Over the Line

by Steve Howell

  The woman running proceedings announced that the Vice Chancellor would now present degrees in business studies and a queue formed near the steps.

  Mimi leaned towards me. “We need to get her the fuck out of here,” she whispered.

  A woman in front of us half-turned, an eyebrow raised. I held her look and she turned back. I was trying to think of a way out, but I couldn’t see how it could be done inconspicuously.

  “It would only make matters worse,” I said.

  The ceremony became a succession of roll calls. Most of the students walked briskly across the stage; others milked their few seconds in the limelight by bowing or waving to friends. I kept an eye on Megan as best I could in the movement of students to and from the stage. She was sitting bolt upright and not obviously showing any emotion.

  The roll calls seemed interminable. My thoughts drifted to the students whose exam papers still lay on my desk. They were second years, so the delay didn’t matter much, but I imagined it gave them something to talk about in the union bar.

  It must have been more than an hour into the ceremony when Mimi nudged me. She was nodding vigorously towards the front of the hall and starting to get out of her seat. I look across the rows of students. No Megan. There was a gap where she’d been sitting. No question about it.

  Mimi was already on the balcony now. I followed her. There was no way of doing this inconspicuously. Parents and students were looking up at us. Even the Vice Chancellor caught my eye with a concerned look.

  We found ourselves in the Sports Hall reception area. It was deserted apart from two stewards waiting for the ceremony to finish.

  Mimi was checking her phone. “Shit! They’ve announced the body is being exhumed.” She was tapping her way through story after story. “It’s frigging everywhere. She must have seen it.”

  “We’ve got to find her,” I said, heading briskly in the direction of some double doors that seemed to lead into the main university building. We followed dark and deserted corridors past student shops and coffee bars until we reached an exit taking us out onto gardens at the front of the building. We could see most of the campus and the village of Caerleon beyond, but the only people around were stewards killing time.

  We stood there in silence, going through the motions of looking in different directions as if there was a possibility Meg would amble into view.

  “She could be anywhere,” I said.

  “I’ve texted her.”

  I nodded. “What are the police saying?”

  “Not much. The only new thing is they mention something about a blood sample taken at the scene.” Mimi was reading from her phone. “They say it wasn’t considered significant in the first investigation, but now they want to do some tests.”

  “Try Meg again.”

  Mimi tapped her phone and went through to voicemail. “It’s Mimi and Liam – call us,” she said.

  “There’s no point in hanging around here,” I said. “We’ll only get caught by the media. Let’s go back to the hotel. Leave your car – we’ll find a way out on foot.”

  Mimi was still fussing with her phone, pulling faces as she trawled through Twitter and Google. You didn’t need to be a genius to guess what was out there.

  I walked down some steps to the intersection of two driveways. The gate we’d used earlier was to the right, but ahead was what looked like the original approach to the main building. It was rammed with parked cars. The gates at the far end were closed, but there seemed to be a gap for pedestrians to one side.

  I called back to Mimi. “Let’s try down there.”

  She looked up and started walking towards me still focused on her phone, even as she negotiated the steps.

  “There are some evil bastards on Twitter,” she said. “Listen to this…”

  “Not now,” I said. “Let’s get out of here first.”

  Mimi took the point. We set off down the drive, trying hard not to break into a jog to avoid giving a photographer with a zoom lens a great shot to sell.

  The hotel was only a short walk from the campus, past the Infants’ School where Megan had first met Matt. We walked in silence, holding hands, like a couple of lost children. When we arrived at the hotel room, it felt like a refuge, a place where we could close the door on this madness. Except for the phone. The calls were relentless. They were all from the media, following up the police announcement. Mimi ignored them.

  I slumped into the armchair and Mimi went into the bathroom. I heard her sit down on the loo and pee. I thought about how embarrassing that would have been only a few days ago, and wondered if maybe we should just pack our bags and go back to London; leave Meg to it. Why were we bothering? She didn’t seem to want our help. We didn’t really know what she needed help with. Mimi emerged from the bathroom, straightening her skirt with one hand and waving the phone at me with the other.

