Magpie

  ‘I’ll bring documentation,’ Kate says. ‘So that you know I’m telling the truth. You can choose where we meet. I’ll come wherever.’

  ‘Thanks. Appreciate that.’

  ‘No, honestly, I appreciate you doing this. It will be really good to talk.’

  Jas laughs.

  ‘Man, you don’t know what I’m going to tell you yet!’

  ‘I’m ready,’ Kate says, and she means it.

  They arrange to meet in a cafe near Finsbury Park tube in two hours’ time.

  The cafe is an old-fashioned greasy spoon. There is a man behind a glass-screened counter, wearing a striped apron tied loosely across his stomach. He greets her cheerily in an Italian accent so pronounced that it sounds fake. She is his only customer, she notices.

  ‘I’ll have a cappuccino, thanks.’

  Normally she’d have a strong black espresso but this morning she feels the need for something more comforting and frothy.

  ‘I’ll bring it over,’ he says, waving her away with one hand. ‘You make yourself comfortable, bella.’

  She chooses a table in the corner at the back and fiddles with the sugar sachets while waiting for Jas. Nineteen eighties rock emerges from a tinny wireless propped up behind the till. Jas told her she was ‘short, blonde hair and Black. You can’t miss me’.

  She was right. When Jas walks in, the cafe bell tinkling as she opens the door, she is immediately recognisable: a small, compact woman with delicate features and a peroxide buzzcut. She is wearing an oversized camouflage jacket and when she turns to close the door behind her, Kate sees the word ‘Warrior’ on the back, spelled out in sequins.

  ‘Hey Tony,’ Jas says to the man behind the counter, whose face breaks into a broad grin when he sees her. ‘I’ll have my usual. Thanks, man.’

  She comes over to the table, shrugging off her jacket and placing it on the back of the chair.

  ‘Kate, yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate stands up and thrusts out her hand which seems, immediately, overly formal. Jas shakes it with a wry, assessing look. Kate notices her nails are long and painted neon pink. The outer edge of her left ear is studded all the way up the cartilage with gold hoop earrings of diminishing size. Kate is briefly surprised that Marisa is friends with someone so cool and then she admonishes herself instantly for her surprise, always wary of her own insidious prejudice or judgement. Why shouldn’t they have been friends?

  Tony brings their drinks over, in slightly grubby white cups accompanied by one individually wrapped thin ginger biscuit on each saucer.

  ‘So,’ Jas says. Her nails clack against the handle when she holds it. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?’

  ‘First off, let me show you I am who I say I am,’ Kate says, sliding an envelope across the table. It contains the surrogacy agreement, a recent utility bill, a scan of hers and Jake’s passports and some photos of the two of them together. She has also brought the baby scan, but has kept it in her wallet. She isn’t sure why.

  Jas leafs through the documents and nods, satisfied.

  ‘I also wanted to bring you this.’ Kate hands over Marisa’s diary. Jas flicks through it, then looks up.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s Marisa’s diary or notebook or something. I found it in her room. She’s been inventing this … this … story about how she and Jake are lovers and she’s expecting his baby, but—’

  Kate breaks off, embarrassed by how it sounds.

  Jas speaks calmly.

  ‘But it’s not her baby,’ Jas says. ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate says, relieved. ‘Yes, that’s it exactly.’

  ‘Oh wow, I’m sorry.’

  She passes Kate some napkins from the dispenser and Kate presses them to her face, mopping up the tears. She takes a few breaths and then, having collected herself, she tells Jas everything: how they met Marisa, her increasingly odd behaviour, the scene in the hallway and the discovery of her drugs prescription. Jas doesn’t seem fazed by any of it.

  ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘Um, in the countryside,’ Kate says. ‘With Jake and his parents. We thought it was best she got away from me and had time to … recuperate. Jake’s dad is a GP – well, a retired one, so he’s looking after her.’

  ‘You need to get her back on her meds as quick as you can,’ Jas says. ‘I’ve seen what happens when Ris forgets to take them and it’s not pretty.’

