The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  She performed a couple of yoga asanas, just enough to raise the grogginess that clasped at her like a shroud. Then she stood in her walk-in wardrobe deciding what to wear for her visit to the bank. The night before, after watching her YouTube performance, she had transferred almost all the cash from various accounts to the current account she shared with Mark, which, thankfully, he never looked at or touched.

  The sum she then had to transfer to Jake so far exceeded even their private bank’s Internet floor-trading limit that she would have to go in and authorise it in person. So today, after taking Tilly to the airport – something she was now viewing more with relief than trepidation – that was where she was heading. She planned to explain the money transfer away as something to do with a property development project in the States.

  Planning her wardrobe for the day, she laid out a simple woollen tunic and matching trousers to wear to take Tilly to the airport at eleven. For the afternoon, she chose a well-cut Prada suit which she had worn a couple of times in the past for meetings with potential Martha’s Wish donors. It made her look business-like and in control, a far cry from what she was actually feeling.

  She laid the suit out on her bed, and selected shoes, stockings and the simple gold necklace Mark had bought her when he first saw her in the suit. He enjoyed accessorising any special outfit she bought – so much so that most of her jewellery had been acquired this way.

  She shouldn’t feel so uneasy about the bank visit – she was an old hand at playing the rich woman. Even so, the role always seemed to require some effort.

  Still in her workout clothes, she ran upstairs to her office and found her passport and birth certificate, ID for the bank, to safeguard against money laundering. She looked at her papers – real enough but certainly false – and admired the irony that they would do the trick.

  Her mouth hangover-rough and dry, she decided to make herself a cup of tea before she showered.

  But when she opened the door to the kitchen, she almost yelped with shock. She had thought herself alone in the house. But there was someone else sitting at the kitchen island, bundled in one of her snowy-white guest dressing gowns, eating a bowl of her own special muesli. Kate’s initial instinct was to bolt for the door – Jake’s comments about his ‘peeps’ being ‘not necessarily nice’ rose high in her mind.

  But then the figure turned to face her and Kate saw, with some relief, that it was only Beattie.

  ‘Oh, hi, honey,’ she said, swivelling round on the tall white stool. A couple of stitches protruded from her lower lip and her black eye had bloomed to the colour of a Victoria plum. ‘Yes. I’m still here, I’m afraid. I’m really sorry. It was a hellish long evening. The hospital took hours: the ER looked like a battlefield, loads of kids with knife wounds, drunken women bleeding and screaming. It was like hell. And the police station was pretty much the same. I tried to insist, but Mark wouldn’t hear of me going back to the hotel. He’s very forceful, isn’t he? Very insistent, once he gets an idea.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate said, putting on the kettle.

  Beattie held her hands in front of her and examined the grazes on her palms. ‘You don’t expect it from a moneyman, but he’s almost suspiciously kind. And your guest suite is gorgeous. Better than my hotel by a million miles. So thoughtful too, to provide dressing gowns and slippers and toothbrushes and whatever a body needs.’

  Kate nodded. She liked to keep everything on the guest floor ready for visitors. Although, since Martha died, she had fallen out of the habit of playing hostess – the rooms had seen only a handful of occupants in all that time.

  ‘You don’t mind me helping myself to breakfast?’ Beattie indicated the muesli. ‘I was just so starving.’

  ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

  ‘Bit sore, but I’ll survive. They just cleaned me up, then I made up some story for the police.’ She smiled. ‘I was so vague, I don’t think there’s any chance of them picking up the wrong boys.’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Do you have any coffee? I don’t really do tea in the mornings.’

  Kate reached down for the coffee beans. ‘I’m going to the bank today to move the money over to his account,’ she shouted above the noise of the grinder.

  ‘That’s a relief, then, hun.’ Beattie passed her hand over her forehead. ‘God bless you.’

  Kate winced. Beattie’s gratitude clearly showed that she put the previous night’s attack down to her not instantly giving in to Jake’s demands.

