The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

Is this all fall-out from The French Shit?

  Or is it because I am completely useless?

  1 August 1980, later – can’t see my fucking watch. Athens. Peta Inn roof, parapet.

  OK, so I’ve nearly finished the wine and I’ve swallowed a couple more pills and I’m sorry about the handwriting.

  I’m still up here. Smoking, drinking, writing and swinging my legs over the edge of the parapet.

  These Karelia make my eyes water. But they’re so cheap, and they come in this sweet little box that reminds me of the Sobranies I once had to smoke for the school play.

  I’ve taken off my sandals because I was worried they might fall off my feet down to the street. If I half close my eyes, the lights and colours underneath me from the shops and the cars all swirl together. It’s quite lovely.

  There’s still no one else up here. Perhaps no one wants to come up here while the wrecked English girl with the Sid Vicious haircut is around. They don’t want to be contaminated by her.

  Jesus. My handwriting.

  I think it would be quite nice just to let myself drop. All I’d have to do is shift forward a bit. It wouldn’t require much effort. It’d just be a letting go, really.

  No one would miss me, would they? Except Mum and Dad, but I wasn’t planning on seeing them much anyway after I went to Cambridge. They’ve had the best of me they were ever going to get.

  So that’s the end of the wine, then.

  That tall, skinny, long-haired boy from The Milk Bar is on the roof of John’s Hostel across the road (it’s the only place in the street cheaper than Peta Inn, but Let’s Go says to avoid it like the plague). At least, I think it’s him. He’s watching me again. I looked over at him, but everything’s a bit blurry.

  Will I be able to read this back? Who cares?

  Are his arms waving all over the place, or is it just my imagination?

  Dear Mum and Dad. I’m sorry. I love you. I was a total let-down. You’re better off without me.

  KATE

  2013

  ‘Kate.’

  She woke to a strong smell of antiseptic. Her head was pounding and she didn’t seem able to move her arms. Nearby she heard a beeping and a shuffling; quite far away someone – not herself, she realised after a second – was moaning.

  ‘Kate.’

  She opened her eyes. Mark was leaning over her.

  ‘You had me worried there, Katie.’

  Frowning, she extricated her arms from the tightly tucked-in blanket that had been constraining them and propped herself up on her elbows. She was in a cubicle, on a hospital bed. Her husband was there in his business suit.

  ‘Ow.’ She gasped as her blood caught up with her movement and throbbed into a very painful temple.

  ‘You took a nasty blow to the head,’ Mark said. ‘You’ve been out for nearly an hour. They want to keep you in for a couple of nights, so I’ve got you a nice room on the private ward.’

  ‘What about Tilly?’

  Mark smiled briefly. ‘Tilly can look after herself. I’ve told her what happened and she’ll be in to visit when her shift’s over.’ His iPhone, which was, as ever, in his hand, buzzed. ‘Damn,’ he said, glancing at the screen. ‘I’ve got to take this. Sorry.’

  Before Kate could ask him what the hell she was doing in a hospital, he ducked out of the cubicle and was replaced by a young female doctor with a long blond ponytail.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Barratt. Welcome back to the world of the living,’ she said as she wrote something in her notes at the end of the bed, taking readings from the monitors Kate now realised she was wired up to. ‘All good.’

  Without warning, she reached forward and put a thumb on Kate’s right eyelid. Kate flinched, but resisted the urge to bat her away.

  ‘I hit my head?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘You’ve got quite a concussion, and I think we’re going to have to give you a couple of stitches up here.’ She put her hand near the point of most pain on Kate’s forehead. ‘Do you remember passing out?’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘You were upstairs in Starbucks on New Oxford Street.’

  Kate blinked. Upstairs. Starbucks, New Oxford Street . . . upstairs, New Oxford Street Starbucks, midday, Thursday.

  Then she remembered: Beattie.

  Beattie.

  Who had given her the shocking, unbelievable news.

