Into the Water

Lena Abbott is Nel Abbott’s daughter by Robbie Cannon, though no one but Nel (and later Jules) knows who Lena’s father is. Lena has a “wide, sullen mouth, dark brows, dirty blond hair” (25), and she is the spitting image of her mother—so much so that her appearance disquiets Jules. In many ways, Lena is a typical 15-year-old: immature, petulant, rude, self-interested, and believing herself far more intelligent than most of the adults around her. She is also grieving for both her best friend and her mother, who died in approximately the same way within months of each other.

Throughout Into the Water, Lena wrestles with feelings of guilt and blame with regards to Katie’s death. She feels deeply hurt that Katie pushed her away during Katie’s relationship with Mark, and she blames Mark for killing Katie, even if not directly. Lena possibly becomes a killer herself after Mark kidnaps her and drives away from Beckford, though the culmination of their encounter is never explicitly laid out.

Lena has tense relationships with almost every adult she knows, particularly Louise, who hates her for her involvement in Katie’s death, and Jules, whom Lena blames for Nel’s death because Jules did not respond to Nel’s calls. Lena does not trust Erin but does trust Sean; this is ironic given that he actually killed her mother, although Lena does not know this. Lena is a prime example of how women mistrust each other, and in doing so, can cause much more damage than good. Most of the women of the story turn on each other, laying blame on other women for disastrous events actually caused by “good” men. Eventually Lena does come to trust Jules enough to live with her and consider her family, suggesting she may be able to live a semi-normal life despite her extensive trauma. 

Detective Inspector Sean Townsend is tall, with salt-and-pepper stubble, grey eyes, and a thin, sharp look to him. As a first-person narrator with many chapters from his perspective, Sean is the most important male character in the novel. He is an example of how history repeats itself in Beckford, having been present as a child when his father murdered his mother, and then killing Nel in a similar way as an adult. Sean is the epitome of the “good man” who feels blameless in his actions. As a police officer and a victim of childhood trauma, he has the respect and sympathy of everyone in the town, so they do not look too closely at his actual behavior. When Erin questions Sean’s professionalism after learning that he had an affair with Nel—a clear conflict of interest for him as he investigates her death—reactions to her inquiry range from disbelief to rage.

Like Jules, Sean’s memory is questionable due to his childhood trauma— first of partially seeing his mother’s death, then of abuse at the hands of his father. He blames Nel for ruining his self-narrative by exposing him to the truth about himself. He observes: “I am not what I think I am. I was not who I thought I was” (381). In Sean’s narrative of himself, Nel’s questions about his past and refusal to continue to believe his version of events cause him to fracture, lose his sense of self, and question what he knows to be “truth.” Unable and unwilling to process the reality of what Nel wants him to remember, Sean kills her to protect his own perception of himself. 

Detective Sergeant Erin Morgan, like Nel Abbott, is an outsider to Beckford. Jules describes her as having “olive skin, dark eyes, blue-black hair the colour of a crow’s wing” (24). Erin is from London, and as she is one of the few characters who speaks in first person, her distinctive speech patterns—more casual than the others, with more use of profanity—help mark her as an outsider to everyone she encounters. Sean tells Erin that Nel struggled with the townspeople viewing her as invasive, and Erin runs into much the same attitude, despite being there as an officer of the law.

Erin is transferred to Beckford due to an affair with a younger colleague who happens to be a woman. Patrick uses his knowledge of Erin’s past to protect his son when Erin starts to question Sean’s background—claiming that Sean has an impeachable record, whereas Erin is guilty of “an abuse of power for her own sexual gratification” (351). Patrick’s assumption that Erin “seduced” a younger colleague does not match up to Erin’s brief admission of events, though as with almost everything in Into the Water, the truth is always unclear.

