The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

  I don’t want to think that Dex might have had anything to do with your death. He certainly had nothing to do with your rape because while it was happening, at the far end of the alley, I saw his face lit up and terrible. In any case, I’ve promised Gav I won’t say anything and I tell myself, because it’s easy to tell myself this, that a promise to my friend trumps any responsibility I might have to you, Marika, or to the truth. Besides which, I know all the reasons now for not coming forward. And they are also facts.

  I am going to stop talking to you now, Marika, and make my way back down the footpath to Fossil Cottage and let myself in by the back door. There’s no need to follow me. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you again tonight.

  In the porch I pull off my outdoor boots in the porch and try to forget my meeting with Gav and what I learned about Marika and the way that she is haunting me.

  What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

  In the kitchen Anna is slicing bread. A smell of bacon wafts from the grill and behind it, I detect the dank, spicy aroma of coffee.

  ‘Oh hello, darling, how’s the hangover? I thought you might have gone back to bed.’ Anna tries a few probing questions about Will and, getting nowhere, gives up.

  ‘Others awake?’ I ask.

  ‘Bo’s gone for a run to clear his head. Dex is still in bed, obviously. I’m doing the bacon butties.’ She begins spreading butter on toast. The kettle wheezes then clicks off. ‘Be a sweetheart and make some more coffee, will you?’

  Bo appears from the back porch, breathing heavily. His eyes land on the sandwiches and boom, he’s at the table pushing a greasy triangle of meat and carbs into his mouth.

  ‘Don’t wait to be asked. Oh darling, how clever, you didn’t,’ Anna says, one eyebrow raised.

  Many years ago, it must have been Trinity term of our first year because I can still picture the sun beaming through the leaves of the great oak in Christchurch meadows, not long after I joined the group, Bo staged a buttie eat-off in his rooms. Being a Scholar, Bo had two, a study and off that a small bedroom. We cooked the bacon by hanging it over the antiquated two-bar electric fire in the study. As the bacon sizzled then began to burn we had to wrap the smoke alarm in foil to stop it giving away our antics. Anna, of course, didn’t eat, and despite my best efforts I was no match for Dex or Bo who were, like most nineteen-year-old men, at the human dustbin stage. Dex ate more but Bo claimed victory on a technicality and Dex, who was always, even then, attracted to the path of least resistance, conceded. I understood then that Bo would never enter any competition unless he was already confident of winning. And if he couldn’t win by fair means, foul ones would do just fine.

  Dex was always lazier and less ambitious and, perhaps, more laid back. It’s what I loved about him when we first got together. It made him a slow, sensual lover. I loved making love to him. It’s still painful to be reminded of that sometimes. Like now, when, drawn from his bed by the smell of bacon and coffee, he appears in the doorway in his boxers, drowsy as a bumble bee, yawning and stretching that lovely, familiar body and giving no sign at all of a man who has anything to worry or feel guilty about. Dex never did do guilt. I admire that about him too. Life washes over Dex and he always manages to come out clean.

  ‘Hello, darling, you look like you could use a coffee,’ Anna says.

  Dex slaps over in bare feet, arms pinned to his sides in a chest stretch.

  ‘Who’s that bloke I saw you flirting with from my bedroom window?’ he says to me.

  ‘Was I flirting?’

  ‘You were practically dry humping. Not that I blame you. We are talking hot. The bloke, I mean. Obviously, you are smokin’. I’ve got a boner just thinking about you.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ It’s been a long time since Dex felt anything move on my account.

  ‘Speaking of.’ He’s thumbing his phone, too hung-over to remember there’s no signal. ‘While Mr Bojangles here pounds some Portland pussy and Cassie is drilling the milkman . . .’

  Mouth too full to talk, Bo flips Dex the bird.

  Dex puts down his phone and reaches for the bacon butties before, thinking better of it, he throws his arms around my neck and plants a kiss on my head. Then, as suddenly, pushes back his chair, stands and begins belting out a rendition of ‘Mr Bojangles’, windmilling his arms and tapping out the rhythm with his feet, one half Bob Dylan, the other Robbie Williams. Moments later, he flumps down into the chair beside me and, like a cat in sunshine, stretches out, his mouth gaping into a luxuriant yawn.