  The beeping machine attached to Kate’s chest picked up tempo.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ the doctor was asking.

  ‘What?’ Kate said.

  ‘When did you last eat?’

  Kate tried to focus her mind. ‘Um . . . yesterday? I don’t really have breakfast and I hadn’t had lunch yet . . .’

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Barratt, you are rather underweight. You probably fainted because you’re not getting enough calories.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kate said. Though she knew that, since Tilly had sprung her Bombshell, she had hardly kept anything down. These were old tricks, and she knew them well.

  ‘You’re probably not aware that you have a problem. There’s nothing in your notes to indicate any reason for concern in the past.’

  Oh yes I am and yes there is, Kate thought. But she didn’t say anything. Why would she?

  ‘I’m keeping you in for observation for concussion. I’m also going to get the Mental Health Team to drop in on you while you’re here.’

  Mental Health? Kate couldn’t believe that this girl, who wasn’t much older than her daughter, was talking to her like this. ‘You can cancel that,’ she said. ‘I’m not seeing a shrink. I’m just naturally skinny and I forgot to eat.’

  The doctor raised an eyebrow and wrote something on her notes. ‘Not eating properly and maintaining such a low weight puts enormous pressure on your system. The reason you fainted was that your heart simply didn’t have the strength to push blood to your brain. Unfortunately, you then hit your head, which has resulted in the concussion.’

  ‘That’s not why I fainted,’ Kate said, her voice low.

  The doctor ignored her. ‘I want you to have this.’ She stood and handed her a leaflet from underneath her notes. ‘And I’ll be referring you to your GP. I would strongly recommend that you follow this up.’

  She left and Kate looked at the leaflet. Addressing Adult Anorexia. Knowing it wouldn’t tell her anything new, she crushed it into a ball and let it fall to the ground. When it came to things to address, she had far more important candidates.

  Alone, she closed her eyes again. In among the hospital hubbub, she could hear Mark speaking emphatically on his phone. A knot tightened inside her. How had he found out she was here? Had he met Beattie? Had she told him who she was? Had she blown her cover?

  And then the relief came flooding through her.

  She had no need for cover.

  Beattie’s words, shocking as they were, had set her free.

  Somehow, the death she had held in her hands for thirty-three years had not happened.

  But how to explain any or all of it to Mark?

  It was impossible.

  She wasn’t who he thought she was.

  Her whole life with him had been a lie, and there was no going back.

  ‘Jesus, sorry,’ Mark said, coming back into the cubicle and pocketing his iPhone. ‘You leave the office for half an hour and the world falls apart.’

  ‘How did you find out I was here?’ Kate said.

  Mark pulled up a chair. ‘Claire found my number on your phone and called me.’

  ‘Claire?’

  ‘Your old school friend. The American?’

  Kate breathed out. Of course. Beattie wouldn’t have revealed anything like the truth to Mark.

  ‘She was worried that it was the shock of bumping into her that floored you.’

  ‘No, no,’ Kate said.

  ‘But now we find out it’s because you haven’t been eating properly. I thought you were looking a bit too fashionably thin lately.’

  ‘It’s the Tilly stuff.�
�

  Mark sighed with a note of impatience. ‘You mustn’t worry about all that. She’s going to be fine.’

  Perhaps she will, then, Kate thought.

  Because everything had changed.

  She wasn’t sure of anything now.

  She had been like a boat, her anchor wedged in horrible, jagged rocks at the bottom of a stagnant bay. Now the chain holding her in one place had ripped and she was floating free. No, free was the wrong word. She was floating lost, in uncharted water.

  Mark handed Kate a Starbucks napkin with some curved, looped handwriting on it. ‘Claire gave me her address and phone number – she’s staying at the Waverley Hotel in Goodge Street. Over to see the sights, she said. Poor woman.’

  ‘Poor woman?’

  ‘Didn’t she tell you? Or perhaps you can’t remember with the concussion. Her husband died last year, and this trip is supposed to help her get over it. I told her she must come round and visit when you’re back home.’

