The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

  ‘Is it . . .’

  ‘Terminal?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’

  ‘But you were thinking it, weren’t you?’ There’s an accusatory note in his voice. ‘Yes, probably.’

  When I make a move towards him he backs off a little, unable to be comforted.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I really am. Even though he stole Dex from me, I don’t wish anything nearly as final as death on Gav. A little bad luck, maybe, but this, no. Way too much.

  ‘To be honest, I just want to be able to forget about real life for a couple of days and try to enjoy the break. Have you seen much of the island yet? Not the most obvious spot for a birthday weekend, but at least it’s not dull.’ He softens the corners of his mouth. ‘I should go down and see Gav off, get back to the cooking.’

  I wait for him to disappear before drawing the curtains and taking a quick shower, then sit for a moment trying to absorb the news about Gav. If there was a time to bring up what happened in Wapping, this isn’t it. Then putting on my game face, I make my way to the ground floor.

  At some point, the owners of the cottage have knocked down a few walls to create a semi open-plan living room cum kitchen. Anna has the oven door open and is peering at the chicken, Bo is setting a fire in the grate in the living room. A bottle of red stands aerating on the kitchen table beside Dex who is sitting at the table with his chin in his one hand, looking pensive. Gav appears to have left.

  ‘Oh, darling, did you like your room?’ Anna says, swivelling to look at me.

  ‘Is Gav gone?’

  ‘Only just. You’ll catch him if you’re quick,’ she adds, with a tilt of the head and a press of the lips to let me know that she too has heard the news.

  I run outside, crunching across the gravel and waving madly. Gav is sitting in the BMW adjusting the heating and looking very old and very, very alone. The driver’s side window whines open and before I’ve opened my mouth he cuts me off with, ‘No outpourings, please. It is what it is.’

  ‘Can I at least say I’m sorry?’ He pauses, as if considering this. To my surprise, because Gav is nothing if not old school, his eyes go filmy. ‘What you can do is be good to Dex. I’m scared I won’t be around for him.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Another thing. That festival business, with the woman?’ His rheumy eyes fix on mine. ‘I think I should tell you that he is in a lot of trouble about what happened. He thinks he isn’t, but he is.’

  I feel myself slump back. What trouble could he possibly be in?

  ‘I see he hasn’t spoken to you,’ Gav says, drily, registering the shock on my face. ‘Well, since you’re probably closer to Dex than anyone other than me I should probably tell you: the police came round.’

  I nod calmly, but my mind is racing. There was that scrap Dex got into at the festival . . . Anna said it started over some drunk accusing him of looking at his girlfriend, but it didn’t amount to anything. Surely the police wouldn’t come round for that?

  ‘Don’t tell him I let the cat out of the bag, please, or mention it to the others. He’d kill me. Solemn promise?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘In the scheme of things, really . . .’

  ‘I understand.’

  Gav blinks a thank you and the car window begins to whir to the vertical. He waves and turns the steering wheel and the BMW crunches across the gravel and disappears from view.

  3

  Anna

  7 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Royal London Hospital

  When Dex finally emerges from the cubicle in Minors, Anna has been calming herself with some mindful belly breathing exercises for over half an hour and is able to greet him with what she hopes is her normal face.

  Since the events of earlier – she’ll say events because it makes what they saw seem less real – she’s been a bit of a mess. Can’t get her mind to engage. Something inside her head is making a sound like a slipped gearbox. The whole evening feels like an odd dream, although she is wide awake and as sober as a judge now. She’ll wake up tomorrow hung-over and wonder if any of it really happened.

  Dex is still drunk. She can tell by the way he’s walking towards her. That’s good too. The more everyone’s mind is scrambled the easier it will be for all of them to get through this. Dex is unlikely to remember many of the details. Bo might but he’s less easily shaken than the others. Cassie will do whatever Dex does. Anyway, the worst has been averted. She rises from the plastic chair in the waiting area and spots on the seat beside her a small still wet nugget of gum. Shaking off her disgust, she sets her mouth into a smile and waits, arms outstretched, for Dex to approach.

