I must be looking in the wrong direction. The last time I was here the entire valley was underwater, yet most of what I’m seeing now is hard-baked mud, criss-crossed by old stone walls, all of it shimmering like a desert in the heat. It’s only at the bottom of the valley, where the reservoir is deepest, that some water still remains. I’m stunned at what the heatwave has done.
‘It looks so … different,’ I manage to say.
The reservoir is supposed to reach from the concrete dam at one end of the valley to the sluice gates at the other. It’s the sort of place people come to sail dinghies, to walk their dogs and eat picnics on the grass banks, or if it rains – when it rains – to buy cream teas and postcards in the shop at the dam end, near the car park. What’s 24left of the reservoir is no bigger than two, maybe three swimming pools.
Jessie points to the stone walls. ‘Strange, isn’t it, to see the old village again?’
‘There was a village here?’ I’ve never heard this before.
‘Syndercombe,’ Jessie explains. ‘Mentioned in the Domesday Book, apparently, but after the reservoir was built, they renamed the whole valley Truthwater.’
I wonder why.
‘See my apple trees?’ Jessie points behind us at her garden: this year there’s not much fruit on the trees. ‘They came from Syndercombe – a man took them from his own orchard and planted them up here. Couldn’t bear to see them drown.’
‘What happened to the people?’ I ask, wiping sweat from my eyes.
‘They had to move out and leave their homes behind.’
The stone walls, I see now, are in fact the outlines of houses. Those nearest to us are in a row as if they were once on the same street. In some of the walls you can still see spaces where ground-floor windows were. It’s eerie. I wonder who lived here – real, actual people who went to school, grew vegetables in their gardens, had babies, pegged out washing to dry. It’s a lost kingdom, a ghost village. 25
Jessie nods towards the bottom of the valley where water still lies.
‘St Mary’s, the old church, is under that lot,’ she says.
Joel looks interested. ‘Wow, must be deep there.’
‘It is.’ She smiles, wide-eyed, putting on her spooky-story voice. ‘On a quiet winter’s night you can still hear the bells ringing under the water.’
Joel grins. ‘Awesome!’
‘It isn’t,’ I blurt out. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘It’s only a story, angel,’ Jessie says, gently.
Still, I feel quite choked up.
‘Seeing the houses like this, it’s really sad.’
‘It’s the past coming back to haunt us, that’s what it feels like,’ Jessie agrees, then glances at her old wristwatch and yelps. ‘Ah, sweet heavens, my shift starts in half an hour. I’d better go.’
I must’ve looked momentarily lost because she tweaks my chin.
‘Be happy, little one. You’re on holiday. Now come inside and cool off.’
*
That night I can’t sleep. Too much stuff is stomping around in my head. Mum’s ill, Sasha and I aren’t talking, 26and at the bottom of Jessie’s garden is what remains of an old village. And it turns out the countryside is as hot as the city. Despite kicking off the sheet and flipping the pillow over so it’s cool side up, I can’t settle. By two o’clock I give up trying. Thinking it’ll be cooler outside, I get out of bed, pull on shorts and T-shirt, grab a torch and go into the garden. There’s a big dog fox under the apple trees, gulping down the scraps Jessie leaves out for them. The foxes are getting hungrier, she says, and tamer. Last week she caught one indoors sniffing about on her kitchen table.
Even outside, it’s still way too hot. What I’d give to not feel sweaty and headachy. It’s hard to remember ever being cold. I catch myself thinking about that night in the sea, the swimming part before everything went wrong. The water did feel amazing. I’d do anything to be that cool again, even – maybe – go swimming.
Don’t, says the worry voice in my head. You said you wouldn’t, not after last time.
But with no one here to talk me out of it, the idea takes hold. It’s not just because I’m hot, or to prove something to my brother or to Sasha but because of what Jessie says is under the water. Perhaps it’s possible to see the old church: I’d really like to have a look. My fear of deep water seems to have shifted into a strange, fizzing energy. The fox barely glances up as I tiptoe across the lawn. 27
At the water’s edge, the lake looks oily black in the darkness. The air down here feels damp, almost cool. Above me the sky is aglitter with stars, and the half-moon, as yellow as a lemon slice, is bright enough to throw my shadow across the water. The excited fizzing is still there in the pit of my stomach. Yet for a moment, I dither, the old fear sneaking back. Should I really go in?
It’s then the soft part my foot catches something hard.
‘Owww!’ I wince, hopping on the spot.
I try to see what I’ve just stepped on. Despite the dark, I find it almost immediately and pick it up. It’s long and narrow, the size of a large chocolate bar, but it weighs a lot more. I switch on the torch I brought with me.
