Complicit

by Unknown

  ‘Bonnie, how can you say that?’

  ‘And I did. Do you remember that party we all went to after we’d played at that post-exam party?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Of course you do. You and Amos and me and Neal and Hayden went. There was a woman there who used to know you. She’s called Miriam Sylvester.’

  ‘Miriam Sylvester?’ Sonia said the name slowly, separating it out into its syllables. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, come, Sonia. Surely you remember. You taught together, after all, in your last job.’

  ‘Oh, her. Yes, I do remember. It was hearing her name out of context that threw me.’

  ‘I went to see her today.’

  She got up and started to fill the kettle, speaking with her back to me. ‘Why? Was she a friend of Hayden’s?’

  ‘Yes. We talked about him. She was upset. Well, women loved Hayden, didn’t they, for all his faults? Except you.’

  ‘I wasn’t so fond of him,’ said Sonia. ‘A bully who beat up his girlfriend.’

  ‘You didn’t know that, though, did you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I don’t think you actually knew he hit me until after he’d died. I don’t think you realized we were together at all.’

  ‘Of course I knew. I told you. That’s why I went round there.’

  ‘You told me you went round there to warn him against ever being violent only after you discovered from me that he’d hit me. When it was a convenient excuse for you to grab onto. You didn’t know before. That wasn’t why you went round there, was it? Answer me. Tell me what I already know.’

  ‘Answer what? You’re not making sense.’ Her voice was icy.

  ‘I remembered meeting Miriam Sylvester at the party and I remembered that she didn’t seem to like you very much. So I took the train up to Sheffield to ask her about it. She’s got nothing against your teaching.’

  Sonia put the kettle down without switching it on. She came and sat down. Her eyes looked very dark and her face very white.

  ‘You suddenly had to leave your school and come to London.’

  ‘I left,’ she said. ‘So?’

  ‘She told me about a boy called Robbie, who died, and the whole school raised money for a charity in his name.’

  ‘Get on with what you’re saying, then,’ she said, so calm. Her hands were quite steady.

  ‘You stole the charity money.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Money raised because a thirteen-year-old boy died and the school wanted to do something in his memory. They had sponsored silences and went on three-legged walks and washed cars. And you used it for a down-payment on rather a nice flat.’

  ‘Miriam Sylvester has given you a complete misrepresentation of what happened.’

  ‘No wonder you live in this grotty dump and have no money. You’re still paying off your debt, aren’t you?’

  I had to hand it to her. She was still utterly composed.

  ‘Bonnie,’ she said. ‘Think about it. What she told you doesn’t make sense. There was a dispute about the use of some school funds. It turned ugly. Anyone who actually stole money like that would be arrested and sent to prison. You’re making a terrible mistake. You’ve been under such stress, I know that.’

  ‘Oh, save it, Sonia. You’ve lied to me enough. Miriam explained all this. They didn’t want to bring the police in and drag the school through a tribunal and get all the disastrous publicity. Miriam told me about the admission you signed, about paying the money back, about how you left. Are you still going to brazen it out?’

  ‘I think you should go.’

  ‘You had contempt for someone like Hayden. He wasn’t a saint, but he would never have done something like that.’

  ‘You really did have a crush on him, didn’t you?’

  I could feel my rage and my grief rise, almost blocking my throat, so that it was hard to speak, and when I did my voice sounded unfamiliar – low and hoarse in my ears. ‘What if I did? What if I had a crush on him? What if I loved him, wanted him, couldn’t keep away from him? What if I feel I’ll go mad with missing him? It’s not about that, it’s not about my feelings and it’s not about whether Hayden was a good man or not, whether he behaved badly. No – it’s about a life that’s been stolen. A life, Sonia. A whole life taken away.’

