by Nuala Casey
When they arrested a forty-seven-year-old crack addict, Martin Harris, for Zoe’s murder, Mark and his mother had attended the trial. They had sat through hours of evidence, listened to witness accounts including the poor man who found her body, a street cleaner who had been left so traumatised he had become a virtual recluse, unable to leave his house. Then Sebastian Bailey had taken the stand. He had been the last person to see Zoe alive. He told the court how he had sat with Zoe on a bench in Soho Square for several hours before she was murdered. He said he had met her when she came in to the modelling agency he worked for. She had put together a portfolio of photographs and was looking to be taken on by Becky Woods, the chief model booker. Bailey told how Zoe had organised an appointment with Becky that morning but Becky had forgotten and Zoe had been left in the waiting room all day.
Bit by bit, Bailey had pieced together not just the last day but the last few months of Zoe’s life. He told them about the landlady who had tricked her into going to a party that night, telling her it was a fancy celebrity event when really it was a crackhead wanting a prostitute. Zoe had been in the house of the man who would go on to murder her, she had drunk his wine and when she guessed his intentions, she had fled, taking a wad of money from her landlady’s hands as she went. As each detail was recounted, his mother had put her head in her hands unable to imagine such a sordid series of events for her lovely, sensible daughter who had left for London so excited and hopeful.
When the guilty verdict was returned, his mother had bowed her head and made the sign of the cross. For her, it was closure, she could get on with the grieving process, slowly rebuild her shattered life. But Mark had been unsettled by Sebastian Bailey. There was smugness in his eyes as he gave his evidence; a chilling composure that didn’t seem right.
As the years have gone by Mark has watched his marriage break down, has heard his six-year-old daughter tell him she doesn’t want anything to do with him and suffered the indignity of losing his job and having to move back in with his nervous wreck of a mother. And through it all, he has followed Bailey; he has Googled his name, Googled his wife’s name too, once he found out what it was. He has seen this man grow more and more successful while he himself has gone further and further into the abyss. All the anger he felt in that morgue; all the rage and confusion sitting in the court listening to the harrowing details of his sister’s murder has directed itself into this man. If, for one moment, Bailey can feel the heartache that Mark has felt these last few years, the fear and sorrow that has reduced his family to dust and left his mother a hollow shell, then he can draw a line under it all. Only when Bailey has been punished will Mark find peace.
The train slows down as they enter a more urban patch. Mark reads the name ‘Welwyn Garden City’ as they pass through another deserted station. There’s nothing garden-like about this place, he thinks, as they pass row upon row of grey, decaying buildings, and where are all the people? Even from inside the train, he can feel it; that familiar tightening in his throat. He has convinced himself that the air gets thinner on the approach into London. He starts to cough. Jesus, he hates this place. He always gets like this when he travels south, the breath seems to drain out of him and as they pass the Emirates stadium, home of Arsenal FC, the giant collage of hyper-real footballers bears down upon him like a cage and he starts to wheeze. It’s like being sucked into a deep river’s current, spinning and whirling into its vortex with no oxygen, no hope of release. He takes his asthma inhaler out of his pocket, shakes it and takes a deep breath of salbutamol. He knew he would need it. He feels his lungs gently expand, feels the muscles in his airways relaxing. He breathes slowly, in and out, in and out and the wheezing subsides.
*
They slow down and come to a standstill just outside the station, waiting for the train in front to make a move. Every passenger seems to take an expectant breath as they prepare to enter the city, the dark, dirty city where people disappear, shrink themselves into nothing until all that remains are their voices, disembodied voices like the train announcer telling them to keep their belongings with them, voices that cling to the bricks and mortar, that echo in the tunnels and hidden places, that hide in the shadows waiting for someone to come and listen; to hear their stories; their secrets.
Mark stands up and takes his ticket out of his back pocket as the train starts to crawl towards the station. Outside spindly trees line the track, poisoned black by the belching grime of the trains. They curl towards the window, holding out their emaciated branches like beggars calling for alms.
