As I walked past Euston Station, still ten minutes away from King’s Cross, I looked at my watch. The last train to Edinburgh had left hours earlier. A grubby-looking hotel with a blue sign offered a good night’s sleep from £49. I checked in. There was no minibar, but there was a small supermarket across the street, which sold spirits. I drank half a bottle of whisky that night, cutting it with tap water in a plastic cup. I drank the other half on the train the next morning. At least this wasn’t unusual behaviour on the East Coast line.
By the time I reached Edinburgh, I was the kind of drunk where you believe you’ve circled right back round to sober again, because you feel so much less drunk than you did two hours ago. I was back in my flat in New Skinner’s Close before I realised I had no idea what to do now.
* * *
Lisa Meyer has poured two fresh glasses of water, and she is looking at me with her tiny frown. ‘You’re sure, Alex? You haven’t seen or heard from Mel since the day of Katarina’s death?’
She has framed her question differently, because she knows I’m not telling her everything. I raise my eyes to meet hers, slowly, like I’m still drunk all these months later.
‘I haven’t seen her, no. I didn’t know where I could find her, you see. I didn’t even know where she lived. And I couldn’t have found out at a weekend, without breaking into Robert’s office in the Unit.’
Lisa Meyer nods briskly, although locked doors and high walls would clearly be no obstruction for her. She sits on the chair opposite me, and flips through her notes till the key page realises it can’t hope to hide from her, and gives itself up.
‘She was arrested the previous night, anyway,’ she says. ‘The British Transport Police found her on the train at Newcastle.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘They continued to Edinburgh, obviously,’ she says, glancing down at her notes. ‘So her mother could attend the interview with her.’ She looks up at me, eyes gleaming under her swishy fringe. ‘So even if you’d known her address, Alex, there wouldn’t have been anyone there.’
I nod.
‘What I’m telling you,’ Lisa Meyer says, her reserves of patience ebbing, ‘is that there was nothing you could do by the time you got back to Scotland. There would have been nothing you could have done if you’d got back the night before. Melody Pearce was under arrest before you’d finished giving your statement at St John’s Wood police station.’ I nod again.
‘So perhaps it’s time you tell me about the letters,’ she says, and picks up her pen.
2
L,
I haven’t heard back from you. Did you reply? I don’t know how much stuff gets through to me in here. You know where I am, though? I said so, didn’t I? St Margaret’s, out at Newtongrange. Have you ever been out this far from the centre of Edinburgh? I bet you haven’t. Or maybe you once went to the Butterfly Farm, that’s near here. You’d like it, honestly. I mean, if you came to visit, you would. Who doesn’t like butterflies?
I don’t think you’d find it depressing. It’s a new building – refurbished last year. The staff like to pretend they had it done up specially for us. The kids who are here now, I mean. But it’s just coincidence. The girl who has the room next to mine was in a different centre last year. And she reckons this one is miles better. She said the old one was just full of broken stuff: broken kids surrounded by broken pool tables and broken speakers. This isn’t like that apart from the kids.
It’s not even that far for my mum to come and visit, and she does, every week. It was weird at first, seeing her here. I expected her to cry. But not continually, from the second I saw her to when she eventually left. You know when someone else cries so much that you think you have to cry too, so it doesn’t look weird? It was like that. Just one person crying, it’s lopsided.
You could get the bus out here, you know. It goes from round the corner from your flat, by Greggs, on the South Bridge. It wouldn’t take long: I asked one of the social workers here and she does that every day. She lives in Leith, so she has to get two buses here.
And I’ve spoken to Carly, and she’s coming to see me soon. This week, Carly said. She’s going to bunk off school and come, so her mum doesn’t find out. Her mum always hated me. She’d go mental if she knew Carly was coming. Totally mental. Did you know Carly had been transferred from Rankeillor? She’s at a normal school now, getting ready for her exams. Her mum pushed for that, obviously: she went to see their MSP and everything. But Carly’s still dating Jono, so her plan didn’t completely work.
