I read the letter again. Eighteen months. Dominic Kovar would be out in eighteen months. Luke’s whole solid, sinewy, thoughtful, beautiful, grey-eyed life was worth that. Not even a month for each of Luke’s years lived. My future, our lives together, everything was reduced to a number. And the number was tiny.
The second page was worse. The sentence was laid out in pre-emptive, don’t-shoot-the-messenger detail. Katarina had made a very convincing character witness, it explained. She had impressed the court with her regret over their fight, with her sympathy for Luke’s family, with her need for Dominic’s income, with her love for him, with her forgiveness for his behaviour. If she had been standing in front of me right then, I realised, I would have pummelled her face into the ground. I would have held her by her ugly, greasy, too-high ponytail and I would have smashed her onto the rocks beneath my feet over and over again. I took another deep breath. Luke’s parents had also spoken to the court, the letter went on. They had made an eloquent plea for their son’s killer to be given a longer sentence than the minimum. But, perhaps because of a lack of further support, the court had regretfully ignored their request.
I had to read the last sentence three times before I realised what it was insinuating. Dominic had got off lightly because I hadn’t attended the trial, because I had run away. My grieving fiancée status might have swung the balance in Luke’s favour. One young woman to stave off the pleas of another young woman. Don’t come crying to us, they might as well have put. It wasn’t the police’s fault that Dominic would be a free man in a few months. It was mine.
I didn’t want to have these pages in my hands any more. I didn’t want them. I began to scrabble at the grass next to me, scratching underneath it to try and loosen a clod. My nails grew black as I dug, but the ground was more solid than I had guessed. I took the key from around my neck and used it to gouge out more of the earth. When I’d loosened the edges enough, I pulled up a lump of grass and soil the size of my fist. I folded the letter into four, buried it in the ground, and replaced the grass on top of it. I pushed the damaged patch back down as hard as I could, and piled the extra soil around the sides, then ground it down with my shoe. Let the worms have it.
DD,
That café that Alex goes to has a website. I should have thought of checking before, because I looked it up, and there it was. Terrible design – clunky, ugly font in browns and greens. They should ask for their money back. It has this Testimonials page where really fucking boring people have said their lemon drizzle cake was exquisite. Anyone who describes a cake as exquisite should be barred from eating it. And then they have a Contact Us button, so you can mail them, I suppose, to complain about the cake if you didn’t like it. And a Location button.
And then they have a page marked About Us, and you click on it, and it’s got this cheesy letter from the manager explaining that he hopes you have a wonderful time when you visit and how he’s looking forward to welcoming you back there soon. They’ve done a fake signature at the bottom, next to a picture of him with his dark, curly hair, and his tight white t-shirt. I bet that’s not even the guy. I bet it’s a model they used instead. Because this guy hasn’t eaten any cakes for fucking ever, that’s for certain.
And then, under his picture are pictures of the rest of the team. The team, for fuck’s sake. In a little café. There’s only five of them, three women, two men. They all have foreign names: Irina, Dmitri, Alaric, Katarina and Noor.
It only took me a few minutes to find a picture of Katarina, the woman that Luke died trying to protect. They’re the same person. Of course they are. It was right in front of me, once I knew what I was looking for. Finally I know why she goes to London.
Alex isn’t waiting for someone to come and meet her at all. The person she wants to see is already there.
ACT FOUR
1
Lisa Meyer has a huge bouquet of orchids in the corner of her office.
Come in, Alex, she says, waving me towards the low chairs by the fireplace. She has a fire burning there, to fight off the cold February day.
Pretty flowers, I say to her. She looks momentarily blank, then follows my gaze.
Yes, she says. But I have to keep them at a distance, or they make me sneeze.
Finding out that Lisa Meyer is allergic to pollen is a bit like discovering that it’s microbes which take down the Tripods in The War of the Worlds.
