by Helen Kitson
Simon sat on the sofa, legs apart. ‘What would they have done, do you think, if you’d given the manuscript to them instead of publishing it?’
‘I think, if I’d given it to them shortly after Madeleine died, they’d have destroyed it. Books aren’t important to them. They wouldn’t have read it. Maybe they’d have stuck it in a drawer in her room, which – I don’t know, but I bet they’ve kept it exactly as it was. It would have gathered dust till they died, then it would have ended up in a skip most likely.’
‘So, what you did, it did at least save the book?’
‘Well, yes, but I refuse to say anything that makes it seem as if I’m justifying my actions. She gave it to me. She even crossed out her name on the cover page, for God’s sake. I didn’t write it, but the book became mine. Look at all the celebrities who have books ghost-written for them. What’s the difference?’
‘I’m an English grad, that’s my context. Integrity of the text and all that.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Is it really that simple? Aren’t there shades of grey? All right, I’ll write out the confession, but only because it seems like the only possible conclusion, the final full stop to the book. And only because it’s probable Madeleine’s parents will never have to read it – assuming they die before me, of course. I’ll have to risk that.’
‘Maybe it’ll be cathartic. Maybe it’ll free you to write something of your own.’
‘Too late for that.’
‘Do you think it was fate that brought me to you? Like it was something that was meant to happen?’
Was he being serious? His expression suggested he was.
‘No; I don’t believe in the workings of fate – not in the way you mean. I don’t know what brought you here. Sooner or later, or maybe never, what does it matter?’
‘Maybe you’re right. But maybe these things matter more than you know.’
I shut my eyes. I’m tired, I wanted to say; tired of thinking about the past, which is gone, over and done with. Let it alone. Let it be. Love me. But when I opened my eyes he’d still be there, that expectant look on his face. Merciless.
Chapter Fifteen
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…
I’d never felt any compulsion to confess the truth. Not to my parents, not to Mr Latham, not to Madeleine’s parents. And how to explain what I’d done? Would anyone believe that Madeleine had simply handed over her novel with the intention of me publishing it under my name? It wasn’t credible. I would be labelled a thief, a fraud, a fake. My actions, however one tried to spin them, couldn’t look anything other than shabby. A true friend would have wanted to see Madeleine’s name glowing on the front cover of her book – a lasting epitaph.
I owed Simon nothing – no more, certainly, than I owed to Madeleine’s parents, those good, damaged people from whom I’d long been estranged. Occasionally I’d tormented myself imagining their reactions if I were fool enough to blurt out the truth. Horror. Disgust. Pity? An insistence that I make a public declaration, a shifting of the crown from my head to Madeleine’s?
And how the literary press would have clamoured to dip their bread in such a tasty sauce had I been tempted to tell. How they would have rolled up their sleeves, flexed their fingers and tapped out their thousands of jabbing words. What a story!
What was the point? She was dead. Brutal but inescapable fact. Fame couldn’t touch her.
Madeleine’s death was officially recorded as an accident. A tragic accident, but an accident nonetheless. No one to blame, no one held accountable. Nothing, of course, could have consoled the Andersons for the loss of their daughter, and I don’t think anyone would have blamed them for the efforts they put into trying to persuade the council to put up some kind of fence along the bank of the river.
‘These things happen,’ said a council official.
‘But how, but how?’ the Andersons asked. A shrug from the council employee. Madeleine wasn’t a toddler. And what had she been doing down there anyway? Sensing, I think, the council official implying that Madeleine’s death might have been suicide, the Andersons backed off.
‘What do you think?’ Mrs Anderson had asked, grasping my hand. We sat next to each other on her sofa, a photo album open on our laps. ‘I know she’d been very low in spirits, all that business with her degree and everything. But we’d have noticed, surely, if she were properly clinically depressed?’
No more than the Andersons did I have any idea of the signs and symptoms of “proper” depression. Nevertheless, I had more of an inkling of her state of mind than they did. But what good would it have done to tell them just how unhappy she was, to the point where she’d told me she wished she were dead? After all, I’m sure I’d said much the same thing myself during my drama-queen, life-is-shit moments.
‘She liked her job,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there’s any reason to believe she intended to kill herself.’
Mrs Anderson winced. ‘But what was she doing there? By the river?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose we shall ever know.’
‘I feel I can never entirely accept her death until I understand how it happened. You do see that, Gabrielle, don’t you? I know it’s unreasonable, but it’s the unanswered questions that are so hard to bear. I keep going over and over in my mind—’
‘I know. I do understand.’
‘Most people don’t. They talk about “learning to live with it”, about “moving on”. I don’t think they mean to sound heartless; in fact I’m sure they mean to be kind, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help in the slightest. There’s no proper end with something like this, just a vague hope that somehow I will get used to this emptiness.’
Her words moved me, but I was no more help to her than the well-meaning folk who told her she must get on with her life.
Did she ever realise, I wonder, that I was keeping from her a great deal of information? I’m not sure any of it would have helped her come to terms with Madeleine’s death.