There is no nature here, thinks Mark, nothing can grow, nothing can live. He coughs again, this time bringing up a thick substance that he tries to swallow but it lodges in his throat and fills his mouth with a sharp, metallic taste. Growing up, he had always preferred the countryside to the town. Zoe had been an urban girl and she would wince when their granddad suggested a nice walk in the hills. But Mark had lived for those outings as a kid and when they reached the summit of Roseberry Topping, that peculiar curved peak that the locals referred to as the ‘Teesside Matterhorn’ he could feel his lungs open up. He could think, he could breathe and for days afterwards he wouldn’t need his inhaler. They used to joke about it, his mates, they used to say he was like those ramblers with the red socks and kagouls trekking out to the hills every weekend. He brushed aside their comments though because he knew it was more important than just having a stroll among pretty scenery; the hills were his oxygen supply, they were the tap he could drink from to clear his head and open his airways. He needed them to live.
When the train finally stops, he lifts the large, long canvas bag from the luggage rack; feels its weight in his hands, the reassuring bulk of what lies hidden in there then he shuffles with the rest of the passengers towards the exit doors. Darkness descends on the narrow corridor as the train passes through its final tunnel, then with a whoosh, shards of bright white artificial light swim in front of his eyes, making him blink. The little button on the door turns from yellow to green; someone in front of him presses it, the door slides open and they step out into the noise and glare of King’s Cross Station.
He looks at his watch. Half past four. And so it begins …
*
Stella sits on a plastic chair cradling a polystyrene cup of tepid, watery coffee. Taking a sip, she looks out of the floor-length window of the motorway services café that hovers precariously above the fast lane of the M4.
Thick wedges of inky-blue sky tussle with the last of the light-tinged clouds as, down below, little red lights on the motorway race sheep in a nearby field.
*
It is 4.30 p.m. In an hour or so she will be in London where Paula is waiting in their hotel room. She has already received four texts from her, updating each stage of her train journey and enquiring in a not too tactless way if ‘the plants are okay’. Stella has not replied to any of the texts. Why does Paula insist on doing that; on filling their time apart with constant updates and reminders and messages?
She takes another sip of coffee. It tastes disgusting but it feels good to be alone; truly alone. Away from the house, away from the street with the chatty neighbours and their unnaturally happy smiles, away from Paula’s endless stream of herb-talk; the phone calls to and from suppliers; the Skype calls to her brother and his children who only live a mile away; the opaque verbal mush that drowns out Stella’s thoughts, stifles her concentration so that she has to take refuge in her attic room like some Victorian hysteric.
She likes the stillness of her own company; likes those moments when hers is the only voice she can hear in her head. She never thought of herself as a solitary person before. In her twenties she had lived in a noisy studio flat in the middle of Soho where every second was filled with noise: the saxophone playing of her jazz musician boyfriend; the banging and crashing of bottles being delivered to the neighbouring restaurants and bars; the shouts and yells of partygoers outside the window. Yet because the noise was so constant, so extreme, it becam
e a sort of white noise, so loud that she stopped hearing it. She had managed to place herself at the heart of the storm where she found her silence; her equilibrium. Still, back then there wasn’t much about herself that she wanted to listen to anyway. She had spent those years in the grip of an eating disorder and Soho was the perfect place to hide it.
Sometimes, she dreams she is lost inside Soho; the streets melting into each other like molten lava, enveloping her; sucking her deep down into their depths. Other times, she dreams of Ade, the man whose heart she broke; she sees the flat they shared, the mess, the CDs scattered across the floor. And then she wakes up in her sumptuous brass bed in her pretty bedroom with its oak floorboards, embroidered rugs and tasteful sage green walls; Georgian elegance, not a hint of anything tacky or vulgar, but the ghosts of Soho, the musty smell of the flat, the warmth of Ade’s body in the bed, stay with her throughout the day, lodged inside her head like an unspoken word.
