Chapter One
Lissa is drowning. Icy water surrounds her, pressing down on every part of her, clinging to her clothes, scalding her skin. Everything is a murky black. A weed twists round her foot, holding her in place as she thrashes, trying to reach the surface, even as she can’t be sure where the surface is. She mustn’t open her mouth. She knows that. But her chest is burning, more pain than she’s ever experienced, urging her to breathe, to relieve the pressure.
Distantly she hears someone screaming for her, over and over, but the voice is distorted, the tenor of it weirdly unfamiliar. This is it. She knows it is, even as her heart beats faster, urging her to keep fighting, as her arms try to claw their way through the oppressive cold.
But she can’t fight any more. She opens her mouth, desperate for release. And water floods in.
She wakes drenched in sweat, her duvet kicked off. She is breathing heavily, her body trembling. Autumn rain lashes at the window, the only noise in the dark.
She tries to steady her breathing, placing a hand on her chest and rubbing there. She’s used to this nightmare, though that felt rougher than usual. She glances at the red numbers on her alarm clock on the bedside table – a birthday present from her dad a few years ago. A demonstration that he didn’t have a clue what to get her, but she likes it all the same.
It’s 5.30 a.m. On the 16th of September.
No surprise, really, that the dream was more vivid than usual, today of all days. Twenty years exactly since her little sister drowned. It doesn’t seem to get any easier, year on year. Perhaps because she knows by now exactly what the day will bring.
She pushes up out of bed. No point trying to get back to sleep after that.
She walks to the bathroom in her small one-bed flat. This is the first year that she’s been able to afford to rent on her own, rather than having to house share, and she loves every tiny inch of it. Being a homeowner is still a distant dream, but the relief of not having to tiptoe around on early mornings or force smiles and chats at the end of the evening is something she welcomes almost daily.
She switches the light on, tries to avoid looking at herself in the mirror. She knows she’ll be too pale, the shadows under her eyes too dark. She takes a packet of pills out of the cabinet, swallows one then cups water from the tap to wash it down. A headache is already pressing down on her, throbbing at her temples, and she knows it’ll only get worse, despite the pain relief.
She tells herself it’s a response to stress, to tiredness. She reminds herself that plenty of people get headaches, that it’s very unlikely to be serious. And this, she thinks, is exactly why her phone is on charge in the living room rather than on her nightstand, far away from where she can start to google symptoms and go down a hole she’ll only get stuck in.
It’s the 16th of September, she reminds herself. It would be weird if shedidn’twake with a headache today. All she has to do is put one foot in front of the other, keep going until the day is done. It’s only twenty-four hours. Less, really, because she can go to bed at, what, 8 p.m.? So that’s only a little more than twelve hours when you think about it.
Twelve hours. She can get through that. She’s done it before, after all.
She arrives at her mum’s house on the outskirts of Bath at 9 a.m. It’s the same house Lissa grew up in, on the northern edge of the city, an area that has grown more desirable over the years – close enough to the centre, but on the doorstep of some beautiful countryside a few minutes’ drive away. It’s probably worth a fortune now, a semi-detached three-bed like this, but her mum will never sell, and Lissa imagines the price of it would be significantly devalued given the state it’s in.
She steps through the overgrown garden, along the stone path that leads to the front door, mossy grass pushing its way through the cracks. There is a black gate to one side of the house, leading round to the back. She remembers a time when two bikes used to be propped up behind that gate, one bright blue, the other purple and silver with tassels on the handles. Her sister never outgrew that bike – never had the chance to.
She doesn’t go through the gate now, though. Instead, she fumbles in her coat pocket for the spare key, turning it in her fingers as she stares at the front door. The rain has eased off, leaving behind just the odd shower in an otherwise sunny morning, like two sides of the weather arguing with one another about what sort of day it should be.
She taps the key against her palm. She doesn’t want to go in. She doesn’t know what she’ll find. Last year, her mum had been passed out on the sofa, a sick bowl next to her, empty bottles lining the kitchen counter. The year before, Lissa had walked in to see the start of a suicide note in the kitchen, torn into pieces. She remembers the terror as she ran upstairs, screaming for her mum, who didn’t answer from where she lay curled in a ball on her bed. Lissa doesn’t think she’d actually go through with something like that, but it seems that each year, on this day, her mum gets worse rather than better. Like she sees it as the day to punish herself – and the world – for what happened.
The door swings open as she finally turns the key in the lock, and she calls out, aware of how tentative her voice sounds. No answer.
‘Mum?’ she tries again, heading further into the house.
She peers into the kitchen to see unwashed dishes stacked in the sink. She’ll do those later. Clutter inhabits the house in a way that makes it impossible to see what it would be like without it, and there’s that distant musty smell that comes with neglect, no matter how much bleach you spray or how many times you hoover. The carpet has been the same for the last twenty years, frayed at the corners and stained in various places, with a rug that she thinks might have belonged to her now deceased grandmother taking centre stage in the living room. The photos on the mantel above the fireplace are the same as they’ve always been, depicting a happy family that no longer exists. The whole place is a time capsule, like stepping back to the 1990s, and if ever Lissa suggests they clear some things away, or perhaps get a new carpet, she is met with a vicious tongue, red-rimmed eyes or an attempt at a joke, depending on the day.
Her mum isn’t anywhere in the house. It’s only when Lissa checks the second bedroom – her old room, which overlooks the back garden – that she sees her. She watches for a moment, one hand on the curtains she chose as a teenager – dark blue with bright, colourful birds on them. She thinks they might have been the last thing her dad bought for the house before he left it. Her mum is standing out there in a nightie and a cardigan, barefoot, staring into nothingness. Lissa’s heart twists at the sight, though she already knows there will be nothing she can do to make things better. Not today.
She heads down to the garden anyway. There used to be a swing set, but her dad got rid of it when Lissa was about twelve, in an attempt to start making a change. It’s the pond her mum is staring at, Lissa notices when she gets there. It’s been left to its own devices over the years, and by rights it probably should’ve dried up or stagnated by now, but instead it has somehow flourished, with flowers and weeds all around, buzzing insects humming with life. It seems cruel that the site of Chloe’s death can be so alive.
‘Mum?’
Her mum turns, her hazel eyes, so like Lissa’s own, red and swollen. Her skin is dull, grey hair unkempt. It’s hard to tell from here if she’s been drinking, but she seems steady enough.
‘You came.’ Her voice is raspy. She doesn’t usually smoke, but today, anything goes.
‘Of course. I always do.’
Her mum turns away, tugging her cardigan to her. Lissa wonders if she slept last night. She wonders if she too is plagued by nightmares. They won’t talk about it if she is. They never talk about it.
‘Come on, let’s get you inside. I’ll make you some breakfast.’ She brought bread and eggs with her – food is not always reliable in her mother’s house.
‘We don’t deserve to eat today, Alyssa.’ The words are small and bitter, and the ‘we’ isn’t lost on Lissa.