  “It’s Meg – a text,” she said, “but I haven’t a clue what she means.”

  I took the phone. The message said:

  ‘See you at the hotel. Need to talk. I was there.’

  Mimi and I looked at each other, bemused. The phone vibrated again: another message from Meg. It said: ‘When he died.’

  Mimi tossed the phone on the bed and joined me in the armchair, her head buried in my shoulder.

  16

  After The Party

  Megan barged through the unlocked door and scanned the room desperately like there might be enemies in every corner. She had a manic look: spiky hair wilder than usual, smart clothes dishevelled, beads of sweat draining mascara from her eyes. She wiped her cheek with the back of a hand, smearing mascara even further across her face. Her eyes settled on us. Mimi was disentangling herself from me and standing up.

  “What’s going on?” Megan said.

  “Nothing much,” Mimi replied, throwing me a guilty, childlike smile. She went into the bathroom and returned with a handful of tissues for Megan.

  “Didn’t look like nothing much to me,” Megan said, taking the tissue and slumping into the other armchair.

  I shrugged. I didn’t have much idea what was going on between Mimi and me, let alone want to explain it to Megan.

  Mimi settled herself on the bed, upending two pillows to cushion her back against the wall. We formed a triangle and sat there in silence avoiding eye contact. Megan was dabbing her cheeks with a tissue. She seemed to be calming herself and preparing to say something, to explain her text. But Mimi spoke first, treading carefully with, “You okay?”

  Megan nodded but didn’t look up.

  “They had no right…” Mimi started.

  But Megan looked at her sharply, frowning. “Yes they did. Of course they did. Well, she did anyway.”

  “She?” Mimi said.

  “That girl who heckled. She’s a cow, but face facts, I was asking for it.”

  Mimi looked across the bed at me as if expecting some help, but I didn’t want a repeat of my row with Megan on the bridge. I was trying to keep my usual lack of tact in check and wait as long as it took for Megan to open up. But she seemed frozen in some angry, dark place and sat there motionless, tanned legs outstretched, staring sullenly at her scuffed and dusty black leather shoes.

  We fell silent again. Mimi fidgeted and looked like she was about to try again, but I gave her a short sharp shake of my head.

  “Have I ever told you I used to go out with Matt?” Megan said, nodding to herself, like she was visualising it. “It was in Year Ten, the summer term. He asked me out, and I was so surprised I said ‘yes’.” Megan lifted her head and looked at me, swallowing a truncated laugh as if the thought of her and Matt was funny and grotesque at the same time.

  “You know we’d been friends from primary school, right?” she continued. “You saw the pictures at Graeme’s. And that carried on at the comp. Like I said, we used to hang-out around Caerleon. We were in the same circle, and Matt was a lovely boy. He was kind and popular, a bit of a joker. Some people said he was a show-off, but that wasn�
�t fair – it was only his way of, you know, trying to get people to like him. We all do that I suppose.”

  “And you liked him?” Mimi said.

  Megan looked back at her as if the question needed careful thought.

  “Of course I did, yes,” she said slowly, “but I was only 15, and to be honest, I’d never thought about him as someone to go out with. He was this kid I’d known forever. He was just Matt. And then suddenly, out of the blue, he goes all serious and wants us to be a couple; wants me to be his ‘missus’. And I’m telling you, he actually called me that, for God’s sake!”

  Megan shook her head, locked in eye contact with Mimi. “We stopped socialising with everyone else,” she said. “It always had to be only us. He’d become really intense. D’you know what I mean? Needy.” She looked at Mimi, who smiled like she knew exactly what she meant, and I thought I must remember to ask her about that.

