by Louise Voss
Mum had passed away two years ago from a sudden stroke. I’d been on tour in Japan at the time, Cohen’s first international tour, supporting Radiohead, and I hadn’t even been able to come home for the funeral. I tried to explain to Pete on the phone, but he’d just shouted at me – the same old stuff: how selfish I was, how I never thought of anyone but myself, until I slammed down the phone.
I hadn’t spoken to him since. The band were my only family now.
Once everyone had downed a few drinks, Ray Newton-Berry, the company MD, gave an effusively OTT speech about Cohen and our ‘incredible’ first album for the label, how honoured they were to be releasing it, how he was sure it was going to be a worldwide smash, how delighted they all were to be working with us … blah, blah, blah. Marsh was staring at his shoes, Matty and Webbo were smirking delightedly at each other and Spike was examining the end of a dreadlock between his fingers, twirling it like a little girl fiddling with a ringlet. All the while, a photographer discreetly snapped away at us, standing under our huge monochrome portraits on the walls. We weren’t asked if we would like to speak – which was fine by me – then the album was duly played out at top volume through the studio’s sound system. I had to admit it sounded pretty amazing, and I could tell from everyone else’s expressions that they thought the same, as they whooped and hollered with genuine enthusiasm between every track. When it was over, Ray got back up and announced, to yet more ecstatic applause, that we would perform ‘Old Boys’ Club’.
Spike heaved up the string bass he was playing on this pared-down version, and Marsh sat down with the bongos rammed between his knees. Webbo and Matty slung their guitars round their necks, and I took my place at the microphone, taking a few belly breaths as the boys began the intro.
Some songs just flowed out of me on a river of emotion, and that was one of them. It wasn’t a sad song, but it resonated deeply; a tale of privilege versus hardship and poverty; a postcode lottery in which plenty was given to the few but denied to the many. You could have heard a pin drop in the room as I howled out the chorus. Even the too-cool-for-school celebs and supermodels were transfixed. When we finished, there was a second’s silence, then a roar of approval, far more genuine than the applause at the start.
I felt a moment of pure happiness – followed instantly by a stab of grief so deep I wanted to double over.
I wanted Pete to be there, clapping. I wanted Mum to be wiping away a tear of pride, just like Mrs Marsh over there. I wanted Dad to be nodding slowly and appreciatively. I wanted someone to give me a huge hug, in the way that Spike’s girlfriend was embracing him.
So it was with a mixture of delight and a dragging sense of loss in my belly that I left the venue a couple of hours later, walking with the boys through the studio doors and along a short pathway to the pavement, where the uniformed drivers of several executive cars waited to whisk us home.
That was when it happened, as we were all milling around, ignoring the paparazzi gathered outside the gates.
Later, I remembered it was a balmy evening – the sort of June night England does so well, when the air was warm yet still fresh and redolent with the scent of petrol, fast food and cut grass.
I’d just been chatting to Webbo, discussing when we’d next meet and what a great night it had been, when a huge and sudden howl of rage made us both swing around, jerking our heads with shock. The security guard at the studio doors started to bolt down the path, but he wasn’t quick enough: a bulky person in a clown mask leaped out, literally from the bushes he’d been hiding in a few feet away, we realised later, and threw something. At me.
I saw a flash of lime green and put my arm up over my eyes, just in time as it transpired, before I was completely drenched with paint flung from a five-litre can. The assailant’s aim was deadly accurate; there was barely a square inch of me that he hadn’t coated. Thankfully I had managed to protect my eyes, but it was in my open mouth, my nostrils and ears, deafening and humiliating me. Bright green, stinking, dripping off me, splattering everyone in a seven-foot radius.
Later, I remembered the gasp that went up, followed immediately by shouts and uproar, and the click-click-click of the camera shutters as the delighted paparazzi got the scoop of a lifetime. I remembered the balmy London night smell was eradicated in a second, replaced by the oily pungent stink of gloss paint – it was gloss; the bastard wanted it to be almost impossible to get off. The venue staff had to call an ambulance and take me away to make sure it hadn’t poisoned my blood. You couldn’t just wash off gloss paint, as I discovered – the hard way.
