At first she thought it was a duvet, or maybe some large coats that someone had, for some unfathomable reason, dumped in there. Her heart was in her throat as she climbed onto the low wall to try and get a better look, still refusing to allow herself the thought that it was anything other than a discarded sleeping bag or suchlike. But she still couldn’t see properly because of the thickness of the unkempt reeds. She needed something to part them with; a stick or branch. There was no way she was getting into the pond herself – she didn’t even know how deep it was. She jumped off the wall and searched around, but there were no sticks on the ground. Then she ran back into the kitchen garden and yanked a cane out of the raspberry bushes, the effort in the hot sunshine making her hands slippery with sweat and fear.

She approached the pond more slowly this time. Should she call security now, save her having to look herself?

No – that would be stupid, she thought. It still might turn out to be nothing. Small insects hummed and buzzed around her head, intensifying the white noise inside it. She got back onto the wall, already feeling unsteady. She focussed intently on the sight of a bee bouncing into a foxglove to help her keep her balance.

She reached forwards with the cane. Parted the rushes, touched the floating lump. Then prodded it, to try and push it out into more open water. It moved, turning slowly.

Later she thought that was the point she knew, deep down. Even though it just couldn’t be … Even though he was unrecognisable.

The body floated free, breaking the surface of the pond, pushing aside the waterlilies in a way that gave Meredith the grim, fleeting thought: pushing up daisies. It rolled slowly over onto its back, an actual dead bug in the water. She glanced at his bloated, greeny-grey face, the skin already beginning to slide off the skull. Then looked away, nausea rising fast.

It was impossible, surely? But from the faded sodden pattern of his shirt, the same shirt she’d ripped most of the buttons off, she knew it was Ralph.

14

1983
Meredith

I didn’t go to Greenham Common because I wanted to make the world a better place. I only went to piss off my parents. That, and because I happened to own a teddy-bear suit.