The Lake Louise Sharland (each kindness read aloud txt) 📖

There is one person, however, that I do need to see.

I wait until Adam has left for work, and knowing full well that he’ll be tied up in meetings all day, I make the call. When the doorbell rings a few hours later, I flick on the kettle and lay a plate of biscuits on the kitchen table.

‘Doris!’ I say, waiting until she’s inside before enveloping her in a huge hug. ‘I’m so glad you could come.’

‘It’s lovely to see you, Katie,’ she says, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘My, you look well. How are you feeling?’

I tell her about the hospital, my recovery at the spa, and my commitment to moving forward. I also tell her about Lisa. There’s something I have to ask her before I can really start to put this all behind me.

‘Do you think it’s my fault, that she killed herself?’

Doris looks at me sternly. ‘I thought you said you were having a break from all that?’

‘I wish I could,’ I reply, ‘but having all this time to think, well … I just can’t escape it.’

Doris sips her tea, clearly considering how to respond. ‘From what you’ve told me, that poor girl was clearly disturbed. Her personal situation with her house, her marriage …’ she shakes her head sadly. ‘And with losing her job and all – well, to be honest, you seemed like the least of her worries.’ She puts her cup down. ‘Are you really going to give it up, Katie? The investigation I mean?’

That woman knows me almost better than I know myself.

I tell Doris my suspicions about Susan O’Neill, but it still seems so unlikely. Michael having an affair with his twenty-something swimming coach.

Doris raises an eyebrow. ‘I hate to jump to conclusions, just because she was his teacher;’ she absent-mindedly toys with the silver crucifix that dangles from a chain around her neck, ‘but let’s be honest, Katie; it’s not unheard of.’ She Googles something on her phone and within minutes comes back with a story of a thirty-five-year-old Maths teacher in Sussex having an affair with one of her fifteen-year-old pupils. ‘This only happened a few months ago.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ I say. ‘Michael would never be interested in someone my age.’

There is a moment of telling silence from Doris. ‘Are you sure there was no mention of Diving Fish being a fellow student in the diary? A sixth former perhaps?’

‘I’m sure.’

Doris reaches into her Cath Kidston tote and removes Michael’s diary, which she lays on the table in front of us. ‘And the sketch? Do you think there could be a clue there?’

I turn to Michael’s drawing of the nude woman on the bed. In pencil, with rough, undefined features, and feet that look like paddles, it’s hard to distinguish anything about the figure other than the fact that it is female.

‘Michael had many talents,’ I murmur, ‘but art wasn’t one of them.’

‘So,’ continues Doris, ‘aside from the very real concern that someone – someone perhaps older – may have been taking advantage of Michael and may have been with him by the lake the night he drowned, there is also another serious matter.’ I look up from the diary in surprise. Is there something I’ve missed? ‘The fact is, Katie, that this person, whoever they are, may still be taking advantage of other young people like Michael.’

So obsessed have I been with solving my own mystery that I haven’t even thought about the wider implications; the other innocent victims.

‘Oh God.’

‘Indeed,’ replies Doris. She clears her throat and sits up a little bit straighter. ‘So there really is only one thing to do isn’t there?’ I know the answer, but I need Doris to say it. ‘Find Diving Fish and get to the bottom of it.’

Along with Michael’s diary, Doris has brought my files and Michael’s laptop with her. I make a second pot of tea and we begin the familiar task of searching online.

An hour or so into our fruitless investigation, Doris glances at her watch.

‘Adam will be home soon,’ she warns. ‘You’d better start putting those things away, and I’d better be going as well. I’m not sure he’d appreciate my being here.’ She gives me a conspiratorial look. ‘Especially if he knew what we’ve been up to.’

I rub my aching temples. What exactly have we been up to? We’ve got names, conjectures and suppositions, but no concrete evidence, no living witnesses, a police force that doesn’t seem to want to take any of this seriously, and most of all, nowhere left to go.

Sensing my despair, Doris takes my hand and squeezes it.

‘Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.’

Adam returns home that evening buoyant. I try to keep up with his upbeat mood, but by teatime I’m flagging. The afternoon spent with Doris has tired me out. It’s left me feeling determined but downhearted. Could Michael really have been having a sexual relationship with a woman nearly twice his age? Doris has shown me stark evidence to prove it isn’t unprecedented. I even looked up the story myself: some sordid tale about the teacher sending the boy topless photos and having sex with him in the back of her car. There was also testimony about threats to the boy if he told anyone. I think back to one of Michael’s diary entries.

I told her I loved her, would love her forever. She just smiled. I told her I wanted the world to know. That’s when it all went ka-boom!

Even though I’m still finding it hard to believe, Susan O’Neill is the only clear link I have to Diving Fish. Is that what Lisa was trying to say when she thrust the photograph at me and said, ‘You figure it out!’

I could try calling Siobhan to try to gain some insight into Edgecombe’s former PE teacher and swimming coach, but I know from her Instagram posts that’s she’s already on the Gold Coast, snorkelling on