The Water's Lovely

When Ismay and Heather’s stepfather was discovered dead in the bathtub nine years ago, the police concluded the drowning was an accident. But Ismay has always silently suspected that Heather might have had something to do with it. Now they’re older and their lives seem to be moving happily forward. But when Heather becomes seriously involved with a man for the first time, Ismay’s long-repressed memories can no longer be ignored. With painful inevitability, Ismay learns that she may not able to keep the dark truth hidden forever.

When Ismay thinks of that terrible day, and she often does, she remembers Heather coming down the stairs–her dress wet, her face as still and white as a porcelain mask. Sometimes the memories return in a dream: climbing the stairs, following her dripping-wet sister to the upstairs bathroom–but when Heather opens the door they are standing in a marble chamber on the edge of a glassy lake. Ismay watches as a white thing floats toward them, its face submerged. She looks into the water and sees her stepfather Guy’s face, his lifeless, frightened eyes, staring up at her.

Now, nine years after Guy was found dead in the bathtub, she and Heather still live in their childhood home, and to this day the two sisters never talk about what happened. Although Ismay finds herself feeling intensely protective of her little sister and of the secret they share, their lives move placidly, even happily, forward. It seems as if the mysterious death of their stepfather is behind them. But when Heather becomes seriously involved with a man for the first time, Ismay’s long-repressed memories can no longer be ignored. With painful inevitability, the surprising truth will emerge whether Ismay wants it to or not.

The award-winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler brings us another terrifically paced, richly drawn novel of suspense and psychological intrigue.

Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream always began in the same way.

She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather’s lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the dream but a chamber floored and walled in marble. In the middle of it was a glassy lake. The white thing in the water floated towards her, its face submerged, and her mother said, absurdly, “Don’t look!”
The dead man was Ismay’s stepfather, Guy. Now, nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother had lived upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy had drowned, had disappeared.

Ismay worked in public relations, and Heather in catering. They got on well. They always had. They never discussed the changes to the house, still less what had happened that August day. . .

But even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And, with painful inevitability, the truth will emerge.