The Well (36 page)

Bodies float, I thought, they floated on the surface with their arms outstretched and flowers from weeds in their hair, but when I stared into the black pool, the blank gaze of the undisturbed surface met me and I experienced an agony of relief. I was wrong. A mallard flew up suddenly from the other side and was gone and even the distant shouting seemed to stop, leaving this cathedral midnight-silent, the arches of the great trees above it holding up the sky, their thin black branches leading the windows between them, letting in the winter light which shone on this, my baptismal font. For a moment, Lucien stood beside me, holding my hand, pointing at tadpoles, then he smiled and slipped away under the water. And then I could see him, beneath the surface where he lay, head down and hanging, barely visible, a pale shadow of a naked boy imprinted on a shroud of water.

H
eaviness, that is what I remember about the first day after that day: the dark itself weighty and anonymous, having neither time nor person to lift it; words, like my head, lying leaden on a pillow; even the silence was thick.

A half-memory of walking in front of my mother’s car on a cliff road in dense fog, shining a torch from side to side. ‘Be careful,’ I am shouting. ‘You are too close to the edge.’

Thirst sticking my tongue to my lips.

Two people, a man and a woman (who was not the other who sat with me sometimes) talking. That other had gone, leaving no trace. Someone else had left, but I was not so clear who, just a sense that they too would never be back. Angie was always coming and going, but it was not her who was missing, although I did need to get in touch with her about something. Perhaps Mark could do that for me. They talked without listening to each other, the man and the woman in the corner of the room. It’s the smell that’s different, he said. I didn’t believe it, sir, when they said about this place on the news. It feels as though I haven’t smelled rain on grass since I was a kid. Let me know when she wakes up. I thought I was awake. My eyes told me this was my bedroom at The Well. Something had happened to bring these people here – a lot of people – they ran all
over the fields and shouted because they had lost something, or someone. Then I remembered. Lucien was dead.

Unfamiliar words and procedures. Days full of circles, questions, headlines, moments of absurd ordinariness and debilitating tremors of loss which came from deep within the earth, leaving jagged cracks down the flaking walls of my mind.

I put him to bed. I woke up. He was gone. I found him dead.

What made you think he’d be at the Wellspring?

I don’t know. Maybe because he was always fascinated by it.

What was your status with the cult?

I am one of the chosen ones.

Chosen by whom?

I don’t know.

How did you know you were chosen?

I was told.

By who?

By the Rose. By Voice. By Sister Amelia. I don’t know.

Who is Voice?

No one’s Voice. It’s just a voice.

Tell us about Sister Amelia. Who is she?

I don’t know.

Tell us about Mark.

I don’t know what to say.

Why did your husband leave?

I don’t know.

Why did your husband come back?

I don’t know.

Are you aware of the previous allegations made against your husband?

Of course.

Where is your daughter?

I don’t know.

Did you kill your grandson?

I don’t know.

You don’t seem to know very much at all.

Where is Mark, I asked them, but they didn’t give me a straight answer.

One thing I did know was how to log on to
todaysheadlines.co.uk
.

I clicked on the link.

I didn’t see page 7. I returned to the main site.

I hesitated, then expanded the headline.

The taste of doubt. The police confirmed that the only footprints found by the Wellspring were those of the Sisters, Sister Amelia, Mark, Lucien and me, no drought-deranged outsiders, no vengeful locals. Him or me, then. Or the Sisters.

‘What about the Sisters? Sister Amelia?’ I asked the policewoman.

‘They have been released without charge as well.’

‘As well as who?’

‘As well as your husband.’

‘Where was he then?’

‘You’ll have to ask him. I am not at liberty to say.’

I did ask him. He told me. The medium of the internet, which
had painted him as a potential paedophile and thrown our lives into chaos in London, had this time put on a suit and tie and provided him with an alibi. Analysis of his laptop had shown he had been online at, as the pathologist chose to call it, the ‘likely time of death’. There were Google searches recorded for flats to rent, Christmas tree farms in Scotland, our solicitor’s address, Alcoholics Anonymous, how to drown yourself . . . and there was a half-finished letter apparently addressed to me, last edited at 2.07 a.m. I didn’t ask about the letter; I knew what it was. Apparently, Mark told me, computer evidence like this is not ‘conclusive’, as the police say, but it was enough to let him off the hook for the time being.

Nothing has been conclusive since that night, but conclusions are all that I am interested in now.

There were things I wanted to ask the Sisters as well, and at some point I was given permission to visit them. I found them the same, but different and my questions stuck in my throat. Sister Amelia was in the hub with Eve, updating the site because the followers were worried, their faith wavering, but their hope for rain uncompromised. They told me how they had been questioned, but in the end, of course, as Amelia said, no Sister is ever alone. They were all each other’s alibis – that’s how the police framed it; they were all each sister’s keeper, according to the word of the Rose. Later, I sat for a while alone with Dorothy who was tear-stained and shrunken, wrapped tightly in a blanket. She told me that they had questioned her repeatedly, not just about what she had been doing, but about the others too and she had become confused. Some things only seemed significant in hindsight; she said she had never felt old until then.

‘It was straightforward about Eve and Amelia, they just went to bed as usual, but Jack?’ She dried her eyes and started making some herbal tea. ‘I didn’t know what to do. She begged me.’

‘What was wrong?’ Sitting at the little fold-down table, I stared at the watercolour half-painted on the pad in front of me, mesmerised by the way it captured the winter rain falling at an angle across
the bare poplars, struck by the desolate feeling which came from this painting of heaven.

I was barely listening, but Dorothy continued talking regardless. ‘Sleep is very hard for her. I often wake and find her gone, so it wasn’t unusual. But she’s been so ill, Ruth. She was a complete mess while the police were around, totally paranoid and deluded. I wondered if it triggered bad memories for her, you know, when she was a child. She kept saying the police would have her sectioned.’

‘So what are you worried about, Dorothy?’

‘I prayed, Ruth. I prayed so hard, but I couldn’t hear the answer. Do you remember asking me once if anyone ever spoke back when I prayed? Well, this time, nothing. But I had to say something. So I said she was here, asleep with me, in this caravan, all night, until dawn when she got up and went out to pray.’

‘Where does she go when she can’t sleep?’

‘Usually to the hub, now it’s cold. In the summer, she just sat out and looked at the stars until she felt calm again. She couldn’t harm anyone, Ruth, you and I know that.’

I took the mug from her, inhaled the sweet lavender of forgetfulness and rosemary of remembrance. ‘Dorothy, you are the most truthful person I know. You mustn’t worry.’

‘I think I have told them everything,’ she sobbed.

The door opened and the cold air rushed in, making us wrap the rugs around us just a little bit tighter, holding onto the writings on the table to stop the answers blowing away. ‘I am sure you did,’ said Sister Amelia.

My boy gone? Never to sit with me again here? On the sofa, reading together? Never?

A post-mortem report – the Table of Contents: