The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  So it was that Beattie was the first to get a goodbye hug from Tilly.

  ‘I’ll make it to Ikaria,’ Tilly said, holding her hand.

  ‘Get there early. It’s glorious in the spring,’ Beattie said. ‘Flowers everywhere. And you can make the most of the lovely walking because it’s not too hot.’

  Kate frowned. How did Beattie know all that? Had she been back there? She couldn’t imagine that she had. Or perhaps, like her, she had looked out for the island – regularly entering the name into search engines, exploring it in Google Maps. It had been in the news recently too, due to it having one of the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world. Not dying, it seemed, was commonplace in Ikaria.

  And how ironic that, despite her best efforts at never, ever mentioning the place, Kate was now seeing her daughter off to go right there.

  ‘I’ll see how I get on in Athens,’ Tilly said. ‘I want to see the sights and keep an open mind.’

  ‘Hey, perhaps you’ll meet someone nice,’ Beattie said, smiling over at Kate.

  ‘I hope you get your passport and that sorted out soon, Claire,’ Tilly said. ‘And make sure Mum and Dad look after you properly.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they will.’

  Tilly kissed Beattie on the cheek one more time, let go of her hand and turned to Kate.

  ‘Um, well, I’ll just go get a coffee, I reckon,’ Beattie said, diplomatically moving away.

  Tilly put her arms around Kate. While not tall, she had an inch on her mother, which, even after a lifetime of being shorter than everyone else, made Kate feel the lesser person of the two of them.

  Her nose stung, and then her cheeks were wet and she was sobbing on her daughter’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to be like this.’

  ‘Listen, Mum, I’ll be careful. I know my way around. I know not to take sweets or lifts from strangers. I’ll keep in touch every day.’

  ‘Promise?’ Kate said, looking up and leaving a string of snot on Tilly’s jacket.

  ‘I promise.’

  Kate fished a tissue out of her handbag and wiped the mess she had made from Tilly’s shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got to grow up, Mum.’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Tilly said, bending to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘Text me when you land, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course. And I’ll Skype as soon as I get Wi-Fi.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Kate pulled out the hundred euros she had stashed in her wallet and curled Tilly’s fingers around them.

  ‘Mum, I’ve got plenty of money.’

  ‘No, I want you to have it. Get a taxi from the airport, and buy yourself a couple of good, hot meals.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Tilly said. ‘If you insist.’

  She turned to go.

  ‘And Tills?’

  ‘Yes, Mother?’

  ‘If you don’t want to come back through France and all that, we’ll be very happy to pay your airfare back from Greece.’

  Tilly sighed. ‘Thanks, Mum. I’ll bear that in mind.’

  She had nearly reached the security gates when Kate caught up with her and stopped her again.

  ‘Take this,’ she said, putting her holey stone in her daughter’s hand. ‘We found it on the beach by Gwel an Mor, remember?’

  Tilly looked blankly at her mother.

  ‘It’s for good luck. Keeps the evil spirits away.’

  ‘Mum, you are such a loony tunes sometimes.’

  ‘Take care, darling,’ Kate said, kissing her one last time on the cheek.

  ‘Can I go now?’ Tilly said, not unkindly.

  Kate stepped back and watched her daughter weave through the retractable barriers to the security channel. A sturdy female guard stopped her to have a word. Kate was just about to intervene and go up and demand what the hell this woman was cross-questioning her daughter about, when Tilly shook her head and kept on going. She showed her boarding pass, turned and waved, and then she was gone, just a blur behind a frosted-glass screen.

  As Kate stood there gasping and gulping and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, she felt an arm snake into hers. She looked round with tear-filled eyes to see Beattie standing beside her with two cups of coffee on a moulded cardboard tray.

  ‘Skinny latte cool with you?’ she said, smiling softly at Kate, who took the drink from her.

  ‘Let’s not let Jake know where she’s gone, eh?’ she said to Beattie.

  ‘Now why on earth would we do that?’

