What She Left: Enhanced Edition

by T. R. Richmond

  ‘You were downing tequila in an Irish bar when I last saw you,’ Luke said.

  ‘Top weekend, wasn’t it?’

  The two of them chatted – ‘bonding’ Luke would have described it as – about some altercation in a bar and drinking games and I felt a prickle of jealousy. I wanted to be part of the exchange. What must it be like to be a boy? I’d thought. Would it be very different?

  And when we bundled out of the restaurant, after the game was up, he’d had the gall to ask: ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Mine,’ I replied, needing to be on home territory when I confronted him.

  So we sat together on the Tube from Leicester Square to Balham like a normal, everyday couple. Ten stops he had, to deny or admit it. Even acknowledging his exchange with Adam hadn’t been a figment of my imagination would have been a start. But he sat, slouched in his seat with his legs apart, sticking out into the carriage so other passengers had to negotiate round them and said absolutely nada. I’m such an idiot. When he’d rolled up after Prague, he’d dismissed my enquiries about the weekend with a ‘Bars, mostly’, and I’d swallowed it. Why wouldn’t I? Even when he’d added ‘a strip club or two, obviously’, I wasn’t over the moon, but it’s what boys do and I liked how he could share that with me.

  According to the sanitized version I’d got, they’d ‘seen’ the castle, but not gone in. Debated whether to visit the Museum of Communism but never got round to it. Luke had gushed about the Charles Bridge and its baroque statues and informed me smugly it was where they filmed part of Mission: Impossible. ‘We had coffee in the Old Town Square, too – does that count as culture?’ he’d joked, plumping up the cushions and stretching back on the sofa.

  ‘For you, yes.’

  ‘Missed you,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ I replied.

  ‘I’m too old for this shit,’ he said. ‘I feel broken.’

  I’d watched Luke and his pal and this guy had the same easy manner as him, but wasn’t anywhere near as hot. My boyfriend, I thought, watching him nodding and laughing. They talked about what a tragedy it was, Gary Speed hanging himself, and what Apple were going to do now Steve Jobs had died. ‘They’re at a creative crossroads,’ Luke said, and I stored that one away; I’d tease him with that later. ‘Creative crossroads,’ I’d say. ‘Get you!’ Then I largely tuned the pair of them out and joined a conversation on my left about a new exhibition at Tate Britain, a retrospective. Luke winked at me, it was a ‘Sorry, we can go soon’ and it gave me a warm, indulgent glow: we’d been seeing each other for eighteen months.

  ‘How much tequila did we put away on that trip?’ I heard my boyfriend ask his new best mate.

  ‘No idea,’ he replied, ‘and I doubt you did. You were sunk to the nuts most of the weekend with that girl from Dartmouth.’

  Article on Student News: Hot off the Press website,

  9 September 2012

  EXCLUSIVE: New Salmon ‘romance’ link with ‘father figure’ Cooke

  The academic slammed for taking a sick interest in Alice Salmon has been ‘romantically’ linked to the dead girl.

  A disgusted witness says loner Jeremy Cooke, who’s penning a book on the femme fatale, took an ‘unnatural level of attention’ in her when she was a student under his care.

  The onlooker claims to have spotted the childless 65-year-old, who lives in a £500,000 house, leading the tragic beauty back to his office when she was drunk as a fresher in 2004.

  Speaking on condition of anonymity, the former undergraduate, now a successful Midlands-based professional, came forward yesterday to lift the lid on the behaviour of the self-confessed ‘relic’, who cycles everywhere on his trademark decrepit bicycle. She’d approached other media outlets, but Student News: Hot Off the Press is the only website prepared to go public with it.

  ‘I bumped into the pair of them one evening just before Christmas and she was distinctly wobbly,’ she said. ‘I offered to take her back to her room in halls but he said, “No, she’s all mine, this one” and she was laughing so I figured she was OK. I should have been more forthright, but he was well senior so I had no reason to be suspicious.’