She reaches down beside the seat and takes out a book from her handbag: Virginia Woolf’s The Years, the subject of her PhD thesis. It is filled with tiny post-it notes with scribbles of ideas written in Stella’s scrawly handwriting. This is part of the reason why she asked Paula to travel down separately. She needs time to prepare, away from Paula’s chatter. Yet still the feeling of guilt won’t leave her; the weight of this deceit hangs heavily as she opens the book.
But as she begins to read she feels herself slow down, feels a warm surge of contentment rise from the pit of her stomach; she is back on familiar terrain:
‘… a rattle of cart-wheel; then a chorus of voices singing – country people going home. This is England, Eleanor thought to herself …’
Stella closes her eyes, allowing the words to whisper into her consciousness; to unravel themselves inside her head like coils of twisted, golden silk. She sees tall, sensible Eleanor sitting out on a terrace at twilight, with bats circling above her head. She sees the Pargiter family rising and falling through the decades like swimmers battling the waves. She takes a deep breath, opens her eyes and looks out of the window.
‘You can do this, Stella,’ she whispers. ‘You’re better now.’
It is getting dark, prematurely so for this time of year, she thinks. Yet, late August always does this, tricks you into thinking that it is autumn already, wraps a deep cloak of purple around the closing days of summer as if preparing itself for cold and decay.
Stella closes her book and as she places it into her bag she feels her phone vibrate in the inside pocket: probably Paula checking on the herbs. She takes the phone and as she sees the name, her cheeks redden.
All set for Wednesday. How does 2 p.m. sound? Dylan.
Stella takes another sip of coffee, still holding the phone in her hand; the open message blinking its unanswered question at her like a warning light.
Paula will be at the Chelsea Physic Garden on Wednesday; she will be lost in her own world among the herbs. Stella had told her she was going to spend the day at the London Library working on the final chapter of her thesis. Phones have to be switched off in the library; as far as Paula is concerned Stella will have stepped out of time for a couple of hours. She won’t suspect a thing.
Yet still this guilt; this feeling that she is betraying her love, that she is being selfish; following her own interests instead of the collective plans that Paula has meticulously set out for them.
The phone’s screen has gone dark, taking the message and all its connotations away into the ether. She will answer it later; when she gets to the hotel. But for now she is happy to stay here; floating in between two worlds, neither in Exeter nor London, but simply inhabiting this moment.
‘This is England.’ The line from The Years rattles round her head. She is disconnected from it all: from Exeter, from London, from England. They say it is Midsummer Eve when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, but for Stella it is this time of year – the last days of summer, the melancholy drift towards September, to the harvests and clean, empty exercise books – that seems to allow her a glimpse into the next world. The weather changes sometime around now, and then stays in a sort of greyish no-man’s land, trapped between one season and the next. Stella always feels raw in this period, exposed, like she is walking barefoot along a slippery log. Underneath, the water is dark, deep and unknowable and she feels like any moment she could fall in; so she waits, her foot dangling over the edge of the log, unable to let go.
She winces as she drains her cup of coffee which is now ice-cold and grainy. She can’t put it off any longer; her moment of solitude is coming to an end. Contentment is so fleeting she thinks, as she puts The Years back into her handbag, it can be shattered in a heartbeat, like a fragile piece of glass.
As she walks out of the café towards the escalator, she feels her phone vibrate again and her throat closes up as she rummages in her bag. Taking the phone in her hand she watches as the familiar name flashes on and off. She will not answer it. She will allow herself one more hour of solitude before her head is filled again with all things ‘Paula’.
She descends the escalator and steps through the automatic doors into the warm air. She looks up at the sky. It’s a perfect late-afternoon light, and the thin sliver of a crescent moon is just visible above the trees that surround the car park. Everything will be okay, she tells herself, repeating Paula’s mantra, and as she walks over towards her car, she almost believes that it will.
4
Kerstin stands at the traffic lights on Piccadilly and waits for the green man to appear, waits to remove the dark stain of the damaged purse from her bag.