  On the way out of the departures hall, a youngish woman with a small crucifix hanging on the outside of her purple polo neck jumper rushed up to Kate.

  ‘You’re the Face of Kindness, aren’t you?’ she asked, taking her by the hand. Kate froze. Was this something set up by Jake?

  ‘She is indeed,’ Beattie said, smiling at the woman, oblivious to any possible threat in the situation.

  ‘I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for all you are doing for the poor girls of West Africa. Whatever anyone else says, you are a great person. The world needs good people like you.’

  She clasped Kate’s hands again and, before hurrying off, gave a little bow, a sort of genuflection.

  Kate stood there perplexed. She hadn’t thought about Martha’s Wish for days. She’d forgotten all about the schoolgirls and the buildings.

  She was a fraud and a liar.

  Nine

  ‘They’re back,’ Beattie said later that day as their taxi drove out of the gates to Kate and Mark’s house and past a white Ford Mondeo parked at the side of the street. Two figures lurked inside, outlined behind tinted windows. ‘I must have scared them off when I spotted them this morning. But they’re back. Watch.’

  Kate turned and, as their cab reached the end of the street, she saw the Mondeo pull out.

  ‘Hopefully just keeping tabs on us,’ Beattie said, tugging at the neckline of the too-tight sweater dress.

  ‘Hopefully.’ Kate’s bones jolted as the taxi splashed through a pothole and turned onto the main road leading up to the river. The Mondeo merged into the thick, rain-soaked traffic three cars behind them.

  It was still there, at about the same distance from them, when they reached the Strand branch of the private bank where Kate and Mark held their accounts. As their cab pulled up, their stalker sped past and turned the corner up ahead of them.

  ‘Satisfied that we got to the bank, I guess.’ Beattie stumbled out of the car and stepped under the shelter of Kate’s umbrella. ‘My, it’s a beautiful building.’

  It was. A sleek swathe of glass in a row of Regency grandeur, its impeccable wall of windows reflected the two women and the entire street behind them. With the distance offered by this, Kate could see what an odd figure Beattie cut. As an outfit, what they had cobbled together wasn’t so bad. On the right person – bigger than Kate and smaller than Beattie – it would have emitted the edgy chic favoured by women of their age, who had grown up in the punk era. But the hard edges of the clothing brutally stretching over Beattie’s soft hips just looked frumpy and wrong. She looked like a sheep in the clothing of a fox.

  Feeling the commanding structure her own Prada suit offered, Kate remembered how and why she had selected it. It was hard enough feeling authoritative with stitches on her forehead. But, like a tatty accessory, Beattie’s shambling, beaten-up appearance would instantly undermine all her efforts.

  ‘Here,’ Kate said, fishing a twenty-pound note out of her bag. ‘Go into that café over there and I’ll come and join you afterwards. They do marvellous little Portuguese custard tarts.’ She had never tasted one herself, but she had it on Tilly’s word how delicious they were.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Beattie said. ‘Sure you don’t want any support in there?’

  ‘I’m fine, honest. They know me very well.’

  ‘It’s just,’ – Beattie rolled the twenty up into a tube – ‘I don’t want to be on my own out here. Not with them being so close by.�
�

  ‘I’ll walk you to the café,’ Kate said. ‘It’s always packed, so nothing can happen to you once you’re in. And I’ll come and get you afterwards.’

  ‘OK.’ Beattie looked doubtful.

  ‘Come on. It’s nearly all over. Just a couple more hours.’

  She ushered Beattie across the road and into the warm, sweet-scented café, found her a seat near the back, away from the windows, and ordered her a large latte and one of the tarts.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she said, before stepping out onto the street.

  It felt different to be outside on her own, knowing that the Mondeo and its drivers might be nearby. The rational part of her brain told her the car might not have had anything to do with Jake – the fact that they were ‘followed’ could just be one of those coincidences of journey, timing and direction that must happen every day. But the thought that she had not yet been physically hurt – was virgin territory in that respect – gave her a superstitious inkling that her turn might be coming up.

