by cass green
I lean forward and hit pause.
Something about this exchange has given me a jolt. Something about it feels wrong. What is it?
I back up a little on the video, going too far.
‘Damn it.’
This time I successfully reach the moment just before Marina Goldman appears in Quinn’s sightline. When she is on camera for the first time, she appears to … what? Draw back a little from his touch? And what is it about her eyes …?
I rewind again and then pause that exact moment. The woman is a little blurred but her eyes are wary. No, more than wary.
A little scared?
I stare at this frozen image until my eyes begin to sting. I try to screenshot it, but it doesn’t work. Sam would know how.
I open another tab and type in ‘Marina Goldman, tv producer’.
She has a Wikipedia page.
‘Marina Goldman is an experienced television producer working in current affairs. Her job includes planning and producing live broadcasts, pre-recorded content and location shoots for the channel and the website. Marina is currently working for Channel 4 News.’
There is a picture of her. She looks plumper here than in that clip. Very pretty, with thick dark brown hair tied up and warm eyes, smoky with make-up. Looking back at the video clip, it’s odd, but she looks older there than in this, presumably, current photo.
I Google ‘Nick Quinn and Marina Goldman’ and find a picture from Hello! magazine of an event held at the Natural History Museum for a charity. They are smiling widely for the camera, Marina in an elegant black dress and her lips painted scarlet. Clearly a couple. I check the date – July 5th 2008. So, the year before that awards night then.
I really want to screenshot these images and print them out. I open yet another tab to see if I can Google how to do this …
… and then a bolt of clarity seems to pierce my intense, feverish state.
I see myself as if from above: a rumpled middle-aged woman, obsessively Googling a man in the middle of the night whose wife has been murdered. A highly respected journalist who hasn’t had a whiff of scandal attached to him in these celebrity-obsessed times.
And why? Because a young woman who has no real regard for the way things should be done, who held me hostage for Christ’s sake, thinks her word counts for more? It’s insane. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
If Ian saw this, he’d probably tell me to go straight to the doctor.
Maybe that night’s events are having a worse effect on me than I realize.
I turn off the computer and, shivering with exhaustion, force myself to climb the stairs to bed.
43
Lucas
He wishes they would just let him sleep.
It’s as though he has lived a lifetime in deficit.
Now, he can easily spend most of the day curled up on the bed in welcome oblivion. It feels like a kindness he doesn’t deserve, that he can sleep like this. But he doesn’t feel guilty enough to tell them to stop the daily dose of diazepam. Unlike his sister, he has never been much of a one for narcotics. His friends used to laugh at the rapid speed at which a few tokes of a joint would knock him out. He just has a low tolerance, that’s all. It’s proving to be a blessing now.
Lucas is on the top bunk and, apart from trying to ignore the frequent grunts and bed squeaks from his Russian roommate’s vigorous masturbation below, it is better than he might have expected. It’s a step-up from his first destination here anyway; a room with a barred plexiglass door designed for close monitoring of vulnerable prisoners. The constant eyes on him began to feel like insects burrowing into his skin.
He was interviewed by several people on arrival, who told him they were putting together some kind of ‘care plan’. It seemed to be because of what he had done on that road. He answered in monosyllables. Talking feels so exhausting.
And they needn’t worry. Lucas isn’t going to try and kill himself here. At least, not yet.
He knows he doesn’t have the guts to do what a bloke did the other day on his corridor; attempted to hang himself with a pair of trousers tied to the top bunk.
He’d heard the frantic shouting then seen three prison officers racing down the corridor.
Lucas has exchanged no more than twenty words with the Russian.
It suits him just fine.
He can go to a place in his mind where all that is muted; no more than a vague background buzzing. He can go to Before. To when there was still time.
The first time they had spoken, the rain started just as Lucas had finished mulching the new flower beds. Miserable with the fuggy feeling inside his waterproofs and the clammy sweat clinging to his back, Lucas was thinking about calling it a day when he became aware of a rhythmic banging sound. He turned to see Alice at the French windows in the kitchen, making the gesture of a cup of tea with her hands.
He’d shaken his head with a small smile and then she had mimed shivering, her arms around herself, her eyes raised in mock horror at the sky, which had made him laugh. So, hating that he was so wet and that he could smell his own heat rising up from inside his damp clothes, he had entered the house for the first time.
‘I don’t think we’ve ever spoken properly, have we?’ said Alice as he stood awkwardly at the windows. He knew that Quinn was away because the car wasn’t out in the driveway. But he still felt a thrill of fear as he stood there.
‘Come in, come in!’ Alice insisted now.
She stood so beautifully, her spine perfectly straight and her shoulders back. Lucas would have known she was a dancer from her posture alone.
She didn’t seem to notice, or mind, that he was being weird, that he couldn’t find the words he wanted to say.
‘Tea? Coffee?’ she said, and this time her bright smile slipped a little because he still hadn’t said a word.
‘Tea, if that’s OK,’ he said and she smiled.
‘Man after my own heart.’ She filled a kettle at the sink and then placed it on the cooker before turning and gesturing that he should sit.
