by Mel McGrath
‘Two guesses.’ Bo is making arcing moves with his arm in time to the beat. He wants one of them to name the track, a game he likes to play, a kind of off-the-cuff version of charades. Bo only ever plays games he knows he can win. Like Anna herself, except that Bo doesn’t realise it. There’s a lot Bo doesn’t realise.
A blonde woman drops her ciggie and adds herself to Bo’s harem. Very tight abs and a crop top designed to show them off. Face not great, though, so that’s fine. This always happens when the Group goes out dancing. Anna doesn’t like it. She prefers it when Bo goes on a hook-up and comes back to report it. The blonde woman has managed to manoeuvre her way through Anna’s force field and is standing right in front of Bo, mirroring his moves. Anna looks around to see if there are any men looking her way then smiles and pretends to be into it, though she actually feels as if some tiny insect has just bored a hole in her.
My body is full of secrets, she thinks, that’s why I’m so fat. Moments later she is pulled from this mental rabbit hole by the blonde woman screaming her name (‘Lisa!’) above the music and holding out her arm to Bo’s for a fist bomb.
‘Boom!’
Bo breaks into his most dazzling smile and fist bombs back. Beside him, Anna sees Cassie very discreetly rolling her eyes so only Anna can see. This is why Anna loves Cassie. One of the reasons.
For the next ten minutes, until he gets tired of his little game, Bo spins and shadow boxes with his new friend, glancing every so often at Anna. Each time she feels her groin pulse and her heart almost shake with rage. This too is part of the game. It’s his way of teasing and punishing her at the same time. All that stuff they’ve said over the years about back-up plans. How if they were both single by thirty they’d get married. Well, it didn’t work out that way, did it? And whose fault is that? So Anna has her own secrets now. A life not even Bo knows about. Fuck Bo for giving her no alternative.
8
Cassie
Evening, Thursday 29 September, Isle of Portland
I follow Anna out into the little garden at the back. It’s cold now and whatever was screeching earlier has stopped. Through a gap in the hedge I can just see illuminated by moonlight the foam from the surf as it crashes along Chesil Beach. On one side of the garden is a raised area on which sits a plastic table and chairs. Anna clambers up and takes a seat and, pulling out a joint and a lighter from her pocket, lights it. Drawing the smoke deeply into her lungs, she pats the seat beside her.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
Anna inhales and closes her eyes but does not respond. The surf hisses against the pebbles as it pulls away.
‘No, I’m sorry. Really. It’s all a bit shit at the moment. Except for your promotion and Bo’s birthday, obviously,’ says Anna.
For a moment her brow furrows and I wonder if she’s going to cry. Instead, taking a deep breath to steady herself and letting a smile perch on her lips, in a weary voice, she goes on, ‘Take no notice of me, I’m just horribly hormonal. They don’t tell you when you have a baby that your hormones will never be the same again. There’s a lot of things they don’t tell you.’ She lets this hang in the air for a while.
Now is the time to say something.
We’re quiet for a moment while Anna, conscious that I have something to say, waits for me to say it. And after a quick silent rehearsal, I do.
‘Gav seems to think Dex might be in some kind of trouble, but he’s made me promise not to talk about it.’
Anna swings round and gives me a worried look. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘He didn’t say exactly. Something that happened at the Wapping Festival.’
A cloud crosses Anna’s face then her eyes widen and her expression softens. ‘Oh, it’ll be to do with the fighting Dex got caught up in. I don’t think it’s anything serious.’
‘Gav seemed to think it was.’
Anna sits with this a moment before dismissing it with a wave of her hand. ‘You know how he exaggerates everything. And anyway, he’s not really thinking straight. Poor Dex.’ Observing the look on my face, she goes on, ‘He’s been thinking of leaving Gav for years. He hasn’t done it because he likes the money and now he’s trapped, at least until Gav dies.’ She passes me the joint then, looking away, towards the moon, holds up a finger and begins moving it to and fro as if trying to wipe out the stars. ‘He never told you, did he? I suppose he couldn’t bring himself to, in the circumstances. I think he loves Gav but they lead separate lives.’ Her eyes cut to me. ‘You can’t have him back, you know, once Gav goes. It would never work.’
