Catch Me When I Fall

by Nicci French

  Trish gave a little cough and I saw she had in front of her some printouts. ‘In the last few days,’ she said, in a businesslike voice, ‘you’ve made some very strange errors. There’ve been inquiries from clients.’

  ‘Give me that!’ I snatched the papers from her and glanced down at them. My cheeks burned with humiliation.

  There was a knock. Meg and Trish looked round irritably. The door opened and Lola’s face appeared.

  ‘Call for Holly,’ she said.

  ‘Tell them we’re in a meeting,’ said Trish. ‘We’ll call back.’

  ‘It’s Craig from the people we’re doing the event with, eYei,’ she said. ‘He wants to talk to Holly straight away.’

  Meg and Trish exchanged glances. Meg stood up. ‘I’ll go and take it in the office,’ she said.

  ‘Holly,’ said Charlie, his voice dripping with pity, ‘we’re only thinking about what’s good for you.’

  ‘This is the question,’ I said. ‘Are you going to drag me forcibly, against my will? I don’t think you’ll stoop to that. Anyway, it’s probably illegal. Trish won’t let you do something that isn’t in the rule book. I’m not going to this Glenstone Manor. I’m going to stay put, and I’m going to come to work every day at nine o’clock and leave at six o’clock and show you how calm and rational and well-behaved I can be. If I do things you don’t approve of, or if I make mistakes, come and tell me about them.’

  There was a long, exceedingly awkward silence until Meg came back into the room. She sat down looking flustered. ‘Well?’ said Trish.

  Meg ignored her and looked at me. ‘If you’re going to do off-the-wall things like sending packages of kitchen implements and books of poetry to important clients with whom we haven’t yet signed a contract, I think it might be a good idea if we all talked it over first.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. I should have the word tattooed on my forehead to save time.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ said Trish. ‘We needed that job.’

  ‘He wants to see you tomorrow,’ said Meg.

  ‘So they didn’t walk away?’

  Meg looked embarrassed. ‘He wants to talk about it tomorrow.’

  ‘With all of us?’

  ‘He said he wanted to meet Holly.’

  ‘You still should have talked about this with us,’ said Trish. ‘And we haven’t come to a decision.’

  I could see that their resolve had crumbled and I stood up. ‘I’m sorry you had to go to all this bother,’ I said, very politely. ‘And I’m sorry you’ve been worrying needlessly.’

  I turned to Charlie. ‘We should talk,’ I said. ‘Can I take you out to dinner tonight? I’ve got a lot to say. A lot of apologies to make.’

  He looked at me for a long moment. ‘All right, Holly,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the only kind of therapy I need.’

  It was like a play having to be abandoned before the final scene. I saw Meg and Dr Difford sharing a muttered exchange on the way out. I didn’t care, I had other priorities. I had a life and a marriage to sort out.

  16

  We found a quiet Italian restaurant round the corner with a table in the window. Charlie drank a beer and I sipped mineral water while we watched people walking past, hurrying to get out of the rain. I reminded Charlie that when we first met, we would sit in restaurants and look at the people at other tables and try to guess what their stories were. He forced a smile. He was making an effort but he was clearly angry and hurt as well. He leaned over the table, close to me so that nobody else could hear what he was saying. ‘I thought about just walking away and never seeing you again. But then…’ H e stopped and stared at me, as if he was struggling with something in his mind.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s all such a mess. But you’re not yourself.’

  ‘Oh, please, don’t you start. What? What are you thinking?’

  He took my trembling, cold hands between his and told me that we were going to sort things out, whatever it took. He said this was our anniversary dinner, and if we weren’t celebrating exactly, we were making resolutions. The next year of our marriage was going to be better. It was going to be a real marriage. We were going to look after each other and he was going to help me.

  I had wanted to talk. I tried to say that I didn’t need any help because I really was going to change, had indeed already started to change, he would see, but he hushed me and said we would discuss all of that later. First I had to rest and recover. I started to say, indignantly, that I wasn’t ill, but he said I should let it all be. ‘Sometimes you don’t need to articulate everything,’ he said. I opened my mouth to argue, but all of a sudden the fight went out of me. It was as if my mind had been cut into segments. I was neatly sliced into anger and defiance, humiliation and shame, grim irony, rampant irritation and a sluggish indifference. None of the slices seemed to connect with each other, and I didn’t know which bit of myself to speak with. I asked him, pathetically, if he still loved me but he didn’t seem to hear. So I said, out of the blue and surprising myself as well, ‘I’ve lost my key.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve lost my key,’ I repeated. ‘It’s not on my key-ring.’

  ‘You’re always losing keys,’ he said, stopped in his tracks. ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you.’

  ‘All right, you’ve told me,’ he said. ‘I’ll get another one cut – and you get yourself a key-ring that doesn’t come apart all the time.’

  We ordered a simple meal, just risotto and salad. Charlie had a glass of wine while I stuck to water. We ate warily, almost in silence, as if we were unfamiliar to each other, circling cautiously.

