before leaning on a rock and vomiting steaming yellow liquid onto his bare feet.
I think I knew before anyone else, though I stared past him with the others, waiting for a glimpse of Bobby’s red scalp coming doggedly in. It took divers to bring him back in the end, beaching his body three hours later, with the lake busier than the tourist season. The police had interviewed us all, and my brother had been in tears. The divers had cursed with all the anger of men who fished for dead children on bitter days. We felt their scorn like blows as we shivered in rough red blankets.
I’d listened while my brother told them nothing worth hearing. He hadn’t seen it happen, he said. The first he knew of the tragedy was when he reached the far bank alone. I might have believed him if he hadn’t seen Bobby hurting me only the day before.
You never really know when a story starts, do you? Bobby had decided I deserved a special punishment, for breaking some rule of his. I’d been crying when my brother came by and Bobby let go. Neither of us was sure what he might do, but there was a hard tightness to my brother that even lads like Bobby found frightening. Just a glance at his dark eyes and a face that looked a little white over the bones and Bobby had dropped me straight away.
The two of them had looked at each other and my brother had smiled. A day later and Bobby Penrith was cold and blue on the side of Derwentwater. I didn’t dare ask the question and it had settled inside me like a cold lump. I felt guilty even for the freedom it brought me. I could walk past Bobby’s house without the usual terror that he would see me and fall into step at my side. The boy had an evil streak in him, but he was not a match for my brother and only a fool would have tried to swim on a November day. Only a boy who had been frightened by an even bigger fish than he was.
In the utter darkness of the Brighton shingle, I began to shiver with the cold. Of course he noticed, and I heard a note of amusement in his voice as he went on.
‘They say suicides don’t feel pain. Did you ever hear that, Davey? They cut and cut away at themselves, but they’re so wrapped up in their own heads that the cowardly little shits barely feel a sting. Can you believe that? It is a strange world.’
I hadn’t felt the cold before. I thought it was numbness, but now it seemed to hit me all at once, as if the wind was tearing right through the skin. My hidden feet were aching with a cold that gnawed up the bones of my legs. I crossed my arms over my chest and I felt it all coming back to me. I would have given anything for numbness then. The alternative was terror and shame.
‘Are you going to tell me why my brave little brother would be out standing in the sea on a cold night?’ he went on. ‘The wind is freezing the arse off me, I can only imagine what it must be like for you. Davey? I’d have brought a coat if I’d known.’
I felt tears on my cheeks and I wondered why they weren’t turning to ice with the cold that pierced me.
‘There are things I can’t bear any more,’ I said, after a time. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted that fine and simple mood I’d been in when he arrived, when I was calm. My bladder had filled without me noticing, and now it made itself felt. Every part of me that had been ruled by my misery now seemed to have woken and be screaming for attention, for warmth. How long had I been standing there?
‘I have an enemy,’ I said softly. There was silence behind me and I didn’t know if he had heard me or not.
‘How deep are you in?’ he said, and for an insane moment I thought he meant the water.
‘I can’t handle it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I can’t… I can’t stop it.’ More tears came and at last I turned to face the man my brother had become. His face was still stretched over his bones and his hair was a dark bristle over pale