The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  And then I realize the voice is in the room, coming from behind me, speaking not to my precious daughter but to me. I swivel, lift my gaze to the double-height skylight, the jewel in the crown of the building, and then to the mezzanine walkway built under it.

  He is standing at its centre, up against the rail, a sphere of light on the wall behind accentuating the broad beam of his shoulders, the taut muscles of his neck. It is impossible not to register this time what eluded me when we met outside the café: his grotesque impersonation of me – the black clothing and bleached hair, perhaps even those alterations to his features. And yet, he is no admirer of mine. When he speaks, loathing drips from every syllable.

  ‘Come to pay me off, have you? Like last time?’

  ‘That was Vic, not me.’ My tone is hard and flat. ‘I had no interest in saving your life, so please don’t flatter yourself. Could you come down?’ I don’t like the backlit effect that is suddenly making me think of the angel Gabriel, when this man is the spiritual opposite.

  He doesn’t move. ‘What do you want?’ he asks, and it occurs to me he’s nervous. He feels safer with the extra height, the vertical separation. His large pale hands grip the rail and I picture them on the steering wheel that night five years ago. I hear the sound of Lucas screaming.

  ‘I want you to stop seeing my daughter,’ I say and my fingers graze my bag.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because I know you’re using her to torment me. You don’t care about her. You’d happily destroy her.’

  His chest rises. ‘I do care about her.’

  ‘Come on, you were released over two and a half years ago, but suddenly you want to reconnect? At the exact moment you think I could make life difficult for you?’

  ‘It’s not suddenly. I’ve tried before.’

  He must mean the letter, but I have no intention of discussing that. ‘Look, I know you’re using her to warn me off, just like Ratcliffe tried to – and even Vic. I’m not stupid.’

  He appears to puzzle over this, his head tilting, brow furrowing, but I can tell he’s play-acting. ‘Why would me and Frey being back in touch be warning you off?’

  Me and Frey. The insolence of him. ‘Because you know she’s all I’ve got left. You stuck the knife in five years ago and now you want to twist it and watch me writhe in agony.’

  The image pleases him. There’s a twitch of a smile on those surgically bloated lips. ‘Why would I want you to writhe in agony, Ellen?’ He says my name almost tenderly, before adding, coldly: ‘Oh, wait, because you orchestrated a massive hate campaign against me? Or maybe because you tried to have me killed?’

  I swallow. I will not waste time denying this last claim or discovering how he knows – since Vic’s heads up, I’ve come to the conclusion that it makes no difference, not in practical terms. All that matters is I failed, otherwise he wouldn’t be standing in front of me now. ‘No. Because you’re a psycho,’ I say. ‘You were then and you are now. You couldn’t bear to see a happy person, a happy family, and you made it your business to destroy us.’

  He dips his head a fraction, his gaze darkening. ‘You’re wrong. You’re the psycho. You flaunted your perfect family and deliberately excluded me. You were a snob and a crazy, obsessed mother and, when the accident happened, you had a ready-made villain.’

  At this, his first reference to Lucas’s death, grief stampedes through me. ‘You made yourself the villain when you left Lucas to die,’ I gasp. ‘Vic should never have set you free.’

  ‘Set me free?’ He gestures with both hands. ‘This is what I’m talking about, you act like I’m an animal – you always did.’

  ‘Okay, if you prefer, he should never have paid you off. It wasn’t his money to give away.’

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with him. I’m satisfied I’ve paid him back.’ As surprise registers on my face, he gives a tight bark of laughter. ‘He still hasn’t told you, has he? Why d’you think James decided to invest?’

  ‘James?’ I feel my cheeks flame under my party make-up. ‘You mean James Ratcliffe?’

