Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

Michelle looks exhausted. My notes say that she works full time in a department store. Fifteen years, ever since Holli’s dad left. Not to be rude but shouldn’t she be at work by now?

“Hi, Michelle. Lovely to meet you. Sorry for the early start,” I say, and to my surprise she takes my hand and shakes it.

A distracted smile. She seems worried about something. “I suppose you’d better go ahead and turn that on first.” She gestures to Phil’s camera.

Phil and I share a look and the camera is up on his shoulder. Red light on.

“I just don’t want to say it all twice.” Michelle looks at me and frowns to herself. “You’d better come in. I’ll stick the kettle on.” She shuffles in her pink booties into the linoleum-tiled flat. We follow. I’m starting to get the feeling that Holli isn’t in there.

Michelle busies herself about the narrow kitchen space.

“I’ve got to call the police if anyone comes asking questions, that’s the thing. Do you mind if I quickly call them up now?” She seems embarrassed, a woman forced into following rules she hasn’t signed up for.

I shake my head, I don’t mind. But the word police screams through my head. Police is not a word I wanted or expected to hear today.

“I’m sorry, Michelle, I really have no idea what’s going on here. Has something happened?” I look back at Phil, in case he’s figured it out. Have I missed something?

For a fraction of a second I think she might actually be calling the police because of me. Because of the plane. Because of the Sharpes. But that’s absurd, of course. Michelle doesn’t know. She doesn’t know me from Adam. And any brief impulse I felt yesterday to call the police after finding out about the Sharpes has long since evaporated. Involving the police at this stage would definitely not be a good idea. Michelle holds up her finger, phone to her ear. Wait .

“Hi there, it’s Michelle Byford. Can I speak to Andy, please?” There’s another pause as we all wait, suspended, like the stale cigarette smoke in the kitchen air. “Thanks. Hello. Hi, Andy, yes, good, thanks. No, no, I haven’t, no, nothing like that, but I’ve got some people here in the flat now asking about Holli. No, no, nothing like that. Yes, yes, I know.” She laughs nervously. “No, they’re from the prison charity. They interviewed Holli in prison for a film. Yes. Erin, yes…”

My eyes shoot to Phil at the mention of my name. This police officer she’s talking to knows me. He knows of me. What the fuck is going on? Michelle holds up a finger, wait .

“Yes, and a man…” She doesn’t know Phil’s name. We skipped that formality.

“Phil,” Phil supplies. “The cameraman.” Pithy as ever.

“Phil, the cameraman. Yes, yes, I’ll tell them, one second, right…here in ten, fifteen, okay, one second.” She holds the phone away from her face and addresses us. “Andy says would you mind waiting ten, fifteen minutes and he’ll swing by? He wants to ask you a couple of questions if he can?”

I look back at Phil; he shrugs.

“Sure,” I answer.

What else can I do? Say no? No, I’m afraid I can’t actually stay to talk to the police, Michelle, because I’ve just stolen two million dollars and maybe caused the deaths of two innocent people. I think my only move here is to just stay. Stay and try to act normal. “Sure” just about covers it.

First day back at work and I’m already being questioned by the police. My stomach rolls.

Michelle puts the phone back up to her ear and addresses Andy. It’s becoming clear to me what’s going on here; I credit myself that much. I’m guessing Holli’s skipped parole. That’s what it will be, something like that, but for some reason my palms are sweating.

Michelle continues into the phone. “Andy, yes, yes, that’s all fine. They’ll be here. No, no, I don’t think they do. Of course. Of course I will. Yes. Okay then. See you soon. Okay then. Bye.” She hangs up and smiles down at the inanimate phone. At Andy, I’d imagine, in an office somewhere.

Phil and I wait. Finally she looks up.

“Sorry. Sorry about that. Coffee?” She flicks on the kettle and it roars to life, recently boiled. “Okay, right, sorry. I suppose you’ve guessed that Holli’s not here?” Michelle looks between us, businesslike. We have.

She nods. “Yeah. She left yesterday. Just disappeared. I took her some toast in bed in the morning but she wasn’t there. We’ve been looking since; we don’t know where she is at the moment. Police are working on it. Andy’s heading up the search right now. It’s—” She breaks off and stares out the grimy double-glazed window above her sink. The kettle clicks off and bubbles to silence next to her. She snaps back into the room and smiles.

“Let’s have a sit-down, shall we?”

She places the coffee mugs down with ceremony onto the pine fold-leaf table and we sit.

Phil continues to film her as she sips her steaming mug. According to the mug’s inscription, “Coffee makes my day more beautiful.” I do hope so; it doesn’t seem to be going well so far, for any of us.

I peer down at the gray-brown stew before me, pellets of undissolved coffee still clinging for dear life to the white ceramic of my mug.

Shit. This is not a good situation. I could really do with not being here right now. I think of the bag hidden in our attic. And guilt, like the first domino, starts to topple one mistake into another. I need to center myself. I need to lock this feeling down before Andy, the policeman, gets here.

And where the hell is Holli?

Michelle sets her mug down carefully with two hands and explains.

“Okay. Here’s what we know.” She looks up with the certainty of someone toeing the official line. She’s been over this a dozen times already, up all night. I can tell. She has that look. I’ve interviewed a lot of people so far in my career and she’s been over these coals a few times. And now she’s doing it again, for us.

“So, I met Holli, collected her, you know, out the back of the prison around 8 A.M. on the twelfth of September. That was seven days ago. She spent the week in the flat mainly. Watching TV, napping. I don’t think she got much sleep in prison. She was exhausted. Then, day before yesterday, Saturday, we’d arranged to nip around to Sinéad’s flat—she’s a friend from work, used to be a hairdresser—so she could sort out Holli’s hair. She’d, Holli had, been worried about her highlights in jail and Sinéad said she’d do them for free. So we went there. I’d brought her some other clothes—Adidas stuff, they all love that now.” She smiles, a mother in the know. “And she changed into them. And then after that we went to Nando’s for chicken. She’d been desperate for a Nando’s. On about it forever. Really excited about the bleeding Nando’s. I don’t think the food was up to much in prison, you know. She was stick thin when she got home. Well, you saw her, you know yourself. Anyway, she loved it, had a half chicken and one each of all the sides. She was happy as a clam. Then we came home and she said she wanted to make a couple of calls on her laptop, so she went to her room and did that for a while and then we watched some old episodes of the Kardashians on catch-up. She was pretty tired and went to bed around nine. Nothing out of the ordinary. She seemed happy. Like her old self again. When I went into her room yesterday morning she was gone. She only took a couple of things. No note. Nothing. But I told Andy, she did take one thing: photo of us, me and her. The one she had in prison. She always kept it by her bed. She liked that photo. Said it made her happy whenever she missed me. She didn’t say stuff like that very often, so I remember it.” Michelle looks at us. That’s all she’s got. That’s her side of it.