The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  ‘Jesus. A nightmare.’ Tilly knocked back her drink. ‘It was someone’s birthday and the Ayckbourn matinee cast were doing tequila slammers. Like a bloody zoo. At five-thirty in the afternoon.’

  ‘The horror,’ Mark said.

  Kate was just offering Tilly a pistachio when the doorbell rang, making her jump and drop the bowl.

  ‘Damn!’ she said.

  ‘At last,’ Mark said.

  ‘Fashionably late, Pa,’ Tilly said, as, still in service-industry mode, she fetched a dustpan and brush to deal with the spilled nuts.

  ‘It was just the bloody food,’ Mark said, returning to the kitchen with two large carrier bags. ‘Where the hell’s your friend got to, then?’

  ‘Perhaps she mistook the time, or something,’ Kate said, glad of the grace being granted by Beattie’s late arrival.

  ‘It’s so unlike an American, though.’ Mark sorted the meat and rice dishes from the salads and handed them to Tilly, who slid them into the oven to keep them warm. ‘Or at least any that I know.’

  ‘Claire was never much of a time-keeper,’ Kate said, trying on the old school-friends disguise. ‘She must have been late for every single class.’

  ‘I thought people grew out of that sort of thing,’ Mark said, dumping salad onto a platter.

  The doorbell clanged again, and, once more, Kate jumped.

  ‘That’ll be her,’ Tilly said, heading for the stairs. ‘I’ll get it. And Dad? Calm down, dear.’

  ‘Cheeky cow,’ Mark said.

  When did they start talking to each other like that? Kate had no idea.

  ‘Shit!’ they heard Tilly gasp from the hallway. ‘Dad!’ she yelled up to the kitchen.

  Mark and Kate looked at each other, then rushed to the stairs.

  Beattie was leaning in the front doorway. Her nose bled into a cut lip, which in turn spilled blood onto her good camel coat. Deep grazes in her knees merged with the ripped nylon of her tights, and she had the beginnings of a black eye.

  Kate still remembered how that felt.

  ‘What happened?’ she said, rushing to catch Beattie as she stumbled into the house.

  ‘Damn kids mugged me,’ Beattie lisped through her split lip. Mark took her other arm and they helped her upstairs.

  ‘Go ahead and sort out the sofa,’ Kate said to Tilly. ‘Put a blanket over it and get some cushions at the end for B— Claire’s head.’

  ‘Bastards took my bag,’ Beattie said as Kate settled her down on the throw Tilly had arranged over the clean white sofa.

  ‘We need to get you to a doctor,’ Mark said, pulling out his phone.

  ‘No, no, I’m fine. Just a little shook up.’

  ‘But they hit you!’ Tilly said.

  ‘They just shoved. It was the fall that hurt me. Nothing’s broken.’

  ‘Your eye, though . . .’ Kate said. Beattie looked at her and, almost imperceptibly, shook her head.

  ‘I’ll call the police, then,’ Mark said, taking himself out of the room.

  ‘No need,’ Beattie said, but he had already gone. She turned to Kate, panic in her eyes.

  ‘Tills, could you get Claire a brandy, please?’ Kate asked. ‘There’s some in the dining-room cabinet.’

  Tilly rushed off, glad for something to do.

  ‘It was Jake’s guys again,’ Beattie whispered hoarsely as soon as they were on their own. ‘Different individuals, but they all look kind of the same. They jumped me just round the corner from here.’

  ‘No!’ Kate said, her eyes wide.

  ‘They said you hadn’t paid up yet. Said this was just a taster. A warning. Said I’m to tell you –’ Beattie looked away.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘I’m to tell you to look after your daughter.’

  Kate put her hands over her mouth and looked in horror at Beattie’s beaten face. She had heard nothing from Jake since she had emailed him asking for proof of his figures. She had imagined that he might be redrafting his demands in the face of her questions. But here was his sign to her that he wasn’t prepared to negotiate. However unreasonable his demands, he had her – and Beattie – over a barrel. There was no way they could tell anyone about his blackmailing without incriminating themselves, which meant he could use as much force as he wanted to make her pay up. And here, now, was the proof of that.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered as Mark came back into the room, still on the phone.

