The Guilty Party

by Mel McGrath

  ‘You two always were on the same page,’ Anna says.

  Cassie reaches out the newly inked arm and gives Dex’s hand a squeeze. Smiling, she looks at each of us in turn and says, ‘At this table is all the love I need.’

  ‘Oh God, please, no emoting, or not yet anyway, we’ve a long night ahead of us. Hey – you got that today?’ Dex asks of the ink on her wrist. It looks new and sore.

  ‘Wait till you hear how,’ Bo says.

  ‘I can hardly,’ Dex replies. His curiosity about the tattoo surprises him, given how long it’s been since he had any claim on Cassie’s body or on her sexual self. Plus, the oddness of the coincidence. Group mind, Dex believes in that, some invisible pool of energy they tap into from time to time. It’s as if they have become a single complex living organism. A coral maybe. Something like a coral, with each part separate but only capable of survival inside the colony.

  ‘I’m afraid I came empty-handed,’ Bo says, the crisp packet sitting suspended in his hand in mid-air.

  ‘Dude, this entire evening is on you,’ Cassie says, raising her glass in a toast.

  Dex waits for a cue from Anna then joins in the toast but it kills him a bit to do it. Anyone can buy festival tickets. Anyone as rich as Bo, anyway, whereas he, Dex, put real thought into his present. And as became quickly obvious just now, he couldn’t have chosen better. Literally couldn’t. Why does Bo insist on stealing the limelight? Every bloody time. All his adult life Dex has been the side show, the other guy, the straight man to his friend’s giant fucking ego. Why isn’t it enough for Bo that he got the best body, the best degree and the best career?

  Now Bo has even spoiled Dex’s interest in Cassie’s tattoo. He half listens to the story, about some blond guy with a Tolkien obsession who’s had a whole body tattoo of Middle Earth, but he can no longer really focus. The story is actually quite funny but of course Bo has hijacked it by laughing hysterically and spraying his beer all over the table.

  ‘Ha ha,’ says Bo. ‘So if the guy was Gandalf, that makes you Shadowfax, Casspot.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Ridden by Gandalf,’ Bo says, explosively.

  Anna and Cassie are both giggling like schoolgirls now. It’s unseemly, and stupid, almost as dumb as Fabien and his ridiculous pretensions. Dex feels the spleen rising in his gullet and knows it for what it is, raw envy repackaged as contempt, yet cannot stop the dark energy growing and billowing inside until it bursts out of him and he hears himself saying, ‘What are we, fourteen again?’

  ‘Or maybe you are Galadriel, Casspot?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ says Anna, still laughing. This is awful. They are all ignoring him.

  ‘The Lady of the Golden Wood,’ Bo goes on.

  More raucous laughter. Ha ha ha. Followed by a descending chorus of snorts and giggles and expressions of merriment.

  ‘You’re a funster, mate,’ Cassie says. There’s a moment of stillness falling while the others collect themselves. Dex watches Bo taking a long draught of his beer and reaching for the bag of crisps. You weren’t that funny, he thinks. If Cassie hadn’t been so ready to laugh.

  Dex raises a hand to his throat and feels for the Adam’s apple. A joke is hiding in there somewhere if only he can find it. But the moment leaves and it’s now too late. Bo is talking about the old days on the Isle of Portland collecting ammonites. Another clear encroachment on Dex’s territory. It was he who bought Cassie the ammonite brooch. If anyone should be talking about ammonites it should be Dex.

  ‘There was this myth that if you put an ammonite under your pillow it would make you dream of your future,’ Bo is saying.

  ‘Does it work?’ asks Cassie.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Bo says, evenly.

  What? Dex can hardly believe what he’s hearing. How can Bo talk such crap. He’s a scientist, for God’s sake. ‘What a crock,’ Dex says, more forcefully than perhaps he intended.

  ‘Maybe I’ll try it with Dex’s pin tonight,’ Cassie says, ignoring him.

  Oh, so now it’s a pin? Since when did his gift become a pin?

  ‘Brooch,’ he says, het up now, his brow sweaty and tense, stretched over a mess of white noise.

  ‘I think you probably have to use a real one,’ Bo says, picking up his crisps and offering them around.