‘Take off those wet things and I’ll get you a towel.’
Hesitating for a moment, Lucas pulled off his wet boots, fretting that his soggy socks smelled, and shucked off his waterproof coat, which he laid neatly over the boots and then walked to the table, conscious of the damp footprints he left in his wake on the stone floor.
‘What a filthy day,’ said Alice with a little shiver, as she dropped teabags into a red teapot and found milk from the fridge. Her dark hair was piled onto the top of her head in a bun, with tendrils of hair falling around her face. She wore dark grey workout trousers that hugged her narrow hips, and a soft pink cardigan that crossed at the front and tied at the back of her waist. Her feet were in sheepskin slippers that made a shh-shh sound as she walked around the tiled floor.
‘I’m surprised you came today,’ she continued. ‘Is there anything that urgent that needs doing?’
Lucas felt a flare of panic then. She knew, he thought. She knew he had been watching her. He had to say something, something that would stop him from coming across as a freak, but just as he opened his mouth, which felt stiff and underused, she spoke again.
‘Mind you, I’ve seen Bob out there in all weathers. Suppose that’s the thing with gardens, isn’t it? They need a lot of care?’
‘Well,’ he said, finding his voice at last, ‘composting those new beds is much easier on a damp day like this.’
She grinned and murmured, ‘Damp?’
Lucas found that he laughed, easily. ‘Yeah, maybe “damp” doesn’t quite cover it,’ he said. ‘But you don’t want to be digging in when the ground is hard.’
Alice seemed to consider this and then she did a little side-to-side thing with her head that would soon become familiar.
‘I guess that makes sense,’ she said with a grin. ‘I swear that if I was in charge I’d kill the lot. I even managed to kill a cactus once, and aren’t they supposed to be indestructible? It feels like there�
��s some magic formula I just don’t understand with plants.’
Lucas laughed and it felt good. ‘People always worry about that,’ he said, ‘but really it is more about knowing the right environment for things to grow. The right soil and so on.’
He accepted the mug of tea she handed him, which was the colour of beechwood. He looked up to see Alice making an apologetic face.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I should have asked how you take it. Not everyone likes their tea so strong you could stand your spoon up.’
‘It’s perfect,’ said Lucas with a smile.
After they had both sipped their tea, he felt emboldened to say, ‘You make tea just right. And I’m sure you’re not that bad with plants really.’
Alice made a face. She did this a lot, pulling her pretty features into mock horror, or exaggerated surprise. It was as though she felt her face to be uninteresting as it was, when it was anything but.
‘Well, let’s hope I get a bit better at looking after things,’ she said, and laid her hand on her belly.
Lucas paused with his mug halfway to his lips, slow to pick up her meaning. Then, when he understood, the shock made his face flood with heat. Alice was looking down at her belly now as she took a surprisingly loud slurp of her tea.
Lucas forced the required words out of his mouth.
‘When is the baby due?’ he said. ‘Sorry, I hadn’t—’
Alice waved a hand airily. ‘Oh please, no one seems able to see it, although I feel as though I’m enormous. It’s due in three months.’
Lucas stared at where she was rubbing her stomach. Now he looked closely, he could see the slight curve there. But it was barely noticeable unless pointed out.
She caught his gaze and he gave what he hoped was an apologetic smile.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘It’s because I’m a dancer, or so I’m told. The old stomach muscles are unwilling to go against years of training to behave a certain way. The doctors have assured me there will be room for the little fella in there.’
‘It’s a boy then?’ said Lucas, his smile plastered onto his face in a way that felt so unnatural, he was sure it was obvious.
‘Yeah, I wanted it to be a surprise but Nick,’ she paused, ‘he’s my husband, he really wanted to know. So …’ she shrugged and looked down at her cup, before taking another drink of her tea. The rest of the sentence was left to hang and an awkward silence fell.
Of course, he did, thought Lucas. It’s all about control, with him.
His heart was banging almost painfully in his ribcage now. Surely, she could hear it? He flailed about in his mind for something socially acceptable to say, but instead blurted out something entirely different.
‘I bet he’s excited,’ he said. ‘Your husband. About the baby.’
Alice looked up and beamed but her eyes were clouded with something now.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It will be his first too.’
‘He hasn’t had kids before then?’ says Lucas, forcing tea into his mouth to hide his oddness.
‘No,’ said Alice. ‘Think his ex-wife did but, well, he won’t talk about that,’ she said. ‘Said it was a part of his life that was difficult. Wants us to make a fresh start.’
Then she let out a small laugh. ‘Bloody hell, get me, opening up like this! I think you must have that sort of face, which makes people confide in you.’
‘That’s alright,’ said Lucas. ‘I don’t mind at all.’ He looked outside and saw that a thin band of blue was splitting the bruised clouds. ‘Clearing up out there. Better get back to it.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said.
‘I don’t even know your name!’ said Alice with a laugh.
He hesitated. ‘It’s Luke,’ he said. ‘My name’s Luke.’
