The Tall Man

by Phoebe Locke

  She had packed her things and left town that night, her last paycheque left uncollected.

  So yes, it did feel odd to be looking for a job again. In the months – the years – before she had returned, alone on Skye, she had limited herself to interacting only online wherever she could. Old furniture bought on auction websites, sanded and painted in her empty garage and then resold on those same sites. Shopping bought online, picked up from a collection point at dawn. She had hidden herself away and in doing so, she had finally made him lose interest in her.

  And now she was letting other people in again. She opened the computer’s browser – but instead of launching a new window, an old one reloaded. Not her email account, but Miles’s. His work account, the rest of the university homepage’s tabs loading across the top of the page.

  She hesitated. This was tempting; she knew little about Miles’s life at work. He talked about his classes sometimes over dinner, told them funny stories about students coming in hungover or with elaborate and improbable excuses for not handing in their coursework. But here were emails from other members of staff, his colleagues, some friendly, some cool, and here she was, intruding, uninvited. Not your life.

  She noticed an email about halfway down the page, an anonymous account: SomeoneSpecial@gmail.com. No subject line. Her mouth suddenly dry, heart thudding in her chest. She clicked on it.

  Meet me at 3.30 at The Bell and I won’t tell, it read. Next to that was a small smiley face. Winking.

  At lunchtime Amber, Jenna and Billie sat on the wall outside the Science block, sharing the fancy fruit salad Leanna had packed for Billie. Amber checked the message she’d sent to Mica during the last period but it was showing as delivered, not read, and the sound of Billie’s heels bumping lazily against the wall made her feel like something inside her was winding tighter and tighter.

  ‘Jake was asking about you on WhatsApp last night,’ Jenna said idly, rummaging through the Tupperware box for yet another strawberry. ‘You totally blew him off after your birthday, huh?’

  Amber glanced at Billie, whose cheeks had turned pink. Her heels bumped against the wall harder.

  ‘He’s totally into Bill,’ she said, glaring at Jenna. ‘Do you not know anything about boys?’

  Billie smiled at her but the thing winding up inside Amber kept on turning inwards, her insides knotted and hot. Sometimes she felt like there was a whole other her deep in there; that one day, if she wasn’t careful, it might come bursting out.

  She couldn’t help feeling afraid that this was something that only Sadie might understand.

  After school, she went round to Leo’s. He answered the door in pyjama bottoms, chest bare, and pulled her in for a kiss. The door swung shut behind her.

  When he released her, she followed him into the kitchen, where the air smelled burnt though the surfaces were clean and the dishes stacked away. He never seemed to eat or make a mess. It seemed like it was only her being there that made things ever move. She watched the muscles in his back flex as he filled the kettle and got mugs down from the cupboard.

  ‘How was your day?’ he asked.

  She had told him that she was a student at Miles’s university – though she’d omitted to mention the fact that her dad worked there – and that she commuted and lived at home to help look after her sick mum. This, she reflected, was comfortably close to the truth and therefore absolutely OK.

  ‘Not bad.’ She slid off her jacket. Her uniform was safely hidden away at the bottom of her bag; the outfit she’d stowed there this morning retrieved and the crinkles smoothed out in the school toilets.

  ‘What are you learning about this week?’ He leaned against the counter, watching her as she hung her jacket over the chair, the heat of his attention sending a thrill through her.

  This part was too easy to really enjoy. She’d heard her dad talk about his lectures since oh, about the beginning of time, and she was sure she pretty much had got a degree in it by now. ‘The rehabilitation of criminals,’ she said airily, leaning against the counter too. ‘Like, how and why people can become a useful part of society again.’

  His eyes went all twinkly when he smiled. She tried not to look for too long, because noticing this made her belly feel warm inside. ‘Such a clever girl,’ he said, and then he held out his arm. ‘Come over here.’

  She let him fold her into him. Let him take her away.

  Later, when they were sprawled out on the sofa, he started twisting a lock of her hair around his fingers, winding and unwinding it idly as they lay in silence. A patch of damp had begun creeping its way across the new plaster, an old leak covered too hastily. There was a smell which drifted through the flat every now and then – something pond-ish and festering. ‘Do you like it here?’ he asked.

  ‘This town?’ She shrugged, her skin sticking to his and to the leather of the chair. ‘It’s boring. Not exactly much to do, is there?’

  ‘Where were your parents before?’

  ‘Reading.’

  ‘Is that where they met?’

  ‘Yeah, at uni. Shall we put the telly on?’

  He stretched over to pick up the remote, though he didn’t aim it at the television. His other hand worked endlessly over that same strand of hair, her scalp pulled taut. ‘Reading. How come they both ended up there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She reached up and took the remote from him, clicked the set to life. Daytime TV chirped into the room, a woman in a hot-pink suit showing a couple into a violently wallpapered kitchen. ‘Where’d you grow up, anyway?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘And don’t you get bored here?’

  He looked at her with those twinkly eyes again, his mouth set in a hard line. ‘I manage to keep myself entertained.’

  Her stomach flipped but he just reached past her and got a glass of stale-looking water from the coffee table behind them. He took a loud gulp and then another before offering it to her. She shook her head. The couple on the television were politely unsure about their new cabinets.

