by Mel McGrath
They fall silent for a moment, taking this in. The cigarette in Luke’s hand glows red in the breeze. Eventually, Nevis says, ‘Satnam called someone, a number that wasn’t in her contacts. Whoever it was called back. They spoke for quite a while. The number’s since gone out of service.’
‘Ratner?’ Luke pinches the remains of the cigarette between his forefinger and thumb, winces a little at the burn, and drops the stub in his pocket.
‘Could be. If she was thinking about blowing the whistle on him. I would think the average guy would go to some lengths to protect his marriage and his career.’
‘Don’t you think you should give the phone to the police?’
‘How would that help?’ Nevis says. ‘No one’s committed a crime.’
‘So far as we know.’
She gestures to his mug. ‘Want a top-up?’
‘No, thanks. Mind if I have another smoke though?’
Nevis watches Luke pull a cigarette from its packet, and waits for him to light it before saying, ‘I think the uni must have known something. It’s no coincidence that they were trying to get Tash to leave. If it had come out that Ratner was sleeping with students and inflating their grades that would have caused quite a scandal. They didn’t want her causing any trouble. Who knows, maybe they were trying to get rid of Jessica and Satnam too?’
Cocking his head to one side and squinting at her, Luke says, ‘I saw an older bloke leaving your flat one time. Maybe it was Ratner.’
Nevis’s mind reels. ‘When?’
‘Like a month ago maybe? It’s kind of awkward to admit this, but sometimes I used to hang around outside. I missed Satnam and it somehow made me feel better. I don’t know, maybe I was hoping she’d see me and realise that she’d made a mistake and get in touch. Or maybe I wanted to find out who she’d cheated on me with. So there was…’ he scrambles for the word, ‘…ambivalence, isn’t that what they call it? But then I saw him coming out of the flat and walking to his car. I thought, so that’s him, the guy she left me for.’
‘Did you get a good look at him?’
‘Not really. It was dark and he was walking pretty quickly to his car. He had an older bloke’s coat on. And a kind of dad walk.’
‘What about the car? You see that?’
Luke nods. ‘A bloke is always gonna look at another bloke’s car, especially if he’s sleeping with your girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.’
‘And?’ She is hoping he will say it was a silver VW Passat MK7, 2013 model, because she has observed in the past that this is the model driven by Mark Ratner.
‘Like I say, it was dark so it’s hard to be precise but I’d say black or dark grey or maybe midnight blue.’ A dark crease appears on his brow. ‘Trying to remember the make. Nah, it’s gone.’
He pinches out his second cigarette and stands to leave. She goes over to the cleat and pulls the bow rope to bring the boat closer onside. He waits for her then leaps onto the quay. She waits for him to recover his balance and shouts over, ‘Hey, Luke, one thing?’
‘Yes?’ His eyes are expectant.
‘You said some students were taking bets about who’d be next?’
He shakes his head and thumbs towards Redcliffe bridge. ‘I should be going.’
She watches him take off along the quay, his tall frame gradually diminishing.
A goose lands with a loud splash not far from the boat.
‘It’s me, isn’t it?’ Nevis says out loud, to no one in particular. ‘They think I’m next.’
Chapter 44
Honor
The drive to Tewkesbury to see Gary Bond takes them through pretty countryside, newly spring minted, the sky the pale blue of birds’ eggs. Honor is at the wheel, Alex in the passenger seat beside her. I miss the country, Honor thinks, as they pass the lime green smudge of hawthorn hedges on either side. Perhaps when this is all over I could take a trip through the navigations and canals of the Midlands as far as Kendal and the Lakes, picking up work refurbing boats along the way. Nevis could visit. Alex might even come. We could take our time. There would be no more hiding, no more secrets. We would keep moving and leave the past behind.
Google Maps leads them to a new-build house, half-way down a cul-de-sac in an estate of similar new-builds on the outskirts of Tewkesbury. Legoland, her dad used to call these places. ‘Don’t expect visits from your mum and me if you end up in Legoland,’ he’d say. Honor didn’t end up in Legoland but they never visited anyway.
