Matty ran a hot bath, too hot, and got in anyway. Slid down until both ears were full, only nose and eyes above water.

Oxygen deprivation caused by immersion is rapidly lethal or permanently damaging to the brain.

Deprivation meant the lack of material benefits considered to be the basic necessities in a society, like food and drink and skateboards. Or it meant the lack or denial of something considered to be a necessity, like a dad. Dad-deprivation.

Brown bits floated on the surface of the bathwater. The Pond had travelled all the way home with Matty and only come off when in contact with water again.

Such warm water drownings occur frequently in domestic baths.

Matty slid further down. Eyes covered. Nose.

It was different under here. Boiling hot, the surface of the bath underneath trapping you. Maybe it felt like this at the bottom of the Pond, hard mud underneath your back. Matty tried to imagine metres and metres of water pressing down. Filling each lung.

He wouldn’t have just gone. He would have wanted to be found.

They were just lazy, the police. They didn’t have divers to send out, and didn’t want to pay for dredging machines. They didn’t care because Dad wasn’t like the baby in Australia whose mum said that dingos ate her. He was a grown-up. They didn’t know he wasn’t in there. They hadn’t felt that slithering touch, like Matty had.

You just had to take a breath. One proper breath. Your lungs wouldn’t fill up. Just a bit of water would go in and the trachea would shut the trapdoor while your brain slowly began to fail. Until the next breath.

The bathroom door opened and Mamma’s voice drifted in, the words soupy and glued together.

Matty shot upwards, water falling away. Bright light and sound.

‘What are you doing?’ One hand was on her hip. ‘You have been in there for too long.’

‘Nothing.’

Mamma stood there. A couple of years ago, she would sit on the toilet seat and read out articles from her fashion magazines as the bubbles dissolved. Or dry Matty’s hair, the rhythmic rasp of the towel, or clean the inside curves of both ears with a cotton bud. There. Clean as a little button. She hadn’t done that for a long time.

There were so many questions. Where’s Dad? Do you think he’s dead? Can we make the police dredge the pond? Can I have some money for tea? Can you make tea? Why haven’t you cried?

Mamma leant over and opened the window. ‘The walls will get damp.’ She turned away. ‘Get out and get dry.’

***

There was a different pair of lifeguards on duty today. One was wearing aviator sunglasses, his grey hair pulled back in a ponytail. ‘No swimming without supervision,’ he said.

Every muscle went stiff. ‘The other lifeguard said it was OK.’