You’ve lost Toby. Nothing else should be shocking. But this morning’s revelations have left you reeling. The possibility of Finn in jail. A legal bill that could swallow whatever home you might own. A nightmare that could drag on for the next two years.
Because of your late start, you arranged to meet Chen in the office. You walk in past the glances of your co-workers, who smile and nod, and you feel their relief at not having to see you daily. As you halt in your cubicle, you hear the murmur of conversation and a laugh across the room.
It’s him; you know his voice. You glance across the open plan and spot him at the far end by the kitchen. He’s talking to someone who has her back to you. He hasn’t seen you, and you observe, with a sinking in your belly, the expression on his face. When the woman he’s talking to says something and he laughs, easily and openly, you realise in a moment what it must cost him to buffer you from the world.
She’s young. You can’t recall her name; she’s not in the same section as you and Chen. But she’s unmarked by pain. She’s whole. Not like you. She leans in close and he’s still smiling at her and you wonder at the nature of his interest.
You have absolutely no right to be jealous. You repeat this fact to yourself and sit down to break your line of sight. You have no right. But it doesn’t stop the burn of it in your veins, following the pain pathways seared into your being. As if pain is all you will ever feel now.
He comes to the door while you’re rummaging, his face adjusted to the calm, accepting expression you’d thought natural on his features.
‘Ready?’ he asks gently.
You can’t stand it. ‘Look, I really need a day in the office. I’ve got emails banking up and a bit of research to do. Why don’t we head out again tomorrow?’
He tilts his head slightly. Oh, he knows you all right. You turn your own head away from him and back to the fascination of the filing drawer, and you won’t let him catch your eye.
‘Sure,’ he says at last. ‘I could do with some admin time too.’
You scrabble, shuffle, crinkle.
‘Everything OK?’
You nod, not trusting your voice. You won’t cry.
‘Do you want a coffee or something?’
‘Maybe later.’
He stands watching you.
‘Chen,’ you say, ‘go away.’
‘You know I’d do anything for you, Bridget Brennan,’ he says. ‘You just have to ask.’
He doesn’t wait for you to reply. He turns quickly and walks off. Damn him. Because you’d like to run after him, wrench him around, batter him or weep or hold him or fuck him or something.
There’s only one place you can be where there’s any peace, and there are many hours before you can get back to it.
You wait for Finn to fall asleep. Even through all this he can still do it. Within minutes his muscles start twitching and he’s gone. You wait until his snores rip the air apart, and you slide out as softly and secretly as a woman going to her lover.
Finn’s return to your bed wasn’t negotiable, but you don’t care much. Your being has narrowed its focus to these hours in the night when you lower yourself into the cool water. The more time you spend in there, the stronger the feeling gets. At first it was just a sense of Toby, a flash here and there, a feeling. Now, you’re becoming convinced, there’s something more. Like an essence of Toby is in that pool. Like – you can hardly believe you would even think this – your son is haunting the water.
It’s not possible. You know that. So you decide to suspend disbelief. You disengage the part of your mind that would dismantle the sensation, and you immerse yourself in the dream of it.
Only it’s not feeling like a dream.
You enter the water, slipping in silently in the dark, and you could swear Toby has run a small hand down your arm, or patted your cheek. You could swear to hearing his voice in the gurgles the water makes around your body. You could swear he’s happy when you come into the water, and that he yearns for you when you leave.
The water lapping your body has travelled across the world for millennia. Falling as rain, evaporating, rising, condensing, falling again. Outside, in the air, your rage at Finn rises up. In the water that all drops away. In the water are love and grief; in the water are the world’s sorrows. In the water you’re in the womb again yourself, you remember your own foetal floating and then Toby floating inside you, and now you’re floating inside him, your roles reversed. Images wash around you: reeds and plants, fish swimming, water that’s clear, with a green light. Bubbles. Tranquillity. Microbes.
The pump clicks on with a jolt and the water gurgles and swirls, interrupting the silence. The system runs automatically at different points during the night to use off-peak electricity, and tonight its timing has coincided with your visit. The mechanical whirr grinds into the dreamy underwater world, disturbing it.
You surface, the moment broken. The throb of the pump means you can’t hear Toby any more and you feel the grief of losing him again.
As you rise on the step, you return to gravity’s pain. You trail your fingers in the water, saying good night. Then you step out, your toes reluctant to break the last contact with the water, and you towel yourself dry.
You detour to the pump house, grab the power cord and yank it from its socket. The pump splutters into silence, the water in the pumps gurgling back to rest. As a test, you return to the pool edge and lower a foot onto the step. Whatever trace of Toby you felt is gone, sucked away through the machine.
At the computer you swizzle the mouse until the screen lights up. Think for a moment. Type in a search term. And though you didn’t know quite what you were looking for, what you wanted pops up. A picture of a swimming pool transformed into a pond. Reeds, water plants, fish. Clear, green-tinted water. Bubbles. Just like your underwater imagining.
According to the descriptions, it’s not hard. Turn off the pumps, wait for the water to go green, introduce plants and fish, let them establish a new balance. You could still swim in it. Some local councils are apparently helping people transform their unused swimming pools into natural ponds. Beautification, economy and a backyard ecosystem. It takes a few weeks. You could do it. You could bring it back to life.