  ‘What did they look like, Claire?’ he said.

  ‘Young. Black,’ Beattie said, and shrugged. ‘Sorry. That’s all I took in.’

  Mark repeated the information into his phone.

  ‘And how many were there?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘She says three.’ He listened for a minute, then turned again to Beattie. ‘And when and where exactly did it take place?’

  ‘About half an hour ago? I’d just turned off the road that leads here from the bus stop.’

  ‘Bridge Lane?’ Mark asked.

  ‘I – I think so.’

  ‘I hate that bit at night,’ Tilly said as she came back from the dining room with a stiff measure of brandy for Beattie.

  Mark spoke to the police operator. Then he listened, nodding, writing notes on a pad he had brought in with him.

  ‘Yes, she can walk. OK, yes. Yes. She’ll be with you. Yes.’ He clicked his phone off and turned to Beattie. ‘They can’t send a car out at the moment – there’s some sort of riot or something going on in Woolwich. We’ve got to take you down to A & E to get your injuries registered. Then we’ll get you to the police station, and they’ll take a full statement. They gave me a crime number, which I’ve put at the bottom there.’ He tore the top sheet off the notepad and handed it to her.

  ‘Come on then, Claire,’ Kate said, going to help her up. It was wrong, she knew, but her major feeling was one of relief that she was going to be spared the discomfort of a dissembling dinner.

  ‘Let her have a drop of brandy first, Mum,’ Tilly said, handing the glass to Beattie. ‘She’s had a terrible shock.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course,’ Kate said.

  ‘But I was so looking forward to dinner with you guys,’ Beattie said, sipping at the brandy. ‘The food smells delicious.’ She winced as the alcohol touched the cut on her lip. ‘And I’m starving. I haven’t eaten all day.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t say anything about going straightaway,’ Mark said. ‘I’m sure we can eat first. Then I’ll take you.’

  Kate hoped that no one heard the tiny groan that escaped her lips.

  ‘Thank you,’ Beattie said, in tears now. ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Mark patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘Kate, have we got something we can clean Claire here up with a bit?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kate said. She ran up the stairs to her bathroom, her head reeling. Here was another fiction – the mugging – that she and Beattie had to maintain for the evening. She hoped they both were up to it.

  Mustn’t drink too much, she told herself.

  As she climbed back down to the living room with the first-aid box and Dettol, Beattie’s gruff voice rose up the stairs to greet her.

  ‘. . . And she was so clever at school – straight A’s all the way!’

  She entered the room and found Mark and Tilly sitting on the armchairs facing Beattie, who was now lying back down on the sofa.

  ‘Such a pity she had to leave before her A Levels. It was awful what happened to her parents – they were such sweet people. Always welcomed me into their home. I was a little lost, being an outsider – my father’s firm moved him from New York to set up the UK branch when I was fifteen. We only stayed three years in the end. Oh, hi, Kate.’

  Kate put a thin smile on her face. At least Beattie had taken the burden of leading the stories off her shoulders.

  ‘That’s the most I’ve ever heard about Mr and Mrs Brown. Kate prefers not to talk about the past,’ Mark said.

  ‘It’s not my favourite s
ubject,’ Kate said, filling a bowl with boiled water.

  ‘I would like to have known her back then, though.’

  Kate couldn’t read the look Mark gave her. Was there regret in it? Or just curiosity? Did he find the present-day Kate lacking? She poured a good slug of Dettol into the water.

  ‘She was quite something,’ Beattie said, looking at Kate warmly.

  ‘I bet she was.’

  ‘Enough!’ Kate said, blushing as she brought the bowl and first-aid box over to Beattie.

  ‘I’ll sort out the food,’ Mark said, discreetly moving over to the kitchen so that Kate and Tilly could help Beattie off with her tights.

  ‘I’m so sorry, you guys,’ Beattie said. ‘Messing up your evening like this.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault,’ Tilly said.

  Beattie winced as Kate set to work on her knees with the Dettol water and tweezers, dabbing and picking bits of grit out of the gouges.

  ‘So you went back to the States then, after Gloucestershire?’ Tilly asked her.

