And now, no one on the end of the phone. It rang and rang, on the hallway table, on the kitchen wall, in her parents’ bedroom, until eventually a click signalled that it was switching to answerphone. She wished, desperately, to hear her mother’s voice, but for security reasons Mr Dale was always the one to record the message, to make it clear there was a man in the house, and it was her father’s cheerful baritone that now told her that everyone was out and asked her to leave a message.
It’s Christmas Eve! she thought, realisation of what that meant sinking in. They’ll be in the pub, of course. How stupid am I, how out of touch, that I forgot where they always go on Christmas Eve, to the lock-in at the Stroud Arms...
The village in the Cotswolds where the Dale family lived, Little Burghley, was by no means the smartest part of the area, and they much preferred it that way. The trendy actors and politicians and ex-guitarists from Blur had all chosen to settle in the prettier, more picturesque areas, not near the former industrial town of Stroud, which tourists tended to bypass. But the Dale family had no complaints. It was their home, and the fact that the village hadn’t been flooded by trendy Londoners meant that it had, to the great satisfaction of them and all the other locals, stayed much the same as it had been for decades.
The Stroud Arms hadn’t been stripped down like a ton of North or East London boozers, its carpets and dartboard removed and bare wooden tables and chairs installed, its menu gastro-pubbed to feature scallops, black pudding, and tomato salads called ‘tomato carpaccio’ and priced at seven pounds. It was still a cosy, wallpapered haven, with comfy old upholstered seats, equally old patterned fitted carpet, games machines, and Scampi Fries or Cheesy Moments sold in packets you pulled off a card hanging behind the bar. Every Christmas Eve, it threw a party for its regulars, with a carol sing-along around the upright piano, a raffle for charity, and the local vicar sponsored, also for charity, to wear a costume voted on by the congregation to be as embarrassing as possible.
Last year the vicar had been Pippa Middleton at her sister’s wedding, her bridesmaid’s dress represented by a long white nightie borrowed from his wife. James had waltzed with him, to the revellers’ great delight, and joined the carol singing with gusto. The inhabitants of Little Burghley had taken James to their hearts, followed his and Melody’s careers, were genuinely proud of what they’d both achieved.
Melody, picturing the happy scene – James, fringe flopping, dipping a bearded ‘Pippa’ over the flashing lights of the pinball machine as everyone hooted and applauded – burst into tears again. Her hands were like ice now; she was ringing her mother’s mobile, but either it had been left at home or the rowdiness in the Stroud Arms was much too far advanced by now for the ring tone to be heard.
The waterfront was completely deserted. Barely any lights were on in Limehouse Reach, and very few in the Four Seasons. No one who could help it was staying in a hotel in the business district on Christmas Eve, miles from any festive nightlife. Not a soul was around, not a single voice could be heard, not a boat passed on the river. Across the black waters of the Thames, the windows of the smaller houses of the new developments on the far bank, by contrast, were all illuminated, cosy, twinkling with tiny dots of colour from the Christmas lights.
To Melody, in floods of tears by now, those cosy little houses, unreachable, separated from her by the wide band of water, were a symbol of the domestic happiness she had lost. She propped her elbows on the railing, staring hopelessly at the distant houses, her head sinking onto her arms as she cried her heart out. She was a sweet, sensible, good-natured girl from a stable and loving family, but she had also chosen to pursue acting as a profession, and, as with most actors, there was a streak of drama in her that was never far from the surface. Right now, absolutely alone in the dark night, hearing the Thames lap at its pilings below her, she sank into an absolute low of self-pity, a black pit of misery and despair.
Her hands were icy, and the phone she was still clutching was beeping now, a mechanised voice saying that her call could not be completed and to try again later. She fumbled to turn it off and it slipped from her fingers, knocking against the railing and sliding right to the edge of the stone pavement, hanging half off the rim, overhanging the water. Melody ducked down and reached her arm through, trying to grab it, but her fingers were so cold that they couldn’t close around the phone; worse, she actually pushed it a little further, tilting it perilously closer to dropping into the river and being lost for ever.
