Widowmere

By Emma Lee Bole

The sun sets over Windermere. An artist is sketching on the shore; nearby, a beautiful young widow fills her pockets with stones and wades out into the lake...
The artist, Eden, is in England's Lake District looking for a new start. Now she finds that deceit and death lie waiting in the shadow of the hills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emma Lee Bole
• Release date: Dec 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370523481

Emma Lee Bole

Emma Lee Bole is a pseudonym.I lived in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham and Australia before settling in north-west England, where I write magazine short stories and children's books under other names.

Book preview

A sky of torn tissue paper in shades of smoke. Hills of piled rust and ashes. Silvered water, as slippery as mercury. The surface of Windermere flinched, trembling, while ducks dozed at its shifting edge.

The rain had wept itself through and left a drained and washed-out landscape. Sitting on the raised path by the lake’s shoreline, I took two deep breaths, boxed up my rage in a dark corner of my head and tried to forget about the phone call that had sent me scuttling here.

Instead I concentrated solely on the sketchpad on my knee. Think of nothing but the colours. Careful, now.

I dipped my brush, stroked the watercolour palette and added a smear of Cadmium Yellow to the ragged sky. It wasn’t there in truth: a gloomy dusk was ready to fall, but this design looked better with a touch of gold.

View from Waterhead was my most popular card. Not my favourite view, with those dark knuckles of the Langdales clenched beyond the jetty: and not the best view in the Lake District by a long chalk, even once I’d deleted the concrete outlet pipes and rearranged the clanking yachts. But in the three months since I’d set up business, it had been my strongest seller – perhaps because so many tourists lingered here and saw it for themselves.

Not that many tourists were lingering here now. On a chilly teatime in mid-March, most visitors had headed for the bright windows of Ambleside’s guesthouses and cafes. Only a handful still dawdled by the darkening lake.

A dog-walker pulled on a reluctant spaniel that was straining at the dopey ducks: an elderly couple in twin green waterproofs strolled comfortably arm in arm: and a young woman in a long black trench-coat was beach-combing, idly sifting through handfuls of stones, although only an incorrigible romantic could find that wet gravel worth a second glance. I watched her drop half her handful and slide the rest into her pocket.

The waterproof twins slowed as they approached me. I could see them trying to get a discreet look at my sketchpad, the way people often do when I’m painting out of doors. Some seem to think I’m laid on for their entertainment: they flock round and praise loudly, only to mutter reservations as they move away again. An easel’s a disaster. It makes painting a spectator sport.

Maybe if I wasn’t young and female it would help. I’ve learnt to scowl, but it doesn’t always work. I had no trouble scowling with sincerity at these two, for my fury was still warm. It didn’t put them off.

Beautiful evening, offered the male of the pair, eager and toothy.

Mm.

He paused to peer. Delightful part of the world here, isn’t it?

Mm-hm. I made it as discouraging as I could.

We’ve just been to look at the Roman fort back there. Galava, do you know it? Fascinating, absolutely.

Mm. It wasn’t. It was a few old lumps of rock, and he was standing in my way.

Come along, Griff, said his partner gently, let’s leave the young lady to her work. She was Scottish, with careful grey hair and glasses. She gave me a kind auntie’s smile, took his hand and they walked on, at peace with each other and the world.

I wasn’t at peace. I was still brooding on that phone call.

It had taken me a while to hear the phone. I’d been hoovering the guesthouse, trying to wipe my muddy traces off The Heronry’s dun carpets. I was desperate to keep my lodgings spotless; I couldn’t afford to give any cause for complaint.

When I finally answered the phone, Greta’s impatience slammed down the line at me. But then talking to my sister frequently reminds me of being beaten around the head with a complaints box.

Eden. You took your time. Having a little lie-down, were you?

Greta, despite being nearly two years younger, sounded like an exasperated older sister. She was in a permanent state of annoyance with me. I knew she wished she wasn’t my sister at all, or at least that I would have the good grace to change my name, move out of Cumbria and stay well away from her.

Greta. How are you? I said evenly. How’s school?

Worked off my feet. What do you think?