  ‘We . . .’ he points to each of us in turn ‘. . . are going to have bloody good fun today.’

  13

  Cassie

  1.00 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping

  I’m watching Dex throwing himself around to the band on the main stage.

  Lovely, funny, lazy Dex. He hasn’t changed his dance style in more than a decade. The same slide of the right leg and odd left hip gyration so familiar from the early days when all four of us would sneak into the Botanical Gardens together at night, drink vodka, share a joint and make Lady Gaga shapes to the soundless tunes in our heads. Is that where Dex is now? Perhaps we’re all stuck in a time warp, to some degree or another. I take myself back to the time just after graduation, when we were all living in that horrible, damp house off the Iffley Road and not in any hurry to begin our lives in the real world. How free and effortless everything seemed! How wonderfully intense and yet, somehow, uncomplicated.

  If only it had stayed that way, but, of course, the real world arrived and, in one way or another, we moved out to meet it. As I recall, I was the last to go, clinging on to my former life as long as I could by taking tutoring jobs for hothoused kids from private schools and in the evenings helping undergrads rewrite their essays in exchange for cash. And although some part of me knew the instant I walked out of the exam school at the end of finals that this part of my life was over, I struggled to accept it. We all did. This is why some part of who we are has remained fixed in that moment. It’s the reason their friendship has survived the drift away from Oxford to London, the break-up of our respective relationships and the formation of Dex and Anna’s marriages. This is why the Group remains at the heart of our lives, a back channel to the days when everything seemed to shimmer with hope and possibility.

  Isn’t that what all long-standing friendships are about?

  The song ends and with it the distraction and in its dying fall the soreness where earlier the tattooist left his mark and at some more diffuse and tangible place, the pricking of my conscience starts up again. I still have no idea what possessed me to do what I did but supposing I could find the woman I wronged, attempting to explain the act would only get me into more trouble because there’s simply no reason for my having behaved the way I did. I can’t even claim that I was overtaken by a moment of madness. It was all very calm and rational and that’s what’s so troubling about it. I was offered a choice between right and wrong and I chose wrong and now I’m stuck with it.

  ‘Hey,’ Dex says, muzzing my hair. ‘What’s with the long face?’

  ‘Nothing. Ink’s a bit sore. Painkiller wearing off.’

  He cups my chin in his hand and bops my nose as he used to do when we were together. Old habits.

  ‘You need another drink, Cass. Mother Nature’s best analgesic.’

  I’ve already drunk too much but the ink thrums and the conscience continues to prick. ‘Maybe a beer?’

  On stage the band begins another song. A little way away Bo is impressing his moves on two dark-haired women a good decade younger than him. Anna has her back to Bo and she’s started dancing and doing the flippy thing she does with her hair. Briefly catches my glance, chin dips towards Bo and eye rolls. Observing this, Dex waits until Anna’s looking away before cracking a knowing smile. Anna and Bo, Bo and Anna. No longer dancing together but still doing the dance.

  ‘Emergency vodka jelly shots all round. You stay here with the others. I’ll get them, it’s my turn.’
r />   Dex waves a hand to attract the attention of the others, swings his wrist in a drinking gesture and shouts. Anna and Bo give a thumbs up.

  I watch Dex shouldering his way through the crowd, pull my bag in close and wonder when my ex became someone I keep secrets from.

  14

  Cassie

  Morning, Friday 30 September, Isle of Portland

  We’re following Bo up a steep scree-lined path to the quarry about fifteen minutes’ walk from Fossil Cottage. What began as a blustery morning has calmed. In the low bushes on the cliffs bees buzz and in the mackerel sky the peregrines sound their warnings. Ravens chatter. Bo wants to show us the bestiary of creatures carved out from discarded blocks of Portland stone which he remembers from the days he spent here with his dad.

