Jenny opens her eyes a second too quickly for her mind to catch up. A fuzziness of view. Something has thrown her awake. It must be the pain that she feels stab through her right thigh. God, it hurts. Her head aches and she longs to close her eyes again and sleep.
Through squinting eyes, the light black and green, she sees daytime hasn’t quite begun. The air is thick and translucent. If it weren’t for the burning in her leg, real and throbbing, she would assume she is still asleep.
It must be almost morning. Reaching out for the clock that lies on her bedside table, it isn’t here. Instead, she grabs a handful of cold, wet leaves. Her fingers curl tightly around them and fasten. Soft, slimy, thick with morning dew and frost, turning black: withering.
The damp seeps upwards, moving quickly, and within moments she shivers from head to toe. The only warmth is the fire in her thigh, a hot hole into flesh. She’s lying on something sharp, something metal. Like a drain grid. She sits up. That rush of water. She can hear it.
There’s no bed. There’s no Will or Finn. Her thigh is red. The blue cotton of her jeans shows blood: a small pinhead soaking through to a palm-size stain.
The shivering is intense now. Her teeth are chatting and her fingers are numb, moving in the air as though playing rapid, uneven scales on an unseen piano.
That she finds herself outside is no longer a shock, but it is still terrifying. Embarrassment sets in – what will she do if someone spots her here? She can’t explain it away. She glances around, left, right, left again.
This time, however, is worse than before. This is the first time that it is near morning – it must be. She had left the cathedral just after one o’clock – she had, what, walked into the park? She couldn’t have been asleep long as she would have frozen to death. It must still be only about two or three a.m. Christ. She’s got to get back. She’s got to get back before Will wakes to find her gone.
And she’s got to get back to Finn. His first Christmas.
Her memory kicks in and Jenny thinks of the fight. She had run through the park: no phone, no purse, no coat.
The lake is frozen and swathes of moonlight cascade from the cloudless night sky. There are a few remaining patches where leaves circle round in pools of water. Stranded. Standing slowly, her leg hurts, but not enough to stop her getting back home. So, despite the shivering, ice cold, she takes a step forward and moves behind a bare tree. Once back on the path, it won’t take more than five minutes to run up the hill. Finn will be awake and need feeding, but Will is there. There is no reason to panic. She just needs to stay calm.
The scratching branch of the tree pokes her as she squeezes past. The branch holds her fast. Pulling free her T-shirt, snagged on twigs, she catches sight of something else caught higher up in the branches. A soggy jumper, half frozen.
Jenny opens it out, to see if she can wear it home, to cover up a little more, but it is too small. It is pink with flowers decorating the front panel. It isn’t an adult’s jumper at all.
Looking out at the lake, at the other side, near the swings and the small café that serves toasties and hot chocolate, she sees a body on the lake, not far from the edge. And also a figure.
It is the adult that holds her attention first. Dressed in dark clothes and running away, looking both exactly right and horribly wrong. Like many runners out on an early frosty morning: a hat, gloves, jogging suit bottoms, sweatshirt. But it’s not day – it’s the middle of the night. There can be no doubt they have placed the body on the ice. The run is fast, the woollen hat pulled tightly on the head, obscures the face.
Jenny chokes on her breath, falling against the tree. The sharp twigs push her back out again, refusing to let her rest.
The body lies flat on the ice. The position is awkward, one leg bent back and outwards in a way that legs shouldn’t bend. One foot dangles into a watery hole, and it won’t be long, maybe even now, that the cracks will appear, and the body – it must be Becky – will disappear for ever into the waters. They might pull the shell of her out, but the girl will have vanished.
She runs. She needs to get round the lake. The figure is moving away and the body lies helpless. It isn’t far enough away to mistake for anything else. She can see arms outstretched on the ice, immobile and sprawled; a head, long hair, spread out in a chaotic tumble, and Jenny runs faster.
Looking once more at the runner, terrified to see it, but more terrified that if it changes course, and returns to the girl, it might throw her off her stride; she is relieved to catch sight only of a diminishing form. A small black spot now running into the trees that leads to the road. There is only her now. It is up to her.
The bluey hue of the darkness ignites a flash of a memory of earlier Christmas mornings and packed stockings at dawn. The childish delight of Christmas. There is so much to save.
Running faster still, she skids over a mirrored puddle and falls, heading down towards the lake, almost at the point where Becky hangs on the ice. Jenny skids, falling onto the edge of the lake, and she hears the cracks of pressure as she lands hard.
Her arm plunges into the freezing water and she withdraws it quickly. She is so cold now, she isn’t sure she will make it out to the girl in time.
Slowly, so as not to crack the ice further, she begins to pull herself flat, gently reaching and sliding, inch by inch.
She can feel splashes of tears on her face and she thinks of Finn, of how he won’t know her if she moves too quickly and falls in; all the mass of love she has felt, and been swallowed up by, might vanish into the water and be lost. He will think of only Will as he grows.
Reaching the long brown hair first, knotted and damp, it frames a white, ghostly face.
‘Please be alive,’ Jenny whispers. ‘Please.’
As though carrying a newborn, she places her shaking, shivering hand under the head of the girl, to protect it, and then with the other hand she grasps her shoulder, before beginning to pull her backwards: slowly, very slowly. She is heavier than Jenny had thought, and in pulling, she hears the small splinters of ice giving way all around. It is taking an age: seconds, minutes, hours. There is only each tug of the girl and each movement towards shore.
Becky stirs beneath her fingers: ‘Help me.’ The voice is faint.
Jenny can see the edge of the shore coming closer out of the corner of her eye.
‘Come on!’ she shouts, to no one, but as she does so, she feels a surge of warmth in her feet. She pauses, and pulls her legs underneath her, kneeling, and then squatting. Her legs ache as she raises one leg, and she stamps, hard. She will be waist deep now; they will not sink.
The ice cracks with the sound of shattering glass and she pulls the body into her arms and wades backwards, in the frozen waters. Each step demands more, and she grunts loudly with the effort; her voice releases the strain of each thrust into the shallow shoreline. She breathes rhythmically, puffing out the exhaustion.
She bursts out of the lake with the body carried aloft; head first they reach the shore and she feels the earth beneath her bare and freezing feet. She gasps for air and screams, piercing and loud.
The warmth in her legs holds her upright for only a moment, and she falls over the body of the girl, and shivers, too cold for thought. Becky’s eyes open briefly, and Jenny whispers, ‘I’ve got you.’
Before Becky passes out, she can feel her hand grip her thumb, before fading.
A voice whispers at her ear. ‘Got you, you bitch.’