Lucy Clarke - You Let Me In

‘You’re going to be so happy here,’ her mother said, holding Elle’s face in her hands. ‘I’m so proud of you. I hope I tell you that often enough.’

Elle could sense the emotion brooked in her mother. It was the first time in two decades that her mother would be returning to an empty flat.

‘You know, Mum, you could do this, too. Study. Make more time to write. You could get a student loan …’

Her mother had waved a hand through the air. ‘This is your time. You enjoy every moment of it.’

And Elle would do.

Until she met him .

In the moon-streaked dark of one a.m., I twist onto my side, pulling the covers under my chin.

When I was a girl, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d slip into my mother’s bed and ask her to tell me a story. She’d pluck ripe characters from the branches of her imagination and I’d lie on my back, eyes open, a forest of snow leopards or daisy fairies dancing across our ceiling.

It’s been four years since she died, yet some nights, it’s still hard to believe that she’s gone.

In those awful first weeks after her death, when Fiona and I were both reeling, I’d read everything I could about sepsis. I’d pick up the phone, outraged to tell Fiona: Did you know, eight million people worldwide die every year from sepsis? How, how have we not heard of it? How can our mother no longer be alive because of something that began with a urinary tract infection?

I flick on the light, too agitated to sleep. From my bedside drawer, I pull out my copy of Wild Fear , and turn to the front.

I read the dedication.

For my mother.

I run a fingertip beneath those words.

Your mum would’ve been so proud , a reader once said at a book signing.

They were wrong.

*

Wind funnels along the side of the house as I step from the back door into the morning’s cold bite. Beneath bare soles, the paving stones are ice. Tightening the cord of my dressing gown, I feel the glossy kiss of my swimsuit beneath.

At the end of the pathway, private steps carve into the rock face, which I share with Frank and Enid’s property. I concentrate on each footstep, avoiding the puddles of seawater pooling in grooves, the rock edges furred with seaweed.

Last night I only managed to snatch an hour or two’s sleep. It felt like there was an axle out of alignment in my mind, causing my thoughts to over-steer, almost imperceptibly, in one direction so that, no matter how far I travelled, eventually they’d turn a circle and I’d arrive exactly where I started.

Out here though, buffeted by the blast and sting of salt air, my head begins to clear. Reaching the beach, the sand is compact, cold against my feet. Whitecaps rise and crumble beneath blustering clouds.

‘You’re mad,’ Fiona always tells me whenever she hears I’ve been in for a winter swim. ‘No one knows you’re out there. You don’t even wear a wetsuit. What if something happened?’

‘It won’t,’ I reply, confident in my ability to judge conditions, to know my own limits. I’ve always loved to swim, but there is something intoxicating about swimming in the depths of winter. When I moved here, I made a bargain with myself that I’d get in the water once a week – all year round.

As children, we used to holiday in Cornwall, renting a caravan set back from the beach. I remember a particularly cold April, books and blankets scattered across the caravan, and a sense of restlessness at having spent too long indoors. I’d looked up from my page to watch a group of elderly people in swimsuits gathered at the water’s edge. There was no squealing, no tiptoeing, no fuss. They simply walked into the sea and swam.

‘That’s what dementia does to you,’ Fiona had declared, clambering onto the sofa beside me to watch.

‘They’re brave,’ I countered, chin resting on forearms.

‘They’re like, a hundred. They’ll get pneumonia.’

Our mother, who’d been writing in the gold-edged notebook we’d bought her for Christmas, glanced up.

‘Cold water boosts our white blood cells because our bodies are forced to react to the changing conditions. It’s good for you.’ She’d always had a knack for casting a relevant, articulate fact into almost any stream of conversation.

Fiona turned to me, eyes glinting. ‘I dare you to join them.’

Four years older than me, her approval was hard to gain. I thought about the sharpness of the cold, the feel of the icy waves lifting and dropping me, the way my skin would pucker with goose bumps. I placed a bookmark into the spine of my novel.

‘Sure.’

I lasted a minute and a half, the cold squeezing the air from my lungs, but Fiona had clapped and cheered from the shoreline and I felt like a hero. Afterwards our mother warmed a pan of hot chocolate and I sat cross-legged in front of the electric fire watching the wiggling red lines of heat, the mug cupped in my hands, a surge of endorphins pumping in my body.

Now at the shoreline, I step from my dressing gown, the cold nicking my skin. I set the gown on the damp sand, then snap a picture of it, typing a quick post:

My drug of choice for getting the brain cells firing. #wildswim

Then the phone is away, and it is just me and the sea.

The trick, I’ve learned, is not to rush. To set a pace that doesn’t falter. I walk purposefully to the shore and straight into the sea. I don’t focus on the cold gripping my ankles: I concentrate on my breathing, keeping it level as the water climbs to my waist.

I push off, kicking away from shore. The bitter sea wraps around me, stealing every thought in my head. It is all I can do to remember to breathe.

I’m careful to remain near shore, not wanting to chance my luck against the stronger currents that pull and suck towards the horizon. I can taste the salt on my lips, feel the pleasing sting of it against my skin.

I look back towards my house. I realise that I’ve left the light on in the writing room and I can see straight inside, the empty desk eyeing me.

It looks, just for a moment, as if someone passes behind it.