No closure for me, either, but that was my own fault.
‘I wish I were dead.’
‘No, you don’t. Why would you? Is your life so terrible? Have you some deadly disease?’
She kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs under her, the Lloyd Loom chair creaking as she shifted around trying to get comfortable.
‘But what’s the point of it all, really? Work, money – it’s a big vicious circle that doesn’t lead anywhere.’
‘Circles don’t, generally,’ I said. I wanted to lighten her mood, get her off this pointless navel-gazing. The meaning of life, for God’s sake! No meaning, no point, you just get on with it.
‘I wanted so much from life,’ she said, fingering the gold heart-shaped locket that represented her parents’ pride and all their hopes for her. ‘It’s been a huge disappointment.’
I wanted to laugh, but Madeleine wasn’t some doom-obsessed goth who painted her nails black and read existentialist French literature.
‘Don’t you remember telling me I shouldn’t settle for less than I wanted? Go back to uni, get a better degree.’
She shook her head. ‘I was wrong about education being the key. Trouble is, I don’t know what the key is.’
‘There isn’t one.’
‘There must be. Listen, Gabs, I want you to do something for me. But you must promise absolutely never to tell another living soul.’
‘All right,’ I said, more annoyed than curious. Why must she make such a mystery of things?
‘Come round to my house on Friday night, seven-ish. I want to give you something. I want you to look after it for me, keep it safe.’
An item of jewellery, perhaps: some heirloom she didn’t trust herself not to lose? What else could it be? I didn’t give the matter much thought, but duly presented myself at her house on Friday evening. I followed her upstairs to her bedroom. Her parents had had it decorated hoping this might cheer her up a bit, the smell of gloss paint still lingering in the air.
‘Here. I’ll give you a carrier bag to put it in. If anyone asks what it is, say I’ve lent you some books.’
I glanced at the front cover of the manuscript. The Song of the Air by Madeleine Anderson. Below that, a quote from The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale about the struggle between good and evil: Up in the little garret there stands, half-dressed, a little Dancer. She stands now on one leg, now on both; she despises the whole world; yet she lives only in imagination.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. I lifted the cover sheet, but she reached out and stopped me.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not here. I can’t stop you reading it, but I’d rather you didn’t until I’ve explained it to you.’
The explanation, when it came (after a couple of shots of vodka), made no sense. She’d written a novel, she believed it was good, but she didn’t trust her parents not to root around in her room and find it. Then she snatched the manuscript from me and crossed out her name.
I laughed purely from nerves.
‘I’m serious,’ she said, clutching the pencil. ‘If anything happens to me, I don’t want them to get their hands on it. It’s yours. I’m giving it to you, Gabs.’
Now I was frightened. People talk about the burning intensity in the eyes of crazy artists and I saw it: her eyes on me, but focussed on God knows what. Something only she could see.
‘I don’t want it,’ I said. ‘I’d rather have your friendship – like in the old days, when we told each other everything.’
She cocked her head, seemed to have returned to the world. ‘Did we, though? Should we have done? Would it have done either of us any good?’
‘Is that the point?’
She shrugged. ‘Anyway, we are what we are, and the past is over and done with. That’s not true either, of course, but let’s pretend it’s true.’
‘Why pretend? Why can’t you be frank with me?’
‘Because that’s not my way. I don’t even know why I wrote this stupid book. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.’
‘If it’s so good, why don’t you send it off? Find a publisher for it?’
‘I can’t be bothered. There – that’s me being frank. I literally can’t be bothered. If you don’t take it, I swear I’ll burn it.’
I winced, even though I was certain I held a slush pile reject, at best something competent but derivative. The idea of burning books – even terrible ones – is something no true lover of literature can stomach.
‘I’ll take it, then. And look after it. But I’ll consider myself holding it on your behalf. You can take it back any time you want.’
It was with some trepidation that I began reading what she’d written once I got home. In some ways I would have been less worried if it had been stiff, boring, the work of a rank beginner. Even a rambling mess would have left me less shaken than the thing of beauty it turned out to be.
I stayed up all night to read it from beginning to end. By the time I’d finished, my eyes were sore, my sleep-deprived mind spinning with questions. Where, above all else, had this come from? Surely I should have had some inkling that my best friend possessed this kind of extraordinary talent? All those years she’d watched me beavering away on stories that, if not actually stillborn, should have been strangled at birth.
Jealousy is unreasonable, insidious, damaging. I knew that. I despised myself. But how could I not have been jealous? The fact that she’d apparently donated the book to me was no consolation. I could never possess it. If anything it would possess me, and so it came to pass. I became obsessed with the book. For years, long after it was published, I continued to torment myself with it, labouring over each line, trying to work out how she’d done it, what the trick was. Always it eluded me.
