Wading In

Illustrated by Ella Clayton.

The two girls – young women really, though it didn’t come naturally to Grace to think of herself as such yet – stepped into the river, skirting around the rocks and a rusting hammer sinking into the riverbed. The current slowed down by the stretch of sand where they’d left a wrinkled pile of clothes and towels, and the wind had stilled, making the water into a near-perfect mirror of the clouds drifting above and the bridge ahead of them.

Grace peered into the water. The sky’s reflection was certainly photogenic, but it covered up the riverbed, and she stepped forward hesitantly. 

“I thought you said you knew this beach best.” Stella’s forehead wrinkled as she squinted at her friend’s slow progress into the water, the same way as when she was puzzling over a particularly tricky reading for one of her seminars and they’d run out of coffee. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“I just can’t see into the water.” Grace remembered the sudden sting of a sharp edge of rock lying unseen before a drop, and though the skin of her feet was smooth and pale in the water, for a moment she could feel the blood running between her toes, its warmth seeping into the current.

“Okay.”

Grace turned back towards Stella, who was balancing on a rock. “That next one’s wobbly, by the way.”

“Noted.” Stella hopped onto the stone in question, the water rising from her ankles to her calves, holding her arms out to her sides for balance. “This is freezing.”

“It’s not too bad. Once you get used to it.” David’s voice echoed in Grace’s ears, calling her forward. 

It’s cold!

It’s not that bad. Can you reach me?

“Are you?”

Grace blinked, her eyes focusing back on the water’s smooth surface, catching a glimpse of the green stripes of her brand-new swimsuit. For accountability, she thought as she spent her paycheck from three hours at work on it. It almost looked like part of the moss growing on the stones under her feet in the distorted light.

“What?”

“Are you used to it.” Stella stepped forward again, coming to stand next to Grace. “Hey.”

“What?”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Grace swallowed. 

“Grace?”

“I need to do it.”

It wasn’t awful, the water’s gentle brush against her legs. It should feel scary, unpleasant, and certainly it wasn’t easy. But Grace couldn’t deny that something about the light dancing in the water and the cool current parting around her legs was calling her forward. She could see why David had brought her here as soon as their parents would let them go paddling on their own.

On dry land, they were just David and little Gracie, and it was anyone’s guess whether she would be allowed to tag along and be Chewbacca when he wanted to play Han Solo, or whether she’d be told in no uncertain terms to go away and build her Lego sets. But, somehow, David’s friends from school didn’t feel the pull of the water, his fascination with finding tadpoles and fish hiding between the rocks, the way Grace did. So, when he said “river?”, she was always running to the house for a swimsuit, yelling “wait for me!” over her shoulder. 

The first time they went in by themselves, giddy that they were grown up enough to paddle without an adult, Grace gripped David’s fingers as they waded in. At twelve, he was probably too eager to get into the deeper end to look after an eight-year-old, but he tried to hang back for her. He’d had a growth spurt that spring, and to Grace, with his gangly limbs, he’d started to look more like her parents than like her. Like he could keep her safe from anything.

We’ll put our heads in together. On three!

Their laughter at the cold shock of the water dripping down their hair, trailing down their necks, had echoed under the bridge, and in the moment they inhaled together as they surfaced, Grace could have sworn they were invincible.

Her parents had cried enough, but every so often, she couldn’t help wondering what they were thinking, letting the two of them run around the river before they were old enough to fully realise that the current should never be taken for granted.

Come deeper!

It’s too far! 

Come on, it’s our last swim before I’m off to uni.

I’m not sure.

It’ll be fine, I promise.

Fine, wait for me!

“You don’t have to do it, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” Grace tried to push her annoyance back down. “It’s been long enough.”

“No one expects you to.” Stella took a step closer to Grace, lifting her hand as if to touch her shoulder, then dropping it as she peered at Grace’s face. 

“That’s the problem.”