  Only recently, reading press reports about the two individuals, has the whistle-blower come to view the incident in a different light and conclude that he and Salmon may have had a ‘special connection’.

  ‘I’ve heard it said that they hung out together when she was doing her finals. She was probably flattered by the attention, as any young girl would have been. Cooke often offered to counsel students who weren’t even on his courses; he showered them – the boys and the girls – with inappropriate levels of kindness and support. Alice could have been infatuated or in awe of him. Maybe she saw him as a father figure. Yes, it could have been a kind of romance.’

  The former student said Cooke’s interest in piecing her life together appeared to be more of a bid for fame and attention than a genuine academic endeavour. ‘A lot of lecturers are obsessed with recognition and legacy,’ she said.

  A leaked student feedback form on the Gender, Language and Culture module shows the way the man, who was educated at a public school in a wealthy part of Scotland and has only worked in one academic institution, was regarded by undergraduates.

  ‘He’s like some throwback to a former era. It’s like he’s on autopilot or not in the room with you,’ one commented.

  Another concluded: ‘Talk about clinging by your fingernails to the wreckage! Rumour has it the powers that be tried to get rid of him way back in the 1980s after some scandal but he’s hung on ever since.’

  In an era when zero physical contact between teaching staff and students is tolerated, these allegations are bound to raise questions over the future of the ailing academic.

  Student News: Hot Off the Press contacted Cooke this morning, but he declined to comment.

  Letter sent by Robert Salmon,

  27 July 2012

  Harding, Young & Sharp

  3 Bow’s Yard

  London EC1Y 7BZ

  Mr Cooke,

  We’ve never met and won’t, so I’ll keep this brief. I am Alice Salmon’s brother. My mother may or may not have deemed fit to mention in her correspondence with you that I’m a lawyer. It appears she’s gone into fanciful details about everything else.

  My area is corporate law, but I have consulted colleagues who specialize in publishing and wish to bring it to your attention that your ‘Alice book’ is taking you into dangerous legal territory. Defamation is a potentially costly business. Cases centring on it are protracted and expensive, and personal bankruptcies are far from uncommon among those subject to claims. One can’t defame the dead, it’s true, but there are many legal avenues one could explore either to prevent publication or to seek post-publication recourse in relation to this work.

  I presume my mother overlooked to request you resist putting the information she supplied – or indeed her own outpourings – into the public domain. Communication between myself and her is limited at present, but I need to remind you that, aside from any legal aspect, doing so would be highly unethical given her current state of mind. She had been coping so well, too. Her exchanges with you clearly trigger bouts of intensified unpredictability, so you must cease any communications with her forthwith.

  The instant you began your pursuit of Alice you opened a Pandora’s box. You’re driving a wedge through what’s left of this family. By nature my father is not a jealous or violent man, but we all have our breaking point. How would you react if you heard your wife once had a relationship with the very man who is now taking such a priapic interest in your late daughter? That your wife once attempted to take her own life? That she was (I’m minded I should say ‘is’) an alcoholic was, I gather, a fact of which he was aware; that one was a revelation solely to me. Congratulations, Professor, you’ve achieved what no one else has for thirty years – you’ve made my mother drink again.

  You may surmise me contacting you is inappropriate – me sharing th
is information could in itself be interpreted as a breach of confidentiality – but when someone is not in their right mind it’s beholden on those closest to them to make decisions on their behalf.

  You need to understand that if you further jeopardize my mother’s welfare, or indeed her relationship with my father, I will pursue you until you are penniless and the last copy of your squalid book has been pulped.

  Yours sincerely,

  Robert M. Salmon

  Extract from transcript of interview with Jessica Barnes conducted at Southampton Central police station led by Detective Superintendent Simon Ranger,

  5 April 2012, 17.20 p.m.

  SR: You said the girl on the weir was about to jump, then what?

  JB: She started singing.

  SR: Singing?

  JB: I was waving and stuff and reckoned I’d got her attention because she waved back. I could see her phone going through the air, the light of the screen, like.

