Two Wrongs

by Mel McGrath

  Honor sits back, trying to take this in. ‘Did anyone else know about Tash and Jessica and this Mark Ratner fellow? Another student? Anyone outside the university?’

  ‘I think maybe Satnam did. She sent Tash a text suggesting they talk about something at a Valentine’s Day party all three of them were going to. That was where Tash and Jessica had the fight. I think it’s possible Satnam wanted to out Dr Ratner and either Tash or Jessica or perhaps both of them didn’t want that to happen.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Tash told me she was in love with him. Maybe she thought if it came out into the open the affair would have to end or the university would kick her out. Jessica told me that all three of them talked about leaving Avon but they all felt under pressure from parents or whatever to stay.’

  ‘We need to go to the police, Nevis.’

  ‘And say what? You have to have proof or it’s just someone saying something. Right now, the variables and assumptions we have, the range of possibilities is infinite and it’s not as if it’s, like, illegal for a tutor to have an affair with an undergraduate.’

  ‘Well it should be.’

  Nevis bites her lip. ‘Satnam sent a text to someone just before she went to the bridge saying she’d had enough. I’ve called and texted the number and it’s no longer in service. Pretty sure it wasn’t Tash or Jessica though, and I know it’s not Mark Ratner’s number because he called me once when he was held up in traffic and late for a tutorial so his number’s still in my phone. Unless he’s got more than one phone. Whatever, that number was live on the Sunday that Satnam went to the bridge. And now it’s not.’

  ‘Whoever that number belonged to must have been in a hurry to distance themselves from it.’

  Silence falls and in the stillness Madeleine Ince’s words come rushing in to Honor’s inner world.

  The university authorities will feel duty-bound to question whether Nevis is a suitable student for Avon, notwithstanding her grades.

  At the time the remark seemed odd and hostile but Honor had grown used to fending off harsh judgements of her daughter’s quirks. She hadn’t seen it as a threat. But that is exactly what it was. She can see that very clearly now. Carry on sticking your nose into this and we’ll see to it that Nevis’s education will suffer. But what if the deaths of Tash and Jessica and the near death of Satnam are only the start? What if there are others? What exactly is Madeleine Ince trying to hide?

  ‘Nevis, I want you to pack a bag and come and stay on the boat with me,’ she says, suddenly, impulsively. ‘There are two bedrooms. I won’t expect you to be in for meals or anything like that. You can just come and go.’

  Nevis tilts her head, curious, wanting to know where this sudden shift in tone has come from. Honor wants to say, I am afraid for you. I do not trust whatever is out there, forces you are too young to understand. And I am afraid of what you might do. But she knows she cannot.

  The heat of their bodies together, on the sofa, has a shocking intimacy to it. Honor hasn’t felt this close, this conscious of the delicacy of the moment, for as long as she can remember. Her knee is touching Nevis’s now, her body angled away, anxious not to approach too close, too soon. The desire to protect stronger than the fear of rejection, she says, almost in a whisper, ‘I know I’ve hurt you. I am not asking for forgiveness. But I am asking you to do this for me.’

  Nevis’s breathing softens and stills. Slowly, Honor swings her body, angling herself towards her daughter, and when Nevis makes no attempt to increase the space between them, Honor reaches for her hands and carefully, exquisitely sensitive to any resistance or stiffening, leans towards her daughter until their foreheads are touching, each warming the other’s cheeks with her breath.

  In a whisper Honor says, ‘I am sorrier than I can say. About Satnam, and Jessica and Tash. About us. About all of it.’

  ‘I know.’

  They make their way through the darkened, rainswept streets. Honor parks Gerry at the side of the street near the Redcliffe bridge and, escorting her daughter through the fencing and along the towpath past the homeless encampment, past the quiet calm of the narrowboats beside the bridge, the gentle slap of the water against the retaining walls of the quay, they arrive finally at the Halcyon Days. Alex has kept the fire going and made up the spare bed.