Have you thought about our conversation last week, Alex? she asks, as she brings a dark, charcoal-grey file over to the table with her. Luke’s files were always a shade between pastel and grime – dirty beige, dull pink, yellowed blue. Lisa clearly gets hers from a different stock room. She pings the black elastic bands from its corners, and opens it on her lap.
Yes. I nod. I’ve thought about it a lot. But I don’t know what to do with the thoughts.
Let’s start with maintaining your reputation, Lisa Meyer says, arching her one mobile eyebrow. And see if we can’t achieve a bit more than that. I’ve been trying to find out who is paying for her lawyer, she adds, flicking through a few pages from the file. It’s taking longer than I thought.
Wouldn’t it be legal aid? I ask her. She’s just a child, after all. Someone has to defend her.
Lisa Meyer blinks twice, rapidly. It seems to be her equivalent of a loud sigh.
It can’t be legal aid, Alex. Brayford didn’t take on this case for that kind of money. Not even for the prestige he imagined he would gain. Someone is paying him, and they must have deep pockets. It is most likely to be her parents, one way or another, but until we do some more digging, I won’t know for sure.
I didn’t realise it would be so complicated, I say, feeling stupid. I suppose I thought because her guilt isn’t in question… I trail off, not knowing how to finish a sentence I wish I hadn’t begun.
Things are rarely simple, she replies. We are trying to get a positive outcome in this case, Alex. So I’m leaving nothing to chance. I’m sure you of all people understand that a person’s guilt is decided by a court, and that facts are not the only determinants of that decision.
The phone on her desk buzzes once, and she stares at it. It goes silent.
Besides, she continues, as if the phone hadn’t dared to interrupt her, her parents know what their daughter did. They will be feeling guilty for what they will surely perceive – correctly, I imagine – to be their poor parenting skills. They may now be over-compensating. But nothing’s certain at the moment.
They probably blame me.
Perhaps they do. That doesn’t matter, Alex. It only matters if Charles Brayford tries to blame you, in court. He’ll need to implicate someone, if they’re going to keep her out of jail. So all that really matters is that we make it impossible for him to blame you. Then he might pick a weaker target.
But what happens if he does? What would happen to that person?
I was wrong about the double-blink being her version of a sigh. She inhales sharply, the negative of a sigh.
Then that person would need to get a lawyer, Alex. Just like you did. You need to remember that none of this is your fault. You experienced an awful, life-changing crime and that made you compelling to a teenage girl with an obsessional streak. And as a direct consequence of that, it has become Charles Brayford’s job to go through a list of names until he found someone who wouldn’t fight back. That used to be you. But it isn’t you any more.
I nod again.
Bad things happen to everyone, Alex. She smiles that small, taut smile. We all choose whether to be defined by them, or whether to be who we are in spite of them.
Victim or survivor, I murmur.
Exactly, she says. That’s it precisely. You are the latter, Alex. You just think you’re the former.
How do you know?
I’ve spent some time with you. I knew Luke, a little, so I have some idea of what you lost when he was killed. And I’ve spoken to Brian Hollis about you. He had enormous respect for Luke, and he has enormous respect for you. He te
lls me you will be the most successful director of your generation, once I’ve sorted this mess out. I’m very smart, Alex, and I don’t make mistakes. That’s why they put my name on the door, she says.
This, I think, is Lisa Meyer’s idea of a joke. I like the fact that the most self-deprecating thing she can think of is not very self-deprecating at all.
I’m still not happy with the idea of testifying against her, I say.
Let’s come back to that, she says. For now, all I need is for you to tell me everything that happened. Everything you remember about meeting her and your classes and her behaviour towards you and her schoolfriends. All of it. If you’re still unhappy when the first court date comes up, we can try to come up with a different strategy. Most judges are going to be sympathetic to someone who has been through what you have been through, Alex. They’re not monsters. That holds true in this case, too. No judge approaches the trial of a minor lightly, especially not when it’s for such a serious crime. But no-one wants to lock her up and throw away the key. It would be inappropriate.