  Kate stops in her tracks.

  ‘Wait, so this … has happened before?’

  Jas signals to Tony for another round of coffees.

  ‘We’re going to be here for a while.’ Jas leans back in her chair, clasping her hands in front of her chest. ‘The first thing you need to know about Ris is that she’s a mistress of her own reinvention. She tells her own story, the way that she likes to believe it. You can’t trust anything she says. A-ny-thing,’ Jas says, drawing out the syllables for emphasis. ‘I love the girl, but she’s damaged. Probably the most damaged person I’ve ever met, to be honest with you. That stuff about her parents she told you? It’s bullshit. Excuse my language. Her mum abandoned her when she was seven years old and she doesn’t talk to her dad any more. She hasn’t seen her sister in over twenty years.’

  ‘What about the miscarriages?’ Kate asks, because this key detail seems of overwhelming importance. It was why they had trusted her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jas answers. ‘She never told me anything like that. Most of the time, when she’s on her meds, she’s fine. But she’s got serious mental health issues.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘It’s not like I have the exact diagnosis. I mean, Ris and I were cool and that, but we didn’t pry too much into each other’s business. I think maybe she’s a bit bipolar?’

  The coffees are delivered to the table, along with two new wrapped biscuits.

  ‘How did you guys meet?’ Kate asks.

  ‘You sure you want to know this?’

  Kate nods. Jas leans forward and places her arms on the table. She has a tattoo in roman numerals on the inside of her right wrist.

  ‘We met at a group for survivors of sexual assault.’

  ‘Oh God. Jas. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s not your fault, is it?’ She laughs, a deep chuckle. ‘I’m OK. Ris was raped when she was seventeen.’

  Kate thinks she might be sick. The caffeine mixes in with her adrenalin and she can feel the whoosh of blood pumping through her veins. She feels at once both very young and very old. She swallows back the feelings.

  ‘That’s horrific,’ she says. ‘Poor Marisa.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They are silent for several seconds. Nearby, bacon sizzles in a frying pan and the smell of it fills the air, which becomes thick and foggy with grease.

  ‘She sorted herself out as much as she could,’ Jas says. ‘It wasn’t easy. It’s a fucking miracle she managed to set up that business with the kids’ books and that, but she did. The meds definitely helped. But sometimes she forgets to take them or she doesn’t think she needs them and I’m guessing with you guys, maybe she worried they would harm the baby or something?’

  There was that, at least, Kate thought. She is clutching on to the idea that Marisa had wanted to do her best for them.

  ‘What happens when she doesn’t take her medication?’

  Jas looks as if she is about to say something and then thinks better of it.

  ‘Ris isn’t a bad person.’

  ‘I know,’ Kate says.

  ‘She’d get these … obsessions,’ Jas says slowly. ‘Like, she’d fixate on a man she’d been on a date with and imagine this future with him and it was all a bit much. She’d text them a lot and sometimes she’d follow them to work and that, and I always told her to chill out, but she never listened and the more I
told her to chill out, the less she started telling me.’

  The cafe is filling up now. Some builders in dusty trousers and hard hats come and sit on the table next to theirs. They talk loudly and roll cigarettes while waiting for their breakfasts. Jas has to raise her voice so that Kate can hear her.

  ‘I suppose we kind of fell out? When she told me about Jake, I said she was moving too fast but, you know, there’s only so much you can do. She didn’t want to hear it. And I had no idea what was actually going on. I had no idea about you.’

  Jas turns up the corners of her mouth. It is not quite a smile, but it is understanding. For the first time in sixteen hours, Kate unclenches her jaw and relaxes her shoulders. The oppressive sensation in her chest, of an elastic being wound tightly around her ribcage, starts to lessen. She is calmer now, knowing that there is someone else who can bear witness to Marisa’s behaviour; who can reassure Kate that she is not the one who’s going mad.

  ‘Thank you, Jas.’

  Jas starts putting her jacket back on.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve done that much.’

