disturbing was, in fact, the simplicity of the whole situation. The fact that it was almost … scenic. The river water, flowing. The mention of someone out for a casual stroll. ‘Rambling’, as the English would say, which seems appropriate as I drive towards a Californian town called Windsor.
A foolish song I knew as a child tussles at my memory, its tune playful and ridiculously out of concert with the topic of my thoughts.
Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees,
Walking, talking, to bushes and to bees …
I shake my head in protest. It seems inappropriate that my mind should wander to such things at this moment. I try to push the tune out of my thoughts.
Beyond the victim’s age, none of her private details – name, residence, so on – have been released to the media, except to indicate that she was a Caucasian female and apparently in good physical condition.
I fidget. But it’s not a fidget, it’s a squirm. I’m uncomfortable. The air in my car is too hot, I realize all at once. I switch on the A/C and turn the knob as far as it will go towards the little snowflake symbol. It lights up with a reassuringly blue glow – blue having at some stage become a colour we all associate with being refreshed and cool. For a moment, this meaningless fact distracts me.
The tune, though, won’t leave my head. Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees …
I stomp my foot beside the accelerator to shake the melody from my mind. Enough!
The cause of death I’d found was listed only as that ambiguous ‘suspected foul play’. Any further detail is apparently under embargo. Hardly surprising, as the case is so new, but it doesn’t close the door to informed speculation. As a woman who reads the news religiously, I know that ‘suspected foul play’ usually means there’s some physical evidence of additional trauma – maybe a gunshot wound, maybe stabbing. Something more than simple drowning, which would be the more obvious cause of death in a river. Drowning could indeed be murder, of course, but it could also be just a fall. Or suicide. ‘Suspected foul play’ hints there’s something more.
My temples are starting to throb. Stinking, ineffectual pills. And the air con is doing shit, blue snowflake or not. I can feel my blouse clinging to the sweat on my back.
I recite the details over and over, making them almost a chant.
A thirty-nine-year-old woman’s body.
Found at the river’s edge.
White.
Cause of death – unannounced.
Foul play.
Sinister.
I’m sure there were other things I looked at in the news today, other happenings that will have attracted me at the bookshop. But my mind is stuck on just this. On this, and …
Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees …
The song won’t leave my head. My breathing has become heavier, and for some reason my right leg is starting to ache. I can’t think of any reason for that. I try to reposition myself on the seat.
The lane to my left suddenly shifts to life. I click on the indicator and push myself into the moving traffic at the first opening. Distraction from the odd sensations. Triumph. We clock a stellar seven miles per hour before the motion slows again, and within a few seconds we’re back at a standstill. The lane I left is moving. I clench my fists tight on the wheel. The urge to unleash a satisfying barrage of profanities is almost overwhelming, but I try not to recite the curse words David describes, with mock old-world flare, as ‘so awfully unwomanly’. Though, to be honest, he always says it with a very un-old-worldly grin, which makes me think he half-likes those moments when I lose verbal control.
I blink heavily two or three times. There are trails there, again, following my eyelids as they move.
The traffic starts to flow once more, and I attempt to distract myself, shifting my attention to the hillsides and vineyards alongside the road. All the locals along this particular stretch of Highway 101 refer to it as the Redwood Road, though I’ve yet to spot a Redwood tree anywhere near it. An enormous growers estate, entirely modern but designed to look ancient and historical, sits off in the sweeping green hills to the left of the highway. It’s a winery, of course, as most things are around here, but I can never remember the name of it. It’s built like a castle, complete with turrets and triangular flags. An odd way to sell wine. But the visual effect is dramatic, and the delivery trucks pulling in with supplies could as easily be wagons with mounted drivers, their diesel horsepower replaced with the actual thing. It wouldn’t look the slightest bit out of place.
But then there’s a Beyoncé cutaway on the radio and a new update on the refugee crisis in Eastern Europe, and the world again seems so very, recognizably, modern. Even the vineyard castle suddenly looks pallid and uninspired. Just another hoaxy specialty shop along the roadside, different only in size from the shed a few miles back and the Safeway warehouse at the next intersection.
That’s how quickly the world changes. A soundtrack, a flash of circumstance, and it’s a different land. A familiar one, where David is waiting at home and the universe is as it should be. God, how I want that, in this moment. My normal world. My comfy home. My wonderful man.
But suddenly I’m sweating fiercely. My breathing has become tight and rapid. The northern California landscape around me is as it was a moment before, nothing at all has changed – and yet it has, all the same and all at once. The woman’s situation has thrust itself back into my mind, powerfully, her circumstances flashing like lights in my vision.
I think I might hyperventilate – maybe I already am. My pulse, I’m sure of it, is out of control. This isn’t a headache any more. I don’t understand what is happening to me. The edges of the highway are glowing white, a phosphorous light that is too bright for me to look at directly, bleeding into every inch of my vision.
And I can see a girl, like a picture from a perfectly told story. She’s right there, in the glow of white that has overtaken the world. I am an observer at the solemn portrait of something ethereal and other-worldly.
And … wrong.
I can no longer see the traffic around me. I’m not sure if I’m still in my lane, or even in my car. Life itself has gone out of focus.
I only see the girl. Her. The girl from the headline – of whom no photos have yet been released. The girl whose face I have no reason to know from Eve’s. There’s something peculiar to her eyes. Something wrong with her neck. Yet it’s her, I’m sure of it, and she’s there, her face bathed in white, staring at mine. Her life ebbing away.
And for some reason I want to call her Emma.
The way things went, after I first gazed into her eyes, first heard her voice – it’s not the way I necessarily would have wanted it to go. I would