The A&E nurses were amazing. They stripped me off and sponge-bathed me with white spirit, which was cold and stung like buggery, three of them wiping me down as fast as possible to minimise the exposure to both the paint and the astringently toxic white spirit. I was too shocked to cry, but all I was thinking about was Pete.
I yearned for my twin then, with a longing stronger than I’d felt in all the years since we’d fallen out. I’d have rung him then and there and begged him to come and see me, thrown myself on his mercy, apologised till the green on my face turned to blue, but I was too busy vomiting into a cardboard kidney bowl.
The paint was so difficult to get it out of my hair that I told them to just shave it off. All of it. I didn’t want it.
I’d have got them to shave my skin off too, if they could.
Everything was ruined.
From the peak straight into the trough.
Spike and Webbo came to the hospital with me that night – Marsh had to take his folks to their hotel and Matty had apparently crashed out somewhere, too stoned to be any use. After my hosing-down, we gave statements to the police in a small, private visitors’ room. They had to keep the windows wide open, because even after a long, hot shower to wash off all the white spirit, my skin still stank of it to the point that the fumes were making everyone else feel slightly dizzy too.
It was in every pore. I felt as if the spirit and the paint were coating my internal organs too, as if I’d been glossed inside and out. My scalp was the only place that felt clean, and I kept obsessively rubbing my newly bald head. I was dressed in paper knickers, braless in hospital scrubs and borrowed flip-flops, my launch-party black dress now in an incinerator somewhere. I felt like a convict.
‘They’ve caught him, right?’ Spike demanded when the two policemen turned up.
But it turned out they hadn’t. And they never did. My assailant had dropped the paint can and legged it before anyone, even the security guard, had managed to catch him. He’d been wearing gloves, so there were no retrievable fingerprints, and no description other than a vague ‘six feet tall with broad shoulders’ – no idea of ethnicity or age or anything. The recording studio was in a residential area, so he could’ve disappeared into any front garden to hide, or into a waiting getaway car. It wasn’t a murder or even serious GBH, and the cops clearly weren’t going to deploy the resources to try and find him.
Everyone assumed it was an aggrieved fan protesting at our perceived sell-out. Although, even then, I thought differently. The attacker hadn’t shouted anything. Those sorts of protests weren’t usually solo; they were carried out by small groups not afraid to let their grievances be known. The point of protest was that there was a point.
As it turned out, I wasn’t wrong. The paint incident was just the start of a whole campaign of harassment that, on numerous occasions, made me wish I had never joined the band in the first place. Anonymous vitriolic letters, vandalism of the tour bus, violent threats to my safety – always mine, never the boys – until we had to have 24/7 security whenever we went anywhere; the cost of extra security at our gigs almost made it financially unviable for us to play in the UK.
The worst thing was the fear. The cold finger of dread on my spine, which had me constantly looking over my shoulder, unable ever to fully enjoy the buzz of playing stadiums and appearing on Top of the Pops, always thinking the masked assailant was out there, waiting to pounce, next
time maybe with a knife or a gun.
I hated him for this. He ruined what ought to have been the most incredible time of my life.
The threats stopped as abruptly as they’d started – a year or so after the green paint incident, but my fear and sense of foreboding never went away.
With good reason, as it turned out.
36
Present Day
Gemma
Gemma sat on the faded velvet sofa in Meredith’s front room, propped herself up with cushions and opened her laptop.
‘Can I have your wifi code, please, Meredith?’ she called. If she was honest, it was kind of nice to be neither at home nor in the strip-lit office, which was always redolent of poor aftershave choices and testosterone. This room smelled of lavender and summer.
‘Here you go,’ Meredith said, returning with a small sticker on which were printed the relevant details.
Gemma thanked her, typed them in, then Googled Merry Heather + Cohen. While she had already found Meredith in the system, she knew little about her career as a popstar, nor about her fellow band members.
