The Drowning Girl. Margaret Leroy

This guy who researches into it. D’you believe in all that?’

      She’s wearing a fisherman’s sweater: long cuffs of heavy oiled wool hang over her hands. She pushes her sleeves up, folding them over and over; her gestures are so graceful. She has many silver rings, and a cinnamon staining of nicotine on the insides of her fingers.

      Her thoughtful grey eyes rest on me. There’s a question in them.

      ‘It depends which bit you mean,’ she says then. ‘I do believe in the spirit world—that there’s a spiritual dimension.’ She gives a little self-deprecating shrug. ‘For God’s sake, Gracie, you know me.’

      I smile, and think of the house where she lives—the Tarot cards, the crystals in her windows, and in her hall a low black table with beeswax candles on; and when she throws one of her parties, she sticks a notice to it: ‘Buddhist altar: please do not put your glasses here.’

      ‘Sometimes…’ she says slowly. ‘Sometimes I think—What if we just don’t get it? What if our dying isn’t at all as we’ve always believed it to be?’

      She comes across to me, rests her hand for a moment on my shoulder. I’m making tree decorations—diminutive pipe-cleaner angels, with frocks of blackberry silk.

      ‘Hey—those are yummy. You clever girl…’ She turns from me, spoons coffee into our cups, pours water from the kettle. ‘Why are you asking anyway?’

      ‘It’s just this thing I read.’

      She waits for a while, but I don’t say anything more.

      ‘Mind you,’ she says then, ‘you have to be a bit careful. People are gullible. It’s easy to start believing all kinds of crazy stuff…’

      Out of the window, the sleet is starting to thicken; big feathery flakes of snow sift gently down. I can tell she’s musing on something. I wait for her.

      She stirs sugar into her coffee. As her hand moves around her intricate rings give off glints and sparkles of light.

      ‘When I was a physio student,’ she says, ‘I had a skeleton to study. I kept it under my bed. And I had no end of bad luck—my boyfriend had dumped me and everything seemed to go wrong.’

      The warmth of the coffee spreads through me. I drink gratefully. Outside, snow stitches its pattern.

      ‘And Teresa, my friend—she’s Irish and superstitious as hell, and she said it was the skeleton that was making all this happen. And she marched me off to Brompton Oratory to get the skeleton blessed. We took it in a Top Shop bag.’ She shakes her head slowly. ‘I mean, can you imagine? And we met this priest, he was absolutely ancient, he had this kind of pleased air. I guess he couldn’t believe his luck. Two girls in very short skirts with a carrier bag full of bones…’

      She’s staring out of the window, where the snowflakes turn and turn as they fall, and fur the sills with white. Her expression is gentle with nostalgia.

      But I’m impatient.

      ‘And what did he say? Did he give it a blessing? Did better things start happening?’

      There are cut-off fronds of juniper on the table; she trails her finger through them, so they release their aromatic resins. Her bracelets make a faint metallic sound.

      ‘He stood there looking at us,’ she says. ‘He had these very blue eyes—startlingly blue, like a child’s eyes. And he said—I’ve never forgotten—“It’s not the dead we should be afraid of, but the living…”’ Her appalling Irish accent makes me smile. ‘“My daughters, always remember: it’s the living we should fear.”’

      CHAPTER 11

      The Arbours was once a private house. It’s a solid, whitewashed building, imposing amid its cedar trees and lawns.

      The receptionist has nail extensions—navy blue, with stick-on gems. We sit in the waiting room, which smells of damp and beeswax. Thank-you cards from children have been pinned up on the walls, and there’s a heap of ancient children’s books. I read Frog and Toad to Sylvie, self-conscious about my mothering, wondering if we’re already being analysed, if the receptionist with the long jewelled nails is marking my parenting out of ten.

      Dr Strickland comes to greet us. He’s a scented, immaculate man, white-haired, with a neat goatee beard. He shakes my hand; his skin is cool and smooth, like fabric.

      ‘I ask everyone who comes here to spend some time in the playroom,’ he tells us. ‘It helps me to understand you. I’ll be watching you through a one-way screen, but you’ll soon forget I’m there. So just enjoy yourselves.’

      The playroom is all in primary colours, with lots of inviting toys—a cooker, bricks and Lego, a heap of dressing-up. Sylvie goes straight to the cooker and makes me a Play-Doh meal, which she cooks in the red plastic saucepans. I watch her as she plays—her decorous gestures, her silky colourless hair. She’s so poised, so self-possessed today. It’s the only time I’ve ever wished that she would be really difficult.

      We’re joined by a woman with parrot earrings and a wide white smile. She says she is Katy the play therapist, and she will play with Sylvie, while I talk to Dr Strickland. She directs me to his office, which looks out over the lawns. It’s a blowy day, wind wrenches at the branches of the cedars, but his room is hushed and silent. He gestures me to a chair. To the side of us there’s one-way glass looking into the playroom.

      ‘Right, Ms Reynolds.’ He picks up a fat silver pen, pulls a notepad towards him. His cologne is too sweet for a man. ‘So when did you first begin to believe that Sylvie has problems?’ he says.

      I don’t like the way he says ‘believe’. But I talk about her tantrums and her waking in the night, and he writes it all down with the fat silver pen.

      ‘And she has a phobia of water,’ I tell him. ‘Especially water touching her face.’

      ‘Yes, Mrs Pace-Barden told me. Was there any traumatic event that might have triggered her fear?’

      ‘No, there was nothing,’ I say. ‘I’ve thought about that a lot.’

      ‘So when did you first begin to notice the problem?’ he says.

      ‘She always hated bath time right from a tiny baby,’ I tell him. ‘We manage. I put in two inches of water, and she just does a quick in and out with absolutely no splashing. When I wash her hair I use one of those face shield things from Mothercare…’

      ‘You need to help her play with water in a relaxed situation,’ he says. ‘Help her learn to feel safe with water.’

      ‘Yes. I’ve tried that,’ I tell him.

      I think of all the things I’ve tried to make her less afraid—playing at hair salons with her Barbies, buying a special watering can for watering the flowers. I think of her shuttered face when I’ve suggested these things. No, Grace. I don’t want to.

      He frowns at the notes in front of him.

      ‘Now, the other things—the screaming and the waking in the night. Do they go back a long way too?’

      ‘Yes. But they seem to be getting worse. It’s almost every night now.’

      ‘Is there anything else that concerns you?’

      ‘Mrs Pace-Barden was worried because she always draws the same picture,’ I tell him.

      ‘What’s in this picture?’ he asks me.

      ‘It’s just a house,’ I tell him.

      I think he will ask, like Mrs Pace-Barden—Did something happen to her there? But instead he smiles a brief ironic smile.

      ‘I have the greatest respect for Mrs Pace-Barden,’ he tells me, ‘but if we took on every child who repeatedly draws a house, the NHS would be in an even more perilous state than it is… Now, let’s go back a bit,’