I’m also conscious I shouldn’t write too much because everything on the Internet’s part of your CV now; it’s never completely gone even if you delete it, it’s still in people’s feeds and caches and Google can still sense it even though it’s not there, like how amputees can still feel their toes itching even after their leg has gone.
He asks me a lot about your funeral, Alice … sorry for ballsing my reading up … and when I gave your mum a cuddle she said, ‘Meg, how am I going to do this?’ and I said, ‘You will because you want it to be a celebration of her life,’ and she said, ‘Not today, I mean the rest of my life.’
Jeremy said he’d seen the hearse arriving: he didn’t go in but had been keen to quietly pay his respects, and I mentioned how you used to say going in a church brought you out in a rash and he said he avoided them as a rule. Then he lost his train of thought and explained about these incredible sky burials in Tibet where they dismember the deceased – it’s done by someone known as a ‘rogyapa’ or body breaker – and put the remains out for the birds of prey. It’s called ‘jhator’, which means giving alms to the birds.
I didn’t say a word to Luke at your funeral because he headed off straight after and he was majorly out of order turning up reeking of booze … I don’t care if Luke is reading this, you wouldn’t want me to lie, and the truth, like Jeremy says, is what matters now. He says it doesn’t matter how I remember you, as long as I do. ‘Who’s going to remember me?’ he keeps saying, making me promise, absolutely promise, I won’t get to his age and have regrets. Then when I explain about how many of our friends have promised to live better, fuller, bigger lives because of what happened to you, he says, ‘That’s beautiful, that’s the spirit. You go out there and grab it, young lady, go and grab life.’
‘Carpe diem,’ I said once, using one of your favourite expressions, as if that would impress him, then shared more stories about us. Once I get started it positively pours out, and he can barely keep up, sitting scribbling away and the diddy red light on his Dictaphone flashing.
‘Daughters,’ he merely says. ‘Daughters!’
Comments left on the above blog post:
I do indeed read this, young lady. A sitcom character, eh? More Geoffrey Palmer than Victor Meldrew, I trust.
Jeremy ‘silver surfer’ Cooke
You can’t go round accusing people of stuff like that, Meg, you’re out of order. For your information I wasn’t drunk at the funeral. I’d had one pint. I’m like the rest of us, trying to hold it together. Besides you seem to be conveniently forgetting it was Alice who split up with me, not the other way round, and I wasn’t seeing someone else!
Luke
No one’s interested in your stupid scrapbook shit and your dumb theories about a girl who drowned because she was PISSED out of her head. You need to be careful you and that old prick of a professor.
A FREEMAN
Texts exchanged between Gavin Mockler and Alice Salmon, 16 March 2006
GM: Hey Alice hows yr nite? LOL
AS: Whozat?
GM: Your fave housemate.
AS: Ace thanx, whole crowd here. We’re in Corrigan’s.
GM: That an invite?
AS: Moved on now. What you up to?
GM: Just chillin playing Warcraft.
GM: Corrigans is shit IMHO run by fascists.
GM: Liked talking to you in lounge last night calmed me down. Youre better than rest of them.
AS: No probs, just a chat, tho, yeah … BTW Spam Sam says if you’re not out tonight you can tidy the house!
AS: Stop playing with yourself!
AS: Soz that last text was Ben. He stole my phone.
GM: RAOFLMAO – not!!! You cud do so much better than Ben Finch.
GM: We’re like creatures of the night us night owls.
Email sent by Elizabeth Salmon,
3 April 2012
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Stay Away
How do I think things were in her final days and hours? Her state of mind, her whereabouts, her conversations, I go over it constantly in my head. My husband, he says I’m going in circles, but it’s not like I can be any more hurt. Why was she down by the water? Was she that drunk? Was she that miserable? Who was she with? That missing segment between her getting separated from her friends and ending up in the river, it’s torture to me. Then however frustrated and furious I get reading all the nonsense, the more I get exposed to it because all it does is drive me to seek out more information.
I used to believe in fate, but now I have faith in zip, other than the marginally consoling possibilities of facts. I hoard them, because I’m terrified I might forget her, Jem, might wake up one day and not be able to remember the detail of my daughter. Wake up one day and that she’ll be gone all over again.
So I’m asking you for something I never thought I would – help. Help me answer my questions, help me find Alice. You owe me that. Jem, what the hell were you doing emailing me? She saw your email in my inbox; she saw it on the day she died. That would have been enough to send anyone into a tailspin.
