‘Alex, you’re here,’ she says. I’m not sure if she was worrying I wouldn’t come because I’d be scared, or because she has deemed me the kind of person who misses flights, caught in a maelstrom of lost passports and misplaced boarding passes.
‘Yes,’ I say. I have given up trying not to state the obvious when talking to her. I think perhaps very beautiful people have that effect, so that their lives are filled with people describing the weather, or commenting on the furniture. It’s possible Lisa Meyer’s existence is duller than I have previously considered.
At the exit, there’s a man to our left, holding up a piece of A4 paper on which he has written Lisa Meyer’s name. Of course she has booked a cab. I can’t even see her on a bus in my imagination. The driver takes us across the road outside and into the ground floor of the car park opposite. His taxi is one of those minivans that could hold eight people, easily. He takes Lisa’s case, swings it expertly onto the back seat, then stands back so I can untangle my bag and put it on the seat myself. Lisa has already given him the address and he is soon pounding towards the city centre. As we drive down Corstorphine Road, past the zoo, I feel a brief pang. I would like to go and see the pandas, which made the national news when they arrived after I’d left Edinburgh. But there is literally no-one I could go with: even Robert wouldn’t want to go to the zoo, unless there was an outdoor production of A Winter’s Tale by the bear enclosure.
The driver turns down Lothian Road, heading towards Bruntsfield. I can’t tell if I’m car-sick or just frightened. But by the time we pull up outside Mel’s building, I can feel sweat dotting my forehead. It isn’t a warm day. Lisa Meyer takes her case from the car, and tells the driver to wait. He glances up at the parking sign, which demands a residents’ permit, but he doesn’t say anything. She slams the door, and looks over the roof of the minivan to me.
‘Are you alright, Alex?’
I nod.
‘Just breathe,’ she says, as she walks past me and crosses the pavement. She scrutinises the bells and presses 1F2. A moment later, there’s a faint buzzing sound and she pushes the door open. Upstairs, the large red front door of an apartment is being held open by a woman I have never met, who must despise me. She looks very much like her daughter: she’s tall and slender, and she dyes her hair the same shade that Mel’s is. The colour of set honey. Her eyes are puffy but not red. She has cried for days, but not yet today.
She looks straight past Lisa Meyer to me, and says, ‘You must be Alex Morris.’ I nod, and she says, ‘I’m Eleanor, Melody’s mother. I’m so sorry.’ And she disintegrates like wet paper.
There’s a beat before Lisa Meyer takes charge. She holds the door for me to follow her, and produces a pack of tissues from her handbag that she hands to Eleanor, who claws at it for a moment before realising it’s unopened. Finally Eleanor peels away the plastic and wrenches one out. She covers her whole face with it, and stands there for a moment like a vandalised portrait. Then she presses it to her eyes and nose, stands perfectly still for a few seconds, and scoops it away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. She offers Lisa Meyer the remainder of the tissues, but Lisa waves them away.
‘I have a bag full of them,’ she says. ‘April is the pollen season.’
Eleanor nods, and leads us through to her kitchen. She switches the kettle on, and it boils in a few seconds. She pulls three mugs off a mug tree, and looks hopelessly at a jar of coffee and a box of tea bags.
‘Tea all round?’ Lisa Meyer says, briskly. ‘Let me.’
Eleanor sits at the kitchen table, and I do the same. Lisa doesn’t ask if anyone wants sugar or milk. She just makes them black, and puts the milk carton on the table.
‘Mrs Pearce,’ she says, calmly. Eleanor blinks hard, and only one small runnel falls from each eye.
‘Call me Eleanor,’ she whispers. ‘Please.’
‘Eleanor,’ says Lisa Meyer. ‘Alex isn’t going to yell at you, and neither am I.’ She looks to me for confirmation, and I nod, vigorously. I have no plans to yell at Eleanor Pearce.
‘I just feel so awful,’ she says. She’s breathing slowly and deeply, trying to control herself. She looks at me. ‘You were there, when she…’ And she breaks off again.
