by Mel McGrath
Something has happened. Obviously. The flat has been burgled or Nevis has been mugged or, God forbid, worse. She is unwell. Or pregnant. There has been an accident. She has had a fight with Satnam. Female friendships can be scarily intense at that age. Honor knows that as well as anyone. And Nevis is sensitive and prone to misunderstandings. Growing up, all Nevis wanted was to eat chips and absorb herself in maths or birds. Most kids didn’t want to do maths or look at birds or eat chips all day and Nevis didn’t really want to do much else. The kids would go off topic and Nevis would become confused or withdrawn. Kids who were weak in maths would befriend her then get her to do their homework. At school some girl would take Nevis under her wing for a while then drop her, saying she was weird. She would go over to a new friend’s house for tea and would not be invited back. The quick allegiances and casual betrayals of teenage girls left Nevis bewildered and out of her depth. She grew more wary and lost her confidence until she arrived at Avon University to study mathematics and biosciences and met Satnam.
The van is screaming along in the slow lane of the motorway now as if it’s being tortured. A presenter on the radio, which is set to the BBC World Service, begins a lecture on Greek mythology. It has begun to rain and she is somewhere near Slough, and these facts would be depressing if Honor had the mental space to think about them. Nevis used to tell her that she drove as if she were set on murdering the engine. They would laugh about it. Like you could murder a fly, Mumtoo, Nevis would say.
Flies are safe from Honor. People are another matter. One person.
The van bumps over the rumble strip and onto the hard shoulder then growls ominously as Honor makes a correction with the steering wheel and the tyres come to land squarely in the slow lane once more. Shit, she thinks, I lost concentration. I must stop thinking about murder before it kills me. A coffee would help. Honor remembers seeing a sign for a service station in eight miles. Better lose ten minutes on the road and get there safely. At Leigh Delamere services she buys a flat white (‘We don’t do just normal white’) and tries Nevis again, this time leaving an estimated arrival time while the server – didn’t they call them baristas these days? – an exhausted-looking young woman in a T-shirt with an unconvincingly perky slogan leans her forehead on the coffee machine and takes a micro-nap while waiting for the dark liquid to trickle into the corrugated paper cup.
It is 1.45 a.m.
Honor takes the coffee back to the van and gulps it down in the service station car park. The lecture on Greek mythology is over and the radio is now playing soothing light jazz. It is gone 2 o’clock when she turns off onto the M32 approach into Bristol and the effect of the coffee seems already to have worn off. She winds a crack in the passenger window to catch the breeze but the air smells cloyingly of diesel fumes. Or maybe this is just a reflection of Honor’s mood. Of her state of mind in general. She hums along with the jazz but the voice in her head sings an altogether different tune. What has happened to Nevis and why hasn’t she called me?
Chapter 5
Nevis
The hour between 12.30 and 1.30 a.m. passes in a blur. One moment Nevis is standing on the bridge, the next she is slumped beside a retaining wall, with a stranger’s hand in hers. Her whole body is shaking. A police car arrives, its siren silenced, then another. The police close the bridge and station uniformed officers at either end to divert traffic, though it’s so late that there isn’t much. A few moments later someone lays a space blanket over her shoulders. She is aware of a policewoman imploring her to speak but the words have flown away. She watches Sondra talking to the policewoman but she cannot hear what is being said. Something has gone wrong with her brain. At that moment an ambulance arrives and two paramedics hurry along the bridge. One of them is a young woman not far off Nevis’s age. There are blinking lights and flashing torches everywhere and a rank smell which could be fox, but is actually, Nevis realises only after the fact, the stench of human fear. The scene is so upsetting and so chaotic that one minute Nevis feels as if her head is exploding and then, moments later, as if it’s happening to someone else far away. The female paramedic rests a hand on her arm. Nevis hears herself say, ‘I want to travel with Satnam’ and with a hand around her shoulders the paramedic leads her to the ambulance.
