brown spiders were pricking across her legs, so presumably she was lying on her side. Her hip felt sore and cold against the parquet. She could taste blood in her mouth.
‘She couldn’t turn the tap off, you see. She was frightened it was going to overflow, so she knocked on the wall. When I first moved in I told her, if you ever need me in a hurry, just bang on the wall. So when I heard the knock, I grabbed the raincoat Mark Garrett had left at my place the day before and came over to help.’
Kallie could see Heather’s back bent over the bath. She couldn’t sort out the different sounds in her head: the water underneath, the flowing tap, the liquid buzz in her ears. Heather rose and pushed up her sleeves.
‘She was so old and frail, like a little doll, and she had no idea that she owned the Water House. No idea! Of course, the walls had been painted over years before. The property belonged to her brother, and he wouldn’t sell it as long as she was alive. Suddenly it seemed so simple. Now it’s all got complicated. Come on, you.’
She pulled Kallie to her feet, then tipped the top half of her body over the bath. Setting a comfortable temperature was not an act of thoughtfulness; she did not want Kallie to be shocked awake by a sudden plunge into cold water.
This is pleasant, thought Kallie. Just what I need to take away the pain. The warmth enveloped her right arm, then the top of her head and one side of her face. She was slowly tipping, being gently lowered. The buzzing suddenly stopped, and all she could hear was the dull sonar of immersion. Water filled her nose and made her cough, and then began to flood her mouth. The sensation was not disagreeable. I’m going to join the people on the walls, she thought. I’ll get to see what they see. I’ll look out at the world with them from deep beneath the river.
She felt her head being turned further into the water, so clear and untroubled, the curving white arc of the bath below so close that her face was touching the cool ceramic base. A soft red cloud drifted slowly before her eyes. That’s just my blood, she thought, from the cut on my head, nothing to be alarmed about.
The water wasn’t deep enough. The hot tap was too slow, and now it had stuck. Heather turned on the cold with her left hand, keeping Kallie’s neck gripped firmly in her right. It was taking too long. She should have been struggling by now. Why was she so relaxed? It wasn’t a normal reaction. Her throat should have closed, she should have been sputtering and fighting for life. It was the worst thing that could happen. She needed the reaction; without it, Kallie wouldn’t gasp and suck water down into her lungs.
They’re helping me, thought Kallie, the men and women on the walls. They’re all underwater, and look how calmly they’re behaving. The waters rose and drowned them all, but in death they can see everything. They’re pointing to the river below the house. They want to be released of their tied-up lives, filled with rules and manners and pious Christian lessons. They want to be washed away, back into an ancient pagan world, to be free to swim to the wide grey sea. And that’s all I want now, to be taken with them. My life above has ended. All I have to do is breathe gently and follow them.
‘Why won’t you fight?’ screamed Heather. But even as she tried to tighten her grip on the neck of the limp, heavy body, she could feel it pulling away from her, back toward the wet floor. She had dreamed of the mural for so long, but now the exposed white faces were unnerving her, judging her. Another few seconds at the most, surely that’s all it can take, she told herself. Then this whole nightmare will be over. Ignoring the blue underwater-wide eyes that stared down on her, she pushed the head in her hands down hard once more.
Even at this crucial moment, Kallie was aware of the growing sound of water all around her. One of the candles on the floor guttered and fell over, its flame hissing out. Water was gushing from between the bricks in the chimney breast, where she had been striking them with the