Summer Lies Bleeding

by Nuala Casey

  How many other women are there? How many young girls has he sweet-talked, put his arm around and led off into pubs and gardens and back streets? There is more to it; more to all of it than what was described in court; it was too obvious: young girl lost in London gets killed by mad junkie. No, there was a reason she was wandering like that on Oxford Street, she was a sensible girl, twenty-four years of age, not a kid, and if she wanted to get to King’s Cross, she would have been on the tube hours before that. She had left the junkie’s house at nine in the evening; why the hell would she have wandered round Soho until three in the morning? It just doesn’t make sense; and Bailey’s line about her climbing into the garden square to check if he was all right, well that’s just bonkers. She barely knew him.

  No, it is clear what happened, and after seeing Bailey with that woman just now, Mark is even more sure that something much darker went on in that garden square: he can see it now, see Bailey’s face, those cowardly eyes, he sees his hands grasping Zoe, forcing himself on her, scaring her so much that she went running off into the night, towards her death. Zoe didn’t climb into that square, he enticed her into it. He wasn’t her friend, he was just another chancer, another Martin Harris albeit in a more expensive suit. Mark knew the moment he walked into the courtroom; he couldn’t look at him and his mother, he just stared straight ahead, smiling at the judge, reciting his lines like a good little public schoolboy.

  He looks down onto the street; it’s getting busier now. Groups of drinkers have congregated outside the pub and he can hear a faint drumming noise coming from the restaurant, a hypnotic sound that carries up the street, bringing a stream of people in its wake. He watches as the large group of men and women stop outside the restaurant, waiting to be admitted. The men wear well-cut suits with pastel-coloured shirts and soft, pale loafers; the women, trouser suits with kitten-heeled shoes, exposing a sliver of tanned flesh; all eyes hidden by aviator sunglasses that glitter like tiny space probes when the light hits them. They look out of place, wrong somehow, their sleek, sharp angles at odds with the rickety curves and decaying decadence of the building.

  He tries to imagine Zoe walking down this street, late at night, towards Soho Square. His sensible sister, who used to take her car everywhere, who used to ring her mother if she was going to be late home from work; who shaded her eyes if a scary scene came on the television. He tries to imagine her now, weaving her way through this crowd of bankers, conspicuous in her skimpy, clubbing clothes, avoiding eye contact, trying to block out their disapproving stares, the whispers, the nudges. Zoe was not part of this world, she was not part of Bailey’s world, and yet he claimed she had helped him see sense, she had sat and talked him through the death of his girlfriend. How can that be when they spoke a different language, and Middlesbrough is a different language to the one spoken by Seb and his posh mates down there on the street; they are as alien to each other as German and Inuit. There is more chance of him breaking bread with the jabbering freaks at the Waterloo Road Mosque than there would be of Zoe pouring her heart out to someone like Seb.

  And yet, what does he know about her? What did he ever know apart from some vague, abstract notion, what did he really know of her beyond the familial role of ‘little sister’? They had never really been close, though he would always leap to her defence if he saw anyone bothering her when they were out clubbing with their respective mates. He knew men looked at her, knew that she was considered an attractive girl, but as to her personality, well he had never really got much further than surface talk. When Zoe opened up, it was to their mam, they were as close as sisters, sharing their worries and dreams and secrets, while Mark had his mates, the pub, the Ferensby Estate and then later, Lisa and Rachel. The only time they had really disagreed was when that Asian lad got stabbed outside the club and Zoe had challenged him; asked him outright if he and his mates had anything to do with it. And when he had told her his opinion of that lad and his ilk, that they should all be shipped back off to Fuckistan or wherever they came from; that they were the kind of people his father would be fighting had he been a soldier today; that they were terrorists and haters who wouldn’t think twice about planting a bomb next to a baby’s buggy; she had gone ballistic, called him a small-minded sod, a racist. Two days later she left for London and when he had joined Lisa and his mother to wave her off as she left for the bus station, Zoe still wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  Well now he can make up for that, he can be the person his father wanted him to be and if he has to go down fighting then so be it. As more people gather on the street below, Mark reaches across to the bed, picks up his rucksack and takes out a small pad of paper and a pen. He flips the pad open but before he has a chance to write, there is a knock on the door.

