Click

by L. Smyth

  Now I think back to Marcus’s question: ‘Are you all right?’ – and I wonder whether, in fact, I was. The visual indicators are clear: I can remember sobbing into his shirt. I can remember saying that I was upset, that I was convinced Marina had never liked me. But I cannot say how much of my reaction was sincere.

  Don’t get me wrong – I was quite shocked by the extent of Marina’s lying. And I was embarrassed by the weight I’d attached to my relationship with her too. But at the same time – if I’m honest – the fact that she had lied so much made me feel satisfied. It cemented my version of events, my interpretation of her character. Marina wasn’t the religious good girl after all. She was nasty and manipulative, someone who pretended to be something else in order to make herself appear more interesting. My instincts had been right after all.

  I liked her all the more for it.

  I spent the next day at the house, focusing on the tasks that Marcus set for me. They were menial tasks, yes: boring pen-on-paper stuff, sorting admin and sifting through files. Yet they offered a sense of completion. I liked that they could be done – that their results were permanent and unchangeable. After the months of worrying, I was grateful to have a distraction from my negative thoughts. It was pleasing to do something straightforward. It was relaxing being able to concentrate. Other worries, other issues – including Marina’s notebook – began to fade away.

  That afternoon I went for a walk around the garden while Marcus worked indoors. The weather was just beginning to break, and the spring arrived warm and sweeter than summer. Looking over the horizon it felt as though my whole life were ahead of me: the clouds curling into the hills, the dim dots of light flickering through the hedgerows, the hum of bees around me. I pulled a cardigan over my wrists. Knees stroked the long grass. As evening settled in, the sun fell over the water so that I could see each individual droplet under the surface. I looked at them drifting and blinking against the rim of the basin. I felt happy.

  Over the course of that evening I began to get to know Marcus too. I began to see who he was beneath his glossy exterior. He relaxed and fluffed in conversation. He whistled to himself. When concentrating, he would often rub his chin with a clumsy forefinger, or run his hand through his hair, causing it to spike out at jagged angles. I liked him, I realized. I liked these glitches in his refinement. Increasingly when he looked at me I didn’t feel the heat of the awkwardness that I had on the previous evening. Instead, I enjoyed his attention.

  On the Saturday night we were sitting on the sofa together, watching a film after a long day’s work. The actress on the screen had a screechy voice. I remembered reading an essay during a film module about how it had been dubbed over with another actress’s voice in a different film. I murmured this to Marcus and we both laughed. Then we were silent.

  I could hear him breathing heavily after that. I could sense his presence intensely: the lift of his chest, his mouth parting and sealing shut, every slight furrow in his brow. My eyes flicked towards him – and it was then that I saw that he was staring at my leg. His eyes were trained on a specific point. The long, brown-flecked birthmark on the inside of my thigh. I felt self-conscious suddenly. My fingers inched down my lap, and tugged at the hem of my skirt.

  Marcus looked up then. He held my gaze for a second, another second, longer than was appropriate and then his eyes flicked back to the screen. Mine did the same. But out of the corner of my eye I could still see that his wrists were flexing a little – he was tense. I lifted my left hand from my lap and spread my fingers on the sofa beside me.

  Suddenly something started to vibrate nearby. I flinched. Marcus’s hand crept off his lap and towards the phone on the coffee table.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said.

  I watched him stand and leave the room. The muscles of his back flexed and contracted under his shirt. There was a speckle of sweat underneath his collar.

  I heard him say: ‘Colin!’ Then something garbled, like: ‘How’s the research coming along?’

  There ensued a muffled conversation outside. I watched the action on the screen. The actress with the screechy voice was gone – now an actor stood in front of a mirror, his biceps rippling, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He put his fingers into a gun shape, lifted them towards the mirror and – before doing anything else –dropped them again. Then he continued to brush his teeth.

  Marcus returned a few seconds later. He eyed me curiously as he walked in, rubbing the end of his nose. I sensed an odd change between us. It made me nervous.

  ‘Eva,’ he said, like he was tasting the word – trying to figure out if he liked the flavour.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked. The corners of my mouth flickered suggestively.

  He nodded slowly. His mouth twisted.

  ‘Funny,’ he said.

  ‘What’s funny?’ I was alarmed to hear that a flirtatious lilt had crept into my voice.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You’re a funny creature. Aren’t you? You look young, but you have a mature mind.’

  Marcus’s eyes travelled down my face, down my neck, back up to my chin. I felt my mouth open a little.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, looking away. ‘Erm, I don’t know what you mean.’

  Marcus sat down on the sofa. He was now closer than he had been.

  ‘You just do,’ he said.

  I sensed that he was still looking at me. I withdrew my hand from the seat beside me and put it on my lap. I stared pointedly at the TV screen.

  ‘You’re very observant, very interested in people. Very independent.’

  ‘OK,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘I can see why you liked Northam so much, why you wanted to stay there.’

  My shoulders tensed. What he’d said wasn’t exactly true, but then it wasn’t exactly untrue either. I watched the actor on the screen: spitting out the swill of toothpaste in his mouth. Staring at his own reflection. Baring his teeth, creasing his brow.

