The Furies: A Novel (30 page)

Mel turned to look at me, and ran. I don’t know which way she went. East, maybe. She must have, I suppose, because she made it back to King’s Cross eventually. An old couple on the other side of the bridge, grimacing in the rain, looked over at me to see what the fuss was all about. I screeched at them to call an ambulance, and I scrambled round the railings and down the steep bank between the road and the canal, towards Katarina. Tree branches and roots grabbed at my feet, trying to hold me back.

I heard sirens when I finally got to her, and I knew they weren’t the ambulance I’d asked for, knew it was going to take too long, in London, in the rush hour. A halo of dark blood was spilling out from under her head, and another under her ribs, and I reached out to her.

‘Don’t move her!’ the old man shouted from the bridge above me. His voice was shaky, but his tone was certain. ‘It’s important that you don’t move her head.’

So I didn’t. I took the hand of the woman I hated, and I held it as she died.

ACT FIVE

1

‘And that’s the last time you saw her?’

Lisa Meyer gets up from her chair, and walks round to the table in front of me. She picks up her phone, and taps the screen once, to stop the recording. She turns to look at me. ‘Melody, I mean?’

‘Yes. She ran off from the bridge, and I haven’t seen her since.’ I can feel the skin around my collarbone blotching.

Lisa Meyer pauses. But I have nothing to add. ‘So everything that happened after that is the same as in the police report?’ she asks.

I try to remember. ‘I guess so. The man – the old man, I mean – rang for an ambulance and the police. His phone was in his wife’s handbag, so it took a few moments for them to find it, in the dark and the rain. He wanted to come down to the canal, but his wife wouldn’t let him. She was worried he’d fall. When the police arrived, they took the three of us to St John’s Wood police station. It’s very near there – where it happened.’

As I’m telling her this, I’m thinking of everything that wouldn’t be in the report. The old man – his name was Mr Hardy – had given me his coat when I’d climbed back up to the bridge, because my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t get them to stop. So the whole time I was making my statement, I was worrying that he wouldn’t be able to leave because I was still wearing his coat, and it was raining even harder now: I could hear the drops pummelling the window behind me. I kept telling the officer that I needed to return it, and he kept nodding and smiling at me.

Eventually, the desk sergeant knocked on the interview room door. She smiled her apology, and asked if she could have his coat back. I shrugged it off, and she gave me a red fleece blanket in its stead. Only once I’d handed it over did I realise that the coat had smelled of un-smoked tobacco, of red Marlboros, to be exact, and that the blanket smelled nowhere near as good.

By the time the interview was over, nobody could tell me what had happened to Mel – whether they’d arrested her, or even found her yet – and no-one could decide what should happen to me. They asked me to sign the statement which the constable had written for me. His handwriting was round and irregular, like a child’s best effort. I felt my throat close up. No-one with a child’s writing should be dealing with a case like this.

They didn’t think they’d need me again the next day, so I was free to head back to King’s Cross. But I needed a different route: the bridge I’d crossed earlier was now blocked off with police tape. So I walked towards Camden, and cut over the next bridge instead. It had been raining for so long that the bridge – which dipped in the middle – had flooded, and I had to wade through water to get over the canal. It seeped in through the soles of my boots, and I could feel blisters form as my wet skin rubbed against the hardened leather.

As I walked past Euston Station, still ten minutes away from King’s Cross, I looked at my watch. The last train to Edinburgh had left hours earlier. A grubby-looking hotel with a blue sign offered a good night’s sleep from £49. I checked in. There was no minibar, but there was a small supermarket across the street, which sold spirits. I drank half a bottle of whisky that night, cutting it with tap water in a plastic cup. I drank the other half on the train the next morning. At least this wasn’t unusual behaviour on the East Coast line.

By the time I reached Edinburgh, I was the kind of drunk where you believe you’ve circled right back round to sober again, because you feel so much less drunk than you did two hours ago. I was back in my flat in New Skinner’s Close before I realised I had no idea what to do now.

*   *   *

Lisa Meyer has poured two fresh glasses of water, and she is looking at me with her tiny frown. ‘You’re sure, Alex? You haven’t seen or heard from Mel since the day of Katarina’s death?’