The tiny line across Lisa Meyer’s nose has appeared again, and I suspect she is calculating which flight she will make, given that this afternoon is clearly going to take longer than she’d hoped.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I was there.’
‘And now I hear from Melody that Martin’s lawyers have been trying to…’ She begins to crack and then regains composure. ‘He wasn’t like that when we were married. He really wasn’t. He’s changed.’
‘People do,’ says Lisa Meyer. She’s hoping that if she talks in generalisations, it might reduce the potential for weeping.
‘I know you’re right,’ Eleanor says. ‘But how dare he?’
I haven’t really considered things from this perspective before. And it hasn’t occurred to me that Mel’s mother would, either. I have been braced for her fury: how dare I have encouraged her daughter to read murderous plays, how dare I have not noticed Mel’s growing obsession, how dare I have waltzed into her daughter’s life and then danced off again once the damage was done? And instead, Eleanor is all apology, guilt and grief. Just like me.
‘We really need to know a bit more about how Melody’s getting on,’ says Lisa Meyer. ‘Her trial date is quite soon now.’
The mention of practicalities is what finally dries Eleanor Pearce’s tears.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What do you need to know? She’s going to plead guilty, of course.’
Lisa Meyer nods, as though this is exactly what she was expecting to hear. It isn’t at all what I was expecting to hear.
‘Guilty of murder?’ I’m appalled.
‘Manslaughter,’ Eleanor corrects me. ‘Well, she says she’s going to plead guilty to murder, but her lawyers are hoping the court will only ask for manslaughter. I mean, not hoping, exactly. It depends on… I mean, if she hadn’t… But maybe if—’
‘But won’t she be locked up for years?’ As Eleanor is trying to work out what she wants to say, I blurt the words out. Eleanor breaks off, sobbing, and Lisa Meyer gives me a weary look.
‘She did kill an innocent woman,’ she murmurs.
‘Excuse me.’ I get up to find the bathroom, which is next to the front door. I pour cold water onto my hands and pat my face and the back of my neck. I sit on the edge of the bath for a moment. There is a small glass bowl with tiny silver discs in it. I can’t work out what they are, and I have to reach over and pick one up before I realise they are batteries for a hearing aid. Of course I knew she would go to prison or a secure unit or something. But she could plead guilty to manslaughter. Surely that would be enough? How punished did we need her to be?
I walk back into the kitchen to find Lisa Meyer and Eleanor still discussing the consequences of Mel’s guilty plea. In the six months that have passed since Mel was arrested, Eleanor has come to terms with the fact that her daughter will be incarcerated for several years. And nothing ever surprises Lisa Meyer. It’s just me who is shocked.
‘But she didn’t mean to do something terrible,’ I say, so loudly that Eleanor jumps. I moderate the volume. ‘I know she didn’t. Your daughter isn’t a bad person.’
Eleanor dips her head, not noticing Lisa’s single, tiny head-shake.
‘Have you got her diary?’ I ask. I am certain that this will reveal her to be the decent girl I think she was, before everything went wrong. Wouldn’t that help?
Eleanor frowns. ‘No,’ she says. She thinks for a moment. ‘Mel used to write all the time, last year. She started it after you asked them to, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t think any of them really bothered except her. Maybe Carly kept one for a few weeks. But Mel used to mention that she was writing hers.’
‘She must have taken it with her into the secure unit,’ Lisa Meyer says.
‘Yes, s
he must,’ Eleanor agrees. ‘But you can check her room if you want.’
As she leads us along the hall, Lisa Meyer glances discreetly at her watch. She is clearly regretting that she didn’t have this conversation on a conference call.
Mel’s bedroom is ordinary: two shelves of books, mainly young adult novels; posters of actors and of a band I don’t recognise and couldn’t name; a desk with a few ring-binders lined up along the wall, their spines neatly labelled with the subjects she studied. There are a few books, an illustrated Greek myths, a book about tragedy, a pile of magazines. Her computer is unplugged, and the desk shows a discoloured patch next to it: the police must have removed it, I realise, and then brought it back and put it in the wrong place. The bin hasn’t been emptied since she was arrested, I don’t think: there are tissues and a broken ring-binder in it.
