Page 60 of Someone in the Water

Lola

She mustn’t panic. She’s in darkness, not danger. A bulb has blown and tripped the switch. Or the centralised system Patrick was talking about has malfunctioned. He’ll sort it, then come back for her. She just needs to wait it out.

But damn, it’s dark. Actually, more than dark. Pure, perfect blackness, the type that makes you wonder if you really exist. Are those wine bottles still lining the walls? Or is she floating in space, or some other unknown dimension?

A noise brings her back to earth. Rustling. She flicks her head left and right, sees nothing. She imagines rats scurrying across the floor. Spiders crawling. Her breath judders inside her chest.

Shit. She needs to hold it together.

Patrick will be back soon, she reminds herself. The lights will come back on.

She feels unbalanced in the darkness, so she lowers down to sitting. She runs her hands down her legs. The soft material of her dress, the slight rise of the hemline, then the smooth flesh of freshly shaved skin. She pulls her knees into her chest, curls into a ball.

In her new position, she can feel the hard mound of her phone in her jacket pocket pressed against her thigh.

God, she wishes she had a phone with a torch function instead of the stupid relic her mum got her.

Then realisation hits. It might not have a torch, but it will light up if she turns it on, which is a hundred times better than the black hole she’s in now.

And more importantly, she can call Patrick.

She pulls the phone out of her pocket and feels around for the on button.

The screen lights up with a dim green glow.

She looks around, but the light ebbs away quickly – she can’t make anything out beyond a metre or so – so she looks back at the screen.

Then sighs at the now missing bars. Patrick called it a cave.

And there are thick stone walls. No wonder there’s no signal.

The screen does show that she has a voicemail – it must have downloaded when she was still upstairs.

Maybe she should listen to that, something to distract her while she waits for Patrick to come back.

She presses the button to play the message, then pushes the phone against her ear. She tenses as she realises it’s from Nicole.

Thank you for your phone call, Lola. I’m sorry I missed you because I really want to talk to you.

You know, I’ve been processing Isobel’s death for a long time now, but the names you mentioned in your email came as a shock.

When Isobel died, I broke. My doctor gave me pills that kept me alive, but I didn’t know night from day.

I couldn’t travel to the boulangerie, never mind go to Corsica, so the local police organised her repatriation.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m mentioning all this.

Well, it’s to excuse me. My stupidity. Because it’s so obvious now, what she was doing. Who she was with.

Lola swings around. She was sure she heard something, the door pushing open. But no, a false alarm. Just Nicole’s words messing with her head. What is so obvious? What was Izzy doing? Lola forces herself back to the message.

Isobel’s father was Corsican, you see. He was born there, in Porto Vecchio, then moved to Paris for university, which is where I met him.

He missed the sea, the fishing, so we set up the restaurant in Nice.

Luca’s parents – Teresa and Nicholas – moved to Nice too, but there was an aunt who stayed in Corsica, Marie.

And she had a son called Salvo. Now I know that’s quite a common name in Corsica, but his son was called Raphael.

And it’s harder to believe that was a coincidence.

The crackling, tinny voice swirls around in Lola’s head and it makes her feel nauseous. Izzy was related to the Paoli family? That’s why she was working for them? But why would they keep that a secret? Lola swallows hard, focuses on Nicole’s voice.

I didn’t want Isobel anywhere near Salvo with his mafia links, the drug trafficking that he was involved in.

But she promised me that her job in Corsica had nothing to do with the Paoli family.

She said she’d been offered a sailing instructor job by a hotelier she met in London, and I believed her.

And as far as I knew, the Paolis had a restaurant, not a hotel.

But now I realise that wasn’t true. That Isobel spent her final days with her father’s cousin, who also happened to be a ruthless criminal …

Nicole’s voice trails off, and for a few seconds there’s just breathing.

Lola feels the sound crawl over her skin.

If Nicole’s right, then Salvo was involved with the mafia; it wasn’t just his brother Jean.

She thinks about the picture of him in that bar, his weather-hardened face and all-knowing eyes.

Patrick is so certain that Salvo was one of the good guys.

Did Salvo keep the truth from him? Lola feels the creep-creep of darkness closing in on her.

Could Patrick have been lying to her? Lola focuses on the voicemail again.

… As well as culpable in my husband’s death.

You know, Isobel knew that Luca and I had argued before his car accident, but I always kept the substance of that argument a secret from her.

But if she found out from Salvo, or his son, it would have made her angry.

She inherited Luca’s passion, his sense of justice.

But if she confronted someone like Salvo, maybe he would have killed her?

You see, Salvo called Luca the morning he died to warn him about some crazy dream he’d had.

Salvo believed he had this special power, bestowed on him by a Corsican legend, and this dream had told him that Luca was going to die.

I know it sounds crazy, and when Luca confided in me, I told him that.

But he was scared. He said we must close the restaurant for a while, and he suddenly wanted to go to church.

I told him he was being overdramatic, silly, and we argued.

Then he stormed out, and that’s the last time I saw him alive. So yes, I’m to blame for his death, for starting the fight, but so is Salvo for what he said to Luca that day.

Will you call me, Lola? Please?

The voicemail clicks out. Lola lowers the phone.

Salvo was part of the Corsican mafia. Izzy had a reason to hate him.

And it was Salvo who made her mum feel responsible for Izzy’s death, who broke her resolve and self-belief with stories of strange powers and violent dreams. It’s all so obvious now.

It must have been Salvo in the water that night.

Of course he could have swum out and back from his fishing boat without anyone noticing.

Patrick adored his grandfather. Has he been wrong about him all this time?

Lola thinks about the notes under her mum’s bedroom door.

Or has she been wrong about Patrick?

Suddenly the weak green light disappears and total blackness returns.

Lola pushes on the phone’s start button.

And again. But nothing happens. She closes her eyes, feels the slow trickle of salty tears down her face.

Her stupid phone has run out of power. And in her black hole, all she can see are horrible images.

Salvo slipping underwater. Izzy’s death-white face.

Wild animals being chased through forests by hooded warriors.

There’s that noise again but coming from a different direction. Actually, no. It’s a different noise. Rustling, but louder, like a person. ‘Hello?’ she calls out, her voice breaking in that one word. ‘Who’s there?’