Free The Drowning by Valerie Mendes

emptily, covered in a film of white dust. Huddles of books, comics and toys littered every other surface. The insides of a radio spewed across Benjie’s desk. On the floor, the train set stretched in elegant curves around bundles of crumpled clothes.
    She bent to pick up a pair of Benjie’s jeans, a favourite T-shirt; held them to her nose, pressed them against her face to push back the tears. She wanted to throw herself on Benjie’s bed, call for him, magic him back from the dead so that she could turn to watch him: playing with the train, pushing parsley into Klunk’s little face, tinkering with pieces of the radio.
    It’s no good. He’s never coming back.
    She stood up, her legs weak. Furious and miserable, she flung the jeans and T-shirt on to the floor by the door.
    Just pretend this room doesn’t belong to Benjie.
    Pretend you’re a cleaner in a hotel . . . You’ve got half an hour . . . Start by stripping the bed.
    She pulled at the duvet cover, tore it off, hurled it across the room. She lifted a pillow and stripped off its case. Then another pillow. She remembered the thousands of times on her way to bed when she’d pushed at Benjie’s door to make sure he was sleeping peacefully, seen his fair hair and soft, round face, thoughtful with sleep.
    She punched at the pillow and then began to hug it, murmuring Benjie’s name, tears scorching her eyes . . .
    Mechanically, she made up the bed with fresh linen, opened Benjie’s cupboard and packed away the toys. On the floor of the cupboard sat the box for the train set. She unhitched the engine and the separate wagons, pulled apart each piece of track and stacked them in a pile.
    She opened the box.
    In it lay a small red notebook. She turned to the first page. Benjie had labelled it in his neat black handwriting.
This Diary Belongs to Benjamin Pascoe.
Top Secret!
Keep Out!
    Jenna picked it up and sat back on her heels.
    A vague memory niggled at the corners of her mind: of hearing a wild scrabbling, the closing of a cupboard, whenever she’d knocked on Benjie’s door.
    Was this what he’d been doing, hiding this away?
    She wiped a grimy hand over her forehead.
    A gull flapped on to the window ledge and began a long, excruciating wail.

The Diary
     
    Jenna knelt on the floor for a long time.
    Then, without reading a single word, she closed the diary, crammed it into her pocket, finished cleaning the room and hurtled downstairs, carrying a pile of Benjie’s dirty clothes. She stuffed them into a black bin-liner and threw it away.
    Rapidly, without tasting anything, she ate the avocado salad with a slice of Dad’s crumbling wholemeal bread, clattered the dishes into the sink.
    If I don’t get out of this place for an hour, I’ll go mad.
    I’ll take Benjie’s diary to where he drowned and fling it in the sea.
    If he had any secrets, I reckon they should be allowed to die with him.
    She tugged on her trainers and threw a raincoat over her shoulders. Curled in his basket in the hall, Dusty watched her go with the merest flicker of curiosity.
    The rain held itself softly in the air, like a filmy curtain.
    Jenna began to jog: through the Digey into Rose Lane, down Bunker’s Hill, along the Wharf to Quay Street, through Sea View Place and Wheal Dream to Porthgwidden Beach. She perched for a moment on a wooden picnic table, her heart thumping. Then she was on the move again, across the path above Porthgwidden, up the damp, grassy hill to the Island and St Nicholas Chapel.
    From the top, she could see the whole of St Ives: its sprawling huddle of rooftops, the harbour and all three curves of beaches, the great wash of cloudy sky which the sun struggled to pierce. Miles of sea spread in front of her, blue-grey, full of secret life, its surface pockmarked by the mizzling rain.
    She dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans.
    She pulled out Benjie’s diary and stood there, willing herself to fling it away, over the edge of the cliff, into the jaws of the