  ‘I could get my taxi to give you a lift back to your hotel after he drops me off.’

  ‘Ah,’ Beattie said, awkwardly running the nail of her index finger over her stitched lip. ‘Um, you see, I’m not at the hotel any more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like I said, Mark is quite insistent,’ Beattie said. ‘He told me that, particularly as Tilly is off and away, you’d both love to have me here as your guest. Someone’s going round to pick up my stuff and bring it here this morning – Mark got me to call the hotel last night to authorise it. He’s also going to settle my bill for me, because he thinks those boys stole my purse with my wallet in it. Jake’s guys did in fact take it, so he is actually helping me out of a tricky situation.’

  Kate carried on making the coffee, her back to Beattie. How could Mark not consult her first before inviting Beattie to stay? This was going to complicate everything. Every time she looked at her, it was like having her nose rubbed in her past. And she’d have to live this whole new subset of Beattie-related lies whenever Mark was around.

  Beattie slipped off the kitchen stool and took Kate’s hands. ‘I’m so sorry, Emma. Believe me, I didn’t want to move into your space. I know it’s going to make everything really awkward for you. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And, to be honest, not having to pay for the hotel is going to be a real help. Thanks to Jake I’m right up against it, as you know.’

  ‘When are you due to go back?’ Kate said.

  Beattie looked at her feet. ‘So my passport was in my purse. I’m going to have to get it back or buy a new one. Mark said he’d ask his secretary – Serena, is it? – to sort out an appointment at the embassy. But I’m afraid I didn’t buy a return ticket,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t really afford it. And I didn’t know how long all this was going to take.’

  ‘Well, it’s nearly all over,’ Kate said. ‘I’m getting the money to Jake this morning, and I’ve got his word that this’ll be the end of it. I’m happy to get you a ticket back home just as soon as we get you sorted with your passport.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’ Beattie hugged Kate tightly, then stepped back, dabbing at her eyes with the dressing-gown belt, leaving a little smudge of mascara on the towelling. ‘Both of you – you’re so kind.’

  But it wasn’t really kindness that was motivating Kate, more a desperate wish for this episode of her life to be over.

  ‘Here’s your coffee,’ she said, handing Beattie a mug.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Beattie said again, taking it back to her bowl of muesli. Kate sat opposite her, cradling her cup of tea. She knew she shouldn’t be worrying about such a thing, but at least there was no danger of Mark taking a fancy to her friend. In the chunky dressing gown, with her hair unbrushed and her facial injuries, Beattie looked rough as hell and at least ten years older than her. She was also, Kate reckoned – and this was a calculation she was used to making when she looked at other women – two and a half times her weight.

  Checking herself, she tried a more humane train of thought: poor Beattie, with her dead husband and grown-up kids. She must feel quite alone in the world.

  As if she could read Kate’s thoughts, without warning, Beattie put her coffee down and covered her eyes with her hands.

  ‘What is it?’ Kate put an arm out across the counter, alarmed. ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you this. I’m too ashamed,’ Beattie sobbed. She reached out and wound her hot, wet fingers around Kate’s. ‘You see, I don’t
have a home to go back to. The girls don’t know it, but I had to sell our house. There’s nothing left for me in San Francisco; just a storage facility full of the furniture I couldn’t get rid of.’

  ‘You had to sell because of Jake?’

  Beattie looked at Kate and nodded. ‘He’s like that, Emma. He took everything I had and then he wanted more. He blackmailed it out of me, with threats that he was going to tell everyone what you and I did to him, and those creeps trailing me all the time, everywhere I went. I’m so scared he’s going to do it all over again to you.’

  ‘He gave his word. I’m paying what he asked for and no more,’ Kate said. ‘And let that be the end of it. If he’s had all that money from you, he has more than he’ll ever need.’ She looked at Beattie and tightened her grip on her hand. ‘Don’t be scared.’

  The thought struck her that, as with Martha’s Wish, good could come out of terrible events. She, Kate, had it in her power to look after this poor creature in front of her, to use the shadow of Jake’s awfulness to be kind and good.

