The Rapture

hands and arms are still raw.

‘Be careful!’ I call out, but she has plunged into the lake and is prancing about in the shimmering water, oblivious. If it is stinging her, and freezing cold, she doesn’t let it show.

‘Come on in!’ she screams, ecstatic. ‘This is fucking amazing!’

My first instinct is the sane one: to refuse. There are no nurses to restrain Bethany should she attack me, and leaving my chair requires a level of confidence I don’t feel. But having chosen to enter a territory with no rules, I am perversely tempted. I have missed the physical routine of my daily swims: my muscles yearn for movement, for something that edges towards punishment, and the serotonin rush that follows. I’m more mobile and free in the water than anywhere else. And it’s not far to the edge.

Sometimes I think too much. Today I won’t. I lower myself out of my chair and shuffle a few metres along the cool mud to get closer to the gap in the reeds where Bethany entered the water. Near the lake’s edge I discard my skirt, keeping just my T-shirt and knickers. The compressed soil is cold and firm against my palms. When the slope sharpens, I turn sideways and roll, using gravity to propel me. It’s an unexpected, stolen and absurdly sensual feeling. In this moment, the refusal of my legs to cooperate with the rest of my body is forgiven. Irrelevant, even. If the slope were longer, I could roll for ever. I could roll to the edge of the world. When I reach the scummy froth I am shocked by the slap of cold, but don’t let my momentum slow, merging into its chilly suck. Once submerged, I paddle a little way out, then float on my back, working my arms, savouring the harsh bliss of the water. Bethany stands chest-deep, facing the horizon, her arms held high above her, shivering and swaying.

‘And I stood upon the sand, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea,’ she shrieks out to the sky. A seagull swoops past and disappears towards a hulked mass of trees in the far distance. ‘Having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy!’

The lake is soft and benign as amniotic fluid, the creeping daylight seductive as a whisper. The world could amlost feel like a good place. Unexpectedly, the sight of Bethany cavorting in the ripples with the giant wind turbine rotating on the hill beyond provokes a strange, painful wash of tenderness.

You could care about her, and the world we live in.

Perhaps you already do.

I close my eyes and float. After a while Bethany quietens down, bored with herself, and I listen to the sound of birdsong and the rustle of the wind in the reeds. In the distance, a tractor starts up. It’s October 11th, and I would feel anxious, were it not for a vague but persistent feeling that Bethany has got it wrong, and that whatever happens tomorrow — and I do not doubt that something will — cannot affect us here. It’s too unimaginable. This country, with its patchworked farmland, its hills and cliffs and valleys and gorges, its woodlands of oak and birch and beech and pine, its rivers and cattle pastures and bright swathes of hemp and rape: there is no room for catastrophes in such a world. They cannot gain entry.

Dr Sulieman would have a thing or two to say about such fantasies of denial.

Lost in them, I don’t hear Bethany’s approach.

When she speaks, teeth chattering, her voice is right in my ear.

‘I suppose Frazer’ll want to fuck you again, now Kristin’s gone.’ Her tone is conversational. She could be commenting on the weather. I don’t want to open my eyes, but I must, if I am to face whatever comes next. She’s treading water next to me, with only her head visible. On top of it, perched like a fright wig, is a filthy clump of chickweed. ‘So are you going to let him? I guess you can’t be choosy.’ I start working my arms, heading for the lake’s edge. But she doesn’t let up. ‘He’s into tits, isn’t he? Yours are better than Kristin’s, so you’ve got that going for you, Wheels. Shame about the rest.’ I must get away. Not just from Bethany (did I catch myself, just seconds ago, caring about her?)but from everything here. This is no place for an ixgoy. I’ll go back to Hadport, explain the whole thing to Kavanagh. ‘Hey, you didn’t really think Frazer was fucking you for your sake, did you? You didn’t think he was in love with you?’ My arms are aching now, and the chill has penetrated my bones. I battle towards the shore, gulping in water. ‘Why would anyone want to fuck a spaz? I told you!’ she yells. ‘He’s fucking Kristin! You know it! Stop pretending you don’t!’

