Into the Water
Author- Paula Hawkins
Publisher- Penguin Random House, Rs599
PAUlA HAWKINS’s Into the Water revolves around the death of two women in a river and the mysteries that the dark waters contain. An edited excerpt:
The Drowning Pool libby
‘Again!Again!’
The men bind her again. Different this time: left thumb to right toe, right thumb to left. The rope around her waist. This time, they carry her into the water.
‘Please’, she starts to beg, because she’s not sure that she can face it, the blackness and the cold. She wants to go back to a home that no longer exists, to a time when she and her aunt sat in front of the fire and told stories to one another. She wants to be in her bed in their cottage, she wants to be little again, to breathe in woodsmoke and rose and the sweet warmth of her aunt’s skin.
‘Please.’
She sinks. By the time they drag her out the second time, her lips are the blue of a bruise, and her breath is gone for good.
2015 Jules
There was something you wanted to tell me, wasn’t thereIJ What was it you were trying to sayIJ I feel like I drifted out of this conversation a long time ago. I stopped concentrating, I was thinking about something else, getting on with things, I wasn’t listening, and I lost the thread of it. Well, you’ve got my attention now. Only I can’t help thinking I’ve missed out on some of the more salient points.
When they came to tell me, I was angry. Relieved first, because when two police officers turn up on your doorstep just as you’re looking for your train ticket, about to run out of the door to work, you fear the worst. I feared for the people I care about — my friends, my ex, the people I work with. But it wasn’t about them, they said, it was about you. So I was relieved, just for a moment, and then they told me what had happened, what you’d done, they told me that you’d been in the water and then I was furious. Furious and afraid.
I was thinking about what I was going to say to you when I got there, how I knew you’d done this to spite me, to upset me, to frighten me, to disrupt my life. To get my attention, to drag me back to where you wanted me. And there you go, Nel, you’ve succeeded: Here I am in the place I never wanted to come back to, to look after your daughter, to sort out your bloody mess.
MONDAY, 10 AUGUST
Josh
Something woke me up. I got out of bed to go to the toilet and I noticed Mum and Dad’s door was open, and when I looked I could see that Mum wasn’t in bed. Dad was snoring as usual. The clock radio said it was 4:08. I thought she must be downstairs. She has trouble sleeping. They both do now, but he takes pills which are so strong you could stand right by the bed and yell into his ear and he wouldn’t wake up.
I went downstairs really quietly because usually what happens is she turns on the TV and watches those really boring adverts about machines that help you lose weight or clean the floor or chop vegetables in lots of different ways and then she falls asleep. But the TV wasn’t on and she wasn’t on the sofa, so I knew she must have gone out.
She’s done it a few times — that I know of, at least. I can’t keep track of where everyone is all the time. The first time, she told me she’d just gone out for a walk to clear her head, but there was another morning when I woke up and she was gone and when I looked out of the window I could see that her car wasn’t parked out front where it usually is.
I think she probably goes to walk by the river or to visit Katie’s grave. I do that sometimes, though not in the middle of the night.
Excerpted from Into the Water by Paula Hawkins and published by Penguin Random House, Rs599