  ‘You have, you really have. Is it OK if I keep your number and stay in touch? It’s just useful, you know, having someone—’

  ‘Sure,’ Jas cuts in.

  ‘And you don’t have any contact details for her family?’

  Jas sucks air through her teeth.

  ‘Nah. And, if you want my opinion, that would be the worst thing you could do.’

  ‘OK, OK. So what we’re doing now – keeping her safe and putting her back on her meds – that’s what you think is best?’

  Jas shrugs.

  ‘I can’t really advise you. I’m not a doctor. But yeah, I guess that’s what I’d do. Look after her. She’ll calm down. You’ll get your baby. And then – what happens next is up to Ris, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you want to see her?’

  Jas shakes her head.

  ‘No. I love Ris. Always will. But she won’t want me to know what’s happened. She’ll be humiliated. When she’s better, I’ll give her a call.’

  Kate stands to say goodbye. This time, she hugs Jas, who is awkward in her embrace. Jas reaches into her pocket and begins to fish out a five-pound note, but Kate says, ‘No, I’ll get these. Least I can do.’

  She watches Jas leave, a slight yet defiant figure. The sequinned ‘Warrior’ on the back of her jacket twinkles as she walks down the street. She turns left and disappears from view.

  27

  Marisa’s eyes stutter open. She is lying in an unfamiliar bed, the duvet tucked over her and a heavy quilted blanket at one end is weighing her legs down like sandbags. She had always hated sleeping in beds with the duvets tucked in and made a point, on the rare occasions she stayed in hotels, to kick out the bedlinen before going to sleep, undoing the neat hospital corner edges and allowing the sheets to billow and free themselves. But this doesn’t feel like a hotel. Where is she?

  Her head is aching and her throat is dry. The bed faces towards a window. Light is slipping through the crack where the blind has not been completely pulled down. She can hear birdsong and, beyond that, silence. The silence is strange. For the last few weeks, she has woken to a cacophony of traffic and thumping music that has seemed to exist both inside and outside her mind. She couldn’t do anything to rid herself of the noise. She tried stuffing her ears with cotton wool and when that didn’t work, she covered the window with masking tape, but still the noise persisted. She thought the noise was malevolent, part of a concerted conspiracy to force her out of her home. She screamed at it, cried tears of frustration and rage at its pernicious permanence, and eventually she gave in to it and allowed it to wash through her, making her incapable of thought.

  This room is different. A shelter. She feels far away from the noise now, cocooned within these white painted walls. She shifts onto her side and notices a bookshelf built into the wall, lined with orange-spined paperbacks. The door has a brass handle and hanging from it is a lilac ribbon attached to a square of embroidered flowers.

  Her stomach gurgles.

  She closes her eyes. A scrap of the remembered past floats in front of the blackness. It is of a woman lifting a baby out of a cot and the baby is crying and it is all because Marisa has done something wrong.

  She drifts back into blackness.

  Hours later, or maybe days, a man comes into the room. She wakes to find him holding her wrist, and his touch is known to her even though she does not recognise him.

  ‘Marisa,’ the man says. ‘How are you feeling?’

  She tries to speak, but no sound comes so instead she smiles weakly and concentrates on appearing polite.

  ‘Better?’

  She nods, although she can’t remember why she is here or what she could be ‘better’ from. Has something happened? Has she been bad? Has Daddy sent her to boarding school again because he needs her out of the way? Is this the sanatorium?

  ‘That’s good,’ says the man on her bed. He is wearing a burgundy-coloured V-neck over a checked shirt, the collar of which is gently frayed. ‘You gave us quite a scare. But there’s nothing to worry about now. You’re safe here with us. You’re perfectly safe.’

  He smiles at her, reassuring. He passes her two pills, starkly white against the pink palm of his hand and she takes them and puts them in her mouth obligingly as she wants to be good again and to be allowed home. She wants to show she is worthy of being loved. The man gives her a tumbler of water, the glass engraved with a pattern of diamonds that casts slivers of light across the white walls. She swallows the pills and the water feels cool in her mouth.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He pats her on the shoulder. ‘Now you must rest. It’s the most important thing you can do. There’s no need to worry about anything else. Just rest.’

