The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  ‘Get up,’ he said.

  Beattie made to move away from Kate, but instead grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up so that she stood in front of her, shielding her from the gun. Kate felt the knife cut into her throat and she thought for a second how that would spoil it for Beattie when her body was found. Through the corner of her eye, she saw Beattie’s Triskelion tattoo on the arm that held the knife to her throat, distorted with tension.

  She was not going to give in, though. This woman had twice planned to kill her and, worse than that, she had turned her into a murderer. She wasn’t going to allow her to get away with it. Remembering a move learned in the self-defence classes she had taken with Tilly, she suddenly looped her arm into Beattie’s, pushing away the knife and forcing her to drop it. At the same time she jabbed the elbow of her other arm back into Beattie’s ribs, winding her. Then she turned and thrust her backwards, up the slope towards the edge of the cliff. Beattie stuck her heel in and launched herself back at Kate, but the odds were stacked against her, because Kate fought now with the strength of a mother protecting her young, her anger further propelled by the weight of all the wrong Beattie had done to her, all her life. She charged at her and shoved, using the force of every tendon, every muscle, every fibre of her body.

  Beattie tottered backwards, her arms windmilling in the air, her feet trying to stay on the edge of the cliff.

  The momentum from Kate’s ruthless bulldozing and the weight of her own body propelled her unstoppably backwards.

  She reached behind her, as if searching out a surface to halt her trajectory. Finding nothing, she toppled flat into the open, thin air.

  Kate had seen the same look of terror many years ago in this same place, on a different face.

  But she had never before seen a pair of eyes so filled with rage.

  And then, with an almost audible whoosh, and just like Jake before her, Beattie was gone.

  Kate rushed up to the edge of the cliff and watched as that bulky body tumbled down onto the rocks some hundred feet below, bouncing, breaking, smashing. She watched as the waves licked at her, gently pulling her to them; Poseidon making love to his Medusa.

  It was over.

  The monster was slain.

  Kate wondered if Beattie’s last thoughts had been that she was going to join Jake at the bottom of the ocean. The thought made her smile. Of course, Beattie had no idea that Jake was on land, tucked safely into the hillside.

  And then she came to her senses. She realised what she had done, and who had been watching. And listening.

  She turned, appalled, to face Giorgios and Tilly.

  PART FOUR

  NOW

  6 May 2013 (Easter Monday), 6 a.m. Ikaria. Giorgios’s taverna.

  I’m still up after the busiest night Giorgios and Elpiniki have ever had. The last revellers – Eirini and Ilias, aged ninety-four and ninety-eight respectively – have just tripped off to bed after a full night’s dancing, drinking and eating. G. and I wondered as they went off hand in hand if they were going to her bed or his.

  Oh, my poor feet ache from running around with plates, but it’s good for the business, and it makes Giorgios happy. So the pain is sweet.

  For the record: I’m trying not to take pills, I’ve stopped drinking and I’m really trying to eat.

  But without my little helpers, even though I’m tired, I can’t sleep.

  Damned sobriety.

  So here I am. I’m going to try my hand at a journal again. Now I can once more tell myself the truth.

  I’ve got a strange ride ahead. It’s like jumping off into the blue. I don’t know where I’m going to land, but it feels surprisingly OK.

  Giorgios is a great help. Who knows what the future holds? But he says I can stay here as long as I like. As long as I need. Which may well be for ever.

  Before I move forward, though, I need to put down what has happened since I killed . . .

  I killed . . .

  Since Beattie went over the cliff.

  Tilly called again yesterday. She says it’s weird without me in the house, but Mark has calmed down ‘a little’.

  But that’s not the right place to start. I need to go further back.

  Two weeks ago we went into Agios Kirikos after putting Tilly and the Rothko on a plane for Athens. Sitting in a café eating souvlaki – bread and all – I found a Wi-Fi signal for my iPad. After long deliberation – I had no idea what Pandora’s box I might be opening – I downloaded my email. With some relief, I saw that there was nothing from anyone. It was as if, away from this island, I had ceased to exist.

  But that was a good thing. It was better I was forgotten. I felt awful about Mark, about the money, but, as far as I could see, there was nothing I could do about it. It had gone, and that was that. Giorgios – and Tilly, in fact – have convinced me that, as far as the money was concerned, I acted with the best possible motives.

  Tilly was safe, and that was good enough for me.

  I hoped her turning up on Mark’s doorstep, with the Rothko, which would easily cover the money I took . . . Well, I hoped she might be able to explain it to him. At least he’d listen to her, and she was primed from six days of me and Giorgios trying to explain everything.

