The Drowning by Camilla Läckberg

knew that now. Father was gone.

6
    He wasn’t allowed to ride in the caravan. And that was only the first of many disappointments during the so-called holiday. Nothing turned out the way he had hoped. The silence, broken only by harsh words, seemed even more oppressive when it didn’t have a whole house to move around in. Being on holiday felt like having more time for quarrels, more time for Mother’s outbursts. And Father seemed even smaller and greyer.
    This was the first time he went along, but as he understood it, every year Mother and Father would take the caravan to the place with the peculiar name. Fjällbacka. The name meant ‘Mountain Hill’ in Swedish, but he saw no mountains and only a few hills. The ground was completely flat in the camping area where they parked the caravan, squeezed in among scores of other campers. He wasn’t sure that he liked it. But Father had explained that Mother’s family was from the area, and that was why she wanted to go there.
    But that was strange too, because he didn’t meet any relatives. During one of the arguments inside the cramped space of the caravan, he finally understood that someone called the Old Bitch lived here, and that she was what his mother meant by ‘family’. What a funny name that was. The Old Bitch. But it didn’t sound as if his mother cared much for her, because her voice got even harsher when she talked about the woman, and they never did see her. So why did they have to come to this place at all?
    Yet what he hated most about Fjällbacka and being on holiday was having to go swimming. He’d never swum in the sea before. At first he wasn’t sure what to think. But his mother admonished him. Said she refused to have a wimp for a son, and she told him to stop whining. So he took a deep breath and timidly waded into the frigid water, even though the feeling of cold and salt on his legs made him gasp for air. When the water reached up to his waist, he stopped. It was too cold, he couldn’t breathe. And he could feel something moving around his feet, touching the calves of his legs, something creeping and crawling over him. Mother waded out to him from shore, laughing, and then took his hand to lead him further out. All of a sudden he felt happy. She was holding his hand, and her laughter bounced off the surface of the water and off of him too. His feet now seemed to move of their own accord, as if they left the sandy bottom and were floating. At last he couldn’t feel anything solid under his feet, but that didn’t matter, because Mother had hold of him, she was carrying him, she loved him.
    Then she let go. He felt the palm of her hand slide over his, then her fingers slipped past his fingertips until not only his feet but his hands were fumbling with nothingness. Again he felt the cold pressing against his chest, and the water seemed to rise up. It reached his shoulders, his neck, and he raised his chin to prevent the water from reaching his mouth, but it rose too fast, and he couldn’t stop it. His mouth filled with salt and cold, which raced down his throat, and the water kept rising – over his cheeks, his eyes, and he felt the water close like a lid over his head, until all sound vanished and the only thing he heard was the roar of what was crawling and creeping.
    He flailed his arms, lashing out at whatever it was that wanted to pull him downward. But he was no match for the massive wave of water, and when he finally felt someone’s skin against his own, a hand on his arm, his first instinct was to defend himself. Then he was yanked upward, and the top of his head surfaced. The first breath was brutal and painful, then he greedily gasped for air. Mother had a tight grip on his arm, but that didn’t matter. Because the water was no longer trying to get him.
    He looked up at her, grateful that she had rescued him, that she hadn’t let him disappear. But what he saw in her eyes was contempt. Somehow he’d done something wrong, he had