  ‘Your mother texted me with the news about your friend. I’m so sorry.’ He holds out a work-roughened hand and lays it on Nevis’s shoulder and, to Honor’s astonishment, she makes no attempt to shrug it off or back away. ‘I’ve made hot chocolate if you’d like some?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’ll go straight to bed.’

  Honor shows her to her room, helps her unpack and returns to the saloon to find Alex sitting on the sofa. Beside him two mugs let loose thin steam spirals. Across the water on the western quayside a couple strolls hand in hand.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘In a lot of pain and feeling vulnerable I think, not that she’d tell me that. Maybe she’ll find it easier to talk to you, once she knows you a bit better.’ She turns to him. ‘I know I do.’

  A faint smile plays on his lips then fades into the solemn moment. ‘Look, I didn’t want to say while Nevis was here, but there is news. Anne called earlier to say she’s tracked down Gary Bond, the student whose friend, Michael Fincher, took his life during that suicide contagion at Midland. Gary’s middle-aged now, of course, but she’s spoken to him and he says he’s willing to meet us.’ He takes her hand and runs his thumb along her palm as if he is reading her future. It’s just a private moment, so intimate, somehow, that it takes her by surprise.

  He says, ‘Are you sure you want to pursue this?’

  They sit in silence watching the play of light on the black water. Then she turns and in the dim light thrown from the table lamp catches something solid and dependable in his face.

  ‘Yes, if you’ll help me.’

  Chapter 42

  Honor

  A new sun is smudging the sky as Honor rises from her bed. Wrapping a robe around her shoulders, she creeps out into the saloon and cracks open the door to what is now Nevis’s room just enough to feel her daughter’s presence without waking her. In spite of the terrible situation there is a wholeness to the morning now. She closes the door, lights the wood burner and heads to the kettle. Her first coffee of the day is drunk, as always, as she sits in the rocking chair waiting for the stove to warm the air and watching the water sparkle as the sun burns off the clouds. Her coffee drunk, she returns to the bedroom and pulls on her tweed trousers, giving them a cursory brush with a damp palm, reassured by the repeating sound of Nevis’s snooze alarm. All is as it ever was. A mother and her teenaged daughter.

  At 7.30 and Nevis not yet surfaced, Honor texts Alex. Breakfast here?

  Not long after, Alex appears, with a loaf of still warm bread bought from one of the bakeries in Harbourside and in a few moments the boat begins to fill with the smell of warm, buttery toast. Nevis emerges in her pyjamas, blinking back the light reflected off the water, clutching her phone and scratching her head and for a brief, too-painful moment Honor thinks about the parents of Jessica and Natasha, waking up this morning without their girls.

  ‘How did you sleep darling?’ How she wishes she could take her daughter in her arms.

  ‘Any news?’

  Nevis shakes her head and, frowning, slumps onto the sofa. Honor hands her daughter a mug of coffee. ‘Thanks,’ says Nevis, her attention still on the screen.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh you know, like shit.’ Still she doesn’t lift her eyes from her phone but her tone is less fragile than it was last night, more resigned, with a hint of something else. Defiance perhaps or fear?

  ‘Alex brought fresh bread,’ Honor says. Nevis doesn’t appear to have noticed him sitting at the kitchen table. She looks up, her eyes lighting briefly on the visitor, then dropping back to her phone. ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘No update on what happened at Three Lakes?’

&nbs
p; ‘Not on the local news site, or on the Bristol Journal page. They just say a body’s been found. They don’t even mention her name or that she was an Avon student.’

  ‘And you’re absolutely sure it’s Tash?’ Honor says.

  ‘Of course I am. It’s all over the internet,’ Nevis says, sounding irritated. ‘I tried calling her number last night but it just went straight to voicemail and now her inbox is full. I guess everyone else had the same idea.’

  ‘Don’t they have to be careful about reporting suicides?’ Honor says, addressing herself to Alex.

  Nevis’s head jerks up. ‘Who says it was a suicide? It could have been an accident; it could have been anything.’

  It is such a surprising thing to say that for an instant Honor is stunned into silence.