Well, I…

Of course, you wouldn’t know about that, would you? But I had Sunday off for a change, for the first time this term. I abandoned the mountain of marking and went for a day out in Keswick. Abrupt, cold, meaningful. I ended up in Latrigg Galleries.

That wasn’t so remarkable. I wondered why she was bothering to tell me.

That’s nice, I said. Did you have a good time?

Oh, yes. Until I walked into the Galleries, and the day was ruined. I saw it, Eden. You’re up to your old tricks again.

Silence. The house stopped to listen.

What do you mean?

You know exactly what I mean. Antagonism drilled through the phone into my ear. I was bewildered.

I don’t sell my cards through Latrigg Galleries, I said. I’ve only got one outlet in Keswick, and that’s Freddie’s bookshop.

I don’t mean your crappy little cards and cheesy sketches! That’s not what I’m talking about!

Then what are you talking about?

You. She hissed down the line. You and those bloody MacLeishes. Haven’t you learnt? Haven’t you got any sense or decency at all? For God’s sake, haven’t you put us through enough? Can you hear me, Eden?

I could hear her. I was so breathless with indignation that I couldn’t speak. Her voice was still boring away like a dentist’s drill: but with a furious jab at the phone I closed the call.

It was total rubbish. I had nothing to do with Latrigg Galleries. I was as desolately clean as a snowy graveyard; but she wouldn’t believe that. She was only willing to believe the worst of me.

I paced up and down the big, cold, silent house for a while, panting my outrage at the pristine carpets, swearing at the stripped beds and banging the doors of empty wardrobes as if Greta was inside them. The end of the rain offered an escape. I grabbed my sketchpad and watercolour box and headed out to the lake, that yielding grey quilt of water, seeking comfort and composure.

Comfort and composure. Wasn’t that what everybody came here for? Brains out, dummies in, as Greta once sneeringly remarked. She was talking about the tourists who clogged the roads each weekend, driving at twenty, heads twisting in their endless, restless chase after tranquillity; but it applied to me as well.

That was why I’d come back here last year, a piece of flotsam looking for a shore. After my ten months in prison, I’d come to see reflections on the silky water, as momentary and untouchable as dreams.

I’d come to hear the rooks’ bedtime banter in tall, swaying trees. I’d come to curl up in the cradle of damp hills, this vast, brackened nest with buzzards swinging overhead. So different from that narrow, overheated prison cell. I’d come to breathe, to lose myself, forget.

Like everyone. Now, down by the uncertain water, I frowned at the fading sunset and then at my sketch: a postcard piece of schmaltz in grey and gold. Four pounds fifty retail. I signed it with a discontented scribble: Eden Shirer.

The grey-haired couple turned to amble back along the shore, talking softly in an easy intimacy that made me feel hollow. The dog-owner had left. Two reined toddlers with their mothers took over duck-tormenting duties at the jetty, hurling in fistfuls of bread that attracted a mob of seagulls. Meanwhile, the young woman in the black coat slid another handful of wet stones into her pocket, and gazed out across Windermere.

Then, with steady, deliberate strides, she walked into the water. Her long coat wetly trailing, she began to wade towards the centre of the lake.

Chapter Two

It took me several seconds to believe it. At first I thought bemusedly that this was just an eccentric form of paddling, for she was barely knee-deep, and seemed unconcerned.

Her coat stretched out behind her like a tent pegged by the water. After a few more paces, she flopped forwards at full length, her arms flung out. She didn’t try to swim.

At which point I said Bloody hell!, pushed everything off my knee on to the ground, ripped off my jacket and galloped down to the lake to wade in after her. It was plainly up to me: the waterproof twins were too old for total immersion and the staring mums were toddler-bound.

So I floundered in. The water bit through my jeans, munching its way up my legs with teeth that were first shockingly, and then numbingly, cold. Although it was still shallow when I reached her, I could feel the bottom beginning to shelve steeply away. I grabbed her by the soggy trench-coat, heaved her upright and tried to drag her back towards the shore.

She was taller than me: heavier and stronger. She fell backwards deliberately and pulled me under. The cold water was a giant, demeaning slap on the face. When I hauled myself up she tried to pull me in again; and all my anger came leaping out of its cage.