  Kate looked away. Her life – which no one in the know would ever have described as straightforward – had, in one short encounter, disintegrated into the surreal.

  ‘You must have a lot of catching up to do, bumping into each other after so many years. It’ll do you good to have someone to talk to. A friend.’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate wondered what the rest of what Beattie had to say was. She had brought her the best yet most shockingly unimaginable news, but she had also come to warn her.

  He was on to them, she’d said.

  The story still wasn’t over, was it?

  ‘She said she recognised you straight away. I’ve always said you’ve hardly aged.’

  ‘But that’s just you,’ Kate said, trying to pin her attention to his conversation, trying to keep things light.

  ‘She said you hadn’t changed at all. I imagine she has, though. She’s not weathered the seas of time all that well, has she?’

  ‘Shh,’ Kate said, forcing a smile.

  He looked at her, narrowing his eyes. She felt small and pale under his scrutiny. ‘You look worn out, Kate. Martha’s Wish is taking it out of you. And we should get a cleaner to help you with the house. You should take it easy.’

  He was always saying things like that. She thought sometimes that he would only consider his job as her protector done when she was sitting on the sofa all day, doing absolutely nothing. But she was too painfully aware of her privilege and her lack of productivity to end up like that. After all, it wasn’t something she had been born to.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’ He reached over and squeezed her hand. The invisible golden threads of his work were pulling at him.

  ‘You go back to the office,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  He left, without, she noticed, kissing her. When had they stopped kissing goodbye?

  But she was glad to be on her own. She had a lot to process.

  If only she had known sooner.

  For thirty-three years she had lived thinking she was responsible for a death.

  Everything she was today had been defined by that thought.

  She was not the person she had thought she was.

  She tried it out in different ways.

  She was not a murderer.

  She had not killed anyone.

  Except, of course, she thought with a jolt, Emma James.

  She had well and truly finished off Emma James.

  PART TWO

  BEFORE

  1

  2 August 1980, 5.30 a.m. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

  It’s happened again!

  Everything has changed AGAIN. Everything is completely, wonderfully, different.

  This crazy travelling world just seems to be totally up or totally down. At least it’s not boring, or bland, or beige, I suppose . . .

  So, of course, I didn’t jump off the roof. Or I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?

  I did seriously think about it. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t do that to my parents. Just thinking of how glad they were to hear from me yesterday morning made me think again. Perhaps if I had a brother or sister I might’ve let myself go over. But I’m the only one they’ve got. The one they’ve chucked all their hopes and dreams into. If nothing else, I owe it to them to keep on living.

  Just as well. Because if I had jumped, I wouldn’t have had this evening!

  So I can’t sleep because I stupidly took a couple more slimming pills half an hour ago. But the good thing is that I feel I can write and write and write! Which is just as well as I’ve got lots to put down. I’ll start at the beginning and write as much detail as I can remember. I want to record this night for the rest of my life.

  I stayed up on the parapet – over there, in fact, just yards from where I am now on my bunk – for another hour after writing my goodbye note to Mum and Dad.

  I sat with my hands clenching the rough stone surface, my shoulders hunched up around my ears and my chin slumped on my chest. It got darker and a bit cooler. After a while, the world stopped swirling quite so much, and I looked up. The lights on the roof had been switched on and I was more or less spot lit. There was a group of people on the roof opposite, sitting on a line of chairs, their feet up on their own parapet, swigging from beer bottles and smoking and laughing amongst themselves. I think they were watching me in case I did something interesting. I looked down at the street, which seemed even further away than it had in daylight. A girl glanced up at me, put her hand over her mouth, and pointed me out to her friend.

  Feeling a little foolish, like a bad actor in a cheap melodrama, I swung my feet round and slipped off the wall onto the roof. I needed to get away from the edge, just in case I changed my mind again.