For Lisa Meyer, being inappropriate might be the greatest sin of all.
OK.
I need you to go through any paperwork you have, Alex. I need you to look at a calendar, or your diary, and try to remember what happened when. I need you to make notes of anything you do remember and any key dates that you can tie it to: a lesson one side or another of a bank holiday, for example?
I’ll try. But I stopped keeping a diary before I went to Edinburgh. I didn’t think I’d need one.
Of course not, she agrees. But you’ll be surprised how much you remember, when you start to write it all down. This might help.
She hands me a print-out of last year’s calendar. It has all the regular holidays printed on it. But someone – Lisa Meyer’s assistant – has added key events that he hopes will jog my memory. News stories, TV programmes, my mother’s birthday, which I can’t imagine how they know, but they do.
I did go through my first few meetings with her, for Charles Brayford. So I remember that time very well.
That’s a great start, she says. But it isn’t enough. I need you to really focus on the summer and the autumn of last year. We’re looking for more information, and with a different purpose, so I need you to think in a different way.
The difference between looking in a drawer where you think your keys are, and looking in one where you’re certain they can’t be? I ask.
Exactly, Alex. She smiles. Is there anything else that might help you to remember details? I think for a moment. The calendar from the Festival Theatre, I say. I used to walk past it every day. The show titles will help.
Her eyes gleam. She goes to the door with her name on it, and speaks briefly to her assistant. By the time I leave, a few minutes later, I have in my bag a print-out of the schedule of every exhibition from the City Art Gallery, the National Galleries of Scotland, the dates of all major cinema releases last year, and a list of every theatre show from the past twelve months at every major Edinburgh venue. Lisa Meyer’s assistant is determined to impress her.
* * *
The school holidays whipped past, as they had when I was a child. Perhaps it was because I had promised myself, when the police letter arrived, that I would stop going to London each week. I was too angry to go the week after I received it, and too sad and weary in the weeks after that. I kept the promise, too; the last time I’d left Edinburgh was early June. And without Rankeillor Street or the trips south to punctuate my weeks, the days all blurred into sameness.
Edinburgh changes beyond recognition during Festival season in August, when the city’s population doubles for a month. Every student theatre group, every stand-up comedian with a microphone and scruffy blond hair gelled into artful disarray, every sketch-comedy troupe with a convoluted punning name that plays on an out-dated film title: they all come to town. The supermarkets are suddenly packed, the streets heave with tourists and the Royal Mile switches from being a passable route through the Old Town to a static home for street theatre, jugglers and mimes.
I had experienced all this from the other side, when I first came to Edinburgh all those years ago, with a school play: a production of Anouilh’s Antigone. We performed for a week in a church hall over by the Botanics, and I fell in love with the city and its pulsing, thronging theatricality. In my memory, it didn’t rain once, though that can’t be true. We stood in the streets flyering for our show every day, either in costume or in the bright purple t-shirts printed with our show, our school, our venue and our dates and times. Over and over again, we would try to press our leaflets on Festival-weary Edinburgh residents. ‘You’re awright, hen,’ was the kindest phrase of rejection I’d ever heard, and that remained true even when I’d heard it every two minutes for a week.
By the time I went home that summer, I knew I would be applying to study there. I knew I would never want to be anywhere else as much. It was a magical city to my teenage mind: from the Scott Monument and the Castle to the sound of the cannons and fireworks at the Tattoo every night. I even liked the strange smell of the place. I liked the fact that you could blindfold anyone who’d ever been to Edinburgh, then take them to the city, and they would know instantly where they were, just from the thick, yeasty scent in the air. The locals say it’s not as pungent as it was before one or another distillery was closed down, but it still smells strong to me. I’d read every Ian Rankin novel, every Christopher Brookmyre book, just to try and keep part of myself in Edinburgh while the rest of me studied for A-levels in Surrey.
