The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

  ‘Watch the steps, darling, they’re slippery.’ Anna waits for me. The men are far ahead of us now, tunelessly belting out nineties guitar anthems.

  ‘Hey, wait for us!’ Anna shouts.

  We catch up and stumble down the cliff path together onto the pebbles, wilding the night air with our whoops and shouts, made more frantic by booze and dope and the desire to get out of our heads, together, now, here, where nothing can touch us.

  ‘Who’s going in?’ Bo says, peeling off his jacket. Soon enough he and Dex are naked and howling across the pebbles and bundling themselves into the waves, leaving me and Anna at the shoreline goose-bumped and trembling and wishing we too were men who could do these things and only regret them later.

  Marika was under the influence of drugs. Death by drowning. Police saying it was an accident. That it probably wasn’t even the same person.

  What I saw could have been a casual hook-up.

  The men are beyond the break now and all that remains visible of them is a crease in the silvery grey reflection of the moonlight upon the swell.

  As I’m unbuttoning my blouse Anna is saying, ‘You’re not actually going in?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  And oh, the sea is brisk, the moon grabbing at the water which rises only to shrink back like a whipped dog, baring pebbles with a growl. Once the water reaches my thighs, I throw myself into the curl of a crest and begin to swim until, finding myself a whorl of water where the temperature is, inexplicably, much warmer, for a while I allow myself to bob on the chop. While I am floating an odd feeling comes over me. It seems that I have drowned and am the revenant Bo mentioned. Drowned and dead and come back to the living with a message. Dex is on the other side of the swell now, waving me over.

  ‘Come here, the water’s bloody amazing.’

  And so I raise an arm over my shoulder and begin a slow, inelegant front crawl in moonlight but soon I can no longer hear or see Dex and the water is darker now and thicker and unfriendly, worrying and jostling at my legs, and it’s like when a man you don’t know very well suddenly pins you to the bed a little too hard or for a little too long and even as you are trying to make sense of what is happening, or even as you are asking the man to back off and be gentler, there is a part of you that is at the same time thinking, So this is it, this is how I will meet my end.

  My arms are whirling, and my legs kicking out, but the current only increases its grip. I can feel myself being drawn further from the beach, out into the dark expanse, and there is a banging inside my skull where my mind is trying to escape, a kind of hopeful denial in the face of what is now unmistakably danger. How did this happen, and so quickly? It was only a moment ago Dex was waving me over, only a moment more since I was thigh deep in moonlit water, turning to wave to Anna on the beach. And now the sea has turned on me. The waves on which I was bobbing are pushing me out to the point of no return. I can hear myself shouting, ‘Dex! Dex!’ but Dex does not appear. Bo is nowhere to be seen and Anna is a dim speck on the strand of beach beyond the shallows. The water is cold. How did I not notice when I went in how cold the water was? Or perhaps I did notice. It seems so long ago now. Am I losing touch with what is real? I am moving, but I’m going nowhere. I am stuck somewhere between the air and the water. The salt is in my eyes and in my nostrils. I am kicking, kicking and going nowhere. Am I beginning to drown? Is this what drowning feels like?

  Is this how it felt for Marika?

  From the corner of my vision I can see Anna standing by the shoreline, silhouetted in the moonlight, watching me throwing my arms to get her attention. A cloud passes over the moon and I am suddenly thinking about the supermoon at the festival, and about Marika, and I am wondering if that is what I deserve, to be where Marika is, able to tell her that I am sorry I stole her money and I am sorry I stood by while something awful happened and I did nothing because I was a coward and I was afraid.

  A voice rises up from the waves and I am thinking, is that the voice of the undertow? Is that the voice of the water? The voice is saying, ‘Cassie, over here!’ My eyes are filmy with salt but I am looking and looking because the voice is not the voice of the water or the undertow. It is Dex’s voice. And I’m calling back but I am swallowing water and the water is taking my voice back down into my body.

  Something touches my arm and I think it must be something that has come up from the water but when I turn towards it I see it is a hand on my arm and the end of the hand is Dex. He’s looking worried. He’s saying, ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, OK thanks.’