  Now he really does laugh, that big rattling sound of old, taking genuine pleasure in my ignorance and confusion. ‘You’re a pretty pathetic detective, aren’t you? Vic got the backing for his business because I made it happen.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ I’ve never had any reason to investigate the source of Vic’s capital, but have taken at face value his account of having made a successful pitch to an investor. He’d been shopping his business plan around town since long before Kieran entered our lives. ‘I’ve googled Ratcliffe, the company, his clients, all of it. There’s no way I would’ve missed Vic’s name.’

  He shrugs. ‘So his brand isn’t featured on their website. Must’ve been someone he didn’t want to find out, huh?’

  ‘Well, I don’t care,’ I say. ‘If he wants to take Ratcliffe’s money, let him. He has completely different priorities from me.’ A new son. A new Lucas. I see Vic in his tower, in the flat I’ve never set foot in, high above the grey, rain-slicked streets. His lovely young girlfriend, their baby in her arms. And I’m glad he’s there and not here. This is my war.

  The song ends and another starts. The same singer, the same gibberish, but with an urgent mood that acts on me, galvanizes me. Funny, I thought I’d want to talk to Kieran long and hard, extract the details I’ve sought for years, but it isn’t unfolding like that. Already I’ve had enough of his posturing from on high. Already I want this over with.

  I unbuckle my bag and open the zip, take out the revolver. I position the grip in the heel of my hand, finger on the trigger guard, as I practised at home. Kieran cries out in shock, though I’m pointing it at the floor. ‘If you won’t come down, I’ll come up. One of us has to end this. It’s the only way. You know that as well as I do, Kieran.’

  I’m aware of him moving to his right as I pace towards the spiral stairs, the weapon knocking my thigh as I climb. When I emerge onto the mezzanine, the space is empty, a bitter cold spreading through open terrace doors, the night gloom beyond. As I step onto the threshold, the darkness causes a momentary loss of vision and I hold my breath in my lungs, feeling the frigid air deep inside me. I can, at least, hear: the pulse of music from Asha’s open window, the din of party chatter. The horn of a boat on the river. Those keening vocals from Kieran’s living room have been silenced.

  I start to get my bearings. The roof lights are off, but a little of the lamplight from below glows through the skylight, weakly, as if the glass is smoked. Kieran is directly in front of me at the balustrade. There are perhaps five paces between us, but I can’t take them. Not yet.

  ‘Come out and join me,’ he invites, his breath a grey cloud in the black night. ‘What, too scared? Oh, of course, you don’t like heights, do you? You’re going to have to get over that. Just this once, Ellen. Just this once.’

  Still, I can’t move. I can do nothing but stare, both attracted and repelled by the sight of him, by the illusion that the balustrade is edgeless, invisible, as if one backward step, one tiny readjustment of a heel, will send him plunging out of sight.

  He speaks again, something more complex in his voice now, something that seems to conjure those teenage years, all the joy and sorrow of lost times:

  ‘Here’s the deal, Ellen. And you don’t need your gun.’

  Killing Time (cont)

  Autobiography is a slippery form at the best of times, and this is never more evident than when Saint’s account of her cat and mouse game with Kieran Watts reaches its final manoeuvres. How can we know what really happened the night they faced off for the last time when only one of them survived to tell the tale?

  Here, then, are two legally proven facts:

  One: exactly five years after the incident that claimed Lucas Gordon’s life, a second incident put an end to Kieran Watts’.

  Two: Ellen Saint was arrested at the scene.

  Sunday Times magazine,

  December 2021

  Chap
ter 37

  They say you have to remember catastrophe in all its detail before you have a hope in hell of forgetting it. (Don’t ask me who ‘they’ are. Bankers? Premier league managers?) Well, there can’t be too many catastrophes where a reconstruction feels as appropriate as mine does – no, make that a resurrection. After all, this whole monstrous situation began with one, didn’t it? The resurrection of Kieran Watts on a rooftop in Shad Thames.

  And justice being the elegant creature she is, it ends in the same place.

  ‘Here’s the deal, Ellen,’ he says. ‘And you don’t need your gun.’