  “Anyway,” Megan said. “It was annoying, and really claustrophobic. Especially the texts all day long. I’d wake up to them. I’d go to bed and ‘ping’ there was another one. And then the selfies started. And, well, it all got a bit strange…” She flushed and held the tissue up to her face, like a child wanting to hide. “I mean really explicit, a bit weird. I felt more and more uncomfortable about the whole thing, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to end this’ but I didn’t know how to do it. There isn’t a good way, is there? So I told him one day after school and he just disappeared – went off somewhere and then rolled up later drunk and started calling me a bitch in front of everyone when we were hanging-out at the barracks. After that, he ignored me for weeks, and later I heard he’d been talking about me.” She shook her head, choking on a sob. “Telling the boys I was a stuck up bitch and a frigid cow, stuff like that.”

  She paused for a moment, took in a deep breath and then turned back towards me like she’d suddenly remembered I was in the room.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Matt and I had been so close – or that’s what I thought – and things were never really the same again.”

  “Did Graeme know about all this?” I said.

  Megan laughed. “What – you mean, all of it? The dirty photos?”

  “Any of it,” I said. “About you going out and things turning sour.”

  “He must have known about us going out, but I never spoke to him about anything like that and Matt probably didn’t either. What’s he going to say? He knew his dad liked me. I don’t know. Julie’s attitude changed. I stopped going to their house for a while, but whenever I saw Julie she was always snooty – like I was trash, not good enough for her Matt.”

  “So what happened after that?” Mimi said.

  Megan took in a long breath and fell silent for a moment.

  “Things gradually settled down,” she said, looking at Mimi, “and I began spending more and more time training and competing. I was away a lot, and we had our GCSEs so I didn’t go out as much as I used to, but Matt and I still had the same friends, hung out with the same people at school.”

  “And Will, was he part of that, in your circle?” I said.

  “Yeah, sort of. Will was mainly Matt’s friend at first. I didn’t really know him that well, but Matt started going to the gym with him not long after we split up. Talk about out of character: he was really skinny and he’d never done any sport. He’d always have an excuse for missing games, like he forgot his kit or something – but then suddenly he was into working out. And then this one time, the first time I’d seen him with his top off for ages, I just laughed out loud: he’d shaved his chest and he had these huge pecs and a six pack. I couldn’t help laughing. Which he didn’t like, not at all.”

  Megan paused, gulping like she was struggling to suppress tears. “But how was I to know how things would turn out?” she said, talking mainly to herself, staring at her feet again. “I had no idea he’d become a ‘roider. Not at first, but then Will told me, and I was shocked – really shocked – especially when Will said most of the boys were at it.”

  I wriggled in my seat, and Megan shot me a look as if to say, ‘I know what you’re thinking’. But she was wrong. At that point, I was only thinking about finding a position that didn’t make my ribs ache. The pain from the beating had eased, but sitting seemed to compress my chest and push the ribs into each other. I straightened my back.

  “So when did you start dating Will?” I asked to move things along, a wince in my voice.

  “About that time,” Megan replied. “The end of Year Twelve. We went out right through my last year at school.” She laughed and shook her head. “We were the ‘celebrity couple’. Will was rugby captain; I was head girl and – you know, the athletics glory girl and all that. I suppose I loved it to be honest, and by then Matt had latched himself onto us again. It was weird. It was like he was our biggest fan, and he seemed okay too, doing his body building and being the centre of attention at parties.”

  She broke off for another long look at her scruffy shoes. “But then he began turning up at the parties less and less. He had new friends outside school. They’d go to Bristol or Cardiff and Matt was always telling everyone how wrecked he’d been and how they should try this or that.” She gave me a sideways glance, checking to see how I was reacting. “Most people had tried weed. I didn’t do it, I didn’t like the smoke. I didn’t even drink. It was odd watching people getting high, but you never knew if they were putting it on; like they’d have one draw and make out they were off their heads. It was pathetic really. Everything was ‘good stuff’. No one ever said, ‘this is crap’. D’you know what I mean?”