  Her head is heavy against the pillow. She closes her eyes. She sees herself crawling along a long dark grey corridor, the carpet scratching her knees.

  She wakes. It is dark outside. The silence is so thick she can almost taste it. No birdsong. She needs the loo. Marisa props herself up gingerly, sliding her legs out from the duvet. There are slippers on the floor. She puts them on her feet, bending down to do so and when she sits up again, there is a rush of blood to her head. She waits for the faintness to pass, and then she stands, as though testing the solidity of the ground beneath her. She opens the bedroom door and is confused when she doesn’t recognise the room on the other side. It seems to be a kitchen and a drawing room in one. She has never seen it before. A panicked, scrabbly feeling starts in her chest. Where is she? What is she doing here? Where are her parents? Why can’t she hear Anna crying?

  She reaches one hand out to the wall to steady herself and fumbles her way along the edge of the room. Somehow she finds the toilet and sits there, allowing her bladder to empty. She notices her belly is full and wonders why. She can’t remember the last time she ate.

  She flushes, then washes her hands. In the mirror, Marisa is shocked to see an adult face looking back at her. Straggly hair, pale skin and puffy cheeks. She is slightly disgusted by the image.

  A woman comes in. She is tall, with pinned-back blonde-grey hair and blue eyes the colour of Arctic skies. She dusts the mantelpiece and the bookshelf and replaces the empty water bottle on the chest of drawers with a new one. She notices the blind is not pulled all the way down, so she walks over and rectifies it with swift, economic movements. She does not realise Marisa, whose eyes seem closed, is actually watching her through a sliver of sightline. The woman stands at the end of the bed, then turns to look at Marisa. The woman shakes her head, then leaves, taking great care to turn the doorknob as quietly as possible.

  Who is she, Marisa wonders? Is she the school matron? Is someone coming to take her home soon?

  There are two pillows underneath her head. They feel expensive, stuffed with feather
s rather than foam. She thinks of where the feathers come from, of whether they pluck young birds and leave them shivering. Or whether they wait for the birds to die, or perhaps they’ve been killed already and the feathers would go to waste otherwise? She imagines passing through a swirling, white tunnel of feathers, reaching out to try and catch one in her hand but they keep escaping her reach. The feathers blow and twist out of her grasp until they recede into the distance and then disappear and she is left floating in blankness.

  ‘Marisa.’

  She hears her name being spoken as if from the opposite side of a chasm. The voice echoes towards her. She opens her eyes and stares into the face of a younger man. Light blond-brown hair, sandy stubble. It is a face of notable symmetry, apart from one distinct eyebrow hair curling out of place. She knows this face and yet she cannot place it.

  ‘How are you?’

  Marisa looks at him, waiting for the answer to come to her. The man seems worried, a deep crinkle appearing just above his right eye and then the worry passes and distils itself into a kind of sadness. His moods pass across his face like changing weather. He sits on the edge of the bed, causing the mattress to dip, and then he takes her hand in his and strokes it with his thumb.

  ‘Marisa,’ he says again. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

  For a few seconds, she doesn’t. For a few seconds, she is still a child waiting for her parents to come and get her. For a few seconds longer, she lives in this protective limbo, as though her mind has chosen to give her a more palatable story to digest until she feels strong enough to be confronted with the actuality of what has happened. And then, she remembers.

  ‘Jake,’ she says.

  The memories collapse around her, nuclear dust from an atomic mushroom cloud. The pregnancy. Her illness. The medication she stopped taking. The hallway. Kate, unconscious, her legs tied up with rope. Blood on the tiles. Jake. Her Jake. Except he isn’t hers. He is Kate’s and everything she did in order to make that not so now rises up inside her with such force that she has to lever herself out of bed and run to the bathroom. She kneels down in front of the toilet bowl and vomits.