  ‘You’re right, of course, Nevis,’ Alex says. ‘The police haven’t ruled anything out and there can be all kinds of reasons for stopping the press from naming the victim. The paper might even have decided to protect the family’s privacy, but I think it’s more likely that they don’t want to piss off the university. The local press is clinging on by its fingernails at the moment and Avon will be a major advertiser for them. The classifieds, the jobs pages, not to mention a source of stories.’

  Honor goes over and sits down beside her daughter. ‘Have you thought about what I said last night? About going to the police.’

  ‘There’s no point.’

  Slapping his thighs and rising from his chair Alex says, ‘I should be off. Lots to do.’ Addressing himself to Honor, he adds, ‘Ten o’clock OK for us to go over and see Gary?’

  ‘I’ll come to the Helene. And thanks for the bread.’

  She watches him go then turns back towards her daughter to find her sitting with her feet on the sofa, arms around her knees, as if trying to squeeze herself small.

  ‘Who’s Gary?’

  ‘Work thing,’ Honor says.

  ‘So why is Alex coming? Is he your boyfriend now or what?’ The sharpness of the tone is surprising. Nevis shifts her position. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Honor moves over to the sofa and sits beside her. This is all too much for any young woman. She gets it. The anxiety and confusion, the constant drumbeat of guilt and the fear that there may be no answers and that at some point you might have to stop looking for them. Reaching out she picks up her daughter’s hand. Nevis does not pull it away.

  Honor says, ‘Look at me.’

  Nevis twists her head and eyes her mother sceptically.

  ‘There is nothing you could have done. Not for Satnam or Jessica or Tash.’ Nevis takes a deep breath and sighs. Her mother goes on. ‘For some people dying is the only way they’re able to make sense of living.’

  Chapter 43

  Nevis

  She waits until Honor has left before texting Luke, then sits back and stares out across the floating world, taking comfort in the familiar, gentle, elemental slap of the water on the steel of the hull and in the busyness of the water birds breaking the cool, green surface. A cormorant, spooked by a fish leaping out of the water, startles her back to wakefulness, its crack, crack backfiring into the air. If Satnam were a water bird she would be a cormorant. She has the same simple elegance, the same air of self-possession and mystery. Jessica would have been a sandpiper, with her nervous, darting energy, and Tash, well that was easy. Tash was a Canada goose, brash, noisy and nosy but with a generous heart and an adventurer’s spirit. They comfort her, these thoughts, though the pain of them is sharp too. She thinks about Satnam, how she could have asked the simple question, ‘Why are you thinking of leaving?’ before heading out to the library that Sunday. About pumping Jessica for information without ever stopping to listen to the silences in the spaces between her words. And about Tash, hard-edged, bawdy, chaotic Tash. Girls like Tash cover up their fear with trash talk and cigarettes.

  Three young women, three chances to intervene. She, Nevis, could have. So why didn’t she? Was it cowardice? Is she so afraid of life that she’s unable to protect it? Everything is so confusing now she hardly knows where to turn. When did it begin? At the Valentine’s Day party or long before that, when three young women who were struggling with their mathematics met at a remedial summer class? What plans were hatched then? And when did they fall apart? And why has all of this passed her by? So many questions. So many unfinished and contradictory stories, tangles of half-truths and lies, of secrets and assumptions.

  She thinks: perhaps I should go to the police after all. But if I did, what would I say? How likely are they to believe me, an odd girl who doesn’t know much about the world? There is no proof of anything. Nothing concrete. I suppose I could call Narinder Mann but she wouldn’t listen to me. There is a limit to what Narinder wants to know. Perhaps I should talk to the Dean? There was a moment, in the restaurant, when she imagined she could tell Christopher Cullen anything. What will I do, how will I feel, if I discover that he already knows? Or doesn’t know and, like Narinder, doesn’t want to hear?

  I know nothing, she thinks. I trust no one. Except, perhaps, for Luke. This is why she has asked to see him. It’s either an act of desperation or an act of hope. The hope is that she will be able to air her suspicions, her fears, her bewilderment, her pain without Luke fussing or offering false reassurances. She hopes he won’t pressure her to go to the police or the university authorities or, worse, try to rescue her because, if she knows anything for sure right now, it’s that Luke is as confused and uncertain as she is. And, perhaps, as wounded too. On the other hand, she is desperate enough to think that Luke might be able to help.