Sometimes I despise Dave because he let this happen, but it’s me who didn’t prevent it. What did I give her that helped? Proper lessons like the ones they dished out with sugary simplicity on those shows she devoured like The O.C. and Dawson’s Creek, advice to equip her emotionally to deal with the shit that’s thrown at you. I passed on nothing except perhaps a love of Sylvia Plath; can’t believe I introduced my daughter to her work when I understood only too well it could snag like a hook in your skin. A love of Plath and the hair I once pretentiously described in a poem as like a raven’s wing (I’d clearly read that somewhere), plus of course a desire to periodically tell the world to go fuck itself. Those things and our intonation, our cadence, even how we wrote, that was me in her and her in me.
Why didn’t I ever speak to her about it, Jem? It wasn’t as if I wasn’t aware this ran like a black streak through us Mullens women, the thing that visited her in the night and made her talk to foxes, the thing that I never had a name for but she called IT, the thing she put in big letters – IT – because small ones were insufficient. I used to reckon Plath was right, but she was so grotesquely wrong we should take her off the syllabus, not because we should control what people read like in 1984, but because there’s nothing beautiful about death or convincing teenage girls there is.
Alice didn’t take her own life. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t.
I was in love with you. At least, a version of you – whether it was one that existed or one I’d constructed in my head is open to debate. It would be disingenuous to claim there weren’t moments that in other circumstances could have morphed into fond memories, but they’re largely lost now, tangled in the woody knot of what came after we split up. It’s that which mostly remains: the anguished soul-searching of what came next (you have no idea, believe me). I recall one argument particularly vividly. ‘You mean Fliss,’ I’d shouted, because your inability to utter her name was driving me insane. ‘If you can sleep with me, you can at least say her name.’
‘Being married, it’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Don’t patronize me,’ I spat. ‘I’m not some love-struck teenager.’ But that was how I was behaving. I’d waited for an hour outside your office and, when you had shown up spouting some rubbish about a meeting having run late, I’d exploded. ‘I’m not going to become one of those women who’s permanently grateful, Jem. Grateful for a phone call, for an evening out, for a morning when I wake up and you’re actually still in the bed. I don’t have to do this. I’m young, I’m not unattractive.’
Your response? ‘How about we sort all this out over a drink?’
Along with dispensing compliments, that was your modus operandi: priming me with gin. Filling me so full of its warming magic that I forgot or didn’t care, didn’t kick up a fuss, didn’t scream, because we couldn’t have that, could we, a sc
ene? Wring the last ounce of fun out of me, then scuttle back to your wife. I loathed you for making me the sort of person I hated (for your information, I’d never been with a married man before – or indeed since), but I loathed myself more for letting it happen. I started to cry. ‘This is a joke,’ I’d said.
You moved towards me, puce with anger. ‘If it’s all such a joke, why aren’t you laughing then?’
I was constantly scared back then, but right then I had a visceral, physical fear. I could smell your breath: stale coffee and onions.
‘Well,’ you said, squeezing my wrist. ‘Go on, laugh then.’
‘You’ve never made me laugh,’ I said. ‘You buy me meals, you take me to not especially good hotels, you buy me clothes I don’t need and jewellery that is the antithesis of my taste and then you go home to Fliss and probably fuck her too because you’re so insecure.’
You raised your hand – and admittedly I’d been drinking and my head was all over the place – but what I saw was a claw coming up at me, seriously it was like an animal’s claw. ‘It’s over,’ I screamed.
And here we are all these years on, back in touch. Can’t believe I’ve written so much. Cathartic, I suppose. You’re water under the bridge now, but you have a responsibility. You have power, divest it wisely. I’ve confided in you, Jem, so don’t let me down.
For your ‘records’, I’m attaching a few sections of her diary, plus one of my favourite photos. It’s her and Rob on a beach, abroad, so it must have been before Dave’s business hit the rocks. Look at her – staring out at the sea as if she could swim that blue with a few bold strokes, wade through it, walk on it. There’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s the sort of day you remember from childhood but never know whether it actually happened or if it’s a trick your memory plays on you: ice creams and sandcastles and dozing in cars and being carried up to bed. The sort of day everyone should be able to remember, but a lot of kids never have. We really tried to give our kids days when it was sea and sky.
You’re right, words so frequently do fall short. I’m sorry to hear you’re ill. I can’t say I’ll pray for you, but you have my best wishes. When I visualize you it’s in an ivy-clad office, sipping Earl Grey and listening to cricket. Is that how it is?
You’re right – we are indeed a right pair with our secrets.
I would like to see you again.
Yours,
Liz
Transcript of voicemail message received by Professor Jeremy Cooke, 24 May 2012, 01.22 a.m.
