“What sort of history?”
“The boy she accused of rape—the foster brother—she had, by all accounts, developed a bit of a thing for him too.”
“A bit of a thing?” I stare at her. “She accused him of rape when he rejected her. And now my brother rejects her, and lo and behold, he ends up brain-dead. You can’t see any sort of connection there? Shall I help you out?”
Her square cheeks are reddening now as she tries to stop herself from saying the things she really wants to. She’s not silly. She knows I’m a lawyer, can probably guess that I’m recording all this with my phone.
“Crying rape and murder are very different crimes, with very different criminal pathologies.”
“That boy turned to drugs because of her. A good life ruined.” I remember how cold I was to his mother, Helen, and guilt only fuels my anger. “She should have gone to prison.”
The policewoman sighs. “Jody Currie has only ever been a danger to herself, Miss Mackenzie. There’s not enough evidence for us to charge her with your brother’s attempted murder.”
“I want to see your superior officer.”
She breathes deeply, gathering herself. “Your brother was a strong, fit young man. He’d been a member of Stone’s Boxing Club for five years.”
I open my mouth to protest that this is the first I’ve heard of it but remember in time that everything Jody told me about my brother is a lie.
“We’ve spoken to the manager, who said that though he was lean, he was a very powerful fighter. Apparently, he had been the victim of homophobic attacks as a teenager and had learned to defend himself.”
An angry flush rises to my cheeks. “You knew my brother was gay and you never thought to mention it to me? You just let me believe that crazy bitch all along.”
She looks at me steadily. “People’s private lives are complicated, Miss Mackenzie. It only becomes our business when a crime has been committed.”
“Like pushing someone over a stairwell?”
“As I was saying, it’s very unlikely Miss Currie would have the physical strength to overpower your brother.”
“She could have caught him off-balance.”
“If there had been a fight or argument, someone in the building would have heard something.”
I snort. “Those crazies?”
“We’ve spoken to her social worker who agrees that she is not a violent person. In her statement, Miss Currie says that she came out of her flat after hearing a strange noise—sound carries in that place, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It was then that she saw your brother lying on the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairwell. She went down to see if she could help him, then called 999 on her cell phone. I can play you the recording if you like. She’s hysterical.”
“So she’s a good actress. She had her cell phone with her, so either she’d just been out and was coming in or she was just about to go out, right?”
“Some people keep their cell phones in their pockets all the time. Or she looked over the stairwell, saw what had happened, and ran back inside to get it before she went down to Abe.”
I stare at her. Useless bloody British police. I could pursue a civil case: the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong.
“You are at least going to prosecute her for wasting police time, right? All the lies about him being depressed?”
“We’ve cautioned her.”
“Another caution? After everything she’s done?”
“I accept you must feel that she made a fool of you, but injuring someone’s pride is not a crime.”
I hesitate before answering to make sure my voice is steady. “So, if you’re so convinced this psycho had nothing to do with it, how do you think my brother fell?”
There is a long beat of silence.
The policewoman’s lipstick is seeping through the wrinkles around her mouth. Why do they do it, these women in positions of power? Why do they cling to these outdated conventions of femininity? She looks like an aging flight attendant.
“I still think he might have been depressed,” she says, and her voice is human again. “I believe there’s a history of mental illness in your family.”
I stiffen.
“We spoke to his doctor in Scotland. As you probably know, Abe was treated for depression when he was fifteen.” She’s carefully avoiding my gaze. “He was working extremely hard, and his employers admitted he was under a lot of pressure. I think he jumped, Mary,” she says gently.
I breathe slowly, tempted to correct her—It’s Miss Mackenzie to you—but what’s the point?
She gets up from the table, taking my statement with all its allegations about Jody, and tells me I can stay in the room as long as I need to.
When she’s gone, I stare at the pale-blue wall, with its single claw mark gouged into the plaster.
It’s not my fault. I was a child, the same as Abe. We both did what we had to to survive. I’m not surprised he was depressed. He medicated with Prozac while I did so with booze and casual sex. The former cry for help always inspires more sympathy than the latter, of course.
In the silence, I hear muffled voices and doors banging, the occasional laugh. Is she here? Have they finished with her already? Sent her home to spin some new tale in which I am the wicked sister who poisoned Abe’s mind against her or killed him to prevent them being together?
I could just go home. Back to my old life. Back to Jackson for some no-strings distraction. Leave Abe’s future in the hands of the doctors. Leave Daniel to Donna.
I close my eyes and push my fingertips back into the scorch marks. The room smells of stale smoke. They can’t have changed the carpets since the ban came in.
My phone, on silent, buzzes angrily in my bag. I force myself not to look but can’t repress the childish hope that it might be Daniel.
Perhaps Derbyshire is right. Maybe Abe jumped. He was overworked and exhausted. Jody was on his case the whole time, so he must have dreaded coming home. Perhaps the relationship with Redhorse came to a bitter end and left him heartbroken.