  She stood, walked round to Beattie and took her in her arms. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. You can stay here as long as it takes for you to get yourself sorted with a plan. As long as it takes for you to feel safe from Jake.’

  ‘Will that ever happen, though?’ Beattie said, her face pressed against Kate’s shoulder.

  ‘Of course,’ Kate said. ‘Of course it will.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ Beattie said, holding Kate tight.

  ‘Oh!’

  Kate could hear the gasp all the way upstairs in her shower room.

  ‘Oh,’ it came again.

  She threw a towel around herself and ran downstairs to find Beattie in the hallway, an open empty suitcase in front of her and a sheaf of papers in her hands. A brown envelope lay at her feet.

  ‘What is it?’ Kate said, stopping on the stairs.

  ‘It’s Jessie and Saira.’ Shaking, Beattie handed over the papers.

  What Kate saw – holding the print-outs away from her eyes because she didn’t have her reading glasses on – was a series of photographs of Beattie’s daughters going about their daily business. In one, the bigger of the two was unloading plastic carrier bags of food into the boot of a station wagon. In another, the other young woman, who had permed dark brown hair and weary eyes, was in a café laughing at someone out of shot. The images had the grainy quality of photos taken from a distance.

  ‘Jesus,’ Kate said, handing the pictures back.

  ‘He’s got people that close to them.’ Scowling, Beattie pulled out one of the sheets and held it up for Kate to see. It was of the larger daughter unlocking a front door, the station wagon now parked in the driveway. Both car registration plate and house number were clearly visible. ‘That’s Jessie’s house.’

  ‘How did you get these?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Mark’s driver just brought my stuff back from the hotel. Didn’t you hear the doorbell?’

  ‘I was in the shower.’

  ‘I took the liberty of answering. I thought it might be him. But he said this was all there was in my room. My empty suitcase and this envelope full of pictures. Everything else has gone.’ Beattie’s voice started to rise in pitch. ‘Disappeared. All my clothes, my papers, my toiletries, everything. He’s taken it all. They must have gotten my key from the purse they stole. I’ve got nothing now but my torn dress and bloody coat from last night.’

  Still clinging on to the photographs of her daughters, Beattie sat on the stairs and sank her head in her hands. Gently, Kate took up position at her side and put her arm around her.

  ‘What did the hotel say?’

  ‘They told Mark’s guy they’d be happy to help me with my insurance claim, but they aren’t responsible if I kept my key in my bag rather than handing it in at reception.’

  ‘Oh Beattie, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I haven’t any insurance, Kate. I was doing all this on a budget. It seemed like an unnecessary expense. But the worst of it is these pictures.’ She threw the pile of papers onto the hall floor. ‘He knows where both my daughters are. If he lays a finger on either of them . . .’

  ‘It won’t come to that, Beattie. I’m getting the money to him today and I’m sure we can find you something to wear. This’ll be over by tomorrow.’

  Beattie put her hands in front of her face and shook her head. ‘I don’t deserve all this kindness. I’ll never be able to repay you.’

  Kate held her tight. ‘Don’t worry about anything, Bea. I’ve got this.’

  A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the front door. It was Tilly, back from her trip to say farewell to her co-workers. By the time she had unlocked the door and entered the hallway, Beattie had stuffed the photographs back into the suitcase and the two women were standing there in line, like a reception committee.

  Eight

  ‘We need a trolley,’ Kate said, heaving Tilly’s rucksack out of the boot of the Audi.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, really,’ Tilly said, taking her bag from her and swinging it onto her back.

  Beattie, who had been having some trouble getting out of the low-slung car, finally popped out onto the pavement.

  She was something of a sight. The only clothes Kate could find that went anywhere near to fitting her were a pair of stretchy leggings and an oversized structural sweater dress that she had never worn herself because the space around it made her feel like an orphaned child. She had also loaned her some large sunglasses to conceal some of the bruising on her face. The expensive clothes looked cheap, stretched over Beattie’s body, and with her split lip and the yellowing skin around the edges of the Dior frames, the carefully groomed woman Kate had met just six days before in Starbucks seemed to have been replaced by some sort of escaped convict.