I don’t even know if you’re still at Rankeillor. Are you? I sort of hope you aren’t, because I don’t like the thought of you being there without us. And I sort of hope you are, because otherwise I don’t know where you are at all. I bet you have left. Poor Robert.
My dad just came the one time. The weekend after I was referred here. He didn’t cry at all. He was really stroppy with the staff, though. Loads of raised eyebrows and may-I-asks. Like he was some fucking king, coming to inspect the place. I think he thought it would make him look like a better parent. Like, it can’t be my fault she went off the rails, look what a disciplinarian I am. It didn’t work. They all just thought he was a fucking idiot.
Louise – who’s my counsellor here – she says it’s quite a common thing they find. Parents worry they’ll be judged by the people who clean up after the mess their kids make. But their job isn’t to judge my parents. It isn’t to judge me, either. It’s just to help. That’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it? You were like that, too. You didn’t let us get away with stuff, but you didn’t hate us for trying either. Not even Jono. And not even me. At least, I hope not me.
So, I still don’t know about this lawyer guy. There were two of them the first time – an older guy and a younger one. The older one was a bit shiny. Too shiny in this place, no matter how new it is. Do you know what I mean? No-one here wears a suit. And the fabric was wrong – it reflected too much light. You get used to everything being less garish here – it’s all dull colours like you used to wear: jeans and tees and hoodies and stuff. I think it’s because it’s so brightly lit in here – fluorescent lights everywhere and white walls. You have to cancel that out a bit, or your eyes would go funny.
I wouldn’t see the lawyers the first time they came. I didn’t want to, and Des said I didn’t have to. I like Des. He’s one of the social workers. But then the younger lawyer came on his own, and with a message saying you’d sent him. So I wrote to you to see if that was true. It didn’t sound right. But why else would he say it, right? Louise says it’s OK for me to have trust issues (she talks like that), especially with strangers. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m here because I got in the car of someone I didn’t know, is it?
But I haven’t heard back from you yet. So I still don’t know if it’s true or not. And now I’m wondering if the letter even got to you. I hope this one does. I’ll send it care of Robert, because I’m sure he will find you.
D
‘The letters?’ Lisa Meyer prompts me.
‘She’s been writing since two weeks after she was arrested. Quite often,’ I say. ‘But she isn’t supposed to contact me, I don’t think. Is that true?’
Lisa Meyer does the closest thing to a frown that she can, given that she has decided never to incur a wrinkle. ‘I don’t see why not. Has her lawyer told her that?’
‘I think so. She started writing to me at Rankeillor, and Cynthia used to forward them to me. Since I’m…’ I don’t need to finish. Lisa Meyer knows that I’m not at Rankeillor any more. That I’m not even in Edinburgh. Robert’s retirement plan has suffered a major setback, though he and Jeff have never once mentioned it.
‘Do you have them with you?’ she asks. I nod, and get them out of my bag, a small bundle of letters to which I have never replied. Lisa Meyer takes them in her perfectly manicured hand. Her nails are a shiny putty colour, like shells. She skim-reads the first three letters.
‘She started writing to y
ou using your real names,’ she says, flipping back to double-check the first two. Then she changes to D and L – why is that?’
She changed the address, too,’ I reply. ‘She sends them to Robert at his home address now. I have no idea how she knows where he lives.’
Lisa Meyer says nothing, but simply waits for me to answer the question she originally asked.
‘She started writing to me openly, I think, because she wanted to, and it doesn’t often occur to her not to do what she wants. Then she became more secretive because she’s been told by her lawyers that she can’t be in touch with me.’
‘They’ve told her a lot of things,’ Lisa Meyer remarks. ‘They seem to have told her that you’ve hired them, for a start.’ She looks up. ‘Which I’m presuming is untrue.’
I’m blushing, even though I know that I’m not the one who’s been lying. ‘Yes, of course it is. I don’t know who hired them. Her mum, maybe? Her dad? And I have no idea why they told her it was me.’
