Bloody Women

by Helen FitzGerald

‘Have a shower. I’ve booked the hotel.’

  ‘It’s going to be great, isn’t it?’ I said, before leaving him alone with his mother.

  After my shower, I towelled myself dry while Joe packed our things in the bedroom.

  ‘You coming?’ Joe said, re-emerging from the bedroom with his suitcase.

  ‘What have you got in there?’ I asked. His case was enormous. ‘Everything!’ Joe grinned, kissing me.

  Presents, I thought to myself. Bless.

  We drove for an hour, corkscrewing our way up the mountain. At each turn of the road I thought we’d reached the top, but the mountain kept surprising me with more bends, until finally we arrived at the hotel.

  It was called Massimo’s and was just outside a small mountain village that consisted of a few houses, a church, a cemetery and an old tavern. We parked at the front of the hotel, about fifty metres from the cemetery, grabbed our bags, and went inside the two-storey stone building, surrounded by geraniums and Vespas and Apes. The owner was called Massimo, funnily enough. He was elderly and friendly. He booked us in for dinner, gave us a map of local walks, and showed us to our room, insisting on carrying our suitcases despite a five-minute battle to deter him. Elderly and tiny as he was, he hauled the cases up the stairs effortlessly. The hotel had seven rooms, and ours overlooked the ominous crater. It was desolate and empty except for the cluster of buildings of the ghost village: a church, a tower, houses and walls, crumbled by the water that engulfed it when the hydroelectric basin was constructed in 1953.

  We had time to explore the village, and I had more than enough energy. We walked briskly down the mountain, to the dry bed of the lake, over a bridge, and into the village. I was mesmerised and terrified by it. It was like a corpse exhumed. The artisans’ and tradesmen’s houses were solid and neat, with all but the roofs intact. And the bell-tower, at the highest point, stood tall and strong, with a door and stairs and wee windows at the very top for the non-existent bell to not ring from.

  ‘The ghost of Lucia Bellini appears above this tower,’ Joe said. ‘People have reported miracles.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I didn’t believe in miracles. ‘What like?’

  ‘Health- and death-related, usually.’

  ‘Why are lakes so spooky?’

  ‘’Cause monsters live in them. Dare you to stand in there blindfolded for a minute,’ Joe said, pointing to the bell-tower. ‘Dare you to take me to the hotel and feed me,’ I replied.

  The sunset was streaky-pink as we walked back up the mountain. On the way, we passed the cemetery where Nonna Giuseppina and Lucia Bellini were buried. It was dimly lit with the flickering candles of devoted relatives. Joe stopped to polish his Nonna’s scary photograph, kissing his hand and then the stone afterwards.

  ‘Ti amo,’ he said softly.

  ‘You loved her a lot,’ I didn’t need to say.

  ‘Yes. And I love you a lot.’

  I was brimming with excitement when we got back to the hotel. ‘Welcome back, me!’ I thought as we unlocked the door to our room. I would get to know him properly. I would take control. I would learn to feel comfortable and safe with him. I pushed Joe onto the bed and straddled him, unbuttoning his shirt, touching and kissing his chest, his ear, his lips.

  Hmm, I sighed twenty minutes later, my shoes still on, my T-shirt slightly ripped at the top. Joe had held my arms down quite hard.

  ‘Do you want some champagne?’ Joe asked, buttoning his shirt and getting off the bed and putting on his trousers. ‘I’ll go get some, and check we’re not too late for dinner.’

  I lay on the bed. I was buzzing. I had too many thoughts. Should I call Anna? She always said to me, ‘Cat, as soon as you buzz, call me. Come to me. Be with me. It’s good to feel excited, but not too excited, and don’t ever be too excited alone.’ Should I call her? I was okay, wasn’t I? Was I?

  ‘Eccoci!’ Joe said, having returned with champagne and two glasses. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Starving!’

  32

  Janet arrived back in Scotland the day Catriona left. She sat by the phone for a day, but it only rang once, and it wasn’t Davina, it was the celebrity she was supposed to be ghost-writing for.