Oh no, you don’t! I yelled. I’m not having this! Out you come right now! – a direct echo from my mother twenty years ago when I was six, which disconcerted me but made her stand up tall in the water in her sodden coat, like a drowned woman’s ghost. She stared at me with wide, dark eyes, made darker by her weeping eyeliner.

No no no, she said in a distant, unemotional wail. I have to go back home. Her wet face shone. With her pale skin, huge black-rimmed eyes, and long, dark, dripping hair, she was a mermaid. A siren. The grim winter twilight laid silver caresses on her. She was beautiful.

Dead right you have to go back home! I scolded. But you have to get out of the water first.

It’s where I live, she said. Where I belong. I’m not getting out.

I really think you should, I said, toning down my voice, more cautious now. You come with me. It’ll be all right. You hold my hand, come on now. Here; that’s it. I took her hands, fish-slippery and unresisting. Be careful.

I slowly backed towards the shore, holding both her hands. This time she didn’t try to pull me down, but followed, stumbling once or twice. Her coat was dragging from her shoulders.

Take that off, I said, as we approached the small audience now gathered by the lakeside. A couple of cars had pulled up on the road to watch. With difficulty, I tugged the sodden coat off her: it weighed a ton. I dropped it in the lapping shallows, and helped her to the shore where the waterproof twins reached kindly hands out to her.

By now I was shivering painfully, as much with adrenalin as cold. I ached all over. She wasn’t shivering at all.

"What were you doing?" I demanded.

Easy now, said the male twin anxiously.

She stood like a trickling statue in a fountain, smiling faintly. She was about my age: perhaps a little younger. Early twenties, maybe.

I stole my husband, she said distantly.

You what?

His soul, she said. She twisted her head to look back at the thin waves of Windermere casting their flickering net at the shore. A black delta of hair flowed down her shoulders, dripping into the lake. I need to go home.

Och, we can take you home, offered the female twin. Can’t we, Griff? Where do you live, dear?

No, I need to stay here. Sitting down abruptly on the stony shoreline, she put her hands around her knees and her head on one side expectantly as if she was waiting for a picnic. I fished for the drifting trench-coat and upended it. Handfuls of sludgy grit slid from the pockets and splattered into the water.

The mothers began to lead their wide-eyed toddlers well away from the bedraggled mermaid: the halted cars, seeing no-one drowned or drowning, pulled regretfully away.

I slipped, she said.

I didn’t argue. Well, what were you doing out there in the first place? It was still my mother’s voice. Worse, my sister Greta’s, haranguing and hostile. I breathed deep and tried again. I mean, are you all right? Do you feel okay?

I just felt like a swim.

A swim? Griff queried, frowning. In your coat? He stared at her. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? Haven’t we met?

No, I don’t think so, Griff, his partner said.

But the mermaid turned her washed face up to them. A face straight out of some Victorian painting, right down to the heavy chin and sulky mouth; stubbornly robust, with none of the airbrushed flimsiness of a magazine model. Despite the weeping make-up, her beauty shuddered through me with a shockwave like an earthquake.

You might have seen me at the supermarket, she said indifferently.

I squatted down beside her. Are you local, then?

She half-closed her eyes. I might be.

What’s your name?

Selena.

Selena what?

She hesitated, then shook her head and wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t tell us where she lived, or give a phone number. There was no phone in her pockets. She sat mute and calm upon the stony beach, hugging her arms around her muddy knees. I noticed a wedding ring.

I looked at the twins. Police or hospital? What do you think?

No, no, neither! Selena’s head shot up in alarm. She shook it again, emphatically, like a dog. I’m not ill. And walking into a lake isn’t a crime.

The Lady of the Lake! Griff announced excitedly. That’s who you are! She glanced up at him sidelong, with a measuring look, and did not disagree.

I glanced at my watch, which had clouded and stopped. Ambleside’s shiny new police station wouldn’t be open now in any case: its hours were nine to five, weekdays only. Local criminals were expected to keep office hours. Kendal police station might be manned, but that was twelve or thirteen miles away, as was the nearest A and E.

I didn’t want to hang around, wet, waiting on a police car for half an hour. Quite apart from the cold, I had an acquired aversion to police cars.

Those two poor girls are both soaked through! exclaimed Griff. We should do something to help them, Muriel!

