Free A Cry in the Night by Tom Grieves

the guards had told her to get out. So they went over to her a little gingerly, suddenly feeling cold after the showers, feeling weird to be so skimpily dressed. They padded back along the pool’s edge. Lee said that the woman watched him all the time. He couldn’t see her mouth from under the water, but he was sure that she was smiling at him.
    Cam noticed it first; the swaying shape beneath the water. It was so unexpected that she didn’t really understand what she was looking at. She just noticed the gentle movement, the slow drift. It took a while to register that there was a body, held down by the woman who still smiled lazily at Lee. A little boy with bright red trunks. His face was turned away from them, pressed up tight against the woman’s stomach.
    They didn’t know what to say. The woman just stared at them. Then Lee saw the body too and his legs started shaking.He started cursing, then screaming. Cam ran, leaving him there, finding a young lifeguard who was as ill-equipped to cope with this as she was. He, in turn, called the police.
    The woman never got out of the water. Eventually she was dragged out by two officers, clutching the boy to her as they did so. The two of them collapsed onto the side like the catch of the day. She just stared up and away from them, that terrifying smile locked on her face. Unblinking, delirious. The boy seemed so calm, it looked like he hadn’t even tried to struggle.
    The woman’s name was Elizabeth Harrison. The boy, James, was her son. She was happily married to Duncan, a tall, muscular Scot who ran a successful business importing stone (for tiles) from Turkey, Greece and the Ukraine. She was a socialite and had also been a member of the local council’s planning committee. When the police asked her friends and colleagues about her, they had all used the same words to describe her: ‘bright’, ‘confident’, ’determined’ and ‘normal’.
    Elizabeth hasn’t spoken since that day. She is in a secure wing at a psychiatric facility in Kent. She smiles but her gaze never reaches the person sat opposite her. It is as though she’s somewhere else, she has escaped, she is safe and happy. And this brings a sense of rage and injustice to those who see her. They wish her damned to hell.
    The fucking witch.
    *
    Sam put the file down. He rubbed his eyes, checked his watch, then placed the file on top of the others. Witches. The idea, the word, seemed so stupid. An image blinked into his mind of Sarah smiling up at him from the lake, clutching Arthur tightly to her chest. He dismissed it at once. He was a practical, logical man and fairytales were not a part of his world.
    He rang his daughter, but there was no answer on her mobile or at home. He worried about this for a bit before stacking all the files in an even pile and shoving them in a drawer. But they didn’t feel secure enough there, so he lugged them back to his car and dumped them in the boot.
    As he slammed the door shut, he saw Ashley Deveraux standing there, watching him. It was as if she’d appeared from nowhere. He looked at her for a moment and then shook his head. A tiny, almost imperceptible no. He saw a flicker of irritation cross her face, but he didn’t want to talk to her, to argue with her, to be seen with her. He turned his back, reopened the boot and organised the already organised files.
    When he turned again she was gone.

FIFTEEN
    Tim pulled the old-fashioned lighter from his pocket and stared at his engraved initials in the metal. It was a present from his father. He lit a cigarette, then started dragging the bins down to the edge of the drive. The sun was setting and the fells glowed with its dying light. He loved being up there, loved their colossal majesty. He wanted to go walking now, get to the top and breathe in the cold air like he did when he was little. His dad used to take him, just the two of them, and they’d stare down at the patchwork countryside below, hearing nothing but the