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Legend had it that what was referred to as the Drowning Pool in Beckford - actually a meander in the river - owned its name to the fact that long ago a woman went off the edge of a cliff to meet with death in its water after she killed her husband. More recently, in 1983, the wife of a policeman died in the same way, survived by her husband, Patrick Townsend, and their son Sean, seven years old - now police DI Sean Townsend. According to some rumors the woman had a lover but no man was pointed at or even seen anywhere.
Lately Nel Abbott, a beautiful and brilliant young woman, a native of Beckford who had developed a lifelong interest in the legend and set out to inquire about the case ended up dying exactly in the same manner, leaving behind her a teenaged daughter and a younger sister.
By the sheerest coincidence the sister got hold of the bracelet the deceased woman was presumed to be wearing. It was found in the possession of DI Townsend's wife Helen- of all places, in a drawer of her desk. Confronted with the evidence, Helen was spellbound but her father in law, to everyone's surprise, sprang up to take her defense : "I ripped it off that whore's wrist before I threw her over." In the process he also confessed to the murder of his wife - he killed her, he said, as a result of a scuffle that left her fatally wounded.
What he did not tell was he was no ordinary father in law nor ordinary father for that matter.
He made no secret of his being deeply in love with the wife of his son, publicly calling her "Darling" and kissing her on the mouth, causing Sean and Helen to get irretrievably estranged from each other. Not only that, he was also a ruthless domestic tyrant. When he found out Nel Abbott got in touch with his son and the two fell in love with each other he decided to put an end to their romance and mercilessly beat his son, for fear that she might tell him his father had killed his wife. Worse still, when Sean, while he
was a young boy, told him that he remembered seeing his mom severely wounded and being helped into the passenger seat of the family car and reaching out for him the day she died, while he got scared and pushed her away, his father threw him against a wall, even cut across his wrist with a knife and threatened to cut the other wrist if he ever dared to mention his mother again.
The retired policeman's confession and subsequent conviction, however, were neither the whole truth nor the end of the story. The ultimate truth lied with Sean Townsend's mind which often drifted as he remembered his maimed mother reaching out for him and he pushed her away.
No one would tell the end better than did Paula Hawkins:
"[Sean and Nel] stood at the top of the cliff looking down. I didn't see it from here, Nel, I said. I was in the trees below. I couldn't see anything. She was on the edge of the cliff, her back to me.
Did she cry out ? She asked me. When she fell, did you hear anything ?
I closed my eyes and I saw her in the car, reaching out for me, and I wanted to get away from her. I shrank back, With my hands in the small of Nel's back, I pushed her away.