A man in his forties answers the door. Red-haired with weathered skin and fragile, searching eyes. Hams for hands. Honor introduces herself and Alex and, conscious of the delicacy of the situation, explains why they’ve come, avoiding any direct mention of Reynolds or the suicides.
As Gary listens his expression hardens, then softens once more. Finally, in a voice hinting at relief, he says, ‘I wasn’t surprised when Anne called. Not really. I knew someone would come eventually.’
He shows them to a cosy living room where, on a cushion by the sofa, a large dog lies gently snoring.
‘Don’t worry about Hector the Protector,’ Gary says, showing Honor to the sofa. ‘We went on an eight-mile walk earlier. He won’t be giving anyone any trouble for a while.’
He offers up an uncertain smile, suggesting tea, and leaves the room to make it. When he returns, they make small talk for a while about the journey, the house, the floods of a decade ago before moving on to the events at Midland University.
‘It’s difficult to talk about, even now,’ Gary says. ‘Suicide is, well, it’s not something we’re very good at dealing with, is it?’
‘We’re very grateful,’ Honor says. ‘And no, we’re not.’ She has her own difficult stories but this is not the time for those.
‘For a long time after my friend Michael died, years really, it was like I was trapped underwater. I used to have dreams about being on the riverbed and not being able to make it to the surface. I saw a counsellor and realised I was literally trying to drown my sorrows.’
‘Did it work?’ asks Alex, simply.
Gary shakes his head. ‘You’re always left trying to answer questions there are no answers for. And the feelings. Anger, then guilt, then back to anger again. People talk about this stuff a bit more now but back then nobody did. I haven’t. I mean, I did a bit at the time, to that journalist who put you in touch with me, Anne, but not really.’
‘I want to ask you about Madeleine Ince. Can you talk about that?’ Honor says, treading carefully.
‘Yes, you said on the phone. Madeleine was Reynolds’s protégée. Older than us, obviously, but not by much. She did a lot of Reynolds’s teaching for him, covered for him. The old bastard was always pissed.’
Honor reminds him that Madeleine denied knowing anything about the abuse and sees Gary’s eyes flash and his face redden.
‘Well she would, wouldn’t she? It was so easy to lie and get away with it back then. Nobody wanted to believe anything was going on because if they accepted it was happening then they’d have to do something about it and if they did something about it then they’d have to acknowledge that it had been going on a long time. But there’s no question that Madeleine knew.’
‘And you know that because…?’
‘Because I have proof. At the time I had a voice recorder that I used to record lectures and I took it into a tutorial with Reynolds. I still have it but…’ He takes a deep breath, then reaches down and begins to stroke the dog, unable to go on.
‘It would help if you could tell us what’s on it.’
Taking a deep breath and sitting upright once more, Gary says, ‘Like I said, I sort of knew this day would come. Reynolds would … what he would say was that he wanted to pleasure you, only it wasn’t pleasurable. It was awful, but you couldn’t say no because he would threaten to ruin your academic career. He would usually lock the door to his office but, this time, it was late, and I guess he forgot, and Maddy burst in on us, and, I remember this so clearly, the shame, but also the hope,
because Maddy saw us and she said “Oh” and I thought, he’s been found out now, so everything will change, but he just said, “Maddy, as you can see Gary and I are busy being naughty, aren’t we Gary, you’ve caught us with our pants down.” Then he laughed and said, “So if you don’t mind?” So she left and he carried on. He had no idea my recorder was on, obviously. But the saddest thing, in a way, was that Madeleine saw what was happening and she turned her back on me.’
‘Did you tell anyone?’
He bites his lip and shakes his head. ‘That’s what’s so sad. None of us did. We didn’t even tell each other. The victims. I didn’t know it had happened to Michael until after he died. I remembered him saying how much he hated Reynolds. It’s so difficult to explain, but you wouldn’t have known what to say. You were so alone. I was scared of getting kicked out of the university. And Reynolds was our personal tutor, so he would have been the person to tell. And what if I had told? He could have just denied it. And Madeleine would have backed him up. In fact, I think she did. It was a stitch-up. And anyway, who would have believed me?’