  I stopped. The air throbbed around me. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ I asked more quietly. ‘What Hayden said to you?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘OK. I’ll tell you, then, as much as I know. It’s obvious enough now. Miriam told Hayden about you, and he must have told you. I’m sure it wasn’t blackmail. Hayden couldn’t be bothered with something like that. But he’d mention it just to take you down a peg or two. Hayden didn’t care for hypocrites.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ At last her voice had a crack in it.

  ‘That was bad enough for you, but you knew it would get worse. He wouldn’t be able to resist talking about it. He would probably have told me, wouldn’t he, for a start? And then no more deputy-headship, no more moral high ground, no Amos, no way out of this nasty little flat. So what did you do? Maybe you went round to tell him it wasn’t true and that he mustn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘This is all a fantasy.’

  ‘If you did, he would have laughed. Stuck-up Sonia, trying to cover her tracks. He’d have found it funny. Or perhaps you knew all along you were going to kill him. That’s what I think. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that you knew in advance you were going to kill him. He was a threat to you and your precious plans. You came to that rehearsal knowing, didn’t you? You were efficient and nice; you cleared up my flat for me; you sang “Leaving On Your Mind” more beautifully than you’d ever sung it before; you did everything impeccably. And all the time you knew what you were going to do. Then you left before anyone else and you went to his flat and you picked up the vase and cracked him over the head with it. Not manslaughter. Murder. Cold-blooded murder. You’re a killer.’

  Sonia’s face was deathly pale, except for red spots on her cheekbones. ‘If I were you, I’d stop right now.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or I’ll go to the police and tell them I was your accomplice in taking away Hayden’s body.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘absolutely fine by me. I don’t care. It would be a relief to my conscience, actually – you know, that strange little voice in the head that torments you when you’ve done wrong. You tell them what I did and I’ll tell them what you did.’

  ‘They wouldn’t believe you. It’s all conjecture.’

  ‘Try it and see.’

  ‘Even if you’re right, Neal and you and I destroyed the evidence.’

  I sat back and folded my arms against my chest. I felt hard and desolate. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘But there’s still Miriam Sylvester and the document you signed.’

  ‘So what’s the point of all this?’

  ‘You leave the school at once. You leave the teaching profession and never return. And you leave Amos.’

  There was a deep silence.

  ‘That’s a lot of leavings,’ she said at last.

  I almost smiled. It was like watching a great, indomitable, unshakeable performer. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? Have you ever heard of contrition or guilt? You killed someone. You planned it in advance and then you went and did it. The fact that I happened to know him and care about him isn’t the point now. You didn’t kill him to protect me or out of self-defence or by accident. You planned it and you did it because you didn’t want your nasty, ugly little secret to be discovered. You put that above a life. So, no, that’s not a lot of leavings, Sonia.’

  ‘Is there anything else you have to say?’ She was white-faced and her mouth was thin and fierce, but she remained in control of herself. What would make her crumble?

  ‘Yes. Yes, there is. First of all, if it ever looks like the police are about to charge anyone e
lse, I’ll tell them everything, without a blink of hesitation. And, second, I’ll be watching you, don’t think that I won’t. If you don’t stick to my conditions, I’ll know. I won’t let it go.’

  ‘Right. Now, you can make your own way out, I think.’

  ‘You have to say you agree to my conditions before I leave.’

  I saw her jaw clench and unclench and her nostrils flare slightly. Then she said, in a stony voice, ‘All right. I agree.’

  ‘Right.’ I got up from the chair. ‘Goodbye, then.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ Then she added, ‘I only did what you should have done. What you didn’t dare to do.’

  For a moment, I saw what it would be like to kill someone out of hot, futile rage. I felt the pressure build in me like a gale until it throbbed behind my eyes and filled my throat and clenched my hands into fists. ‘You disgust me,’ I said. ‘Hayden was worth a hundred of you. A thousand.’