At the dark edges of the sky, where the moonlight does not penetrate, there are stars visible, intense pinpoints of light bringing proof of life, messages that are old and redundant before we can even read them. Every one of those stars is dead now, little more than a collection of debris or a black hole.
Anna’s hands are in her lap, the fingers of her right hand idly twirling the ring around her left ring finger. ‘You’re so much more real than any of us, Cassie. So much less complicated.’ She looks up. ‘Maybe you think I’m being condescending but I’m really not. When you say things, you mean them. You have no idea how rare that is in the world I come from. I feel safe when I’m with you.’ She signals for the joint, takes a deep inhale and blows out rings across the sky. ‘I suppose that’s what also makes you such a bad liar.’
‘Which means?’
‘I know where you got the money to buy those clothes you’re wearing and it wasn’t a promotion, was it?’ She drops the joint and extinguishes it under her foot. ‘The thing is, everyone’s got a secret they think no one else knows, but most of the time someone else does. I saw what was in your bag that night in Wapping. When it fell open. Funny that Gav loses a wad of cash from his hallway and a wad of cash turns up in your bag.’
‘I didn’t take Gav’s money.’
‘Well, then, maybe all the more reason for not drawing the attention of the cops,’ says Anna, and, hugging her chest, in a breezy tone adds, ‘It’s suddenly got awfully cold. Shall we go in?’
While we’ve been gone, Bo has filled our glasses, Dex has brought out a plate of wonderful cheeses and a box of silky, expensive chocolates and with night staring in from the French windows and the flickering shadows of candles on the thick, enveloping walls of Fossil Cottage it is almost possible to believe, even now, that everything is normal. But our world is anything but normal. Even the word will not hold, as it runs along tracks made wet with wine, heading towards an as yet unnamed catastrophe. The not-normalness. I know then that by going back to what I’d seen, to what we all witnessed, will be to risk not only being cast out but something more, some permanent injury which will be impossible ever to put right. If I could I would stop the train and head off the crash but I do not know how. A family like ours, tied not by blood or birth but by love and secrets, is so much more delicately but also more complicatedly bound, the contract between kin willingly entered into and habitually renewed, but at the same time so exquisitely fragile, so will-o’-the-wispish, that it might at any moment crack and splinter like dropped glass. It’s hard to lose your blood family. I know that to be the case. Something of them remains inside you. But your family of choice can be taken from you in a blink. If that happened to me, what – after the years of emotional investment, of love and shared history – would be left? A going nowhere job and a dingy room in a rented flat overlooking a bus station.
Dex brings out the Scrabble board and for the next hour or two we make our way through another bottle or two of wine and attempt to fill the board with words, too drunk by now to play with any skill.
Game finished, cheese and chocolates polished off, Bo says, ‘So, who’s for a nightcap? There’s some ridiculously pricey cognac somewhere,’ and without waiting for an answer pulls back his chair and makes his way unsteadily towards the kitchen. Then just as suddenly he stops in his tracks and turning to face us with a grin, he says, ‘That bloody word, it’s finally come to me!’ He’d stumbled during o
ur earlier game and lost points. ‘Revenant!’
‘Is that a word?’ Anna says.
‘Don’t you remember, there was a film out a while ago, Leonardo di Caprio doing battle with a man in a bear costume,’ Bo says.
‘I missed that one. What a shame.’
‘Anyway, it means a dead soul who comes back into the world of the living bringing a message. Damn, if only I’d remembered! It would have been millions of points. More than enough to win.’
‘But mate, you didn’t. Remember or win,’ says Dex.
Anna lets out an extravagant yawn. ‘It’s time for my bed.’ And with a flirtatious little wave, she gets up and wafts towards the staircase.
I bump into her a few minutes later in the upstairs hallway. I’m coming out of the loo, and she’s waiting to go in.
‘Goodnight, darling,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek. Everything else goes unsaid. Now I know Anna knows my secret. And I, in turn, know hers. If one of us spills, we both go down. That makes us quits.