“How is it a problem? You’re the one who’s been talking about it for months.”

Grace looked at the chipping pink polish on her toenails, unable to think of a response, because she couldn’t deny that ever since she’d decided to swim again, she’d kept going back and forth about it with her and she’d asked her to come every time she decided that yes, it was time. 

It had been easier to talk about this sudden determination to swim again with Stella. Stella had never known Grace-and-David, Grace-David’s-little-sister. Can you claim sisterhood when you are no one’s sister anymore? Grace still wasn’t sure, so she had stopped trying to.

Stella had met Grace, only-child, eighteen, here to study history. Grace, who set three alarms in the morning and preferred Earl Grey to Yorkshire tea. And Stella, who had grown up in a landlocked hamlet in Devon, had no particular love for water. So, for the first month of their friendship, there had been no reason for David to come up. That is, until November third, when Grace turned nineteen, and, against her flat’s insistence that she join them for pre’s and the club, made it abundantly clear she didn’t feel like having a birthday night out, but they should all definitely go out without her, she was just really tired and still had a bit of a cough from freshers’ flu. She’d join next time for sure.

She was settling into her bed in her oldest pyjamas when Stella knocked, startling Grace enough that a bit of Earl Grey sloshed over her mug and onto her carpet. 

“Are you okay?”

“I thought you were going out.” Stella was still wearing the sparkly black blouse that Grace had offered her, blonde curls falling over one shoulder.

“I know you’re not ill. You haven’t sniffled your way through one of Patrick’s seminars for a week. And it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, but I didn’t feel right leaving you here alone.” Grace finished opening the door, but didn’t invite her in.

“I wanted to be alone.”

“That’s your right, I guess.” Stella started to turn around, then stopped. “But you don’t have to be. I’m here to talk; if you need to.”

“Thanks.” Grace started to step back into her room, glancing at the card from her parents, propped up on her desk. They’d already called, and suddenly the realisation that, if Stella left, her night would be sitting alone in her room, going back and forth about whether she was still David’s younger sister if she was now officially older than he ever would be, made her stomach twist. “Wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to come in? There’s still some cake left.”

“Sure.”

Grace sank down into her bed, letting Stella take the chair. 

“So, do you want to talk about it?”

“About why I’m spending my birthday in bleach-stained plaid, downing Earl Grey instead of pints?”

“You should’ve been an English student.” Stella smiled. “But, yeah, what happened?” 

Grace took another sip of her tea, putting off her answer for a moment longer, trying to stretch out the brief period where she had been just Grace, only- child. “I’m nineteen.” Stella raised an eyebrow. “I never thought…it doesn’t feel right that I am.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Grace, I don’t want to pry–”

“No, it’s okay, I just…I’ve never really had to tell anyone.” Grace took a sip of her tea, trying to put it off just a minute longer.

“My brother and I, we used to be mad about wild swimming. It’s in again, actually, I saw it in The Guardian…anyway, we used to swim in the river near our house.”

“I didn’t know you have a brother.”

“I don’t.” Grace picked at a loose thread on her duvet, staring a hole into it, because if there was one thing she never wanted to see again, it was the look on people’s faces when they realised. “I made it out that day.” A lump was quickly forming in her throat – that hadn’t happened in a while. Usually, she could talk about David, but, then again, she’d never had to discuss him with someone who hadn’t known him, and never at length. “But it was too late when they got him out.”

A whole future, the place at St Andrews (class of 2018) studying biology waiting for David, gone in half an hour. Grace’s cheeks were suddenly too warm, and the tear running down her cheek felt like it was boiling. 

“He was eighteen,” she whispered, her throat suddenly hoarse.

Her mattress sank as Stella moved next to her.

“I had no idea. Grace I–I’m so sorry.” Grace shook her head.

“You couldn’t have. I never had to talk about it to anyone, like I said, because everyone at home just…knows.”

“Can I hug you?” 

Grace sniffed. 

“Yeah.”

