The Drowning Girl. Margaret Leroy

‘Jesus, Sylvie. I’ve had enough. Just stop it, for God’s sake, will you?’

      She sits quite still at the table, with her back to me. She presses her hands to her ears.

      If I stay, I’ll hit her.

      I go to the bathroom, slam and lock the door. I sit on the edge of the bath, rigid, my fists clenched, my nails driving into my palms. I can feel the pounding of every pulse in my body. I sit there for a long time, making myself take great big breaths, sucking the air deep into my lungs like somebody pulled from the sea. Gradually, my heart slows and the anger seeps away.

      I’m aware of the pain again. It’s worse now, drilling into my jaw. I find two Nurofen at the back of the bathroom cabinet. But my throat is tight, they’re hard to swallow, I’ve sucked off all the coating before I get them down. They leave a bitter taste.

      In the living room, Sylvie is on the floor again, busy with her Noah’s Ark, humming softly to herself, as though none of this had happened.

      ‘I’ll make you some toast,’ I tell her.

      She doesn’t look up.

      ‘With Marmite?’ she says.

      ‘Of course. If that’s what you’d like.’

      I make her the toast, put milk in her cup. I eat a few mouthfuls of crumble, though my appetite has gone. I clear the table.

      ‘Shall we watch television?’

      She nods. We sit together on the sofa, and she curls in close to me, taking neat bites of her toast. If she drops a crumb she licks her finger and dabs at the crumb and sucks it from her fingertip. It’s a wildlife programme, about otters in a stream in the Scottish Highlands. She loves the otters, laughs at their quick, lithe bodies, the way they slide across the rocks as sleek and easy as water. As we sit there close together, it feels happy again between us, the bad scene just a memory, faint as the slight bitter taste in my mouth.

      ‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry I shouted at you,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t feel well. My tooth hurts.’

      She’s nestled in the crook of my arm. She looks up at me.

      ‘Which one, Grace?’ she says.

      ‘It’s here.’ I point to the sore place. ‘I’ll have to go to the dentist—he’ll probably take it out.’

      She reaches across and rests her hand against the side of my face.

      ‘There,’ she says.

      The tenderness in the gesture melts me. I hug her to me, bury my face in her hair, in her smell of lemons and warm wool. She lets herself be held.

      CHAPTER 9

      The receptionist greets me: she’s married to one of the dentists who work here. She has a faded prettiness and bleached, dishevelled hair.

      ‘Toothache?’ she says.

      ‘I’m afraid so.’

      ‘Oh, dear.’ She shakes her head, a little disapproving. ‘You shouldn’t have left it so long.’

      The waiting room has a fish tank and comfortable chairs. I sit and watch the fish. They have a transparent, unnatural look, like embryos, and their slow, threaded dance is hypnotic. There’s the faintest antiseptic smell, like that green astringent liquid the dentist gives you to rinse with. It’s very warm, and quiet with double glazing at the windows, so all you hear is the softest hum of traffic from the street. It’s pleasant sitting doing nothing, the warmth easing into my limbs.

      There are papers and magazines on the table beside me. I look casually through the magazines, hoping for something glamorous, for opulent taffeta frocks and fetishy shoes; but they’re all just property journals.

      A woman comes in and speaks to the receptionist. She’s dressed discreetly, in business black with sensible court shoes, but I can’t help staring at her: her face is a mess, the skin around one eye all bruised and broken. Someone must have attacked her; perhaps she lives with a violent man. She sits beside the fish tank, very straight and still, as though moving too much could hurt her.

      The dentist’s wife puts down her pen.

      ‘So how’s your little one doing, Ms Reynolds?’

      She knows Sylvie well: I may put off my own visits, but I never miss Sylvie’s check-ups.

      ‘Sylvie’s fine,’ I tell her.

      ‘She’s how old now?’

      ‘She’s three.’

      ‘They’re so lovely at three.’ Briefly, her face softens. She has a hazy, nostalgic look. ‘They grow up so quickly,’ she says.

      ‘Yes, I guess so.’

      ‘My two are at university now. It seems to happen so suddenly. But I’ll tell you one thing—you never ever stop worrying. Whatever you do, you always feel you might have got it wrong.’

      ‘Yes. I can imagine that.’

      Her husband calls her in to help with the patient before me: she doubles as his dental nurse.

      I glance across at the woman with the bruising. I wonder about her life, and the little steps, each seeming perhaps so innocuous, that have brought her to what looks like a very bad place. How easily this can happen—sleepwalking into trouble. Maybe she senses my gaze on her; she glances up, catches my eye. I feel myself flush and turn back to the magazines, pulling out a local paper, the Twickenham Times.

      I keep my eyes down, looking at the paper, pretending to be interested. There are pictures of school prize-givings. I read my horoscope. There’s a recipe for grapefruit and poppyseed cake, which sounds delicious and which I attempt to memorise. I wonder if poppyseeds are expensive, and whether they stock them at Somerfield.

      Something catches my eye then, a double-page spread in the centre of the paper. ‘The Real Ghost-Busters: Cynthia Johnson Reports.’ Intrigued, I start to read. It’s all written in that bland, gossipy style you find in small local newspapers.

      Things that go bump in the night are all in a day’s work for Dr Adam Winters, of the Psychic Institute at Hampton University. Adam talked to me in the disappointingly prosaic setting of his office in the Department of Psychology. A soft-spoken man, whose gentle voice belies his evident energy and fascination with his subject, he has investigated ghosts, poltergeists and cases of telepathy. Sounds like an exciting job? ‘Mostly it’s quite routine,’ says Adam. ‘For instance, if someone claims to have telepathic powers, we might set up an experiment where they have to make predictions, and we analyse the results to see if their guesses are better than chance. Basically we’re applying scientific methods of inquiry to the things that happen to people that they can’t explain…’

      There’s a photo of Adam Winters with the article. It’s a grainy photo; you can’t really see him clearly. He’s lean and dark, and his chin is shadowed with stubble, and he has a startled air, as if someone has just called his name. I contemplate the photo for a moment. I decide he’s the kind of man who’d corner you at a party and stand too close and talk at length about some obsession of his: someone who’d undoubtedly think that I was rather frivolous. Then I smile at myself, for conjuring up this entire persona for him.

      I can hear the edgy, mosquito whine of a drill from one of the surgeries. I don’t want to think about it. I focus on the article, which has lots of stories of local ghosts. There’s a gallery at Hampton Court that’s haunted by the ghost of Kathryn Howard, whom Henry VIII beheaded: dogs won’t go over the threshold. Adam Winters and his colleagues visit the sites of the hauntings, and measure fluctuations in electromagnetic fields.

      I ask him if he believes in ghosts, but he’s guarded and non-committal. He tells me, ‘A scientist should never say that anything is impossible…’

      I look up as the woman in the black business suit is called in. I notice how stiffly she moves, her body fragile as eggshell. Then the