My eyes stinging, I shoved the manuscript back into the Tesco bag. I spent Saturday, the first whole day I had with Madeleine’s book, trying to hate it, trying to find fault, pick flaws, but there was only one conclusion to be drawn. The book was brilliant. Madeleine was a born writer, but more than that, she had gifts most us don’t even dream of possessing.
That evening I went round to her house, asked if she wanted to know what I thought of the book.
‘You couldn’t have read it,’ she said. ‘I only gave it to you last night.’ She looked even rougher than me. Panda eyes from going to bed with make-up on; food stains (tomato ketchup and egg by the looks of it) on her baggy jumper, which she wore with the sleeves pulled down so they almost covered her hands; her lank hair gathered into a messy ponytail with a rubber band. She wasn’t wearing her locket.
‘I stayed up to read it,’ I told her.
‘Does that mean you liked it?’
Liked it! Did she really have no idea what she’d done? And if I told her it was brilliant, would she demand it back? Would she suddenly decide she wasn’t depressed after all, send the book out, become a world-famous author; money, fame, respect – ? All that I could set in front of her.
‘You’re the writer,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you really thought of it. I shan’t be upset if you don’t like it.’
It was supposed to be my glittering career, wasn’t it? Didn’t I deserve it, after all the hours, the tears of frustration, the work I’d put in to becoming a writer? My dream, not hers. O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on. I knew the quotes. I knew what I was supposed to feel, what I was supposed to do. The right thing, the wrong thing: these were clear-cut, without ambiguity.
‘I think you’ve got some really interesting ideas,’ I said. Words: choose them carefully. ‘But I’m probably not the right person to judge. I know you too well.’ I didn’t know her at all, it seemed. But then, she didn’t know me.
She slumped back in her chair. ‘It’s no good, is it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ How could she not know? ‘Look, I’ll be honest, it’s quite good. It’s just… You know how fickle publishers are, how they’re always looking for stuff that’s overtly commercial – mass appeal and so on.’
She nodded, rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper.
She’d given the book to me, hadn’t she? So why would she even care what I thought of it?
She sighed. ‘I knew I was probably aiming too high – trying to do something I didn’t have the experience to do. Do you think you could do anything with it? To improve it, I mean? Would you try?’
I almost laughed. What craziness were we talking? ‘Do you want me to?’
‘You could edit it for me, couldn’t you? Tidy it up, get rid of all the loose stuff, re-write the bits that don’t work? Is it worth it?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but I can’t promise. It’s quite an odd book, isn’t it? I can’t make up my mind whether it’s stupidly good or complete bollocks.’
‘Probably bollocks. Do your best. If it’s useless I’ll just have to accept that. It doesn’t really matter, after all.’
It goes without saying that I didn’t alter a single word. It was already perfect.
For the record, it never crossed my mind at any stage that Madeleine was contemplating suicide. It’s a minor point, really, for I doubt this knowledge would have changed anything. That she hadn’t been behaving normally for some time was something her parents and I had come to accept. We hoped she would “get over it”. That something would happen, some course of action occur to her, that would bring her back to life, back to us.
‘People do change,’ my mother told me. ‘She was never the life and soul type, was she? I expect she’s still upset about not doing as well in her degree as she’d hoped, but she’s young enough to change direction, if she wants.’
There was more to it than that, of course. More than I ever understood.
But the crucial point, the point where everything stops, where the blame re
sts squarely upon my shoulders, is that I was with her when she died. I’d followed her, meaning to catch up with her to tell her what I really thought about her book. I felt it was the only thing that would help, give her something to be joyful about.
It was about eight, a gloomy February evening. I lifted my hand, opened my mouth to call to her. Stood there, as if petrified, feeling as impotent as I had on the day of my grandmother’s funeral when I’d tried to reach my weeping mother, only to be shooed away by other relatives. My father and an aunt comforted my mother. My other grandmother looked after me, but I felt as if I’d been denied something. I wasn’t allowed into the circle of grieving. Too young; no use at all.
Madeleine wore no jacket. Jeans, boots, an old cardigan that reached almost to her knees. Hands stuffed into the pockets of the cardigan, her hair loose. I was sure that if I ran up to her and tapped her on the shoulder she would spin round and look at me as if I wasn’t there, or as if I were a stranger. Somehow I sensed she’d passed beyond me.
Following slowly behind, I decided she was going to meet a man. Which man, I couldn’t guess. Someone she’d met at work? So much of her life was closed off to me.
I followed her over iron-hard ground (no rain had fallen for days), watched her push aside the branches of the trees, saw her stand at the water’s edge. The man she waited for – why didn’t he come? Another married man, stringing her along…
Hands pressed against the rough bark of a tree, I watched her crouch down, her head bent. Was she looking for something in the water? Praying? Then she climbed down so that she was sitting on the bank (grassy in summer, now an earthy ridge). She levered herself off the bank and into the water, slowly, as though testing the depth, her body adjusting to the shock.
Then I understood. ‘Maddie!’ I cried out. She gave no indication she’d heard me. I scrambled after her, my eyes fixed on her, watching her wade out to where the water was deepest.