  ‘All you’ve done is show your breasts,’ she told the celeb. ‘I’d have to write ten chapters per nipple.’

  Thus the ghost-writing job was no more.

  And the Cat Marsden book was a complete waste of time. The visits to Joe and his family had proved fruitless. Janet’s energy and confidence faded with the silent hours, hours where the phone did not ring and a deep female voice did not say, ‘Hello, my darling, it’s Davina. Let’s go. Let’s go together now.’

  She tried various poses to bring on the telephone call, hovering on her left leg, with her right suspended in the air. One hand on top of her head. Tongue out. Eyes crossed. Staring from different distances. She knew it was weird, the way counting biscuits and switching the light on and off three times before going to bed was weird, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  Eventually, Janet resumed a normal pose and dialled Davina’s office number.

  ‘She’s left already,’ the receptionist said.

  She rang her home number.

  ‘Leave a message,’ the machine said.

  Her mobile.

  ‘This is the voicemail of . . .’

  She put on her coat and drove to her apartment in Stockbridge and buzzed her buzzer and spoke through the intercom.

  ‘Hello?’ came Davina’s matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘It’s Janet.’

  The buzzer crackled and Janet pushed the heavy door open and walked up the stairwell. Davina lived on the first floor, in prime position. Her door was open when Janet arrived at it, huffing.

  ‘I’m in the kitchen,’ Davina shouted as Janet walked along the hallway, unable to get her breath back, exhaustion now overtaking anticipation.

  ‘Do you want a glass of wine?’ Davina asked. She was dressed in the usual smart trouser suit. Probably just in from work, if you could call drinking with people who sometimes wrote something ‘work’.

  ‘You didn’t call.’

  ‘I didn’t. That’s true.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve never been very successful at relationships.’

  ‘I think you are.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Davina said sternly. She wasn’t being self-deprecating. She poured the white wine and handed the glass to Janet, who drank it down in two long gulps.

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you’re really good,’ Janet said. She was a child begging to stop at Toys ‘R’ Us when Toys ‘R’ Us is simply not on the itinerary.

  ‘Sit down,’ Davina said, scratching her head.

  Janet sat on a kitchen chair waiting for two things: for Davina to sit down also, and for Davina to refill her empty glass.

  Neither happened.

  Davina stood over her and said, ‘You’re too intense, Janet. It doesn’t always have to be so intense.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t always have to be kissy and huggy, and let’s move to Tuscany.’

  ‘I thought . . .’ Janet began.

  ‘You thought a lot of things. Listen, I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Right, I see. “It’s not me, it’s you . . . I’m just not ready for commitment . . . It’s too soon, too much . . .” Blah, blah, blah. God, you’re full of shit!’ Janet’s anger welled.

  ‘I am full of shit. You’re better off without me.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, not that one!’

  The car had driven right past the toy emporium and into a carpet warehouse. Janet set her tantrum free, lifting the glass she had forgotten was empty and tossing nothing right into Davina’s face.

  ‘Unbelievably stupid!’ Janet berated herself, throwing the glass to the floor.

  That evening, Janet found two shards of wine glass embedded in her black court shoes.

  She left them there, to remember.

  She then opened a p
acket of almond biscuits, counted out fifteen, and looked at them. She was a fool. A pathetic old fool.

  Unable to eat the biscuits, she took a new notebook from her study and wrote FEELINGS DIARY on the cover. On the first page, she wrote, ‘I feel like shit. I am shit.’

  She threw the notebook at the study wall, grabbed her keys, and slammed the door behind her. She walked around Morningside. There were families and couples everywhere. Families in family cars doing family things, couples in couply bars doing couply things. The walk was making her feel worse. Her life was rubbish. She had no work, no partner, no one but her friend Margaret – who was too stressed with police work to make time for wine-tasting courses and the like – and her little brother and his three brats. She hated her brother and his wife, both bankers. They were money-obsessed robots who seemed to shout ‘Accumulate! Accumulate’ as they ferried themselves and their ghastly children to planned activities. Once, one of the children had said, ‘Aunty Janet’s fat. And she can’t come to the play because my friend Beth hates lesbians.’

