by Mel McGrath
Anna cocks her head and presses her lips into a disapproving line. ‘Why are you being so weird, Cassie? This isn’t still about that Wapping thing, is it?’
‘No. You’ve all made it very clear what you think about that.’
As we’re walking down the street Julie appears from the dry cleaners and almost runs into us. She smiles and waits to be introduced, and then is off down the road in the direction of the cliffs. Anna watches her go.
‘Isn’t that the policewoman from yesterday? You two seem to be great friends all of a sudden.’
‘She’s a mate of Will’s. It’s a small town.’
We turn off the high street and begin to make our way to the steps which give onto the path leading up the hill to Fossil Cottage. But in some as-yet-indefinable way, Anna is right. The Big Black Book and Marika Lapska are connected, at least in my mind. I’ve been uneasy about both these things for weeks now, even before I knew Marika’s identity or that she had died. But my uneasiness on Marika’s behalf never came to a head. It never led to action. How much easier it was to forget her when she had no name. I was a witness to her objectification in the hands of her rapist and all I did was objectify her further. Wasn’t that what we were all doing, to one extent or another, by photographing people who did not know they were being photographed, scoring their sexual performance and putting images of them up on the Cloud which showed them at their most vulnerable? No one asked for that, they never gave their permission.
‘I think we should close the Big Black Book down.’
Anna seems surprised for a moment, then irritated. ‘Why would we do that?’
‘It’s too bloody dark.’
‘Oh you are a funny one, Cassie. It’s just a bit of fun! It’s not as if anyone knows anything about it except us.’ She pauses, her eyes narrowing. ‘Oh, this is about that woman.’ She pauses and, putting her shopping bag down in the brush of ferns and dogwood on the verge of the path, rests her fists on her hips. ‘We both saw how out of it she was. My guess is that it was either a horrible accident or she killed herself. But who knows? People can be very unpredictable when they’re off their faces. In any case, it’s a bit late to grow a conscience, isn’t it? Given what you did earlier that evening.
‘Anyway, darling, you said the police aren’t pursuing it, isn’t that right?’
‘That’s what Gav told me.’
‘Is that what you were talking to that policewoman about?’
‘No, of course not!’
And so we carry on up the hill towards the sheltered bowl where Fossil Cottage sits, the atmosphere between us soupy and thick. Halfway up the hill Anna stops and catches her breath for a moment. Above us, the falcons are mustering for their twilight hunt.
‘I think it’s just best not to say anything to either of the boys, don’t you? About what we said earlier? Bo doesn’t have to know and I don’t want Dex to think we’ve been gossiping behind his back.’
We go in the front door, past the creepy statue of the Mer-Chicken, through the Farrow and Ball hallway into the kitchen-living room in silence. Before now it has never occurred to me to be afraid of Anna, but now, I can see that perhaps I should be. Dex is lying, one leg slung across the sofa, right hand scrolling through his phone, left clasped around the neck of a bottle of Corona. His eyes lift briefly from the screen. Anna walks past him into the kitchen area, sets her bag on the counter and fills the kettle.
‘’S’up?’ Dex says idly.
You have three friends, and they are more or less the only friends you have in the world. More than that, over the fifteen years you’ve known them they have become your family. One has been your lover and betrayed you in a way that remains raw. The other two have also been lovers. Only one of these two is unhappy. The other is careless of the other’s feelings but he has never done you any wrong and he’s brilliant and the most fun a person can be. So tell me this. Who is most deserving of your loyalty?
Anna spins about. She’s looking at me, her brow lifting. Say nothing. ‘Gav call?’
‘Yeah, we spoke, he’s fine. He’s with his sister.’
‘You’ve been out?’
‘Only to get a phone signal.’
Forgetting the coffee she was about to make, Anna goes into the fridge, brings out a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon, fetches two glasses and places the ensemble on the breakfast bar. I pour for both of us then take mine over to the wing back chair opposite Dex, who picks up the beer bottle which is now sitting on the carpet beside him and shakes it in his ear. ‘Oh, Dexter, I see you’ve drunk your beer. Can I get you another?’