When she looked back on the events of that night, Melody found it almost impossible to believe what she had done next. It was the kind of idiotic thing that you did when you were drunk, or high, and thought you were invulnerable.
And even then, you would hope that you’d have friends with you who would pull you back, stop you the moment you swung up your leg and started to climb over the railing that was the only thing that separated you from the drop to the river beyond...
She was still fit and supple from all the intensive training that she had undergone for her stunts for Wonder Woman; it was the work of a moment for Melody to swing over the railing, land on the other side, and, holding onto the upright metal rail with one hand, lean out for the phone with the other. She was squatting down, and if she had been wearing trainers she might well have managed the whole manoeuvre safely enough.
But the Uggs were her downfall. Literally. As she reached out, extending one foot for balance, the lack of any support for her ankle meant that her foot turned, shooting out from under her, sending her flailing. Her outstretched leg kicked into the phone and sent it over the edge; a second later she heard the splash as it hit the water. She wailed in misery: the phone, at that moment, symbolised her last thread of connection to anyone who loved her. It was as if she had lost everything, every last contact, leaving her completely alone, out here in the dark, utterly isolated...
She was too busy sobbing to realise that the hand on the ice-cold metal rail was losing its grip. Her frozen fingers let go and she tumbled back, towards the edge, hitting the pavement with a smack that drove the breath out of her, her knee cracking into the stone, her legs falling over the lip of the bank, dangling dangerously down towards the water into which her mobile had already fallen. Melody flailed desperately, trying to pull herself back, kicking against the stone wall to try to get a purchase, but she only succeeded in detaching one of her Uggs with her frantic efforts; she heard it plummet down, land on the surface of the water with a soft, gentle plop, and knew that it was being absorbed slowly but surely, sucked down by the slow-moving tide.
The image made her even more frantic, panic still more, and, lifting her head, she let out what was supposed to be a full-blooded scream, but issued as a thin wail of terror, more like a seagull being strangled than anything that would alert anyone that she was in trouble. From the hips down, she was hanging over the edge, down towards the water. Her cape was caught under her, her hat was tipped over her eyes; she thrashed around, attempting desperately to grab hold of the vertical metal rail, to pull herself to safety, but the cape was tangled around her, trapping her arms by her sides, and the more she tried to free them, the more she slipped back. She could get no purchase on the smooth stone, and her legs seemed to be inexorably heavy, pulling her down, down to the black waters of the Thames.
It was low tide; if she fell, she would never be able to climb up again and she wouldn’t survive for more than a minute in the cold water. The tweed fabric of her cape would saturate with water, pull her down – like Ophelia, she thought suddenly. Melody had played her for the RSC; she remembered very well the speech in which Gertrude described Ophelia’s death. ‘Long it could not be/ Till that her garments, heavy with their drink/ Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay/ To muddy death.’ James had loved the phrase ‘melodious lay’, had quoted it to her again and again, because it sounded out her name.
But now, writhing frantically, trying to wrestle her arms out from the cape without sending herself down to the s
hock of the cold waters below, her fingers numb with cold, her breath gasping with terror and panic, all she could think of were the words ‘muddy death’. Blood filled her mouth; she must have bitten her lip in the fall. Soon it’ll be water, she thought, water filling my mouth, my nose, my ears, my eyes. And then it’ll be mud, when I wash up finally under a bridge, when they have to grapple my body with hooks off some stanchion. Will they be able to identify me? Will anyone report me missing? Will James even know that I’m dead?
Oh God, if they do find me, if they work out when I disappeared, they might track down that cab driver – he thought I was going to do something stupid, he’ll tell them I drowned myself, they’ll think I committed suicide because I went to my old house and saw him kissing Priya... oh God, that would be so awful and humiliating and untrue...
This picture was so profoundly sad that Melody heard herself let out another thin stifled wail of utter hopelessness. In that moment, she felt herself sliding back a couple of inches further, the weight of her pelvis now tipping her towards the river, and she knew she was lost. This was it. She was going to die tonight, on Christmas Eve, drowned and swept away, with her body maybe never even found...
