Click

by L. Smyth

  What happened next seemed to be the result of two simultaneous movements. 1) I edged my teeth over his fingers and bit down as hard as I could; 2) I jammed my foot into his knee and used the impact to fling myself backwards. Marcus cowered, alarmed, and his hands flew up in a protective gesture. I backed away and then shoved him viciously before running towards the door. But he came back again towards me, this time grabbing at my neck.

  ‘Come here!’

  His figure loomed over my head and he reached but I dodged him again, falling back against the shelving unit; scratching my face on the corner of something metallic. I steadied my balance. I drew back my hand in a strong swift pull and blindly, but with all my might, crunched it forward into his face. I felt a moist pop, a sharp sting over my knuckles. Marcus’s figure was black and smudgy: a blurred figure with hands over its eyes, staggering backwards.

  I did not give myself time to think. I turned and sprinted out of the room, out of the house, out past the rows of statues and along the drive, the sound of my feet beating loudly against the earth.

  It was only when I reached the bus stop, far down the lane, that I realized my pockets were empty. I thought then of the draft email, the window left minimized on Marcus’s desktop. I thought of the notebook I had left on the desk, pressed flat underneath the keyboard, lying open on the penultimate page.

  vii.

  Mid-April 2014

  The period of my breakdown felt like swimming underwater. When I opened my eyes and tried to process what had happened, I could sometimes make out an image I recognized: Marcus’s hand on my shoulder, Marina’s eyes under her fringe, the faded outline of my thighs on a screen. The rest of the time I was in complete darkness, trying to shut out everything.

  On the day I ran from Mosebury, I was lucky. I was lucky that buses were running that day; I was lucky that I had coins in my jean pocket, I was lucky that Marina’s house was high on a hill, so that I could see the surrounding countryside. The other houses. The village shop. The church.

  For twenty, maybe thirty minutes, I ran all the way down the road. I ran through cornfields, through sunflower fields, past pea-pickers and strawberry growers, over fences, under fences, through streams, past farm houses and fancy houses. I went past the village shop. I went past the church where Marina’s funeral had been.

  I arrived at the bus stop. I saw the crusty 21A staggering in, recognized the driver, flagged it down, then I rode it all the way to Northam. From Northam to Walford I travelled via train and from there, I walked home. The journey took six hours in total – from Marina’s house to mine. It seems remarkable to me that I had enough energy to stop myself from fainting or throwing up. I don’t remember what I thought about.

  But I do remember that when I approached my house – the sweet cottage at the end of the lane – that I felt panic rather than relief. I felt another surge of adrenaline. I had only one thing on my mind: they need to help me.

  As soon as I entered the house I attempted to tell my parents what had happened. I threw open the door, I ran into the hall and set about searching for them, yelling, screaming. When I found them in the kitchen, I paused for a second to collect my breath. I tried to say everything, in order, that I remembered. I really tried to articulate myself clearly: spell out my experience as a compelling case. But it didn’t work. As the words came out of my mouth I sensed that my sentences were fractured and that I was not making sense to them, that I was operating on a different wavelength.

  It was strange. The shape of what I was trying to say was so clear in my head. I knew exactly what the thought was that I was trying to convey: I knew how it sounded, how it looked, what it meant. The perfect version of the sentence was stretched out in a kind of spider-diagram of words in my mind. Yet the way my mouth formed them refused to translate into any kind of coherent meaning. I couldn’t make myself make sense.

  I watched my parents as I spoke. I saw their expressions of fear and confusion. I saw my mother glancing at my father. She bent forward slightly in her chair; shook her head at the floor. Eventually she broke the silence.

  ‘We know what happened, Eva,’ she said simply. ‘You don’t have to tell us.’

  Panic rose in my chest, making my breathing tight.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘We’re tired of this,’ my father said. ‘Constantly making us worried. Making up silly stories. It’s time for—’

  ‘Don’t start reproaching her,’ my mother cut in. ‘Not now.’