  ‘For years I used to dream about this place,’ Bo says. ‘I’d wake up blubbing and covered in sweat. No one ever came to see if I was OK. I still do dream about it sometimes.’

  Scattered about the scrub is a macabre petrified zoo of nightmares, odd unsettling combinations of goats and fish and Mer-Chickens, and dogs with unicorn heads.

  ‘Oh God, I feel I’m trapped in someone else’s bad acid trip,’ Dex says, sweeping his head around to take it all in. ‘Whoever made all this has some scary shit going on in their head.’

  ‘Remind me not to come up here in the dark,’ Anna says, shivering.

  ‘Mate,’ begins Dex, ‘not being funny, but can we leave now?’

  And so we follow Bo back to the main path, through a stile leading onto a slope of low brush and heathers. There are goats here, Bo says, which were released a few years ago to keep the vegetation down and have since gone feral. Hence the fencing. We emerge from the brush and walk on to another stile and down a steep track giving onto the beach at West Weare. On the cliff behind us looms the grey expanse of the prison and young offender institute. To the north lies the port from where the convict ships left for Australia.

  ‘I think this might be the weirdest place I’ve ever been apart from Newcastle on a Saturday night in winter.’

  ‘What’s weird about Newcastle?’ Bo wants to know.

  ‘Have you been to the Toon on a Saturday night in winter? It’s freezing and the streets are full of packs of young men and women out hunting and everyone is, like, dressed to the nines and at the same time almost naked.’

  ‘Oh, this is much weirder than that,’ Bo says.

  ‘How is that even possible?’ asks Anna.

  Bo just smiles and says, ‘You’ll see.’

  Heading downhill we pick our way through gorse and bracken towards the beach in the hope of finding fossils. This being late September, the earlier calm didn’t last long and a chill wind is now blowing off the sea and onto the Underhill. In among the rocks a few hardy shrubs poke their heads experimentally from the shelter of the grass, their branches waving plastic wrappers and the occasional dog poo bag. We separate and begin to comb the beach. In the quiet by the shoreline, Marika begins to resurface in my mind. Perhaps it’s the proximity to the water. Eventually Anna moves closer and shifts the pebbles with her foot.

  ‘Find anything yet?’

  ‘Nope. You?’

  She doesn’t answer but stands for a moment in silence, looking out to sea.

  ‘So what did Gav want?’ Her face is turned to mine now and she’s smiling.

  ‘What, last night?’

  Anna presses her lips into a line and waggles a finger in the air. ‘Now, now, Cassie, don’t be coy. I saw his car in the lane this morning then you trotted in a few minutes later.’

  ‘Oh that. He asked me not to say anything. I think he was feeling embarrassed about being so grumpy so he drove all the way back from Exeter to come and apologise but I persuaded him out of it. You know what Gav’s like. Bit of a drama queen.’

  Anna hovers for a moment then flashing a smile, says, ‘Well, I’m glad. We all want this weekend to be about just the four of us, alone, together.’

  We carry on for a while, sweeping the beach for fossils. Eventually Anna loses interest and begins to meander through the rock pools. Dex takes to a nearby rocky ledge and sparks up a smoke.

  ‘Bloody lightweights,’ mutters Bo, without any real feeling.

  At the mouth of the path which leads off from the beach and winds its way along the west side of the Fleet, Bo and I stop to admire the view from the water, across the Fleet to Chesil Beach and with Weymouth in the distance to the east.

  ‘What happens now?’ asks Dex, strolling over.

  ‘We carry on looking for fossils,’ says Bo.

  ‘But we haven’t found any.’

  Bo digs into his pocket and pulls out a triangular-shaped rock. ‘Shark’s tooth.’

  Dex’s eyebrows slide up his face. ‘How fitting.’

  Just then Anna appears, holding out a small, bullet-shaped object. ‘I found this, but I don’t know if it’s a fossil or just some old car part.’

