Catch Me When I Fall

by Nicci French

  At half past eleven, I drove to the building site south of the river. In spite of Holly’s vagueness, it proved quite easy to find. I asked a bulky man with a mottled nose and an orange hat if he could point me in the direction of Anthony Manning.

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘Yes, Tony.’ I tried to sound businesslike, as if I was expected.

  ‘Not here. He’s never here on Thursdays. It’s his day at the club.’

  ‘The club?’

  ‘Golf. Schmoozing clients.’

  ‘Which club would that be?’

  ‘In Kingston.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks.’

  I thought of giving up, just going back to the office and telling myself I’d done everything that could be expected. But instead I found myself driving to Kingston and asking directions to the golf club, then walking in, trying to look as if I came to this kind of place all the time. At the bar where people were drinking gin and tonic I asked for Anthony Manning, and a man in a hideous brown corduroy suit pointed outside and said he was on the course.

  I ordered a tomato juice but was told non-members weren’t allowed to drink in the bar. I said I’d just sit in the corner and wait, and was told that non-members weren’t allowed even to be in the bar. So I loitered in the hallway, looking at a catalogue full of pictures of checked hats and shoes with tassels. And at last someone said, ‘Yes?’

  A tall, solid-looking man was before me, jingling change in his pocket. He wasn’t wearing the stupid clothes most of the men preferred around here. There was not a hint of a smile in his face, or of curiosity.

  ‘Anthony Manning?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again, a hint of impatience in his voice.

  ‘I’m Meg Summers, a friend of Holly. Holly Krauss.’ He didn’t say anything; the expression on his face didn’t alter. I took a deep breath. ‘She’s in hospital and not well and I need to track down someone for her. To sort out her debts.’

  A tiny smile appeared on his face. ‘Do you, now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Where do I find him?’

  ‘You need to visit him at his company headquarters.’

  ‘That sounds grand.’

  ‘It’s a shop in Kennington.’ He scribbled an address and handed it to me.

  ‘What kind of shop?’

  ‘This and that,’ he said, and turned away. But then he added, ‘And don’t try to beat him down. He’s negotiating from a position of strength.’

  I thought I should have someone with me so I took Lola. She’s really the last person you should involve in a crisis. She’s small, innocent, panicky and gullible. But she adores Holly, like a puppy adores its owner. I just wanted her to sit outside in the car and wait for me. What for, I couldn’t say.

  Cowden Brothers was a pawn shop between a boarded-up travel agent and a barber. In the window was a monocycle, a saxophone, an electric guitar, a grandfather clock and lots of jewellery. Also, a small sign saying, ‘MONEY LENT. GOOD TERMS. CONFIDENTIALITY RESPECTED’. I pushed the door and a bell jangled loudly.

  A fat man with a tiny, dainty face sat behind the counter. He was reading a magazine and smoking. Behind him a much older man was watching the racing on TV. ‘I’m looking for Vic Norris,’ I said.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Meg Summers. A friend of Holly Krauss.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are and I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘I suppose Vic Norris would know who Holly is.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. ‘He doesn’t work here,’ he said.

  ‘I was given this address.’

  The man slowly extracted another cigarette from a packet and lit it. ‘What’s the nature of your business?’ he said.

  ‘My friend owes Vic Norris some money. Apparently.’

  ‘Oh dear. And why are you here?’

  ‘She’s unwell.’

  The man took a deep drag on his cigarette and gave a wheezy cough. ‘What was the name?’

  ‘Holly Krauss.’

  ‘Hang on.’ He walked through a door behind the counter.

  The old man turned his head towards me, then back to the racing.

  When the fat man returned, he seemed more affable. ‘That’s right. Your young lady owes sixteen thousand pounds.’

  ‘Sixteen? I heard it was eleven.’

  He chuckled. ‘There’s interest payments, love,’ he said. ‘Your friend has been slow in paying.’

  ‘This is completely unfair,’ I said. ‘She didn’t mean any of this. And she’s been ill.’

  The man didn’t seem to have heard me. He just turned to his companion. ‘Who won?’

  ‘Nineteen To The Dozen,’ said the old man.

  ‘Fuck,’ said the fat man.

  ‘I was saying that this is completely unfair.’

  ‘Your friend should be careful where she borrows money,’ he said.

  ‘She didn’t borrow it. She was lured into a poker game.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Next week it’ll be seventeen, then eighteen. But…’ Another shrug. He gazed down at his magazine.

  ‘What if she can’t pay?’ I said. ‘What if people can’t pay?’

  The fat man smiled, showing a gap in the teeth in his upper jaw. ‘They always pay,’ he said.

  I looked at him and at the old man behind him. I looked at the objects arranged on the shelves – old stereos, a drum-kit, shoes, a teapot and matching jug, an exercise bike, several watches, a carriage clock, a clumsy black camera.

  ‘Today’s Thursday,’ I said. ‘I’ll come on Tuesday with it. Tuesday before six in the evening.’

  ‘On Tuesday it’ll be seventeen thousand.’

