Tideline (23 page)

‘Christ, I thought we were done for. OK. We’re safe now, Sonia, chuck the rope. I’ll tie us on.’

He lashed the rope round one of the pillars and then stood up, wobbling on the raft and holding his arms out like a tightrope walker, looking as if he’d never had a moment’s fear
after all.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked.

‘We have several options,’ he said. ‘One, we wait here till the tide goes out and walk ashore. Two, we climb up a ladder and go home by bus. Three, we turn round and row home
again. Four, I climb up a ladder and leave you on the raft to see how you’re going to get out of here.’

‘Don’t do the last one, Seb, will you? Please? I’m cold and I’m scared under here, it’s dangerous.’

‘What’s dangerous about it?’

‘Seb!
Tamasa
is sinking as we speak. No one can see us and the water’s rising and we might get trapped.’

I could only make out his silhouette in the dark so I wasn’t sure if he shrugged or smiled or just ignored me, but suddenly he’d swung the raft round to one of the pillars that had
an iron ladder attached to it, and was shinning up it.

‘Seb, come back! Don’t leave me here.’

Leaving me was one of Seb’s hobbies. What I didn’t know then was that I hadn’t experienced it properly yet. Not fully. Not for ever.

The raft continued to bob up and down and swing around. It was lashed to one of the pillars so I knew there was no chance of being swept further upriver, or, more frightening still, downriver
once the tide turned. But alone in the dark of that overhang, the water heaving up against the pillars, I began to wonder what I’d do if the tide rose so high there was no airspace between me
and the roof. And
Tamasa
was dipping below the waterline. Soon she would sink and I’d be left holding on, my arms growing weaker and weaker until I’d have to let go and collapse
into the dark depths of the real Tamasa, too frozen and exhausted to swim for it. I ought to follow Seb. But the cold of the river had got into me. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. I made a grab
for a ladder, but wobbled as I pulled myself halfway to my feet and almost toppled overboard.

After four or five attempts to haul myself up, unable to get any purchase underfoot from
Tamasa
who kept swinging round and dipping under the water, I gave up. I could barely move my
hands any more, let alone find the strength in my arms.

Seb had gone. I sat on what was left of the raft and wrapping my oilcloth closer around me, pulled my knees up to my chin. There was a loud scuffle and a squeal of rats from the wall. I shouted
again for Seb. He didn’t answer and I imagined him now, ensconced in a pub maybe, ordering a lager – he always got away with ordering alcohol even though he was under age. And I felt
the familiar onslaught of rejection and envy and yearning that he always managed to evoke in me.

Soon more pressing concerns pushed their way in.
Tamasa
was definitely sinking. The back end, the end with the big bag of polystyrene bits that were meant to keep her afloat started to
disappear beneath the water’s surface. I wouldn’t have been able to see this in the dark if it wasn’t for a beam of light that flashed under the overhang and lit up that end of
the raft. My boots were full of water now, I tried to prise them off. Then there was a roar,
Tamasa
rose alarmingly, my vision filled with bright white light and big black arms were all
around me.

I awoke later in the police launch whose light had found me. Seb had gone home. I’m not sure whether he ever got over the humiliation of finding the police involved, though if I’d
known then what I know now, I would have realized how light his punishment at that point was. A reprimand. A day’s grounding. And that was it. Until next time.

My right hand, which has been absently picking up and dropping stones as I sit on the concrete slab, is now loosely holding onto a smooth cylindrical shape. I look down and am
startled to see it’s a bone. If I’m not mistaken, dredging up the anatomy lessons I once took, it’s a human wrist bone. I drop it in alarm and see that all around, in amongst the
pieces of chalk and flint and shoe soles, are more and more bones, thicker hollow ones, shorter finger-like ones, many blackened at the ends as if burnt, and one or two chopped off halfway down,
raggedly, as if they’ve been hacked to pieces. The tide has started to come in and there’s a wind coming off the water, which swells and sighs. The whole river and the sky is filled
with the whoosh and cry of things moving restlessly in discomfort. Moans and rattles, creaks and groans, as if the river itself were demanding attention.

I look up and realize I am not, after all, alone. In the flats that line the river side of the alley there are people on one of the roof terraces, looking down at me. I stand up and brush myself
down, filled with a sense of dread, and hurry back to the mooring steps.