Yes, we need to get them dry. We’ve got a car, Muriel told me in her composed, dapper Scottish, but it’s not very close. It’s parked up in the town.

We might as well walk her straight to my house. My teeth were chattering. I needed to move: I could feel everything beginning to seize up. Selena? Can you walk into Ambleside? I held her limp hand, which felt warmer this time than my own. When I started to pull her to her feet, she stood up of her own volition.

All right, she said meekly.

We must have made a strange procession. Heads swivelled as we laid a wet trail along the pavements. Griff and Muriel insisted on walking the whole half-mile with us, Griff carrying the sodden coat on one arm and gallantly thrusting his other elbow at Selena. She laid two fingers on it like a fastidious lady.

Meanwhile Muriel accompanied me with my painting gear, laying on a gentle stream of commonplaces as if hoping to shrink the day back to ordinary status. She and Griff were on holiday, she told me in her calm, musical voice, staying in a flat up the hill on the east side of the town and returning to the old haunts they used to visit with the children. Who were grown-up now, and lived down south, with two delightful grandchildren. One boy, one girl.

Didn’t we stay here once, Muriel? exclaimed Griff as we arrived at The Heronry and I fumbled for the key.

Years ago, said Muriel. This is your guesthouse? She looked up dubiously at the narrow grey façade, the lightless windows frowning at the dusk, and the No Vacancies sign. Actually there were eleven vacancies, but no proprietor.

Not mine, I said. I’m house-sitting while the owners are in Lanzarote. I unlocked the door and keyed the alarm with frozen fingers, then led them down the long corridor into the kitchen at the back.

My goodness, you’re both terribly wet! said Griff with concern, as if he’d only just noticed.

Well, March isn’t the best month for swimming in Windermere, I said.

No, indeed! He looked around the kitchen. Where are we? Who owns this place?

Some friends called the Pattinsons. They were actually friends of my mother. My own friends, almost without exception, were no longer talking to me.

I hoped the laminated floor was waterproof. Selena was still dripping lavishly. You’d have thought she was made of water. I sat her on a stool to ooze while I spread around haphazard sheets of the Westmorland Gazette, which I’d left open at Accommodation after a forlorn and depressing search. Griff fussed with tea-towels.

Dear me, he said, talk about wet! The lady of the lake and no mistake!

Selena flicked back her hair with one finger and laughed. She looked pretty normal. Griff laughed back.

Muriel put the kettle on. Should we stay here with you? she asked doubtfully. Will you be all right?

I’ll be fine, I said. I’ll put her in the bath. And lend her some dry clothes. I wasn’t sure what to do with her after that, but it was hardly Muriel’s problem.

I hate to leave you to it, but...

It’s okay. I know a policeman at the local station. I can always ring him if I need to, I said loudly, for Selena’s benefit. In truth, to say that I knew Sergeant Hunter Brigg was stretching reality. I’d talked to him half a dozen times. Skirted the sharp edges of him, maybe.

You won’t need to ring the police. I won’t cause any trouble, Selena said with calm assurance. I hoped she was right, because I didn’t have Hunter’s private number, and I couldn’t see Kendal station happily handing it over.

I would stay – it’s just that… Muriel gestured helplessly. We need to get back home.

Oh, yes, said Griff regretfully. We’ve got to pack. Early start tomorrow. Reality calls, alas.

As they trooped into the hall, Muriel pulled a slip of paper from her handbag and wrote neatly on it. That’s my mobile number. Do ring, Eden, if you need any help – or just to let us know what happens.

Okay. Thanks. I closed the door on them and returned to the kitchen, where Selena was opening cupboard doors with energetic curiosity.

Where do you keep your tea?

I’ll do that, I said. I didn’t want her rummaging. I found mugs and dropped teabags into them. And in a bit I’ll run you a bath, as long as you won’t try and drown yourself in it.

Her lips twitched ruefully. Windermere wasn’t deep enough, was it?

It gets deeper, I said. And colder. If you’d gone any further out I might have thought twice about going in after you. I hate deep water.

It was nice of you to follow me. Can you not swim, then?