  He closes the pad and gets up. He isn’t worried. This is not the hostel; you get a better standard of service in hotels like this. It’s probably the concierge with a tray of tea. But as he opens the door and sees a flash of bare skin, his mouth goes dry.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  27

  Seb turns from the bar, a glass in each hand, and makes his way to the small table where Stella is sitting, her face half in shadow. The pub is filling up, as it always does at this time of day, as it did the evening he last saw Stella; the last time he set foot in this place.

  He puts a glass of sparkling water in front of Stella then sits down on the low stool opposite her and takes a sip of his pint of orange squash, but his mouth feels as dry as sandpaper and the juice tastes like metal. Panic and fear always make things taste like that, he thinks, as he puts the glass down on the table.

  ‘Keeping a clear head for tonight?’ asks Stella, nodding towards his glass.

  ‘No,’ he says, realising that there is so much she doesn’t know, a whole lifetime, it seems, to catch up on. But there is no time for that, not now, not with what is happening. ‘I don’t drink anymore. Haven’t touched a drop in seven years,’ he says.

  He scratches his neck and sees Stella looking. He can imagine what he must look like, trussed up in this itchy suit; the skin round his shirt collar all pink and rashy. Yet he doesn’t care about that, he just needs to be around someone calm, someone who will tell him everything is going to be okay. When he saw Stella on the street, it was like she had been sent for precisely that reason; a constant in a day of flux.

  ‘Oh, right,’ she says, and Seb remembers the last time they met. He had swayed on his chair, raised his glass to her and Ade, her boyfriend, had thought he was … well did it really matter what Ade thought? The name sounds like a relic now, a whisper from another age. He would not recognise his old self now; that troubled young man sitting by the bar, drinking himself to death alongside a man named Ade.

  ‘Still, I don’t blame you,’ says Stella, taking a sip of her water. ‘I’ve had the monster of all hangovers today. I drank way too much champagne last night and … oh I’m sorry I shouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Oh, please, don’t be silly,’ says Seb. ‘If I was that sensitive around booze, I couldn’t function next door.’ He lifts his glass but his hands are shaking so violently he has to put it down.

  ‘Seb, are you okay?’

  He looks at her and smiles, his eyes meet hers for a microsecond then he looks away. He can feel an old sorrow rising up from his gut; it’s like the last seven years haven’t happened and he is here with this girl-woman, the one who always made him feel sad, sitting in the pub falling to pieces. He can feel the liquid bubbling to the surface and he tries to blink it away but as he does, a tear escapes and runs down his cheek in a thin rivulet.

  ‘Seb, what is it?’ She shifts her stool towards him and puts her hand on his.

  He looks at her and closes his eyes, wanting to pause the moment; to stop whatever he is about to say before it can come out of his mouth. The inertia seems to last an age but can only be a couple of seconds, then he opens his eyes and looks straight ahead as he talks. Stella’s hand remains tightly clasped on his.
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  ‘That night, the last time we met, I was drunk, I was so drunk I could barely see, barely speak. I don’t think I ever told you, but there was a woman, a woman I loved, had been with for two years and … and she died.’

  ‘When was this?’ Stella looks at him and her gaze is so intense he doesn’t think he can go on so he directs his words to the grimy table top. An inanimate object cannot judge.

  ‘December 2004. A couple of months before I met you, before I started working at Honey Vision. Anyway, this woman, Sophie her name was, well she looked very much like you, so much so that when I first met you I thought I was going mad, thought I was seeing things.’

