Hydra

by Matt Wesolowski

  Another blunt nib, another frayed end. More frustration. It feels like every lead I follow ends up with faded footprints in falling snow – just enough intrigue to keep me grasping before being obscured. The feeling that I am close to the resolution of this mystery comes and goes; it swims around my feet, a silent, hulking shape in dark waters, occasionally brushing my skin, sometimes diving deeper. Chasing this leviathan, I never know when or if it will end.

  Then there’s the threats. I take my privacy seriously. I am in the public eye to some extent and my attitude towards Six Stories is that the podcast is about the crimes, the victims, the people involved. Not me. My role is the facilitator. I have nothing that can be taken from me personally. And I owe no one anything – not in terms of Six Stories, anyway.

  Yet these sustained and relentless text messages are still bothering me. How do they have my number? What have I done to provoke this? It makes me think of Mr Marsh.

  It is true that Arla Macleod agreed to speak to me rather than the press, which has clearly not gone down well. Arla’s sentence for what she did to her family is as divisive as the woman herself, so perhaps by agreeing to speak to me, she has made some people think I’m guilty by association. What I think personally matters very little on Six Stories. I always try to present each case I cover in a balanced and fair manner. So for me to suddenly become the target of this unparalleled aggression online is unjustified, and very unpleasant.

  There are parts of me that want this to be over, to give in and say this was an open-and-shut case: a woman with mental-health issues killed her family in a state of psychosis. But then I think of the ripples that Arla Macleod has made; how who she is and what she’s done affects those who are still here. Long after Arla’s hammer blows subsided, the echoes still reverberate.

  I realise that I too have become part of these ripples, and that maybe I am perpetuating this resonance, intensifying this echo. But for that do I deserve the abuse, the threats?

  Perhaps there are those who think that somehow I am giving Arla a platform. That because of what she did she doesn’t deserve this. To that I would say that I am only interested in how Arla Macleod became the way she did – in what triggered the psychosis that led to the events of the 21st of November 2014.

  In the spirit of which, let’s return to Anthony Walsh and his story.

  —Can you remember the first time you met Arla Macleod?

  —Actually, no, not really. That’s kind of blurry.

  —Oh. Really?

  —Yeah, sorry. I can, however tell you about the first time I saw Alice, though. Her sister.

  It is in this moment that I realise something – a spark of light when all seemed to have been dull. My phone is now mostly on silent and I have blocked several numbers as well as notifications from anonymous social-media accounts that pop up quicker than I can stop them. The cons of doing this were starting to outweigh the pros – that was until now, the moment when something makes sense to me, right here in this interview. Anthony’s face changes, colour rises in his cheeks and his voice becomes wistful.

  —It wasn’t long after the business on the beach with Kyle and Jack and Greg – in fact it was the next morning. After they’d humiliated me the night before, I woke up with this feeling I’d never had in my life. I remember it so well. It was this black feeling, this heaviness that sort of hung from my soul. I know it sounds rather overdramatic, but it’s true. I remember spending the day with my parents, just me and them, and it was so weird because I felt like a shadow. I felt like everything I was had just been emptied out of me, I was nothing but a puddle evaporated by the sun.

  I was so scared of seeing them – Kyle and the others. I was so worried I’d bump into them in the hotel and they’d laugh at me. I was scared that I’d just break down, just weep. I remember packing that stupid ‘Empty’ T-shirt right down into the bottom of my bag, along with the beanie hat, and begging my mum to take me shopping for some other clothes. Everything I had just looked terrible, just stupid. I couldn’t believe I’d dressed like I did – ‘Empty’ on the front of a fat kid’s T-shirt – I mean, come on…

  They had destroyed me. They’d skinned me alive and shone a bright light into me, forced me to see everything I was and realise how terrible it was. And they didn’t care.

  ‘I told Anna that Empty liked her, and you know what she did? … She ran!’

  Of course she fucking ran.

  —You met Alice Macleod that day?