She has framed her question differently, because she knows I’m not telling her everything. I raise my eyes to meet hers, slowly, like I’m still drunk all these months later.

‘I haven’t seen her, no. I didn’t know where I could find her, you see. I didn’t even know where she lived. And I couldn’t have found out at a weekend, without breaking into Robert’s office in the Unit.’

Lisa Meyer nods briskly, although locked doors and high walls would clearly be no obstruction for her. She sits on the chair opposite me, and flips through her notes till the key page realises it can’t hope to hide from her, and gives itself up.

‘She was arrested the previous night, anyway,’ she says. ‘The British Transport Police found her on the train at Newcastle.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘They continued to Edinburgh, obviously,’ she says, glancing down at her notes. ‘So her mother could attend the interview with her.’ She looks up at me, eyes gleaming under her swishy fringe. ‘So even if you’d known her address, Alex, there wouldn’t have been anyone there.’

I nod.

‘What I’m telling you,’ Lisa Meyer says, her reserves of patience ebbing, ‘is that there was nothing you could do by the time you got back to Scotland. There would have been nothing you could have done if you’d got back the night before. Melody Pearce was under arrest before you’d finished giving your statement at St John’s Wood police station.’ I nod again.

‘So perhaps it’s time you tell me about the letters,’ she says, and picks up her pen.

2

L,

I haven’t heard back from you. Did you reply? I don’t know how much stuff gets through to me in here. You know where I am, though? I said so, didn’t I? St Margaret’s, out at Newtongrange. Have you ever been out this far from the centre of Edinburgh? I bet you haven’t. Or maybe you once went to the Butterfly Farm, that’s near here. You’d like it, honestly. I mean, if you came to visit, you would. Who doesn’t like butterflies?

I don’t think you’d find it depressing. It’s a new building – refurbished last year. The staff like to pretend they had it done up specially for us. The kids who are here now, I mean. But it’s just coincidence. The girl who has the room next to mine was in a different centre last year. And she reckons this one is miles better. She said the old one was just full of broken stuff: broken kids surrounded by broken pool tables and broken speakers. This isn’t like that apart from the kids.

It’s not even that far for my mum to come and visit, and she does, every week. It was weird at first, seeing her here. I expected her to cry. But not continually, from the second I saw her to when she eventually left. You know when someone else cries so much that you think you have to cry too, so it doesn’t look weird? It was like that. Just one person crying, it’s lopsided.

You could get the bus out here, you know. It goes from round the corner from your flat, by Greggs, on the South Bridge. It wouldn’t take long: I asked one of the social workers here and she does that every day. She lives in Leith, so she has to get two buses here.

And I’ve spoken to Carly, and she’s coming to see me soon. This week, Carly said. She’s going to bunk off school and come, so her mum doesn’t find out. Her mum always hated me. She’d go mental if she knew Carly was coming. Totally mental. Did you know Carly had been transferred from Rankeillor? She’s at a normal school now, getting ready for her exams. Her mum pushed for that, obviously: she went to see their MSP and everything. But Carly’s still dating Jono, so her plan didn’t completely work.

I don’t even know if you’re still at Rankeillor. Are you? I sort of hope you aren’t, because I don’t like the thought of you being there without us. And I sort of hope you are, because otherwise I don’t know where you are at all. I bet you have left. Poor Robert.

My dad just came the one time. The weekend after I was referred here. He didn’t cry at all. He was really stroppy with the staff, though. Loads of raised eyebrows and may-I-asks. Like he was some fucking king, coming to inspect the place. I think he thought it would make him look like a better parent. Like, it can’t be my fault she went off the rails, look what a disciplinarian I am. It didn’t work. They all just thought he was a fucking idiot.

Louise – who’s my counsellor here – she says it’s quite a common thing they find. Parents worry they’ll be judged by the people who clean up after the mess their kids make. But their job isn’t to judge my parents. It isn’t to judge me, either. It’s just to help. That’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it? You were like that, too. You didn’t let us get away with stuff, but you didn’t hate us for trying either. Not even Jono. And not even me. At least, I hope not me.