‘And Madeleine never said anything to you about that incident?’
‘Nothing. I avoided her. I was just so, you know, so humiliated that she’d walked in on what Reynolds was doing. When you told me you wanted to talk about her, I went up into the attic and dug out some photos. I found one of her. I guess it must have been at one of the faculty drinks parties. You want to see it?’ Without waiting for an answer he reaches out for an envelope lying on the coffee table and draws out a photograph of a young woman with dark hair and a broad smile punctuated at either end by dimples. Something about the image is familiar, though she has never met Madeleine Ince, only had that one disastrous phone call with her.
‘She’s very pretty,’ Honor says, returning the photograph to the table.
‘Yeah. A lot of us had crushes on her. Which somehow made what happened even more excruciating. She had a boyfriend, a postgrad, quite a bit younger than her, so that was a bit dodgy too. He was, like, this maths genius…’
Honor feels her breath quit. At that moment the dog, sensing some tension in her, wakes and looks up, cocks his head.
‘Chris or Christopher as I remember. I think he was, like, the same age as us, so eighteen, nineteen, and she was in her mid-twenties.’
‘You remember his last name?’
Gary taps his fingers on his chin and stares into the middle distance for a moment. ‘I’m not sure. Mulholland was it? Something like that.’
Honor feels the blood drain from her limbs. The world billows and flattens. On the chair opposite, Gary bobs forward, as if poised to leap up and catch her.
‘Are you all right, Honor?’ asks Alex.
She nods, unable to speak just then, and, reaching for the photograph of Madeleine Ince on the table, picks it up and inspects the long dark hair, the giant, dimpling smile. The resemblance to Zoe is so uncanny it takes her breath away.
‘I’ll make some more tea,’ Gary says, hastily disappearing into the kitchen and returning, moments later, with mugs, a teapot and a carton of milk on a tray and, laying it down on the table, says, ‘I’m wondering why you’re interested in all this? It was all so long ago.’
Alex’s eyes dart to Honor, waiting for her to speak.
‘We think there may be something similar going on, in another university, perhaps, though we’re not sure.’
She watches Gary slump back and heave a deep sigh. Holding his head in his hands, he says, ‘It never stops, does it? These universities care more about their reps than the people they’re supposed to be serving. Young people. Vulnerable people.’ He looks up, his eyes bright with tears, jawline trembling with emotion. ‘It never leaves you. Never.’
‘I do know,’ Honor says, softly, and in an impulse reaches for his hand and squeezes it, saying, ‘We’re going to try and stop it, Gary. What you’ve told us today, what you’ve shared, that’s going to help enormously.’
Gary blinks but does not answer.
Later, on the drive back to Bristol, Alex says, ‘So what was that back at Gary’s house?’
She looks straight ahead and in a calm voice says, ‘Unfinished business.’
‘You want to tell me? It’s another hour to Bristol.’
She checks the time on her phone. It is nearly three o’clock.
‘Can I think about it?’
He does not answer. She reaches for her phone and texts Nevis. On way back R U OK?
‘Why are you smiling?’ Alex says.
She catches herself. ‘Oh yes, I was, wasn’t I?’ She explains why, how Nevis would call her text abbreviations OPT, for old person text. ‘She’s always on at me to use predictive text.’
There’s a pause. Outside the country slides by.
‘I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ Alex says finally.
‘I’m not, not really.’
‘It’s still nearly another hour to Bristol,’ he says.
How to explain that all of this has stirred up in her a wayward, almost savage, desire for revenge. It burns in her, white hot and rageful as a wildfire. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. In nearly twenty years she has never told anyone the whole story. There never will be a good time, she knows that, but there might not be a better time either. Steeling herself, she begins:
‘When I was Nevis’s age, I had this friend, Zoe. She was the only real friend I’d ever had. We met as students studying classics at St Olaf’s. We loved each other, Alex, I mean really loved each other. Zoe was the sister I never had.’ She swallows hard, pushing down the grief.