  When Janet got back to her flat, she picked up her short-lived feelings diary and then picked up Catriona Marsden’s file. In it were the photocopied pages Catriona had given her in prison. The girl had been advised to keep a feelings diary since being diagnosed as bipolar at the age of twenty-three. It was a means for her to keep track of her moods, and to be aware of significant changes. Despite being heavily medicated and seriously depressed, Catriona had continued writing during her incarceration, and had included memories and feelings about almost everything she could call to mind.

  ‘It’ll help get my side of the story across,’ Catriona had said during their first meeting in Cambusvale.

  The notes made Janet feel better. Out there, beyond Morningside, people felt worse than her, and that felt good.

  At first, the notes had confirmed her suspicions about Catriona: that she was stark, raving mad, confused about her sexuality, suspicious and over-cautious when it came to men, and sometimes violent. Considering that the girl had practically confessed to the murders, telling police that she ‘couldn’t remember for sure’, Janet had no qualms about using carefully selected quotes to support her argument.

  She read the notes again. The girl loved her mother. She loved her friend, Anna, perhaps more than she was ready to admit. And she had cared about all of the significant men in her life. None of the notes indicated a worrying level of aggression or violence towards men or women.

  ‘I would always love Johnny, in a way. He was the first man to crawl inside me. He left traces, course he did.’

  ‘Rory was special. He was always struggling against what he didn’t like about himself. I loved him for that.’

  ‘We didn’t need him, me and Mum. We didn’t need anybody. All Mum’s family were in other countries, so we were just two girls together. We called ourselves “Team Girl”!’

  ‘Mum always listened. Never said, “In a minute.”’

  Reading with a new mindset, Janet also noticed how hard on herself Catriona was. Her notes were filled with the self-doubt and self-hatred that she herself now felt.

  ‘How could my mother have loved me?’

  ‘Why did Johnny want me?’

  ‘How could Rory have forgiven me?’

  ‘Poor Mani, living with me.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m capable of.’

  ‘What did I do to Stewart?’

  ‘I’m just the most terrible person.’

  ‘I’ve ruined Joe’s life.’

  ‘I’ve ruined Anna’s life.’

  ‘I’ve destroyed my wonderful mother, just like Dad did, just like I always knew I would.’

  ‘I feel like shit. I am shit.’

  Just like me, thought Janet.

  Something else began to emerge from the interview notes she had taken – on closer inspection, Catriona’s ex-boyfriends were anything but perfect.

  ‘Johnny always shagged about,’ his mate Spider admits.

  ‘Just not one for commitment. And she knew it.’

  ‘When Catriona thought she was pregnant,’ Anna says, ‘Johnny ran for the hills. He was shacked up with one of her friends from uni. I told her, but she put her hands on her ears and hummed. She didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Rory called me his breath of fresh air,’ Catriona’s diary reads.

  ‘Rory knew she was beneath him,’ Rory’s mother says. ‘He thought her job was shallow,’ a friend admits. ‘He thought she was nuts,’ another says.

  ‘He’s a posh little prick,’ an ex-Socialist Worker says. ‘Took her along as proof of his egalitarianism, pushed her around, and treated her like shit.’

  ‘I kicked the television. I shouldn’t have. But he shouldn’t have called me names all those years.’

  ‘Mani never intended to stay with her,’ his brother says. ‘It was his bit of fun before settling down. His rebellion.’

  ‘When she got pregnant, Mani made her have an abortion. She never got over it. He left her after that,’ Anna says.

  Suddenly, Janet’s thus far unshakeable conviction that Catriona Marsden was a man-hating serial killer seemed as flimsy as her retirement plan.

  She took out the photographs she’d gathered for her research. There was one of Johnny judging a dancing competition on the evening he was murdered. He looked smarmy in his panel seat in front of the stage, too trim and twinkly-eyed to be trustworthy. A large crowd watched the competition from behind him.

  There was a photograph of Rory, suited for the annual general meeting of his firm.