  I turned away and walked out of Sonia’s kitchen. As I closed the door behind me, I heard a violent screaming and then a terrible sound of breaking glass, of objects crashing against surfaces. The screaming went on, like an animal sprung in a trap. I stood there for a few moments, listening to the woman who had once been my dearest friend howling like a creature in agony. Then I walked away.

  Before

  I took my time, walking up the road to Liza’s flat slowly, as if in a dream. People flowed past me and they seemed to belong to a different world, one full of purpose and certainty, of rules to keep and places to get to. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon and in the mysterious half-light it was cool. I shivered in my thin jacket. Summer was disappearing; soon it would be autumn.

  How much can a person change? How much can you trust them to change? How much should you be ruled by the head, and how much by the heart? If you want so very, very badly to feel someone’s arms around you again, to feel their breath in your hair and hear their voice whispering your name, is it wrong to give in to it?

  Each step I took towards Hayden was taking me nearer a decision. For a moment I came to a halt, standing under a knobbled plane tree. To love and be loved, desire and be desired – but to be weak and in someone’s power, to be hurt again, betrayed again, left again.

  After

  Obviously we musicians didn’t get to go to the wedding itself. Thank the Lord. While Danielle and Jed were making their sacred vows in a church in the Strand in front of their nearest and dearest, we were carrying our equipment down into the basement of a hotel in Holborn while other people hauled tables and carried piles of plates and arranged vases of flowers.

  We weren’t the merriest of bands. A couple of days earlier, late in the evening, I had heard a sound at my door that was barely even a knock. It sounded more as if someone was desperately fumbling and clawing at the door. I’d opened it to find Amos in tears. ‘Sonia’s left me,’ he said.

  I led him inside and sat him on the sofa and put a tumbler of whisky into his trembling hands. He gulped at it as if he was desperately thirsty. He spoke in a series of sobs. ‘She left me, just like that,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘She’s moving on,’ he said. ‘Literally moving on. She’s leaving town, leaving her job. She’s going to get a job somewhere else. She wouldn’t even tell me where she was going.’ He rubbed his eyes with his hands. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said, with rare truthfulness.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ he said. ‘Did you know she was going to throw everything away, leave everything?’

  But it was really a rhetorical question because for an hour or more Amos talked and cried and talked more. I wanted to tell him to stop. I wanted to say that I wasn’t the person he should be saying these things to. I could have asked him why he was so eager to demonstrate to me the strength of his feelings for another woman but, for what it was worth, I think I knew the answer to that. Amos liked to be in control and this had just happened. It hadn’t been part of his master plan. I couldn’t think of the right question to ask and I didn’t care that much. There was nothing Amos could tell me, so in the end it was easier just to sit back and look sympathetic and keep him topped up with whisky and let him talk.

  Finally, when he stood up, a bit unsteadily, to go, he said, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can’t play now.’

  I told him very firmly that we had promised to play. I was going through with it and so was he. When the rest of the band were told about Sonia, they reacted more calmly. Guy started to say something sarcastic and bitter but the different events and conflicts had knocked the fight out of him and he muttered something about how he’d do his best and try not to let me down. Joakim barely shrugged. ‘I guess why she’s done this isn’t any of my business,’ he said.

  ‘It sort of is,’ I said, ‘because, without Sonia, you and I are going to have to do most of the singing.’

  So the two of us got together and sorted out the vocals in a quick session. Joakim had a wispy, indie-band voice but it would probably appeal to any teenage girls at the wedding. I wasn’t sure about my own. I wasn’t exactly Bessie Smith, who I wanted to be in all sorts of ways, but I could hold a note and I was used to singing in front of classes to demonstrate how things should go.

  When I told Neal, he seemed worried at first and then suspicious. ‘Is she losing it?’ he said. ‘Is she suddenly going to make a confession to clear her conscience?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ I said. ‘She’s not like that.’

  Neal looked thoughtful. ‘Is there something I should know?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, again truthfully. There were things he didn’t know, and nothing he should know. But I felt I couldn’t leave it at that. ‘It was probably inevitable. I don’t think we could stay together with something like that hanging over us. It’s probably good that she moved – she’ll be with new people in a new job.’

