Knife Edge : A Novel (2020)

by Mayo, Simon

  ‘I do, Highness, yes,’ she said. ‘You want to go?’

  Famie considered briefly whether it would be seen as disrespectful; whether she should stay for the burial, say a few words to Amal. Probably, she thought, but right now she didn’t care. Famie nodded gratefully and they eased their way apologetically down the row.

  ‘Pub,’ she said as soon as they’d stepped outside the mosque. Famie breathed the air as though she’d been underwater.

  ‘Taxi,’ said Charlie, and they negotiated the cordon of police and press. Cameras pointed, flashlights flashed, and Charlie hailed a passing cab.

  They bailed as soon as they thought they were far enough away from the mosque. The first café they passed sold wine and chips. ‘Here,’ said Famie. ‘We’ll finish the service in here.’ They ordered Pinot Grigio, coffee, pizza, salad, fries, toast and cheesecake from a slightly nonplussed waiter and sat holding hands across the table. Famie poured two generous glasses of wine and raised her glass.

  ‘This is how Seth would like to be remembered,’ she said. ‘With some shitty wine which has been made just about bearable – let’s say sanctified – by great company.’

  Charlie raised her glass, clinking it against Famie’s. ‘To Seth, then,’ she said, holding her mother’s gaze. ‘You two did this a lot, didn’t you?’

  Famie nodded. ‘We did.’

  ‘He was special?’

  Famie sighed, then smiled. ‘He was special.’

  ‘Mum, I’m so sorry.’

  Famie smiled again. ‘It was over a while back, but it was good while it lasted.’

  ‘So you didn’t want to stay at the funeral longer?’ asked Charlie.

  Famie took a bite out of a slice of pizza, gulped some more wine. ‘I went. I sat. I wore the right clothes. I didn’t complain about the patriarchy.’

  Charlie laughed, and clinked her mother’s glass again. ‘Fair enough. Did you know his brother?’

  Famie shook her head. ‘Seth didn’t talk about him much, said they were very different. I asked about him sometimes but it never went anywhere.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I need to seriously pace myself.’

  Charlie looked puzzled. ‘Why so?’

  ‘One down, six to go.’

  Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You’re going to all of them?’

  ‘I am,’ said Famie. ‘I realized as we walked into the mosque. There’s something at stake here, Charlie. If there’s anything I believe in, it’s journalists being able to be journalists without being intimidated. And if some murderous fuckers want to take us out then the very least I can do, the very least, is to stand with my kind. Stand with my people.’ She dipped some chips in a small pot of ketchup, then waved them in front of her face for emphasis. ‘I’m going to all of them.’

  Charlie looked reassured then cast her eyes to the table, toying with the salad. ‘Respect to you, Mum. Proud of you. But I’m really sorry, I do need to go back to uni. Tonight. If that’s OK? I won’t be able to come with you.’

  Famie shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t expect you to. They weren’t your colleagues.’ She ate the last of the pizza slice. ‘Anyway, I didn’t sleep with any of the others. I’ll be fine.’

  11

  A HUNDRED MILES away, north and west from Famie’s café, the student sat hunched and sweaty over a portable typewriter. It was a 1966 Brother De Luxe with a pale blue cover, a threaded red and black ribbon and black on white keys. Functional, efficient, reliable. The O and I looked worn, and the S had almost disappeared, but the rest of the letters looked, if not exactly pristine, then certainly fit for purpose. His fingers were sweaty and he wiped them – again – on his shorts.

  The attic was tiny, airless and overpoweringly hot. The fragile floor made movement of any kind extremely hazardous; one misstep and it would cave in, causing him to fall four metres to his bedroom floor below. It was, however, impressively soundproofed.

  He shouldn’t be there of course, there was no reason for anyone to be in the attic, but it was the only place in the house that was lagged and muffled enough to obscure his work.

  The student held his breath, fingers poised above the keys, and listened. The water tank hissed the way it always did and the joist he was sitting on creaked when he moved but, apart from that, the house was silent.

  The attic door was shut. His bedroom door below was shut.

  He began to type.