Sonia

Back in the River House, I gather the old portable CD player Kit used as a teenager, a pile of CDs, and an ipod. I’m about to return to the garage bearing gifts that I
hope will put Jez in a better frame of mind, when Greg arrives back from the station. He comes into the sitting room, his arms open, a daft, boyish grin on his face.

‘Well, we have the house to ourselves at last!’ he says, drawing right up close to me and placing his hands on my ribcage. I flinch. He presses his nose in the back of my neck and
starts to kiss it.

‘Put those CDs away. There’s no need to start tidying up now,’ he says into my hair.

I pull away.

‘Don’t, Sonia, let’s not go upstairs, there’s no need. Let’s be spontaneous for a change. There’s no one here! We can do what the hell we like.’
He’s breathing quickly and I can tell he’s been thinking about this all the way back from Euston, getting himself in a lather. He presses himself up against me and I can feel the
hard-on against my thigh as he begins to pluck at my top, burrowing his hand under the neckline and pushing it inside my bra. His hand is hot and slightly sticky.

‘Oh God, Sonia, I miss you when I’m away. I think about this all the time, you here, alone in your black skirt and stockings, me coming in and taking you in the living room, right
here, while you’re trying to get on with the housework.’

I make light of this, pushing him away, trying to laugh.

‘In my fantasy you’re in here with a duster, polishing the furniture and I come in and take you . . .’

I want to guffaw –
with a duster
?
I’ve never held a duster in my life
! – but my sense of humour has left me.

‘Greg, I’m sorry, I can’t. Not in here. Not in this room.’

‘Relax!’ he says. ‘Relax, enjoy!’

‘Look. You enjoy your fantasy, why don’t you? And if you must be in here, I’ll go, and you can please yourself.’ I take his hand from under my skirt, place it on his
crotch.

‘I’ve had enough of pleasing myself, Sonia! It’s what I have to do when I’m away. I’ve got you here with me now and I want you.’ He puts his doctor’s
hands on my shoulders and pushes me towards the sofa, then shoves me down onto it and kneels over me.

‘Greg, please stop this. I’ve got jobs to do. I’m not in the mood.’

He frowns at me.

‘You’re
never
in the mood. Tell me what the hell I have to do to get you in the mood.’

His right hand, where it pushes against my collarbone, hurts me. I move my face to one side so I don’t have to smell his breath, don’t have to observe the vein that pulsates under
the loose skin of his throat. He holds me down with one hand and grasps my skirt with the other. I regret wearing the stockings I put on this morning. Greg was the last thing on my mind when I
dressed. I’ve still got my boots on. These details only make Greg more excited.

‘Keep them on,’ he breathes into my ear. ‘Keep on your stockings and your long black leather boots while I take you on the sofa in the sitting room. Think, just outside the
window, people are walking by. Imagine their surprise if they glanced in . . .’

He’s red in the face. And strong. He pulls my top up and fastens his mouth to one of my nipples. Nothing happens. I am, as always with Greg, as good as dead. I usually pretend, so
frightened am I of disappointing him. Terrified of his anger at my lack of response. And he seems taken in by my acting; I suppose he’s happy to suspend his disbelief. Even now, as I turn my
face this way and that to avoid his kisses, he imagines I’m simply tormenting him by playing hard to get. He’s got his trousers round his knees now, black hairs curling against the
goose-pimpled flesh of his thighs. I screw my eyes shut tight and pray that it’ll be done with as quickly as possible, so that I may be released from the sense of revulsion I feel. Revulsion
is too weak a word. What I feel is not simply a physical recoiling, but a profound loneliness.

At last he gasps, sobs, and collapses on top of me, says one day he’ll have a heart attack if he’s not careful, I turn him on so much. I push him off me, get up, smooth down my skirt
and go to the kitchen. I stand at the sink, turn on the tap, let the silver splash of the water against the stainless steel fill my vision, its gush blot out my thoughts.

‘Bring me a coffee, darling!’ he calls from the living room, and I fill the kettle, and plug it in, moving as if through some thick, viscous liquid, fetching cups and milk and sugar.
A thought I had in the garage earlier, when I told Jez I felt trapped comes back to me. There must be a simple unobtrusive way I could get rid of Greg cleanly and for ever. But I know I can’t
do it. I haven’t got it in me.