  Kate held her breath – she had forgotten to warn Beattie that she had relocated her childhood to the Cotswolds. But she didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘Yep, to Minnesota. We were forever moving around.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ve never been anywhere really.’

  ‘Apart from to stay with your uncle in New York and to West Africa to visit the school,’ Kate said, putting plasters on Beattie’s wounds.

  ‘But mostly we just go to Cornwall,’ Tilly said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘We’ve got a house there,’ Kate said.

  ‘How lovely,’ Beattie said.

  ‘Open a bottle of red, will you?’ Mark called over to Kate from the kitchen.

  When Kate returned to the sofa with the wine, corkscrew and glasses, she found Tilly sitting on the floor telling Beattie about her Greek plans. With all the stress and excitement of Beattie’s predicament, she had nearly forgotten that tomorrow was the day her daughter was leaving.

  ‘Mum’s not keen, for some reason, but I think she’s coming round.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got to be allowed to spread your wings,’ Beattie said. ‘I learned that when Jessie took off for three months in South East Asia. I didn’t want her to go at all – I’d heard all these horror stories about what happened to young American girls out there. But of course she was fine. And she says that she would have gone even if I’d have stood in front of her and physically barred her way. Believe me, honey,’ she turned to Kate, her bearing matronly, ‘you can’t stop your young ones flying the nest.’

  ‘It’s a little different for Mum, though,’ Tilly said. ‘With Martha and all that.’

  ‘Of course. Your poor little sister. Your Mom told me about her,’ Beattie said.

  ‘Wine?’ Kate said. Even though she was so close to Beattie and Tilly, she felt she needed to declare her presence, to stop them talking about her in the third person.

  ‘Yes please,’ Tilly said.

  ‘Yes please, Kate,’ Beattie said. ‘So where are you planning on going in Greece?’ she asked Tilly.

  ‘Oh, Athens, Delphi, Thessaloniki, Sparta. Then I’m going to hit the islands, see if I can find a perfect beach with not too many tourists.’

  ‘Ah, the authentic Greece. I know just the spot,’ Beattie said.

  No, no, Kate’s heartbeat fluttered up into her throat as she drew the cork from the bottle, please don’t.

  But it was too late.

  ‘You’ve been to Greece, then?’ Tilly asked, handing the pistachios to Beattie.

  ‘Oh yes. I’m what you might call a Grecophile, honey.’

  ‘Where do you suggest, then?’

  ‘Well. There’s this lovely little island called Ikaria.’

  Kate couldn’t believe what she was hearing. As she poured the drinks, the neck of the bottle slipped from the rim of the glass, spilling red wine all over the expensive white rug.

  ‘Mum!’ Tilly said, jumping up.

  Beattie might simply have been trying to be helpful, but it was so dangerous to mix up fact and fiction like that.

  ‘I’m sorry, I—’ Kate said. Perhaps she wasn’t as acquainted as she was with the rules of living a lie. Although hadn’t she said that her own family knew nothing of her past?

  ‘Ha!’ Tilly smiled at Beattie. ‘Mum spilled the wine because she doesn’t like us talking about Greece.’

  ‘Oh?’ Beattie said, looking at Kate.

  Kate tried to laugh, although she felt like being sick. ‘It’s hard to say goodbye to my girl.’

  ‘I’m not going for ever, Mum.’ Tilly rolled her eyes and headed off towards the kitchen area. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Mum’s spilled wine all over the rug!’

  ‘Why the hell did you tell her about Ikaria?’ Kate whispered sharply to Beattie. ‘It’s the last place on earth I want her to be.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Beattie said. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Emma.’

  ‘It’s Kate!’

  ‘God, I’m sorry. Kate. I’m just a little shook up right now.’ Beattie looked devastated.

  Kate’s knuckle rubbed at her nose. She thought she’d come round to Tilly’s departure, but Beattie’s stupidity had made her superstitious dread rear its ugly head all over again.

  Mark and Tilly marched into the living area. He brandished a tub of salt, while she waved a roll of paper towels above her head.

  ‘Salt’s the thing,’ Mark was saying.

  ‘Listen, Dad, I spend my life clearing up after pissed actors knocking over their wine. Believe me, this is the method that works.’ Tilly wadded up a great long piece of kitchen roll and placed it over the wine stain. ‘Claire was telling me about some island she knows in Greece. What was it called?’