And yet the picture Lula painted of my brother was not of a depressive. He might have been as a closeted gay teenager, but now? The novel on his bedside table was half-finished; I came to the page he had turned down, just after the plot twist when everything was thrown up in the air. It sounds silly, but wouldn’t you find out what happened before you jumped? Unless it was on impulse. On the way back from a lonely night drowning his sorrows? Except that he hadn’t drunk anything. And it happened early in the evening, only an hour or so after he’d gotten back from work.
I think of the bruises on Jody’s clavicles and Abe’s torn shirt, both signs of a struggle.
The fact that Abe was not wearing his jacket with his wallet in the pocket, as if someone had knocked on the door of the flat and called him outside for a moment.
I think about the fact that Jody was prepared to destroy the life of the last man who rejected her.
She did it, I’m sure of it, but with so little evidence, what can I do?
Getting up from the table, my legs feel like lead. I pick up my bag and walk back through the corridors of the police station, then ask to be buzzed out into the main reception area.
The woman who visited Jody on her birthday is there, speaking quietly to the duty officer. She breaks off when she sees me.
“Excuse me, Miss Mackenzie. My name’s Tabitha Obodom. I’m Jody Currie’s social worker. Could I—”
I push past her. I don’t want to hear whatever sob story she’s going to concoct to make me drop my accusations. I’m done with stories.
It’s dark outside and raining just heavily enough to be unpleasant but too lightly to make the sidewalks glitter. I must confront Jody, but the last place in the world I want to be is back at St. Jerome’s. I just don’t have the energy to sort out a hotel. I’ll go back,
have an early night, and then decide tomorrow whether to stay and see this thing through or give up and go home. I’m not usually a quitter, but tonight, I feel beaten. In fact, when a passing truck throws up a cascade of filthy puddle water all over my legs, I feel like crying.
Instead, I take out my phone to call a cab.
The missed call was from Daniel. I don’t call him back.
25.
Mira
The sister told the police that they must arrest Jody for murder. They didn’t, though. They didn’t say, You have the right to remain silent, as I have seen on British police programs. They just said they would take her to the station for a little chat. They treated her gently because she was so very upset, and for that, I was grateful.
I don’t know what she will tell them at the station. Will she carry on protecting you?
You are still not home when I start preparing our dinner. The smell of the onions makes me feel sick. I know that a piece of bread and butter will take away the feeling, but I do not have any. You said that women use pregnancy as an excuse to become fat pigs.
Is that why you went with another woman?
You think I didn’t guess?
The kondomat in your gym bag.
The late nights spent in the pub with the guys from the building site.
The times you crept out in the middle of the night, like you did a few nights ago.
The sudden smiles as you thought about something—about someone—who wasn’t me.
It’s as if you wanted me to find out, but I stubbornly refused to, didn’t I?
Because where will I be without you?
I will have to go home. To the shame of being unable to keep my husband. The dishonor surrounding me like a bad smell, revolting all other men who might once have wanted me. The sullied woman with her bastard child.
They will think it strange, the people who gave us the flat, that I can just trot back to Albania where we were persecuted for being Roma. We are not Roma. Why did you tell them we were? Because it would be easier for us to stay, you said. Why do you not want to go home? My parents do not understand. I do not understand. You have cut all ties with our mother country as if you believed the lie you told the English authorities, that we were in danger of our lives, that we could never go back.
Could you bear to leave the baby, Loran? He, at least, you seem to love.
It is a miracle I am pregnant at all. We make love perhaps once or twice in a month when you are drunk. You want a son. Then, you say, you would not be sad to come home every night to a miserable house. You would call him Pjeter, which means rock, because this is how a man must be. A man must be strong because women are weak. It is your burden to look after me.
The burden of my mother and sisters rested lightly on my father’s shoulders. Papa often laughed. But all men are different, and all women are different.
The day I left her, Mama told me to be a good wife for you. She was crying as she said it. You stood by the car with your face as hard and cold as the ice on the puddles in the ditches. Papa told her to hush because she was upsetting you. He was grateful that you had chosen me because you were from a better family than ours. Mother said it was you who should be grateful, that I was the most beautiful girl in the whole of Tirana and could have any man I chose.
I chose you. Papa would not have forced me into marriage if it wasn’t my desire. I did it for love, but not of you—of them. I could not bear to see them disappointed. And I thought I could make you love me. It had been so easy for me before you. I had thought men were simple creatures, that all you had to do was smile and wear pretty clothes, to paint your lips and listen to their woes, to make them supper and open your legs. I thought love would follow.
I could tell you did not desire me, even as you asked for my hand. This had not happened to me before. It excited me, the thought of bringing you around. I imagined the moment you would break: as you made love to me, suddenly, love would come upon you like a wave crashing over your head. But you fuck me like my pidhi is just a hole in the mattress.
What is she like? Is she tighter? Softer? Does she smell better?
Is it Jody? Or the drug-addicted woman downstairs? If so, I shudder to think of what you bring back to our bed.
