Into the Water

by Paula Hawkins

The things I want to remember I can’t, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.

they never saw what the water really was, greenish-black and filled with living things and dying things.

The places where hopeless people go to end it all, cathedrals of despair.

No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.

You could say what you liked about Lena Abbott, but she was loyal; she kept her word. And perhaps now, freed from the toxic influence of her mother, she might even turn into a decent person.

Everyone was embarrassed. She had never realized before her life was torn apart how awkward grief was, how inconvenient for everyone with whom the mourner came into contact. At first it was acknowledged and respected and deferred to. But after a while it got in the way—of conversation, of laughter, of normal life. Everyone wanted to put it behind them, to get on with things, and there you were, in the way, blocking the path, dragging the body of your dead child behind you.

Some say the women left something of themselves in the water; some say it retains some of their power, for ever since then it has drawn to its shores the unlucky, the desperate, the unhappy, the lost. They come here to swim with their sisters.

You were never the princess, you were never the passive beauty waiting for a prince, you were something else. You sided with darkness, with the wicked stepmother, the bad fairy, the witch.

Beckford is not a suicide spot. Beckford is a place to get rid of troublesome women.

The last thing I ever said to her was that it was her fault Katie was dead.

Imagine walking past the place where you lost someone, every single day. I can’t credit it, couldn’t do it. But then I suppose I’ve never really lost anyone. How would I know what that kind of grief feels like?

My father calls it absenting myself, as though it’s something I do on purpose, something I can control, but it isn’t. I’ve always done it, ever since childhood: one moment I’m there, and then I’m not. I don’t mean for it to happen. Sometimes when I’ve drifted away I become aware of it, and sometimes I can bring myself back—I taught myself a long time ago: I touch the scar on my wrist. It usually works. Not always.

I’ve known women like her before, older women, the wrong side of thirty-five, losing their looks. They want to feel wanted. You can smell the desperation a mile off. I knew what I had to do, even though it made my flesh crawl to think about it. I had to bring her onside. Charm her. Seduce her.”