  ‘But she left Amos,’ said Neal.

  ‘It’s probably a lucky escape for both of them,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘Allow me some bitterness,’ I said.

  A hotel official directed us to a makeshift stage at the end of the hall. As we set up, I felt we were like people on the morning after a night where we had got terribly drunk and said too much to each other and done things, some of which we couldn’t quite remember and others of which we were ashamed. And now, after it all, we were a bit hung-over, a bit the worse for wear, and we didn’t quite want to catch each other’s eye. Oh, and we were nervous about performing in front of a crowd of strangers.

  Gradually people began to drift in from the ceremony and look for their places on the tables. I thought they’d be curious about us but they scarcely noticed us. I had a sense of what it was like to be one of the invisible people, those who take your coat or hand you your food or clear up after you. Finally Danielle and Jed came in like a pair of celebrities you don’t quite recognize, greeted with whoops and clicks from mobile-phone cameras. They processed around the filling tables, hugging and kissing cheeks. Then Danielle caught sight of us, gave a shriek and, with her huge cream dress billowing around her, ran over to us with the bridegroom in tow.

  ‘Omigod, omigod, omigod,’ she said, and enfolded me. ‘This is just the most incredible day. I was so nervous. I thought I was going to forget my own name. I can’t even remember if I did. I can’t remember a single word I said. We’re probably not even married. This is Jed. Jed, Bonnie. Bonnie, Jed. Doesn’t he look fantastic?’

  Jed was tall with a mop of blond hair. He was wearing a grey morning suit with a very flowery waistcoat. He surveyed us with an expression that was slightly disbelieving.

  ‘This is so brilliant of you, Bonnie,’ said Danielle, ‘after all you’ve gone through. It’s the most awful thing. I can’t believe what it must have been like for you. Everyone here can’t stop talking about it.’ I couldn’t bear to sa
y anything so I just nodded. ‘When we get back from – well, I’m not meant to say where we’re going – we must have a proper talk about it all. I want to have a really good talk.’ She stopped and looked at us all. ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’

  We were wearing our alt-country get-up, which was almost exactly what we normally wore: jeans and shirts. I also had on some cowboy boots I’d found at the bottom of one of my packing cases. ‘It goes with the music,’ I said.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she said. ‘Is your singer here yet?’

  ‘Sonia can’t make it,’ I said.

  ‘Omigod,’ said Danielle. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘She’s unavoidably detained,’ I said, ‘but we’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Danielle, as if she’d had the first inkling that something might go wrong with her perfect day. ‘I’ve fixed you up with something to eat. If you talk to Sergio, the sweet man in the purple jacket over there, he’ll sort you out. We’re going to have some speeches after we’ve eaten and then you can strike up. I’m so looking forward to hearing you and having a bit of a dance.’

  Sergio steered us out of the main room and into a sort of store area to one side with cardboard boxes and a picnic table on which there were some pieces of chicken, a bottle of wine and a carton of fruit juice. Joakim and Neal ate heartily while the rest of us sipped our drinks and didn’t speak. Guy was drinking orange juice but I stuck to wine. If I was going to sing to this lot, I needed it.

  The speeches were perfect. Jed’s best friend told stories that fell completely flat about getting drunk and about previous girlfriends. You could hear the wind blowing outside and crickets chirping. Then Danielle’s father read out a speech that was too long even though it turned out that a page had gone missing, which rendered quite a lot of what remained meaningless. By the time he toasted the bride and groom, it would have been hard for anything not to be an improvement. Danielle seized the microphone and told the crowd they were in for a huge treat, that one of her oldest friends was a musician and had got a band together especially for the occasion and that they had been practising the entire summer and overcome lots and lots of obstacles and could everyone just put their hands together for Bonnie Graham and her band.