The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  ‘I’m up for the blog post this week.’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK, Kate. Sophie PR’s written the next four weeks already.’

  ‘Oh. Good.’ Kate didn’t know why this annoyed her so. Sophie’s action was a kindness – they hadn’t known how long she was going to be off sick. However, she would be charging for it at her extortionate agency rates, depriving small African girls of a school. But this didn’t irk her as much as the feeling that she was being squeezed out.

  Using her annoyance as momentum, she forged on.

  ‘I feel like I’m out of the loop,’ she said. ‘With everything that’s been happening lately, with Face of Kindness and all that, and the incredible public response Sophie wrote about on the blog.’

  ‘Oh, it’s been amazing,’ Patience said. ‘We’ll have to have that celebratory team meal soon.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘We can’t spend it fast enough.’

  ‘How much has come in, exactly?’

  ‘I need to put it all together, but it’s millions, not thousands.’

  While Kate was taking this in, there was a knock at the door and Beattie came in.

  ‘Excuse me just one second, please, Patience.’ Kate put her hand over the receiver and smiled at Beattie.

  ‘I thought you could do with a coffee, hon.’ She tiptoed across the room and placed a steaming cup at Kate’s side.

  Kate mouthed her thanks at Beattie and watched as she crept back out the door. When she was sure that she had left, she turned her attention back to Patience. ‘We don’t have the infrastructure for spending that sort of money, though, do we?’ she said, dipping her toe in the water of her plan.

  ‘No. We’re going to have a trustees meeting soon to reassess our priorities for the coming year.’

  ‘That’s what Mark and I were talking about last night. In fact, he’s got this great investment opportunity that would be a perfect place to house the money until we’re ready to spend it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We should make the most of it. Not let it rot in our reserve account.’

  ‘But would the money be safe?’

  ‘Guaranteed return of capital, easy access and potentially up to twelve per cent for the first year, which Mark actually says is a conservative estimate.’

  ‘Sounds too good to be true.’

  ‘Mark does know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘It’s a limited window, though. He says they’re going to go like hot cakes when the word’s out. Do you think you could get the actual picture to me as soon as possible?’

  ‘Of course,’ Patience said. ‘I’ll get a report to you by next week.’

  ‘The window is extremely limited,’ Kate said. ‘Is there any way you could do it by the end of the day?’

  She heard Patience sigh, and the clatter of a keyboard. ‘I guess it could be done. We’re pretty busy, though . . .’

  ‘This is the best thing for Martha’s Wish,’ Kate said.

  ‘OK. Is it ethical, though, this investment?’

  Martha’s Wish had no guidelines for where their money should go before it was spent. But morally correct investment was one of Patience’s things, and since she was in charge of the day-to-day financial side of the charity, it had become a major unofficial policy. So the charity kept its current and reserve accounts with a small ethical bank, a move that Mark had nearly vetoed, saying that they could earn more bloody interest at any of the major institutions. Kate had talked him out of it. Keeping Patience happy was, to her, more important than half a per cent on an interest rate.

  ‘Of course it’s ethical! Patience, we’ve been working together for seven years. Do you think I’d approve of anything else?’

  ‘No, of course not. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s renewable energy. A big flotation. I can bike the literature over if you’d like to see it. Put your mind at rest.’

  ‘No, no, I trust you,’ Patience said, as Kate had been 99 per cent sure she would. The one per cent error margin could have been dealt with by a bike messenger going astray story.

  ‘Great, because we’ve got to get a crack on.’

  She hung up and put her head in her hands.

  It was dicey – really dicey. But she had no choice. There was money and she could get at it. It was a bad thing to do, but she would pay it back as soon as they shifted the horrible artworks, and no one would be any the wiser.

  It wasn’t as bad as murder, after all. Hadn’t Jake implied a threat to Tilly if she didn’t pay up? Even if he had no idea where she was right now, he knew exactly where she was going in the autumn – he’d named both her university and the course she was doing. So wasn’t this really little Martha looking out for her big sister? Wouldn’t that be Martha’s wish?

