The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  The words emerged in a monotone, low and hypnotic like a prayer. I shifted, uncomfortably, on the edge of the sofa. But then he drew in a sudden, deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice was matter-of-fact.

  ‘She didn’t say anything when she saw that I was crying, just reached across and held my hand. And then, a few minutes later, she said I’d better be getting home.’

  ‘Did it happen again?’

  ‘Lying on her bed? No, but there were other things that were . . . too close. Once in the school yard Mark McCrae rubbed dog shit into my hair, and when I got to her flat, she leant me over the bath and washed my hair, using this white rubbery shower hose which she attached onto the taps. And her Pears shampoo, which I smelled of for days afterwards. She dried my hair with a towel, and then drew it round my shoulders, tight under my chin. Then we sat in front of the fire and listened to Elgar’s cello concerto.’

  The cello concerto. All that storm and darkness.

  ‘She never tried to talk me out of my moods. I liked that about her. But she was quite practical too. When she found out the boys used to take the piss out of my thrift-shop uniform, she went to Aitken & Niven and bought me a new blazer.’

  ‘So did she . . .’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t abuse me, nothing like that.’ There was a long pause. ‘It was just that she was . . . I don’t know. The only way I can describe it is that she was greedy for me.’ He gave a shrug, a half shudder. ‘Like she wanted me to be hers, her son, you know? I started going there most days after school, and it all became a big secret. I had to lie to my parents, and to the school. I made up a friend called Philippe, who went to the state school down the road and was supposedly helping me with my maths because he was some kind of fucking maths genius. And all just so I could go and sit in her music room and listen to Elgar.’ He blinked and shook his head as though it was all unbelievable, as though it had happened to someone else, not him. ‘I didn’t have a single friend my own age.’

  ‘How long did all this go on?’

  ‘A long time, Janey. A very long time.’

  Had he been in her flat while Hattie and I had had our lessons? The thumping from the back room. The table set for two. A crawling feeling came over me. This man. This man, who I’d trusted with my secrets, had been tucked into another layer of my life, hiding there like an insect all this time.

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Sixth form, I guess. It started to fizzle out then when I got busy with exams and so on. And obviously then I left to go to art college in Glasgow.’

  ‘So you’re not still . . .’ I shivered and his arm tightened around me, as though he was trying to strengthen me. ‘In touch? With her?’

  ‘I do see her. Yes.’

  I felt it like a substance under my skin: the old horror seeping into the present.

  ‘She’s senile, though,’ I said, grasping now for something that could negate the fact of his seeing her, or knowing her, and cancel out the betrayal.

  ‘Yeah,’ he sighed, letting go of me now and leaning back on the sofa. ‘She’s in a bad way. When I was round there last she was in her dressing gown – she’d run herself a bath, even though the carers are meant to do all that. She wanted to listen to some Tchaikovsky thing. She’d plugged her CD player into one of the sockets in the hall and balanced it on the side of the bath.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I took it away with me, said it was broken. I’ll need to get her one with a shorter flex.’

  Suddenly I was irritated at the careworn, solicitous tone of his voice. Why was he talking about this like I’d be interested? Like we were somehow in this together? Did he expect me to say I’d pick one up from John Lewis next time I was there?

  ‘I measured the distance between the socket and the edge of the bath.’

  I shrugged, the insolent ‘whatever’ shrug of a teenager. I’d told him about what she’d done, hadn’t I? About how her filthy black words had settled over my stomach that day. Over the place where my baby slept. Didn’t he understand that I hated her?

  ‘The problem is, it’s impossible to eliminate all risk. The carer said that once she tried to heat her electric kettle on the gas hob. There were brown scorch marks all the way up the side.’

  ‘So you see her all the time, then. Basically.’

  Why did she have to spoil this – me and Steve – like everything else?

  He shrugged. ‘I go and see her a couple of times a week. Someone had to step in and sort out the care situation. That’s the problem, when someone doesn’t have family. They can slip through the cracks. She needs to be in a home, really.’

  ‘Doesn’t she have a case worker or something? Someone who can organise a home? It shouldn’t all be down to you. Tell them it’s not safe for her to live by herself any more. She seemed completely brain dead when I visited her.’

  I’d told Steve. I’d told him I’d visited her. He’d sat there and said nothing.

  ‘Oh, she was on those meds then. They decided to try her on them to calm her down a bit. Antipsychotic meds, basically.’ He sighed. ‘She liked to go on walks around the city: visiting her old haunts, remembering the old days, I suppose. I used to give her little jobs to do: posting letters, buying a magazine for me, or new drawing pencils, that sort of thing. It was a way to try and keep her engaged with the real world.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘But then she grabbed the man in the newsagent round the throat because they didn’t have the magazine I’d asked for one day.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She gets these flashes of paranoia sometimes. Thinks people are conspiring against her. And hallucinations. She sometimes has hallucinations. They prescribed the meds after she attacked that poor man. But they were too much for her. Zonked her out completely. They tried something a bit different but that was even worse, so we had to take her off them again. But it’s so hard, because it’s basically not safe to let her go on her walkabouts any more. Not safe for herself or other people, really. So I try and take her out when I can. But it’s not easy.’