  SR: How did you respond?

  JB: What sort of a world is it my baby’s going to grow up in when a girl can die and no one notices?

  SR: How did she respond when you waved, Jessica?

  JB: On Facebook someone’s put ‘She’s gone to a better place’, but guess what some sicko’s wrote? ‘That rules Portsmouth out.’

  SR: Jessica, can you please focus? What happened next?

  JB: She stopped waving and stood still on the weir and that made me calmer because I figured if you were going to do something dreadful you’d be more careless, you wouldn’t give a shit, would you? Way she’d been screaming at that fella, too, she had too much fight in her; women like that don’t top themselves. Good on her, I say. No offence, like, but most men are utter wankers.

  SR: So the man she’d been with – any sign of him at this point?

  JB: He was long gone.

  SR: But he could have returned unbeknown to you?

  JB: You reckon it was him?

  SR: One of our lines of enquiry is that she wasn’t alone when she entered the water.

  JB: My boyfriend’s right, he says you lot haven’t got a clue. No wonder the newspapers are giving you a kicking. They reckon she was being stalked – was she?

  SR: What did Alice do after she’d stopped waving?

  JB: She was pacing around and I was all, ‘Shit, what do I do? What do I do?’ So I yelled ‘hello’, then grabbed my phone. I weren’t sure who to ring, whether to call the police or what, but there was no signal and that was when I twigged why she was up there waving her arms. She went up there to get a signal.

  SR: That seems a wee bit far-fetched.

  JB: You do weird stuff when you’re pissed; crazy stuff makes sense and normal stuff feels crazy. She kept putting her phone in front of her face; I could see the light from the screen. She must have been texting or picking up a message.

  SR: Jessica, I’m going to ask you a very simple question and it’s crucial that you answer honestly. What did Alice do next?

  JB: She climbed down, swear on my kid’s life, she climbed down.

  SR: Would you be prepared to swear that under oath in a court of law?

  JB: Yes, defo. I did make out someone else on her side of the river a bit further up when I left – some old grandad. Must’ve been out walking a dog. I didn’t see no dog, but why else would you have been out there, it was about minus 200.

  SR: You were.

  JB: I’ve explained that. I’d never have left her if I’d known she was going to die, would I? You can’t blame me …

  SR: You’re not a suspect here.

  JB: I remembered when I was on the bus coming here what song it was she was singing. It was like she was doing karaoke with no one listening.

  SR: Elaborate on this ‘old grandad’ walking a dog.

  JB: Can’t get the tune out of my head now. It was ‘Example’ because she sang the line about the love kickstarts again. Says on the Internet it was one of her favourite songs. I ain’t no policewoman, but if she was going to jump she’d have done it on the weir and she wasn’t so hammered that she slipped, so from where I’m sitting that leaves one thing.

  SR: Which is what, Jessica?

  JB: Obvious, isn’t it? She was murdered.

  Alice Salmon’s Twitter biography,

  4 January 2012

  Jackess of all trades. Neither fish nor fowl. Personal views – some borrowed, some blue (mainly blue at mo). Remember, it’s not about the money, money, money …

  Letter sent by Professor Jeremy Cooke,

  25 July 2012

  Dear Larry,

  You’ll have to excuse my preoccupation with the past; 1982 feels remarkably present. I stuck with Dr Richard Carter into the autumn. His observations remained challenging, but I’d begun to derive a nebulous satisfaction from them. When I wobbled, Fliss reminded me of our deal. She’d keep me, she’d said, as if referring to an old piece of furniture or an unpleasant pet – a dog, perhaps, that had taken to biting – as long as I persisted with the ‘consultations’.

  I’d pulled into the drive one evening after six or so weeks of her absence – don’t quote me on that, time morphs and bends at the edges – and the sitting-room light was on. ‘You’re back,’ I’d said.

  ‘Don’t mistake this for weakness,’ she replied. ‘Don’t ever mistake this for weakness.’