  ‘It’s true, Linda.’

  ‘What happened?’ I said quickly. ‘What’s going on?’

  There was a beat. My mother looked at the floor for a second, and then spoke.

  ‘Marcus called,’ she said. ‘Luckily he’s not seriously hurt but my god, you could have blinded him. Now the foundation event will have to be postponed. His eye is completely black.’

  ‘Thankfully he isn’t going to press charges,’ my father added.

  ‘He was – luckily for you – quite good-humoured about the whole thing. But as for your behaviour …’

  ‘Can you imagine how difficult this is for us?’

  The words reverberated around my brain. I blinked hard, tried to forget them, tried process what she said next. Marcus was concerned about me, she said. Yes, he was concerned about me – and although he had tried to see it all within a PTSD framework, he thought I needed to see someone. Urgently. I wasn’t safe out here. I was unstable.

  ‘He’s told us about the Marina obsession,’ said my mother. ‘The problem is you’re a fantasist.’

  Marcus had done his research. He had explained to my parents how I’d stolen Marina’s clothes and books at Northam – he said he’d found some still in my bag. He told them how I’d snuck into her room without asking him. He had told them how I’d fabricated an ‘absurd fiction’ about some dealings with Montgomery.

  I had nothing to say to any of that.

  ‘We’re just …’ my father shook his head. ‘Sometimes I look at you and wonder if—’

  ‘Wonder what?’ I spat.

  He sighed, looked at the ground. ‘I wonder if you’re ever going to learn to be normal.’

  My mother started crying then. She said that she was so upset, that she’d been so worried. She said that she felt guilty for not bringing me up like everyone else. She said she’d never known how to deal with these situations, how to deal with me. But talking to Marcus had made things clearer. I needed to go somewhere. Considering my mental history and the current reaction to this it was clear I’d had—

  ‘One of your episodes.’

  That sickness again, that creeping dizzy feeling – the sense that I was losing sight of my reality, the knowledge of who I was. All the colours of the room, the faces, the chairs were blurring into one another.

  ‘No,’ I said. The tears gathered under my eyelashes. ‘It’s not that. Please. That’s not true.’

  ‘Eva, listen. We know it sounds frightening but we have to address the problem head on. The doctors, and the psychologists, and well, your old tutor. And Marcus. They’ve all said that what needs to happen is …’

  At that moment I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and my clothes were torn. There was a ribbon of blood across my cheek. The faint outline of a bruise lay under my eye, I was sure of it. I leaned towards the mirror. When I blinked it disappeared.

  ‘… We think you need to go somewhere. We’ve found a place to send you to, just for a while, it’s just a few miles away. It’s not like the other place, the one you were before. This is upmarket. It’s like a hotel. This one has big grounds, the best care, the nurses are—’

  I screamed then. I screamed and it had all come flooding out – Marcus’s hand on my shoulder, the funeral, the email address, the notebook, the pictures.

  I continued to scream, and when they did not act upon my screaming I began to break things. I picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. I grabbed the frying pan off the counter and threw it against
the oven. I loved the sound they made over my voice: a shatter, a blast, a cacophonous thwack. I could feel the impulse building – the desire to destroy things, to hurt someone, hurt myself.

  On the floor underneath the wall there was a sea of shattered glass. I thought of my leg. I thought of the rock through the window, the splintered star in the night.

  I stopped screaming.

  I bent down and picked up a piece of glass off the floor. I brought it up to my fingers, slowly.

  ‘Eva, please.’

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. We froze. My mother opened it apologetically, started to wave the person away.

  ‘It’s just my daughter,’ she said. ‘No, no need to come in. There’s something wrong with her amygdala – you know, in her brain? – it was affected when she was an infant.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Hutchings, I can’t take no for an answer. I’m going to have to come in.’

