Jane Robins - White Bodies - A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Lisa Jewell

We pass by open fields and then Windsor castle, by whitewashed suburban mansions with lawns that run down to the water, and I spot a heron on the far bank.

Felix is steering from the back, and he says, ‘Let’s swim.’ We’re on a wide part of the river now, dense woodland on one side, a flat, empty field on the other. I look around, for people, but there’s no one.

‘It’s too cold!’ I protest. ‘And not safe. Don’t people drown in the Thames?’

But Felix and Tilda aren’t listening. Instead, Felix ties the boat to an overhanging branch, and the two of them are ripping their clothes off, frantically, like they’re in a race. Then they’re standing up, totally naked, the boat rocking madly as they position themselves to jump out. Two spindly white bodies, Tilda gripping Felix’s arm and screeching, ‘I’m bloody freezing already! I can’t do it’.

‘Oh yes you can!’

In a sweeping move, he scoops up my sister, holding her across his chest in his arms, which I now notice are muscular and strong. She yells, ‘No! No!’ and kicks her legs in scissor shapes as he flings her overboard into the water, then leaps in himself. For the briefest, heart-stopping moment, they both vanish into the black; then they are swimming and splashing about, Tilda screaming, and I can’t tell whether she’s exhilarated or furious. But she calls out, ‘Come on in, Callie! It’s amazing.’

‘You know you want to!’ Felix reaches up, pulls the side of the boat down into the water, as though he’s a monster coming to get me, grabbing at my ankle.

‘I won’t!’

My mind is racing, though, trying to figure out what to do. I don’t want to strip off my clothes in front of them – I’m embarrassed about my roundish pinkish body, and afraid that they’ll laugh at me. At the same time, I’m thinking how wonderful it would be to sink to the bottom of the river, swallowed up by the icy water. Also, I’m intoxicated by the compliment of being included and, for some reason that I don’t quite understand, I want to impress Felix. So I sit on one of the benches and take off my parka coat and my sweatshirt and jeans and socks. Then I jump in wearing a t-shirt, bra and knickers, sinking down, just as I had wanted, shocked, numb and frozen, unable to think because my head is pounding. My feet touch the bottom, a thick slime with hard edges jutting out. I flinch, and float to the top, where I find that Felix is standing next to me, water up to his chest, and he leans into me, his hands gripping my waist. ‘I have you in my power,’ he says, raising me out of the water, while I pretend to struggle, my hands on his shoulders. Then he throws me backwards; in again, and under, right down to the bottom. When I emerge, I find myself screaming and laughing just as Tilda had done. I want to say, ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ like a child would.

But Felix has turned to Tilda, and I see that he can lift her thin body much higher than mine, and can throw her into the water much harder. Then, when her head appears, it takes only a swift push with one hand to force her back down, so cleanly that she has no chance to protest, and there is no sign of her, no arms flailing, no disturbance in the water, and I worry that he’s holding her down at the bottom far too long, forcing her into the hazardous mud. ‘Stop it! It’s too much,’ I yell.

He releases his grip, so that she comes up limp and choking, her shoulders heaving. This time he takes her gently in his arms and carries her back to the boat. ‘You shouldn’t have done that…’ she says, coughing out the words so weakly that I can barely hear, her head resting on his chest, her arm dangling lifelessly at her side.

Felix flops her over the side, into the bottom of the boat. ‘You’re fine. Now let’s get dressed and have some food.’

I swim to the boat and heave myself up to look inside, to check that she’s okay. Her eyes meet mine and she’s blinking slowly, looking startled and empty. There’s something insect-like in the way she is folded into herself in the corner, something maimed. I’m about to screech with concern but she changes her expression, so swiftly that it’s like a magic trick, and she’s laughing and telling us to get into the boat before we freeze to death.

We take it in turns to use a linen picnic cloth as a towel, and as I watch Tilda drying herself I think I detect that she’s still shaken, but it’s hard to be sure.

Soon we’re huddled in our dry clothes, eating sandwiches, and drinking black coffee from a flask that we pass around. Tilda’s smiling as she says to me, ‘This is what it’s like being with Felix – amazing! And I’m so pleased you joined us.’ Felix says that he too is pleased I came, and he leans across the boat to touch my bare ankle, just for a second. At that moment, everything is sharper, keener, more intense than I’ve ever known. The sky, the trees, the water – even the ham in the sandwiches.

Later, when I’m back home, I open up the dossier and write: Tilda is in love with Felix and maybe I love him too. As her boyfriend, obviously. He’s so handsome and clever and romantic. My pulse raced when he stripped off all his clothes and I saw his white, muscular body, and he jumped into the river. I was amazed that he would do something so spectacular in front of me. I can’t remember such an exciting day in my life as this. I just wish he hadn’t forced Tilda under the water and held her there so long.

1997

3

It’s the hottest, brightest day I have ever known and we are running, so fast, hurtling down a steep hill, somewhere in Kent. Beneath us, the grass grows in tufts and mounds, and I’m trying to keep my balance, at the same time looking towards the bottom of the hill, at the grown-ups in the half-distance. They are sprawling on a blanket and passing a bottle from hand to hand. Mum is slightly apart from the group, drinking her wine, smoking and adjusting the skirt of the long yellow dress she made the night before.

She looks up to watch our race, shading her eyes with her cigarette hand, and we run faster until we’re tumbling through blue sky into the field, my legs going so fast they’re out of control, making me bump-bump at a million miles an hour, right past the picnickers, whose voices I can suddenly hear. Mum yells, ‘Come on, Tilda!’ because my sister is challenging a girl called Precious for first position, and they are neck and neck, belting for the finish line. Tilda’s blonde hair is flipping around and her elbows are jabbing outwards, until she is just about in front, and she shrieks, ‘I’m the winner! I’m the winner!’ For a fraction of a moment my heart is broken, then Mum calls out, ‘Great job, Callie!’ and I’m happy again even though I hear the note of consolation in her voice, because I am going to be last. At the bottom of the hill, the other children collapse into each other and I bump straight past them, accelerating instead of stopping, until I fall headlong into the black prickly bush that separates the picnicking field from the one beyond, the one with cows in it.

Now, the sunny day is gone and I’m on my knees in the bush with my hands pressed into the earth, trying to find a way to stand up, but I can’t because I’m stuck in a mesh of branches which are spiking into my back. I think maybe I can scrunch myself up and inch out backwards, and I shift my hands into a good position so that my right palm presses into something hard and knobbly in the ground. As I grasp it, I hear someone laughing, saying, ‘Look at Callie!’ and the others running to the bush to watch me. I’m curious now about the object in my right hand, and am careful to keep hold of it as I scratch myself slowly into the light, rolling backwards until I’m sitting on the grass. I find that I’m holding something pale under dark crumbly soil, which I brush off with the tips of my fingers, tracing along crevices and points. Cradled in my hand, I have the skull of a small animal, and my eyes start to sting.