Anna and I exchange looks. ‘Remind me, which one of us is your server tonight. Is it your turn, Anna?’
‘Don’t even . . .’ Anna says. ‘Anyway, where’s Bo? Still on his date?’
Dex shrugs. I guess.
Removing a pork joint from the fridge, Anna places it on the counter beside the oven to come to temperature, then leaving the kitchen walks through the living room, sits down on the sofa beside Dex and curls her feet under his knees. ‘Cassie swiped right.’
Dex’s eyebrows raise. ‘The breakfast bloke?’ Somewhere in my psyche I still long for Dex to be in the smallest way jealous, but there’s never been any sign of that. Lifting himself up onto one elbow he passes me his phone, saying, ‘What d’you think of that?’ Anna immediately gets up and comes over. If there’s one thing Anna cannot bear it’s not being the first in the know. Bending her head at an advantageous angle, she takes a look at the specimen on the screen. This is the part that has always most delighted Anna: helping us choose our next Black Book entries.
‘He’s older than that photo,’ I say, caught up in an obscure need to stick the knife in.
‘And you know that how?’ says Dex. I point to the green haze in the background.
‘No one uses that effect any more.’
‘He says he’s thirty-two on his profile,’ says Dex.
‘People always lie on their profiles,’ Anna says.
A pulse starts up under Dex’s eye. ‘He’s just some guy who fancies a hook-up. I probably won’t even bother. Anyway, as you might have noticed by now, older men are my thing. You know, especially the ones with terminal illnesses.’
He’s looking away from us, then, just as suddenly, his head swivels back, and his face is sunny, as if nothing raw and agonising was ever said.
Is this why you approached Dex at the festival, Marika? The friendly, but inattentive, easy-going face? A face that says ‘I won’t be rude or aggressive or try to outsmart you’. A face which might just belong to the kind of guy who, for an easy life, will give in and buy whatever you want to sell him, if that’s what you were doing. I wouldn’t have blamed you at all for thinking this. He gives such good face, does Dex, it’s frightening.
You couldn’t have known that Dex’s good face is a lie.
Take this one time. One of many I’ve witnessed over the years. We were on holiday. Camping on one of the Greek Islands. My head says Santorini, but it might have been another. We used to go to Greece as often as we could which was often in the early days. I’d get a bar job, scrape together my share in a few weeks, Dex would do a spot of gardening at his parents’ house then hit them up for his half and we’d be off. We loved the dry, undulant landscape, elderly couples tending vegetables in their tiny patches of garden, white churches and terraces of olive trees populated by skinny cats. Another couple, about to move to a hostel a few miles further down the coast for a couple of days before heading home to – where? Rugby comes to mind – with a blow-up mattress to sell. At this point we’re in the islands for another two weeks and sleeping on mats. So Dex hands over the money – it felt like a lot, though it almost certainly wasn’t – we take the mattress and by two o’clock in the morning it becomes evident that the couple has offloaded a dud. Fully pumped when we paid for it, the thing is now half the size and shrinking. There’s a leak somewhere but it’s the kind of leak you’d never find. But Dex won’t let the mattr
ess lie. Puts on his trainers and hits the road. Outside it’s a full moon which helps him find his way but also, perhaps, contributes to his craziness. It takes him several hours but he finally springs the couple in their hostel up the coast. They haven’t even got up yet. By mid-morning he’s back at our campsite with the money and a very bruised fist.
If there’s one thing Dex can’t tolerate it’s being ripped off. Funny for someone in the art world, which is all about that, really. Is that what you tried to do, Marika? That roll of fifties I took from your handbag. Three grand’s worth. Sixty notes. I know because I counted them. Did you take that money? Just as I in turn took it from you? Or did he give it to you? Did Dex buy something from you? What were you selling that evening, Marika? Was it more of those pills you had taken? Or something worse? Your silence, perhaps? Surely it’s no coincidence that what ended up in your bag, and then in mine, was the same sum Gav says went missing from his house? But if Dex took it, what was it for? And here’s another question for you, Marika, if you did steal that money: why was Dex carrying three grand to a festival? If I could ask you that question now, would you know the answer? Dex knows, of course, but I’ve a feeling he’ll never tell me. And I’ll never ask. He means too much to me to risk losing him over money. Or even over you.