There was a Wikipedia entry about the band, which Gemma read through – a long list of chart singles and albums, the various changes of line-up after Meredith left suddenly in 1995, links to articles endlessly discussing the reasons why she might have quit so abruptly, statements from a spokesperson from her record company saying that she had left the country indefinitely for ‘personal reasons’. There were also a lot of photos and reports of an incident in which Meredith had had paint thrown over her; Gemma made a mental note to speak to her about it. Nobody seemed to have made a connection between this and the abduction, three years later. She clicked back to the Google search results, and something caught her eye – a link from a site called TMZ, which Gemma knew was a celebrity gossip site: ‘The Mystery of Merry Heather – Solved at Last?’
Her breath caught in her throat. How had nobody spotted this? Clicking on the article, she saw an old photo of Meredith, much younger and thinner, and in full stage make-up, accepting a BRIT Award, with an inset video still of a smarmy-looking man. The banner underneath read: ‘Breaking News – Record Company Exec Iain McKinnon Speaks Out.’ She clicked on the video.
‘I can’t say much,’ said this Iain bloke self-importantly, looking like he was dying to say everything. ‘Just that I have exclusive information that Merry Heather has been back in the UK for some time, living a very different life in rural Surrey, and currently considering a summer reunion with Cohen. Obviously this is most exciting, but I’m not at liberty to disclose the details until contracts have been finalised. It would be Cohen’s first performance in twenty years, and their first with the original line-up in over twenty-five. I’m sure Merry is dying to get back in the spotlight again! Working in a gift shop in a stately home is very far from what she does best.’
A brief shadow crossed his face as if he knew he’d said too much, and the interviewer, off-camera, pounced, demanding, ‘She works in a shop? In a stately home? Merry Heather? Which stately home? Has she said why she left the band so suddenly all those years ago?’
Iain McKinnon smirked guiltily and gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘As I’m sure you appreciate, I can’t divulge that information. Merry’s privacy is very important to us.’
The video ended abruptly, and Gemma sat back on her pillows, bewildered. A reunion? That couldn’t be right, surely. The thought of Meredith on stage again was almost laughable. The woman couldn’t even bear to mention the band, let alone want to rejoin it.
She peered at the date on the article – last August, almost a year ago. If someone had really wanted to discover Meredith’s whereabouts and go about making her life a misery, it wouldn’t be that difficult. How many stately homes – with gift shops – were there in Surrey? Quite a few, but not so many that it would be difficult to figure out which one she ran. A handful of phonecalls would probably do it; or a lot of visits to country piles.
Gemma hadn’t realised there had been a big mystery around why Meredith dropped out of the band all those years ago. But why would she? She’d been five years old in 1995. She barely even remembered Kurt Cobain.
Her thoughts returned to the scar on Meredith’s hand, the hooded expression in her eyes whenever anybody asked her any questions about the past. Gemma had just sort of assumed that the woman had got fed up with being in the public eye, as she herself would very quickly. Gemma couldn’t imagine anything worse than being hassled wherever she went, photographers lurking in corners to leap out at her, longlensed, capturing her least flattering angles. She imagined being in the Daily Mail’s Sidebar of Shame, pictured all sweaty leaving the gym, or caught having a row with her ex, Rich, shouting puce-faced in a park at him, under the caption: ‘Gemma McMeekin in Screaming Argument with Boyfriend!’
She shuddered, closed the laptop and wandered through to the kitchen in socked feet, delicious smells of lamb and rosemary wafting through to her from the Aga. Meredith was laying a tiny table with knives and forks. A jam jar of fresh bright-blue cornflowers had been placed in the middle and an uncorked bottle of red sat on the counter with two empty glasses next to it.
Meredith looked up and caught Gemma looking longingly at it. ‘Hi. I know you said you didn’t want to drink as you’re on duty, but it’s there if you want to. I’m going to have one. At least one.’
‘It smells delicious.’