  When they reach him, Dex says, ‘I don’t think so thanks, mate, I had a pizza with my date before I came out.’

  ‘Trieste with double mozzarella?’

  ‘What?’ The moment the word enters the air Dex is aware of sounding defensive.

  ‘Pizza,’ Bo says. ‘That’s what you always have.’

  Dex blinks, trying to recompose his face, kicking himself for being so reactive.

  ‘Whoa,’ Bo says, holding his hands up in surrender. Dex catches Bo’s eye and pretends to laugh it off. Why didn’t he just say a friend came over? Why was he dumb enough to be so evasive? Now it looks as if he has something to hide.

  The only way out of this is to change the subject. Saying, ‘So, do you want to hear about my date or not?’ and not waiting for the answer, he launches into the story of what turned out to be his semi-disastrous date. Transferring the encounter from his and Gav’s house to a fictional pad in Elephant and Castle – even the Group can’t know he breaks Gav’s golden rule – and embroiders the story, embellishing all Fabien’s ridiculous pretensions and bolting on a growing atmosphere of farce. As he observes Cassie and Anna getting more drawn into the story the cloud of murk inside his mind begins to clear and lets the sun back in. Then, all of a sudden, this:

  ‘Did you get that skinny, dark delivery girl?’ Bo shovels a large crisp into his mouth and bites down on it.

  In a flash Dex feels his sides crumble, like an unstable cliff. Left with the uneasy feeling that he’s messed up and momentarily lost control of the situation, he says, ‘What?’

  ‘Pizza delivery.’ Dex looks about, trying to appeal first to Anna then to Cassie, but is met with blank looks.

  ‘Mate, what’s with the pizza? No one cares.’

  But of course Dex does care. He cares because he thinks Bo is sniffing him out, trying to catch him in a lie and that line of thought has set him off in many others, no less disturbing. He’s wondering now whether he really did leave the console table drawer closed, perhaps he left it open. He thinks about the money in there, how stupid it was to keep the spare key somewhere like that, his own foolishness in insisting on locking the door from the inside.

  ‘No reason.’

  Well then, Dex thinks, relieved. Let this be an end to it.

  But Bo, who is running his fingers down his pint glass, isn’t finished.

  ‘I’m just surprised they deliver all the way down there,’ Bo is saying. ‘Because the flyer says a one-mile radius and I reckon Elephant’s got to be at least one and a half.’

  For a moment Dex doesn’t respond to this, hoping that Anna or Cassie will come to his aid and end what has become a conversation over which Dex no longer has any control and does not know how to stop. The atmosphere reminds him of a visit to the municipal tip he once made at the height of summer. The same still, rancid fug. He doesn’t know what to say but he knows he can’t just say nothing. Beside them Cassie and Anna are inspecting their drinks glasses and shooting each other long, low looks. The only way he can think of to respond is to meet the challenge with a counter-challenge.

  ‘Mate, are you out of your mind?’ he says.

  Bo swings his head around like an owl’s as if to say, ‘who, me?’ There’s an amused bonhomie in his expression, the eyes wide, the lips curled up at the edges which Dex senses is fake and because of this, rouses in him feelings of such hostility he could cheerfully punch his friend. ‘I don’t think so, do I sound it?’

  ‘Frankly, yes,’ Dex says, already feeling that he’s got Bo on the back foot and is taking back the power. ‘Because, why the fuck else would it even occur to you that I’d lie about a pizza delivery?’

  26

  Cassie
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  Afternoon, Saturday 1 October, Isle of Portland

  A while after tea and the conversation with Anna, Dex comes bounding into the living room, clocks me and Anna sitting at either end of the sofa, slumps into the wing-back chair beside the sofa and switches on the TV with the sound muted.

  ‘Have you decided to stay?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  Dex spins around and crosses his arms over the back of the wing chair. ‘I think you should go. We can get you a cab or wait for Bo to come home and drive you to the station.’

  ‘It’s beginning to sound like you want to see the back of me.’

  ‘Of course we don’t want to get rid of you, Cassie, darling, do we, Dex?’