  ‘It shouldn’t all be down to you. Tell them she needs to go in a home now, or you won’t be responsible for what happens. Why should you be?’

  I felt my hands clench in a rush of childish rage. I wanted to get him away from her. Away.

  ‘You’re not even family,’ I went on. ‘And she’s suffering from severe dementia.’

  Steve stretched out his legs and sighed. ‘She’s away with the fucking fairies, Janey. But she was like a mother to me, when I needed one. I can’t give up on her.’

  I shivered. ‘I’m going back to bed. I’m tired.’

  ‘Wait, Janey. Now I’ve started, I need to tell you the whole lot. We used to talk, Esme and I. We talked about pretty much everything. So I know – knew – a fair few things about you.’

  Oh Lord. What a fool I’d been. Rationing out my secrets when he’d known everything all along.

  ‘You knew about the baby. You’ve always known.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. Why would she have told you about that?’

  He winced. ‘Because it was catastrophic for her, the whole thing. You do realise that, don’t you?’

  I wrapped my arms around myself and pulled my knees up.

  ‘The piano lessons just fell away, after the word got out. There were rumours that she’d hurt you. The St Katherine’s parents cut her off, then there was the ripple effect to all the other schools. Edinburgh’s a small place. So that was that. She was finished as a teacher. She’d been finished as a pianist well before that, of course. What with her various misfortunes.’

  He gave a hollow laugh that made the skin creep on my arms. Was he referring to the car accident, or did he mean . . .

  ‘Sorry, Steve. I really, really need to go to bed.’

  ‘I need to ask you something else. The hammer thing, and your dream. It seems too much of a coincidence. Did you know something about it?’

  ‘About what?’

 
; But already, scenes were flashing through my mind like the stuttering images in an old film.

  ‘The attack.’

  I searched about, in my mind, for anything else he might mean. But no, he’d caught me. He’d caught me right in his trap.

  I’d been pushing it away for so long. The night of the carol service, December 1989. It had taken an effort almost more than I could bear, and had cost more than I ever had to give. I tried to find my anger again. Or even the panic. The superstitious fears I’d held on to. All the things that I’d attached to it – to her – over the years. Anything rather than remember the event itself.

  ‘No, Steve. Not this. No.’

  But I sank my head into my hands, and let it come back.

  *

  I emerge from the dark of the Marlowes’ garden, through the alleyway and onto Regent’s Crescent. If Renee’s put her coat on, she must be going out. She must be going to see Hattie. If Hattie’s gone to stay with friends, I’m going to find out who and where.

  Further ahead up the street, is that her? A figure in a long coat, and why is she wearing Hattie’s St Katherine’s scarf and hat? And carrying her schoolbag? I can see the reflective strips. I helped her fix them on after last term’s police road-safety talk. She isn’t hunched against the rain, as Hattie would be: she hates the rain. No, she’s striding along in a hurry.

  I follow, the rush making me dizzy after crouching in the garden for so long. Streetlight slashes off the wet pavement, and I keep losing her, the dark shape up ahead.

  She marches along Regent Road into town, crosses North Bridge, strides up the High Street. Where is she going? I’m exhausted, my chilblained toes aching in my damp school shoes. She makes for Lauriston Place, Tollcross. She’s heading towards Morningside. Why would she be going to Miss Fortune’s?

  But that’s what she does, moving steadily up the hill, and finally disappearing onto a side street.

  I run to catch up, but when I turn onto Craigielaw Street there’s no sign of her. Surely she’s gone into Miss Fortune’s flat, then? I’m confused. Is Hattie having a lesson? One final lesson before going away? But the curtains of the music room bay window are open and there’s no sign of anybody. I wait, sitting on a low wall, studded with metal where old railings have once been removed. If she’s having a lesson, why aren’t they in the music room? My backside is numb from the cold wall, so I get up and push open the door into the tenement stair, taking care not to let my footsteps sound out in the stairwell as I cross the passage and out onto the back green. The kitchen window is easy to find: second along on the left. The curtains don’t quite meet in the middle, and I peer through the tangle of spider plants on the windowsill, through the cups and plates jumbled on the draining board, and try to make sense of the scene inside.

  The room is brightly lit, bathed in warm yellow tones like a cosy stage set. Music is playing inside – an aria from Madame Butterfly – and Miss Fortune is attached to a kitchen chair. Strapped to it. With shiny black tape, spiralling from shoulders to waist, all along her thighs and down to her ankles.

  Her left hand – her good hand – is taped to the kitchen table, which has been pulled out to the centre of the room. The tape has been wound round the wrist, and looped round the tabletop three or four times. The fingers are splayed, each fastened down at the tip with a neatly cut strip of tape.

  A fly caught in a crazy black web.

  Her eyes are wide open and wild. Her cheeks are shiny, streaked with mascara.

  She’s staring at the figure seated across the table from her.

  The figure rises suddenly. It’s Renee, still wearing Hattie’s school scarf, her face violently distorted, deep furrows etched into it like a Greek tragedy mask. She’s holding something in her two hands, something that doesn’t make sense.

