An Individual Will

by J.G. Ellis

  Chapter Seventeen

  Silk scarves – those that had bound Adrian in the boat. Black, red, and yellow. Could they be traced? Ah, yes, madam; red, black and gold. We sell them in packs of three. Very popular with the boating bondage set. We've sold ten sets in the past fortnight. Names and addresses? Of course, madam. That, or some real-world approximation thereof, is a technocrat’s fantasy. The rubbish bag that came from the roll, that came from the warehouse, that supplied the shop, that sold to the house where Jack lived. Ideally, the bags, like the scarves, would be, have been, a singular purchase bought for a singular purpose. Life – even in the laboratory – tends to be messier than that. Sophisticated tests take time and cost money, and then – annoyingly – tend to reflect life’s untidiness. The scarves, as far as we knew, and more than likely, were plucked at random from a collection gathered over time, possibly a long time. What, though, about the sign that had been hung about his neck? Had that been designed for the purpose? Had someone painted the word arse on it knowing full well that it was destined to be hung around Adrian Mansfield’s neck? That, too, was a moot point. It was, after all, merely a word painted on a piece of plywood. Possibly there were other pieces of plywood with other words painted on them – part of an arts project, perhaps, or a game. Arse – a very British, or Irish, word. Our transatlantic friends would say ass. Arse-ass, bottom-Bottom, ass-donkey. Thoughts, like furniture, jostling for mind-room – seeking somewhere to be they wouldn't look out of place. What about the knife, then? What if it had originally been part of the intended tableau? That would mean that the despoiler, the defacer, had removed and disposed of the knife. It would also mean that Adrian had not been alone when he took his life; that he had had an accomplice or sympathiser – or, more sinisterly, a disciple – who had aided and abetted and helped to create the image that would later be despoiled. Risky, but not very – especially if you later planned to take your own life. Had that person recorded and got away with – and got out in the multimedia sense – the death-image that Adrian had wanted the world to see?

  I had just parked outside Caroline Meadows’ home. It was raining thinly, and the street-lamps glowed in the twilight. I sat for a moment thinking about the knife. Why hadn’t that occurred to me before? Perhaps I’d been seduced by a clichéd image of artistic vandalism – the ugliness of a knife, fuelled by rage and frustration, slashing at a painting.

  I was in a suburban street of extended 1930s houses with neat lawns and flower-beds and off-road parking, so presumably above the tasteless territorial disputes and plank-and-bin markings of the gotta-right-to-park-outside-my-own-house brigade. There were lights on in the downstairs of the house, though the curtains were unclosed. A black and white cat looked out at the darkening world from the bay window. I pushed the doorbell and heard it softly chime inside. A tall forty-something woman answered the door. Her hair was dark-blonde, cut short, and she was dressed in grey jeans and a baggy white shirt, which she wore outside the jeans. There was a family resemblance to her daughter, but it was passing rather than striking – there only if you were looking for it. I said, “My name’s Barbara Black. Could I speak to Caroline, please?” I put it like that because I wanted to avoid her worrying that something dreadful might have happened to someone close to her, which I feared might be the effect of a more formal introduction.

  She said, “Yes, she mentioned you. I’m afraid she’s not in. Cat-sitting duties this evening. If you want, I can give you the address.” She went back into the house without being asked and returned with a scrap of paper with an address written on it in pencil. Handing it to me, she smiled and said, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “Tell you what, ma’am?” I said.

  “Something terrible happened at the school today, didn’t it?”

  I said nothing, but neither did I move away.

  She said, “Caroline knows – I’m sure she does – but she won’t tell me. I suppose that’s why you want to speak to her again. Caroline’s very good at keeping her own counsel where her parents are concerned. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to worry us.”