What’s in my hand appears to be a door handle. An old one. It’s mud-encrusted, but the handle actually turns, making a gritty rasping sound. Perhaps it’s from the old village, I think. And if it is, then whose front door did it open? Whose hand once gripped the handle? Who was the last person to ever close the door? My brain swoops and spins with possibilities.
I’m tempted to take the door handle to show Joel, but decide instead to bring him down here tomorrow, so he can see where I found it. As I go to lay it back on the ground, the handle catches in my belt hook. I can’t untangle it, despite a few irritable moments trying. In the 28end I give up and tuck it in my pocket. I’ll sort it later: right now, I’m here to swim.
Taking a big, bold breath, I walk into the water. It is cool, amazingly so, and it’s this I try to concentrate on, not eels or sharks or piranhas. Though you hear stories all the time these days about wildlife getting confused by the weather and ending up in places they’re not meant to be, like the foxes in Jessie’s kitchen.
As the water reaches my waist, I’m almost used to how cool it feels. There’s no pull against my legs, no warm or cold currents. The handle in my pocket isn’t as heavy as I expected. I can do this, I tell myself. I just have to block out Joel’s angry voice telling me I was drowning and Sasha saying I swam like a poodle. I say it over and over in my head: I can do this. Pushing off, I start to swim.
I head into the centre of the lake, where the church is supposed to be. The only noise is the soft swish-swish of my arms and legs moving through the water. To my surprise, swimming feels easier here than it does in the sea or at the pool. It gives me the confidence to keep going, and I do until a strange sensation takes hold. It’s like I'm being pulled, very gently, downwards. I sense something underneath me. My foot brushes a hard surface. 29
I gulp, snatching my leg away, heart suddenly pounding.
Something is down there. It’s too dark to see what, but my imagination has more than enough ideas, all of them more terrifying than Jessie’s church. My teeth are chattering. I knew it was stupid to come out here by myself.
I fumble for the torch around my neck: it’s supposed to be waterproof, and thankfully, the light comes on, blindingly bright for a second. Then all I see is the lake gleaming back at me. Just below the surface, the water swirls like fog, greys and greens and a strange shade of almost-red, which is the colour of the soil in the local fields. It looks eerie and beautiful, like storm clouds.
Nothing’s there, I tell myself, trying to calm down.
And it almost works. Just as I feel myself starting to relax my foot touches something again, something smooth and hard. I don’t dare look: my dizzy brain isn’t ready. I’m also becoming more aware of the door handle bumping against my hip.
Feeling along with my other foot, I then realise what this is, what I’m standing on. That ridge beneath my toes is the edge of a tile. Beyond it, more edges, more tiles. If I stretch my leg right down, I reach what feels like guttering. I am on a rooftop, of what I’m guessing must be the old church. 30
‘Wow!’ I gasp, though there’s no one here to hear me. ‘Oh wow!’
I can’t wait to see Joel’s face when I tell him. Or Sasha’s.
Feeling braver, I point the torchlight into the water. It’s so strange to be gazing down on a building like this when I should be looking up at it, my feet on dry land. It’s as if I’m a bird or a fish or in another world entirely. In the beam of my torch, the roof is grey, covered in green algae, and beyond the roof, a door lintel, arched and important-looking with a row of apples carved into the wood.
Deeper still, I see the curve of a gravestone, then another topped with a stone urn. My guess was right: this is the church Jessie was talking about. The torch picks out huge gaps between the headstones: most of the graves are missing. What happened to the bodies in the coffins buried beneath, I wonder? Where do people go nowadays if they want to leave flowers on a loved one’s grave? The sadness of it makes me shiver.
The water too has turned colder suddenly, and begins to swirl around me. It’s time to go back. But as I try to swim to shore, the water tugs on my clothes so I can’t move away. In my pocket, the door handle feels as if it’s turning. Strangest of all is that I don’t feel scared. I’m being pushed, pulled, guided somewhere, and wherever 31it is, I decide it’s best to go with it. I let myself sink down. And down.
My chest tightens. I can’t breathe. Panic comes over me, yet as quick as it comes, it’s gone again. I seem to know exactly where I’m going now, and start to swim to the very bottom of the lake. The torch proves it’s not so waterproof after all, and blinks and dies: I don’t need it, anyway.
In the graveyard it’s daylight bright, and though there’s a blackbird singing, it doesn’t feel weird at all. I’m aware of other noises too – a dog barking, sheep bleating, and a woman calling to me: ‘Nellie? You realise what the time is, don’t you?’ and I know in my bones that my name isn’t Polly any more, that I’m Nellie and I’m due to be somewhere, and I’ll regret it for ever if I’m late.