I have never known that this is her assistant’s name. I nod again.
Lisa Meyer walks over to her desk. She opens a drawer, and pulls out a small microphone, which she plugs into her phone. She walks back, and unfolds a small plastic stand which she places on the table in front of me. She fits the microphone into the stand and taps the phone screen. It starts recording.
I can see the tiny beads of light register her voice, as she says, Whenever you’re ready, Alex. There’s water next to you – I look down and see this is true – and I just need you to tell me what happened on the Friday. I need to know what you saw and what you heard. Not what you thought or what you wished. What you witnessed. Do you understand?
Yes, I say. Even though I’m speaking quietly, the lights on the phone flicker up. It can hear me.
I’ll be over here, she says, and takes a seat behind me. I hear a faint rustling sound and realise she has picked up a pad and a pen, so she can start making notes. I wonder if she’s trying to replicate the role of therapist and client, or if she just knows most people find it easier to talk if they’re not trying to read the face of their audience.
I take a sip of water. OK, I say. This is what I remember.
6
What I recall most clearly about that day was a bird. But I guess Lisa Meyer would prefer me to start at the beginning, not the end.
I had spent forty-eight hours, by that Friday morning, corroding with anger. How could Luke have been lost, while the people who took him continued to thrive? I wanted to open a window and scream the questions into the crisp night air. What is the point of punishing someone, of imprisoning them, when it takes away nothing but their liberty, briefly, and even that only in its most limited physical sense? Luke’s killer had kept everything important: his happiness, his future, his hopes, his lover. He had retained everything Luke had lost. Everything I had lost. I was inchoate, and he was temporarily inconvenienced.
When I called in sick on the Thursday, Cynthia told me to take the rest of the week off. Robert would take my lessons, she said. Everything was fine. But nothing was fine. Yes, I knew; everyone said it, after all. Grieving was supposed to be hard. But this was way past hard. It was in a new category. I took tiny, faltering steps towards a new life, and every time I covered any distance, I got punched in the gut and fell right back to where I’d started. I didn’t believe in God, so how was it possible I was living in purgatory?
I spent Thursday in my flat. I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t go out. I broke my own rule, googled Dominic Kovar, and read the news stories that had bubbled up during his trial and sentencing, the ones I’d worked hard to avoid. I read about his earlier convictions for assault, possession of a knife, grievous bodily harm. I felt my anger crystallise into a tiny solid shape in the centre of my chest. I hated him, right then, with a purity I have never otherwise felt, untainted by any other emotion, unsoftened by mitigation. I wanted justice: the real kind, not the legal kind. And I wanted it to hurt. I didn’t want him to lose what Luke had lost. I wanted him to lose what I had lost. I wanted him to know he would never see the person he loved again, that he wouldn’t see her smile, or cry, or laugh, or sneeze, anything. I wanted him to understand that this is what loss means.
* * *
I left Edinburgh planning to kill her. I walked up to the North Bridge and then down Cockburn Street. I bought my ticket from a machine: I have no idea if it was a single or return. I sat on the train as I had done so many times before, but it felt very different. All those times I’d travelled down there in the past, I’d felt like I was performing a ritual. I couldn’t keep Luke alive by loving him, in spite of the platitudes people liked to offer me. I needed to perform an action, to bear my libations, if you like. But not to his grave, a small sad piece of grass in the grounds of the church he attended as a boy. I didn’t know that Luke. His childhood was just photographs to me.
I didn’t go to a place that was special to us: how could I? I would have fallen to my knees and pounded my fists against the pavement. So I went somewhere that wasn’t ours, but belonged to him. If I couldn’t go to him, I could at least keep watch on the woman he’d died for. And so I went, week after week, hoping I’d see something that he might have seen – some spark which would make the loss of him a tiny bit more tolerable. He’d saved her life, hadn’t he? Didn’t that mean she owed him? Didn’t she have an obligation to the man whose life she’d cost?