  Miss Fortune turns away, tucking her head towards her left shoulder. Her eyes seem to meet mine for a moment. I hold my breath, but there is no moment of recognition. She can’t see me in the darkness.

  Then Renee lifts the hammer high into the air and brings it down on Miss Fortune’s pinkie finger, one – two – three – four – five – six times.

  *

  What did I do?

  I know that I stood, the wet leeching into my lace-ups from the sodden flowerbed.

  I know that I watched as Renee sat down again and lit a cigarette. I watched as the smoke curled upwards, and Miss Fortune sobbed, and Madame Butterfly’s heartbroken aria soared into the high-ceilinged spaces of the flat.

  She waited a few minutes between each finger. It took perhaps half an hour before she’d finished all five.

  Plenty of time for me to fetch help. I could have knocked on the door of one of the other flats, or found a callbox and phoned the police.

  Was I in shock? Paralysed by what I was seeing? I was only a child, of course.

  Or maybe I assumed Miss Fortune had done something dreadful to deserve it, something to Hattie perhaps, and that Renee was just a tigress, defending her cub.

  But really, there has only ever been one answer. Thwarting Renee – this new, terrifying Renee – would have meant I’d never see Hattie again. And my twelve-year-old self did a cold, hard calculation and decided that I needed Hattie more than Miss Fortune needed her fingers.

  *

  ‘Oh God. Steve. I could have stopped it.’ I drew my hands away from my face, but I still couldn’t look at him. ‘I didn’t help her.’

  ‘You were twelve, Janey.’

  ‘Do you know . . . why? What did Renee have against her? What had Miss Fortune done?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t you know any of this? Emil Marlowe and Esme had a history. They’d met at Ramplings as teenagers, and it was all a bit Romeo and Juliet: his parents tried to split them up, but they couldn’t do it. Only the car smash could do that, as it turned out. You know about that, yeah? While they were studying at the Conservatoire in Paris?’

  I nodded. The love of my life, she’d said.

  ‘I don’t know all of it,’ he went on. ‘I know that Emil went to the States after the accident, and she moved back to Edinburgh and started teaching. I guess it was the only option for her, really. But he ended up moving to Edinburgh too, when he got married, and I think they started up again. There was a dynamic between them, despite everything.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘she thought that if Emil ended up with her, it would sort of redeem everything. Because they could build their lives around love, instead of being a glittering musical couple. It would be romantic, love winning the day.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s spot on, I think. And part of it was that she wanted to have a family. She tried to have children. Not that he knew.’

  Dried-up, spinsterish Miss Fortune trying to get pregnant. I’d never known her at all, I realised now.

  ‘In fact, Esme had just had her sixth miscarriage when Renee became pregnant with the lump of gristle that turned out to be James.’

  Six. Six miscarriages.

  ‘But Renee had a breakdown when James was a few months old. Some sort of postnatal depression. Emil shipped her off to an expensive “retreat” in Switzerland and moved Esme into his house to keep him company.’ He broke off with an ironic laugh. ‘He really was a piece of work. And she ended up looking after James. It all went on longer than anyone expected. Emil sent her packing as soon as there was talk of Renee coming back, which was just around the time James was learning to talk. He would have been two-ish? Two and a half maybe.’

  Two and a half. She’d have seen him through the worst of his teething, maybe even potty-trained him. He’d have taken his first steps with her. I thought of Pip, his little legs stretching out and losing their baby softness as he learned to run, to jump, to climb.

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense. Renee would never have let her anywhere near Hattie, let alone hire her as a teacher.’

  ‘Presumably Renee didn’t know. Maybe she heard whispers, after she got back, or had her suspicions. Who knows. But when she did finally twig .
. . Well, you saw what happened.’

  ‘Why didn’t Esme go to the police?’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Renee said she’d come back, if the police started sniffing around, and next time it’d be her face. She said she had an alibi on hand. Some judge that lived next door to her who owed her a favour.’

  I shivered. ‘That may have been true. A favour is one way of putting it. The Marlowes all knew Lord Smythe was screwing his housekeeper.’

  Steve poured himself another whisky – his third – and laid his head back against the sofa.

  ‘It’s crazy, crazy stuff. Phew.’

  I sat back too. This wasn’t so bad. Maybe, after all, I was glad that he knew.

  ‘The lawyer doesn’t think a criminal prosecution would stick, what with Esme’s memory issues, though there’s nothing to stop us reporting it to the police. And a civil case would have all sorts of problems, too.’

  The air in the room seemed to go cold.

  ‘What lawyer?’

  ‘Oh, I sounded out a lawyer about it all a few months back.’

  A few months back?

  ‘I think it’s a bit of a dead end, even with a witness now. They’d probably pull all kinds of holes in your evidence, with it being so long ago and given your age at the time. One option might be to have a conversation with Renee Marlowe. Appeal to her better nature. She could bloody well offer some compensation. It would go some way towards paying for Esme’s care. Knowing there was a witness might, shall we say, focus her mind.’