  Of Mani, professional and distant for his BBC website photograph.

  Janet put the photographs in the file and put it to one side. She looked at the biscuits on the table and decided there and then to stop eating biscuits for breakfast – hell, she could eat muesli if she wanted.

  She also decided to talk to Irene Marsden.

  33

  Irene Marsden had wanted to tell Janet Edgely something ever since she’d received a copy of ‘that damned book’, as she had come to call it. So when the Freak told her Janet was in the visits area, Irene didn’t think twice. This was her chance.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Janet asked when Irene sat at bench number fourteen.

  ‘It’s not as bad as I expected,’ Irene said. ‘I’ll survive.’

  ‘I want to say sorry if I hurt you. If you trusted me, and . . . It’s just not right, is it? This? You, here? I don’t know what I think but I know I don’t think it’s right. You didn’t do it, did you Irene?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Of course I did,’ she replied.

  A pause.

  ‘You’d do anything to protect her, wouldn’t you?’

  More silence.

  ‘We’re “Team Girl” . . .’ The words fell away, then after a moment Irene snapped out of her temporary dwam.

  ‘I am guilty.’

  ‘Had Catriona ever done anything that really concerned you?’

  ‘No. She’s always managed her illness, much more successfully than her dad did. As a kid she was naughty now and then. Got into trouble at school. I believe she was temperamental with Rory, but, no . . .’

  ‘You love her very much, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You think you’re doing the right thing.’

  Here we go again, Irene thought. The police had questioned her for three days solid before they believed she wasn’t covering for her daughter.

  Irene focused. ‘I let you visit me so I could tell you something. I’ve wanted to tell you this since I got a copy of that damned book.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re a bad woman, Janet. I thought you were good. I thought you were clever. But you’re bad and you’re stupid. You sent my daughter over the edge. I want you to stay away from us. Stay away from her. You hear me? Stay away.’

  As Janet pondered Irene’s words – all of them true – Irene lay on her cell bed thinking about Catriona. When she was a toddler, she used to stroke t
he mole on her mother’s left cheek as they cuddled in bed, stroke it gently till she fell asleep. She had a toy stethoscope, and she used to place it on her mother’s chest and say ‘Cough!’ solemnly, and then ‘Cough!’ again. When she was in primary three, she liked making comic books, the best of which was ‘Team Girl and the Arrested Astronaut!’ in which Catriona and her mother saved the world by calling the police just in the nick of time. At eleven, she used to tell her mother to be understanding, that her hormones were kicking in and that was why she should be allowed to wear mascara. At fifteen, she used to hold her mother tight and hug her for as long as she needed, as often as she needed, because Jamie had gone.

  ‘I know, Mum, I know,’ Catriona would say.

  Irene thought about her second last meeting with her daughter. Cat was dressed in prison get-up and covered in bandages, having repeatedly tried to kill herself using paper and a pencil.

  In the visits area, Catriona had asked to speak to her mother alone.

  ‘I was going mad when you were tiny, and I do blame myself for not feeding you properly, but I’ve never intended to hurt you, my darling,’ Irene said.

  ‘Then why am I thinking that?’

  ‘You’re thinking lots of strange things at the moment. Your dad used to do the same. Sometimes he thought I was evil, out to get him.’

  Looking at her mother, holding her hand, tears streaming down her face, Catriona realised she’d been talking nonsense.

  ‘It made so much sense last night. Like a thunder bolt. You’d done it to hurt me. What’s wrong with me? What sort of person am I?’

  ‘You’re my girl,’ Irene answered.

  ‘I don’t want to be me any more,’ Catriona said.

  ‘Perhaps you’re not you at the moment.’

  ‘Why would you still love me? After everything I’ve done?’

  ‘Just because, my beautiful daughter.’

  Irene would not sit back and wait till her daughter killed herself in prison. She would not go through that again. She made her an offer. She would do the time. The Munchausen’s by Proxy story could actually work. It could help reduce her sentence.

  ‘I could use the time to do a course or something,’ Irene said, trying to convince her daughter.