I never spoke to her, never told her who I was. She wouldn’t have recognised me: I looked nothing like the snatched photos the newspapers printed of me. But this time, I wanted it to be different. I gazed at the coastline as it sped past. This time, I would go up to her and scream at her. I would put my hands round her thick neck and squeeze until she clawed at the ground. I would have my revenge.
I believed this for the duration of the train journey. My commitment to hurting her – better, killing her – sustained me as I walked out of King’s Cross, up the Euston Road, and turned right into the park. I stalked through the park, my head pounding with every step. It looked beautiful that day: I do remember that. The leaves were every shade of red and orange, dropping to form a slippery carpet underfoot. I walked past dog-walkers and joggers and an old couple nestled on a bench. He was reading to her from a dog-eared book. I turned left, and walked past the zoo. The porcupines were scuttling round their pen and a couple of small, dappled goats trotted between the sheep and chickens in the petting zoo.
I had almost reached the northernmost tip of the park. I paused for a moment, then renewed my steps, still heading towards the café. And then I saw the bird. Or rather, I saw what used to be a bird. It was a pigeon, lying next to the path at the top of the park. It lay face up, its too-small head and scabby little feet completely intact, in a pool of tiny white feathers. As I walked closer, I saw its body had been completely pecked away. Crows and magpies, I guessed, had eaten its heart and lungs and everything else. They had parted its tiny ribcage, splaying it out so it was a shell of what it had been. Its wings and shoulders were still there, like a coat wrapped round the back of an empty chair.
And that’s when I realised that I could do nothing to Katarina which could make me feel anything other than hollow, no matter how fucking happy she and Dominic Kovar turned out to be. Let them be delirious. It would be easy while he was in prison and it was all stolen moments in the visitors’ room, like some cheap romantic film. Easy. But when he left jail, when they moved back in together and faced the grind of rubbing up against each other’s bad habits and annoying traits and noisy eating and never doing the washing up, well, let them have that, I thought. We’ll see how happy they are then. The last time they were together, they were arguing so violently in the street that a stranger had thought she was in danger, and had stepped in to try and keep her safe. How long would it be, once the forbidden thrill of being together became quotidian, before they were at each other’s throats again? Let them have it all. My mouth tasted vile, as though all the hatred in my head was seeping away down my throat. I felt suddenly ashamed at how ridiculous and melodramatic my behaviour had been.
And so I turned round to go home again, because I had nothing left to do there. Revenge was not – after all – something I needed to enact upon Katarina. It was inherent in their being alive; they would see their love crumble slowly, but it would be just as dead as Luke in the end. I started to walk back the way I’d come. I reached The Broad Walk – the big, tree-lined avenue that runs through the park from north to south – and there she was, as if she’d just been teleported into place: Melody Pearce from my Greek tragedy class, standing right in front of me, four hundred miles away from where she was supposed to be.
‘Mel?’ I was almost afraid. Was it really her? For a moment, I thought I must have conjured her, imposing her face on another slender blonde girl. But it was her, wearing black leggings and a tiny skirt, a green woolly hat over her head, and a small puffy jacket in that red she liked, doing such a poor job of keeping her warm that s
he was shaking.
‘Alex, where are you going?’ Her voice was blurred.
‘I’m going to catch the train to Edinburgh. What are you doing here?’
‘I was following you.’
‘I realise that. Why?’
She shrugged, Rankeillor code for any and every emotion.
‘Mel, I asked you a question. Would you answer me, please?’
‘I wanted to. I wanted to see what you’d do.’
I had no desire to argue with her. I just wanted to go home. I felt utterly spent, every broken night and furious day catching up with me at once.
‘This isn’t really OK, you know. You can’t just follow people because you feel like it. Are you planning to follow me back home? Or do I need to ring Robert and ask him to call your mother to let her know where you are?’