  ‘I – um – the name’s slipped my mind,’ Beattie said, frowning.

  ‘But you just said it!’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Claire’s had a bit of a shock, Tilly,’ Mark said.

  ‘Wasn’t it something like diarrhoea?’ Tilly said. ‘Icky—’

  ‘Wasn’t it Ikaria?’ Kate said, stepping in. Beattie’s clumsy attempts to backtrack, while well intentioned, were only making things worse.

  ‘Yes,’ Beattie said, frowning slightly. ‘That was it.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Mark said.

  ‘Not many foreigners have,’ Beattie said. ‘It’s why it’s so special.’

  ‘When did you go?’ Tilly asked, stamping on the kitchen roll.

  ‘Oh, a long time back. When I was, what, twenty or so,’ Beattie said. ‘Just a little older than you are now. I had a great time. It’s the most beautiful place.’

  ‘Named after Icarus?’

  ‘Yep. He fell into the sea just nearby, and his poor old Pop Daedalus buried him on the island.’

  ‘I’m going to go there,’ Tilly said.

  Kate knocked back a big slug of wine.

  ‘You just make sure you keep in touch with your Mom now,’ Beattie said. ‘Let her know what you’re getting up to, where you’re going and all that. Be a good daughter.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tilly said. She peeled the paper from the carpet with a flourish. Almost all the wine had been absorbed.

  ‘Oh, she’s a good daughter,’ Kate said, as Mark knelt to sprinkle salt over what remained of the stain. ‘The best.’

  Better than she had ever been herself.

  How it must have been for her parents never to see her again, never to know what happened to her. When she was pregnant with Tilly and facing her own impending parenthood she had hired a private detective to see how they were doing. She had thought perhaps that she could somehow make some sort of amends, possibly funnel some money their way or something. The short investigation revealed that they had, in fact, died within six months of each other, less than five years after she had staged her disappearance. The official line was that her father had been taken by a coronary and her mother a stroke. But K
ate had added their deaths to her list of culpabilities. It had been hearts that had killed them, hadn’t it? Broken hearts.

  Mark stood, brushing lint from his knees where he had knelt on the rug. ‘Grub’s nearly up. Are you all right to sit at the table, Claire?’

  ‘Of course,’ Beattie said, putting out a hand. ‘Help me up, will you, dear?’ she asked Tilly, who handed her father the wad of wine-stained kitchen towel and stepped in instantly.

  During the meal, Kate felt observed in every way. For one thing, everyone else at the table was watching how much she was eating. She knew, too, that Mark and Tilly would also be trying to picture her as a schoolgirl, friends with this strange American woman. She could also feel Beattie looking at how she, Kate, interacted with her family. She felt like she was a bad actor in the wrong play: utterly unconvincing on every level.

  The only way to survive was by taking control and driving the conversation around the safer routes. So she asked Beattie about her life: what her children were up to (Jessie was a dentist and Saira was nearly a lawyer), how she was coping after the death of her husband (it was taking her a while to adjust), and what it was like living in San Francisco (it was really cool). Even so, after all this expense of energy, she still encountered some difficult moments. At one point, Beattie went to push up the sleeves of her polo neck jumper, which would have revealed her Triskelion. Kate, who was sitting opposite, managed to tap her leg under the table just in time and point out her own tattoo. Mercifully Beattie took the hint.

  ‘Would you like some more, Claire?’ Mark asked, holding the plate of lamb kebabs up for her.

  ‘Oh no thank you, Mark. It was delicious, but I really need to watch what I eat.’

  She smiled over at Kate, who had just hidden a lump of meat under a lettuce leaf.

  ‘So what did you think when you bumped into each other in Starbucks, then?’ Mark said, as he and Tilly cleared the plates at the end of the meal.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ Kate said. ‘Claire was sitting across the room. I thought I recognised something about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then she came up and asked me if my name was Kate and I recognised her voice instantly. It hasn’t changed one bit.’

  ‘Whereas you even look exactly as you did when you were at school,’ Beattie said, resting her chin on her hands and smiling warmly at Kate.