  He smiles and shows his teeth. ‘You went a bit weird there for a moment.’ He flicks his head towards the shore. ‘Want to go back now?’

  So I raise one arm over my shoulder and scissor my feet then raise the other arm and I keep on doing that, with Dex beside me, until I can feel myself rising up on the wave and dropping down onto the shore side of the breakers and I rise, dazed and exhausted, up onto the pebbles and hobble my way through the shallows and onto the beach with Dex following on behind.

  Anna comes bustling over. It’s cold suddenly. The wind, which felt balmy before we went in, is now sharp-edged and unwelcoming.

  ‘Cassie, darling, I saw you waving, but I didn’t know . . .’

  Just then Bo emerges from the sea, whooping; shaking his arms free of water, he picks his way across the pebbles towards us, skin mauve in the moonlight.

  ‘Fucking hell, it’s bloody freezing. Whoever thought that was a good idea?’

  Anna turns and reaching out a hand, touches my shoulder. ‘Darling, you’re shivering.’ She takes off her jacket and wraps it around me. ‘Here, have this.’

  ‘No bloody sign of the Mer-Chicken, but I spy with my little eye a couple of fine Mer-Cocks,’ Bo says.

  ‘Put them back in their coops before they freeze to death,’ says Anna and the men, rubbing their legs back to life and scraping the sea from their bodies, pull their clothes over damp skin and still haw-hawing, race each other across the beach towards the path back to the cottage. I watch them go with an odd feeling of panic.

  Suddenly my legs are going and I’m skipping across the pebbles, not wanting to be far from Dex or to be left alone with Anna.

  Later, as I emerge from the shower, wrapped in a towelling robe, I can’t help but wonder what it was that got me out there on the waves. When I go downstairs to join the others, Bo, dressed only in a towel, is pouring hot chocolate into mugs. A fire is flapping in the grate.

  ‘Anna and Dex are in the garden, having a smoke.’

  Through the French doors are two figures, bundled inside duvets, with their backs to me.

  ‘You want some of my famous secret recipe boozy hot chocolate?’

  ‘What’s the secret?’

  ‘I can’t tell you obviously, or it won’t be a secret.’

  ‘Then how do I know there is a secret?’

  Bo taps his nose. ‘There’s always a secret.’

  Leaving my drink inside, I take two mugs of chocolate and head out into the garden. Anna and Dex have their backs to me but hearing the door slide open, Anna’s head turns and in the light from the living room and the moonlight her skin looks almost synthetic and not quite human. She smiles and waves me over but when she thinks I’m not looking I see her right foot swing out and press Dex’s.

  ‘This is good,’ Dex, says, taking a sip of chocolate. On one cheek sits a small sparkle though whether it is water from his wet hair or a tear I can’t tell.

  ‘Isn’t it, darling?’ says Anna, in an intimate tone. Then Dex’s eyes join in with his smile and he is fine again and I have to suppose they had been talking about Gav because what else could they be talking about when there is absolutely nothing to say? Dex’s smile fades and a silence falls and in the quiet some dark bud begins to blossom and I sense immediately that whatever Dex is about to say, Anna would prefer him not to. The hand not clutching the hot chocolate finds its way to mine and gives it a gentle squeeze.

 
‘Listen, Cass, whatever Gav said to you about me and that woman please take it with a sack of salt. He’s ill and he’s fucking paranoid and it’s really bloody wearing. For the record, that girl the police came about? I bought some weed off her and the bloke she was with thought I was trying to rip her off so it got a bit hairy. Obviously I wasn’t about to tell the cops that so I made up something on the spot.’

  ‘We should just stop talking about it. Let’s just stop,’ Anna says, holding up a hand. She turns her face to me and in the angle of her lips I detect a warning.

  Just then Bo pokes his head around the French windows. ‘Ladies and arseholes, the performance is about to recommence.’

  And so we all troop in and one by one make our ways to bed knowing that there is no performance, or, rather that, all of this is a performance. We’re a side show, a circus act in a big top, straining to keep each other so occupied we can ignore the elephant in the room.