  And so she waits, counting the water birds to pass the time. 10 o’clock, 10.15. At 10.30 she finally hears a bike rattling down the quayside. Moments later, Luke’s voice calls her name and as she goes up on deck to greet him, her heart is growing lighter, the space inside her clearing as if a fog were lifting.

  ‘I had to mend a puncture, sorry. Should have texted you but I thought it was probably just quicker to get it done.’ She’d told him in the text that she was staying with her mother. Didn’t say why.

  Looking around, Luke gives a low whistle. ‘Nice gaff.’ Directing himself to her, says, ‘Anyway, how are you? Fucking awful about Tash.’

  ‘You didn’t like her much.’

  ‘No, but still.’

  ‘You want to come down into the saloon? I’ve made coffee.’

  He takes a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘I need a smoke… if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll fetch it up here then,’ she says.

  When she returns balancing a mug in each hand, he’s most of the way through his first cigarette. Squinting at her through the morning sun, in a concerned voice, he says. ‘Did you see it coming? With Tash I mean.’

  ‘No. Did you?’

  He shrugs and looks away. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure how to answer that question. I only really knew her through Satnam. It always seemed like she was trying a bit too hard to be the cool girl. Plus I used to think she was a troublemaker. I feel bad about that now. I think maybe she was just troubled.’

  ‘Have you been on campus?’

  ‘Yeah, I swung by on my way here to pick up some coursework. Why?’

  ‘Are they going to call a meeting or something?’

  Luke blows out his cheeks and shakes his head. ‘Dunno. I guess they’ll send everyone an email if they plan on doing that. Everyone’s talking about it though, obviously. Other students. Wondering who’ll be next. I even heard that some of them were taking bets which is pretty sick, you ask me.’

  He sits in silence, finishing his cigarette while Nevis tells him what she knows, about Jessica and Tash and Ratner, how Tash was convinced that the university was trying to get rid of her, the row at the Valentine’s Day party, then finding Satnam’s coursework, taking it to the Dean who said it was Ratner who’d marked it up. Wondering now whether Satnam too was involved with Ratner. Maybe even sleeping with him to help her grades.

  By the t
ime she’s done, Luke has grown wide-eyed, his focus intense, the stub of another cigarette slowly burning unnoticed between his fingers. He slumps back and rubs his free hand across his face, reddened now and blotchy.

  ‘She texted me on the Sunday night. It must have been just before she went to the bridge.’ He starts, suddenly, as the hot ash makes contact with his flesh and flicks the offending stub out across the water.

  ‘I know. I got into her phone.’

  He screws his eyes shut and slowly shakes his head. She does not read faces well but there is no mistaking the shadow of regret and shame contouring his cheeks.

  ‘Then you know what she said,’ he says, quietly. ‘And you’ll know she asked me to call and I didn’t.’ Luke hangs his head and picks at a fingernail. ‘Obviously I’m gutted about that. It’s why I didn’t tell you before. But I was angry with her, you know? Texting me saying she’d made a big mistake, like I was just supposed to forgive her for cheating and take her back.’

  ‘You think that’s what she meant by a mistake? That it was about the two of you?’

  His eyes swing round to meet hers, a glaze of incomprehension. She goes on, ‘What if by mistake she meant her involvement with Mark Ratner? Maybe she wanted out.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  The water of the Floating Harbour is dazzling in the sun now and from behind the boat a flurry of honking comes, and a Canada goose appears, heaving its huge bulk from the water on frantic wings. She turns her attentions to Luke, watching him observing the bird.

  ‘Amazing, aren’t they?’ he says.

  ‘Yup. So clumsy lifting off. Their flight is one of the great wonders of the world though. The ones at the back honking to encourage the leader. Flying in V formation gives them 71 per cent more range than flying alone.’