  A euphemism of sorts: I don’t, or didn’t, want to worry you. Meaning what exactly? Meaning, sadly, and rather cruelly: It’s a waste of time talking to you about anything I care about. In Caroline’s case, there was a distinct note of kindly condescension in the mix. They really wouldn’t get it, so why worry them? Why not let them believe that their daughter was a happy high-achiever interesting herself in appropriate teenage things? Clearly her mother had virtually no idea about her virtual friends, and still less about her online writing.

  I thanked Mrs Meadows and returned to the car. The pencilled address was not far – less than a quarter of a mile. I arrived there in a few minutes and parked in the residents car park. A round white street lamp – brightly lit – stood sentinel at the entrance, casting the cars and the few trees into silhouette.

  The address was of one of three detached houses on a private estate with a “No drive through” sign, and a notice announcing that parking was for residents only. The gardens of the houses backed on to a private wooded area, also for residents only, though part of a larger, public wooded area. As far as I know, no-one has ever complained about trespass – whether because no-one has, or no-one has noticed or cared when someone has, I couldn’t say. Caroline answered the door, and – absurdly, I suppose – the transformation in her appearance surprised me. She was wearing blue jeans and a grey T-shirt with a brightly-coloured cartoon depiction of a duck and three ducklings in a marching line printed on it. Her hair, which at school had been tamed and tethered in a horsetail plait, now hung freely and shone in the artificial light. The display was momentary, though, and – probably – accidental, for I was no sooner in the hall than she was gathering it into a ponytail, around which she twice looped a green hair-tie. I followed her through to the kitchen, where she pushed the button on a half-full kettle – suffusing the water with a blue light – and invited me to sit down at a modern chrome-and-glass dining-table. The kitchen was square and spacious, and tiled everywhere except the ceiling, the walls entirely in white, the floor in a black-and-white chessboard pattern. Against one wall were the food and drink bowls of an animal, presumably the cat Caroline had come to sit.

  She asked if I wanted coffee, and how I preferred it, and then said, “I hope Mum isn’t too upset. Did you tell her about Chloe?”

  “No,” I said. “And neither did you. I can’t help wondering why not.”

  “I didn’t want to worry her.” I must have betrayed a degree of scepticism, for she added, “No, I really didn’t want to worry her. Mum’s uncomfortable with the idea of really unhappy people, and Chloe was really unhappy. She hated her father – not because he'd done anything bad to her but because of who he was. She thought he was repulsive, and was repelled by the idea that he had anything to do with who she was. Her mother went up in her estimation when she started having an affair. Her father embodied everything she despised about the world.”

  I said, “Or maybe he was the world she despised.”

  She smiled, but not very much. “That’s a clever thing to say, but it isn’t true – and it’s unfair on Chloe. Chloe cared about the world and the way we abuse it. True, it might have helped had her father, or either of her parents, been supportive or sympathetic, but her mother was indifferent – too interested in shoes and shopping – and her father thinks concern for anything other than yourself is a sign of weakness. I’ve met him; he’s an arse. Probably has a small dick.” She sipped her coffee and grinned ruefully. “Sorry.”

  I said, “Not an insecure arse, then – with or without aforementioned diminutive dick?”

  “Have you been reading Chloe’s blog?” A note of surprise or reproach tinged with disgust. “That was quick. She’s probably still warm.”

  “The link was on a suicide note tucked into her sock, Caroline,” I said, perhaps a little defensively. “Did you know she was going to com
mit suicide?”

  She snorted. “Hmm – yes, that’s really something I’m going to answer yes to, isn’t it? Seriously, why are you even asking me that? I know lots of people who talk and write about suicide – should I be producing a list of names for the police to investigate?” Clearly she thought not.

  I said, “I would, if at all possible, Caroline, like to stop any more young people dying prematurely.”

  “Prematurely? What does that mean? Before we get old, you mean? Before we’ve served our allotted time in the slave market called the world of work, which – with the help of our elders and betters – we’re all supposed to be in training to join? Why not accept that Chloe did the right thing for Chloe? Why assume you know better?”

  “Is that what this is all about, Caroline – a petulant desire not to work?” I probably sounded appalled. I probably was.