‘Think about it,’ Lisa Meyer says. ‘Her lawyers were trying to implicate you. For that to work, they needed to know a lot more about you. And for that to happen, they needed to ask Melody about you. But she’s devoted to you. So they simply found a way round that.’
‘Is that even legal?’
She shrugs. ‘It’s certainly unethical. Why D and L?’
‘Teenagers always abbreviate names, don’t they?’
Lisa Meyer, a woman whose own parents probably call her by her full name and job title, looks uncertain.
‘Carly and Mel were close, and they had nicknames for each other. They used the last syllable of their names – Lee and Dee – because everyone else used the first syllables – Mel for Melody, and Carly is really Caroline, you see.’
Lisa Meyer is unconvinced.
‘They’re best friends, and they’re teenagers. They have secret nicknames,’ I say, hoping she will remember what it’s like to be sixteen.
She nods, slowly. ‘But L doesn’t stand for Lee here,’ she says.
‘No, it stands for Lex. She’s just using the same system on my name as she did on Carly’s.’
‘No-one else calls you Lex?’ Lisa Meyer asks. She looks deeply suspicious, as if I have suddenly revealed an alter ego, mid-costume-change in a phone booth.
‘No-one.’
‘It’s not a very sophisticated code,’ Lisa Meyer mutters, skimming back through the letters.
‘She just wants to believe that the letters will reach me. And she’s disguising her identity and mine because they’ve persuaded her that she shouldn’t be writing to me. But no, she probably won’t get a job at MI5.’
‘Brayford has taken a big risk. He must have known there was a strong chance she’d check. Have you written back?’ she asks.
‘No.’
Lisa Meyer tilts her head. She is testing the weight of my answer.
‘I think you might have to,’ she says. ‘I want to know who told Brayford that lying to his client is a reasonable course of action. It can’t be her mother, I don’t think. More likely to be the father. But if it is him, and he’s the one trying to use you to ameliorate his daughter’s position, I want to know for sure.’
‘Does it really matter?’
‘Information is always better than a lack of information,’ she says simply. ‘The more we know, the better prepared we will be. You need to write back. Use your real name. Tell her to reply via my office if you don’t want to give her your address.’
‘No, it’s fine. I don’t mind if she knows my address.’ The unsaid words hang in the air between us. What’s she going to do – come here and murder someone in front of me?
‘If you’re sure,’ Lisa Meyer says.
‘She’s just a child. She made a mistake – a terrible mistake, I know, but it was still a mistake. She’s not a homicidal maniac, she’s a sixteen-year-old girl.’
Lisa Meyer’s face is unreadable.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Write. Tell her you don’t know anything about her lawyers, and you certainly didn’t send them. Tell her she should try and find out who did, because they’re lying to her and they’re lying about you. And if you possibly can, do it before the final post today,’ she adds. ‘We’re on a deadline, Alex. The court date is only a few weeks away, and you need to bear in mind that knowledge is crucial. Not just for you. For Mel.’
Dear Alex,
I got your letter! I wish I could send you mail, but our computer time is all checked and stuff here. No phones or laptops or anything much. I don’t mind as much as I thought I would. If you’d asked me if I could go without the internet twenty-three hours a day, I’d have said no way. But it turns out that you just do things differently – now I’m writing letters instead. And it’s really exciting when the post comes in the afternoons. Well, it arrives in the mornings, but it has to be checked through before we get it. I don’t know why. It’s not like you’d be sending me a map of the building and its weak spots, is it?
I didn’t know you were living back down south again now. It was nice of Robert to forward my letters. I’m sorry you left Rankeillor. They must really miss you there. I bet they blame me, right? For you leaving? Do you blame me, too? I know that must be why you left. Because you were going to stay, weren’t you? You were going to stay on there permanently and now you’ve had to start a new life all over again. Or have you just gone back to your old life? Do you have another job? Have you seen your mum? Tell me everything. It’s boring here, so any news from outside is more exciting to me than it is to you.