  In the chair Dex is biting his lip. His whole face has become brittle and he’s shaking his head as if he’s disapproving of the question. What’s that all about? Is Dex going to cry? Anna too has seen it. Getting up she goes over and plants a kiss on the top of his head.

  ‘Darling Dex, we’re all really so sorry about Gav. Poor love, you always were such a sensitive boy.’ Yawning and making exaggerated Pop-Eye arms to suggest tiredness, she goes on. ‘While you make up your mind, Cassie, I’m going upstairs for a nap.’

  Dex waits for her to leave, then rises from his spot in the wing chair and turning to me but without catching my eyes, says, ‘Fancy a tea or something stronger?’

  ‘There’s some co-codamol in my sponge bag.’

  ‘Done.’ He returns, bringing with him the foil of pills and a whisky chaser and sits beside me.

  ‘I’m not trying to get rid of you, but I think maybe for your safety . . .?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Only that you had a bump to the head and if you were home you’d be nearer to an A&E. Just in case. I’d go with you on the train, but Gav’s coming for me on his way back to Exeter and I can’t face the scene if I’m not here. He’s being unbelievably demanding and unreasonable at the moment.’

  ‘Please, Dex, stop fussing over me. I’m OK. Let’s change the subject. How’s about a card game? I’ll beat you at two-player poker if you like, then you’ll be sure I’m OK.’ When we were dating, Dex always beat me at poker, but I’ve practised a lot since then, and now I’m good.

  A smile appears on his face. ‘OK, then, why not?’

  He goes over to the bureau, fetches a deck of cards, returns and curling his legs under himself, begins to shuffle.

  We’re a couple of hands in, it’s Dex’s play and the cards are in a fan in front of him when the question presents itself.

  ‘You didn’t go into my phone this morning, did you?’ It wouldn’t be hard for Dex to guess the password.

  He looks up from his cards, looks at me and frowns. ‘No, of course not. Why would I do that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t and you didn’t.’

  He mutters a disapproving grunt before his face lifts and a smile appears. ‘Oh, I get it, you’re trying to psyche me out.’ He wags an admonishing finger and lays down a flush. ‘Clever clogs, but I’m afraid you failed.’

  We play a few hands. I don’t try to win but I try not to lose either. Dex pours himself a whisky. I wet my lips on mine, biding my time. On the sixth or seventh hand, in a tone as close to a summer breeze as I can muster, I say, ‘That money Gav was going on about, you don’t think the pizza delivery person could have taken it, do you?’

  ‘No, like I said, Gav already spent it and he’s just forgotten.’

  I fan the cards in my hand. Why would Dex lie unless he met the fake Frenchman at his and Gav’s house in Lovat Lane and had pizzas delivered there? Didn’t Bo say his pizza place only delivered within a mile? Marika Lapska was dark and thin and, as I know from the report of death in the paper, worked for a food delivery company.

  What happened to Marika that night before the terrible event in the churchyard? I’d allowed myself to believe we were just doing the sensible thing, that any rational person would avoid trouble at the end of a festival – but a terrible thought has occurred to me. What if I wasn’t the only one with a motive for remaining out of sight? What if we all had reasons for not coming forward?

  I know now that Anna refused Marika’s cry for help at the taxi rank. I know Dex had a run-in with her too. Were we all a malign influence on her life that night?

  Did all of us actively contribute in our different ways to Marika’s death?

  Are we all to blame?

  ‘Your move,’ Dex says, interrupting my thoughts. He draws an oval in the air. ‘That poker face right there? There is literally zero expression on that face. It’s like you’re not even alive. You are alive, though, right?’

  There comes a knock on the back door. Dex gets up to answer. It’s Will.

  ‘I heard about the thing at the stables. Is Cassie OK?’ I can see him moving his head, trying to edge around Dex to see if there’s anyone in the living room. Instead of letting him in, Dex stands blocking the view into the living room. I cannot see his face, but the angle of his shoulders gives off an air if not quite of hostility then of unwelcomeness.

  Dex waits until the other man has finished, and in a chilly tone, he says, ‘Luckily, she’s fine, so . . .’

  ‘Hey, Will.’ I’ve risen from the sofa and hobbled over. Since tumbling from Jason, my body has stiffened. I’m young, but evidently no longer that young.