  My eyes have adjusted and I see his face better now, the strange and mesmerizing glow of his eyes. ‘What deal?’

  ‘I’ll give you exactly what you want. But you have to come here. You have to come to the edge.’

  His manner is more seductive than threatening and I’m confused, mistrustful. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean push me. You can tell everyone I jumped, obviously. Or don’t say anything at all. No one even knows you’re here, do they?’

  No one knows you’re here: why would he say that? I cast about for the blinking eyes of a camera, but all I find are the red dots of cranes in construction sites over the river.

  He continues, his tone different again, regretful now and conciliatory: ‘I know what you’re thinking. I’m not messing with you, I promise. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. I can’t go on, not remembering, not knowing. It was all lost, Ellen. Lost with Lucas.’

  I can’t bear him to say my son’s name. I swallow my pain. ‘Please, if you really want to do it, do it. Jump.’

  But he shakes his head. ‘That’s not the deal. I need you. I need to feel your hand on my back when I go…’

  ‘Why?’ This is crazy, wrong-footing trickery. It is—

  Oh! Now I see. Now it is clear. It’s his final revenge. To make me the very thing he was, the thing all men despise. A killer. A thief of life – a young person’s life. Yes, the world will say it is suicide, but I will know. I’ll always know and it will be his way of preying on me for ever.

  ‘You understand,’ he says gently. ‘But you have to be brave. You have to face your fear.’

  I drop both my bag and the gun. My foot lifts, but does not step.

  Just this once, Ellen. Just this once.

  And I do it. Finally released from my paralysis, I leave the safety of the terrace doors to walk across the roof towards him, towards the huge gaping space between the cliff face of The Heights and the twinkling city beyond. His expression now grotesquely jubilant, Kieran turns his back on me and leans forward over the barrier, folding so steeply his head hangs towards the ground. My stomach flips as if I too have been turned upside down. His left foot springs off the ground and then the right, his upper body lowering, fraction by fraction, until he is holding himself in perfect balance between life and death.

  His voice comes from far away now, from a separate place, one word repeated: ‘Push,’ he says. ‘Push.’ And it is what I’ve dreaded and desired for as long as I can remember. I place my right palm on his back. He is already tipping when I do it.

  The push and the jump are one.

  I clap my hands to my ears so I cannot hear him land – one, two, three, all the way to ten – and then I look down. And when I say look down, I mean I press against that barrier with my full body weight and double right over it, exactly as he did moments ago. I have to: it’s the only way I can see what’s happening below.

  I see the tops of heads of people on the fifth floor leaning from the window. A dress of silver scales. Bangles glinting on wrists. Phone screens lighting up and then turning downwards. In a sudden flare of flashlight, I glimpse a splayed, broken shape on the walkway.

  Something feels different within me then. Something incurable has been cured. And I can’t help smiling to myself when I understand what it is.

  I am standing right at the edge of the highest building in range and yet I feel no urge to jump. No urge at all.

  Which is, I think you’ll agree, the only acceptable ending.

  Killing Time (cont)

  I began by describing a typical library and so it is – except for one thing. You can’t just walk into it off the street. You need the correct authority and an official escort. You need – if I counted correctly – seven doors to be unlocked for you to pass through and then locked again behind you. Because, in an attempt to follow Felix Penney’s ‘rules of revelation’ (his term, not mine), I have wilfully delayed mentioning that Ellen Saint and her fellow students are not free citizens but prisoners. Their residence, HMP Langton, Berkshire, has been rehabilitating female offenders since 1961. Or attempting to.

  Penney’s memoir-writing course is just one of a range of intensive self-analysis exercises offered by Langton’s controversial therapeutic unit, designed in the 2000s to overturn stubborn reoffender rates. I say controversial, because, inevitably, it attracts its share of detractors. It is a matter of public record that the programme, which includes art, theatre and a host of other creative activities, costs almost ten thousand pounds a year more than a standard prison stretch.