  Charlie seemed different. Over the previous weeks he had been evasive, tetchy, ill-at-ease, resentful. Some of this was his own fault and had made me angry, which had made him worse, which had made me angrier. And, God knows, some of it had also been an understandable reaction to my behaviour. Sometimes I had thought that what had started out as a marriage had become a psychological experiment in which two people were confined in a small space to torment each other to death.

  Now he seemed calmer, almost contented, as if he was in control, as if he could protect me. He’d made his decision about us. It was a face I had never seen before, and it made me want to crawl into his arms. It also made me want to drag myself into a deep, dark hole and sleep until spring came again. I did the next best thing. I ate a few forkfuls of warm, comforting risotto, took a sip of his wine, then let him take me home in a cab. He ran me a bath and after I had soaked for a long time I climbed into bed. I lay there and stared at that fucking horrible sculpture and it stared back at me, accusing me of terrible things, until Charlie came in with a mug of tea and a digestive biscuit. It was like being a child again. He turned the light off and stood in the doorway watching me, watching over me. I wrapped my arms round my pillow and pretended to sleep and at some point I was no longer pretending and the long day ended at last.

  The next morning I arrived to find a message from eYei. It was just the name of the bar round the corner from our office where Craig wanted to meet me after work. With a spasm of embarrassment I thought about the package I’d sent them. What must they have thought? I had a sudden vision of a life spent clearing up after myself. I could explain it away as a joke or a moment of madness or lovable eccentricity or… I asked Lola to go over the road and fetch me two double espressos. When she returned, I took them to a grim-faced Meg.

  ‘Maybe you should come as well,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t need me,’ she said.

  ‘I think I need you too much.’

  ‘He specifically asked to see you,’ said Meg.

  I gulped at my coffee, grateful for the scalding sensation on my tongue. Meg’s stood untouched on her desk.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you have to bet the company every day? We’re not like you. We don
’t need all that excitement.’

  The moment I saw Craig at the bar, I realized it was going to be all right. He was half-way through a dry martini and when he saw me he smiled broadly. He started to order me a drink but I shook my head. It was going to be water for the moment. I was already a couple of martinis ahead of the rest of humanity.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he said, draining his glass and signalling to the woman behind the bar for another. ‘It was just what we needed. Thinking outside the box. Here, listen to this.’

  The poetry book was lying on the bar beside his martini. He picked it up and read a poem aloud. I found it hard to follow.

  ‘Isn’t that great? I haven’t read a poem since I left Oxford. And this thing…’ H e took the runny honey device out of his pocket. ‘It’s a functional object,’ he said, ‘and yet there’s something comic about it. I’ve shown it to people and it makes them smile.’

  ‘I just thought it was funny,’ I said, and indeed, that was about all I said. My brain was too fuzzed up to speak so Craig told me about the design business and I nodded at the right places, to give the impression of deep thought, and sometimes smiled, to give the impression of sympathy.

  After an hour, he stood up and held out his hand. ‘This has been great,’ he said. ‘I feel we’ve really clarified our ideas.’

  I shook his hand.

  ‘Can I drop you somewhere?’ he said.

  ‘No. I’m going back to the office,’ I said falsely.

  ‘You people,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. We’re going to make money together.’

  When I was alone, I ordered another mineral water. What I really needed was a piece of paper and a pencil but I started to make the list in my head. It was a matter of sorting things out one by one. First, Charlie. Second, work. Then there was the other stuff. I had to make that go away. There was that gambling mess. Surely they understood that that was all a mistake. That would be number three on my list. I would deal with it. Somehow. I paid for my drink and asked where the toilet was. The barwoman directed me to the basement. After I had washed my hands I stood and looked at myself in the mirror and smoothed my hair with my hands. ‘One step at a time,’ I said to myself.

  As I came out into the bare stone corridor, I brushed against a man in a suit and muttered an apology. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I was pushed back hard against the brick wall. I felt it cold through the silk of my dress. Rees’s face was looking down at me with an expression almost of curiosity. ‘You haven’t been in touch,’ he said.

  I tried to move out of his grip. His hand came up. I didn’t feel the blow. I saw it, an explosion of white light, and I heard the slap of his hand on my face. All of my breath was gone.

  ‘You’re fucking me around,’ he said. ‘I don’t like that.’

  His left hand was now tight on my neck so I couldn’t cry out. His right hand stroked my cheek where he had hit me, then it moved down my body, down my breast, my stomach, pushing between my legs through my dress. He leaned against me. I could still hear the sound of clinking glasses and chatter from upstairs. He whispered into my ear, ‘You’ve played with me. You’ve made me do this. I’m not like this. I was just a normal man with a girlfriend…’

  It was crazy. I was so frightened that my insides felt liquid. I knew he could do anything he wanted to me and I couldn’t stop him, but even so, even with his hand on my throat, when he started talking self-pityingly about being an ordinary man, I couldn’t stop myself laughing.

  His face turned almost black with anger. ‘You fucking… you fucking–’ he gasped at me. ‘How do you like it now?’ he said. He shoved a knee in my groin making me cry out in agony, then ripped at my dress. His face came down towards me, really close so I could feel his breath on my face, see the wetness on his lips.

  ‘You fucked me,’ he whispered. ‘I can do anything I want to you now.’