Grace didn’t regret telling Stella, exactly. It was like her therapist said – people she grew close to would have to find out eventually, and better that they did on her terms. But after she had – as it always did – it marked a clear before and after.  

“Come on, maybe we should stay in tonight,” Stella had insisted on David’s birthday, even though Grace told her, Stella, it’s fine, that she didn’t mind going out.

“Let’s watch something else,” when their friends voted to watch a documentary about British rivers. Granted, Grace had voted to watch Grease again, but she didn’t feel strongly enough about it to put up a fight. Stella, it’s fine. But Stella had pushed and cajoled until they ended up changing the movie.

And now, there it was again, with the water up to Grace’s knees for the first time in almost five years, with her face slightly wavy on the surface – slightly paler than usual, her eyes wider, but with her chin set. 

“What problem? Grace?”

“The problem is that every time someone hears about…about David, it’s always the same. No one asks me to go swimming, or to the beach. Suddenly water just doesn’t come up in conversation, and people don’t even try to hide that they’re avoiding mentioning it. I can never not be the girl whose brother drowned that summer, and I’m so sick that everyone treats me like a glass doll after they find out!” Her legs were no longer cold, and she could feel her ears starting to blush. “It broke my heart, but I’m not fucking broken and if you could stop treating me like I need to be protected and telling me that it’s okay not to be okay it’d be just great!”

“I don’t think you’re broken! God!” Stella had stopped, and standing on the rock, she was no longer two inches taller than Grace, but seven. “I’m not worried because I think that you can’t handle the thought of water, I’m worried because you’ve dissociated multiple times in the last fifteen minutes, because–” Grace started to open her mouth, but Stella held up her hand. “No, listen to me, I’m worried because you took a month to even be able to tell anyone at uni that this major…thing happened to you and then a month ago you called me at eight in the morning and told me you wanted us to go swimming when I visited, and then every day you’ve managed to bring it up.”

“I already have a therapist, I don’t need you to bring out the psychology talk.”

“Well, then excuse me for being worried that one of my best friends has suddenly decided, out of the blue, that she’s going to fix herself by proving a point that literally no one needs to see proven.”

“That’s it!” Grace stepped away from Stella, and the water brushed her thighs. A fish, the same colour as the sand under her feet, scarcely bigger than her thumb, darted downstream, and her eyes followed it before she looked up at Stella again, willing herself not to cry, her voice to keep steady. ““Fix!” You can say all you want that you don’t think I’m fragile, and it’s bullshit. I know it and you know it.” Stella stepped forward. “No, you listen. You’re not my mum. You’re supposed to be my friend. I didn’t tell you about David so you could protect me. Are you going to keep trying to be my parent or are you going to let me do this?”

Stella’s lip trembled, and a pang of regret tightened Grace’s chest. She glanced at her feet again, but all the fish and tadpoles had run away from her shadow.

“We can talk about this later, but I’m not leaving you in this river.” Grace looked up at Stella. “It doesn’t make it okay that you’ve just yelled at me like it’s my fault how everyone else treats you, but I’m not leaving you alone.” Stella paused, her chest rising slightly as she took a breath. “And I do respect what you’re doing here. I really do.”

“Thanks, Stella.” Grace bit her lip, waiting for Stella to reach her. “Are you still cold?”

“I think I’m used to it now.”

“Okay.” Grace stepped forward again, then turned back. Stella raised her eyebrows at her. “I’m not changing my mind, I just, here.” She stretched her hand towards Stella. “I don’t want to do this alone. David and I never came here alone.” 

“I’ll say it again, I’m not leaving you alone here.”

“Okay.” Stella’s palm was warm in hers, and she was reminded again of how she’d gripped David’s fingers that first time they paddled on their own, ten years before. But she kept her fingers loose. There was no need to grip. “We’ll put our heads in together? On three?”

Stella nodded.

“On three. One, two.” Grace closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “Three.”