As they make their way through the city in a tunnel of blue light, the paramedic keeps up a flow of chatter. All Nevis’s focus is on why this has happened but she still can’t make head or tail of it. Satnam is her best friend. Shouldn’t she know? Is this because her head’s not quite right, or different anyway? Wouldn’t a real friend have guessed? Shouldn’t she at least have had a clue?
At the hospital she doesn’t want to leave Satnam but they don’t give her a choice. A nurse leads her away to a waiting area in A&E and fires questions. How is she feeling? Does she think she might faint? Would she like a cup of tea? A sandwich? No, no and no. Does she have any idea why this happened? Another no. Did anything happen leading up to this? No, yes, Nevis isn’t sure. The questions fade into the background and a voice that Nevis knows is hers even though it seems to be coming from outside is asking over and over, ‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘We don’t know, but we’re doing our best,’ the nurse says simply. ‘It’s a good job she collapsed before she could jump. There would have been no coming back from that.’ The nurse moves to lay a hand on her arm. Nevis shifts just out of reach and the nurse makes no attempt to touch her again, instead in a soft kind voice, asking, ‘Would you like me to call someone?’
I should call Honor myself, Nevis thinks, instead of allowing a nurse to do it. But she feels helpless and almost paralysed, completely lost for words. Tapping the passcode into her phone, she blinks at the blizzard of notifications and missed calls from Honor, then passes the device to the woman beside her. She has become like an infant, floppy and unable to make a coherent decision. The nurse initiates the call and speaks for a few moments. Nevis doesn’t listen. Finally, the nurse cuts the call, and, patting her hand, in a cosy, woolly voice, says, ‘Your mum says she’ll be here soon.’
She wants to say Honor isn’t my real mum but she doesn’t know how to explain. And now would probably not be the time. The nurse is still asking questions, this time about whether Nevis has a contact number for Satnam’s parents. Does she know the names of Satnam’s parents? Yes, yes, at least she does know that. Bikram and Narinder.
‘Do you have a number for them?’
She checks in her pocket, pulls out Satnam’s phone. Sondra said she should take it in the ambulance. ‘Oh, but I don’t know the passcode.’
‘Don’t worry, we can find the number.’
‘Wait.’ She remembers now. ‘I do have it.’ Dropping Satnam’s phone in her backpack she reaches for her own. Satnam’s mother Narinder had given her their home number last year when they were on better terms, before Narinder found out about Luke. She reads the screen, memorising the integers as she goes.
The nurse promises to place the call and turns away. For the first time since getting into the taxi what seems like a lifetime ago, Nevis finds herself alone, her mind emptied of everything but Satnam.
Not long afterwards Sondra arrives in the company of a policewoman, who tells Nevis they’ve taken Satnam up to the ICU.
‘A quick word?’ the officer says to her, in a tone that suggests it’s not really a question. Sondra shoots Nevis an encouraging look.
It’s difficult, especially now, for Nevis to do much talking. Part of her is still standing in the thick, reflected light from the bridge’s lamps, watching the figure pressed against the barrier, hands clinging to the wires. Another part is with Satnam in the ICU. There’s not much left for speaking. Besides, hasn’t she already said everything? What else is there to talk about?
‘Can we go somewhere else?’ No point in being in A&E and the waiting room feels oppressive.
‘If you like,’ the policewoman says. ‘How’s about a cup of tea at the caff?’
The three of them w
alk through the hospital. More corridors, more noise and confusing signs. The cafeteria sits near the entrance. A pod-shaped room, lit with white, fluorescent tubes. A few exhausted looking people sitting at tables. Food service has not yet opened for the day but a bank of vending machines hums on a far wall. Sondra reaches out and squeezes Nevis’s hand, trying to be comforting, but Nevis doesn’t like to be touched. Not by strangers. Not by anyone except Satnam.
They take a table and Sondra volunteers to go and get coffee from the vending machine. The policewoman wastes no time in small talk. She wants to know how Satnam seemed last night.
‘I already told the other officer.’