  When I saw it was a policeman, I dropped the piece of glass and ran to the door. I began to shout again. I shouted for his help. I told him about Marcus, about Marina, about the professor, and as I did so I found myself unable to stop other anecdotes from creeping in there too – dream anecdotes; drunk anecdotes – so that I no longer knew what was and wasn’t real. I shouted at him even while he asked me patiently to calm down, to explain what was wrong.

  Finally he shouted, ‘All right!’ and that was enough to shut me up.

  ‘Eva, I need you to say what’s happened slowly.’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Check the inbox now, please,’ I murmured. ‘Please. There’s physical evidence – you can see I’m not lying.’

  The policeman paused for a second, then sat down in front of the computer. I breathlessly recited the email address and the password.

  He typed them in. He hit enter.

  Email address not found.

  ‘Put it in again,’ I said.

  He typed it again, and this time I watched over his shoulder to check his fingers were tapping the correct keys.

  Email address not found.

  My breathing quickened.

  ‘They’re taking photos of Northam students,’ I said quickly. ‘Professor Colin Montgomery, Marcus Bede – and others. They’re taking photos of female students and lecturers and circulating them over email. And it’s … some of them are intimate. I mean really intimate. One of them … I think one of them is of me … Please. We should try to get into their email accounts. Even if the photos are deleted – there must be a way of unearthing previous content.’

  I remember the way the policeman looked at me then: the way the corners of his mouth shook; the way one eyebrow drew upwards.

  ‘Those are certainly some serious accusations,’ he said. He glanced towards my mother.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said.

  I recognized a shrill note of desperation creeping into my voice, and on hearing it my frustration intensified.

  ‘Well I’ll be sure to bring this up with my colleagues,’ said the policeman, though his tone made it clear he wasn’t going to.

  The next morning, when they took me to be assessed, I looked out the window and saw the trees and large houses in the distance. I thought again of what Marcus had said about no one believing me. I thought of the notebook, that tiny slim volume which had been left under the keyboard. And I thought of Marcus – how I’d left him, crying in agony, cowering behind the table clutching at his eye.

  I wished then that I’d punched harder. I wished I’d punched him hard enough to make him really feel it – to make the bone of the socket shatter and splinter into his brain.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Early May 2017

  i.

  LIVE REACTIONS: SHOULD UPSKIRTING REALLY BE CLASSED AS A SEXUAL OFFENCE?

  WHAT IS UPSKIRTING? THE MEANING AND LAW EXPLAINED

  ‘IT WASN’T TAKEN IN PRIVATE, SO IT’S NOT VOYEURISM’: OUR LEGAL EXPERT OSCAR ELLETSON EXPLAINS

  The place they sent me called itself a ‘Bertrand Retreat’. It was a sort of rural hotel for rich people with various mental health problems. It wasn’t a psychiatric unit exactly, nor was it a rehabilitation centre – you just weren’t allowed to leave. I dread to think how much my parents spent on it, but since everyone there was clinically faux-polite and the programme was fundamentally redundant, I expect it was a lot. The staff made a big point about the fact that their “Practice” was modelled on the teachings of a yogi-slash-pharmacist-gone-rogue from the 1970s, which meant exactly nothing to me. All I understood was that the ‘guests’ were forbidden to go anywhere, although you were granted six slots of visiting hours per week, and occasionally some alcohol, so there was an air of sociability about the place.

  Anyway, I don’t want to talk about what happened in there.

  Two years went by and I almost convinced myself that what they were saying was true. They said that I was crazy; that I had imagined the whole term; that I had been disturbingly obsessed with Marina.

  Maybe that last point stands. No one has ever had such an intense impact on me. No one has ever made me question myself to the extent that she did – or made me behave so strangely. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still think about her all the time. The gilded edges of her smile, the dusty ringlets of hair, her strange green eyes staring at a book, glinting with concentration. When I recall our relationship, I try to blot out what came after so that it isn’t tainted. I don’t ask myself how much she knew about her father’s involvement. No. Instead I focus on the memories I have of her face, of the time we spent together: those snapshot fragments lodged in my brain. They are still so vivid.