  21

  Dex

  10.45 p.m., Saturday 13 August, Wapping

  It’s been ten minutes since Bo went to the bar and Dex has already forgotten all about beer.

  The Radials are halfway through their set and his mind is back in the noughties. Wasn’t he listening to ‘Turn right then left then right again’ when he first got news of 7/7? Yeah, that’s right, he was. Oh, and hang on, wasn’t Cassie there too? Now he remembers. Summer of the second year, they were doing their best to stay up in Oxford for as long as possible, doing shitty jobs. Well, no, Cassie was doing a shitty job working in a bar. Dex had that law office internship through his dad. Way back when they were on speaks. Before he discovered his real sexual identity. Even now the memory of his confusion back then burns. All that mutual masturbation in the dorms at school. That miserable git of a housemaster telling him it was just a phase, that all the boys went through it. The awful coming-out conversation with his parents, his mother’s tears, his father standing with his back to him, saying he’d never have named him after one of his great jazz heroes if he’d realised what a disappointment his son would turn out to be. He’s glad they’re estranged, actually. He’s better off without the reactionary old bastard. Now he thinks about it, weren’t he and Cassie saving up to go to Greece? Santorini, was it, or one of the other islands? No, no, he remembers now. It was the Mani. They wanted to follow in the steps of Patrick Leigh Fermor, well, Cassie did. The romantic in her. What was that paragraph which so struck him? Taking out his phone, he taps in the search window and brings up a pages of quotes, locates what he’s looking for and reads as if for the first time:

  It might be argued that the decorous little services of the West, the hushed voices, the self-control, our brave smiles and calmness either stifle the emotion of sorrow completely, or drive it underground where it lodges and proliferates in a malign and dangerous growth that festers for a lifetime.

  His breath catches, throat swells like a frog’s and he feels himself almost slayed with grief. Everything he’s let go, the horrible stiff-upper-lipness of his horrible upbringing. Cassie helped but it wasn’t really until he met Gav that he was able finally to divest himself of it. If he hadn’t read that paragraph all those years ago would he ever had had the courage to reject the future that had been mapped out for him?

  Hadn’t his parents done everything they could to try to rip him off, to trick him into a life of pretence and quiet despair? And for what? Respectability? Convention? If it hadn’t been for Cassie and, later, Gav, he might have slipped into the mould they had already prepared for him. When he thinks about Gav, though, his heart stumbles. Dex has always been given a long leash, Gav never even trying to impose his own monogamous impulses on his husband. There has only ever been one condition. Play by all means, but if you’re going to play, play away. Gav has never asked anything else of him, except, perhaps, a willingness to feign interest in opera and modern dance, but still Dex hasn’t been able to find it in himself to comply. Plus his earlier encounter wasn’t the first time he’d ordered in. Why? Laziness? The path of least resistance? Maybe. Or could it be some twisted combo of revenge for his financial dependency coupled with a secret desire to get caught? Mate, best not go there.

  He tunes back into the music, moves a little to the beat. The Radials! Irresistible. The dance area comes alive as everyone begins flinging their bodies around. For a moment Dex is transported. Someone pushes past and sends him off balance. He swings an arm out to stay himself and sees the culprit hurrying away. A small woman with dark hair, dressed in red. She turns for an instant, doesn’t see him, but in that moment a sharp stab of recognition hits him. Oh, but, hang on, isn’t that the pizza delivery girl from earlier? What’s she doing here? His eyes scan the space beside her for signs of a companion, but she’s scurrying off towards the edge of the dance area. Alone, he thinks. It’s a bit sad, actually. Who goes to a festival without their mates? He feels for her, a foreigner in his town, his capital. He should buy her a drink. Yes, be magnanimous. He muscles his way through the crowd towards her waving and catches her eye. She’s surprised to see him, which, yes – he suddenly wonders if he isn’t being a bit creepy. Maybe that’s why she seems ill at ease, a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. She’s trying to sound nice but Dex is pretty sure she’s faking it. Her breathing has quickened and her eyes are darting from side to side as if she’s looking for an escape exit. He’s intrigued now. Why is she being so odd with him? Almost as if she’s scared? Or maybe it’s not him she’s afraid of, maybe there is a man somewhere who doesn’t like her talking to other men. He scopes about. Nope.

