51

Balham

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, at the height of an unusually balmy British summer, Sissy’s decorating was going even more badly than usual, mainly because she felt like she was in danger of actually going mad. Since Thursday night she hadn’t been sleeping at all well, and she’d had that familiar feeling of dread that she’d harboured for so long about Nigel, and everything else for that matter, but it seemed that it was worse than ever today. As well as her desperate worry about her friend’s safety, about whether she was alive or dead, she kept playing over Renée’s meltdown last night at what had happened in America, and she wondered how Renée had coped all these years, carried on as if everything was normal – and how she, Sissy, had been oblivious. No wonder poor Renée had become hysterical last night. And on top of all that the kids were playing up and Sissy couldn’t quite deal with them at the moment, so she put down her scraper to turn on the Disney channel while they ate their tea – it wouldn’t hurt just this once. After messing about with two remotes for what seemed like ages the TV finally sprang into life, causing Sissy to shriek so loudly that both her kids turned their wide sad eyes on her, and Conor said over his boiled egg, ‘What is it, Mummy?’

Sissy didn’t need to listen to what the newsreader was saying. As soon as she read the caption, ‘Live, Hyde Park’, and saw the white police tent and the grungy brown of the water, she knew they’d found her. It had actually happened, she really had drowned – and as Sissy flicked the channel frantically to a re-run of Top Gear she felt as faint as she had on holiday in Sardinia, the time she’d nearly died of heatstroke.

Her poor, poor friend. Siobhan was dead!

Sissy felt the grief as if she’d been punched in the stomach, hard. When Nigel had died it had been too quick, too unbelievable to take in, so her feelings had been stuck for days, weeks even, her brain unable to comprehend what had happened. On this occasion she’d been prepared for death, had dreaded it, whilst also hoping desperately that Siobhan would turn up at her desk on Monday morning with a comical tale of a wild weekend. It had happened before – but not this time.

Sissy tried to think logically through her grief and panic. Siobhan had drowned, was dead. But not only that – she, Sissy, had left her to drown. What on earth had been wrong with her? How had she convinced herself that it wasn’t Siobhan, a great big splash like that? She knew she should have gone after her. Why hadn’t she? Why? She’d let her friend drown, had just jumped in a cab and gone home to bed, leaving her helpless and dying at the bottom of The Serpentine. They’d all left her, Sissy tried to remind herself, it hadn’t just been her – plus she’d been drunk for once. Surely it wasn’t anyone’s fault. The splash must have sounded like a bird, they couldn’t all have been wrong – but inside Sissy knew she was as complicit as the rest of them.

Sissy sat down on the faded sofa and dropped her head between her knees to try to stop the roar in her head. The children sat mutely watching Top Gear, even though Nell especially didn’t like it, all the cars looked the same to her. A new thought came to Sissy now, and it made her feel physically sick. She accepted she was at fault morally, was sure of that, but what exactly was she culpable of in the eyes of the law? Obviously it wasn’t murder – but did her inaction constitute some kind of crime, even manslaughter perhaps, through negligence or something? Would she be arrested? As she tried to control her panic, aware that the kids were watching her, she remembered a couple of the others flippantly saying that if anything had happened to Siobhan they’d just pretend they hadn’t heard the splash – but they wouldn’t really do that, surely? No, they would all have to go to the police, file a report, admit that they’d abandoned her, and gone home.

Sissy’s thoughts began unravelling further. What if she even ended up in prison over this, left the children without a mother or a father? She started panting, hyperventilating almost, and although she’d thought she would never cry as hard again as she had over Nigel’s death, she’d been wrong. Her children looked desolate, already aware, as children usually are, that there was yet more sadness and heartbreak to come in their poor young lives. And as Sissy sobbed, she remembered all over again that Siobhan was dead, and she cried even harder – for her lost friend, for Nigel, for her children, already so damaged – for what the fallout from her madness that night might ultimately prove to be.

Sissy could bear no more. She jumped up, stumbled from the room and ran upstairs to run Conor’s bath, leaving her children to finish their tea alone at the second-hand dining table, shocked, but safe for now, in the capable hands of Jeremy Clarkson.