1
Hannah, Now
Water. Just water.
Thatās all it is.
Get over it.
Even as I say this to myself, gazing at the darkness of the white-painted ceiling, I can hear another voice in my head. Just water? Just?
Water is everything. Water is my body, water is the womb and water was the dream. I grew up looking at water, the river that leads to the sea; I was a yearning little girl, hoping to travel the planet and sail across the waters.
Just water? We seek it out every day, to wash, to drink, to cook; we dive in it, we swim in it, we run to it, we hunger to live by it.
We sink in itā
I turn over on the pillow, crushing my eyes shut.
We sail in it, we play in it, splash and plash, trickle, squirt, flush, sprinkle. Sex is mainly water: the moistness, the wetness, the flush of wet blood in the tingling skin, a soft wet kiss drying on the cheek.
Get up, Hannybobs.
Lifting my eyes, I check my little clock, the friendly, glowy green digits: 5.36 a.m.
Why do I keep waking up at this merciless time? It has become the Waking Hour. Between five and six most days, ever since IT happened. Sometimes if I lie really still and shut my eyes hard and mummify myself in the duvet and banish nasty thoughts, I can get back to a kind-of sleep, which then becomes a gaudy parade of dreams, like an unwanted circus arriving in town: a cavalcade of zombie clowns, leering acrobats, tumbling freaks, huge trumpeting elephants, me.
Often, I just lie here, wondering if I should simply get the hell up, given that I probably wonāt be able to go back to sleep; knowing, however, that if I do get up, my best time, when my mind is most fertile, will be spent sitting around, eyes open, brain whirring fruitlessly: filing memories away, taking them out again. And then in an hour, the great building will begin to stir around me: a whistling sous-chef, the clatter of the kitchens, hurrying maids laughing in whispers, and I will smell the first bacony breakfast smells, and I will likely hear the guests having vigorous morning sex down the corridor in Room 14, and then I know I will really have to get up.
Shower, in water. Make tea, with water. Drink coffee, made with as little water as possible. Short and black and multiple, because I will need endless coffees in the main office above reception to fight the yawns that are the daily wages of rising this early.
Get up.
This time, I obey. Pushing away the duvet, I consider turning on the lamp, but I decide not to. I like the dark. It hides things. And besides, it is not a total dark: there is a near-full moon, and its fragile silveriness floods around the half-closed curtains. Which are means to hide me from that tormenting view onto the Blackwater River.
Stretching my hand out towards the door, I find my soft blue dressing gown, lovely and warm and fluffy, and definitely not a witch hanging from a hook.
Thatās a sharp memory, returning unprompted.
I am seven or eight years old waking up in my little bedroom and in the chilly gloom I see my long winter coat hanging from the door, but it looks like a crook-necked witch executed on a gallows in that book about witches, and I scream until Mummy rushes in and takes me in her arms, surrounds me, like warm water embracing soft coral. She soothes and cuddles me, kisses my forehead, with wine on her breath from last night mixed with minty toothpaste. But with so much love. The scent of faintly sour wine can mean love to me, even now.
On the best nights, if Dad was away, Mum would say, OK, Hannybobs, you can, and I would gleefully rise, all witches forgotten, and pick up Toffee the Bear by a ragged arm and follow her down the cold landing to her warm bed and she would let me sleep the rest of the sweet, perfectly dreamless night beside her, my heart slowing, fears dispelled, breathing deep and calm, like the sea in the summer, and me inhaling her scent, home-made perfume, home-made soap, Mummy smell.
The dressing gown enfolds me, warms me. My bare feet find my slippers in the moonlit dark. I can see the kettle and teapot ā¦ but I am, inevitably, drawn to the View Out There. I am going to do it. I am going to look at the Blackwater.
It is always like this. Some days I cannot bear to look at the Blackwater. I close the curtains for twenty-four hours; I hide away. On the worst days I physically avert myself from, say, the famous, bay-windowed view in the heart of the hotel, as I walk through the brasserie to get breakfast. When I do this, I can sense guests peering at me: Why is she looking to the side like that?
At other times, like today, I yield, and stare at it. My enemy. My life. My home. My walls. The flowing Blackwater, part-sea, part-river, part-salty, part-coffin. Four parts making one pure terror.
Quickly, as if I am tearing off a plaster, I rip open the curtains. There she is. The Blackwater hasnāt gone away. She runs past the hotel: a deep throb of lateral darkness, west to east. The reflection of the late September moon is a lane of silver cobbles. The night is cloudless. The miniature orange and scarlet lights of Goldhanger sparkle wetly at the far edge of the black.
I want to smell it. I need to breathe it in. Otherwise, I might get the fears again.
This is my allotted therapy, to expose myself.
My room has a handsome sash window, in keeping with the Regency core of the hotel. Itās also old, stiff and takes an effort to lift, but when I manage, I am rewarded: the tide must be in because the air smells gorgeous, sweet and salt and ozoney, rather than of mudflats and fermenting brineweed.
As I breathe deep, I can hear the endless cries of the waterbirds in the dark before dawn. Wigeons, shelduck, turnstones? Iām never entirely sure. There are many species on the island; they sing most of the day, and often all night. If I look hard, I can see them, maybe alerted by the sound of the window opening. They are flittering away in the night, like tiny, frightened ghosts.