  ‘I’m so sorry about what happened.’ He takes a step around Dex and leans in to give me a hug. From his spot in the utility room by the back door, Dex watches him beadily.

  ‘Can I have a word? In private? The car’s in the drive, if you don’t mind.’

  From his post, Dex feigns a kind of cool detachment but his eyes follow me and as I’m closing the back door his face says, We’ll need to talk about this later.

  Outside, the ravens shift and murmur in the trees.

  ‘What the hell was all that about?’ Will begins, once we are safely installed in the Land Rover and he’s put the heating on.

  ‘I don’t know. He seems to have come over all protective.’ Will looks at me sideways, as if he’s deciding whether to carry on.

  ‘Obviously, you’re entitled spend time with anyone you like . . . but your friends . . . You know they’re kind of weird, right?’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Look, I know I’ve only just met you all, and I don’t really know how to explain it, but you just don’t seem comfortable with them. It’s like none of you trust each other.’

  ‘Well, we do. More than anything.’

  Will pushes his fingers into mine until our hands are clasped. Our eyes meet for a moment before Will looks away.

  They say that however you bring up a child it will feel normal to them. Kids adapt to all kinds of strange situations and quickly lose any sense that the situations are strange. I’ve read the articles. Who or what is to say what is normal?

  But is this normal? Me and Anna and Bo and Dex.

  ‘I don’t know you very well, Cassie, but I know those people at the stables, they’re really hot about safety. They wouldn’t have let you out of the yard without doing all the safety checks. They would have checked that girth.’ He pauses, pressing his fingers together, searching for the right words. ‘Look, I’m not going to lie, Hayley said something to my friend that I think you ought to know.’

  Will looks at me and swallows. There’s genuine concern on his face.

  ‘No, it’s fine, I’m not hurt or anything.’

  I don’t want Will’s concern. It doesn’t interest me. All I want is Anna and Bo and Dex.

  The heart beat rising. What did you do?

  They say if you put an ammonite under your pillow, you’ll dream about your future.

  Go away, Marika Lapska. I never knew you. Why don’t you go and haunt someone else? I took your money but I don’t owe you anything. I don’t know why you died but you were out of it. I know I didn’t kill you.

  My arm is on the door release.

  ‘Please don’t go. If you
don’t want to see me later, that’s fine. Just hear me out. I think your friend Anna might have done something unintentional.’

  Unintentional. That means it was an accident.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does. Hayley saw Anna fiddling with Jason’s tack when you went off to go for a pee. Maybe she thought she was tightening his girth and accidentally loosened it?’

  Our breath is hazing the windscreen. Will reaches out and turns up the blower and in that action I get the sense that he’s about to back away from me, from the group, from all of us. And it’s a relief. Honestly, it really is.

  ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to be suing your friend Hayley or posting some bullshit on Twitter or whatever, if that’s what you’ve come to check up about, so you don’t have to worry.’

  Will smiles but I can see he’s hurt. ‘It wasn’t just that, obviously. I wanted to make sure you were OK.’

  ‘. . . to have sex?’ He turns to look at me.

  ‘Are you always this cynical?’ Am I? Who can I ask but the only people who really know me? And Will isn’t one of them.

  ‘I’m sorry. I get it, I really do. You’re anxious to protect your mates at the stables.’ Will nods and smiles. There’s a pause in which each of us takes the other in. That’s when Dex appears in the front porch, standing, hand on hip.

  ‘Is everything OK, Cass?’

  The hand on the door release, popping it open, me shifting my weight, making to leave and as I’m about to, Will reaching for my hand again and squeezing it, Will saying, ‘Please come over later, not for sex, not for anything. But just because I’d like to . . .’ He leans over and plants a kiss on my forehead. ‘And think about what I said.’

  I reach for the car door, let myself out, feet scrunching across the gravel. Without waiting for me, Dex turns and goes back inside. The Land Rover’s lights arc across the bushes. I wait in the porch, beside the statue of the Mer-Chicken, until the red tail-lights have disappeared down the driveway.

  Family. I’ve been saying the word so long I’ve forgotten it’s supposed to mean something. Will is right. My friends are weird and hostile to outsiders. And it is odd about Anna.