And she reached over and slapped my face, hard. I was so shocked, it took a moment to match the sound to the pain. I put my hand up to feel her handprint burning on my cheek.
‘Where are you going?’ she said again.
‘I’m going home. And so should you. Why were you following me?’
‘Because this is it, Alex. Your climax. I came to see it happen.’
‘You came to what?’
‘You, and that bitch Katarina.’
Hearing Katarina’s name said out loud, and by someone from my new life, was so disorientating I felt clammy.
‘How do you know about Katarina?’ Now I knew where Robert’s newspaper article had come from.
‘I know everything, Alex. I’ve known for ages. And now you have to do something about it.’
‘I have to go home.’
‘That won’t be enough.’ Her face was blotchy and red. She wasn’t shaking from the cold, but with fury.
‘Yes, it will. I’m going back to Edinburgh, I’m staying at Rankeillor and I am living my new life – which I’m sure you know is not the one I chose – the best way I can. And none of that will be improved in the slightest if I go and have a slanging match with the woman whose fiancé killed mine. None of it. You can understand that, surely?’
Her face cracked as I raised my voice, and tears started forming in her lovely blue eyes.
‘I don’t know why you’re crying,’ I said. ‘You hit me, remember.’
‘You can’t just leave it like this!’ she screamed. A woman walking past with a chubby chocolate Labrador gave us a disapproving stare. ‘This isn’t how it ends, Alex. It isn’t fair.’
I was almost laughing. ‘You’re telling me it isn’t fair? Do you honestly believe I don’t know that? None of it has ever been fair. None of it. But all of it happened, and I can’t demand a recount and get everyone to start again. You’re right. It isn’t fair. Things aren’t fair, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Which is why I’m going home.’
I started to walk past her, and she grabbed my arm.
‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘That can’t be what happens now. You have to have it out with her. If you aren’t going to, I will.’ And she dropped my arm, and began walking towards the café.
‘Mel, this isn’t going to make anything better.’ I started to follow her. Even though I thought she was behaving appallingly, I couldn’t just abandon her.
‘Leaving things unfinished isn’t going to make anything better,’ she snapped, turning back to face me. ‘Running away, not saying what needs saying, that doesn’t work. I’m surprised you don’t know that. Now, come on.’
And I followed her because I thought I could stop her. I thought I could talk to her, and make her see that her behaviour was not just unpleasant, it was unnecessary, because nothing was left unfinished. So I hurried after her, almost running to catch her up. She had grown: she’d been my height when I first met her, and now she was striding away from me with ease. I kept talking as we drew nearer the café, and she kept arguing that I didn’t understand. Suddenly, she stopped dead.
‘There she is,’ she said, and I followed her gaze. Katarina was walking away from the café, up towards the road, out of the park. I glanced at my watch and realised that it had gone four o’clock. The sky was darkening. I wondered how the hell she could identify someone she’d never even met from this distance, in this almost non-existent light.
‘Just leave her alone,’ I said. ‘Really, Mel, come on. We’re going home.’
She wrenched herself away from my hand, and began walking again towards Katarina’s retreating back.
* * *
What do I remember? I remember that Katarina – a tall woman to begin with – was wearing shiny black heels, topplingly high, with thick, shelf-like platforms. I remember thinking how quickly she was moving, when I wouldn’t have been able to take a step without holding on to a rail. I remember that she crossed the road at the top of the park, and turned left to walk past a running track where two weary joggers were circling, hoods up against the increasingly heavy drizzle. Katarina passed them, and Mel was gaining on her all the time, and if I had to describe how I was feeling at that exact moment, it was embarrassed, because the whole thing was so bloody theatrical.
Then Katarina turned right to walk up to the main road, over Regent’s Canal. I found out later from the police that she was heading to a friend’s flat, just off Avenue Road, a little way north of the canal bridge. She was going to an engagement party which her friends were throwing, because they knew how lonely she was with Dominic in prison. And as she walked over the bridge, Mel broke away and ran up to her. She pushed her hard, in the small of the back.
