…and the bodies of several women who were ‘inconvenient’ to patriarchal mindsets. At least, she used to, till they found her dead body in the same ‘drowning pool’, where they had found Nel’s.
She insists that her mother had repeatedly tried to get in touch with Jules, but that the latter had neither returned calls nor initiated them. She meets Nel’s 15-year old daughter, who is convinced that her mother would have been alive, if her aunt had tried to connect to her in some way, or had replied to her mother’s calls or messages over the years. Nel is dead now and Jules has to return to Beckford and Mill House, where she had spent her childhood and teenage years. The trauma this causes results in Jules trying to drown herself, Nel rescuing her…and a gap in their communication caused by a misunderstanding that completely destroyed their relationship. Nel’s boyfriend is amused by Jules’ prickliness and tries to discover how deep the prickliness goes. Nel tries to push Jules away every time she is anywhere close: and it doesn’t help that Nel is tall, willowy, and attractive, and Jules, short and fat. Jules, the ‘baby’, is fascinated by her elder sister and her friends, her style and her sass, her easy air of assurance, and her boyfriend. And on that one fact - her sense of relief when she knows that it was only Nel, her sister, who had died - hinges the entire book. But when she knows that it was ‘only’ her sister, she is relieved. Jules is apprehensive, thinking that something had happened to her friends, her colleagues, or her ex-husband. Two police officers arrive at Jules’ doorstep to inform her that there has been a tragic and fatal accident. So begins one of the most powerful books I have ever read, Paula Hawkins’ ‘Into the Water.’
This time they carry her into the water.’ Different this time: left thumb to right toe, right thumb to left.
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