  ‘Dex, darling, ouch, oh poor you.’ A bandage is wound over the right fist, a plaster on the right cheek, right eye as burst as a stewed plum. She leans up and plants a kiss on his lips. He gives her his forlorn look. A bit little boy lost.

  ‘You should see the other guy,’ he says, playing hanging tough. He means the guy at the festival, of course. Some arsehole over by the beer tent, apparently. You looking at my girlfriend? As if. Anna had noticed his war wounds as soon as Dex had got back to the main stage earlier but, honestly, it hadn’t looked particularly bad. Now it’s been a few hours and the injury has had time to swell and fester.

  ‘Is Bo still in there?’ she asks.

  ‘I guess so. He got called just before me, but maybe he’s had to have an x-ray or something.’

  ‘He’s not badly hurt, is he?’ Not long after what happened in the alley Anna had received a message from Dex to say that Bo, too, had got into a skirmish – this time with a couple of guys, something to do with a spilt beer, and they were going to A&E to get him sorted.

  ‘He’ll live. Where’s Cass? I thought she’d be with you.’ Dex checks his phone and runs a hand over bedraggled hair.

  ‘We got separated in the churchyard. My phone’s croaked. She’s probably back home by now though. What a horrid birthday celebration it’s turned out to be, poor darling.’

  Dex cocks his head, presses his lips together and nods at the truth of this. He’s so easily placated, so much less demanding than Bo. She watches him frown then peer at her neck.

  ‘That looks like a nasty bruise.’

  Anna taps the dark spot then dismisses it with a wave of her left hand. ‘Oh, it’s nothing, darling, I got shoved in that scrum. To be honest I’m more pissed off about my jumpsuit.’ She points to the tears in the fabric, pre-empting any awkward questions. ‘Speaking of, what happened in the churchyard?’

  Dex closes his eyes, trying to summon a memory, opens them again and blinks. ‘Oh, you mean that couple?’

  ‘Is that what they were?’

  ‘What I saw, a couple of randos having a quickie.’ He seems anxious to change the subject. Good, thinks Anna. In that case, he’ll be cooperative. ‘I thought that arsehole was about to come at me so I decided to take off.’

  This is not how Anna remembers it. What Anna recalls is that Dex switched off his phone light and ran away into the night, leaving the woman in the alleyway to her fate. Lowering her voice, Anna says, ‘I honestly don’t think we should talk about it any more, darling. Why get involved? God, it’s a madhouse in here. Let’s find somewhere else to sit.’ She picks up the Diet Coke she left as a placeholder and holds it out to Dex. There’s nothing she wants more than to put this whole awful night to bed. ‘You want some?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  While Dex drains the can, Anna scouts for a more genial spot to wait, not easy in a London A&E during the early hours of a Sunday morning. The place is a heaving mosh pit of drunks and wasters, most, by the looks of them, walking wounded from the fight that kicked off after the festival. A name is called and one of the anxious parents stands up and offers a hand to his son, leaving a couple of plastic chairs empty near the triage station. Anna points and lets Dex lead.

  A nurse glides by, smiling, followed by two policemen. All three disappear through swing doors into another part of the hospital. Anna jams her hands
in her lap and watches them go with mounting relief. They’ll have other things on their minds. ‘Want another Coke, darling?’

  ‘Not really.’

  The guy opposite is doing his best to remove an Egg McMuffin from its paper bag with one hand. A sickening, sulphurous smell drifts over. Anna flaps her hand and wrinkles her nose. The Egg McMuffin guy gets up and obligingly moves off. A moment later the swing doors part and the two coppers reappear. Anna sits on her hands while they go past. A nurse walks by. A man’s name is called. The Egg McMuffin guy sinks into a more distant chair.

  ‘When did you get here?’ Anna says. She needs to be careful about the timeline. Doesn’t want to get caught out.

  Dex checks his watch. ‘Ages ago. Not sure, to be honest. They kept me waiting in the cubicle for what seemed like forever. Man, I’m wrecked.’