If I drowned now, I wouldn’t care.

But I don’t. I swim to the edge, fighting back the sobs, while Bethany explodes into ugly, high-pitched laughter and splashes her way to the opposite bank. Scrambling out and grabbing her towel, she runs, stark naked, towards the house.

I drag myself out of the water to the safety of my chair and strip off. Bethany’s cries grow fainter in the distance. You’re being manipulated, Ms Fox, her father said. And you can’t even see it. Now I do. I know she is mad but I still feel betrayed. Just a moment ago, I thought we might have edged into a new realm. My teeth are chattering and there is steam coming off my skin as my heat mingles with the cold air. Laboriously, I towel myself off and squeeze out my wet clothes. Transferring from the ground into my chair is something I mastered long ago, in rehab. But here, with the chair perched at an awkward angle on the concrete platform next to the mud bank, the manoeuvre seems impossible. I fail twice. By the third attempt I am in tears.

N’abandonne pas! says a voice in my head. Whenever I fantasise about Maman, I am eleven again. But I’m not listening to her. Or to my father, who’s here too, not as the man he is, but as the man he was, with his kindness and his gentle jokes and his cultivation. The word that best summed up both him and the things he appreciated in life was ‘civilised’. He is saying, this is not civilised.

No, Dad. And I’m sorry about that. But this is the way things panned out. Lying naked in the mud, I imagine my body dissolving to become a part of the Earth’s crust, my flesh rotting and my bones fossilising to rock.

I hear a shout. Frazer Melville is calling my name. Wearily, I look up. He’s running towards me from the direction of the house. He looks desperate. Trying to summon up some dignity, I haul myself to a sitting position and cover up with the towel.

‘What happened? What did she do? Did she hurt you?’ He squats next to me, panting, and takes hold of my arm.

His hand is on my back. ‘My God, you’re freezing!’

‘Let me go!’ I shuck him off violently.

‘You’ve had a shock. Calm down. It’s OK, I’m here.’ He looks wild with alarm. I draw a line in the mud with my finger, gouging deep. He’d better not cross it.

‘You have to tell me what’s going on!’ he pleads. ‘What are you doing out here? Why are you acting like you hate me?’

‘Because I do hate you!’ And now I need his help to get into my chair and I hate him for that too. He looks astonished, slapped. Confounded. Then horrified.

‘But why? What have I done?’

‘Well, you tell me!’ I lunge for my chair and miss. He repositions it, hauls me up by the arms — I succumb for practical reasons but despise myself for it — and seats me in it. Free to move, I roll back sharply but miscalculate the edge of the concrete platform. The chair tips: catching it just in time he pitches me back.

‘I haven’t done anything!’

‘Yes, right! And I’m supposed to believe that? When I saw you with her?’ I spin on my wheels and propel myself as fast as I can along the walkway. He grabs my chair by a handle and jerks it to a stop, planting himself in front of me at eye level.

‘When you saw me with who?’

‘With Kristin!’

‘Kristin?’

‘In your house. It was evening. You drew the blinds. And the next day you lied and said you’d been at the office.’

‘Yes, Kristin came to my house! I showed her Bethany’s drawings and we talked and that’s all we did. Oh, and I drew the blinds. Which is now obviously one of the classic signs of infidelity!’ he shouts. ‘If you think that, then you’re as crazy as Bethany! I didn’t tell you about her because we realised we’d have to abduct Bethany and I didn’t want you to be part of it. For your sake. I did it for you. How could you think—’

‘I came to see you and there she was and so of course I thought what I thought!’

‘There’s no of course!’

‘There is if you’re me! And Bethany said—’ But I can’t say it. The tears and the rage are in the way.

‘Bethany? You’re trusting her?’ he shouts.