Not when it’s that cold. I’d had a fear of deep, cold water ever since I was ten and fell into Derwentwater while I was boating with Greta and our older brother Allen. I reckon Greta pushed me, though she denied it. The expedition was her idea: playing bloody Swallows and Amazons, and I expect I annoyed her, as usual, by not doing it right.

I remember well the breathless, stabbing shock of going in. The water wrapped me round like lead. I couldn’t move. It was Allen who helped me struggle out, nearly paralysed with cold, unable to swim although I was a perfectly good swimmer. All these years later, I still avoided the edges of boats and had a horror of falling in – even on the Sawrey ferry.

I’m perfectly all right now, said Selena tranquilly. Now that I’m here.

None the less, once she’d drunk her tea and I’d run a bath down in the Pattinsons’ gloomy living quarters in the basement, I wedged the bathroom door open and listened for healthy splashing while I shivered in a dressing gown in the adjacent room. I was realising, belatedly, that no matter how sane she seemed I shouldn’t leave her alone.

So I waited until she was out of the bath and carelessly half-covered in an inadequate towel – dripping all over again, a dark and disturbing Botticelli Venus – before running upstairs to pull dry clothes from the wardrobe I was currently using in one of the guest bedrooms and bring them down to her.

She sat on the edge of the bath with her long bare legs stretched out, voluptuous breasts exposed in an unselfconsciously seductive pose that she can’t have meant but that totally threw me. She watched me in the mirror, doubly dripping, hair and glass and skin all melting into tears. Her face told me nothing.

Get out while I shower, I said, more roughly than I needed to.

By the time I’d finished, she was dressed. With my blue shirt buttoned to her neck, she was no longer a sensual Botticelli but a pent-up Victorian, pouting like the brooding beauties in a Rossetti painting.

In comparison I felt as puny as a drippy Waterhouse nymph, all anxious eyes and muddy hair. My clothes were tight on her: she was shapelier than me. My ten months in prison had turned me somehow both thin and flabby at the same time. The flabbiness was going, but the thinness lingered.

Her eyes were fixed intently on me, waiting patiently for directions; she seemed as passive as a child. Her trust was disconcerting.

I wondered what I ought to do with her. Although the sensible thing would be to turn her over to the police, I felt an innate revulsion at that idea. And now that she didn’t seem to be in imminent danger at her own hands, she became almost a welcome distraction. Having somebody else to think about, I decided, was good for me.

Let’s get something to eat, I said, and led her back up to the kitchen where I cooked us beans on toast. We ate on stools squashed up against the worktop, because I was trying to keep the adjoining dining room clean, and anyway its formal ranks of tables didn’t seem conducive to the confidences I was hoping she would entrust me with.

Sorry it’s a bit basic, I said. Beans on toast was a staple of my diet, along with pasta and brown sauce, and mints. I used to shoplift bacon in my carefree past, but these days dared not risk it.

That’s all right. She ate rapidly, hungrily, and I forgot my own food in watching her: this beauty who had stepped out of her gilded frame to eat my toast. Her accent seemed incongruous – south Lancashire, I thought, perhaps a touch of Merseyside.

Where are you from? I asked, and saw the lovely face stiffen. All right. I’m not asking. But why Windermere?

She stared mournfully at the plate, mouth set in a melancholy bow. Her long hair, slick with my conditioner, slid down to veil her face.

Was it just the closest bit of water? I persisted.

Not really. Coniston’s closer. Or Esthwaite, she murmured through the hair, inviting guesses. She reminded me of somebody, though I couldn’t quite think who.

But Esthwaite narrowed it down. Maybe she was from round Hawkshead way.

You live in a village?

On a farm.

I studied her. Even allowing for her double soaking, her skin looked dewy-fresh, not weather-beaten. Her curves weren’t muscular. Her fingernails were long: I remembered how soft her hands had felt. And there was that wedding ring.

You’re not a farmer’s wife? I asked, incredulous.

She nodded. Luke’s wife, she said softly.

Luke who?

She didn’t answer, just glanced at me from under those dark lashes. She really wanted to be recognised and taken home, I thought: a sheltered townie unsettled by the rough and ruthless nature of farm life. Luke the farmer probably fell short on sympathy. So Luke’s the husband you stole, right? I continued.

What?

You said in the lake you stole your husband.