  12

  Wednesday, 6 June

  ONCE THE OFFICIAL post-mortems and secondary, independent examinations had been concluded, Famie attended funerals in Brighton, Keswick, Penarth, Croydon and Hammersmith. They had been, she thought, Methodist, humanist, Catholic, Anglican, and one she wasn’t sure about. She was aware of the continuing media outrage, had seen headlines and caught the occasional news bulletin, but as far as possible she kept her music playing. The endless speculation that followed an atrocity had always seemed to her one of the most demoralizing features of modern news reporting. In the absence of anything new to focus on, the screens and airwaves overflowed with a dizzying array of fools and liars. Famie resolved to avoid them all. Her ‘Classical Chill’ playlist, all forty-three hours of it, had become her panic room. She visited often.

  The police had called once. Two detectives from the Met had asked her the most cursory of questions about the Investigations team and what they might have been working on. Famie found herself apologizing for being of so little help. One of them had left his card.

  The final service, just over two weeks on from the attacks, was Mary Lawson’s, and it was the one she was dreading the most. With the others, the grieving families were unknown to her, but Mary’s was different. Famie had met her children, Freddie and Ella, at their house, bought them presents for their last birthdays. After writing them both letters about their mother, she had briefly considered asking Charlie back before calling Tommi and Sam instead.

  Famie hauled on her ‘uniform’ one more time. Knee-length black shift dress, black beret. They travelled together to the Northamptonshire village of Ashby St Ledgers, ‘population one hundred and seventy-three’, declared Tommi, reading from his phone.

  ‘Not today,’ said Sam, eyes on the traffic jam they’d just joined. ‘If we make it in time, it’ll be many times that.’

  ‘And all of them journalists,’ said Famie. ‘Lucky Ashby St Ledgers.’

  They crawled through the village, along a twisty, narrow road lined with coach houses, thatched cottages and Land Rovers. One-way traffic all the way to the church. They were directed along a grassy track to an adjoining bone-dry and virtually grassless field. Billows of dust enveloped the queues of cars, directed into lines by a teenage boy in an orange beanie hat. Famie edged her Volvo X40 saloon up against a hedge.

  ‘Apart from this god-awful knot in my stomach,’ she said, ‘for all the world this feels like we’re going to Latitude.’

  ‘Just without the designer beer tents,’ said Tommi, opening his door.

  Famie checked the dashboard thermometer. ‘Thirty-four degrees. Christ, this is going to be tough.’

  They joined the stream of mourners who were making their way to the church, shuffling back along the track. Low, ancient walls revealed a small graveyard. A few headstones were adorned with flowers. Most were bare.

  The TV trucks had been lined up in a tight formation in front of the church’s simple wooden gate. ‘Open daily’ said a sign. A short path cut through the graveyard to the porch, its ironstone walls glowing in the sunshine. Famie hesitated, the knot tightening. She took a deep breath and stepped inside. The cool air was a relief and carried with it the omnipresent church smells of damp wood and dusty books.

  A solemn woman nodded at them. ‘Out of service sheets, I’m afraid,’ she stage-whispered. ‘Last seats on the back pew.’

  Tommi stood, Sam and Famie sat. No one spoke. The only sounds came from the fifteenth-century pews which creaked as their occupants tried and failed to find a comfortable position. Famie forced herself to face the front.
Mary’s coffin rested on trestles and was topped with a rose, lily and ivy wreath spelling ‘MUM’. Freddie and Ella sat either side of their father, his arms draped around them both.

  The vicar arrived. Another salesman. They sang, they prayed, they sang again. Mary’s widower managed a few words of a eulogy which had to be completed by a friend.

  So much crying, thought Famie. I’ve heard so much crying.

  The committal was an old-fashioned burial at the back of the church, out of sight of the cameras. Famie held back, reluctant to encroach on the family’s grief, but when eleven-year-old Ella, her face a study of stoicism, waved at her, she melted. Pulling Sam and Tommi with her, Famie forced herself to the graveside. It was a smaller party now, maybe thirty strong. Two weathered and worn old crosses stood nearby. Here, the grief was intense. It ran through every clenched hand, every tear-lined face. Famie was overwhelmed. The knot in her stomach finally unwound, and the tears flowed. She sobbed from the pit of her stomach. It was a convulsion. She felt Sam and Tommi support her, their hands hooking under her arms, lifting her gently. She steadied herself. Surely it would be over soon.