  He looks up and Stella nods, and he notices the shadow of a frown pass across her face. Had she thought something could have happened between them? No, of course not. She is with a woman; she had been with a woman, the same woman, that night. Yet he can’t help feel that she seems disappointed somehow. He looks at her now: she is still beautiful, but it is a borrowed beauty. To him she will always be a mirror image of his dead love, and though he may have entertained amorous thoughts back then, they were just that, thoughts, abstract ‘what ifs’. And even though she is sitting here in front of him, flesh and blood, talking and listening, it still feels like she is a figment of his imagination. And when she touched him to offer comfort, her hands were cold.

  ‘It was the best and the worst year of my life, 2005,’ he continues. He looks up at her and smiles and suddenly it feels like they are looking at each other for the first time, without barriers. ‘That night, when I saw you in here, I just wanted to end it. I went from bar to bar, drinking myself into oblivion, then I stumbled into Soho Square Gardens and collapsed on a bench.’

  Stella nods her head but she doesn’t look up at him.

  ‘When I woke up, there was this girl,’ he says.

  Stella raises her eyebrow. It’s a momentary reflex but it seems like a private thought, a judgement has been allowed to slip through her composure and Seb sees it.

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t like that. It was a girl from the office, poor thing, she’d been messed about by Becky and she was trying to get home to Middlesbrough — ’

  ‘Zoe,’ says Stella, so softly, Seb has to bend his head to hear.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘How did you…?’

  ‘I bumped into her that night as well,’ she says, twisting the damp cardboard coaster between her finger and thumb. ‘In here, in the ladies loos upstairs. I’ve never forgotten it. Paula and I had argued, she had stormed off and I had locked myself away in the loo. I was scared I’d bump into Ade and have to explain why I hadn’t gone to that party.’

  Seb nods, remembering Ade’s fury as he marched into the pub that night, blustering about lost record deals and Stella messing up his chances of stardom. Christ it seems like a lifetime ago now, all that upset over someone not going to a party. It seems crazy now in the light of what he is facing.

  ‘I was standing by the sink when she came in,’ Stella continues. ‘She’d been crying and her face was covered in snot and mascara. I lent her my wet wipes and we got talking. She had grown up a few miles from me. If I’m honest she unsettled me; reminded me of the girls I used to avoid at school.’

  He sees Zoe; her face lit by the streetlights of Soho Square; her northern voice soft and comforting as he sat offloading his sorrow onto her.

  ‘She sat with me on the bench and she listened to me talk about Sophie,’ he says, choosing not to acknowledge Stella’s comment about the girls at school. ‘I talked and I talked and she made me feel better then I said goodbye and I headed back to the office to finish a painting of Sophie that I had started the day of her funeral. Zoe gave me the strength to finish it; I worked through the night and I got it done …’

  ‘So it all turned out well in the end,’ says Stella.

  Seb looks up at her. She has no idea. How can she not know about all this; this huge thing that has dominated his life; those horrific details that haunt his dreams and make him triple lock his door at night.

  ‘She was murdered that night, Stella.’

  The sentence hangs in the air like cigarette smoke, waiting for someone to speak and blow it away with the weight of their words.

  But Stella cannot speak, he can see that. Her eyes glaze and he recognises the confusion. He can see her mind rushing images through like an express train, so fast, it is impossible to settle on any one scene. Like him, she will try to grab hold of one of them but they will fall away like the images on a shaken kaleidoscope.

  ‘And I was the last person to see her alive.’ Seb’s voice finally cuts into the silence and he looks up, letting the tears fall, allowing his hands to shake, showing her that this is not about grief, this is fear, raw, unbridled fear. He sees it register in her eyes as he leans forward in his chair and grabs her hands.

  ‘Stella, you have to help me,’ he says, his voice suddenly louder. ‘Christ, there’s so little time. I have to be at the restaurant, I should be there now, Yas will be going ballistic, we had a big fight and I’m telling you all this back to front. You look confused … I’d be confused …’

  ‘Seb, slow down,’ she says loosening the tight grip of his hands. ‘Tell me what you’re scared of. What’s happened?’