I swallow the nausea and chop the onions, then I wash and dry up before folding the towel and tucking it into the handle of the cooker so that the back and front edges line up. You like the house to be tidy.
I don’t know what else I can do.
If I were at home, I would feed the pigs now, or collect the eggs, or cut off the runners from the pumpkin plants. Or I might treat my hair with olive oil and simply lie by the window, reading Kadare, while the oil sinks into my hair to make it glossy and thick for a man to run his fingers through.
I am glad to hide my hair under a scarf now. Seeing it would only make me sad.
There is nothing else to do but wait, so I watch television—very quietly so that I can hear your footsteps echoing in the stairwell. I watch the program where English people shout at each other because they have behaved badly toward one another. Sometimes, it makes me laugh. Always, it lightens my heart because it shows me that all people have troubles, that mine are not so great.
26.
Mags
Daniel leaves me a message asking how my brother is. It’s a stupid thing to say and probably only born out of guilt over his rekindled domestic bliss, so I don’t bother replying.
From the police station, I head straight to the hospital.
Jody isn’t there. The nurses don’t seem aware of what’s happened. If I told them, she’d be barred from visiting him, but this is the one place I am guaranteed to see her, so I don’t.
I ask for Dr. Bonville, and they say he is coming to see another patient so I can catch him then. I’m intending to tell him I want Abe’s machines turned off. But as I sit down beside my brother’s bed, I find I cannot concentrate on the novel I brought with me. I read the same page six times without taking it in, then finally close it with a sigh.
Abe’s face is almost as pale as the pillowcase. The bruises are greenish yellow now, as if he’s been painted with glow-in-the-dark paint.
I cannot fawn over this near cadaver like Jody, but I could at least hold his hand.
The rush of blood in my ears drowns out the monitors as I reach forward and take his limp hand in my own.
“Hello, Abe. It’s Mags.”
It’s the first time I have touched him since Eilean Donan castle.
His fingers are cool and dry. I was afraid they would be clammy with death. Carefully, I slide my palm beneath his until we are palm to palm, then I clasp my fingers around his.
All sounds recede as I close my eyes and focus on the connection between us. A channel of electricity, or magnetism, or whatever it is that makes up the human soul.
Good God. I can’t breathe, or swallow, or open my eyes. I’m as paralyzed as my brother. My beautiful, kind, self-sacrificing brother, who ate fish suppers with a worn-out starlet, who loved a man with a red horse on his hip.
Fingers clasp mine. Just for a moment.
Then the fingers slacken, and the hand becomes limp again.
I open my eyes. My brother lies motionless, his eyelashes still against his cheek. The respirator sucks and blows, the heart monitor bleeps. Somewhere far away, in the bowels of the hospital, an alarm sounds.
I don’t lean forward and beg him to give me a sign that he can hear me. I’m not under any illusions. It is a reflex, that’s all.
But I don’t let his hand go.
Dr. Bonville arrives on the ward, but I’m already pulling on my coat. I’ve changed my mind. Was I actually going to let my brother die just as a way of getting back at Jody? What’s wrong with me? Have I spent so long repressing all human emotion that I’ve become inhuman?
Bonville is busy with a
patient at the end of the room, but as I pass him, he looks up and moves toward me.
“Miss Mackenzie. I was intending to phone you, but we’ve been very busy. May I have a word?” He gestures to the door, for me to follow him.
“We can talk here,” I say. “It’s not as if Abe’s going to hear.”
He looks torn for a moment, then seems to give up. When he speaks again, his voice is very low. “Your brother developed a chest infection, and by the time it was spotted, it had become pneumonia.” He adds hastily, “This wasn’t down to anyone’s negligence. These things happen with our very sickest patients.”
“So you’ve put him on antibiotics?”
He hesitates. “We have.”
“Fine. You don’t need to ask me about that sort of thing, right?”
“We don’t.” He glances up at the door as if seeking a way out, and I think again how young he is.
He inhales. “Pneumonia is very dangerous for people in Abe’s condition. Especially if the infection spreads to the bloodstream and causes sepsis—blood poisoning. I’m afraid the tests for sepsis have come back positive.”
He waits for me to process this fact—that my brother might die without my having to make any decision at all.
“I wanted to let you know, even though I’m not required by law to do so, that we’ve added a DNR to his notes.”
“Do not resuscitate?”
He nods, watching me warily.
I’m not sure whether to be angry or relieved. A wave of heat passes over my skin, followed by a wave of ice.
“There are several reasons for this, not just that his quality of life would be—”
“You don’t need to explain,” I say. “I under—” To my surprise, my voice cracks on the last word. However hard I try, I cannot force it out. And then I break down in tears, there, in the middle of the ICU, surrounded by the bleep and whir and gasp of machinery.
He lets me cry for a moment, then he puts his soft young hand on my shoulder. “I really am so sorry.”
The Girlfriend Page 17