  —I did. The sun was beating down. It was almost subtropical outside, and I was in my jeans and one of my stupid band T-shirts, my stupid clothes. I felt so fat and disgusting, I thought the whole place would start laughing at me if I went outside. Mum and Dad were starting to get worried, I could tell. I was saying I had a headache but I had to come out sooner or later. I couldn’t ruin this holiday that they’d worked hard and paid for. I couldn’t mess this up as well.

  They were both suggesting some swimming thing in the hotel pool. Inflatables or some such. I knew for a fact Kyle and the others would be there. They were always in the pool – ‘scouting out the talent’ was what they called it. I joined them a couple of times and it made me feel sick. Sick and embarrassed with the things they said about the girls in the hotel.

  Of course I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened, so I just said I was feeling a bit sick and that I would go back to my room. I remember just wandering about instead, walking up and down the stairs, as if that would somehow make me lose weight. In a day.

  I eventually ended up on the basement floor. I didn’t even know there was anything down there except the car park until I found this little room, this alcove where there were a couple of gambling machines and this girl just stood there all by herself.

  I remember this sort of rush running through me like electricity – so powerful that all the humiliation from before was momentarily relegated to the back of my brain. I was simply blown away.

  —This girl was Alice Macleod, right?

  —It was, but I didn’t know that yet. The other thing was, I thought she was way older than me. She was only fourteen I think but she looked at least twenty! She was so … developed. Ugh, this is all sounding so bad isn’t it?

  —Maybe if you were an adult, but you weren’t. Not back then. It’s important to remember that.

  —You’re right, of course. Yeah. She was perfect. She wasn’t glamorous like the girls we were chasing all those other nights – make-up and revealing clothes and stuff. Alice’s beauty was all natural. She was the only person to make me feel that rush. I’ve never felt it since. I don’t want to say it was love. I just remember my own voice in my head, like a whisper … Who on earth is that?

  —Did you speak to her?

  —Somehow! Despite everything that had happened to me on that holiday so far, somehow my lips formed words and I said something. I have no idea what it was. I had nothing to lose you see. I felt so repulsive, so terrible, I’d lost all rhyme or reason. I just figured that nothing else could hurt me now. I was numb.

  I don’t remember my opening line at all. I was probably red and sweaty, after all those stairs. I remember she talked back – she spoke to me without laughing, without poking fun. I remember she seemed just so innocent, so fragile. I’d found this little lost creature, this beautiful thing, this rare flower that no one else had discovered … and … and I just wanted her for my own.

  That sounds terrible as well, doesn’t it? It sounds so wrong. But it wasn’t like that – it wasn’t sexual at all. I think back then I thought it was love. I think I fell in love with her on the spot.

  I have to say a pang of empathy echoes from somewhere inside me when Anthony says this. He looks beyond the screen, lost in his memories. I feel sorry for the young, naive Anthony, still reeling from what happened to him at the mercy of Kyle and Jack and Greg.

  —There’s a saying isn’t there? ‘Fool me twice, shame on me.’ I should have learned; I should have been more guarded, but I just wasn’
t like that and Alice completely had me in her thrall from the first moment I laid eyes on her.

  —So the two of you struck up a friendship? I imagine that couldn’t have been easy.

  —We were both shy, so it was such a task, a chore, to get a chat going with her. But her shyness was another thing that enthralled me. I couldn’t understand it; someone like her, shy? Every time we met, we would almost circle each other, like cats, but once we got talking it was great. I felt like I was spilling open, releasing all this tension. I told her all about my anxiety and all the problems I’d had before the holiday. She was an amazing listener. I always felt so at ease with her.

  —Did the two of you ever go anywhere together, like you had with Kyle and the boys?

  —We stayed down there in that room – always down there! Alice would go above ground to do activities and swim and stuff, with her family. I would just hang about down there and wait for her to come back. How pathetic is that?

  —Did Alice ever confide in you about herself?