Eleanor notices me looking, and puts her hand up to her hair. ‘I’m sorry it’s a mess,’ she says, though it isn’t. ‘I haven’t managed to…’
‘It’s OK,’ I reply.
This doesn’t look like the room a murderer lived in. It looks like a room a child lived in.
‘Could you ask her, when you next visit?’ I ask. ‘Ask her where the diary is?’
‘Yes, alright.’ Eleanor nods, and the floating strands of hair which she had placed behind her ears come free again. ‘Unless you wanted to visit her, while you’re up here?’
‘Alex has to be back in London by tonight,’ Lisa Meyer says, quickly. ‘Another time, perhaps.’
We’re there for another hour, drinking more tea, trying to comfort her. When we leave, Eleanor hugs me, like a daughter. I squeeze back, because I don’t know what else to do. The car is waiting right outside, and the driver springs out of his seat to open Lisa Meyer’s door for her. He begins the return journey to the airport. Lisa Meyer asks once if I am alright. Then she opens her shiny silver case and removes her laptop, making swift notes as we drive along.
Hi Lex,
That’s a pun. Did you get it? An ilex is the Latin word for an oak tree. Are you impressed I know that? You should be. I haven’t started gardening, before you think I’ve lost my mind. God, imagine if that was the therapy here. Fuck, that would be lame. I’ve started a course in Latin. The Centre head here is really cool. A bit like Robert, actually. Except she’s a she. She asked me what I was interested in, since I didn’t seem ‘engaged in my learning plan’. Yeah, I know. It’s like they have a weird condition.
I told her I wasn’t engaged in it, because it’s basically more fucking collages (Jono would love that). And I prefer learning stuff to being bored. So she’s found this online course for me to learn Latin. I don’t know if they’ll let me learn Greek so I can read your plays properly. That might be good. Or maybe not.
Speaking of Jono, he and Carly came to see me yesterday. That’s why I didn’t write then. It was weird seeing them after all this time. Really strange. They seem exactly the same, whereas for me, everything’s different, isn’t it? It was all a bit awkward at first – lots of stilted hellos, and Carly hugged me and Jono didn’t know what to do and then he hugged me too, which was unexpected. I think he’s got fatter – I could barely reach round him. And then he said, you’re not armed, are you, and Carly jabbed him with her elbow, but I thought it was funny so I laughed and then they laughed and it was OK.
I don’t want you to think I’m laughing about what happened, though. I do know, Alex, that it isn’t funny. Honestly. But sometimes, when I think about that day I don’t know how to feel. It’s like something I dreamed or watched, something that happened to other people, not to me and you. When I talk to the counsellor about it, she says it’s a dissociative state. She says it will take a long time before I can come to terms with what I’ve done. And she says it’s OK that I don’t know how to process it at the moment.
Do you think that’s true? Because there are moments, tiny flashes, like a migraine, when I feel really, really awful. And then they flash away again, just as fast. And if you asked me what I’m afraid of, and I told you the truth, I would say this: I’m afraid it’s those moments that are real and the rest of the time is the lie. And that what she means when she says I’ll come to terms with it is that it’ll switch round, and I’ll live in those bits, the migraine moments, and the good stuff will be what happens in short flashes – with Carly and Jono, or learning Latin, or writing to you. Just tiny bites of happy, and the rest of the time will be bad. Is that what happens when you do something terrible? And if it is, how do you learn to live with it? How do I?
You visited my mum last week, didn’t you? She liked you – she said so. She said you might come and see me sometime, but it probably won’t be here, will it? I’ll be moved after my trial. Or maybe I won’t for a bit. No-one knows yet. But you can still come, you know. I’ll send you the new address.
My mum said you were upset that I am pleading guilty. I don’t want you to be upset, Alex. You of all people know I have to plead guilty, don’t you? That’s how it works – you do something bad and then you have to pay. Like Orestes and Electra in your plays. We never got that far in class, did we? But I read it anyway. I brought the book with me, and I read the final play of the trilogy in here. The Eumenides, I mean. That’s a pretty word, isn’t it? They sound nicer than they are. The Kindly Ones – that’s what it means, isn’t it? Except they aren’t kindly at all. They’re terrifying vengeful goddesses with black fire all around them. I’ve been drawing them in art class (I can’t get out of all the collage bullshit, you see). I’ve enclosed a sketch of one here. It’s not that good, but I’m getting there. The trick is to do it in charcoal, you see, and not pencil. That was Carly’s suggestion, actually. She was always better at art than me.