And what is that?
There is a small but elegant speedboat, moored up to the jetty. I donāt recognize it. It could be anyoneās. Freddyās spare? But it looks too sleek. Pricey. A guestās maybe? Some come privately. I often see boats, if I am brave enough to look out across the Blackwater.
The fears churn.
I will. I can. Why not? Right now? Jump in that handy little boat, pull the ripcord, and go. Because there has to come a day, an hour, a moment, when the rushing tides in my head will turn. Iāve been told this will happen, so maybe this could be that time: unexpected, but desired. The door is opening.
Could it be now?
NOW.
I must not waste this unique feeling of sudden fearlessness.
I will be stealing the boat but who cares? Iāll give it back at the other side.
The tingling hope is almost unbearable.
Dressed. Ready. Pushing the door open, I peer out as if I am committing a crime. I suppose I am.
The corridor is silent, the smoke alarm regarding me with a singular, insectoid red eye. The guests in Room 14 are still silent. The maids are asleep.
There is no one, and nothing, to stop me.
Jogging down the corridor, I take a left. I donāt want to storm through the building even if it is the quickest way. I might be seen. Iāve caused enough trouble.
Another left brings me to the external fire escape. Metal bar across it. I know it is not alarmed. I can just push. And I know that beyond this door the steep shingle beach begins; Iāll run down it, crunching pebbles under boots, climb onto the jetty, untie the boat, trigger the motor ā and steer away. Escaping my prison.
Sweating with excitement, nerves, the impossibility of this, I shunt the metal bar and the door swings open with a creeeeak like a bird. And as soon as I step onto the clanking shingle it happens.
Of course. I knew it would happen. Who was I kidding? What was I thinking? What was the point?
The fear breeds the fear.
The brent geese are honking, mocking. Catcalling the silly woman on the darkened beach, the scared young woman standing perfectly still in the moonlight as her brain fizzes like bad electrics, like the wiring in the east wing, the one we havenāt finished yet.
First my throat closes, as if someone is choking me. What did the therapist tell me? The word anxiety comes from Latin angere: to choke.
Now comes the horrible dizziness, water in my brain, blurring vision: sometimes I can go blind. Next, I feel my heart: pounding like a baboon with a drum ā bang bang bang ā painful, angry, dangerous. I know how bad this can get: sometimes it is so bad I faint. Iāve read that it could possibly kill me ā it is rare, but it happens ā extreme tachycardia, panic so bad you die. And just the thought of that makes it all worse.
The fear breeds the fear breeds the fear. My heart is hurting, and it is way too much. Too frighteningly painful. As if it will burst through my ribs.
Retreat, retreat. Quickly, shudderingly, I step back into the building, turning my back on the river. I wonāt look again, today.
The door swings shut, and the silence imprisons me. I am defeated. As usual.
Ashamed of my cowardice, I lean back against the wall, and slide to the floor.
My heart is slowing, the panic receding ā but now comes the sadness. Tears roll. Hot salty water. Why do we make hot salty water when we are sad?
It is just water. And I am making lots of it. It dribbles down my chin and runs through my pale fingers.
Oh Hannah, little Hannybobs, you canāt get over it.
2
My jeans are clean, my tears are dried, my shirt is crisp, white and pressed, and my pink cashmere jumper gives a necessary hint of luxury for someone working, even if it is in the back offices, at a high-end hotel. I donāt have to suit up like Leon, the concierge, or Alistair the manager, but I am still expected to look ārespectableā when passing through common areas.
I am not expected to go out on the beach at dawn to steal boats. That is not ārespectableā; neither is it desired that I should slump to the floor, sobbing with panic and grief just as Elena the Polish maid comes down the corridor carrying clean pillowslips.
Luckily, I managed to crawl back, unseen, into the shadows.
Now Elena is here: she waves as I head for reception. She is pushing her trolley filled with mops and cloths and cleaning kit, and chic little soaps, Earl Grey teabags, tiny White Company shampoo bottles, Nespresso pods. She is much prized by management: she can turn a room, perfectly, in eighteen minutes.
āLovely day!ā I say, brightly, happily faking it all.
Elena gives me her crooked smile. Then she gestures, as if she has a delicious secret. āPeople in Room 14. My God, Hannah!ā
āThey actually broke the bed this time?ā
She leans close, but then we both see Owen, the pink-faced young sous-chef, buttoning his whites as he heads for the kitchens. We are never allowed to gossip about guests, not in public; we break apart, guiltily.
āSee you later, Elena!ā I chirp and she grins, and we get on with our days. Mine takes me down the corridor into reception. I say hello to Danielle ā local, dyed blonde, harshly pretty, lots of make-up, thirty, smart, friendly, yet always that bit distant. Sheās possibly sleeping with Logan Mackinlay, the Mackster, the genius head chef. Or she did sleep with him, and theyāve stopped? Gossip about staff also circulates; I hear some of it.
Danielle is looking in the BOOK.
Ever since the day we reopened, the Stanhope has kept a grand, old-fashioned Guest Book. We did it deliberately, to give an echo of the Stanhope in its heyday. It was my idea.
We could have used tablets and e-signatures, like everyone else, but instead we had an old guest registry bound in tooled leather, and we bought some fine Visconti fountain pens to go with it. This told the arriving new guest: this hotel does things differently, and...
