A J Grayson - The Girl in the Water

Killer Reads an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Killer Reads 2019

Copyright © A J Grayson 2019

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

A J Grayson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008321024

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008321031

Version: 2019-03-04

To those who have suffered:

A tribute

For David who didn’t make it: the fondest of memories.

And for Rachael, once again.

Don ’t give up.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

He’s hiding something …

Prologue

Part One

Beginnings

Chapter 1. Amber

Chapter 2. Amber

Chapter 3. David

Chapter 4. Amber

Chapter 5. David

Chapter 6. Amber

Chapter 7. David

Chapter 8. Amber

Chapter 9. Amber

Chapter 10. David

Chapter 11

Chapter 12. Amber

Chapter 13. David

Chapter 14. Amber

Chapter 15. Amber

Chapter 16. David

Chapter 17. Amber

Chapter 18

Chapter 19. Amber

Chapter 20

Chapter 21. Amber

Chapter 22. Amber

Part Two

Twenty-Three Years Ago

Chapter 23. David, Aged 17 With The Counsellor

Chapter 24. David With The Admissions Officer

Chapter 25. David

Part Three

The Present

Chapter 26

Chapter 27. Amber

Chapter 28. Amber

Chapter 29. David

Chapter 30

Chapter 31. Amber

Chapter 32. Amber

Chapter 33

Chapter 34. Amber

Chapter 35. Amber

Chapter 36. Amber

Chapter 37. Amber

Part Four

Two-and-a-Half Years Ago

Chapter 38. David

Chapter 39. David

Chapter 40. David

Chapter 41. David

Chapter 42. David

Part Five

The Present

Chapter 43. Amber

Chapter 44. Amber

Chapter 45

Chapter 46. Amber

Chapter 47. Amber

Chapter 48. Amber

Chapter 49. Amber

Chapter 50. David

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53. Amber

Chapter 54. Amber

Chapter 55. Amber

Chapter 56. Amber

Part Six

New Lives

Chapter 57. David

Chapter 58. David

Chapter 59. David

Chapter 60. Emma Fairfax

Chapter 61. Amber

Chapter 62. David

Part Seven

Finale

Chapter 63. Amber

Chapter 64. David

Chapter 65. Amber

Chapter 66. Amber

Chapter 67. Amber

Chapter 68. Amber

Chapter 69. Amber

Chapter 70. David

Chapter 71. Amber

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by AJ Grayson

About the Publisher

He’s hiding something from me. I know he is. He’s hiding something, and it’s going to change everything.

There’s nothing I can pinpoint; no concrete, indisputable fact that makes this a certainty, but I’m certain all the same.

He’s lying. And he’s never done that before.

I’m not sure what to make of it. It could be nothing. Could even be good. Men hide things, usually because they’re cowards, but sometimes because they think we want them to. They consider it wit. Maybe he’s hiding a necklace. Or earrings. Or tickets for a surprise holiday, maybe back to the coast again. He knows I always like the coast, especially in the springtime.

But I don’t really think it’s any of those, not if I’m honest. My skin is a pepper of fire and suspicion.

His briefcase is in the walk-in closet of our little bedroom. I know it’s always locked, off limits, but he never holes it away or tries to conceal it. Yet today I found it, unprompted – a pair of synthetically shiny gym shorts slung over the top, as if this would somehow mask its shape. As if I wouldn’t be able to see.

He’s lying. He’s lying.

My beautiful man is lying …

The first body in the water was a woman’s. She was a beautiful creature, despite her unfortunate condition. Her black hair was cropped short. Her cheeks were soft. She had rose-painted lips. Above her body, stranded forever in place, the clouds floated smoothly across the sky.

The river, by all accounts, received her body with reverence. It seemed, through some wordless comprehension of nature, to know this was the arrangement and would, for a time, continue to be. ‘Everything in its appointed place,’ it seemed to affirm, and that, perhaps, made things a little more right in the world. Or wrong.

It’s sometimes hard to know the difference.

The last body in the water would be mine.

That’s a hard thing to admit, and harder to accept, but it’s the way things go. The vision, crystal and clear. My golden hair, swaying in the motion that water always has near the shore. My clothes untorn. An altogether different appearance in death than that girl. A stripe in my flesh, bleeding crimson into the water around me. My fingertips, as always, with their nails nibbled down to the skin. My blue eyes open.

It’s an odd thing, to play the observer at one’s own death. Part of me is ashamed, certain I should feel more emotion. There should be anger. Grief. But then, how can I feel those things, really? Of course the shore must be the end. Of course there is water and silence. My story was probably always going to end like this. Like most, the final page was presumably written long before the first, the conclusion the one sturdy fixture towards which everything before it was always going to lead. However they begin, there’s no story that doesn’t finish with the end.

So I see it. Real. Certain. I float in the water, my light blouse transparent against my body, suggestive in ways that, in life, would be provocative but which in death evokes only pity. I’m dead, and I’m quiet, and I’m screaming. My lips are stalled a lifeless pale, but I’m screaming. Screaming with all the breath that is no longer there.

Every morning, as I stand in the bathroom and gaze into the mirror, my eyes look back and taunt me. The fact that their colour doesn’t match my name has always disappointed me, and it’s like they know this, and are so prominent on my slightly freckled face purely as a way to rub it in.