  Sleepy from the wine and Valium, I looked over to my bed. At some point while I’d been sitting on the parapet, Mick the acid-casualty Australian must have slunk in and climbed onto his mattress right next to mine, where he lay, snoring, out and away on something. I couldn’t face lying next to him up there.

  So, with no particular plan, I grabbed my bag and ran for the stairs. I didn’t much like the thought of going out into the night on my own, but what I had nearly done to myself freaked me out. I needed to get away, down onto the ground, quickly, before I changed my mind again.

  I bombed as fast as I could down the stone stairs, but on the second floor I stumbled and fell, twisted my ankle and tumbled down five or six steps. Luckily, someone coming in the opposite direction broke my fall.

  I’m going to try to remember every single word we said . . .

  ‘Whoa,’ he says.

  I look up and see he’s the tall skinny boy from The Milk Bar. The boy from John’s Hostel roof. He’s startlingly beautiful close up.

  Even in the dim stairwell, I can make out the extraordinary blue of his eyes.

  ‘Ow,’ I say, catching my ankle behind me (which still really hurts now by the way).

  He smiles. ‘Where were you off to in such a hurry? You had the hounds of hell at your heels.’

  It’s a question I can’t answer, because I have no idea where I was going. That, and something about the kindness in his voice – warm, American, sincere – makes me crumple. I just burst into tears. He wraps his arms around me and holds me.

  It might sound a bit Mills and Boon, but that’s what it was like. He held me. My first touch since Marseille. The tender touch I wanted. The tender touch that, even before The French Shit, I’d never known. I don’t come from a family of huggers or kissers. I don’t do all that.

  Normally.

  ‘What is it?’ he says, his lips in my hair.

  ‘It’s stupid,’ I say, or something like that. ‘It’s nothing.’ My voice is thick with pills and wine.

  ‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me. Tell me.’ He’s rubbing my back. It feels safe, though, brotherly, lovely. Not threatening in any way.

  ‘It’s just—’ The tears overtake me again. ‘I don’t know what I am or where I’m going.’

  Eventually, when the wor
st of my tears are over, he takes me by the shoulders and looks at me.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Emma James.’

  ‘I’m Jake. Jake Mithras.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say, laughing through the remains of my tears, because it seems odd to be introducing ourselves after such an intimate moment.

  ‘Do you wanna go get something to eat, Emma James?’ he says, wiping the wet from my cheeks.

  I nod.

  ‘I know just the place. Come on.’

  He takes me by the hand and leads me down the stairs and out through the front door onto Nikis.

  And there we are: two people, people together, a couple of people, a couple. Part of the throng of pairs and groups of backpackers and travellers winding their way up along the dusty road into the narrower pedestrian twists and turns of the Plaka, looking for food, drink, action.

  As we walk, he tells me about himself. He’s twenty-one years old and has recently graduated from UCLA, majoring in philosophy. He grew up in San Diego and is in Greece to discover an ancient way of life lost to ‘dumb Americans’.

  ‘Look,’ he says, as we pass some patchily spotlit ruins of a temple partially fenced-off behind a bunch of café tables filled with beer-swilling tourists. A couple of mangy street dogs loll on the steps up to the pillars, almost identically mirroring the postures of two crumbling stone hounds next to them. ‘You wouldn’t get something like that in California – the ancient past, casually muddled up with the present. If we did have anything that old, it would be kept preserved, set behind Plexiglas, sanitised. I’ve been here two weeks and my mind is totally blown. Are you staying here long?’

  I shake my head. ‘I want to head out to the islands, find a simpler way of life.’

  ‘Me too!’ he says. ‘There’s places out there where they still live like they did back in the olden times, where they still even speak a sort of Ancient Greek.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure.’ He turns towards me and smiles, giving me no choice whatsoever but to smile back at him. I like him. He’s got this soft mouth, with an exaggerated cupid’s bow that looks almost girlish. But there’s something else there in his face, something edgy that makes me think he might come up with a surprise or two.