So, I still don’t know about this lawyer guy. There were two of them the first time – an older guy and a younger one. The older one was a bit shiny. Too shiny in this place, no matter how new it is. Do you know what I mean? No-one here wears a suit. And the fabric was wrong – it reflected too much light. You get used to everything being less garish here – it’s all dull colours like you used to wear: jeans and tees and hoodies and stuff. I think it’s because it’s so brightly lit in here – fluorescent lights everywhere and white walls. You have to cancel that out a bit, or your eyes would go funny.

I wouldn’t see the lawyers the first time they came. I didn’t want to, and Des said I didn’t have to. I like Des. He’s one of the social workers. But then the younger lawyer came on his own, and with a message saying you’d sent him. So I wrote to you to see if that was true. It didn’t sound right. But why else would he say it, right? Louise says it’s OK for me to have trust issues (she talks like that), especially with strangers. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m here because I got in the car of someone I didn’t know, is it?

But I haven’t heard back from you yet. So I still don’t know if it’s true or not. And now I’m wondering if the letter even got to you. I hope this one does. I’ll send it care of Robert, because I’m sure he will find you.

D

‘The letters?’ Lisa Meyer prompts me.

‘She’s been writing since two weeks after she was arrested. Quite often,’ I say. ‘But she isn’t supposed to contact me, I don’t think. Is that true?’

Lisa Meyer does the closest thing to a frown that she can, given that she has decided never to incur a wrinkle. ‘I don’t see why not. Has her lawyer told her that?’

‘I think so. She started writing to me at Rankeillor, and Cynthia used to forward them to me. Since I’m…’ I don’t need to finish. Lisa Meyer knows that I’m not at Rankeillor any more. That I’m not even in Edinburgh. Robert’s retirement plan has suffered a major setback, though he and Jeff have never once mentioned it.

‘Do you have them with you?’ she asks. I nod, and get them out of my bag, a small bundle of letters to which I have never replied. Lisa Meyer takes them in her perfectly manicured hand. Her nails are a shiny putty colour, like shells. She skim-reads the first three letters.

‘She started writing to you using your real names,’ she says, flipping back to double-check the first two. Then she changes to D and L – why is that?’

She changed the address, too,’ I reply. ‘She sends them to Robert at his home address now. I have no idea how she knows where he lives.’

Lisa Meyer says nothing, but simply waits for me to answer the question she originally asked.

‘She started writing to me openly, I think, because she wanted to, and it doesn’t often occur to her not to do what she wants. Then she became more secretive because she’s been told by her lawyers that she can’t be in touch with me.’

‘They’ve told her a lot of things,’ Lisa Meyer remarks. ‘They seem to have told her that you’ve hired them, for a start.’ She looks up. ‘Which I’m presuming is untrue.’

I’m blushing, even though I know that I’m not the one who’s been lying. ‘Yes, of course it is. I don’t know who hired them. Her mum, maybe? Her dad? And I have no idea why they told her it was me.’

‘Think about it,’ Lisa Meyer says. ‘Her lawyers were trying to implicate you. For that to work, they needed to know a lot more about you. And for that to happen, they needed to ask Melody about you. But she’s devoted to you. So they simply found a way round that.’

‘Is that even legal?’

She shrugs. ‘It’s certainly unethical. Why D and L?’

‘Teenagers always abbreviate names, don’t they?’

Lisa Meyer, a woman whose own parents probably call her by her full name and job title, looks uncertain.

‘Carly and Mel were close, and they had nicknames for each other. They used the last syllable of their names – Lee and Dee – because everyone else used the first syllables – Mel for Melody, and Carly is really Caroline, you see.’

Lisa Meyer is unconvinced.

‘They’re best friends, and they’re teenagers. They have secret nicknames,’ I say, hoping she will remember what it’s like to be sixteen.

She nods, slowly. ‘But L doesn’t stand for Lee here,’ she says.

‘No, it stands for Lex. She’s just using the same system on my name as she did on Carly’s.’

‘No-one else calls you Lex?’ Lisa Meyer asks. She looks deeply suspicious, as if I have suddenly revealed an alter ego, mid-costume-change in a phone booth.