‘Just once more if you wouldn’t mind.’ There’s a beep from the policewoman’s phone. She holds up a finger and is soon engrossed in conversation.
‘Is everything all right?’ Sondra says, returning with the coffee.
Well no, obviously.
The two women sit in awkward silence for a few moments, before Sondra pipes up with, ‘Nevis is a nice name. As in the island?’
‘As in the mountain.’
As the policewoman finishes up her call, Sondra excuses herself to wait out the conversation at another table.
‘Sorry about that. So, you were saying, does Satnam usually drink and take drugs?’
‘That’s not what I was saying.’
The policewoman stiffens, checks her pad, and pastes on a professional smile. ‘We’re not looking to get either you or your friend into any trouble. We’re just trying to get to the truth.’
The truth. Well, yes, obviously, not least because Nevis is very bad at lying.
‘She drinks wine sometimes.’ Nevis wonders if she should mention the bottle of vodka in Satnam’s bedroom and decides not to.
‘I see.’ The policewoman writes something down. ‘What about drugs? Something for those essay deadlines? A little smoke to relax?’
‘Nothing that I know of.’
‘The initial toxicology report apparently suggests Ritalin. Is that something you’ve ever seen Satnam using before tonight?’
‘No.’
‘And can you tell me exactly what happened last night?’
‘No.’
The policewoman cocks her head and grimaces. ‘I think you told my colleague that you ate chips together then Satnam went to bed and you went back to the campus library. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sooo… you can tell me.’ There’s a familiar look on the woman’s face that Nevis has learned to read as frustration.
‘I only know what happened to me.’
‘Yes, I see. Well, OK then, so did Satnam seem her usual self… to you? Did she say anything out of the ordinary, anything that seemed odd, again, to you?’
Nevis takes a deep breath. Her mind turns and quickens then fizzes like a firework. The space behind her eyes is heating up and she wonders, suddenly, if she is going to cry.
From somewhere far away she hears the policewoman repeating the question. A hand lands on her arm.
‘You need a moment to think about it?’ asks the policewoman.
‘No.’
‘So, nothing strange.’ The policewoman is staring at Nevis now, trying to work her out.
‘We’ve checked out her social accounts, obviously, but there doesn’t seem to be anything there to…’
A familiar face appears. The nurse who led Nevis from the ambulance.
‘A quick word? Nothing bad, just to let you know that the doctors have managed to stabilise Satnam. She’s still very poorly and the next twenty-four hours will be crucial but for now she’s stable.’
‘Can I see her?’
The nurse, whose name is Becky, Nevis remembers now, grimaces. Nevis is not sure what this is supposed to mean. ‘Not right now, sweetheart. She’s in good hands. Her parents are on their way.’
‘They don’t like me.’
‘Why wouldn’t they like you?’
‘The usual reasons.’
Becky flashes the policewoman an odd look.
The policewoman goes on talking once Becky has left but Nevis has switched off. She checks the time on her phone. She’s thinking about Honor now, hoping she gets here soon. Normally she would have timed the drive from the exact minute Honor set off. She wishes now she had because not knowing is anxious-making. An oversight. Her legs begin to jig up and down. She is longing for Honor to arrive but also afraid of what she might feel when she does. The hurt from the summer has not gone away.
The policewoman’s hand lands on her arm once more and a voice says she needs Nevis to focus on the question. The police need to find Satnam’s phone. ‘Sondra told us she gave it to you in the ambulance. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, do you have it on you?’
‘No,’ Nevis says. This is not a lie. It is merely not the whole truth. The phone is still in Nevis’s backpack.
‘Maybe you left it in the ambulance?’
‘It’s possible.’
Shortly afterwards the policewoman stops talking and leaves Nevis in the company of Sondra once more. Hours pass or seem to. She watches traffic accidents being stretchered in, ashen-faced elderly folk, worried looking parents with their subdued or else screaming kids, all rotating in and out, in and out in the early morning churn. She takes out her phone and checks Satnam’s social.