‘You’re lucky Gav is so understanding about other men,’ Anna says, steering the conversation to safer ground.
‘Maybe it’s a gay thing, or maybe an age difference thing. Or maybe it’s just Gav,’ concedes Dex. ‘So long as I don’t bring strangers to the house, he’s always been super-cool.’
‘How funny. We feel the same way about Fossil Cottage, don’t we, Cassie?’
Turning back to me so that Dex can’t see, Anna brings her finger to her lips. Don’t say a word. Then, rising to her full height, she makes her way into the kitchen.
‘Now, who’s going to help make Bo-Bo’s birthday cake?’
And so we pass the time before Bo arrives prepping the dinner, ignoring the elephant in the room, and, as so often, reminiscing about the good old days, all the time we spent together before our thirties got in the way: graduation week camping in the Brecon Beacons, the Black Eyed Peas gig where we all knew all the words, the weddings of people we never saw again.
We don’t talk about the police or the money or Gav’s illness or Bo’s drinking. And we definitely don’t talk about Marika Lapska.
A couple of hours drift by. The cake mix is beaten, whipped, stirred and baked.
‘Who wants to help me decorate?’
‘Let’s get some music on,’ Dex says.
‘We’ll probably be needing this too,’ adds Anna, popping a bottle of prosecco.
A problem arises immediately. Anna wants to do a cream cheese frosting but a hunt in the fridge and in the pantry quickly reveals that there is none in the cottage.
‘Let’s just get drunk instead,’ Dex suggests, but I know that look in Anna’s face. Sort of crumpled, like a little girl. In Anna’s world everything is either perfect or pure unfiltered shit.
‘I’ll run to the shop and get some. Won’t take more than twenty minutes.’
It’s snivelly outside, but not cold. I don’t know what I was thinking saying twenty minutes. It’s at least ten minutes downhill to Fortuneswell high street, then allow five minutes to buy the cheese, and another fifteen to get back up the hill. I’ll have to hurry to make it in half an hour. I’m barely in town when my phone picks up a signal and pings with texts. Better check to make sure there’s nothing urgent. I pull out the device, tap in the security pin and scroll down.
The usual blitz of marketing messages, something from one of my flatmates, subject line, My granola?????!!!!!.
And a single text from Will: Msg from J re yr neighbour: police not investigating any further. Drowned while under influence of drugs. She said you’d know what she’s talking abt. See you tomorrow.
Thirty-five minutes have elapsed before I’m back at Fossil Cottage. The bottle of prosecco is almost empty.
‘God, you took your time! We were about to call the police and report you missing,’ jokes Anna. While I’ve been gone, she and Dex have tried smearing the chocolate cake in what looks like butter but it hasn’t worked. Mostly, by the looks of things, they’ve been drinking.
‘Well, I’m here now, bearing a world of cream cheese.’ We decant the cheese into a bowl and Anna goes at it at a very leisurely pace with a fork. Every so often, Dex, who is sitting at the breakfast bar, dips in a finger.
‘I should have told you to get vanilla and icing sugar,’ Anna says, looking a little crestfallen.
‘It tastes bloody delicious. Just whack it on,’ Dex says. There’s a pause. If I’m going to say anything, it needs to be now, before everyone’s too drunk to absorb it. There’s no point in beating about the bush.
‘I found out what killed Marika Lapska.’
Dex, his cheesy finger frozen mid-air, creases his brow in evident bewilderment and says, ‘Who?’
‘You mean, who killed her?’ Why would he ask that? Unless he suspected something. I watch his shoulders fall and a sigh issue from his mouth.
‘No,’ he says, his voice sharp now. ‘I meant, who’s she? But now you’ve said that, of course, I know you’re still going on about that woman at the festival.’
‘She drowned.’
‘Mate, of course she bloody drowned. She was found in the river.’
‘All I’m asking is that we call Crimestoppers and leave an anonymous tip-off.’