  ‘So, how’s your mum doing?’ Leo asked, taking another swig of water which leaked out of the corner of his mouth though he didn’t swipe it away.

  Amber shifted, the leather sofa sucking at her bare leg. ‘She’s fine. I mean, as fine as she can be.’

  He took hold of a clump of her hair now, letting it fall through his fingers and then clawing it back up. ‘What did you say was wrong with her again?’

  The pink-suited woman was showing a freckly child into a new bedroom now, the wardrobes unfinished. ‘She gets these delusions,’ Amber said. ‘She’s not, you know, right.’ She screwed a finger into her temple, the universal sign for ‘crazy’. It had been a while; you kind of had to develop a shorthand. It wasn’t as if she wanted to dwell on this conversation, especially when she could feel his eyes on her. Don’t feel sorry for me, she wanted to say, because the thought revolted her.

  ‘What are you doing at the weekend?’ she asked, changing the subject, and when she looked up at him, his face had changed. A door closed.

  ‘I’m probably not going to be around much,’ he said. ‘I’ve got somewhere to be.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shifted into a sitting position, suddenly cold and exposed. She wanted him to touch her again, but he didn’t; he carried on watching the TV as the camera panned out on the newly improved home and the credits started to roll. She wanted to touch him but couldn’t seem to do it; her hands felt suddenly heavy and clumsy. ‘I’m gonna be pretty busy, too,’ she said instead. ‘Loads of work to do, and loads of people I’m supposed to see.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He glanced over at her, leaning in to give her a quick kiss that didn’t feel as if he meant it. ‘You should head off. I need to go and see someone this evening.’

  ‘Right, yeah.’ She got up quickly, retrieving her jeans from the floor. ‘I need to get going anyway.’

  He watched her dress and she felt flushed and shaky. She had said something wrong, done something wron
g. She’d shaved too quickly in the shower this morning – she could have missed some hair. Had she made a weird noise? Was she sweaty from the walk over? More likely it was the pity, because who ever got turned on by pity? When she went through to the kitchen to get her bag and boots, he followed her, as if he was trying to make sure she left. She felt a scrabbling inside her, a flutter of panic. She had to say the right thing, act the right way, to steer them back on to the right path – if only she could figure out what it was.

  ‘Well, bye,’ she said at the door. She wanted to ask him when she would see him again but that was totally desperate and she would not sink that low.

  ‘Bye.’ He leaned in to kiss her again, and it was a bit longer this time, an improvement, though nothing like what she wanted, not hungry or hard or needing her. ‘I’ll call you.’

  And then the door was closing and she had to turn away. She shouldered her bag and pulled her jacket round her tighter – the sun hung low and pale in the sky today, the wind raging through the streets unchecked.

  The whole way to the bus and the whole walk home, she told herself she didn’t care. She told herself she didn’t feel like crying; she hadn’t cried in years.

  20

  2018

  The plane begins its descent in a slick greyness that flickers past the windows as tray tables are stowed and seats start gliding upwards again. Greta feels dusty and sick, her skin and her mouth dry and her head taut with lack of sleep. She dreamt of Texas and the Miller kids again, briefly, and finally lurched her way back to wakefulness three hours ago, spending the rest of the flight huddled under the airline blanket, watching the most inane films she could find. Amber, on the other hand, only opened her eyes when breakfast arrived, tearing at Greta’s unwanted croissant even as she ate her own; shovelling in the brain-like eggs between swigs of orange juice.

  ‘Real cutlery,’ she said, in awe, as the fork made its journey back to the plate again, her tongue gummy with egg. ‘Real plates. This is what it’s like to be rich, huh?’

  And now she seems to be sleeping again, her blanket back over her and her head tucked into a wing of the headrest. So much for insomnia, Greta thinks, though it occurs to her now that Amber’s sleeping position is unusually still, almost rigid. She imagines Amber lying awake all this time, eyes held shut, and can’t stop a shudder. She longs for the moment when she can step out of this cabin with its chilled air and its endlessly red interior.

  The plane sinks steadily downwards and glasses are clinked into place in the service area. Greta’s final film disappears, the screen blinking out and then producing a map of their route, and she looks out of the window instead. The countryside below stretches on in its patchwork of browns and greens, the occasional incongruous blue of a swimming pool as the houses swell and then shrink again, rows of terraces zigzagging into tight knots of towns.

  Greta looks at Amber as the ground rushes up to meet them. It’s almost time to hand her over and yet Greta can’t help feeling that the burden is only beginning.

  Federica is waiting for them at the edge of a clump of families, eager faces and banners poised, with her sunglasses on and a coffee in hand. She’s found the time to have her hair cut while they’ve been away and it grazes her shoulders now, threads of grey worming their way through the frizzy curls. She’s wearing a man’s overcoat despite the warm day, the hand without the coffee wedged into a pocket. Her feet shoved into ugly black rubber clogs, her thick legs in linen combat trousers. Her mouth, sliding into a small smile to show she has seen them, is painted with a thin slash of red, the top layer already transferred to the coffee cup’s lid.