  Why had she given her holey stone away to Tilly? Surely she was the one in more need of it?

  She hurried along the pavement towards the bank, where she was shown inside by a doorman in a bottle-green uniform.

  The transfer was actually more problem-free than she had anticipated. The story about sending the money to someone called Stephen Smith, who was building a property for her in the US, seemed entirely plausible, the ID did the trick, and the bank manager, a woman about ten years younger than her who sported a fearsome, bright red manicure, even complimented her on her suit. ‘Prada, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Kate smiled and nodded.

  Feeling as if she had just relieved herself – which, in many ways, she had – she stepped out onto the street, her fingers crossed that Mark wouldn’t somehow find out what she had been up to. The downpour had eased off, and a rainbow arced its end into the gap between the buildings at the Trafalgar Square end of the Strand. Any sense of release drained quickly from her, however, as a white Mondeo with tinted windows turned onto the main drag from a side street a little way from where she was standing. It cruised slowly towards her then stopped in front of her, right by her toes.

  Kate had no idea what to do. Should she run? To where, though? She certainly didn’t want to lead them to Beattie. The driver’s window wound down a couple of inches to reveal the top of a bald head.

  ‘Emma James?’ the man inside said, his voice high and reedy, his accent nasal and odd, possibly Essex.

  ‘What?’ Kate said, reluctantly moving closer to the car, in an attempt at keeping the exchange intimate. She didn’t want to respond too openly to a name she hadn’t used when in the bank.

  ‘He says good,’ the man said. ‘Good girly, he says.’

  ‘Can I have Beattie’s passport?’ Kate said suddenly. If she could get that from him, then Beattie could go home quickly and, with a little help from Kate, find herself somewhere to rent and get herself back on her feet again, hastening the end of this whole horrible chapter.

  But the man just closed the window of his car, revved the engine, and sped off, raising a wave of puddle water that splashed against the trousers of an elegantly dressed elderly gentleman passing on the pavement.

  ‘Farking cunt,’ the old man said, waving his walking stick at the retreating Mondeo.

  Marks and Spencer’s was overheated and reeked cloyingly of roast dinners. Kate’s suit felt too tight and she longed to take off her Louboutins, which were the kind of shoes you could only stand in for half an hour before feeling as if some sort of medieval fire torture had been conducted on the balls of your feet.

  She felt embarrassed and ungenerous taking Beattie here, rather than, say, Harvey Nichols, but they did need to buy several outfits and M&S was better suited both to Beattie’s style – if you could call it that – and the size she would need, which Kate estimated as a UK eighteen.

  But Beattie loved the shop. ‘It’s like JC Penney but a million times nicer,’ she said, fingering an overdone scarf in the Per Una section.

  ‘What takes your fancy?’ Kate asked as they waded through the racks and racks of clothes.

  ‘You dress so beautifully. You choose for me.’

  To Beattie’s effusive displays of gratitude, they managed to fill a shopping trolley with possibilities. Kate sat on a vinyl armchair outside the changing rooms and handed items through to her to try on – they had exceeded the fitting-room garment limit of six many times over. Every now and then, Beattie would step sheepishly outside the cubicle and show herself for Kate’s verdict. The rejects – which amounted to most of their initial selection – she handed out so that Kate could hang them up.

  Kate looked at a pair of tailored trousers Beattie had not been able to get into, and thought that she could fit into them twice. The thrill of triumph she felt at that thought repulsed her. Such ideas did not make her a winner over Beattie. If anything, it was the reverse.

  So what was it about Beattie that made her want to despise her? And then, as she pegged the trousers back onto their hanger, she realised that it was because Beattie had so fully allowed herself to become a victim, the role Kate had spurned throughout all the challenges of the years. Alongside raising her remaining daughter to be healthy and happy, she considered that to be her life’s victory. And now, here was Beattie, whirling into her life, dragging her down with her personal fears and her battered face and her state of having allowed everything to be taken from her.

