Deeper Water

Deeper Water

by Jessie Cole
published 2014
Ligature finest
genre Literary Fiction

‘The secret things I knew about my mum, and the things that everyone knew, had played in my mind for some time, since I was real little, I guess. When I was small, all around me seemed to flow, gentle and sweet like the edge of the creek. Then my brothers grew too large to be hemmed in, and Sophie met a bloke, moved out and had babies, and things became harder.

The older I got the louder those secret things inside me became, all those knowns and unknowns, until—apart from Anja—I'd rather talk to animals than people.’

Innocent and unworldly, Mema is still living at home with her mother on a remote, lush hinterland property. It is a small, confined, simple sort of life, and Mema is content with it.

One day, during a heavy downpour, Mema saves a stranger from the raging creek. She takes him into her family home, where marooned by rising floods, he has to stay until the waters recede. His sudden presence is unsettling—for Mema, her mother and her wild friend Anja—but slowly he opens the door to a world of beckoning possibilities that threaten to sweep Mema into the deep.