No! Why would I say that? She looked alarmed. I never said that. My husband died.

He died? My image of a surly farmer melted into ripples. What happened?

It was at the farm. It was dreadful. I can’t tell you. Yet the soulful eyes gazed at me with supplication, as if she just wanted prompting to say more.

I knew now who she reminded me of. There had been women like her in prison: evasive, troubled, contradictory. Saying things for effect. Sometimes they meant them, sometimes not.

Are you on anything? I asked, although I’d seen no puncture marks. Medication, drugs? I don’t want to dob you in, I just want to know.

Nothing, she said. I don’t do drugs.

Okay. When did Luke die? Can you tell me that?

Three months ago. December. There was a pause, during which I was wondering how to word the obvious question, when she answered it anyway. He killed himself. The words hung in the air like letters of smoke, drifting down into the silence.

I’m sorry to hear that, I said after a moment.

Yes. So, you see. She dropped her head. I saw: the beans congealing on her plate, the downcast face framed by damp hair, and felt a cruel, clomping idiot.

Do you want to talk about it?

She shook her head slowly, meditatively. Could you show me round the house?

I could think of no reason why not. It would take her mind off dead Luke, after all. So I gave her the guided tour, from the owners’ basement to the third floor single up in the roof, smelling of Spring Primrose paint.

She exclaimed at everything with a mermaid’s naïve wonder at how the humans lived. She counted bedrooms on her long fingers and caressed the Pattinsons’ commonplace ornaments with unnecessary reverence.

It’s nice here. We used to move around so much, she said. I never got used to any of those places. They weren’t much of a home. But your home’s nice.

It’s not mine. I explained that I was house-sitting while the owners had their annual holiday, and at the same time was charged with repainting most of the bedrooms. This was the fourth guesthouse I’d looked after since New Year, and would be the last, for the wandering owners were returning: Easter would soon unleash its slow-moving GoreTex-coated hordes.

I didn’t know where I would go next. I had hopes of the Ruskin Hotel, where I’d worked two summers as a student, but they might not take me now. Not now I was a con.

The Pattinsons knew of my criminal record, of course, but more importantly, they also knew my mother. Sometimes I felt that everyone knew my mother – in the guesthouse trade, at any rate. She’d run one herself before moving to Penrith, where she set up an accommodation agency. A woman of many parts, my mother. Not like me. I had one part, and that was it.

I’d started house-sitting soon after my release from jail, unfairly desperate to get away from my parents. My mother’s brisk efficiency was too painful a reminder of my own failures: while my father, who I’d hoped would at least provide a stout shoulder I could cry on, shied away from any such drama. I loved my father, but he would have been happier, I think, with mechanical children than ones made of flesh and blood and tears. He didn’t know what to do with me, and was glad to escape into his shed, leaving me to wander the house like a doleful shadow in search of myself; my past everywhere around me yet unutterably lost.

There was no comfort in home any more. So it was a relief to escape to the bland rooms of the Heronry which were at least as empty of memories as they were of character.

I explained a little of this, briefly, to Selena. Not about jail. She seemed more fascinated with the guesthouse than it merited. I hadn’t intended to show her the big back double bedroom where I did my cards; but she opened the door and went in anyway.

I’d turned the room into my temporary studio. It faced north, with high sash windows that let in draughts, but also a clean light. On the spotless Old Rose wall hung two large prints of baleful herons: but all the other art-works in the room were mine.

My drawing-board was propped up on the dressing table with my box of watercolour tubes and my jars of water, a dustsheet spread beneath to catch the splatters. The Pattinsons would be aghast – but they would never know. The latest batch of cards was lying on sheets of newspaper on the bed, while the mounts were stacked against the pillows.

I was uncomfortable. I felt exposed, which was daft, because what else did I paint the things for except to be seen?

That’s lovely! Selena picked up a waterfall. She sounded surprised enough to be sincere.

They’re greetings cards. People like hand-painted cards, I said grumpily.

They’re very artistic. She laid the waterfall down respectfully and picked up Tarn Hows. This is really nice! Eden, you’re so talented! Her admiration knocked me sideways. I liked it, but I didn’t deserve it.