  —A bit. I think I probably just blathered on, but from what I gathered about Alice, things weren’t easy at home. Her parents were strict, religious; her sister was always in and out of some sort of crisis, all the attention focused on her, that sort of thing. Alice felt like Arla was ruining her life, her future career, everything. Whenever they tried to get Arla involved in any of Alice’s interests, Arla would spoil it.

  It’s interesting that Alice Macleod appeared to tow the line with her parents yet here she is, hanging about in the games room, just like her sister. I wonder if Alice in some way wished she could rebel like Arla did.

  —Did you ever see the Macleod sisters with their family?

  —Yeah, once. It was one of those entertainment nights in the hotel – you know when they put on a show? A load of staff in gold waistcoats sing songs from the shows and the adults get drunk. It seemed like everyone who was staying in the hotel was down there that night. I didn’t even look out for Kyle and the rest of them. I didn’t dare. I do remember seeing the Macleods. They were sitting on the other side of the stage, and I remember Alice turning and looking right at me, and I remember looking right back at her. I smiled, fully expecting her to walk over. I had this fantasy of her sitting down next to me, putting her head on my shoulder, our lips touching as the gold-coats sang a ballad. Ridiculous, but I was sixteen, I was in love.

  And that was it.

  —What do you mean? What happened?

  —She just turned away. As if I wasn’t there. She never looked at me once. I know because I spent the whole show staring at her. That’s when I finally gave up. She was way out of my league. I had no chance. The boys had made me absolutely sure of that. That’s all it took. For me to give up. I was back on my own.

  —And then you met Arla?

  —And that’s when everything went wrong.

  All of this fits the vague timeline that I’ve established for the events at the hotel in Cornwall. Arla at this point would have been spending most of her time with Angel. Spurned by the other boys and now by Alice, Anthony switched his attention to Arla.

  —Tell me, how did you and Arla meet?

  —It was pretty much an accident. Like I said, I was doing my utmost to keep away from Kyle and the others. I knew it wasn’t long before they’d discover Alice, or she’d discover them.

  —Did you just stop hanging about with Alice then – did you just cut all ties?

  —Yeah. I thought she’d be glad not to have me hanging around her like an odour. It was obvious as well. I stayed in my room – didn’t even go down to the fruit machines again. I just read a book – my dad’s copy of The Rats by James Herbert. I just lay on my bed and read that. When I did go out of the room, I stayed close to my parents. I barely even looked up from the floor.

  One day, though, I saw her and my heart leapt before withering into a little ball. Alice with the boys. It was inevitable really. I used to see them everywhere after that. She’d changed as well. Down there with me she was withdrawn and shy. Up there with them she was someone else entirely, always seemed to be laughing at something they’d said, draping herself all over them, you know? The thing was that she would always glance at me while she was doing it, as if to let me know that she was with better people, that I was nothing and I should know that. I realise now what a good little actress Alice Macleod was.

  —That must have been painful.

  —The worst of it was the way they were around her. I just couldn’t bear it.

  —What do you mean?

  —When her back was turned they’d be trying to look up her skirt or they’d be making gestures to each other – sex stuff. And she was totally oblivious to it. I was too scared to say anything. I’ll never forgive myself for that. I thought she was older, I thought she could handle herself. But still I felt protective of her. Especially as I knew what Kyle and the others were like. I heard the way they talked about girls, about women. The things they said. It was revolting.

  —Did you ever try and intervene?

  —I knew I should have. I knew that was the right thing to do, but … but every time I went anywhere near them, I just kept hearing them saying ‘Empty’. Whether they were actually saying it or it was all in my head, I don’t know. But that humiliation just crushed me. These boys, they were all from rich families; their fathers were highly paid and powerful – doctors and executives and stuff. They had money and they had privilege. What was I going to do? No one was going to listen to ‘Empty’, were they?