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry, I forgot – work’s a fact of life, isn’t it, like death and taxes, and we – young people, that is – need to get ourselves uncomplainingly ready for it. I mean, really, it’s terribly important to think of the needs of the economy and the wider community. It wouldn’t quite do to think only of ourselves, now would it? That I might want to dance before the world and be applauded simply for being me – well, that’s immature and something I’m bound to grow out of. All right to have my dreams, of course – I’m allowed those – just so long as I don’t let them get in the way of equipping myself for the needs of the modern workplace. Yes, there’s a lot to look forward to, but it’s important to remain realistic.”

  “Caroline, there’s only you and I here,” I said; “you might spare me the intellectually aloof posturing.” I watched as she placed a mug of coffee on a coaster on the table in front of me. “Did you know Samantha?” I asked.

  “You make a lot of assumptions,” she said – a sharpish hint of petulance here, of offence taken. “I don’t have to talk to you. Actually, thinking about it, there’s probably rules and regulations about questioning someone my age without a representative or guardian present. I mean, sorry, what gives you the right to be so patronisingly dismissive? There’s more to thinking about life and death than your plodding brand of common sense. Or do you think anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong, and therefore misguided or intellectually posturing? I understand things; I get things. You do not know better than me or Chloe simply because you’ve lived longer. You surely recognise how insulting such a suggestion is.”

  I said, rather sharply no doubt, “Is Samantha dead, Caroline?”

  She looked at me defiantly. “I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think Chloe would have left Sam in the world without her. She probably waited for news of Sam’s death before killing herself. Sam had a thing for the sea, so she probably didn’t die in Amberton.”

  What was an appropriate response to all this? Should I have been thinking about instigating procedures to have Caroline taken into care – on the basis that she might be a danger to herself, by committing suicide, or to others, by sympathising with their desire to do so? The idea struck me as patently absurd. I worried, though, that it might only take one story in the local press about teen suicide clusters or pacts to drown the investigation in tabloid-political moral panic. If Caroline died, committed suicide, I would be accused of complacency – probably monstrous complacency by the press – and expected to explain why I hadn’t reported her as a suicide risk. Why hadn’t I suggested counselling? Why hadn’t I notified the social services? Blah blah, etc. I didn’t because Caroline never at any juncture struck me as a young lady in need of care or protection.

  I asked about boyfriends, specifically if Chloe had anyone special. Caroline rolled her eyes – presumably at the banality of the question – and said, “No, she wasn’t interested. Didn’t see the point. Thick people go in for that sort of thing because they think that that’s what it’s all about – winning other people’s approval and affection. Oh, and fucking and having children. Goes with the mortgage and dull job. Chloe wasn’t thick.”

  I said, “Can I take it, then, you’re not romantically linked to anyone?”

  She smiled. "I’d like to shock you, and say Adrian. At least he’s dead. The dead ones are always the most interesting and romantic.” She picked up her coffee, and said, “You should meet Lady Penelope.” Coffee in hand, I followed her into the sitting room, where stretched out along the back of a cream sofa was an amber-eyed, white and platinum Norwegian Forest Cat with its right forepaw stretched out and dropped, like a hand offered for a kiss. Her tail, reminiscent of a squirrel’s or skunk’s, lolled down the front of the sofa. Caroline gestured grandly, and said, “I give you... Lady Penelope.”

  Lady Penelope regarded me for a moment with a modicum of interest, and then slowly closed her eyes and yawned. I asked, “Is there a Parker?”

  Caroline smiled, and said, “I think we’re all Parker.” She put her coffee down on the glass-topped coffee table and knelt on the sofa – gently, so as not to spook the object of desire. She stroked Lady Penelope’s head and massaged behind her ears. She turned to me then, pleased with herself, and said, “Isn’t she gorgeous?” She was smiling, and seemed much younger than she had previously. I had the sensation of blinking on sand. She paused to consider me for a moment, and then said, “Oh my god – you’re crying!”