And then a sharp pain shot through both her shoulders. Something was gripping her, digging in, pinning her down to the paving stones and then dragging her forward, towards the railing. Two hands, grabbing her as best they could, strong fingers sinking into the fabric of the tweed cape, trying to get a purchase on the bones of her shoulders, to haul her by main force back to safety. Craning her head back, her vision half-hidden by the hat that had got jammed down over her eyes, Melody made out two big white blobs in front of her, like giant marshmallows, she thought, her vision blurry.
She was jerked further forward, her hip bones dragging along the stone, the cape’s twist around her loosening enough so that she could wriggle her arms out a little, use her palms to press to the pavement and writhe closer to the rail, clawing her body along. One marshmallow and then the other stepped back, the hands gripping Melody’s shoulders continuing to pull her forcefully back, the person above her breathing heavily with the effort. Melody’s head nearly banged into the vertical rail; squirming up, she slid a hand along the stone, and closed it around the rail, the other hand rising up to grab the lower crossbar.
The metal was so cold it was like gripping onto blocks of ice. It took all the willpower Melody had to close her cramped hands around it and hold on. But she did. She held on for dear life. She was no Ophelia: she didn’t want to drown poetically so that her ex-boyfriend would feel horribly guilty when he found out. She wanted to live, to get James back, to scrabble one knee under her, kicking away the folds of the bloody cape she was so stupidly wearing, and then to pull up the other leg, kneeling up now, to walk her hands up to the top of the railing, to haul herself up to her feet and, with the help of her saviour, who was still keeping a firm hold on her shoulders, to climb back over the railing once more and collapse, gasping with shock and disorientation, into Aniela’s arms.
Aniela
‘Melody?’ Aniela said in disbelief, as the girl crumpled against her. She had assumed, initially, when she saw the figure beyond the railing, slipping down towards the Thames, that it was some poor homeless person, who had either fainted or was trying to kill themselves; she hadn’t realised, when she ran over and grabbed hold of the amorphous shape, that it was her own patient whose life she was saving. Thank goodness Melody’s so light, Aniela thought, slipping her arm around Melody’s waist, which was narrow even through the layers of cape and sweaters underneath. It wasn’t too hard to pull her up. And thank God she didn’t resist me...
‘Come on,’ she said firmly, helping Melody stand upright.
‘It’s freezing here. We must go inside straight away.’ Melody started to hop along; Aniela looked down and realised that Melody was missing an Ugg.
‘I lost it in the river,’ Melody said, her voice muffled, her nose bubbling with snot. ‘And my phone. I dropped it, and I was trying to get it...’
Aniela kept her voice very even as she repeated: ‘You were trying to get your phone?’
‘Yes! My hands were cold, and I dropped it – I was ringing my mum,’ Melody babbled. ‘And then I climbed over the rail to get it, and I slipped in these silly boots—’
She stopped for a moment, twisting to look at Aniela’s expression, but they were in shadow, and it was too dark to see anything.
‘That’s all! I promise!’ she said quickly. ‘Honestly! I wasn’t doing anything stupid!’
‘Climbing over the rail is stupid,’ Aniela observed, pulling Melody along again.
‘I know,’ Melody agreed fervently. ‘But, Aniela, honestly – I’d never do anything stupid – you know, like trying to kill myself – I promise.’
It was impossible not to recognise the sincerity in her voice, even though it was trailing off now as Melody sniffed hard. With great relief, Aniela reached in the pocket of her padded Primark coat, pulled out a tissue, and handed it to Melody. She had absolutely no wish to cope with a suicidal, dramatic patient on Christmas Eve; at the least, she’d have to call in Dr Nassri, who would then have to get in a psychiatrist to assess Melody’s mental state. And if that assessment didn’t go well, Melody would have to be detained in a hospital, to prevent any more attempts at self-harm; it would be a big, exhausting mess at Christmas for all concerned, and Dr Nassri would end up blaming Aniela for not managing Melody better. ‘You were ringing your mother?’ Aniela prompted, to see how Melody would respond.