The railings are so low there. Peeling old brown things, in a crunchy diamond pattern. They must have been built when people were smaller: they were barely at my waist height, and Katarina was tall even without the crazy shoes. With them, her centre of gravity was thrown forwards and up, and so when someone pushed her from behind, sharply and unexpectedly, she couldn’t stop herself from falling. And if she’d landed in the canal, the water would have broken her fall. But she was just past the canal, so when she fell, she fell straight down onto the pock-marked concrete canal path, thirty feet below. It happened so quickly, she didn’t even scream. I screamed, but she did not.
Mel turned to look at me, and ran. I don’t know which way she went. East, maybe. She must have, I suppose, because she made it back to King’s Cross eventually. An old couple on the other side of the bridge, grimacing in the rain, looked over at me to see what the fuss was all about. I screeched at them to call an ambulance, and I scrambled round the railings and down the steep bank between the road and the canal, towards Katarina. Tree branches and roots grabbed at my feet, trying to hold me back.
I heard sirens when I finally got to her, and I knew they weren’t the ambulance I’d asked for, knew it was going to take too long, in London, in the rush hour. A halo of dark blood was spilling out from under her head, and another under her ribs, and I reached out to her.
‘Don’t move her!’ the old man shouted from the bridge above me. His voice was shaky, but his tone was certain. ‘It’s important that you don’t move her head.’
So I didn’t. I took the hand of the woman I hated, and I held it as she died.
ACT FIVE
1
‘And that’s the last time you saw her?’
Lisa Meyer gets up from her chair, and walks round to the table in front of me. She picks up her phone, and taps the screen once, to stop the recording. She turns to look at me. ‘Melody, I mean?’
‘Yes. She ran off from the bridge, and I haven’t seen her since.’ I can feel the skin around my collarbone blotching.
Lisa Meyer pauses. But I have nothing to add. ‘So everything that happened after that is the same as in the police report?’ she asks.
I try to remember. ‘I guess so. The man – the old man, I mean – rang for an ambulance and the police. His phone was in his wife’s handbag, so it took a few moments for them to find it, in the dark and the rain. He wanted to come down to the canal, but his wife wouldn’t let him. She was worried he’d f
all. When the police arrived, they took the three of us to St John’s Wood police station. It’s very near there – where it happened.’
As I’m telling her this, I’m thinking of everything that wouldn’t be in the report. The old man – his name was Mr Hardy – had given me his coat when I’d climbed back up to the bridge, because my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t get them to stop. So the whole time I was making my statement, I was worrying that he wouldn’t be able to leave because I was still wearing his coat, and it was raining even harder now: I could hear the drops pummelling the window behind me. I kept telling the officer that I needed to return it, and he kept nodding and smiling at me.
Eventually, the desk sergeant knocked on the interview room door. She smiled her apology, and asked if she could have his coat back. I shrugged it off, and she gave me a red fleece blanket in its stead. Only once I’d handed it over did I realise that the coat had smelled of un-smoked tobacco, of red Marlboros, to be exact, and that the blanket smelled nowhere near as good.
By the time the interview was over, nobody could tell me what had happened to Mel – whether they’d arrested her, or even found her yet – and no-one could decide what should happen to me. They asked me to sign the statement which the constable had written for me. His handwriting was round and irregular, like a child’s best effort. I felt my throat close up. No-one with a child’s writing should be dealing with a case like this.
They didn’t think they’d need me again the next day, so I was free to head back to King’s Cross. But I needed a different route: the bridge I’d crossed earlier was now blocked off with police tape. So I walked towards Camden, and cut over the next bridge instead. It had been raining for so long that the bridge – which dipped in the middle – had flooded, and I had to wade through water to get over the canal. It seeped in through the soles of my boots, and I could feel blisters form as my wet skin rubbed against the hardened leather.
The Furies: A Novel Page 23