  At that moment a figure emerges from behind the swing doors, eyes unfocused, a bit staggery, evidently still high, a couple of nasty-looking abrasions on his face and a puffy nose. Anna feels herself stiffen then soften then stiffen and then, putting her feelings aside, rises up and goes towards him, with Dex following on behind.

  ‘That looks sore.’ In the circumstances, it hurts her to have to take him in her arms and give him a hug but it’s necessary. Men have to be managed. His body is electric and uncoordinated, like a cheap firework display. He doesn’t notice the bruise on her neck.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says, shrugging her off. His pupils are a single grain of lumpfish roe floating on a tissue of blood. What the hell has he taken this time? Whatever it is, the nurse has discharged him so it’s clearly not life-threatening, thank God. ‘Nurse said some bastard must have gone at me with their house keys. I don’t know about you lot, but I need a fry-up.’

  ‘You need to go home, like now,’ Anna says. She throws him a steady look which he returns, very briefly, the only focus he can manage right now. He’s understood her, though. He’s picked up something serious in the tone. ‘Make sure he gets to bed, Dex, won’t you? I have to get back for Ralphie,’ Anna says.

  Slowly, they lead Bo through the corridor towards the exit. As they pass the lifts, the doors open and the two coppers appear from within, solemn-faced, as if they’ve just come from dealing with some hard business. Anna looks away. Thank God they’re about to be rid of the stale air, the smell of vomit and egg and antiseptic, the tang of fear and adrenaline. What an unspeakably difficult night. She’s within whispering distance of being able to put it all behind her. This night, at least. There might be repercussions, though, God knows. But she’ll think about that later. She’s exhausted, at breaking point. If only she could just run home to her parents. If only she had the kind of parents you could run home to. Hers would only make everything worse. Mummy would find a way to make it all about her and Daddy would dump her off on her stepmother.

  ‘Ordering the Uber right now,’ Dex says, pulling his phone from his pocket.

  Anna leans against the retaining wall of the municipal flower bed beside the entrance and waits with them, overwhelmed by the effort of seeming so normal when she’s feeling as if she might at any moment crack open and the separate pieces of her heart fly out into what remains of the night.

  ‘Anna, gorgeous girl, you’re shaking!’

  She brushes this off with a smile. Why does it always have to be Dex who notices these things? ‘Just tired.’

  The cab arrives and takes the problem back to the flat with the river view from where he came. And oh, the relief! The instant the vehicle is out of sight her legs go from under her and she has to sit back against the flower bed and recompose herself.

  She takes a deep breath and holds it until her face feels as if it might explode then lets it out in one, in the hope that it might take all the guilt and the trauma of the night with it. Adjusting her jumpsuit and smoothing her hair she goes back through the hospital swing doors and picks up the taxi phone.

  A voice asks, ‘Where to?’

  Home, she thinks. Back to Ralphie.

  4

  Cassie

  6.05 p.m., Thursday 29 September, Dorset

  Within minutes of my arrival at the cottage, we have settled back into our habitual routines. Dex, the entertainer, is telling one of his bad jokes; Anna, the doer, is rifling through cupboards looking for box games and, even though there’s no signal, Bo, the bystander, is scrolling idly through his phone. And I am sitting at the kitchen table observing all this, beside me a bottle of wine, more than half empty now, and the discarded copy of the Standard, reminding me of all those years, before I gave up on myself, when I would grab a copy at the tube on my way home from teaching and look forward to sitting down with a glass of wine and unwinding with the crossword. And now? Why not?

  ‘Anyone got a pen?’

  ‘There’s one in that pot there, by the sink,’ Anna says, as if it’s something she has always known. Of the four of us, Anna has always been the most observant and the tidiest, the pickiest eater, the most careful driver, the girl in control, the subject of male admiration and female envy. It was Anna who introduced me to Dex. She was in my seminar group but it was months before I plucked up the courage so much as to smile at her. Anna was both posh and cool, which was rare at Oxford, where the cool set and the posh set didn’t often intersect. She had a smartphone then, in 2006, which was the hippest thing I’d ever seen. I would overhear her talking about people she knew who had parts in Harry Potter films, people who went snowboarding in Aspen and went to Glastonbury on ‘access all area’ passes. She wore tiny shorts and minis with Uggs and she had all this hair which she wore long with a fringe half obscuring her eyes. In Oxford, where it rains all the time, I never once saw her look anything but perfectly groomed. And of course she lived out of college, in a house in Jericho, which was where all the cool students had rooms and her housemates were all DJs and part-time games designers.