  The priest read on. ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

  Famie opened her eyes.

  ‘Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days: that I may be certified how long I have to live.’

  Ella and Freddie were lined up by the graveside. The sight of them, faces now screwed up in grief, not wanting to throw their handful of earth on their mother’s coffin, was, finally, more than Famie could take. She ran. She ran and sobbed, ran and raged, ran and cursed. Tommi and Sam caught up with her eventually but by then she was almost at the car park and they knew better than to talk to her. She slowed, they all slowed. They walked to the car in silence.

  Sam noticed the envelope first. ‘Someone’s left a message,’ he said.

  A blue envelope had been tucked under the right windscreen wiper. They all peered at it. It had ‘Famie Madden’ typed on it.

  ‘What the fuck …’ she said, tugging it from under the rubber. Welcoming the distraction.

  Sam and Tommi pushed closer as she opened the envelope. Inside, a single sheet of white paper, folded once. She pulled it out. Unfolded it. It contained two lines of double-spaced typewriter script.

  Famie read out loud. ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’ She looked at Tommi, then Sam. ‘Huh?’ she said.

  ‘Well at least it’s not a parking ticket,’ said Sam.

  13

  THE RETURN JOURNEY was a lighter affair. Three quarter-pounders and a pile of fries sorted their post-funeral hunger and when Famie offered Sam and Tommi drinks at her flat, they accepted. She found a new bottle of gin, some tins of tonic, and filled a bowl with some ice.

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ she said.

  Famie opened the lounge windows wide to the early evening breeze and the stale, oppressive heat in the flat eased considerably. She sat on the sofa, grabbing her laptop as she propped herself up. From her pocket, she fished out the envelope.

  ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,’ she read again. ‘Any takers?’ She looked up at Sam and Tommi, measuring tonic into three tumblers, her fingers poised above the keyboard.

  ‘Sounds vaguely familiar,’ muttered Sam. ‘Line from a film maybe?’ He handed Famie her drink.

  ‘Probably someone advertising pizzas or something,’ suggested Tommi, already pouring his second.

  ‘OK, you’re officially useless,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what Dr Google has to say.’ She typed and sent. Her screen filled with text and video links, and she hit the first one. ‘There you go,’ she said, spinning the screen to include Sam and Tommi. She hit play. A black and white video started to play. A young waistcoated Bob Dylan stood in a ramshackle street, white A3 cards held in his hands.

  ‘What is it?’ said Tommi.

  Famie’s jaw dropped theatrically. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Really?’

  Tommi shrugged.

  ‘“It”,’ said Famie, ‘is one of the most iconic videos of all time.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Remind me not to put you on any entertainment stories,’ she said.

  They watched as the singer held, then threw away the cards, each with key words and phrases from the song written on it in black marker.

  ‘And that’s Allen Ginsberg on the other side of the street,’ she said. Tommi opened his mouth to speak but Famie ploughed on. ‘And if you ask who Allen Ginsberg is, you’re fired.’ Tommi closed his mouth.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Sam.

  ‘Wait,’ said Famie, ‘I remember this now. My dad used to play this stuff all the time.’

  Dylan was into the second verse, the words ‘District Attorney’ etched in black capitals on his card. There followed ‘Look Out!’, ‘It Don’t Matter’, ‘Tip Toes’, ‘No Dose’, ‘Those’, ‘Fire Hose’, ‘Clean Nose’ and ‘Plain Clothes’.

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Tommi,’ shouted Famie, pausing, rewinding slightly. ‘Listen, for Chrissakes.’

  She hit play. As Dylan dropped the ‘Plain Clothes’ card, he sang the words they’d been looking for – ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’ – while holding a card with ‘Wind Blows’ written on it.

  There was silence in the room.

  ‘OK, well, so what?’ said Sam. ‘It’s a line from a Bob Dylan song.’