  ‘I’ll come on Monday. Can I pay with a cheque?’

  ‘There’s a service charge for cheques,’ he said.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Thirty per cent.’

  ‘I’ll pay cash.’

  The door jangled again as I left.

  31

  I had nearly eleven thousand pounds in the bank, in a special savings account. It had taken me six years to amass that much. I was keeping it to buy a house. Well, probably a poky one-bedroom flat in the outskirts, but a start at least. One day I’d live in a place of my own, with a small garden. Herbs and flowers and an ornamental fruit tree. Maybe a cat, even. Holly had been able to buy her house because there were two of them, and her mother had lent her half the deposit. When we first started the company I dreamed we’d be earning enough to save more quickly, but of course it hadn’t been like that.

  I put away the thoughts of my fantasy house, my fantasy life. I had eleven thousand, but I still needed to find another five, and I could see no way of raising that at all, let alone by Monday. I had an overdraft limit of five hundred, so I guessed I could call on that. But five thousand?

  Late that afternoon I sat at my desk and pondered. At KS Associates we had an agreed overdraft limit of thirty thousand pounds and were only in debt at present to the tune of nineteen thousand, four hundred. That meant I could write out a cheque for cash tomorrow morning and still not have reached the limit. I even took the company cheque book out of the drawer and put it into my bag. But then I glanced round the office, at Lola and Trish and all the others who trusted me – who thought I was safe as a house – and put it back again. I knew I would be signing away everything we’d worked so hard for.

  ‘You’ll come with me to my parents for Christmas, won’t you?’

  It wasn’t really a question, more a statement, delivered casually as I was pushing a fork loaded with rice into my mouth. I was suddenly filled with a calm kind of happiness at the steadiness of this relationship, its basic kindness. I laid down my fork. ‘That’d be nice,’ I replied, trying to keep the wobble of emotion out of my voice. ‘If you’d like me to.’

  ‘I’d like you to,’ he said. ‘And they want to meet you.’

  ‘Do they?’ I beamed. ‘Yes. I’d like to meet them too.’

  We
grinned at each other, then returned to our meal. I hadn’t looked forward to Christmas for ages. Most years my parents and I had gone to my sister’s in Devon. She had a husband, and now two small children, a cat. They lived in a small house in the middle of nowhere, mud churning up to the threshold and the sea not far over the horizon. I always felt a bit of a spare part, the one who arrived late and alone, and played the part of the good daughter and the cheery aunt for a day or two before escaping back to London. Last year I’d gone to Holly and Charlie’s, and stayed up till five in the morning because Holly insisted on a drunken game of charades. I remembered her standing on a table in her spindly shoes, her paper hat askew, giggling helplessly. But this year was different. Todd and I had plans together. We were going to buy a tree together, we were going to go away at New Year together, maybe make resolutions together. The year ahead seemed bright with hopes.

  Then I let Holly move from the back of my thoughts into the front once more. She was going to have a strange Christmas this year. I’d talked to Charlie about it and he’d told me that her mother had agreed to stay on until she was out of hospital and settled at home. His mother was also coming for a few days. Naomi was going to cook the dinner. Poor Holly, I thought, lying in her hospital bed, dull and pale and thin, while all around people discussed her and made plans for her.

  I had always thought of Holly as bold, the boldest person I’d ever met, but now she was scared. I wondered if she was so afraid because of what was inside her – all the strange, tormenting demons she used to think were part of her character but which now felt like hideous invasions – or of what lay outside, in the real world she would have to return to soon enough. Probably she was afraid of both the inside and the outside: she couldn’t escape either, and there was nowhere to hide. Even when she slept, she had told me, she had hideous dreams. I have never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life as I now felt for Holly, nor so responsible. It was as if we’d moved beyond the normal kind of friendship, and she was more like my daughter, my sister, my mother, rolled into one. Like a boulder on my heart, so that even when I was with Todd, a little part of me was thinking of her and worrying. And making plans, like the plan I had for today, which I’d not even told Todd about because I knew he would tell me I was being stupid.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Todd. ‘Your face has got that frown on it.’

  ‘Has it? I don’t know why.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Meg, I’m not blind. Tell me.’

  ‘It’s not really my story to tell. It’s Holly’s.’

  ‘Oh, Holly. I might have known.’

  A slight coolness hung between us for the rest of the evening. And in the end, lying in bed, I told him about Holly’s debt, my visit to the golf club and to Cowden Brothers.

  ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘You think I’m being incredibly stupid.’

  ‘I think you’re the kindest and most loyal and generous friend there’s ever been.’

  ‘Oh.’ I could feel my cheeks turning pink in the dark. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Have you thought this through?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Does Holly appreciate you?’

  ‘I’m not telling her about this. I just want her to be safe when she comes out of hospital.’

  ‘So you’re doing it and not even wanting to be thanked. That’s positively unnatural.’

  ‘It’s gone beyond things like that now,’ I heard myself say, realizing as I said it that it was true. ‘It feels more like a matter of life and death or sanity and insanity or something. I feel I don’t really have a choice.’

