Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

—

It’s 7:39 that evening when Alexa calls out my name from the kitchen; I’m upstairs napping in the guest room, my room. She calls my name just once. Clearly. Loudly. And I get a feeling in my chest I haven’t had for two months. Fear. Tight and sharp and sudden. I know from her tone. Something is happening. The sounds of Christmas Eve cooking have ceased now. The house is eerily still. I follow the sound of the television downstairs and into their cozy kitchen. The scent of our Christmas maple-roasted ham wafts from the closed Aga. Alexa and her father stand frozen, their backs to me, staring wordlessly at the wall-mounted television. They do not turn when I enter. I slow to a halt as I join them and the sense of what I’m seeing hits me. On screen, BBC News 24, a live feed to a shop-lined street—a deserted London street, maybe Oxford Street. But it’s abandoned. So it can’t be Oxford Street, can it? Oxford Street wouldn’t be abandoned on Christmas Eve. Then I see the police cordon. Police tape across the entire road. An ongoing event. A breaking news event.

We watch in horror as a crouching figure makes a sudden break from the safety of a shopfront bright with Christmas lights. Stumbling blindly out from cover and into the wide empty expanse of the road. The shadow sprints low and fast, terrified, toward the cordon. Away from something we can’t see, away from something terrible.

The crawl scrolls across the bottom of the screen. ONGOING INCIDENT…FATALITIES. TWO ATTACKERS. ARMED POLICE PRESENCE.

If there’s a reporter speaking, I don’t hear them. Everything around me muffles to silence as two photos flash up in the corner of the TV screen. The identities of the attackers. I recognize one of the faces instantly.

Alexa turns her head now to look back at me. To make sure I see what she sees. The photo is of Holli. My Holli. I look back at the screen. At Holli’s pale young face. It’s not a mugshot they’ve used for her picture; that’s the first thing that occurs to me—I don’t know why that’s the first thing that occurs to me, but it is. The photo they’ve used is a holiday snap. From before prison. Before the burning bus. Before any of this. And then it hits me so hard my breath catches in my throat. Something awful has happened. She’s done something terrible this time. Something truly, truly terrible.

Her words come back to me. That day in prison when I asked her what she planned to do next. “You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you? But expect…great things, Erin. Great things.”

She told me. She told me she would do this, didn’t she? I knew. In a way I always knew—not something like this, obviously—but I knew.

But what could I have done? What can you do? You can’t save everyone. Sometimes you just have to save yourself.

For Ross

Acknowledgments

To Ross, thank you for leading by example and inspiring me to start along this road. Thank you for your energy, your knowledge, and your advice.

To my mum, my first reader, thank you for checking it wasn’t awful! Thank you for all your encouragement, for supporting my reading habit when I was younger, and for inspiring me to go for things.

Special thanks go to Camilla Wray, my wonderful agent. Thank you so much for replying to that first synopsis email I sent you, for reading the first three chapters, and then, the next day, the full manuscript. Thank you for all your brilliant thoughts, ideas, and guidance and being a strong cheerleader for Erin. I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to a whole new, exciting world.

To the brilliant Kate Miciak, my editor at Ballantine, thank you for reading the manuscript so quickly, thank you for your belief and your enthusiasm from our very first phone conversation and through the whole process. Thank you for your editing genius, your eagle eye, and your love of a good story—it’s an absolute pleasure working with you. Thank you for making this book its sparkling best.

To the excellent Anne Perry, my British editor, thank you for falling in love with this book and being such a complete joy to work with. I’m so happy SITW has such a fantastic UK home with Simon & Schuster.

Thank you to everyone who has helped to bring about the book you now hold in your hands! It has been a warm-sanded, sun-soaked dream working with you all.

About the Author

CATHERINE STEADMAN is an actress and writer based in the UK. She is best known for her role as Mabel Lane Fox in Downton Abbey . She grew up in the New Forest, UK, and now lives in North London with a small dog and an average-sized man. Something in the Water is her first novel.

Twitter: @CatSteadman

What’s next on

your reading list?

Discover your next

great read!

Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

Sign up now.