  ‘You did like Northam, didn’t you?’ Marcus pushed. ‘You liked the campus, at least.’

  ‘The campus grew on me,’ I admitted. I was unsure of where this was going, of why he was steering the conversation in this direction. It was making me uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes – and you liked to go walking on your own, around it, seeking things out for yourself.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘On different parts of the campus.’

  I tried to concentrate on what was happening in the film. The actor lifted his fingers into a gun shape again. He began to mouth at his reflection.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘Especially after I found out about Marina.’

  ‘And before. During the holidays.’

  I was silent.

  ‘And during the holidays,’ Marcus repeated.

  I said nothing. On the screen the actor was talking to himself, louder and louder. His mouth was sloping out of control. His eyes were beginning to bulge out of his face.

  Marcus continued: ‘You see, I mentioned to Colin that you were here with me, and he asked how you were after … the whole business.’ Marcus leaned towards me slightly. ‘And then he mentioned that he saw you at Northam station. In January.’

  The actor on screen was now fully shouting at himself, his mouth distorted and his eyes crazed. His shouts became shrieks, volume, pitch, madness increasing until it reached fever pitch and he bent forward and shot at the mirror. Bang.

  The memory clicked into place. Now I knew what Marcus was talking about. He was talking about the time I’d taken a trip to Northam accidentally: when I’d got onto the train in an attempt to escape from Jonny Wilcox. He was talking about the time I’d seen the professor in the bookshop.

  ‘Oh – right, yes,’ I said. ‘I saw Professor Montgomery at a bookshop in Northam station very briefly. He was buying a book for his niece.’

  ‘What were you doing there – at Northam?’

  I lifted my hand from my lap and moved it slowly towards my opposite forearm. I
thought back to the Jonny Wilcox saga; how I could best explain it, without mentioning Joe.

  ‘Well, weirdly,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t meant to go there. It wasn’t a planned trip.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I felt a tiny loose scab under my elbow.

  ‘Er, I was at the station, in Walford. And then I got into a conversation with someone from school – someone I hadn’t seen for years.’ I picked at the scab. Ridges of hard skin crumbled under my fingers. ‘I got distracted … and then I got on the wrong train.’

  The skin flaked off in its entirety. A tiny cold dab of liquid slid onto my fingertip. I continued, in a babbling panic: ‘And then Northam was the next stop. It just happened to be. Once I arrived, there wasn’t a train going in the other direction. So I spent about forty minutes in the bookshop. That’s where I saw Mont— that’s where I saw the professor.’

  I brought my fingertip to my mouth. It tasted of vinegar.

  ‘I didn’t even really go to Northam though,’ I said. ‘Not to the campus. I mean, I got the train straight back to Walford. Then my parents grounded me. I didn’t spend any time in Northam over the holidays.’

  Marcus shifted towards the television, away from me.

  ‘Your mother mentioned about you driving around,’ he said. ‘Visiting nearby towns, around Christmas time and New Year.’

  I realized what he was getting at then. My driving around in late December; early January. He thought I had driven to Northam at the time when Marina died. Perhaps my parents had told him about my antics. Perhaps he thought I had had something to do with her death.

  ‘Other towns,’ I assured him. ‘Other towns. Burston, York, Whitby, closer towns. The only time I went to Northam was the trip I just mentioned. It was once, accidentally.’

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  We watched the rest of the film in silence. When it ended I said goodnight, without looking him in the eye, and went straight into my room.

  ***

  For a long time that conversation gave me vivid nightmares. Occasionally I still have them. I dream of driving through the country lanes. I dream of the raindrops sliding over the windscreen, the wipers squeaking back and forth, back and forth. I dream of the looming towers of Northam. I dream that I am standing outside her window.

  I am watching her open the window. Leaning out onto the sill. She looks down at me, her eyes wide. Her eyes laughing.

  Eva, she says. Eva. What are you doing here?

  My fists clench. I find myself unable to stop the questions. Why haven’t you replied to my messages. Why didn’t you tell me that you weren’t coming back. Why have you been hiding from me. Why are hiding from me. Why are you here.

  What the fuck are you talking about? She says again. What are you even doing here?

  I tell her she is pathetic. I tell her she has no worth. I tell her no one will miss her and that she has no purpose here anyway. She’s worthless, I say.

  Stop it, she says. Stop it.

  She leans out the window. I keep yelling. She leans further, teasing me.

  I tell her I don’t care what she does. I tell her I don’t care if she dies. I tell her that no one will miss her.

  Throw yourself out.

  Do it.

  Jump.

  Her smug expression vanishes. Her features melt away. She leans very far forward. I see her left hand falling out first. The cigarette drops, tumbles down, leaving a long slow trail of smoke in its wake.

  In my periphery I see the stick bouncing on the pavement, a smudge of lipstick against concrete. Then there is one foot on the windowsill. The edges of her body blur.

  Before anything else happens, I have turned and walked away. I am walking down the path towards my accommodation block. I am climbing into my car, watching the rain slide down the windscreen, the wipers squeaking back and forth, back and forth.