‘Nevis’s birth mother?’
‘Yes. When we were in our second year, the university let in a mathematics prodigy, Christopher Mulholland…’
‘…the guy Gary was talking about?’
‘The same. Really young he was, like fifteen or sixteen, brilliant but still a minor, so his mother came with him. He was obviously completely under her thumb. She used to humiliate him in public. It was horrible, really. Anyway, most students just ignored Christopher but there were some who teased him mercilessly, bullying, I guess. And there was this group who sort of took him as their mascot. They were mean actually, but either he didn’t care or he was so desperate to fit in that he took it. Zoe was on the edge of this group, but she was kind to him and paid him attention because Zoe was like that. Maybe it was inevitable, given how lonely he was, but he developed this terrible crush on Zoe. She had no interest in him sexually – to us he was still a kid. Everyone except me thought it was funny, you know, laughable, even sweet. But I saw the way he used to look at her, the way he would pierce her with his eyes. To me there was something off about him, something creepy.
‘Towards the end of our second year, Zoe and Christopher ended up at the Maths Society’s annual do. I wasn’t feeling well so I didn’t go. Everyone was drinking tons and some genius thought it would be a good idea to ply Christopher with vodka. Zoe said he got sick and she felt bad for him so she offered to escort him home. They had to pass by her rooms on the way to the place he stayed with his mum. He begged her to let him sit for a while in her room and sober up. He said his mum would kill him if he came home drunk. So she made them both some coffee and everything began to get really swimmy and odd. It could have been all the drink that night but Zoe could take her drink so I’ve always believed that Christopher slipped her something. She didn’t remember anything else, but I do.’
‘You were there?’
‘I was in bed in my room which was on the same floor, but I had to get up to pee and the bathroom was down the corridor. There was a light on in Zoe’s room. Not the main light, but, like a bedside lamp. I called her name and when she didn’t answer I tried the door. Christopher had obviously thought to put the chain on but it wasn’t locked so it swung open just enough for me to see Zoe lying unconscious with Christopher on top of her and…’ She stops. ‘I can’t tell you how many people I had to relate that story to afterwards. Police, the uni
versity security, the university authorities, Zoe’s parents, my parents, lawyers. It was like it became the only story ever told.’ She looks up at him and sees a pair of kind eyes looking back. ‘But I haven’t told it for a long, long time.’
‘Don’t go on if you can’t manage it.’
‘No, it’s OK, I want you to know. When I saw what was happening, I shouted to Zoe through the crack in the door, but she didn’t respond. I think I said something like, “Get off her,” and I saw Christopher freeze. I tried to curl my fingers around the door to slide the chain but I couldn’t reach it, so I took off. I was in a panic and I couldn’t think who to tell. It was late, there were no staff around. I ran around campus until I found a security guard at the gate. I had to explain what I’d seen to get him to agree to come. Eventually he did. By the time we got back and he let us in, Zoe was still on the bed, unconscious, only now she was alone.
‘The security guy just shrugged and said, “She’s out of it.”
‘I went over and pulled the duvet over her then I raced after the guard. I said, “Aren’t you going to call the police?” and he said, “She’s completely pissed. What did she expect?”’
‘So you called the cops?’
‘Not then, I was too afraid, I thought they’d take the same view as the security guard.’ Her eyes prickle. ‘I know I should have done. Instead I sat and waited in her room till she came to. She couldn’t remember anything, of course. It would have been easier, better even, not to have told her. Except that, I know now, she would have found out eventually. Back then I thought everyone had the right to know the truth about their lives. I believed in justice, transparency, all that idealistic stuff. And so I told her and I found out the hard way that it’s not true, what they say, about the truth setting you free. The truth didn’t set Zoe free. It destroyed her. I destroyed her.’
Alex’s head swings round and his face is surprisingly fierce. ‘Don’t say that.’