  ‘Amber,’ she says, moving towards them and kissing the girl’s cheeks in a cloud of Dior. Tom and Luca have all the luggage balanced on two trolleys and Federica is flustered for a second, her hands striking out of their own accord in the search for something to take or do. She recovers quickly, sliding an arm through Amber’s. ‘The car’s waiting outside,’ she says, leading her away with a quick backwards nod at Greta. Greta notices the mother of the family beside them nudging the father, a furtive finger pointed at Amber’s retreating back. The eldest child, a teenage boy, swivels round, phone up and ready. ‘Was that her? Oh my God, I have to get a picture!’ His sister, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, is disappointed. ‘She’s kind of small. She’s not scary at all.’

  ‘Come on,’ Tom says quietly beside her. ‘Let’s get out of here before the rest of them notice.’

  ‘Before the pack descends,’ Luca says, shuffling a cigarette from his jacket pocket as he starts to walk towards the sliding doors.

  Federica and Amber are out on the pavement ahead of them, Federica talking animatedly with a hand pressed to Amber’s shoulder.

  ‘A match made in heaven, if you ask me,’ Tom says to Greta.

  ‘I’m worried about her.’ She is tired and the words slip out without her realising. ‘She’s young,’ she says, flushing. ‘I don’t think she knows what she’s getting herself into with all this press.’

  Tom slows, his eyes kind as he considers her. ‘She’s really done a number on you, huh?’

  Luca slings an arm round Greta, ruffles her hair. ‘Good old Greta, the beating heart of our sleazy little operation.’ He releases her to light his cigarette. ‘She knows exactly what she’s doing, don’t worry. That kid is smart.’

  And they walk on, the car idling at the kerb up ahead.

  It’s 10 p.m. when Federica arrives at Greta’s door. The hotel is dim and claustrophobic, its few frosted windows small and round, high on the walls. The swirling carpet is making her feel seasick and so she lies on her bed and wishes she’d insisted more firmly on returning home to Hetty and Lisette instead of accepting the cheapest room in this place, the dull oceanic roar of the M25 in the distance. Federica had said this would be easier, it would surely save Greta travel time and costs, it would mean a real team effort for the duration of the shoot (because, obviously, Greta being a tube ride across town would really be the thing that slowed the team down). She had promised that Greta would, yes, be able to have the evening off for Lisette’s birthday dinner. And now there’s the expected rap at the door, sharp and efficient.

  She heaves herself up, bare feet repelled by the staticky carpet. She opens the door and they look at each other in the greenish light of the hallway. Federica’s sunglasses are pushed back on her forehead now, her eyes tired and bare. The red lipstick has been reapplied to compensate.

  They sit on the bed (there are no chairs) and drink cans of beer which Federica has brought with her (no minibar either).

  ‘You caught the sun,’ she says.

  Greta’s hand goes to her shoulder, the skin there feathery and cracking. ‘Has she settled in all right?’

  ‘Yep.’ Federica laughs and takes a big gulp of beer, her wide throat toadish and exposed. ‘Bit of a madam, isn’t she?’

  Greta smiles and says nothing.

  ‘Thanks for stepping in,’ Federica says, considering the can in her lap, her knotted fingers and their rings. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ Greta says, and hates herself. ‘How have things been here?’ She panics at the implied intimacy of this at the last second and adds, ‘Is there still a lot of press around the verdict?’

  Federica nods. ‘Yeah, the tabs have run stories on her most days. Lots of shots of her in the States. You got into a couple of the pictures, actually.’

  Greta feels a twinge of dread, tries to drown it with quickly warming beer.

  ‘It’s generally pretty positive coverage,’ Federica continues. ‘People seem to think it’s right she got off. And if you read the comments, even the cynics are warming to her. Mostly.’ She lifts the can to her mouth and then thinks better of it. ‘It is a great story, after all.’

  ‘You’ve been doing some more digging.’

  ‘Yes. There’s . . . There are anecdotes out there, Greta. If we look into these places we know Sadie Banner ended up, we can find a lot of .
. . evidence. It’s a whole new dimension for the thing.’ That flat, wide smile again.

  ‘You’re starting to believe it?’ Greta takes a sip of beer, bigger than she intended so that a little fizzes down her chin. ‘The Tall Man?’

  Federica stares at her. ‘Obviously not. I just think it’s interesting how people started to “remember” things after this all became public, you know? It’s like mass suggestion. We can do a whole episode on this.’

  ‘OK. I can pull some more statements from people in Wombleton.’

  ‘Yes. And then up in Skye, too. Talk to some people there, and anywhere else we know she was. There’s bound to be people who think they saw stuff now.’

  ‘And Amber?’

  ‘Yeah, we have to get deeper. It’ll happen. There’s got to be other stuff in there, you can practically hear her brain ticking the whole time.’ Federica takes two long pulls on her beer, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘We’ll crack her. I know you can do it. Get something more than those crappy soundbites she keeps regurgitating. That lawyer got her well trained, I’ll give him that.’ She cracks open another beer, the bed creaking as she moves. ‘I’m going to get her to say it. I’m going to get her to tell us that she believes in the Tall Man. That the Tall Man made her do it.’