44
Angel
Leon has started to complain about Angel lying around watching telly all day, like she’s some sort of housewife who’s going to cook his tea.
Still, she thinks, maybe he has got a point. She isn’t even sure she had a shower yesterday.
Angel swings her legs around from the sofa and picks up her cigarettes from the coffee table. Leon had swept up the wine bottle, glasses and pizza boxes this morning, grumbling all the while. But there is still a sticky red circle where the bottle rested.
Her head throbs and her mouth tastes foul. She lights up a cigarette and leans back again.
For the millionth time, she tries to picture what is happening to Lucas right now. The fact that she can’t speak to him boils painfully inside her.
Every cliché she has ever known about prison keeps playing endlessly around her head. Her unhelpful imagination is very good, it transpires, at presenting her with a whole series of horrific images: Lucas curled, bleeding and naked on the dirty floor of the showers; Lucas being stabbed in the dinner queue; Lucas being forced to suck off some bald, tattooed ape …
This cigarette tastes disgusting. She jabs it out into the ashtray, then rises quickly from the sofa.
She’s going to have to do something about this … situation. She can’t pretend it isn’t happening any more. At some point Leon, thick as he may be, is going to wonder why she nearly jumps through the ceiling if he touches her breasts, or why she can only face one drink. Why she is so tired. She tells him it’s the shock of everything, still catching up with her, and he believes her. So far. At least she hasn’t been throwing up. You would think everyone did this, from watching telly. It’s different to that other time, when she was a teenager and took that stuff someone gave her in a club. That didn’t have time to root in. She’d had no symptoms at all then.
She gets up from the sofa now and goes to the bathroom. Stripping off her T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, she stands in her knickers and looks at the full-length mirror.
Her nipples look huge; darker than usual too. Her stomach is still flat though and she stands to the side, trying to imagine what it would look like, rounded and full, her hand on her belly.
She had been so close to telling Nina yesterday. It may have made a difference to her decision, perhaps, had she known. But there is something else too; deep inside her, Angel had just wanted to tell her for … what, advice? Sympathy? A little motherly tenderness? Nina seems to find it effortless to be warm and kind. As if there is nothing difficult about it at all. Angel marvels at this.
Fuck this. She can’t sit around stewing in fear and resentment.
She gets into the shower and lets the hot water pound on her head and down her face, where it mixes with the sudden tears. This is where she does her crying, largely. Always has been.
This time she can’t seem to stop, though, and her whole body shudders with the spasms of grief. It’s only now, belatedly, that the truth is properly sinking in; Quinn has won, again. Lucas is broken. Forever? He never could fight back.
She might actually go to prison.
Prison.
For all her supposed rebellions – taking every drug going, generally putting two fingers up to authority all her life – she’d never been arrested before. In the back of that police car … she’d never felt smaller or more alone in all her life.
Angel leans against the wall with both hands and bows her head, letting the water run over her face and off her chin. She stands there for so long that the water starts to run cool, then cold, as the hot water tank empties. This is such a shithole, she thinks. Can’t even get a decent shower.
When she dries herself, shivering a little, she can feel sparks of her ever-simmering anger starting to return. She grasps onto them; anger is better than this pathetic crying.
She’s getting dressed in the depressing murky light of the bedroom when it comes to her.
She’s already in terrible trouble. How much worse can it get, really? Nina will probably tell the cops about her attempts to, what is it called, pervert the course of justice?
Angel makes a face at no one and then finds a pad of writing paper and a pen.
Luckily, she still h
as a note of the address in her phone from the night it all happened and Lucas needed help finding his way.
It’s nice to actually write something properly, rather than dashing off a vague bit of communication with two thumbs.
Angel, much to certain people’s surprise, has nice handwriting and she takes pleasure in the process of sweeping pen on paper as she writes.
You probably think you will get away with this, as you get away with everything else. And yes, maybe my brother will be too broken to fight back.
But I am not broken.
I won’t go to prison for very long. And it will be worth it to have my time in court. I think the press are going to be all over this case, aren’t they? I’m looking forward to telling the world about what a monster you are. Remember all those times Marianne went to the doctor about walking into doors and falling down stairs? People might start to wonder if they look into that a little deeper. Not to mention the bruises and bumps that Lucas and me always had (clumsy old us). Plenty of mums at our old school who might have wondered too.
I bet other women will come forward if this becomes news.
And even if there is no proof of your crimes, it might just put off all those publishers and telly people from featuring your pig-arrogant face.
You wouldn’t be the first national figure to be shown up for what he really is to the British public. It’s quite the trend, news-wise!
I hope you rot in hell, you piece of shit. See you in court.
Angel feels calmer than she can remember for some time as she goes to find an envelope. Hard to imagine that he will really want to show this to the police.
Next, she can get her job at Gioli’s back for the time being. It will stop her sitting around and obsessing about the things she can’t fix. Stop her picturing her broken brother and worrying about what to do about this thing burrowing deep inside her.
45
Nina
I sleep more heavily than I can remember for ages. When I emerge from the thick, slow mass of it, I see it’s after two pm.