  I wake up in a cold sweat, the scene printed on the backs of my eyelids. I have to keep reminding myself that it didn’t happen.

  It didn’t happen. I wasn’t there.

  v.

  Still Saturday

  Following my conversation with Marcus, it seemed important that I should find out now, more than ever, what it was that Marina was trying to say. I needed to save myself from the conspiracy theories – prove that I wasn’t crazy. I sensed that Montgomery was out to get me. Perhaps Marcus was too.

  After the film, I did not go to sleep. I entered my room and locked the door behind me. I sat on the bed, and pulled my bag onto my lap. I riffled past the piles of pants, clothes and books, and then – to my relief – saw it was still in there. I drew out the tiny notebook. I thumbed through the pages, noting each of the dates, rolling my mind back to what I had been doing with Marina, if anything, on those days.

  2nd October; 29th October; 1st November; 5th November; 10th November; 11th November; 4th December; 13th December.

  I stared at the penultimate page.

  ast3r1sk_12_2013@gmail.com.

  The password: a5t3r1sk.

  I thought about Marina then, writing in the notebook: the way she would have clutched the pencil and scribbled those symbols down. Perhaps she had done so in this room. I felt a sudden and unexpected tenderness towards her. I thought of the evenings getting drunk together in my room in Northam. I thought of the day we had broken into the professor’s office together. And it was then that I felt the familiar stirrings of curiosity about her life.

  I’d do it tomorrow, I decided. I’d do it while Marcus was out of his office. I would find some way. I would find some way to get access to a computer. Then I would unlock the account and discover what she had been hiding – or, I thought with a flicker of unease, what her messages were trying to tell me.

  vi.

  Sunday morning. The air was fragrant and sweet and calm. Marcus and I were in the office together. He was slightly quieter than usual, but his manner was otherwise breezy and friendly – he did not seem to have been affected by the conversation of the previous evening. I was relieved to think he’d forgotten it, but there was also something unnerving about the fact that he was able to move on so quickly.

  He told me to sit at the desk opposite, so I did so.

  ‘Now here are a few things to do today. We need to get cracking.’

  He pushed a slip of paper in my direction.

  18th April 2013 – Marina Bede Foundation Inauguration Dinner

  TASKS NEED DOING:

  Count table settings

  File bank statements

  Count leaflets (should be eighteen in total)

  Print accounts

  Draft emails

  ‘Do the ones at the top first,’ Marcus said. ‘I’ll have to direct you through the bottom section.’

  With the thought of the notebook in my pocket, it was difficult to concentrate on work. So difficult. So difficult that I chewed my nails to distract myself. They became raw and ruddy, the cuticles ragged around the nail. When Marcus’s back was turned, I found it impossible to stop myself from touching things. I saw a stack of boxes in the shelves with the words: CHILDHOOD VIDEOS scrawled over them in thick permanent marker and my hands physically itched. I looked at the photos of Marina as a child in arty black and white and stroked my hands over the frames. I liked imagining them in colour, in motion. I imagined her snotty nose running, her pudgy hands wiping, the funny things she would say.

  Eventually, Marcus left – another phone call.

  ‘I’ll take this outside,’ he said. He turned his head as he left the room, frowning at the monitor.

  As soon as I was sure that he was gone, I ran over to his computer. The weight of the notebook was heavy in my pocket. I thumbed it a little, feeling the ridges of the pages through the material of my skirt. The screensaver winked at me. I sat down in front of the monitor and brought my hands to the keyboard.

  I was alone. I was completely alone in front of the computer. I ran my fingers along the keys experimentally, tracing the plastic corners with my nails.
I moved the mouse and the desktop appeared. How surreal it was to be using technology again – I thought – how glossy and smoothly artificial. But no time for reflection – I hastily clicked onto a tab and put in the address for an email server. I tapped in what I could remember, hearing the sing-songy rhythm of the email address pulse through my mind.

  ast3r1sk_12_2013@gmail.com

  Password: A5terisk – no; a53ter15k; no. What was it? My hands flurried to my pocket, I brought out the notebook and flicked clumsily through the pages.

  I could hear Marcus’s voice outside. ‘Darling, no that’s fine. Look I’ve got to rush—’

  I grasped the page. There – a5t3r1sk

  I typed it hurriedly into the keyboard. I could still hear Marcus on the phone outside, Elena’s vague muttering coming through the speaker, his unsuccessful attempts to cut the conversation short. I typed faster.

  Authorization successful.

  It took a moment to load, then the inbox appeared. It was full of unread emails, the subject of each simply ‘FWD’. I saw the sender initials: ‘C.M.’

  C.M.

  I focused hard on those initials, tried to make them bloom into words …

  “Oh yes, that’s a good point. Ok, I’ll send them today sweetheart. Hang on – wait, yes?”

  After a few seconds, it hit me.

  Colin Montgomery?

  I saw that all the emails had been sent on one date: 13th December.

  I grasped the notebook on my lap, and I sped through it to the page which contained the dates of Marina’s meetings with the professor.

  2nd October; 29th October; 1st November; 5th November; 10th November; 11th November; 4th December; 13th December.