Strangers. Danuta Reah

      The coroner’s court of East London is all too familiar with river deaths. The curve in the river around the Isle of Dogs means that bodies are often left aground there as the water retreats with the tide.

      Dead Body 13 was the stark designation of the thirteenth body to be taken from the river in a year that was shaping up to be much as standard. The few people attending the inquest stood as the coroner entered. The court had little to do in this case. No one had been able to establish an identity for the dead woman, or trace the origins of the unusual ring she had been wearing on the middle finger of her right hand. The ring bore an inscription in Arabic, lines from a poem or other literary text: take what is here now, let go of a promise. The drumbeat is best from far away.

      Her origins were in the Indian subcontinent. Whether she was a recent arrival, or a runaway from home, it was impossible to tell. No one had claimed her and no one seemed to be looking for her.

      She had drowned. She had been alive when she went into the water–the presence of algae in her liver and kidneys confirmed that, and a witness had seen her fall. He was a man called Joe Massey who had been on the river walk near St Paul’s. He gave his account, telling the court that he’d spent the evening in a bar and was on his way home when he had seen a woman standing on the wall looking down at the water. There had been a strong wind blowing and her balance had been precarious. He had called out a warning to her, but she hadn’t heard, or hadn’t listened. He couldn’t say if she had deliberately jumped, or if she had fallen, but she had seemed heedless of the risk she was taking.

      Someone or something had hurt her before she died. There was evidence of half-healed but extensive bruising on her back and legs, and at some time in her past her wrist had been broken and had healed poorly. But none of this had contributed to her death. Whether or not it had driven her to the dark waters of the Thames, no one could say. The damage that the river had done to her body had blackened her skin and obliterated her features. To the uninitiated eye, she looked as though she had been burned. Her body was battered and broken by tides, currents and river traffic.

      The coroner gave the only verdict he could: an open one. ‘It is not possible to say if this unfortunate young woman committed suicide, or if she fell into the water by accident.’ Police enquiries as to her identity were ongoing.

      Joe Massey attended the inquest as the only witness to the girl’s last moments. Later, he went back to the riverside to the place where she had fallen in. He stood for a while, watching the water, then he swore, not quite under his breath. Two women walking along the path towards him stopped as they heard the obscenity, then walked quickly back the way they had come.

      It was the end of September before the summer came to its inevitable end. Roisin was at work when Joe called her and suggested that they meet. He had seemed preoccupied for the past week and he was quiet as they followed their familiar route to the riverside. She could feel the slight tension in him. They walked past the bridge and the café tables outside the film theatre, crowded and cluttered with empty glasses, wrappers, and discarded food that the pigeons fought over.

      They leaned against the parapet and watched the boats go by. The air was cooler, and she could feel the first touch of autumn. Summer was coming to an end. She looked across the water to the iron stanchions of the bridge. She could remember that grey day when they’d first walked along the river together.

      After a moment, he spoke. ‘I got a letter this morning. From McMaster…’

      The Canadian university where he hoped to join a research team. This was it. Their timeless summer was over. She opened her eyes wide and stared across the river. She couldn’t trust her voice. It was a moment before she could take in what he was saying.

      ‘…wanted someone with more experience in the field.’ He was watching the river as he spoke. ‘If this had happened three months ago, I’d have been gutted. Now–it’s almost a relief.’ He looked at her. ‘I just need to decide what to do next.’

      ‘You aren’t leaving…’ Roisin blinked fast to clear her vision that had blurred and distorted and felt the tears spill out and run down her face.

      ‘I’ll go, if you feel that badly about it,’ he said.

      She tried to laugh, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I just…I’m sorry you didn’t get it.’

      ‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’ve had some more news. They want me to go back to the Gulf. They’ve been putting the pressure on for weeks and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. The offer’s too good to turn down. Roisin, I’ll go, but only if you’ll come with me.’

      ‘Come with you?’

      ‘To Riyadh. I’ve been looking into it. You could work–they need qualified women to teach English at the university. They’ve been short staffed for months. With all the troubles, they’ve been losing more people than they can recruit. I’m in a strong position. I can dictate some terms. Oh, hell. We can sort this out later. Roisin, I love you. Will you marry me?’

      It was as simple as that. He produced a bottle of champagne from his bag and they sat on the parapet watching the river flow by, drinking champagne out of the bottle–he’d forgotten to bring glasses–planning their lives together.

      Not everyone was as pleased with the news as Joe and Roisin were. Her friends were cautious in their response. They barely knew Joe, and the word ‘rebound’, unspoken, hung over the congratulations.

      Her mother was more frank. ‘Saudi Arabia? Rosie–that’s so far away.’

      The anxiety in her voice pricked Roisin’s conscience. Maggie Gardner had greeted her plans to go to Warsaw with a resigned acceptance, but Saudi was an alien environment in her mother’s eyes, a veiled and dangerous place where Westerners could be–were–shot on the streets. ‘It’s only for a year,’ Roisin said.

      ‘And married. Rosie, you hardly know him.’

      ‘I’ve known him for three months.’ It didn’t sound long–it felt like longer. ‘I knew Michel for two years and it turned out I didn’t know him at all.’

      She heard her mother sigh. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ she said, in a tone that suggested she thought the opposite.

      Old George was the worst. ‘Him?’ Joe was still ‘the man who kicked Shadow’. George had never warmed to him. When she told him she was leaving, moving to the other side of the world, he said, ‘What you want to go out there for?’ Then he turned away so that she wouldn’t see his face, and shuffled back into his flat, Shadow looking back at her as the front door closed.

      The day before the wedding, while Joe was at work, she took out her photograph album, her collection of pictures that marked, for her, the major events of her life. There was a dim, unfocused picture of two strangers holding a toddler–her birth parents, unknown to her and long gone. There was her mother and father holding her up to the camera on the day the adoption became official. There were photographs of schoolfriends, youthful sporting triumphs, photos that marked private moments that meant something only to her. ‘Why have you got a photo of that dreadful boy?’ her mother had asked once when they looked at the album together. Because he was the first man I ever had sex with was what Roisin hadn’t said.

      And there were photos of her and Amy, one taken in the red-eye darkness of a rave, both of them high as kites on E’s or some similar chemical, and another, more sober, of the two of them sitting on the steps outside college, smoking.

      Amy. Her best friend through a large part of her adolescence. They had had an instant affinity that may have come from the