  ‘Zoe was murdered by a junkie … it’s a long story … I haven’t got time to tell you the ins and outs of it all. But anyway, as I was the last person to see her alive, I was called to give evidence at the trial.’

  Stella nods her head slowly, like she is trying to pace him, to calm him with her body language.

  ‘The courtroom was packed, the details of her murder were horrific, her mother and brother were there … they watched me as I gave my account. Well, her mother didn’t, it was the brother, he wouldn’t take his eyes off me. It was like he didn’t believe me, as though it was me in the dock, standing accused of her murder.’ He stops and takes a long glug of his drink and he feels the muscles in his neck contract as the liquid goes down his throat. When he finishes he goes to put the glass down, but his hands are shaking so badly, Stella has to grab it before it falls to the floor.

  ‘He is here,’ says Seb, as Stella moves the glass from his reach. ‘He came to the restaurant this morning and said, more or less, that he thought I was responsible for Zoe’s death and that he was going to get his revenge.’

  ‘What? That’s crazy …’

  ‘He knows everything about me Stella. It’s like he’s been following me, all these years since the trial, like he’s been biding his time, waiting for the right moment to pounce.’

  ‘Seb, are you sure about this? I mean, maybe what with the stress of the opening night and everything, maybe you’re reading too much into it.’

  ‘He mentioned my daughter, Cosima,’ says Seb, as another tear escapes and drops onto the table spreading across the surface like a stain ‘He said he had nothing to lose, but that I had a beautiful daughter. It was his tone, Stella, he was definitely implying something … though he may not have come right out and said it.’

  ‘Well then you should call the police,’ says Stella, firmly. ‘If you think this man is threatening your daughter then you have to report it – immediately.’

  ‘And what if I’m wrong? What if I’m just being paranoid, then I end up ruining Yasmine’s big night, the biggest of her life, the thing she has worked towards for twenty years.’

  He wants her to tell him to err on the side of caution, to tell him what he already knows; that his child’s life is immeasurably more important than a restaurant; that he should be telling all this to his wife, not to her, but he knows that all of that is too little, too late. It is six now, the doors will be opening, the guests will be on their way and Yasmine will be elbow deep in harissa sauce and adrenalin.

  ‘Where is Cosima now?’

  The name feels strange coming from her mouth. He imagines her referring to her own little girl, taking her hand and leading her away from danger. He feels secure, for just a moment.

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nbsp; ‘She’s getting here for six-thirty,’ he says, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Her granny, Yasmine’s mother, is bringing her. But that’s what I’m worried about – Maggie will have a drink, and she’s lovely and everything, but she lets Cosima do what she likes, she won’t have her eye on her all the time. And I’ll be running round like a blue-arsed fly dealing with the press and what have you …’

  ‘What does she look like?’ asks Stella.

  ‘Who, Cosima?’

  Stella nods her head and smiles.

  ‘She’s absolutely beautiful,’ says Seb, as tears fill his eyes once more. ‘She’s got dark-blonde curly hair and deep-brown eyes and she knows everything there is to know about animals …’ His face collapses then and he puts his hands over his eyes and starts to sob.

  Stella puts her hand on his and takes it from his face so she can see his eyes. ‘Seb, listen to me. I will look after Cosima. Now I know what she looks like. I will stand by the door and look out for her arriving and then, I promise you, I will look after her. After all, you always looked out for me.’

  ‘Stella,’ he begins, then stops, the words too heavy to come out. ‘Thank you,’ he whispers. ‘Thank you for doing this.’

  ‘It will be a pleasure,’ says Stella, standing up from the table. ‘Come on, we’d better get there, eh?’

  Seb nods as he stands up. ‘Oh, and … she’s wearing a green dress, you won’t miss her,’ he says, as he picks up his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Stella, you will make sure you’re with her … all the time won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Seb,’ says Stella as they walk towards the door. ‘I won’t let her out of my sight.’

  *

  Mark stands in the centre of the room, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Liv, you’re going to have to get out of here. Now.’