  What it felt like for her to know the truth! To be free of the dread of her finding out . . .

  Well, it’s like stepping into the light after the longest, darkest night.

  I was just about to put the iPad away and finish my souvlaki when an email arrived in my personal account.

  When I saw the name of the sender, I blinked and shook my head.

  It was from Jake Mithras.

  I stabbed at the screen to open it.

  Dear Emma, it said.

  This is Sam here. Soon I’m going to shut down this email, and try to forget all about Jake Mithras. After that I will never contact you again, I promise. But I need to tell you how sorry I am. I am shamed by my actions. I thought it was only cash. You know, extortion . . .

  Only extortion!

  . . . I swear I had no idea what Luanne was really up to, that she wanted to wipe you and Tilly out. Obliterate you, she said. I only found that out when she joined us up on the cliff and we’d tied Tilly up.

  I’d thought we were just going to leave you both up there, then take that painting and disappear . . .

  I knew that, in fact. Tilly told me.

  She’d met the man who’d told her he was called Jake when she was having breakfast in Agios Kirikos after getting off the boat. He sat down and started talking with her and they realised they both had a shared passion for theatre. She said she felt almost instantly that she could trust him. He reminded her of her Uncle Julian, in fact. She said she ‘was almost a hundred per cent positive he was gay’.

  When, after they had talked non-stop for two hours about Ibsen and Shaw and Sondheim, he’d offered to take her round in the jeep he had hired, she hadn’t even hesitated. They had a great weekend, hiking along mountain tracks, visiting villages full of really old people. They stayed in a bed and breakfast near a beautiful beach called Nas, where a river pooled and met the sea by a temple of Artemis, he in one room, she in another. Not for one minute did she feel threatened by him in any way.

  On the Monday evening, he’d taken her up to the cliff, supposedly to show her the sunset. When they reached the top, she had been shocked to find the woman she knew as Claire up there waiting for them. She hadn’t believed it when this big gentle new friend of hers had turned on her and helped that woman – who was nothing like the kindly figure she had met in London – tie her up.

  And then Beattie told this man – whom she called Sam – what she wanted him to do when I turned up.

  Tilly had no idea, of course, that I was on the island. But the shock of that discovery was obliterated by the realisation that this woman wanted this Sam man to kill us both.

  Then Sam started arguing with Beattie. He said he wanted no part of it. Beattie put the big knife to Tilly’s throat and s
aid she’d kill her outright if he didn’t ‘Goddamn shut up’ and do as he was told. That was when he told Beattie he was quitting, and started walking away.

  ‘If you hadn’t turned up then, Mum,’ Tilly said, ‘I think she would have killed me.’

  . . . I’m not violent, Sam’s email went on. It was just like a really well-paid role-play gig. I’m just a broke actor with bills to pay . . .

  He’s not violent.

  Beattie must have faked every single injury I ever saw on her. The real Jake hadn’t attacked her back in 1980, poor boy: she’d done it to herself. His only crime was trying to warn me about her. There were no henchmen in San Francisco or London. In her grim determination to get at me, Beattie beat herself up. Several times, in the most grim horrible ways.

  There was no husband, there were no daughters, just a life of bad luck, prison and meanness.

  Of course, Sam had no idea of the extent of her madness.

  None of us did.

  She was fucking good, wasn’t she?

  Everything that happened back in Greece thirty-three years ago was set up by Beattie or Claire or Luanne or whoever the hell she was. It was like some sort of reality TV game, but for real, and twenty years ahead of Big Brother. I was duped, led, forced into pushing Jake off that cliff, unwittingly punishing him for the ‘crime’ of falling in love with me.

  So does that mean I’m less responsible for what happened? What I did?

  I don’t know.

  It doesn’t feel like that at the moment. Perhaps it will later.

  Sam’s email went on to tell me his version of what happened before I turned up on the cliff – which was exactly the same as Tilly’s. If he hadn’t done such awful things, I think I’d quite like him. But then I’m a fine one to talk, aren’t I, about doing awful things?

  He liked Tilly:

  . . . Your daughter is the most charming girl. She is full of life and hope and optimism. She reminds me of myself when I was that age. She called me Uncle Jake. She made me feel protective toward her. There was absolutely nothing else in my feelings, I swear . . .

  Then he took a few further steps towards redemption:

  . . . You thought I abandoned you both after I walked past you on the cliff. But I was there, hiding, listening out, ready to jump in and save you from crazy Luanne.

  I even stuck around when that waiter guy came stalking along the cliff edge – I had no idea whose side he was going to be on. All I saw was a man with a gun . . .