As she stands she counts. She has been counting since she fled Cal and the office; she counted as she ran down the stairs, as she hurried through reception, out of the revolving doors and onto St James’s Street. ‘Six hundred and fifty-three,’ she mutters to herself as the lights change and she rushes into the busy road, towards Bond Street and redemption.
The pavement beneath her feet sparkles like a thousand diamonds have been compressed into the granite. All the money of the city, all the bonuses and trust funds; all the savings and bribes, all the invisible credit, pours into this place like a hundred rivers running into the sea. It’s what keeps the windows gleaming, the flags flying, the goods shining like the specks on the pavement. This is London’s great pleasure-dome; an adult fairy-land where magic and illusion are attainable – at a price.
But Kerstin doesn’t see the diamonds on the street, she doesn’t look up to swoon at the flags and the handbags and the silk scarves fluttering in the windows like exotic birds. She cannot be distracted by any of it. She must keep counting until she gets to her golden number, the number of truth and light, then everything will be all right. When she gets to eleven hundred and nine – her birthday, the eleventh day of the ninth month, order and perfection, order and perfection – when she gets to that number then she will stop.
Nine hundred and twenty.
The intensity of the counting makes her feel dizzy as she strides down Bond Street, staring straight ahead. Orange spots dance in front of her eyes manically, like the prelude to a bout of travel sickness. But she must keep counting.
Nine hundred and fifty-two.
She weaves in and out of rambling window-shoppers like a sleek car navigating its way into the fast lane of the motorway. She must keep going for if she slows down, if she slackens her pace, she will be crushed.
Nine hundred and eighty-four.
Thoughts roll around inside her head like tiny ball-bearings. The ripped purse; the report; Dominic Stratton’s last terse email. One thousand and six. It’s all punishment, she tells herself, well deserved punishment for her shoddiness; her lack of control. One thousand and twenty-three. When she lets things slip, when she loses her faith in numbers, it all falls apart.
Boom!
A loud bang reverberates through the street. She jumps with the shock and the counting pauses; the number one thousand and twenty-four balances precariously on the tip of her t
ongue like a word she can’t quite place. There’s a second bang – a hard, heavy thud, a sonic boom it seems like to Kerstin’s frazzled senses and she turns to see a man walking away from the back of a truck, his arms laden with boxes. It’s fine, she tells herself, it was just a door slamming. But the noise has stalled her, it has taken her thoughts away from counting and led her back eight years; to the explosion outside the pizza shop in Cologne that fine June day in 2004.
She was a student, twenty-two, happy and hungover, making her way home from an all-night party. It happened so quickly, she could count it in the steps she took; one, two, three across the street then suddenly an apocalyptic smash and behind her, carnage and blood, nails embedded in flesh and the grisly smell of burning body, like bacon sizzling in a pan, and that man’s face; the one that returns to her night after night. He had greeted her like a friend, just moments before it happened, smiling as he raised a cigarette to his mouth. One, two, three, and it could have been her lying there mangled and bloodied, eyes raised to the sky, asking why.
She gathers herself and scoops up the numbers like a mother calling for her children. One thousand and twenty-five. The delivery man deposits his boxes, the noise dissolves into the sharp, late afternoon air and Kerstin walks on, her heart thudding against her chest. One thousand and twenty-seven.
She wants to shout the numbers out loud; release them from the confines of her head; spill them out onto the pavement like loose change. A blonde, middle-aged woman in a floor-length camel coat and large, black sunglasses smiles at her as she passes. But the woman is smiling at the illusion: the smart, attractive young woman in an expensive, black trouser suit and neat, shoulder-length hair the colour of milky tea, walking along Bond Street in search of a purse. That is what the woman sees. Kerstin wants to scream at her, wants to show her the contents of her harried brain. If she could, she would throw the numbers at her, thrust them into her arms like an unwanted parcel. Then she would be free, she could walk happily through Mayfair, breathe in the late summer air and discover what it feels like to be normal.