  It was heartless to think it, but Beattie was like an evil talisman. Kate wanted her away from her as soon as possible. After this blip – the Jake Effect blip – she wanted to enjoy the rest of her life in peace. She had paid and paid and that was that.

  And as if to herald the coming new age, at that very moment a text arrived from Tilly:

  Arrived safely xxxxx

  Kate texted back:

  Get a taxi into town! xxxxxx

  Instantly the reply arrived:

  Yes, Mother xxxxx

  In the end, Beattie chose a series of loose, flowing clothes in creams and taupes – colours that made up the major part of Kate’s own wardrobe. Unconsciously, she had selected for Beattie styles very like those she would choose for herself. And oddly – given their physical differences – they also looked good on Beattie. The result was that Beattie looked like a distorted, lower-rent version of herself – when not in her sharp Prada suit, of course.

  They stopped in the food hall, because Beattie said she wanted to cook supper for Mark and Kate, to say thank you.

  ‘I will pay you back,’ she said, as Kate used her card to pay for her purchases. ‘I promise, Emma.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Kate said.

  ‘You’re so kind.’

  No. No, I’m not, Kate thought.

  ‘I have to say that you’re taking all this very well,’ Kate said as finally they made their way towards the shop exit, taking up the whole aisle with the bulk of their carrier bags. ‘Having all your things taken, and all that.’

  ‘It’s only stuff.’ Beattie leaned into Kate a little so that their arms brushed. ‘And I’m so lucky to have such a good and generous friend.’

  ‘And now we’ve paid Jake off, we don’t have to worry about him hurting us or anyone we love,’ Kate said.

  ‘I hope you’re right about that,’ Beattie said.

  Kate stopped. They had stepped out on to the crowded street, right into the pedestrian flow. A woman with a briefcase bumped into them and crossly veered around them.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘He’s a very greedy man, Emma.’

  They both looked glumly out at the river of pedestrians, which had diverted its flow around the obstacle they presented, as if they were an island.

  Ten

  ‘I’ve paid the money into your account.’

  ‘Good,’ Jake said. It was a particularly bad Skype connection. His image kept freezing.

  Kate raised her eyeb
rows.

  Was that it? He could at least show a little gratitude. It was a hell of a lot of money, after all. But he clearly had other things on his mind. Immobile as he was in his chair, he exuded the energy of an excited puppy.

  ‘Hey, little Em, I’ve got great news,’ he said, his face beaming broadly across the monitor.

  ‘What is it?’ Kate said.

  ‘Guess who I’ve found?’

  Kate shrugged. The way Jake had his fingers tangled in the web, it could have been anyone. ‘Elvis?’

  Jake laughed, a large, throaty, surprisingly un-wheezy guffaw and, for a second, she thought she glimpsed the beautiful boy she had once loved.

  The meaty smell of Beattie’s cooking snaked through Kate’s office. She found this evidence of her friend’s presence strangely comforting, because, while her weakness and gratitude wasn’t exactly wholesome, it gave Kate the rare feeling of being the stronger person – as if she had budded powerful, capable wings for Beattie to shelter under.

  ‘Elvis! I love it,’ Jake said, once he had taken the breath again from his machine. ‘You are a scream, little Em. No. It’s even better than that. It’s someone else who, like you, was once close to me. Well, some people who were close, in fact. Three people.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Kate said, not wanting to play his game. She felt an unfamiliar rumble in her stomach and realised that the cooking smells were making her hungry, one of the many feelings she thought she had eliminated from her repertoire.

  It was nearly all over. She was nearly free. She wanted to switch Jake off and forget about him.

  ‘Think, girl. Who else was I looking for as well as you?’

  ‘Not your family?’

  ‘Clever girl! Yep. I have located Marnie, Zeb and Moon. The Fellowship are smart at covering tracks – not as smart as you were, but pretty good. But if you know how to look and where to go, and if you have some people who can actually WALK on the ground for you, then anything’s possible.’

  He inhaled again, grasping at the air, much quicker than usual – as if he had news he couldn’t wait to share.