Louise is Katie and Josh’s mother, in her early forties, “slightly on the heavy side, dark hair” (48). She blames Nel Abbott for Katie’s death, believing that Nel somehow prompted Katie to kill herself. Louise wrestles with her own grief and lack of understanding at her daughter’s situation, thinking, “[b]ecause the truth is, they never worried about Katie. Katie was bright, capable, poised, with a will of steel” (35). She eventually realizes, to her dismay, that she didn’t know her daughter nearly as well as she thought she did.

Louise exemplifies several of the themes in Into the Water, particularly that people are quick to pin blame on a “troublesome” woman and turn a blind eye to men’s behavior simply because of their social position as “good” men. When Louise meets Mark after Nel’s death, she is “touched to see that there were tears in the poor man’s eyes” (34). Since Mark was Katie’s teacher, Louise simply interprets his grief as empathy, completely missing that his inappropriate relationship with her daughter—his student—is the real cause of Katie’s death. Louise is a product of the society in which she was raised, where women are assumed to be “problems” and men are assumed “good”; therefore she mistrusts other women, not only immediately blaming Nel, but pushing Lena away and having negative or antagonistic relationships with all of the other women she encounters. 

Josh is Katie’s younger brother and Louise’s son. He is 12 years old and “had always been sensitive, an anxious child” (35). He knows much more about Katie’s death than he lets on to anyone other than Lena, and he tries to keep Katie’s secrets in order to protect her. Josh is noteworthy in the story as the only male character who is not a rapist or murderer. He is young enough still to be innocent. 

After Lena and Katie flirt with Mark—their schoolteacher—Mark develops a sexual relationship with Katie. He claims that he is in love with her, even leaving his fiancée for her, and driving a wedge between Katie and Lena. Mark is obsessed with trying to keep anyone from finding out about his relationship for fear of what will happen to him. He genuinely believes that he loved Katie and that he did nothing wrong in getting involved with her.

Though he does not kill Katie, Mark is responsible for her suicide, as the desire to “protect” Mark from harm drives Katie to kill herself to remove any evidence of his crime. Mark pushes Katie away when he learns that others know of their relationship, insisting that she has ruined his life by allowing their secret out, adding: “When this gets out—when that bitch tells the police, and she will tell the police—my life will be over” (262). 

He kidnaps Lena to silence her and ultimately dies at Lena’s hands—though this is merely suggested, not explicitly stated.

Though Into the Water does not have a clear antagonist, Patrick is the closest, being representative of a “good” man committing atrocities against women. He is also directly tied to two murders—those of his own wife, Lauren Spencer, whom he killed outright, and of Nel Abbott, whom his son killed, partially through prodding from Patrick. Patrick takes the blame for Nel’s death to protect Sean.

Patrick is a former police officer. He is also a violent, homophobic misogynist who believes women are either chaste—and therefore “good”—or whores. Patrick’s relationship with his son’s wife is questionable. He drives Sean to marry Helen because Helen is his own “ideal” woman, and his affection for her seems to go well beyond paternal love.

Helen is Sean Townsend’s wife and the head teacher at Lena’s school. She is “pale, and her limbs soft, like someone who rarely went out or saw the sun” (206). Patrick chooses Helen for Sean because Helen is stable, demure, and nonthreatening—the epitome of the “chaste” woman. Helen is plagued by anxiety. She lives most of the time with Patrick rather than Sean following Sean’s infidelity with Nel Abbott. Helen believes in the “goodness” of the Townsend men despite evidence to the contrary.

Nickie is Beckford’s resident “psychic.” Her legitimacy as a seer remains open to interpretation, though Nickie herself believes she is “descended from the witches” (93). She walks with a cane, has purple streaks in her grey hair, and according to Erin, looks “like an elderly goth” (81). While most residents of Beckford find Nickie a nuisance, she does have a greater understanding of the truth than many of the other townspeople and ends up indirectly involved in multiple deaths over the years.   

Katie is Lena’s best friend, daughter of Louise Whittaker and sister to Josh Whittaker. By the time of the novel’s main story, Katie is already dead, having committed suicide to keep people from finding out about her relationship with her teacher, Mark Henderson.