  I am yet again filled with sadness at this. To me, it seems that Anthony may have got this all wrong. Perhaps Alice Macleod was acting this way as a reaction to Anthony spurning her friendship. All she did was look away. And then he didn’t speak to her again. Perhaps she felt rejected by Anthony and was punishing him for it? That’s my instinctive thought, anyway. Let’s not forget that Anthony’s self-esteem had been shot into a million fragments and turning inward and punishing himself was his way of dealing with such situations.

  Of course, I may be wrong. Alice Macleod could have been, deep down, a manipulative and unpleasant person, deciding to goad Anthony on purpose for reasons known only to herself.

  —So where did you and Arla meet?

  —Oddly enough, in the same place I met Alice. It was in that little games room down in the basement of the hotel. It’s amazing, so many people in that hotel and I never saw anyone else down there.

  —Was Arla with anyone else when you met her?

  —Yeah. It was her and this other girl who was staying at the hotel. It was late-ish I suppose, like, maybe eight or nine. Mum and Dad still thought I was friends with Kyle and the others. I kept up that pretence by just going out of the room with my swimming stuff and wandering around. Or else just walking up and down the stairs.

  So I was doing that when I wandered out into the basement floor, and there she was.

  —What were Arla and her friend doing?

  —They weren’t bothered about the fruit machines or the pinball; they were messing about with the lift. When I first saw Arla she was standing there, looking at it, hands on her hips. I didn’t even know she was Alice’s sister. She looked nothing like her. Arla was tall, skinny. I very nearly just walked away but then I noticed something. I noticed she had a Skexxixx wristband, one of those black tennis-style ones, embroidered with that ‘S’, and I thought that, finally, I’d found someone like me.

  —That’s a big assumption based on a wristband, no?

  —See, it’s hard to explain unless you’re a Skexxixx fan. Back then, if you saw someone else who liked Skexxixx, more often than not you knew that you shared something. It was like most Skexxixx people are on the fringes, the outcasts. You would never catch Jack or Kyle listening to stuff like that. By then though, Skexxixx wasn’t as big as he had been, so it was rare seeing someone wearing Skexxixx stuff then.

  —After his second album had been such a flop?

  —Oh my gosh, are you a…

  —N
o. But I’ve researched him.

  —Oh. I hope you’re not going with that whole ‘music makes you evil’ narrative. It’s so nineties. So ignorant.

  —On the contrary. What I’ve surmised is that, while Through the Mocking Glass had a limited appeal, many Skexxixx fans found it really spoke to them, perhaps more than his earlier work. Would you agree with that?

  —Yes … wow … OK. It’s nice to have someone understand like that. That’s what it was like when I started talking to Arla. As much as I liked Alice, we didn’t actually have that much in common. It was infatuation – puppy love. With Arla it was different, it was like we were kindred spirits or something. We became friends easily. We bonded with our love of Skexxixx…

  —Was it like that from the start?

  —Right off the bat. Just that one thing – that wristband. It was like a calling card and I remember hoping, praying that she got it, you know? So many people didn’t.

  —What was it in particular that Arla understood?

  —She understood why that album made so much sense. The songs on that album were long, they were sad. You could get lost in them.

  —The overriding theme in Through the Mocking Glass is escape, isn’t it? Other worlds.

  —Yes. That’s why it appealed to me, that’s why it just made sense to me – and loads of others like me! That’s why me and Arla connected so much. We were both … we were both in a bad place. We were both looking for an escape. She’d spent a lot of time online too, reading about the theories behind the lyrics, the albums. I often wondered if we’d actually spoken before – online I mean!

  Serendipity, sliding doors, aligned arts, all the clichés – but this certainly is a situation bound by coincidence. Anthony, while he had support at home, was crippled by anxiety and his self-esteem was non-existent. He was entombed within the hotel, with Alice and the boys flaunting their friendship in front of him, showing him how much they neatly fitted into the moulds that society builds for the young. They were the beautiful people, part of a world that Anthony did not belong to. Arla though, clearly did not fit in with the rest of the young people at the hotel and, unlike her younger sister, was defiant about that. Whatever it was, both Anthony and Arla met each other at a time when both were at a low and vulnerable ebb.