I’m not bitching though, honestly. I like it here. Well, maybe not ‘like’. But it’s OK, is what I mean. I don’t prefer it to being at home or anything, but it is kind of easier being here. At first, you think everything’s decided for you: you have to be at this place at this time for this thing, which makes me feel a bit itchy. I don’t like being told what to do. But actually, the people who work here are really nice. So if you tell them that you don’t want to have counselling first thing in the morning, they try and change it so that you get it after lunch. They like us to feel like we have control over our lives. Or as you’d say, agency over our fates. Right?
So, that’s weird, about the lawyers. You didn’t send them, but they definitely said you had. I told the Centre head here that I wanted to see them again, and she passed the message on, and the young one came back. His name’s Adam. You said you’d met him – he’s pretty hot, isn’t he? I like the way his hair curls into his collar, and his eyes are almost green – did you notice that? Cute, anyway.
Plus he blushes when you ask him why his boss is a fucking liar. He goes all burbly, um, er, well, I can’t imagine how, I mean, well, er, yes. I told him point blank that he could either tell me the truth or fuck off out of my life so I could have some peace and quiet to read a fucking book. And then he saw I wasn’t kidding, and said it was my dad who was paying him, but that my dad had asked them to keep that hidden from me, ‘if at all possible’ (he put little air quotes round that like a total numpty), in case it ‘antagonised me further’.
How fucking bizarre is that? My dad hasn’t even visited me here beyond once, because I wouldn’t take his phone calls and I ignored his letters. And I don’t miss him, because I hardly ever saw him anyway, because we don’t even live in the same city. And then suddenly he’s all Jason fucking Bourne subterfuge. That’s the right word, isn’t it? Subterfuge. I like the sound of it, but actually it looks even better written down. I’ve looked it up: it comes from Latin. It means to escape secretly. You probably know that already, though, don’t you, Alex?
Anyway, my dad is clearly busy with his girl-bride, isn’t he? Isn’t it weird how the plays we were reading began to happen in real life? My mum hates him enough to be Clytemnestra, easily. So I suppose that makes me Electra, doesn’t it? I don’t mind that – it’s a pretty name.
Actually, I wonder if he is still planning their wedding, or if I’ve spoiled that for him too. Maybe she’s left him, because of
his scary awful daughter (that would be me). It would be hilarious if that had happened. Wouldn’t it? If he’d gone all mid-life-crisis-cliché and then she’d left him when she found out what kind of father he is. It must look really bad, having a daughter about to stand trial for murder. You couldn’t mention that on a first date.
But I’m definitely not going to see him again now I know about this whole lawyer thing. Why would they say you’d sent them? I asked Adam, but he was really vague – just muttered about how they wanted me to feel safe talking to them, and that obviously my mother hadn’t sent them so his boss had to think of something else. Really fucking dubious. He said they had a few questions about you, but I told him he’d have to fuck off until I’d spoken to you. He said, and I quote, ‘That was the very thing we were hoping to avoid, Miss Pearce.’ Like a fucking vicar would talk. When I asked him why he didn’t want me talking to you, he just blushed and burbled again.
Write back soon. Tell me how you are. What’s it like where you’re living? Is Reigate in London? Or nearby? Are you working in London? Tell me everything, but don’t spend ages replying, because I’d rather hear from you soon and have you miss things out than wait ages for a letter. Please, I mean.
Love, Mel
PS Adam tried calling me Mel, but I told him we weren’t friends, so he could call me Miss Pearce. You’d have been proud of me. I think. I hope.
x
3
I meet Lisa Meyer at Edinburgh Airport. I have flown in from Gatwick, and she’s come from City Airport. My plane arrives an hour before hers, so I wait in Arrivals, surrounded by presentation bottles of Glenmorangie and toy bears in tartan capes. I haven’t been in this airport for ages – I’d forgotten how small it is. It doesn’t seem possible that planes can fly from what appears to be nothing more than a tiny shopping mall, but they do. Lisa Meyer steps into the Arrivals hall with a silver travelling case hovering behind her. I wonder how much she had to pay for one which never snags its wheels on the uneven flooring or tips to one side.
The Furies: A Novel Page 24
