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Into the Water
Into the Water Read online
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
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New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Paula Hawkins Ltd.
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Extract taken from “The Numbers Game,” Dear Boy © Emily Berry and reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
Excerpt from Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks, copyright © 2012 by Oliver Sacks. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Lyrics from “Down by the Water” by PJ Harvey reproduced by kind permission of Hot Head Music Ltd. All rights reserved.
Ebook ISBN: 9780735211216
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hawkins, Paula, author.
Title: Into the water : a novel / Paula Hawkins.
Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017003237 | ISBN 9780735211209 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6108.A963 I58 2017 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003237
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For all the troublemakers
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
THE DROWNING POOL | LIBBY
PART ONE 2015 | JULES ABBOTT
Monday, 10 August | JOSH WHITTAKER
Tuesday, 11 August | JULES
NICKIE SAGE
JULES
JULES
LENA ABBOTT
MARK HENDERSON
LOUISE WHITTAKER
THE DROWNING POOL (UNPUBLISHED) | DANIELLE ABBOTT
ERIN MORGAN
JULES
LENA
JULES
August 1993 | JULES
2015 | Wednesday, 12 August | PATRICK TOWNSEND
Thursday, 13 August | ERIN
JULES
JULES
THE DROWNING POOL | 1679 | LIBBY
Monday, 17 August | NICKIE
HELEN TOWNSEND
JOSH
LENA
JULES
August 1993 | JULES
2015 | SEAN TOWNSEND
THE DROWNING POOL | 1983 | LAUREN
ERIN
PART TWO Tuesday, 18 August | LOUISE
SEAN
Wednesday, 19 August | ERIN
MARK
ERIN
ERIN
LENA
LENA
THE DROWNING POOL | 2015 | KATIE
JULES
August 1993 | JULES
2015 | HELEN
SEAN
Thursday, 20 August | LENA
Friday, 21 August | ERIN
THE DROWNING POOL | 1920 | ANNE WARD
Sunday, 23 August | PATRICK
NICKIE
JULES
JULES
NICKIE
JULES
PART THREE Monday, 24 August | MARK
JULES
JULES
MARK
LENA
ERIN
JULES
ERIN
SEAN
LENA
JULES
THE DROWNING POOL | 1983 | LAUREN, AGAIN
SEAN
LENA
SEAN
LENA
SEAN
JULES
LENA
JULES
Tuesday, 25 August | ERIN
HELEN
JULES
ERIN
JULES
PATRICK
PART FOUR September | LENA
JOSH
LOUISE
December | NICKIE
ERIN
HELEN
January | JULES
PATRICK
SEAN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was very young when I was cracked open.
Some things you should let go of
Others you shouldn’t
Views differ as to which
—Emily Berry, “The Numbers Game”
We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.
—Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations
THE DROWNING POOL
LIBBY
“Again! Again!”
The men bind her again. Different this time: left thumb to right toe, right thumb to left. The rope around her waist. This time, they carry her into the water.
“Please,” she starts to beg, because she’s not sure that she can face it, the blackness and the cold. She wants to go back to a home that no longer exists, to a time when she and her aunt sat in front of the fire and told stories to each other. She wants to be in her bed in their cottage, she wants to be little again, to breathe in woodsmoke and rose and the sweet warmth of her aunt’s skin.
“Please.”
She sinks. By the time they drag her out the second time, her lips are the blue of a bruise, and her breath is gone for good.
PART ONE
2015
JULES ABBOTT
There was something you wanted to tell me, wasn’t there? What was it you were trying to say? I feel like I drifted out of this conversation a long time ago. I stopped concentrating, I was thinking about something else, getting on with things, I wasn’t listening, and I lost the thread of it. Well, you’ve got my attention now. Only I can’t help thinking I’ve missed out on some of the more salient points.
When they came to tell me, I was angry. Relieved first, because when two police officers turn up on your doorstep just as you’re looking for your train ticket, about to run out of the door to work, you fear the worst. I feared for the people I care about—my friends, my ex, the people I work with. But it wasn’t about them, they said, it was about you. So I was relieved, just for a moment, and then they told me what had happened, what you’d done, they told me that you’d been in the water and then I was furious. Furious and afraid.
I was thinking about what I was going to say to you when I got there, how I knew you’d done this to spite me, to upset me, to frighten me, to disrupt my life. To get my attention, to drag me back to wher