  She gives him an odd, lopsided little smile. Her pupils are tiny, like two poppy seeds which have flown off a bagel and landed in her eyes. Oh, so that’s it. She’s taken something and it’s making her paranoid. She’s basically off her tits. Well, OK, whatever, maybe he won’t offer to buy her a drink, then. He’ll duck out as gracefully and as quickly as he can.

  ‘Top band,’ he says, thinking even as it comes out of his mouth, Christ, who says that? He’s out of practice.

  Her face immediately softens into an expression of relief. ‘I am leaving,’ she says.

  ‘OK, well,’ he says. ‘Thanks for bringing round the pizzas.’

  She catches his eye. Her pupils are minuscule, positively reptilian.

  ‘Maybe I stay bit longer,’ she says.

  It’s then he spots Bo, processing through the crowd, carrying two bottles of Corona high above everyone’s heads like an icon at a religious festival.

  ‘OK, well, bye then,’ he says, assuming this will be the last he sees of her. He thinks of saying, ‘Have a nice life,’ but it sounds overly aggressive, so he decides instead as he’s moving off to give her a little wave. She waits until he’s a way away to return the gesture before disappearing into the crowd.

  22

  Cassie

  Morning, Saturday 1 October, Isle of Portland

  I wake, lean across the bed to the stool that serves as a bedside table to check the time on my phone and realise that it’s not there. There is a little alarm clock on the shelf below though which reads ten thirty. No owl last night, or none I remember and no flashbacks of the awful moment in the sea, so the drink did at least do its job. I know the smell of drowning now. It’s a briny, rancid scent, like old vase water. That’s not something I’m going to forget. The wine has also left me slow and unable to think properly but that’s a small price. It’s not like me, all this sleeping. But I haven’t been like me for a month now.

  Coffee might help. I get up and pad downstairs. The living room is still a mess of empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays and what look like the wrappers from a year’s supply of Lindor chocolate balls, none of which I can recall eating. My phone is lying on the kitchen table. Did I leave it there? How odd. I remember it being on the stool beside my bed. But it’s here, so I must be wrong. I’m becoming careless and forgetful. Random message to self: stop drinking and ch
ange phone passcode. It’s been 1108, my birthday, for as long as I can recall, but that feels a little less like a day to celebrate now that I know it was the last day of Marika Lapska’s life.

  Someone has begun clearing up in the kitchen. There is washing up on the counter top and a cafetière still half full of lukewarm coffee. Otherwise no signs or sounds of life, unless you count the cottage. We gave it a trashing last night and it took its revenge, fussing and creaking all through the early hours. It’s quiet again now, but awake and brooding, licking its wounds.

  The slow crunch of gravel under tyres comes in from outside. Through the glass pane in the front door I can see Bo’s Audi heaving to a stop. The engine cuts and there is a moment of unidentifiable music from the stereo before the driver’s door opens and Anna steps out, looking as fresh as a cheerleader, clutching a couple of bags.

  I go over to the front door and wave. That dazzling smile. She approaches, gives a comedy swerve to avoid the Mer-Chicken and lands a kiss on my cheek.

  ‘Cassie, darling, you’re awake! Are you OK?’ She hands the bags to me, swings off her coat and pulls at her ballet pumps. ‘I thought we could probably use a fry-up after last night’s dinner debacle. Bo back from his run yet?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘Oh, in that case he’s probably gone to the beach. He was keen to do some more fossiling. Apparently, last night’s storm will have brought them up.’

  ‘Was there a storm?’ Perhaps it was this and not the house that woke me.

  Anna’s brow creases. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t hear it? God, the thunder was enough to wake the dead.’

  In the kitchen Anna fills the kettle, digs around in the shopping for a packet of coffee and spoons the grounds into the big cafetière.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ She checks her watch.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Dex has gone off to meet someone, one for the Big Black Book, I think, so it’s just us. I thought we might go horse riding later, though if we’re going I should ring and book.’