I know where you live, Mr Hotshot Professor … Could track you down as easily as order a pizza … You better leave her alone … none of your business … Wouldn’t be so keen to dig up the past then, would you, Mr Anthroporologic? [sic] … She died … [indistinguishable word] … dead … gone … Which bit of that can’t you grasp? She [indistinguishable words] bridge. [Indistinguishable words]. Should be ashamed, ashamed … No more opening old wounds, no more … [indistinguishable words] loved Alice. Watch yourself, old man, because bad things happen, accidents happen.
Part III
* * *
LIFE’S LIKE SCRABBLE
Texts exchanged, 13 May 2010
Between Luke Addison and Alice Salmon
10.06 a.m.
L: Thanks for a gr8 night, Alice, but feeling the burn now! How r u?
A: Who is this???
L: V funny! It’s the guy you got drunk.
A: Was you who got *me* drunk – and on a school night. You’re a bad man, Mr Addison!
L: Don’t normally drink, made exception for you!
A: Heroic exception!
L: That’s me all over – a hero! Sorry about the Crown, BTW. Didn’t know it had become Balham’s worst pub.
A: So it *was* a first date then?
L: No comment ☺
15.42 p.m.
A: How’s yr hangover?
L: It’s a good one! Yours?
A: Self-medicating with tea, am drinking it by the bucket. How’s the rest of your day?
L: Been in world’s most boring meeting. Given any thought to Saturday?
A: Cinema?
L: Season of Swedish retrospectives on at Picturehouse …
A: On reflection, am washing my hair …
L: The Road?
A: Was just trying to impress you when I mentioned that. Much rather see Shrek Forever After.
L: Ditto. Could eat beforehand in new tapas place on Clapham High Street? Tequila doesn’t count as booze if it’s with tapas!
A: Am cheap tequila date ☺
L: Will remember that ☺
20.02 p.m.
A: Flatmate’s opened bottle of wine, so having one glass. Where are you?
L: Went to gym earlier to shake off last of hangover, now back in pub.
A: It’s Thursday!
L: Thursday’s the new Friday!
A: Aren’t your friends grumpy with you for ignoring them?
L: Am outside having a smoke. Besides, they’re not mates mates. Rather be texting you.
23.41 p.m.
L: You still up?
A: Reading in bed. Where are you?
L: Walking home. Massively enjoyed last night Alice.
A: So you said!
L: Wanted to say it again.
A: Me too. Laughed more than I have in ages.
L: WITH not AT hopefully.
A: Both! Turning phone off now – need my beauty sleep. Text me tomorrow, got a long day so need distractions.
L: Available all day for distraction services!
A: Thanks x
Between Charlie Moore and Luke Addison
18.20 p.m.
C: How was last night?
L: Mental.
C: What, your date???
L: No, for a change! She was the business.
C: Seal the deal?
L: She went home m8.
C: You’re kidding?
L: No. Trying not to balls this one up.
C: *Tastes vomit*
L: Cock.
C: Which one was this anyway?
L: Met her last weekend in Porterhouse, tall, dark hair, freckles, bit off the wall but gorgeous.
C: *More vomit*
L: Bigger cock!
C: That’s what the ladies say! You seeing her again?
L: Too right – Saturday. Food then flicks.
C: Too keen!
L: But am keen.
C: Irrelevant. Don’t let her see that. We need to do beers to plan Prague – will email you. Gonna be a messy one.
L: What goes on tour …
Extract from Alice Salmon’s diary,
19 February 2009, age 22
It’s eighteen minutes past four and I can’t sleep.
A new city, a new job, new flatmates. It’s like freshers’ week all over again. I’ve decided life’s one giant game of snakes and ladders: get to the top of one ladder then, bam, down a snake you go!
Nights feel most like the snakes. Should make a rule: no entries after 11 p.m.
That fox is outside. He always hangs around. A boy fox, I reckon, big but raggedy like a doll. Must be very lonely out there among the bins and the buses, and how much would he like even just once to feel grass under his paws? Hope he finds a girl. Or sounds like he’s already found more than one, the plaaaaayer.
How can I feel this lonely when there are seven million people in London? I watch them on trains – in their skinny jeans and big glasses, reading the Metro and texting, tinny traces of Dizzee Rascal or Kaiser Chiefs escaping from their earphones – and imagine their existences unfolding alongside mine. Listen to their conversations and try to piece together whole lives from overheard fragments.
‘You overanalyse stuff,’ Meg said once, and perhaps this is what she means. Watching a fox in the garden – rather, the stamp-sized square of concrete we share with the possibly pregnant lady downstairs, Maybe Baby, and the Polish family upstairs we call ‘When’s Bins?’ because that’s as far as their conversation with us has gone.<
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What She Left: Enhanced Edition Page 11