  She closed her eyes and the part of her that had been born a Catholic – Emma, she supposed – crossed herself.

  Fourteen

  Kate now had to wait until Patience got back to her. She paced the circle of her office floor, unable to decide what to do. To make the time pass more quickly, she could have gone downstairs and worked through her normal Thursday cleaning tasks. But if she did, Beattie would insist on helping, and she couldn’t face dealing with that.

  Restlessly, she sat again, opened a new browser window and searched for Tilly’s hostel on Google Earth, but was disappointed to see that she couldn’t zoom in to Street View. She hadn’t heard from her since the text she had picked up while she was in Marks and Spencer and she ached to talk to her. But if she called, she ran the risk of being accused of being a neurotic mother.

  Then, almost as if Kate had summoned it, Skype started singing and Tilly’s face popped up: a photograph taken last year in Cornwall: long, yellow curls blowing in the wind, smile almost bursting her suntanned face.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Kate asked, trying not to sound like she was flinging accusations.

  ‘I tried to contact you,’ Tilly said. ‘I emailed, and I Facebooked and I tweeted and I DM’d on Skype . . .’

  Kate glanced at the bottom of the Skype window. There she was, Tilly, trying to contact her at six the evening before, then later on at eleven, twelve and one-thirty.

  ‘Oh, sorry, darling. But I was expecting you to phone.’

  ‘I’ve lost my phone, Mum.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘After I texted you yesterday, I put it back in my bag. But when I went to text you again, when I got to the hostel, it wasn’t there. Someone must’ve nicked it.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Kate said. Was it all starting to go wrong already for Tilly?

  ‘It’s not the end of the world, Mum! It’s insured. And at least I’ve got the iPad.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And here’s a funny thing,’ Tilly went on. ‘That hundred euro you gave me? Well, it’s all gone. I got completely ripped off by the taxi driver. My guidebook says it shouldn’t cost more than thirty to get to the city centre from the airport. It was quite funny, really. We had this big old shouting match in the street outside my hostel, me threatening to call a policeman, trying to get the people around to help me, but they were actually just beggars and druggies and couldn’t give a shit. There was even some man lying in the doorway next to the hostel passed out with a needle still in his arm. Gross.’

  ‘Oh, Tilly!’ Kate put her hands over her mouth.

  ‘In the end the taxi guy looked like he might get violent, so I had no choice but to hand over the money. I made a big show of writing down his number, though. Said I was going to report him. Arsehole.’

  ‘You should do that.’

  ‘Well, too late now. I’m on my way out of here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s fucking boiling in Athens, Mum. They’re having a crazy heatwave at the moment. The hostel guy said it’s never been this hot in April before. The Greeks are really lovely, though. So friendly, so welcoming. I feel like I’ve come home. But I can’t stay her
e, it’s just sweltering. So I’m going to go out to that island Claire told me about until things cool down a bit. There’s no way I’m doing sightseeing in this.’

  ‘You’re going to Ikaria?’

  ‘Yep. Got my ticket for the night boat this evening.’

  Kate’s disquiet that Tilly was heading so quickly to the place of her own downfall was completely outweighed by relief that she was putting even more distance between herself and Jake’s clutches. The further away she was from civilisation the better, as far as Kate was concerned. Even if it meant she had to be in Ikaria.

  ‘Look after her, Martha,’ Kate said under her breath after they had said their goodbyes.

  ‘Emma! Lunchtime!’ Beattie called from somewhere out on the landing.

  ‘But she’s insured, right? For the iPhone?’ Beattie placed a giant turkey club sandwich in front of Kate.

  ‘Yes. But it’s the fact of being robbed. It’s horrible. And she’s going to have to survive without a phone now until we can get a new one to her.’