Even in 2011, when I was no longer a student but a proper resident of the city, and therefore morally obliged to hate the Fringe, I didn’t. I was glad it was coming, glad that Edinburgh would make its annual transformation from sensible Jekyll into rampaging Hyde. Even though I had spent so much time with Luke in Edinburgh – this is where we met, after all, in a bar which had thankfully changed names and décor at least twice since then – I knew that when it put on its August costume, the city belonged to me alone. Luke never stayed here for the Fringe: his landlady would hire their flat out for three times its usual monthly rent, and he would head south, to do an internship in London, or to catch up with schoolfriends and family.
The invasion was the same this year as every year: students in white-face make-up, discs of pink painted on their cheeks, promising a radical new reading of Racine or Kafka, alongside improvisational comedians handing out blank pieces of paper instead of flyers. The baked potato shop on Cockburn Street sprouted queues backing all the way up to the Mile every lunchtime, and around the corner, the Scotsman Steps had reopened as an artwork: every one was a different colour of Italian marble. It felt decadent to walk on something so expensive. There was one step, eight down from the top, that was identical to Robert’s steely grey kitchen worktops – except that the steps smelled faintly of urine, because not everyone appreciates public artworks in the same way, I suppose. But the steps were beautiful even when they were pungent: a kaleidoscope of pinks and greens and oranges that didn’t fit their surroundings at all, like a peacock who’d wandered away from his formal garden and into the woods by mistake.
The annual craft fair appeared at St John’s church, filled with intricate silver earrings, carved wooden bowls and bright felted birds. As I walked round it one drizzly Saturday morning, I saw a tiny wooden spaniel on one stall, which looked exactly like my mother’s dog. It was carved from a dark red wood, its polished grain glistening like Pickle’s fur. I bought it for her, and walked down Lothian Road to buy a padded envelope from the card shop. Then I thought of the phone call I’d get when she received it – the pleasure in her voice mingled with the sadness that I hadn’t seen her all year – and I decided to wait, and take it down for her birthday next month.
2
DD,
This has honestly been the worst fucking summer ever. Worse than even I imagined it would be. Here’s what I didn’t want to do this summer: sit at home every day on my own, not see an
y of my friends for weeks on end, not know what’s going on with Alex. And how many of those things happened? All of them.
I know. I have a bus pass, I have legs. I could just have gone out whenever I liked. Except I couldn’t, because I spent most of the summer with an ear infection. And given that I can’t hear, that is about as unfair as things get.
God, it hurt. It really, really fucking hurt. I don’t know where I caught it: my mum is convinced that it was from swimming at Warrender pool. She gets these ideas stuck in her head sometimes, and you can’t reason with her.
The doctor said it was a virus, anyway, which turned into a bacterial infection. He was going to send me to hospital at one point, but I persuaded him to let me stay at home: my mum promised she’d look after me when she wasn’t at work, and our flat is warm and dry, which is all they could really offer me in hospital.
I had to take antibiotics for weeks, which just make me really sleepy, and I felt like crying from how badly it hurt. I would rather have anything than earache. I’d much rather break an arm or a leg, because it can’t hurt as much. The worst part is, it hurts when you swallow. Every single time. I read my Greek myths book a lot while I was lying on the sofa, hurting. And I worked out that this is my idea of Tartarus: the bit of hell where people are punished with the same thing every day. Tantalus is always hungry, trying to reach his grapes that keep slipping out of sight. Prometheus has his liver pecked out every day by a bird. Sisyphus has to push a rock up a hill and every time he gets to the top, it rolls back down, and he has to start all over again.
And for me, hell would be a middle-ear infection. Every time I eat, or drink, or swallow, it’s like someone slicing a razor through my eardrums. I couldn’t keep my aids in for more than a few minutes at a time, because the noise was too much. I watched the TV with subtitles on, but after a while, you think if you’re going to do that much reading, you might as well just pick up a book.
The Furies: A Novel Page 19