  She directed that at Mimi, perhaps thinking I was too out of touch to know what she meant. Mimi nodded.

  “Anyway, Matt was into other things by now,” Meg continued. “Weed was child’s play for him. He was like a walking pharmacy, a bag of pills in one pocket and a bottle of vodka to wash them down in the other.” She stopped as if wondering what to say next.

  Mimi started to get up. “Do you want some water?” she said.

  “And he began to make money from it,” Megan said.

  Mimi sat back down.

  “Will thought Matt was making a lot of money; said he was dealing in everything. Steroids. Weed. Meow meow.”

  I gave her a puzzled frown.

  “Love him,” Megan said to Mimi, laughing at me and sounding very Welsh.

  She was right. I had no idea what meow meow was. I’m not sure Mimi did either, but she kept quiet.

  “It’s an amphetamine, Li,” Megan said. “I couldn’t believe how low he’d sunk. He started acting like he was some kind of drug baron, like something out of Breaking Bad. He had his own little fan club of girls too. But give me a break, I mean this was Caerleon for God’s sake.” She paused as if trying to remember something. “Yes, I’ll have some water please.”

  Mimi went into the bathroom and came back with two glasses of tap water. She handed one to Megan and took a gulp from the other, then gave the remainder to me. The room had become unbearably hot. With no windows open, the afternoon sun streaming in and the heat from three warm bodies, it was like a sauna. I didn’t want to risk anyone overhearing our conversation, but Mimi was one step ahead of me. She opened the door, letting a refreshing breeze in, and leaned outside, looking both ways to see if anyone was around. “Let’s leave it open for a few minutes,” she said, standing by the door.

  Megan was fidgeting, trying to pull something out of a small pocket in her skirt. “I keep this,” she said, handing me a tatty photograph. It had been cut down so only Matt was in it. He was standing outside a pub, wearing a waistcoat and collarless shirt and drawing on a cigarette. I hardly recognised him. His face was grey and emaciated, his eyes sunken in dark cavities. There was a smile on his face, as if he was pleased with himself, but in a grim way – not like the innocent boy with the fish I’d seen at Graeme’s flat.

  I passed the photo to Mimi who was still guarding the door. She stared at it for a while. She hadn’t seen Matt’s i
mage, other than a much younger school photograph of him that was being recycled in the papers.

  “He looks shocking,” she said, handing the photo back to Megan, closing the door and going back to her place on the bed.

  “That was taken after our A-Levels,” Megan said. “We were still friends then, just about. I think we were going out to celebrate the end of the exams. Not that Matt was very bothered about the exams. He was expecting to fail, and he didn’t seem to care.”

  Megan was gripping the arms of the chair now and I sensed she was bracing herself, like she was through the foothills and the climb was about to get steeper.

  “It’s the last photo I have of him,” she said. “I hardly saw him that summer. Everything was coming together for me. I reached the finals at the AAAs in Birmingham and then I went to the European Juniors in Italy, which was fantastic. I loved it. This fabulous old city called Rieti; athletes from all over Europe…”

  I smiled and nodded. Rieti was special. I’d gone out to those championships with one of my juniors and helped out coaching the relay squad. I didn’t speak to Meg but I saw her compete. She was only 18 – younger than most of the other competitors – but she held her own. On her time in the qualifiers, she could have been among the medals, but nerves and the heat got the better of her in the final.

  “You did well,” I said.

  “Ha, but I bombed in the final,” she said, reading my mind. “Still, I was pleased. It whetted my appetite. But then when I came back, I found Will was really miserable. He’d injured himself – pulled a hamstring in pre-season training. It was supposed to be his breakthrough year, and he was gutted. He couldn’t do anything for weeks, and by the time he could train again, the season had started and he was struggling to make the squad. I think he only had two full games before Christmas...” Megan paused. “Well, I mean, before he failed the test.” She looked hard at me, a fixed unblinking stare. “I know it looks bad, Liam, but I had no idea. Not until he got done.”