  ‘“Subterranean Homesick Blues”,’ said Famie.

  ‘OK, it’s a line from “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. And?’

  Famie spread her arms wide. ‘And … I have no idea. It means something. Rings a bell I think, but right now, I’ve not a clue. Neat video though. I’d forgotten how much I love his stuff.’ She selected some tracks from a playlist on her laptop and the opening chords of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ played from the speakers.

  ‘Your brain has been addled by all that Mozart,’ said Sam over the intro. ‘Now this is music.’ He raised his glass, clinked the ice.

  They sat in silence, a companionable if mournful silence. Famie glanced at her friends; Sam with his eyes closed, Tommi leaning forward, eyes to the floor. She knew they were about to embark on an alcohol-driven, post-funeral reflection so she thought she would go first.

  ‘Well today has been fucking awful,’ she said. ‘Much like yesterday and the day before that. But’ – she waved her glass for emphasis – ‘that burger and this gin taste wonderful. So I’ve decided to resign. Cheers.’ She took her turn to raise her glass.

  Tommi looked up. Sam furrowed his brow.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  She smiled at her bemused colleagues. It wasn’t what she had been planning to say, in fact she was surprised to hear herself say the words at all. But they sounded sweet so she said them again. ‘The burger and the gin taste wonderful and I’m quitting.’

  Tommi shook his head. ‘You need second eyes on that sentence, Fames. That’s a non sequitur right there. The second half of the sentence doesn’t fit with the first. Didn’t you learn anything at journalism school?’

  Famie dumped her laptop and spun herself to face them. ‘This may sound stupid and I might message you in the morning taking it all back, but I’m serious. And no, Tommi, it all makes sense. To me anyway. I’ve had enough. Enough of the restructurings, the reorganizations and the improvements that always make things worse. Enough of the bullshit. I’d had enough before … before all of this.’ She pointed at Sam and Tommi’s funeral suits and her black dress. ‘These are our work clothes now. This is what we wear. Every fucking day. Look at us! I never want to wear this again. In fact …’ She stood up from the sofa, exiting the room as swiftly as the gin would let her. In her bedroom she pulled off the dress and grabbed some jeans and a T-shirt from the laundry bag. She reappeared in the l
ounge still zipping herself in. ‘There. I’ve resigned. What do you think?’ She paraded in front of them like a catwalk model.

  ‘I think you’re pissed,’ said Tommi.

  ‘Pissed but serious,’ suggested Sam.

  Famie pointed at him. ‘In one, Sam, got it in one. There’s voluntary redundancy on the table and I’m buggered if I want to spend one more second of my life feeling terrified. I have no idea what I’ll do. But where I was just depressed about work before, now I’m depressed and scared, and that’s just stupid. For any of us.’ She felt surprisingly, delightfully exhilarated by her own words and wondered if she should call Charlie.

  How swiftly our roles reverse, she thought, that I now need approval from my child.

  ‘I know this isn’t exactly the point here, Fames,’ said Tommi, ‘but where precisely does the burger and gin come into all of this?’

  Famie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him, glass in her lap. ‘But it is the point, Tommi, it is precisely the point,’ she said. ‘After the funeral we were so hungry, so desperate for a drink that when we got both, they tasted amazing. That’s what life should be like! That’s what life is like for everyone else!’

  Tommi looked sceptical. ‘Burger and gin every day?’

  Famie’s shoulders slumped. ‘It’s a metaphor, Tommi, cut me some slack here. It’s normal life I’m talking about and I’d like some. That’s all.’

  ‘You’d hate it,’ said Sam. ‘We’d all hate it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Famie, ‘maybe. But right now I’d hate it a whole lot less than wondering if some psycho with a knife is waiting for me around every street corner.’

  Many hours later, when Famie got up to close her windows and take some painkillers, she picked up the discarded windscreen note from the sofa. While she waited in the near dark of her lounge for the tablets to kick in, she played with it in her hands, wondering again why it had been left for her in the first place. No other cars had one. It wasn’t a flyer. It wasn’t mass-produced. It was just for her. In the silence of the night, it seemed a stranger, deeper puzzle than before. She fumbled for the light.