In the few short hours since she left for the library Nevis Smith has changed, some small, bright part of her gone, perhaps forever. The alteration became clear to her in the conversation with the policewoman. The old Nevis Smith never once in her life told a lie. This new, sadder, Nevis is surprisingly good at telling only part of the truth.
Chapter 6
Cullen
Christopher Cullen is pulling on his still-damp jacket and trying not to allow Veronica’s complaining to get to him. He knows how much his wife hates it when he drops everything for his mother. The calls usually come at night, often from the care home, sometimes from Amanda herself. When it’s the home it’s usually because Amanda has done something unconscionable to one of the other residents or is refusing to let anyone in her room. Amanda will then call to deny the accusations and counterattack with a list of grievances about the facilities or the food or the carers and to demand her son come over immediately. This time it’s the care home. Amanda, or the Dalek as he calls her in private, on the grounds that she is capable of exterminating everything in her path, has called the police again, this time claiming to have been kidnapped.
‘Do you really have to go?’ Veronica says, watching him from the doorway to the living room. His wife has no idea of the hold Amanda has over him and Cullen wants to keep it that way. A few loose words and his mother could ruin him, ruin this, the beautiful house, the glamorous, prestigious wife, his future prospects. And if it came to it, if he crossed her, if he displeased her, she would. Cullen is in no doubt about that.
‘It is what it is,’ he says, blandly, relieved to have an excuse to get away and not be called upon to service his wife who, he suspects, might be ovulating.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!’ she says, affronted.
Whumph. There it is. The demand, the judgement and, oh God, his wife’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger look, similar enough to Princess Diana’s doe eyes to make him suspect Veronica of practising it from old clips of the princess on YouTube. ‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’
‘No,’ Veronica says, determinedly. ‘My OPK checked positive yesterday. Sorry darling, but the old ovavavooms are primed and ready. It’s time to muster the troops.’
Most of the talk between them these days seems to be about ovulation prediction kits and luteinising hormone surges. Cullen’s not even sure he wants a baby. Until recently he and Veronica were of one mind on this but when she hit thirty-five, the clock didn’t just start ticking, it began to beat out a desperate kind of alarm which Cullen found at first bewildering and then just plain terrifying. Veronica became obsessed with the mechanisms of r
eproduction, forever taking her temperature and monitoring her cycles, taking no sexual interest in Cullen whatsoever until the indicators told her it was time, and then laying siege upon his seed. For a while Cullen pushed back, but soon discovered that only led to rows. Surrender seemed easier. That and looking elsewhere for the satisfaction of his needs. He told himself that this too would pass and until it did, he had a right to his extra-curricular fantasies, his own particular obsessions.
‘A quickie will do,’ Veronica says now.
Cullen briefly considers his options which boil down to servicing Veronica now or later. I’m having an off day or I’ve got a headache won’t wash. Later only means putting off the inevitable and there’s something about seeing his mother which stops the old troop carrier in its tracks. Dr Freud would have a field day with that! It had better be now.
‘Kiss me, darling,’ Veronica says, smiling and with a gleam in her eye.
All right, all right, he thinks. His eye lands on the handle of the cupboard under the stairs where he keeps his Browning game gun and a strange thought crosses his mind for a moment. Blinking it away, he turns his brain to conjuring images of long ago until, thank God, his groin automatically begins to rustle and stir.
Afterwards, he helps Veronica prop herself on the sofa with cushions and returns to his still damp jacket in the hallway. At the door he notices that the cleaner has picked up the post – Veronica always leaves it where it falls, on the grounds that it’s ‘boy stuff’, by which she means bills – and left it in the letter rack. He leafs through, stuffs a couple of items in his jacket pocket and heads out of the front door, past Veronica’s brand-new top-end Mini to his own ten-year-old Volvo S60. He lets himself into the driver’s seat, removes the mail from his jacket pocket and stuffs the envelopes in with all the others in the glove box. Eventually, he’ll have to empty it, but for now, it’s out of sight, out of mind.