  ‘What time’s your plane, honey?’ she asked Tilly for what Kate thought was the fifth time.

  ‘One-fifty,’ Tilly said. Being a better person than her mother, she didn’t seem at all annoyed at having to repeat the answer yet again.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I asked that already, didn’t I? It’s just I get so overwhelmed by airports and all that. Since Ed died. I don’t know. They just make me nervous.’

  It was extraordinary to Kate how Beattie had changed since they were both young. This dowdy, dithery, housewife figure had been the feisty one, the leader, the queen bee of their little threesome. Or at least that’s how Kate remembered it. Hadn’t this same thing – this narrowing of horizons – happened to her, though? It was so hard to see oneself objectively. She was certainly more adventurous back then. More foolhardy, she corrected herself. They had all changed: she, Beattie and Jake. All in different ways, but all for the same reason.

  The Jake Effect.

  She looked around her at the rows and rows of cars parked by people who had left them to travel all over the world. Why couldn’t life be simpler? It seemed absurd, when you could talk to anyone over a computer, to have to go up fifty thousand feet or however high it was in a big metal bird and move to a different place.

  Yet here was Tilly, all ripe and ready to go. Kate tried to recall her own wanderlust, how she felt when she took the train down to London to set off for Dover. Of course, her parents didn’t give her a lift or anything, like she was doing for Tilly. They had no idea. They couldn’t even begin to understand what she was up to.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ Tilly said, large rucksack on her back, small bag strung across her front like a baby carrier. She turned to Beattie. ‘She’s always going off like this. Into a dream world.’

  ‘Oh, but she’s sad to see you go,’ Beattie said. ‘All discombobulated.’

  Kate locked the car and they set off for the departure lounge. On the travelator Tilly strode in front of them, walking fast, swinging her arms. From the back, she looked like a soldier going into battle. She seemed so sure, so steadfast.

  Kate told herself it was absurd to worry about her. A kid brought up in London, used to walking the city streets
at night, a girl who had been working all hours for the past six months, dealing with drunken famous actors at the National Theatre. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes as wet-behind-the-ears Emma James.

  Tilly will be fine, Tilly will be fine, she chanted silently. And, most importantly of all, she would be out of Jake’s clutches, in the far reaches of Europe, until it was all over.

  ‘Have you got your phone and your iPad?’ she asked as they stepped off the end of the travelator.

  ‘Yes, Mum. And my passport, and my debit card, and my euros, and my insurance documents and three pairs of knickers.’

  ‘Only three?’ Beattie said, putting her hand to her chest. ‘My.’

  ‘One to wear, one to wash and one to dry,’ Tilly said, as they approached the easyJet baggage drop.

  She really did know what she was doing, this girl. Kate tried to fill the big balloon of emptiness expanding inside her with gratitude that Tilly was being delivered to safety. They checked in her big rucksack and moved on to the security channels.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got no liquids in your bag?’ Kate asked.

  ‘No tweezers or sharp things?’ Beattie added.

  ‘Jeeze. It’s like having two twittering mother hens instead of just the one!’

  Kate had much rather it had been just her and Tilly at the airport. Ever since she heard her daughter’s plans, she had imagined this morning as a scene played out between just the two of them. But Beattie had been too nervous to stay on her own at the house. She swore that a car she had seen on the street earlier, when she had been out having a cigarette, belonged to Jake’s people.

  ‘Why?’ Kate had asked.

  ‘Tinted windows,’ Beattie said darkly. ‘They all have tinted windows.’

  Kate shrugged it off. Most of the young men around the neighbourhood had tinted windows in their cars. It was no big deal.

  ‘Don’t leave me here,’ Beattie had pleaded, holding on to Kate’s arm. ‘Not till you put the money in Jake’s account. Please.’