  The days with Marcus are not as clear to me. Those shards of memory come back only in the night, with cold sweat and his oleaginous mouth and the feeling of his hand squeezing my shoulder. I try not to think about that too much.

  I try not to think about my parents, either. They were not unsympathetic. They came to visit me often at first, but the more inarticulate I became, the less they seemed to have to say to me in return. Then the visits became phone calls, then the phone calls became shorter and then they stopped completely. It wasn’t that we were resentful towards one another, and it’s not that I blame them for what happened – there just wasn’t anything we had to talk about. Or perhaps more accurately, there was so much that we had to talk about, but I didn’t know how, and they didn’t know the right questions to ask.

  I hollowed myself out emotionally, and didn’t contact them when I was deemed fit to leave. Instead I took a train south, far far south – right down to the Cornish coast. I applied for a job there: a gig in property which paid in cash. I lived in a cheap hostel nearby. It wasn’t as hard as everyone said it would be – finding work – and it wasn’t especially difficult maintaining my anonymity either. I don’t think my colleagues ever suspected anything about me. They didn’t ask many questions about my past. They thought I was ‘cool’ or ‘aloof’ for the fact that I didn’t use social media. Sometimes, they would squint at me and ask why I looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Were you a child actor or something?’

  ‘Is blonde your natural colour?’

  ‘How do you curl it at the ends like that?’

  Life like this was satisfying. I ignored current affairs, disengaged from the news, and I didn’t reactivate social media or look at my emails. Instead I focused on my work, checking house prices and ringing mortgage lenders. It was oddly easy to focus on these tasks, to make them constitute my existence, to convince myself that this was the only thing worth my attention. I certainly liked making my own money. I met people outside houses and walked them around the premises, showing them empty rooms, selling them stories about the lives they could live in there if they bought them. I was a vessel between people and places, a filler of empty rooms.

  Then one day, one of my colleagues mentioned that her eighteen-year-old cousin was starting at Northam. The mere mention of the institution was enough to make my fingers itch – and though I tried
to laugh it off, to stay out of the news and the implications of it all, a few days later I sought out an Internet café.

  Sitting in front of the computer, I saw some of the headlines. I saw that Marcus Bede had been made Chancellor of Northam. I saw that the Marina Bede Foundation was still going. I saw that the event I had helped Marcus organize had been postponed, but had taken place a month afterwards. I saw that Montgomery still worked as a university professor. I saw that Henry – now in America – was working on a thesis about Mary Wollstonecraft’s theory of the sublime. I trawled through the archives, through all the family press conferences, through the online forums, through the snide remarks underneath the articles. I read what my family had said about me since I had been admitted to the ward.

  It was hard, processing some of this information, but in many respects it was reassuring to me. Marcus’s promotion was a cliché. The professor’s continuation at Northam was also predictable. I could have been angered by it but I honestly felt quite liberated. I had feared the worst – I could therefore accept the worst – but there was good news in that people were no longer talking about me. There were no photos of my upper thighs. There were no more death threats. I had escaped my old self – she was dead – and I could continue to live my new life: the one without a past.

  That was a year ago. For twelve months I successfully put it all out of my mind. There was the occasional spook – the occasional Northam mention, the occasional reference to ‘charities like the MBF’ – but after I moved again I hadn’t thought very much about any of it. Or at least, I hadn’t until recently.

  In the last few weeks, the newspaper headlines have reappeared and they are not going away. The stories about Marcus and Marina and Colin Montgomery are ubiquitous. I have seen those dark green eyes glaring out at me from the front page of a newsstand. I have recognised his – their – kindly wizened faces on the TV in the gym. I have seen unnervingly familiar images of Northam across screens and paper. I try to avoid them, to shut them out, but it doesn’t work. I can’t think about anything else.