I call Greg into the kitchen when the coffee’s made. I don’t want to sit in the living room with its echoes and ghosts. And now its faint residual odour of sex.

‘D’you want a sandwich?’ I ask as he comes up behind me again and puts his arms around my waist.

‘I could murder a toastie,’ he breathes into my ear. ‘You’ve given me an appetite!’

I move away from him and light the grill. Outside there’s a lowering brownish light. I wonder again if it’s going to snow. I slice bread and grate cheese, trying to look casual as I
ask, ‘So how long are you planning to stay?’

He glances up, probably wondering whether I’m having a go at him again. I smile sweetly.

‘There’s a conference in Barcelona next week,’ he says. ‘I’d need to leave on Monday. But I’m happy to cancel my commitments there. You know that.’

‘There’s no need. I’m very busy next week with my clients. Even if you were to stay here, we’d hardly see each other.’

‘You don’t
want
me to go, do you, Sonia?’ he asks. His eyes are twinkling. He believes nothing could be further from the truth.

‘Of course not!’

‘Sonia, I know you’ve been unwell with this flu, but you’re not depressed, are you? You haven’t been yourself the last few days. Kit thought you were offhand with Harry.
She was upset about it.’

I turn the bread over under the grill, add the cheese and wait for it to bubble.

‘Offhand?’

‘She thought you didn’t make much effort. I told her you were just a bit low, post-viral probably. But is that all?’

‘I can’t think how much more effort I could’ve made,’ I snap. I think of the meals I cooked, the bedroom I let Harry sleep in. How I let him play in the music room, the
trip to the opera . . . Everything I did for the onerous Harry when the one person I wanted to look after was shut up in a draughty hovel, suffering under my own hands.

‘Then when the police came yesterday, you looked very pale. Very upset. It
is
upsetting when someone disappears. And frightening, too. To think someone might be out there who . . . Anyway
to reiterate, if you’re anxious I could – and would – cancel Barcelona.’

‘Please don’t cancel Barcelona,’ I say, and slam the plate of cheese on toast on the table in front of him more vigorously than I mean to.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Good. Now. There are a few things I need to sort before I go. You did as I asked, I take it. About the alarm?’

There’s a tense pause as he realizes what I’m about to say.

‘I haven’t had a moment.’

‘Sonia! We can’t put the house on the market without a functioning burglar alarm! Not with things the way they are around here. OK, I know we’ve been avoiding the subject of
moving but it is something we have to discuss soon.’

‘You know how I feel about that. About selling up.’

‘And
you
know this bloody-mindedness is irrational.’

‘I’m never moving from here.’

He puts his toast down and stares rigidly out of the window as if struggling to stop himself from speaking his mind.

‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘we can ring about the alarm now. In fact, what the police said, you know, about this disappearance. It made me think. You’ve talked about it loads of
times, putting bars up at the sitting-room windows. I’d feel safer here alone if I knew there were bars.’

He stands up. Casts me another of his sceptical glances.

‘OK. Leave it to me,’ he says. ‘I’ll sort the alarm and we can discuss the sale again when you’re in a better frame of mind. I’ll go down to the
locksmith’s. They may still be open. And then you’ll be OK for me to go to Barcelona?’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Go tomorrow if you prefer.’

‘And Sonia, perhaps you should pop to the GP next week. Have a chat about these mood swings. They can do a very simple test for depression these days, a straightforward questionnaire.
’

‘I’m not depressed, Greg.’

He looks at me, that look again, as if he knows more than I do.

‘That’s often part of the whole thing, I’m afraid,’ he says.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Denial,’ he says. ‘Harry pointed it out. It’s a classic symptom of depression that the patient denies there’s anything wrong with them.’

‘What does Harry know about it. About me?’

‘Oh, Harry’s not just a pretty face,’ says Greg, an expression I find odd coming from my manly husband. ‘He specializes in psychiatry. You know that.’

I stare at him. How am I supposed to know that Harry, whom I’ve only just met, and taken an instant dislike to, specializes in the study of the mind?