  ‘Can’t you just wire her the money to buy a new one?’

  ‘Tilly wouldn’t allow that. She’s determined to be independent.’

  ‘They are at that age, aren’t they?’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘I’m so jealous of her, being in Athens. Remember sitting up by the Acropolis, watching the dawn?’

  ‘Areopagus Hill? Yes.’ Kate recalled the closeness of Jake, how it hadn’t been enough.

  ‘It was our playground, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. After we three met. But—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘When I arrived, I was in a terrible state. I had a lonely couple of days.’

  ‘Why were you in such a state, honey?’ Beattie sat opposite her and leaned towards her, elbows on the worktop, slightly frowning, searching out Kate’s eyes. But Kate didn’t return her gaze; she could only keep looking at the ceiling down-lighters, to keep the tears at bay.

  Was she just about to tell Beattie the thing she had never let slip to a single person, that she hardly ever admitted to herself? The story of what happened in that alleyway behind the youth hostel in Marseille? She splayed her fingers on the worktop and looked at the short, bitten nails on the red raw hands that no manicure could get on top of. She had tried false nails, but had just gnawed them off.

  Finally, she breathed in, looked Beattie straight in the eye and nearly spoke. But, at the last minute, she lost her nerve: ‘I just wasn’t any good at being on my own.’

  ‘Was that it?’ Beattie said, as if somehow she had expected something else, something more.

  ‘Yes.’ Kate dropped her eyes. By not telling the full truth, she was betraying Beattie’s offer of understanding. She hated doing that – it was another of the reasons she had never countenanced therapy, despite having been in need of it all her adult life. ‘I’d been travelling for a while. It was my first time totally alone – I was so young, remember – two years younger than you.’

  ‘Three,’ Beattie said.

  ‘Three, then. And I had no idea how lonely I would be.’ Speaking about it was bringing it all back to her – her vulnerability, the memory of how lost she had been after the attack. She noticed that her hands were shaking. ‘When I arrived in a place I was scared even to go out in the morning and find myself some bread. And the evenings were hell. If I went out for something to eat, there was always some guy pestering me, not willing to give up, giving me grief.’

  Beattie moved round the kitchen island and put her arms around Kate. ‘Poor honey. I know it. It was the same for me. I had sore hands from slapping them off!’

  Kate leaned her head on Beattie’s shoulder, giving in to her embrace. ‘But you could tell them where to go. I just didn’t know how to say no firmly enough.’

  ‘Ah, the great British sense of reserve.’

  ‘I just think now, looking back, I was hopelessly wet behind the ears.’

  ‘I never saw you as being like that.’

  ‘Not a good condition to be in for travelling solo, really.’

  ‘I really liked you.’

  ‘A recipe for disaster.’

  ‘I’m just sorry I was such an asshole back then,’ Beattie said. ‘All that Dangerous Game crapola. Just a load of BS from a girl who came from somewhere too comfortable, too boring. I should have handed in those wallets I found. And stealing from those Brit kids, that was so far out of order. Unforgivable. I guess I was just trying to impress you in some way.’

  ‘We all made mistakes, Beattie. We were all idiots.’

  ‘Nah.’ Beattie put her hand on Kate’s cheek and held her face up so that she couldn’t avoid her gaze. Her green eyes seemed to bore into her, almost hypnotising her. ‘You were fine. You are fine. We’re nearly through all this. I’ll get my passport and ticket, I’ll go back and work hard to pay off what I owe you—’

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that.’

  ‘I do, though. Claire McCormack don’t take no pay-outs,’ she said, smiling. ‘And then we’ll be free to live the rest of our lives in peace. No more Jake trouble for you or for me. It’ll be like a new beginning for both of us.’

  Kate touched Beattie’s hand, then broke free, sliding off the stool to raise a blind and let the pale spring sunshine into the kitchen.

  All the things she wasn’t telling Beattie.