No, I’m not, I said roughly. I just churn them out for the tourists. These had taken hardly more thought than the paint I’d slapped upon the bedroom walls. The same views over and over: no two quite identical, though. I was diligent about that.

That one’s Grasmere, isn’t it?

Probably.

And there’s Skelwith Fold! she said excitedly. I saw you there! I saw you painting. You had a yellow coat on.

Yup, more than likely. I get all over the place.

She picked up my sketchpad and studied the pencil outlines of hills and trees with letters scribbled around them. WB, VR, UTS. Why do you write on them?

That’s a code for the colours. Winsor Blue, Venetian Red and Usual Tree Stuff.

Wow, she said. A real artist. You’re so clever. What else do you paint?

Just this, I said shortly. None of this was art, and I knew it even if she didn’t. This was just technique. I did larger pieces as well, A2 or A3, designed to complement magnolia walls; but they weren’t art either. I didn’t sell many. They languished, slowly growing tattered, in Freddie’s bookshop.

Meanwhile the big stuff – the real stuff – was lurking somewhere just beyond the trees or beneath the surface of the lake, but I didn’t know exactly where it was or how to reach it. Sometimes I caught the edge of it as I sketched, shivering, on a hillside: sometimes it glowed briefly through the layers of wash on the paper. But I couldn’t keep it there. The more paint I applied, the more I hid it from myself.

Selena sat down at the dressing table and fingered my brushes. Dabbling one in a jar, she painted a large watery circle on the mirror.

Two oval eyes, an L for a nose, a collapsing M for a mouth; and long wet snakes for hair. A child’s portrait. As the strokes began to run, she laid down the brush and stared into the liquid face.

But that’s not me, she said quietly. Not the real me in any picture. I wish I could paint myself. Do you ever paint people, Eden?

Not any more. I’m not much good at people. I’d done enough portraits in jail to last a lifetime, but none since. To change the subject, I asked her, Do you like it on the farm? – then could have kicked myself. With a dead husband?

She did not answer. Laying a finger on the mirror she began to draw stripe after stripe across the dissolving face, caging it behind trickling bars until it was obliterated.

Sorry, I said.

I’ve nowhere else to go. It was okay at first. But it’s lonely without Luke.

Yes, of course. Which farm?

She looked at me sidelong through the waterfall of hair, as expressionless as the wet face on the mirror.

Okay, I said. How did you get to the lake?

I walked, she said.

That must have taken you a while.

I suppose. An hour or so. I wasn’t checking. Now I pinned down exactly who she reminded me of. It was Jackie, from the cell next door to mine, ten years older than me but as dreamy and erratic as a teenager. Jackie would confide half a secret and wait for me to ask for the rest. I never knew which of her secrets to believe: they were mostly rubbish.

But Selena’s secrets would be different. A husband’s suicide… How would I react if Nick had killed himself?

With a shudder, I instantly dismissed the thought, because if Nick, my one-time partner, were to do anything so out of character it could only be my fault.

Are you okay? she asked, as solicitous as if I were the half-drowned widow and not her.

I’m fine. Still warming up after our dip, I said. Why did you say you belonged there, in the lake?

She gazed back at the spoiled reflection in the mirror. Just remembering stories from when I was a kid, she said quietly.

Stories?

About selkies. You know what a selkie is? It’s a woman who lives in the sea and comes out to get married. But she has to go back to the sea after. Her reflected eyes fixed on me intensely: her voice urged me to understand. I didn’t.

Windermere’s not the sea, I pointed out.

It doesn’t matter, she said earnestly. It works the same way, whatever. It’s just water. It doesn’t have to be the sea. This girl – this selkie came out of the black pool and got caught. She shed her fishy skin and all the men fell in love with her. They hid her skin away so she couldn’t go back home until she found it.

A silver fish-tail struggled briefly in my head, net-bound. But surely that was wrong.

I thought the selkie was a seal, not a fish, I said. Who told you those stories?

My Grandad.

And where does your Grandad live?

He’s gone. They’ve all gone. I’m alone. And suddenly her voice was husky and her eyes were wet with tears: an artist’s tears, poised on the brink, not reddening her eyes but only magnifying their lustre. Can I stay here with you tonight? I feel safe here. I’ll be no trouble.

"I don’t think that’s a