  ‘I would question whether this is legitimate therapy and not simply an expensive and indulgent treat for some of the least deserving people in our society,’ says former Shadow Home Secretary Gareth Symonds.

  Penney begs to differ. He points out that much of the extra cost is met by the Langton Trust, a charitable body with a formidable fundraising record, and adds that his own fee is waived. ‘There is no way a convicted criminal like Ellen could have reached this level of rehabilitation – and atonement – in a conventional prison,’ he argues.

  Might ‘atonement’ be overstating it, I suggest?

  But Penney isn’t backing down. Langton’s memoir course is his baby and Ellen Saint is the baby’s shiny new rattle.

  Sunday Times magazine,

  December 2021

  Chapter 38

  I feel strangely comfortable in the aftermath – I mean, it isn’t like we haven’t been here before, is it? A shocking incident involving two people, only one of whom comes out of it alive. A sequence of events that is hard to prove and easy to doubt. Press interest – a lot of press interest.

  After a period of legal negotiation as process-driven and emotionless as Kieran’s ever was, I plead guilty to Encouraging or Assisting Suicide. It is an unusual charge and prosecutions are rare; where my sentence will land between minimum and maximum, my team prefers not to predict.

  James Ratcliffe is an unlikely ally, giving evidence of Kieran’s depression, which dated from well before my re-entry into his life. According to the investor, the inescapable guilt of having failed to save his best friend had left him staggering from one anti-anxiety medication to the next. He has several times threatened to throw himself from his terrace.

  The Moodsmart app is not mentioned; business interests protected to the last. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that the launch has been delayed (maybe, thanks to accounts like this, it will be given a new name).

  But the historical link between Kieran and me has to be explored – of course it does. Ratcliffe testifies that Kieran’s new surname was inspired by my maiden name, which he’d learned years ago from Lucas. He also had a photo of me, taken without my knowledge, and later shared it with the cosmetic surgeon who worked on his face. Body dysmorphic disorder is mentioned, as is borderline personality disorder, but neither quite defines the obsessive way he came to regard me following his release from Danstone.

  Still, if anyone understands obsession it is me.

  Asha gives a statement confirming that the encounter between her neighbour ‘Sam’ and her new lighting designer was engineered by him, and that I had expressed only casual interest in returning his overtures. Neither his brief attendance at the party nor my premature departure was noticed by any of the partygoers who gave statements.

  Selena is not among those asked to give one.

  As for my se
cond phone, I surrendered it to the police willingly on arrest. What was there to hide, in the end? An audio file, a photograph, the search history of a bereaved mother getting herself up to date on the upgraded lifestyle of the criminal who wrecked her life. The very fact that I procured it is argued to be evidence of a paranoid mind. Unstable thinking. And maybe it was. Certainly, the record of Kieran’s trial, the stress of Lock Up Longer, the years of medical notes I’ve accrued, it all works in my favour. The sentence, when it comes, is right at the best-case-scenario end of the scale. Just two years, the same as Kieran’s.

  But, wait, what about the gun, you ask? That five-year minimum term I mentioned. Well, I am extremely fortunate to have the firearm charge dropped after the item is found to be a replica, the type used in historical re-enactments – perfectly legal and with a market value of about £150. I now know that an imitation firearm is only treated as a firearm in law if it can be ‘readily convertible into a weapon’ and my convincing little toy was not. I owe more to those kids on the Whitley Estate than they could ever know, though I’m not so naïve as to think they would gain an ounce of satisfaction from that debt of gratitude.

  Of course, there will always be those who think I got away with murder. I understand that. But, as the judge said herself after pronouncing my fate, there are no winners in this case.

  * * *

  Early in my stretch, I am told of a prison unit to which I might request a transfer, a therapeutic facility that I’m convinced must be oversubscribed, but, it transpires, is not. The prospect presents barriers to the majority of the prison population, it seems. The unluckiest of lives have left most lacking any desire to express themselves in psychotherapy, let alone memoir or art or theatre.