Anyway, I want you to understand that I’m not pleading guilty because I want to be punished, I’m pleading guilty because I have to be punished. It’s in the play, Alex – if society doesn’t punish its criminals, the gods do.
I don’t think that black-fire-breathing monsters will come after me, or anything. I’m not crazy. But those flashes, the moments of blackness – those are my Eumenides. And I can’t live with them, not if they get any bigger. I’ll be better off in prison, honestly. You have to let me do this. I can’t really explain it to my mum – she pretends she understands, but I know she just thinks I’m mental. She hasn’t read all the plays that we have, Alex, so she doesn’t get it. But you have, so you should understand.
My mum says you want to find my diary. You won’t find it, you know. Not if you looked for a year. I want it that way – it’s private. My mum says you think it will show the jury that I’m just an ordinary girl who got a bit confused, or something. But I don’t want it found, I don’t want it read, and I don’t want it in court. It wouldn’t help, anyway. And even if it would, that isn’t what I want.
I hope I haven’t upset you. I just need to do this properly. I need to do things right, for once. Write soon, though. Tell me you’re OK with everything. I’ll be worrying about it till I hear from you. My counsellor says that kind of statement is passive-aggressive. Jesus.
Love, Mel
4
Adam is in the coffee shop when I arrive, drinking something frothy and eating what might once have been a muffin. On second glance, I’m not sure if he’s eating it, or merely rendering it down to crumbs. He has a messenger bag on the floor between his feet, and his right leg is twitching so fast it makes his whole leg quiver. He’s gazing at the muffin remnants.
‘Hello.’ I stand in front of him, and he starts to his feet.
‘Alex,’ he says, reaching out a hand covered with crumbs, which he brushes onto the table. We shake hands.
‘Do you want anything?’ I ask him.
‘No, thanks. I mean, let me.’
‘It’s fine.’ I walk over to the counter and order a latte. By the time I return to the table, Adam has jettisoned the plate and swept the crumbs from the table to the floor.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
&nb
sp; ‘Worried about Mel,’ I reply, and he nods vigorously.
‘Can I help?’
‘I think so. You know she intends to plead guilty?’
He nods again, but smaller.
‘I think her diary would prove that she isn’t…’ I can’t find the words.
‘Isn’t what?’
‘Isn’t a monster. She kept it for the whole year, almost. She wrote her feelings and worries and everything in there. She wrote stories and things for class.’
His nods have scaled back so much, they are almost invisible to the naked eye.
‘I just think if you could find it, if you could show it to the court, then they would realise that she’s not a terrible person. They might not lock her up for so long. She doesn’t deserve to lose her whole youth, does she? She’s just a kid who did something terrible, which isn’t the same thing, is it?’
‘No, quite,’ he says. ‘She hasn’t mentioned a diary in our,’ he pauses, ‘admittedly brief meetings.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have lied to her about me?’ I suggest.
He tugs at his collar. ‘I’m sorry about that. I don’t have much say in the choices my boss makes. But I admit that was a terrible idea, and I should have told him so.’
‘Charles Brayford made a stupid choice. It means she doesn’t trust him, and she only half-trusts you.’
He brightens. ‘Do you think she does?’
‘She thinks you’re cute. So she told me.’
‘Well, that’s better than before, then,’ he says. He pats away the milk from his top lip with a napkin. ‘I can ask her for the diary, Alex. I can go to her flat and search the place. But you’ve tried that, haven’t you? So she probably threw it out before she was arrested, don’t you think?’
‘Probably. But maybe not: a diary is a very personal thing. People who keep them care about them. And she wants to be a writer. I think it would have been agony for her to throw it away. It’s at least possible that she kept it.’
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