  There was a silence. He stroked my hair absent-mindedly.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking you should have told me before.’

  ‘I wanted to, but it was Holly’s secret to tell, not mine.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone there by yourself.’

  ‘I had Lola with me.’

  ‘Great.’ He’d met Lola.

  ‘It was fine.’

  ‘You’re really going to do this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, I was thinking that I can give you four thousand. It’s all I’ve got. A bit more than all I’ve got.’

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘No, no and no. That would be all wrong. You don’t even know Holly. The only time you met her she was offensive and rude. I wouldn’t have told you anything if I’d thought you were going to offer. Now I feel awful.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Meg, I want to. I’ve decided.’

  ‘But this is all wrong – I can’t take money from you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t.’

  ‘A loan, then.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But without the weekly interest.’

  ‘Todd.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Why do you have to say anything?’

  The remaining thousand pounds I borrowed from Trish and an old schoolfriend who worked in the City, lived in a large house in Camden and spent five hundred on every pair of shoes she bought. I said I’d pay them back after Christmas, without fail; just a slight cash-flow problem. Everyone was a bit embarrassed.

  On Monday morning I felt faint with nerves. I made myself go through the motions of working but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I took an hour to answer a few routine emails, then opened the post slowly, trying to look busy. At lunchtime I went to my bank and withdrew eleven thousand five hundred pounds. I now had an overdraft of four hundred and six pounds in my current account, and £1.56 left in my special savings account. I felt a bit tipsy as I pushed the bundles of notes into a plastic bag and then into my shoulder-bag: a mixture of heroic self-sacrifice, sadness, resentment and euphoric strangeness. I wasn’t used to doing wild, dramatic things like this. It was as though I had stepped into someone else’s life.

  I met Todd outside his workplace. He came out looking like a criminal, glancing extravagantly from side to side and holding to his chest a scuffed briefcase I hadn’t seen before. A little giggle lodged in my chest. I hugged him tight and kissed his cold cheek.

  ‘Hi,’ he half whispered, then smirked at himself.

  ‘Are you hungry? Do you want to grab a bite to eat first?’

  ‘What? Carrying all this cash with us? Christ, Meg, let’s just deliver it and get it over with before we lose it or get mugged.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I feel peculiar. Illicit. As if we’re about to rob a bank or something.’

  ‘If only. We’re the ones who are being robbed, remember?’

  ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘Parked on a meter round the corner.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Todd.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Say that later. Come on.’

  It was only the fat man this time, although there were sounds from the back of the shop. He locked the door after we came in and turned the sign to ‘Closed’. Then he went back round the other side of the counter and I handed over my plastic bag and Todd’s two manilla envelopes. He touched his tongue to his forefinger delicately and started to flick through the notes with practised skill. We both stared at him. I watched his small hands riffling the money and his rosebud lips, which he licked constantly.

  ‘Good,’ he said at last.

  ‘Can I have a receipt?’

  He tore a piece of paper from a pad, scrawled the figures on it and handed it to me.

  ‘This isn’t exactly a VAT receipt,’ I said.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘How do I trust you? What if you just denied getting the money? What if you keep on hassling Holly?’

  The fat man looked hurt. ‘We’re a business,’ he said. ‘What would that do for our reputation? You’ve settled up. Now go away.’


  32

  It sounds awful to say but I felt proud of myself. I had gone out into the awful mess that Holly had left behind her and I had sorted it out. I wasn’t sure whether I had slain a dragon or just done a bit of spring-cleaning, but I had made Holly’s world a less hostile place. I looked forward to telling her about it and teasing a smile out of her; slowly things would start to get better. It didn’t turn out like that. When I came through the door of her ward, she was lying in her bed with her back to me. The position looked unnatural and ominous. I walked round so that I could look at her face. She was pale, her skin clammy. At first I thought she was asleep, but then her eyes opened. They looked dead, like the eyes of a fish.

  ‘Holly,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

  She mumbled something I couldn’t make out so I leaned closer. It was nonsense, just meaningless syllables. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

  In my alarm, I ran for a nurse and almost dragged her across to Holly’s bed. ‘Something’s terribly wrong with her,’ I said. ‘She needs a doctor.’

  The nurse frowned and bent over Holly. She took the chart from the end of the bed. ‘Miss Krauss is resting,’ she said. ‘She’s just got back from her first treatment.’

  ‘What sort of treatment?’

  ‘ECT.’

  I almost fought my way past Dr Thorne’s secretary on my way in to his office. He was on the phone and looked baffled to see me. I stood there stubbornly until he replaced the receiver. ‘I’m Holly Krauss’s friend,’ I said. ‘You talked to me the other day.’

  ‘Yes, Meg, I know who you are.’

  ‘What’s the hell’s going on? I just came in to see her and she was completely incoherent. And then I discovered she’s been given ECT.’ I paused. There was no response. ‘Well?’

  ‘I ordered the treatment,’ he said, ‘with the consent of Miss Krauss and her husband.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really can’t discuss the details of her treatment with you.’