The Long Way Under

Auntie Row's spare room smelled of other people's washing and lavender and, very faintly, of a cat that Auntie Row had never in her life owned and said so, sharply, to anyone who so much as sniffed. Cass lay in the narrow bed under a candlewick counterpane and watched the ceiling go from black to grey. He hadn't really slept. He'd slept the way you sleep on a coach, in dropped stitches, coming up out of each one with the whole day landing on him again from a height. Mr. Tarrant's empty chair. The bright film draining off the path. His own hands closing in the water on nothing at all. Every time he surfaced he reached for his grandfather…