It was a night to get drunk. He’d only done it once since Toby had died. Afraid that drinking too much would take him beyond the comfort of alcohol and into the dark. But now he and Bridget were both on their fourth beer, finished off over home-delivered Japanese as dusk fell around them and the mosquitoes whined and the crickets chirped and the bats squealed high overhead. Bridget put on music, something soft and easy, for perhaps the first time, or at least the first time Finn could remember, since Toby’s death. She’d chosen well: music you could lean into and feel safe with.
‘I’m gonna watch some telly,’ Jarrah said after dinner.
Back when, Bridget would have asked him to clear the table and stack the dishwasher. But back then he hadn’t sounded so adult, so much like he understood both their need to be alone together and their fear of it. Like he knew that sitting not too far off he’d be a comfort to them, while the television and the wall in between would give them privacy too.
She stood and came around beside his chair. He felt the warmth of her body alongside his, and with it a wave of longing that hurt his throat, ran down and hurt his chest and his gut and his bowel. No difference between longing and pain. All the same.
‘I’ve got something to show you,’ she whispered. ‘Come?’
She took his hand. The comfort of that was almost as deep as the pain. The comfort of her touch and the feeling that she was there behind it, present, with him for the first time since Toby died.
He would have followed her anywhere, but when she led him to the pool gate and reached up with her left hand to unlatch it he recoiled instinctively.
‘Where are we going?’
The clutch of her hand said he would be safe, but he didn’t want to go in there and his body pulled back of its own accord.
‘Trust me,’ she said.
I never stopped trusting you, he wanted to say, but instead gripped her hand harder, steeled himself, followed. Then stopped dead. The water was pale translucent green, full of moving shapes. He pulled back, horrified. What was in there?
‘It’s plants,’ she said, anchoring him with her hand. ‘Fish. It’s alive now.’
‘What?’ He couldn’t understand.
‘The pumps are gone. The chemicals are gone. It’s a living pond.’
His breath shuddered in his chest. ‘Christ.’ He wanted to run from the water and its awful, flickering life.
‘Come closer.’ She drew him forwards, led him to the edge, shifted his body so that he lowered himself to sitting. He gasped when the water first touched his feet and wanted to fight her, but she held him there and slowly, slowly lowered his feet to the first step, and the water came around his ankles and up his shins and he hated it.
She sat next to him, lowered her own feet until they were next to his on the step, white in the green flickering, the shadows of the plants playing across their skin.
‘He’s here,’ she said.
Finn’s chest tightened. That day in court he thought she’d come to some place he could understand, some place he recognised. Had he been wrong?
She put a finger on his lips. ‘Shh. I want you to feel it.’
She shrugged off her shirt and bra. Stood on the step and pulled off her shorts and underpants. Stepped down to the next step, the water coming midway up her thighs. Held out her hand to him. She meant to immerse herself, he saw. Had she forgotten their son drowned in that water?
‘Trust me, remember?’ She extended her hand further. Took his.
There was no choice. Not if he wanted to keep her. He stood. Let go of her hand and began to unbutton his shirt. Felt his body shaking.