Melody was snuffling into the tissue as she hopped along, doing her best to barely touch the cold stone pavement with the sock-covered, Ugg-less foot.
‘Yes, I wanted to talk to them,’ Melody said simply. ‘My mum and dad and my brother. Only they’re all out at the local pub. I was remembering what you said, about people who love you. Maybe they can come and see me tomorrow.’ She sighed. ‘Sod it, I can’t remember the last time I backed up my phone – I bet I’ve lost tons of numbers.’
Good, Aniela thought. There was the ring of truth in this as well; Melody wasn’t covering up a dramatic, farewell-to-all-this phone call to her parents. Aniela had dealt, in her time in the NHS, with several failed suicide attempts, and none of them had been in the kind of practical mental state shortly afterwards to be concerned about the loss of phone numbers.
There was still not a soul apart from the two women on the wide boulevard by the river’s edge; they shuffled around the Four Seasons, up the narrow path that separated it from Limehouse Reach, and around the front of the building to the Clinic beyond. Aniela, instinctively understanding that Melody wouldn’t want the doorman of the Reach to see her in this state – bedraggled, one boot missing – took her on a loop around the curving driveway, with its spur up to the huge car lift in which the doormen would take guests’ cars down to the basement parking garage, and round to the main entrance of the Clinic. She entered the code, swung open the door and flicked on the lights; Melody flinched back from the onslaught of bright white fluorescent illumination after all the time she had spent in the dark.
‘We will have tea,’ Aniela said, ‘and I will look at your face. You have some blood on your lip. I hope I do not have to put in a stitch.’
Melody’s hand flew to her face. ‘I think I bit it when I fell over,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s fine. Please – I really don’t want any more stitches...’
‘I will check, however,’ Aniela said firmly, unbuttoning Melody’s cape, taking off her hat, sitting her down under the bright kitchen light and pulling back her lower lip with a firm finger and thumb grip before Melody could even protest. ‘It is okay,’ she announced, looking down at the shiny pink flesh. ‘You have not damaged the surgery, where Dr Nassri takes out the filler. It is a scratch. You will feel a lump for a few days, but no more than that.’
‘Phew,’ Melody said, sagging back in the chair. ‘I hated having stitches in there.’
Aniela put on the kettle, a
nd took off her own coat, draping it over the back of one of the chairs. She leaned back against the kitchen counter, looking at Melody, observing her carefully. The girl’s face was puffy and swollen from crying, her nose red from the cold, but in the bright kitchen light Aniela’s years of experience could see the bone structure clearly outlined beneath the swelling and the fading bruises. She nodded slowly. ‘What?’ Melody said.
‘You are healing well, I think,’ Aniela said.
‘I went to see my ex-boyfriend,’ Melody blurted out, pushing back her heavy black hair. ‘Just now.’
‘Oh yes?’ Aniela turned away, pulling down mugs and a box of tea bags from the cupboards. If she didn’t look directly at Melody, the girl would confide more, and Aniela wanted to hear her talk – to make absolutely sure that, by the time Melody went to bed tonight, she wasn’t in the kind of mental state that would have her going out to walk by the river again. ‘And what happened?’
‘He was having a party,’ Melody said sadly. ‘I saw those friends of mine – the ones who were visiting yesterday, when you came round... they went to it, and they didn’t even tell me they were going...’
Camomile tea was called for. A double dose, with sugar. The kettle boiled, and Aniela filled the mugs, letting them steep. ‘And the blonde one – you know, the nasty one that you put in her place—’
Aniela nodded again.
‘ – she kissed James, right there on the doorstep, practically snogged him for the pap – there was a photographer,’ Melody added. ‘For the tabloids. And then, this girl who took over Juliet when I went to LA, she turned up and she really did snog James, and then she made a joke about me and they went inside...’
Bad Angels Page 17