  Bo smiles. ‘It’s stone. A bit of a giveaway.’ Turning the thing over in his hand, he says, ‘If you actually want to know, it’s a belemnite. I used to have a ton of these in my room at college.’ He’s looking at Anna as though she should remember that.

  Anna waits a beat before replying, ‘I was never looking at your rocks, darling.’ It’s always tricky, this Anna/Bo thing, even after all this time. Dex and I have got to the point of pretending not to notice.

  ‘They’re squid bits,’ Bo says.

  ‘What, like cocks?’ Dex says, pursing his lips and giving a little shimmy.

  ‘Fossilised phragmocone. Squid don’t have cocks.’

  ‘Of course they do. All blokes have cocks. Even squid blokes. I should know.’

  Bo shakes his head in mock wonder. ‘How did anyone ever mistake you for straight? No offence, Cassie.’

  ‘Oh, Cassie doesn’t mind, do you, darling?’ Anna jumps in.

  ‘Would it matter if I did?’

  ‘Not really,’ Bo says. Ho ho ho. ‘Another half hour then lunch?’

  Anna and Dex synchronise an eye roll then turn and head off together, hand in hand, laughing at some shared joke, leaving me and Bo standing beside the rocks.

  ‘For someone whose husband is about to kick the bucket, he’s remarkably cheery this morning,’ Bo says, darkly.

  ‘We’re doing our best to get away from all the shit this weekend, aren’t we?’

  Bo turns his head and throws me a quizzical look, then, realising he’s not interested in pursuing the question, resumes his habitual poker face. We start along the beach again, Anna and Dex by the water’s edge and me and Bo up at the beachhead, where the pebbles meet the mud at the base of the cliffs.

  ‘Do you miss all this?’ I say to Bo.

  He looks at me as if I’m a little mad. ‘What, fossiling? The palaeo thing? Not really. You know me, Casspot, I don’t give much thought to stuff like that. Anyway, algorithms aren’t all that unlike fossils, really.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘In the sense that they’re just an expression of natural laws. They’ve been there as long as nature itself.’

  ‘I don’t get the analogy.’

  ‘Really? You’re usually such a brainiac. I guess all I mean is that an algorithm is an inherent part of nature, just like fossils are an inherent part of the rock strata. It’s like us in a way. We’re all just component parts of a bigger thing.’

  ‘You mean, like God or something?’

  ‘More like the Group. People used to think fossils were the remnants of animals that didn’t make it onto Noah’s ark. They didn’t even start to question that theory until the beginning of the nineteenth century.’

  ‘It’s weird that it took so long.’

  Bo shrugs. ‘People choose not to ask the right questions when they don’t want to have to deal with the answers. The larger point I’m trying to make is that fossils aren’t just foreign bodies embedded in rock. They’re actually part of the rock itself.’ He stands tall, checks to see where the others are and swinging
his rucksack across his shoulders, takes out a half of Bell’s and hands it over.

  ‘Hair of the dog. Don’t tell Anna. She keeps nagging me about the booze.’ I take a sip and hand back the bottle, the remains of which Bo pours down his throat all at once, as if he were putting out a fire. ‘But it’s my bloody birthday and we’re bloody well going to have a bloody great weekend.’

  By one o’clock we are all done and gathered together on the beach to inspect our haul.

  ‘Whoever first described these thought they looked like ram’s horns, so they named them after the ancient Egyptian ram’s headed God Amun, Lord of Good Counsel,’ Bo says, fingering Anna’s incomplete fragments of ammonite.

  ‘It’s funny. After all these centuries, Zoroastrians still place their dead on a raised platform, because they think Amun can’t reach them there. The Dokhma, they call it. The Tower of Silence.’

  ‘Why don’t they think the dead deserve good counsel?’ says Anna, squinting into the bright marine light.

  ‘I guess because, if they got it, they might choose not to remain dead.’

  ‘Ooh, scary,’ says Dex, revealing a handful of stone clams, which are, according to Bo, ossedes, spineless molluscs, and something vaguely spiral shaped which Bo identifies as coprolite, better known as a fossilised turd.