Sunday Water

The first thing I noticed was that nobody rang the bell.

There were footsteps on the outside stairs, then a knock: three firm sounds, a pause, another. Denise was already standing before the second set came.

Alice looked up from her drawing.

Mum had arrived ten minutes earlier with a container of chicken and rice. She was washing her hands at the sink. When she heard the knock, she turned off the tap but didn't reach for the towel.

Denise went to the door.

I heard Adebayo say her name.

After that, I tried very hard not to hear.

There was another officer with her, a woman whose voice was lower and softer. They asked to come in. Denise asked something I couldn't make out. Then she said no, very clearly, as if they had offered her a thing she could refuse.

Mum dried her hands slowly.

“Alice,” she said. “Come and sit with me a moment.”

Alice didn't move.

“What?” she asked.

Mum went to her chair.

In the hallway, Adebayo asked whether there was somewhere they could sit down. Denise said there was the sitting room. Her voice had become oddly polite. I could picture her moving the laundry basket from the sofa, apologising for the mess, making space for something no room could possibly accommodate.

I stood by the counter with a teaspoon in my hand.

The kettle had boiled again because I'd forgotten it was already hot. Steam clouded the lower corner of the window.

Then Denise made a sound from the other room.

I had heard people cry before. Mum, quietly, when she thought the extractor fan would cover it. Sam, angrily, when he broke his wrist and couldn't understand why being brave didn't make it hurt less. Friends in toilets, teachers in corridors after funerals, people on screens whose grief had been edited into something a viewer could manage.

This was none of those sounds.

Alice got up so quickly her chair struck the cupboard.

Mum caught her hand, not to stop her, only to go with her.

I stayed in the kitchen.

For a while, my entire world consisted of the teaspoon and the need to put it somewhere. If I put it on the counter, it would leave a wet mark. If I put it in the sink, it would make a noise. I held it until my fingers cramped.

Eventually the second officer came to the kitchen doorway.

“Are you Bea?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Is Ruth your mum?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to sit down?”

I looked at the chair Alice had left crookedly against the cupboard.

“Have they found him?”

The officer took a small breath.

“A body has been found near the centre. We believe it may be Rowan. We need to complete the identification process.”

I understood every word. I couldn't make them belong to the same sentence.

“Near the centre?”

“Yes.”

“But they looked there.”

“The search team was working with council staff to access part of the drainage system.”

I saw the rolled plan in the worker's hand. The waterproof trousers. The gate with its fresh green line.

“Was he—”

I stopped.

“You don't need to ask everything now,” she said.

I looked at her face. She wasn't trying to make it sound less terrible. She was giving me permission to know less for a little longer.

I put the spoon in the sink. It made the noise I'd been afraid of, small and metallic and entirely ordinary.

The officer asked whether I had someone else she could contact. I said Mum was there. She said yes, she knew, but there might be someone who could take me home when I was ready. I gave her Sam's name, then remembered how that name now sat in the investigation and felt an absurd urge to explain that he was still my brother.

She didn't ask me to.

From the sitting room, Alice said, “No.”

Then again, louder.

The officer looked towards the sound and went back.

I sat at the kitchen table. The notebook was still open. On the page facing me, Rowan had drawn the handle of their kettle as if it were the neck of a bird. There were three attempts, each slightly different. He had written too smug beside the last one.

I touched the edge of the page and took my hand away.

I don't know how long I sat there. Time did not stop. It became inconveniently precise in small places. The fridge motor started. A message arrived on Denise's phone, still on the table. The screen lit with a name I didn't know, someone asking whether there was any news.

I turned the phone over without reading the rest.

Adebayo came into the kitchen after a while. She looked at me, then at the notebook.

“We'll need to speak again, Bea. Not tonight unless there is something urgent you need to tell us.”

I nodded.

“I've read your message about the earlier account. We'll arrange that with your mum. For now, please don't discuss details you think you know about what happened. Your friend's family needs time, and some things haven't been established.”

“Was it an accident?”

“We're working to establish the circumstances.”

I hated the phrase immediately. Then I realised it was probably the only truthful one she could give me.

“I was there,” I said.

“At the fundraiser.”

“Yes.”

“So were many people.”

“I had a camera.”

Adebayo pulled out the chair opposite me and sat for a moment.

“A camera doesn't make you responsible for everything outside its frame.”

I looked at her.

I wanted to believe she was offering absolution. She wasn't. She was telling me one limited thing that was true, which was more useful and less comforting.

“I changed the film,” I said.

“You've given us both files.”

“I changed what I told you.”

“And we will deal with that. It does not help Rowan or his family for you to make yourself responsible for things you did not do.”

I couldn't answer.

She stood when the other officer called her quietly from the hall.

Mum came in a few minutes later. Her eyes were red. She put both hands on my shoulders and looked at me properly, as if checking that I was still entirely present.

“Sam's on his way,” she said. “I'll stay with Denise for a bit.”

“What about Alice?”

“Her aunt is coming.”

“Does she want—”

“I'll ask her what she wants.”

I nodded.

Mum touched my cheek with the back of her fingers. I hadn't realised there were tears on it.

When Sam arrived, he didn't ask what had happened. Mum must have told him enough. He stood in the kitchen doorway in an old sweatshirt and trainers with one lace shorter than the other, and I was so relieved to see him that I felt ashamed of it.

He picked up my bag from the floor.

“Come on,” he said gently.

I went to the sitting-room doorway before leaving. Denise sat on the sofa with Alice pressed against her side. Her hand moved slowly over Alice's hair, again and again, even while she spoke to the officer. It seemed less like comfort than proof that one child was still within reach.

“I'm going home,” I said, though nobody needed the information.

Denise looked up.

“Thank you for bringing the notebook.”

I nearly said sorry. The word rose automatically, wanting to attach itself to everything in the room.

Instead I said, “Of course.”

Outside, the evening was warm. A neighbour stood at the bottom of the stairs with a bag of groceries in each hand. She looked at our faces and moved aside without speaking.

Sam and I walked home. He carried my bag. At the crossing, he put a hand out in front of me because I had stepped forward before the light changed. I didn't tell him I wasn't a child.

At home, he made tea we didn't drink. He called Mum to say we were back. He found a blanket and put it on the sofa beside me, not over me, as if he understood that being arranged might be unbearable.

My phone kept lighting up.

Finn called. I let it ring, then sent a message saying I couldn't talk. Imani wrote only: I'm here. You don't need to answer.

I turned the phone off.

Later, when the light outside had begun to fade, I went upstairs and opened the silent viewing copy.

The empty stage appeared. The keyboard player knelt beside the amplifier. He tried one cable, frowned, tried another. In the service passage, people crossed in and out of the narrow strip the camera could see.

I did not enlarge the picture. I did not move the marker to make the waiting shorter.

I let the eleven minutes run.