A little while later, when one of the candles gutters on the kitchen table, and Dex licks his thumb and stubs out the flame, I read it as a sign to remain in the dark. Stay in the shadows. Don’t try to find out what you don’t want to know.
But still, the feeling of shock and betrayal doesn’t go away. All night in the Urchin room, turning in the bed, the owls outside the window hooting, You did nothing. You did nothing.
At some point, when it’s still dark outside, I get up and take a shower, soothed by the warm water, the steamy atmosphere inside the cubicle through which I can neither see out nor be seen. I’ve become such an expert at cover-up and pretence I’m no longer sure what’s me and what’s a version of me. Am I Cassie 1.0 or Cassie 2.3? Who is left to ask? I am the sole child of dead parents. My only friends in real life are the other members of the Group. I don’t really speak to my flatmates and the only relationship I’ve ever had was with Dex. I sometimes wonder if I have made myself up from fragments of other people’s online avatars. I only ever feel like a proper person when I’m with the Group as we were a few hours ago now, sitting round the table, drinking Bo’s posh wine. It’s then that I’m able to persuade myself that I could really be someone, an actual person and not just a collection of borrowed algorithms and virtual characteristics. Perhaps that makes me sound more complicated than I really am. What I really am is pretty simple, like Anna said. I am unsure. I am both the keeper of secrets and secretly a lost soul.
If the world knew what I had seen, I wondered as the water poured down, what would it ask of me? What would Marika Lapska ask? Would she come out of the world of the dead to speak to me? Would she say that, because I saw what was happening and did not intervene, I owe her? Would she consider me responsible? Do I owe her? If so, what and how much? Enough to risk my career, my friendships, even my liberty?
I am unsure of all of this. The only thing I am sure of now is that for the next four days I am going to be the Cassie who has friends who are real and funny and who give every sign of wanting to be with me. I am going to be the Cassie who belongs.
9
Bo
1.25 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping
As Bo walks by the burger bar he spots Dex standing at a three-quarter turn away from him, in the patch of ground between the food trucks and the chill-out tent.
Ah, so that’s where the old tosser went. Bo lifts an arm to wave then stills himself, aware, suddenly, that his friend is staring intently at something, or someone. He can’t get a clear view of what Dex is glaring at, but his stance seems wired, almost predatory. Could Dex be on the pull? Oh, now, this is interesting. An opportunity to see his friend in the wild.
Naturally, Bo’s had gay men making the moves on him for years, the way he looks, but Dex has never once tried it on. Mind you, though, Bo isn’t really Dex’s type. He already knows from Dex’s entries in the Big Black Book that he likes tough-looking guys with shaven heads and aggression rippling not far under the surface. The polar-opposite of Gav, in fact. Poor bastard, trapped by domesticity. Though at least he gets to play away, so he has it easier than Anna. Though women like that domestic shit, don’t they? Funny, it all seems to have happened while his eye was off the ball, his friends settling down, becoming that tiny bit more boring. He doesn’t envy any of it. Why would he? Look what life has laid at his door. A fabulous river-view apartment, a great set of wheels, friends who love him, stimulating, highly paid work, all the booze and drugs he could ever want, the best bloody pizzas in London courtesy of the Big Fat Pizza company (hats off to Dex for that recommendation), and access to a city full of women at the swipe of a screen. Wey-Aye, Man. Literally living the dream.
He’s jolted out of his reverie by movement. Dex is heading towards something or someone. Actually it’s more like a pounce. Like a cat, almost. Bloody hell, he hasn’t seen Dex move like that since they were both teenagers trying out for varsity football.
What’s this? A girl is standing by the chill-out tent with her back to them and Dex is tapping her on the shoulder. Thin girl, petite, dark hair, red dress. Hot, so far as you can tell from looking at the back. Hot, if you like that sort of thing. Which, as it happens, Bo does. But Dex? What possible business could Dex have with her? Plus she seems shaky on her pegs.