  Communication between us was clumsy and maladroit in the period following her return. She’d been astounded when I’d initially confided where I was creeping off to on Wednesday afternoons. ‘My profession,’ I’d informed her with more than a hint of pretension, ‘is quick enough to hold up a mirror to mankind so I figured it was appropriate I did so to myself.’

  Richard was suitably enervated when I articulated my contrition. My sparring partner even proffered up a few snippets of himself: he had a fiancée, an interest in arboriculture, a penchant for the gothic. He had unconventional yet fascinating views on Jung. ‘Of all the careers you could have chosen, why this one?’ I enquired.

  ‘There’s not a whole lot else to do on a Wednesday afternoon,’ he said and we both chuckled; another watershed.

  In fact, three decades on, I’ve half a mind to root out Dr Richard Carter again; we’d have a whole new raft of issues to, as he might term it, ‘explore’. But back then I was witnessing a most implausible phenomenon: progress. I felt like a new man. In November I asked Fliss if she concurred.

  ‘It’s not a new man I’m hoping for,’ she said, ‘just a slightly improved version of the old one. My dad said you might ultimately not be very nice, but I disagree. You’re a fool, but you’re not fundamentally bad, not at heart.’

  ‘I’ve been so very stupid.’

  ‘You’ll not get an argument over that.’ She’d carried on preparing the pastry, a Delia recipe probably, she was all the rage back then, as indeed she’s become again thirty years later. ‘What did you see?’ Fliss asked, smoothing her hair back behind her ear and inadvertently leaving a dab of flour there. ‘When you held up that mirror to yourself?’

  ‘Someone who’s very lucky. Someone who won’t ever make the same mistake again.’

  I reached out and brushed the flour off her hair. I was glad she’d rumbled me. I couldn’t carry the weight of my secret any more. ‘Evolution is supposed to make us better, but I fear we’re going backwards,’ I said. ‘We’re becoming less human. I read yesterday that well over 10,000 people have been killed in this latest outbreak of war in Lebanon. Can you believe that it’s 1982 and we’re still killing each other over ground ?’

  She did her best to buoy me up, dubbed me a pessimistic old stick – reminded me there was plenty of good news around: the man at the University of Utah who’d had the world’s first artificial heart; Columbia striking out into space; our engineers beating back the watery forces of the Thames before they engulfed London; even, she said apprehensively – aware that despite my left-leanings I was sceptical of that ragtag bunch of lesbians at Greenham Common – the backlash against the arms race.


  Larry, I’d never expected a Damascene conversion. Richard had warned me that there wouldn’t be a light-bulb moment, but I was revitalized. That said, it would be a misrepresentation to assert I’d had some sort of personality re-engineering, because I was lobbying hard behind the scenes to get that turncoat Devereux relieved of his duties, on account of the bastard’s one-man campaign against my ‘lack of moral integrity’. (Ultimately, as you’ll recall, my efforts were thwarted because he was so chummy with the top brass.)

  ‘With the benefit of hindsight, how might you describe your actions?’ Richard had asked in one of our final sessions, the question reminiscent of school. I was never in trouble so only heard it second-hand, but the fierier boys, the ones with real spunk – the ones who I’d later read in the alumni magazine had become venture capitalists or relocated to Kuala Lumpur – would recount how the headmaster, mid-admonishment, would ask how they’d describe their actions.

  ‘Shoddy,’ I said. ‘Bad form.’

  Then one afternoon, clearly having concluded our relationship had moved into a new plane, Richard let rip. ‘There’s much I admire about you, Jeremy, but you do realize you’re a tremendous hypocrite. You cite our insignificance, but at heart you believe that you’re the most special creature that’s ever set foot on God’s earth. You can’t accept the self-evident truths you preach to your students. For all your qualifications – and please spare me any more of the Oxford bullshit – you can’t reconcile yourself to one fact. You’re mortal. You’re going to die. You won’t change the world. Plus, were this a lecturer and student relationship, I’d feel duty-bound to remind you that you’ve never satisfactorily answered my initial question as to why you come here!’