Cover

LIZ TRENOW

The Secrets of the Lake

Dedication page

In memory of my mother and father, who built the house on the lake.

Epigraph page

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

by Lewis Carroll

PART ONE:

SPRING 2019

1

That night she dreams of Jimmy: his almond eyes and chubby red cheeks, his lips curled into a smile as though permanently amused by life; a little boy scarcely touched by the cares of the world, who lived each day as it came, blithely unaware of his difference. A boy who loved ball games, the twinkling lights at Christmas, lemonade, biscuits, steak-and-kidney pudding and mashed potato with gravy. Who fell in love with anyone who showed even the smallest gesture of kindness; who wouldn’t shake hands but preferred to hug people instead, even people he barely knew.

He’s pestering her with endless questions, speaking with surprising fluency. Why does the sun come up in the same place each day? Why do they call those stars a ‘plough’? What are we going to do today, Molly? What’s for supper? She shouts at him to leave her in peace for just a few seconds, for pity’s sake.

She feels his hot body in bed beside her, finds herself irritated by his snoring. She takes him back to his own room, only to find him returned again, entwined around her. And then . . . and then . . . she sees him floating, far off on the other side of the lake. His eyes are open, his lips are smiling. Yet even from here she can tell he is dead.

She wakes with that familiar knot in her stomach. She knows it well, its weight, its position, its shape and even its colour as she imagines it: a deep charcoal-grey. But perhaps, now she’s so old, it’s actually turning into a physical tumour that has taken up permanent residence, that will grow and spread throughout her body. A cancer that will kill her in the end. Maybe that would be a blessing, she thinks. The last thing she wants is to linger on, being a nuisance to everyone.

Then she remembers why the knot has reappeared. The police are coming. Whatever can they want from her, after all these years? She recalls the hours of questioning, sitting on the sofa in her shorts with the woolly upholstery prickling her legs as the rain battered the vicarage windows, Pa pacing outside the door, the overwhelming feelings of guilt, the ‘if only’ loop going round and round in her head. The endless, futile prayers and that crushing sense of emptiness and helplessness.