  So, like Tilly and Giorgios, he was witness to everything. And when it was all over, and he knew Beattie was finished and we were safe, he evaporated away from the island.

  . . . Your guy had that gun, after all, and I should imagine I wasn’t your favourite dude at that moment . . .

  Too right he wasn’t. But then he signed off with this:

  . . . I want you to know that whatever happened on that cliff – both recently and in the past – is safe with me. All I ask is your forgiveness for my part in all of this, all the grief I have caused you and your family. I’m sorry. I was greedy.

  Now to my final business with you. I still have access to the money – Luanne gave me fake ID to open the Stephen Smith account. Now I know more about what she was capable of, I don’t want to think exactly how she got hold of it. But it’s useful just for a couple more days.

  If you let me have your account details, I will pay the money back to you.

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  So it turned out he wasn’t such a bad guy, after all. My heart would have broken from gratitude, if it hadn’t been too busy soaring with joy.

  Two days after she got home, Tilly phoned to say that Mark had got all the money back, except for two hundred thousand pounds. Before he de-friended her, ‘Stephen Smith’ sent her a private message on Facebook, explaining that it was for his ‘expenses’.

  I said he wasn’t such a bad guy. I didn’t say he was an angel.

  And Tilly told me yesterday that Mark has now invested the two million for Martha’s Wish in a way that is quite helpful to his own fund, as well as offering a great deal for the charity.

  And Patience is none the wiser.

  All faces are saved.

  At some point he’ll have to explain my absence, but I’m sure he’ll think of something.

  When Tilly was here, I told her where my old diaries are hidden in the Battersea house. She’s read them through now, and I’ve asked her to post them on to me, so that I can finally face them and start to figure it all out for myself.

  ‘In a way, it’s all The French Shit’s fault,’ she said to me when she called yesterday.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, although you were clearly anorexic right from the start, you were a driven and brilliant and adventurous girl – and I know from seeing it in so many girls at school that sometimes that goes hand in hand with eating disorders. But all of that good stuff was pushed out of you when he raped you, wasn’t it, Mum? The French Shit put you in a box that you’ve never quite escaped from.’

  That sort of took my breath away. I’d never thought of it like that. I’d always put everything that happened down as my own making.

  Perhaps, then, that absolution of thinking of myself as a victim is still open to me?

  Tills assures me she understands. She just needs time to absorb it all. And when she has, she will try to explain it to her father, although I have asked her not to tell him where I am.

  Not yet.

  He’s still very upset, she says.

  I feel so sorry for him, for all I put him through. All these years he thought he was looking after someone else, entirely. He was completely mistaken about the nature of the bird he kept in that gilded cage.

  But what he had, in fact, was a girl caught in stasis, frozen in free-fall from everything that had happened – here in Ikaria, in Athens, and yes, Tilly’s right, in Marseille.

  But now Beattie’s gone, out of the picture, dead, washing around in the currents somewhere out there – Giorgios checks daily and as yet there are no reports of any bodies washed up.

  I feel I’ve landed, and the jolt has allowed the real Emma to wake up.

  And this Emma can’t believe that Kate allowed herself to live like that all those years.

  I don’t know if Mark would ever be able to bear the real Emma James, aged fifty.

  We’ll have to see what happens.

  I’m just glad the money’s back – especially the Martha’s Wish money. Apart from Jake, that’s the part out of all of this that I feel the worst about.

  I don’t feel bad about Beattie, though.

  No.

  I feel proud.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to:

  Brian Kellett for information on A&E procedures; Jonathan Ford for brilliant answers to my questions about hedge fund management; Eva Nella and Gabriella Triantafyllis for Greek translations and advice on Athens landmarks; Eri Voulgaraki and everyone at the wonderful Pyrgos Villas, Agios Kirikos, Ikaria, where I stayed on my research trip; Owen and Eva (again) for finding the island for me in the first place; Marya Hornbacher, whose honest memoir Wasted helped me understand anorexia; Harvard Student Agencies, whose Let’s Go Europe 1980 was invaluable both then and now; my agent, Simon Trewin at WME, who talks great plot; Ali Hope, my editor at Headline, whose constant encouragement and incisive comments really kicked me into shape – and Emily Kitchin, who I know had a hand in it all as well; my first readers: Tim and Nel, who put up with my hovering and hand-wringing, and finally Joey, who sometimes has to fend for himself while his mum is wrangling in the writing shed.

  Anything I have got wrong is my own fault. And, as well as taking a few liberties with the island’s geography, I also made up the sculpture in the airport in Ikaria.

 

 

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