Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

But it’s too easy and karma isn’t that forgiving. Something will have to give and I guess it will be the most important thing. My writer’s block will return and I will never be able to write again. That will be my punishment. I will have this crazy story to tell and I just won’t be able to get the words down. I have used so many people; it makes sense that the fruit of that abuse is toxic, even though my intentions weren’t.

In the beginning of my writing career my motives were pure enough: to tell the truth. Writing is above all, telling the truth. But it’s not sustainable if you don’t live truthfully, which I haven’t done since I was eight years old. And now that it’s too late I know what Eve said that night was true: that my writing is a gift and if I misuse it, it will – and did – abandon me.

I feel I have turned a corner now. I understand that the universe wants more out of a person than I have been offering. It is time to live a more authentic writing life.

The third ending. I can hear voices through the swing-doors, down the corridor, low and muffled. I want to tell someone about my epiphany. Anyone will do at this stage, even Sello. Their muted voices grow louder as they near. I stand up and try to look through the bars but the angle is wrong, so I pace for a while and sit down again. I wonder if they will bring me a pen. I perch on the end of the bed and play imaginary piano on my knees. And I wait.

Sometimes, things in life happen which shock you on such a fundamental level, you know for sure that you will never be the same person again. They don’t happen often, and perhaps some people don’t ever experience it. It’s like being hit by a car you didn’t see coming, despite looking both ways before stepping off the pavement. Like waking up without your legs, or being turned to dust after being caught by an early dawn.

The first time it happened to me was that summer in Pringle Bay when I held my sleeping sister in my arms. And now it happens again. My heart stops beating, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and the air turns to clear jelly. The double doors swing open and in she strides.

“True friends stab you in the front.”

At first I think, Oh Fuck, I have finally snapped the delicate and trembling cord that was connecting me to sanity. And it’s about fucking time. I’ve had just about enough of the sane life. It was too hard and it never made sense.

I try to stand but find my legs no longer belong to me.

“Hello Slade,” she says.

I am numb, deaf and dumb. The jelly holds me in place.

“Eve?”

“Hi,” she says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be raised from the dead. She takes a key out of her pocket and opens the cell door. I know I should be happy to see her, or at the very least, relieved. But seeing her walk in here has spun the world in the opposite direction, leaving my brain behind. Her movements are measured, fluid, confident. She has been planning this for a long time. When I realise that I may not be mad and this may in fact be happening, I gag.

She walks towards me, takes my hand, hoists me up and leads me out of the cell, down the corridor and into a large room where people are waiting for me. In the nervous crowd stand a tear-stained version of my father, an astounded Sifiso, a broken-nosed Frank. The room is whirling. I also see other faces I recognise. The executor of Eve’s will, the boy from the bank, the detectives in plain clothes: Sello and Madinga. The deaf-mute cousin who almost gave the game away. Everyone manages to look grim and hopeful at the same time.

“Surprise party?” I joke. I address Sello grimly: “You shouldn’t have.”

“I know I went too far,” starts Eve. “It started off as an idea, a small project, a benevolent hoax…”

“A betrayal,” I say. “The ultimate betrayal.”

“No,” she shakes her head. “Not a betrayal. A gift.”

I spit out bitter laughter.

“A gift? I almost died!”

“You were dead already,” she says, “We brought you back to life.”

“I thought you were dead for Christ’s sake!” I am shouting and my voice bounces off the spinning walls. “Do you know what that did to me? Do you have any idea? And to make me think that I played a part in it? Heartless, hateful…”

“You did play a part in it,” Eve says, “the most important part. It was your plan.”

“What?”

“It was your plan, your mind map, on the kitchen table. I saw it a few days after our fight at your party – I had gone to apologise – and that’s when I had the big idea. You planned to kill me in theory; all we did is continue the story. We followed it to see where it would go, to give you an authentic experience.”

I turn on the others, casting venom at my father and Frank.

“And you!” I shout, “You traitors! You cold-blooded traitors!”

“No one was against you Slade, the whole time everyone was with you, helping you, taking care of you.”

“Frank! Helping me? He was trying to kill me! And Dad… spying on me.”

Eve is calm. “We lost you once and your father let us know where you were and which car to find you in. He was helping us to look out for you. You became more and more… unpredictable. Frank has been acting as your bodyguard since the day of the ‘murder’. He made sure that you didn’t do anything too dangerous.”

I think of Edgar, AKA Frank, knocking the box of matches out of my hand. I am quiet for a while.

“When you started battling to write I wondered if a small mystery might coax you into a new story, so I wrote you a few letters. When that didn’t work, I spray-painted your wall. Threw a rock through your front window. That didn’t work either, so I gave up, until I saw your plan. It was perfect.”

“You all stood around and let me lose everything.”

“You lost nothing,” she says. “It was all part of the setup. I thought you must feel as though you have lost everything to realise how much you really had. Everything is exactly as it was before we started. You have your house, your car…”

“Your contract with Starling,” pipes Sifiso.

“Everything is as it was before?” I say, “Nothing is as it was before.”

“Well then,” smiles Eve, “We have accomplished what we set out to do.”

“Which was what, exactly?”

“Whether you see it now or not, we have given you your life back.”

“You could have fucking fooled me.”

“You needed something… devastating… to get you writing again. You were desperate, you told me so. You thought you were finished. I decided to show you that you weren’t. I gave you what you were begging for.”

“It wasn’t for you to do.”

“And who else would do it? If we hadn’t done this, where would you be?”

“I would be safe, at home, drinking whisky, instead of standing here with twenty years taken off my life.”

“Your reaction is understandable; we expected you to feel this way. We planned everything to the last detail. But that wasn’t enough… you kept on surprising us.”

“I dare say I return your sentiment.”

I am angry but I start to relax into the thought that I no longer have to fear for my life. More importantly, Eve is alive. The relief is heady.

“You really had us on our toes. We had a full team working on the project 24/7. We had actors, mostly, and some guys from the film production house to help with make-up and photos and props, like crime tape.”