‘It’s just a lamb stew. You do eat meat, don’t you?’ Meredith said it in a way that implied tough shit if you don’t.
‘Yeah.’ Gemma had already told her this, just a few minutes ago.
‘Good. I’ll dish up then. Have a seat.’
Gemma sat down, mentally rehearsing the questions she wanted to ask. ‘Um, Meredith, I didn’t know you were planning a reunion with your band?’ Perhaps a bit abrupt to kick off with, she thought, but she wanted to see what reaction it got.
Meredith had just turned to stir the stew with a ladle, ready to spoon it onto plates, but she froze; her back to Gemma, so Gemma couldn’t see the expression on her face.
‘I’m fucking well not. Not in a million years. What makes you think that?’
Gemma felt alarmed at the vehemence of her tone. That was a reaction all right.
‘I saw something on line. A video interview with some record company guy – Iain McSomething – who claims you are. Or were, last year.’
Meredith dropped the ladle back into the pan, stew splattering with a sizzle over the Aga’s hotplates. When she turned round, her face was green with shock. ‘What? Show me.’
‘I’ll get my laptop. Hold on.’
Gemma galloped back into the front room and grabbed the laptop. When she re-entered the kitchen ten seconds later, Meredith had filled a glass of red to the brim and was sitting, legs splayed, on one of the kitchen chairs, swigging at it. Her eyes were pink and she was blinking furiously. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said. ‘I’m livid. How fucking dare he?’
Gemma navigated back to the TMZ clip. ‘I think he let it slip,’ she said as they watched in silence. ‘Look at his face when he says it. I’m sure he didn’t mean to.’
‘He hired a private detective to find me,’ Meredith said in a strained voice.
‘You knew?’
‘I knew he wanted me to do these stupid gigs, because he found my phone number and rang me up last year. I told him where to stick his offer, obviously. But I can’t believe he then let it go out on the internet as if it was actually a done deal! He’s the most arrogant dickhead I’ve ever met. He was, twenty-five years ago, and he still is. I just can’t believe it. Can I sue him? Let me see that again.’
They watched the clip a second time, Meredith’s face a mask as she stared intently at it. Gemma kept glancing at her. She was glad she was here with the woman. Meredith increasingly seemed like someone who really did need protecting.
‘I guess it’s lucky that other media outlets didn’t pick up on it,’ Gemma said gently. ‘It could have been wo
rse. But … if someone has been looking for you for years and they’ve seen this, it might have given them the clue they’ve needed to track you down.’ The unspoken words ‘and start killing your friends’ seemed to hang between them like a miasma.
‘Do you remember anybody ringing the shop to ask if Merry Heather worked there, or anything like that? Anything out of the ordinary at all? Any of your staff mentioning that someone was asking questions or hanging around?’
Meredith shook her head. On the Aga the stew had begun to bubble ferociously. She stood up slowly, picked up the oven gloves and lifted the pot off the burner. ‘Don’t want it to stick,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if we eat a bit later? I’ve lost my appetite.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Gemma, ‘but please think hard. We can’t ignore this. I’ll need to let M— … Mark, I mean DI Davis, know.’
She stammered over his name, almost calling him Mavis.
‘I can’t remember anything like that happening, no. But if it was someone who found me based on this – why didn’t they kill me? Why kill Ralph and Andrea? Or…’ she swallowed, ‘…Pete, God forbid, if they’re after people close to me? And why now?’
The two women gazed at one another. Gemma wanted to reassure her, but found she couldn’t. ‘We don’t know that Pete isn’t in danger,’ she said, absolutely dying to pour herself a glass of the wine. Red stained her braces though, she reminded herself, but it didn’t stop the craving. ‘Or you. We have to work out who’s done this and stop them, before it escalates any further. There’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you: the night Ralph went missing, Pete came to “pick you up” to go for a drink. But he doesn’t have a car, does he?’
‘He’s got a van, for his furniture deliveries,’ said Meredith slowly. ‘But yes, that night he was on his bike.’