She’s turning round now. Dex has moved to one side and turned somewhat too, so his face is now partially visible. Whoa, Bo thinks, finally getting a purchase on that facial expression, stay well clear. It takes a lot to make Dex angry but that’s exactly how he looks at this moment with his eyes flaring and his mouth opening into a shout. Something odd about this. An unstable energy. For an instant he considers intervening to calm the situation. But that would mean getting involved in whatever shit Dex has got himself into. Bo positions himself behind a sign to avoid being spotted and peers at the scene.
The wiser part of him thinks he should just leave now. Better all round to be able to say truthfully that he didn’t see anything. Yes, that’s what he’ll do, he thinks. Walk away and go and get a burger. Maybe buy the girls a burger. Make himself popular. So far as he can recall none of them has eaten since they arrived several hours ago. And there were those lines he snorted, earlier, before the pizza. And the Viagra to get him in the mood. And the jellies maybe? Shit, he can’t actually remember. Plus he never actually ate that pizza, did he? In any case, all the food and drugs seem to have worn off now. Yeah, he thinks, trying to convince himself, I am actually hungry. He makes a move towards the bar and in that instant remembers: Dex spotted him as he was leaving the portaloos. Couldn’t have been more than a minute or two ago. More than that, they’d exchanged words. Bloody hell, what am I doing to my brain that I didn’t even remember that till now? He lets out a weird little laugh. What was that about? Anyway, he does actually recall Dex looking intense even then. Maybe even angry. Bo had watched him go and wondered what was going on.
Dex isn’t a man to lose his temper easily. In fact, Bo can’t remember the last time he saw Dex crack. Maybe when Dex’s dad refused to come to his wedding to Gav? But even then it wasn’t rage as such, just more like a kind of growl. But there’s some weird shit going down here.
Bo turns back to Dex. He’s already forgotten about pretending to be hungry. He watches, rapt, as his friend reaches out a hand and grips the girl’s upper arm in an attempt to spin her round. Bo has never seen a performance like it. Has anyone else noticed? He turns his head this way and that. Nope. It’s dark after all. Darkish anyway, despite all the lights. Why has Dex taken such a firm grip on her arm? Is he trying to help her? No, no, he’s definitely not trying to help her. In fact he’s tugging on her and she’s shaking her head and doing all she can to back away from him.
As she does so, Bo catches a glimpse of her cheek and the shape of her nose and a hint of the outline of her lips. Shit. Is it? No, how can that possibly be? The woman has turned a hundred and eighty degrees now and at this new angle her face is more fully visible. He blinks, takes a moment to compos
e himself, then blinks again. The sight before him remains. Can it really be the pizza delivery girl from earlier? It looks remarkably like her. What was her name? Bo searches his memory and comes up with nothing.
If it’s not her then it’s a dead ringer. He peers more closely, his mouth open with shock. He’d bet any money it’s her. What the hell’s she doing here? And what business does Dex have with her? Hang on, don’t they use the same takeaway pizza company? He wishes his head weren’t so fuzzy and thumps his knuckles against his forehead in the vain hope of forcing himself to think more clearly. Think, you stupid bastard. He hears his father’s voice saying, ‘Number one, number one.’ Why is that bloody worthless turdmonger still taking up Bo’s head?
Before him an increasingly hectic scene is playing out. Dex is shaking the woman now. What on earth is happening? Could she have sold him some dud grass? A few pills? No, hang on, Dex isn’t a pill head. Grass is more his speed. Bo smiles internally, amused by his pun. Speed. Ha ha. But the momentary hilarity is soon superseded by a rising wave of panic.
Didn’t the pizza woman say she was going on shift? He checks his watch. That was hours ago. Maybe she just came off. Was she wearing that red dress earlier? Bo thinks not. What can she have done to arouse such rage in Dex? Nicked something from him? Pretty girls think they can get away with stuff like that.
Bo is transfixed now. Dex is suddenly right in the woman’s face, one hand on her shoulder, doing his best to yank off her bag strap. To be honest, this looks really bad. Some random pissed cockwomble aggressing a woman at a festie. What the fuck is Dex up to? If he doesn’t back off right now, Bo will have to go over and sort it.