  Kate was growing a whole new hell garden of secrets to keep to herself. To her it felt less like a new beginning and more like being slowly lowered into a boiling caldera.

  ‘Look. First sun we’ve seen for ages,’ she said, turning to Beattie and painting a smile on her face.

  ‘Must be a sign,’ Beattie said. The smile she returned was full, honest and alight. ‘We’re nearly there, hun! Now, how about eating a bit of this lunch I’ve made for us?’

  As soon as she could, Kate retreated to her office, where she only had to lie to herself.

  She sat there, checking her emails every five minutes for word from Patience. In between, she either looked out of the windows or tormented herself by clicking through the Martha’s Wish website and reading about all the charity’s good works, all the children she would be stealing from.

  Finally, as the setting sun stained the city skyline a yellowish pink, the message she had been waiting for pinged into her inbox.

  Eagerly, she opened the attachment and leaned towards the screen to read it.

  But, as her eyes ran over the figures, any hope she had felt was washed away. She had imagined vast millions of pounds coming into the charity as a result of the photograph. Everyone had been saying how well they had been doing. Indeed, the provisional end-of-year figures showed that the rise in donations had been five-fold compared to their usual donated income. But five-fold from last year’s four hundred thousand pounds was only two million.

  Kate scrunched up her face and rubbed at her cheekbones with her thumbs. ‘Only’ two million.

  She scribbled the maths down on the pad she kept at the side of her desk.

  With contingencies, it cost twenty-five thousand pounds for Martha’s Wish to build one simple school. Project development and field costs took up another ten thousand per project. So, even with the UK admin and staff costs taken into consideration – which were mostly covered by Mark and Kate’s own yearly tax-saving fifty-thousand-pound donation – the rise in funds meant that, if Martha’s Wish had the infrastructure – which Kate knew they didn’t – a further fifty-five schools could be built on top of the thirty they had already managed. Which would result in around eleven thousand more girls having their futures changed through not only education, but also provision of clean water and latrines.

  Or it could be just over a third of what Jake was demanding from her.

  Quickly, she picked up the phone and congratulated Patience on getting the report done so quickly.

  ‘It’s not so hard with the software Mark had installed for us,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all in the reserve account?’ K
ate said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to move it over to an account Mark’s set up so that he can then buy the shares.’

  Just for one beat, Patience didn’t say anything. In that moment, Kate’s cheeks turned from pink to scarlet. She knew what she was doing was wrong: really, really wrong, but she had no choice. And it wasn’t like she was stealing the money. She was only borrowing it until she and Mark could sell the art.

  There were lives at stake.

  ‘It’ll have to wait till the morning,’ Patience said. ‘I’ll need to authorise it in office hours.’

  ‘Sure,’ Kate said, trying to sound cool about the delay. ‘You’ll do it first thing?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And it’s two million, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks, Patience. I’ll send you an email to let you know it’s gone.’

  Kate hung up.

  Then, in a gesture that was becoming something of a habit, she put her head on her keyboard.

  Where was she going to find the other three million?

  A noise behind her made her sit bolt upright.

  ‘Oh, sorry, honey,’ Beattie said from the doorway ‘Are you still working? I didn’t want to make you jump. I’ve fixed us a little supper. Do you want to come down and join me?’

  Fifteen

  ‘I’ve put three million dollars in your account,’ Kate told Jake the next morning, after she had done the deed. That was what the Martha’s Wish money converted to in dollars.

  ‘Why thank you,’ Jake said, his face as immobile as ever behind his great beard.

  There was something different about him – at first Kate thought it must be coming from within him – a result of finding his family again, perhaps. But then she noticed that it was because the football posters and pennants behind him had disappeared. Instead, his backdrop was now pale and bare except for a brown and cream abstract geometric print. How had he moved all his stuff around? She supposed he had a carer who would have helped him. But why?

  ‘But that’s not enough, is it, Emma?’

  ‘It’s all I can put my hands on.’