  To a girl like me, who’d grown up on an estate in a dreary commuter belt town at the end of the Metropolitan Line, with a mother who drank and served family sized packs of Wotsits for tea and a father who pretended to go to his job at the council every day for six months after he’d been sacked, Anna seemed to have come from another planet. From the moment I first saw her in my seminar group I was half in love with her. I still am.

  As for what Anna saw in me? A certain kind of naïve intelligence perhaps. A willingness to please. Early on I had given up on understanding people, who were beyond me. Instead I had made myself a quick study of the material business of the world. By the time I was ten I knew the names of thirty-seven species of migratory birds and could name all the capitals of the world. Facts were the barricades behind which I retreated from Mum’s alcoholism and Dad’s weirdness. People-pleasing was the Technicolor coat I wore to disguise the drabness of my surroundings. Soon I became good at being able to absorb, even to take on, the self-serving lies of others, and pretend they were true. I knew my dad wasn’t really going to work every morning and I knew my mother was keeping vodka miniatures buried in the cat’s kibble long after she swore she’d given up. I never confronted them because I knew it wouldn’t change anything and would probably make all of us even unhappier. Perhaps it’s this that Anna sensed in me. She knew I would never challenge her. So long as she and I were friends, Anna would always be the Group’s number one girl.

  ‘You’re not going to do crosswords all weekend, are you, darling?’ she asks me now, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Nope.’ I flip the paper over to the front page to find the relevant page number on the printed ticker and I’m flicking through when my eye is drawn to a headline in the Metro pages.

  The body has its own visceral intelligence. It reacts before the mind has time to catch up. Daffy Duck has run off a cliff and is paddling in the air. His mind can’t compute, which explains the expression of stupid bewilderment on his face, but his body knows exactly what’s about to happen.

  It happened to me when two policewomen appeared at my door with news that my mum had be
en found dead beside an empty two-litre vodka bottle. It happened when I watched the man in the alley grab the woman’s hair. It’s happening now.

  Police appeal for witnesses in festival woman’s death

  As I read on it’s as if tiny particles of dark matter begin to collect in the air like soot rising from a coal fire. How could we have missed this? How could we not have known?

  Police are launching an appeal for witnesses in the death of 27-year-old Marika Lapska, a Lithuanian national, resident in London. Lapska worked as a food delivery bicycle courier. Her body was discovered in the Thames hours after a music festival in Wapping. She was wearing a festival band around her wrist. Police are anxious to speak to anyone who may have known Lapska or seen her on the night of Saturday 13 August.

  There’s the usual Crimestoppers number and below it, almost impossible to look at, is a grainy, heart-stopping CCTV still of a round-faced woman with sharp features and bold, enquiring eyes. Is this her, the woman we all saw in the alley? I scan the cheekbones, the eyes, the full, soft lips, check the shape of the hairline, the placement of the ears, but nothing rings any bells – and there is no particular arrangement of human features, after all, which says, I have been raped. Is this the face? So difficult to tell. There’s no clear picture in my mind, hardly surprising since whoever was attacking her was pushing her face against the wall. But what if I did see her face and have somehow blanked it from my memory? Aren’t eye witnesses supposed to be notoriously unreliable? What if the figure in the alley wasn’t her? What if the woman we saw walked away from that obscene event and brushed herself down and is living her life somewhere in the capital?

  Stealing another glance at the picture now, focusing on the woman’s clothes, is there anything there I remember? I take my time and do a bit of peering. It’s then it happens. A sudden illumination, like a camera going off in a dark room. A mind flash in canary yellow and sky blue, the colours of the scarf the woman in the picture is wearing.