‘And say what exactly?’ Dex is red-faced and about to blow. Which is not something Dex does, at least, not unless he’s feeling ripped off.
‘Christ, Dex, what do you think? We say we saw her.’
I watch his jaw tighten, the breath catching a little in the throat, his fingertips forming little white moons where they are gripping the countertop. ‘The woman I saw in the alleyway wasn’t the same one as in the paper. Jesus, Cassie, how many times?’
Dex stares ahead, his body bristling. Then slowly rising from his bar stool, he turns and leaves the room. We listen to his footsteps climbing the stairs.
‘Cassie, can you please not do this,’ Anna says in a brittle tone. And with a flick of her hair she turns on her heel and bustles off up the stairs to deal with Dex.
A while later Anna reappears in the doorway, wearing a blank expression on her face.
‘We need to have a little chat. There is something I should tell you. But it has to be between us.’ She goes over to the sofa, pats the cushion and waits for me to join her. Looking directly ahead, she says, ‘That woman. The one you thought you saw being, you know.’
‘Raped?’
Anna’s voice rises a notch or two. ‘Cassie, we don’t know that.’
‘But anyway—’
‘I had a little brush with her.’
This trip is turning out to be full of surprises.
‘You said you had no idea who she was!’
Anna clicks her tongue against her palate. Generally if she’s angry with someone she walks away. But here we are, sitting on the sofa in Fossil Cottage, and there’s no escape.
‘If you remember,’ she says, emphatically, in a loaded voice, ‘what I said was I didn’t know the woman. Which I don’t. But whatever. She tried to get me to pay for her cab home. Some crap about not feeling good and how someone had stolen all her money. She was just a mess. Completely off her tits. To be honest, I found her a bit scary. I may have given her a little push. Not that any of that makes any difference at all to anything. It’s just, you know, the police try to drag you into things.’
‘You pushed her?’
Anna sits tall and crosses and uncrosses her legs. ‘Just a tiny shove. She was being scary. Anyway, she lost her footing and had a bit of a tumble so I helped pick her up. She wasn’t hurt or anything. But honestly, though, can you believe people? If someone hadn’t stolen her money . . .’ her eyes fixed on me ‘. . . she’d have called a cab and she’d be alive today, so I
really think the thief is more to blame for this than anyone.’
‘Including the guy who raped her?’
‘The point is, if you carry on like this, it may just be better for you to go home. And if you insist on this police crap, you’re really going to have to think about your place in the Group. We can’t have disloyalty. We just can’t.’ She moves towards me and putting both hands on my arms, says, ‘Plus you know it could backfire terribly and you could be the one getting hurt. So you must drop this, you know, or . . .’ She drifts off, then pulls away and stands hands on hips, as if waiting.
By the time Bo returns a while later a semblance of calm has been restored, and although anyone with a fraction of a talent for the nuances of mood would notice the tension in the cottage, Bo isn’t anyone.
‘Been up to anything interesting while I was gone?’ His eyes buzz around the room. Anna smiles and blinks, very deliberately, first at Dex and then at me.
‘Nada,’ says Dex.
We wait for Bo to pour himself a glass of wine and fling his body onto the sofa. Then Anna says, ‘So, tell us everything.’
How, what, when?
Her name is Rachel. She lives in a flat in a terrace of houses near the lighthouse. There’s no need for any further details. We’re not interested. What we are interested in is how dry her lips were when Bo went to kiss her, and how he’d had to pull away and moisten his own lips with his tongue before going back in again. How she’d laughed when he first touched her right nipple and given a little gasp when he touched her left. How she had asked him to start off with her back to him, as if spooning but without any of the intimacy, as if she regretted kissing him. How she leaned back into him. How she sighed when he entered her then fallen silent, as if she were being interrogated. Which, in a way, she was.
‘You want to see her?’ Bo asks. He’s teasing. Seeing her is the whole point of the Big Black Book. He takes out his phone and scrolls. And there she is, all of a sudden, asleep and sweetly smiling.
In our earlier upset we’ve forgotten the actual cooking and at eight, just as we are about to eat, discover the pork loin, uncooked, under a plate on the counter.