  With all my energy, I spat at him, and saw with satisfaction the gob of phlegm on his neck. He lifted his hand and hit me again. I jerked back, hearing but not feeling the sharp rap of my head against the wall. He put a hand on the neck of my dress and ripped it, then brought his lips down on mine. I bit hard and tasted blood. I heard him cry out and once again there was an explosion of pain as he hit me.

  There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Rees pulled away from me and was gone. As he ran up the steps, two women came down and passed me without speaking to me. They didn’t even seem to see me cowering there.

  My legs were trembling and my heart thumping so much that for a few minutes I couldn’t bring myself to move. I just leaned against the wall and listened to the sound of my breathing. Then the toilet flushed in the cloakroom, so I made myself walk up the stairs, back into the bright lights and laughter of the bar, out into the dark streets again.

  17

  I stared around. A bulky figure stumbled out of the alleyway and I felt a tightness in my chest but it wasn’t him, just another man in a suit. I looked at my watch and it was only just past seven. In June, there would be hours more of daylight left.

  Where to? I should go home, but the taxis that sped past were occupied and I couldn’t go on the Underground. I pulled out my mobile, but who did I want to call? I put a hand to my cheek, under my eye, and gently touched the puffy skin, wincing as I did so. I pulled my coat round me more firmly, trying not to think about his hand on my body. All of a sudden, I felt clammy and sick.

  The office was a minute’s walk away, so that was where I went, slowly on my shaky legs, looking around me all the time in case he was still near. I went straight to the cloakroom, turned on the light and stood in front of the mirror, gazing at the stranger in front of me, with bloodshot eyes, puffy skin, torn dress and a blue bruise flowering on her cheek. I slid out of my coat and inspected the damage, then ran some cold water and dabbed it on the swollen skin. I touched the back of my head, where I’d bumped it against the wall, and came away with a smear of blood on my fingers. The pain I hadn’t felt at the time I felt now, and I was also assailed by a sense of despair, which left me dizzy so that I had to hold on to the wash-basin to stay upright.

  I closed my eyes. Then I heard a faint sound outside and opened them again. Footsteps coming through the office. A light turned on. I couldn’t move, just stayed staring at the damaged, helpless woman in the mirror. The footsteps tapped towards me, stopped, continued. The door creaked open.

  Then Meg was standing behind me. I didn’t turn round, but our eyes met in the mirror and we gazed at each other wordlessly. It was as if she could see right into me, into all the ghastly parts of me that even I didn’t know about, and I felt so frightened and alone that I barely managed to stay upright, keep meeting her eyes. Was this friendship, I wondered, beyond affection or even love, a kind of terrible intimacy of knowledge? Or was it something else?

  ‘Meg,’ I said at last. ‘What?’

  ‘This can’t go on.’ She stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. I felt her warm fingers through my thin dress. Her hand felt very heavy. Was she comforting me, or was she like a warder leading the prisoner away? I turned at last; she put an arm round my shoulders and guided me into the office.

  ‘You have to tell the police – I wanted you to before, but now you must.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘No buts. He’s dangerous – I knew it as soon as I saw him. He won’t stop there.’

  ‘Meg?’

  ‘I’m going to take you round to the station now. My car’s outside in the loading bay. I just came back to collect a couple of files. I’ll go and get your coat for you.’

  She came back with it, wrapped it round me, then helped me downstairs to her car. She pressed me into the passenger seat, and fastened the seat-belt.

  ‘Meg,’ I said, as she got in on the driver’s side and turned on the ignition.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s going on with me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I keep thinking there’s something
you haven’t told me.’

  ‘We’ll talk about that later.’

  ‘We never used to have secrets from each other. We used to tell each other everything.’

  ‘You’re going to report this Rees to the police. Everything else can wait.’

  ‘I hate waiting.’

  ‘I know,’ she said drily.

  ‘Is Charlie having an affair?’

  ‘Later, Holly.’

  ‘He is, isn’t he? I wouldn’t blame him. The question is, who with? Meg, who with?’

  ‘Here we are.’

  ∗

  When, after forty minutes of waiting, I found myself sitting opposite a policewoman called Gill Corcoran, I found I didn’t know how to tell the story. It seemed so hard to grasp, vivid and yet blurred, a nightmare that makes you wake up with sweat pouring off you in the small hours. It was Meg, sitting to one side of the desk, who prompted me so that in the end I managed to stumble through the squalid tale.

  Gill Corcoran had a pleasant face, shrewd eyes, a sympathetic way of listening. She kept pouring water into a polystyrene cup for me, and I kept gulping it back, as if I could swill everything through me, out of me. She made me go over in detail how Rees had hit me. She looked at my cheek and the gash on my head, which was still bleeding. She told me to show her exactly where he’d touched me, what he’d done.

  Without looking at Meg but feeling her eyes on me, I told her how I’d met him. I told her about the night we’d spent together. I told her about the phone calls he’d made to Charlie, about the knickers he’d sent. Meg looked down at her hands, which were resting on her knees. At one point I sensed, rather than saw, her flinch, but I kept going. Now she was going to see what kind of person I really was. Gill Corcoran didn’t look shocked or judgemental and I was grateful to her.