The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  Jake took in air through his tube then let go of a laugh so low and horrible it made Kate’s bones vibrate.

  ‘All you can put your hands on?’ he said. ‘You sit there in your fancy house in your fancy clothes and you tell me you don’t have the wit – THE WIT – to raise a measly four and a half million dollars. That’s just a dot in the ocean of your vast wealth, Emma, don’t bullshit me.’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong, we’re not as rich as you think, Mark’s business is in trouble, and— ’

  ‘Oh, again, my heart bleeds.’

  Once more, Kate felt that kernel of anger flare up inside – the sharp anger only Jake seemed able to ignite in her. ‘You don’t understand, Jake. I just don’t have the money.’

  ‘Raise it, then,’ he said. ‘Sell stuff.’

  ‘It’s complicated . . .’

  ‘Seems simple to me. Simpler than your confession going viral. Simpler than poor Tilly going AWOL in Greece.’

  Kate jolted as if he had reached out through the tangle of worldwide servers between them and slapped her round the face.

  ‘AWOL in Greece, our old Alma Mater. I wonder which island she’s visiting first?’

  ‘How do you—?’

  He wheezed wearily. ‘Oh fuck, Emma, how many times do I have to go through this? There is nothing you or your family do that I will not know about. I have all the cards and I hold them to my chest until I want to play them. This situation will continue for the rest of our lives until you pay up, so please, do me a favour and just get your little stupid head around the idea.’

  ‘Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God,’ Kate heard herself say. Her breathing had become shallow. Black spots floated in front of her eyes. The windows of her office with their spiny cactus fingers pressed in on her, bearing down on her. Just before she blacked out, she thought she heard Jake say, ‘I give you one more day.’

  Sixteen

  The ceiling looked like a wheel, with wooden beams radiating from a central point to a circular support on which the turret roof rested. She had never noticed it before, but then again she had never lain on her office floor like that, flat on her back.

  One day. What difference would that make? She could pawn some of her jewellery and hope that Mark wouldn’t notice. But that would only scratch the surface. The risk outweighed the benefits in a big way.

  Then she remembered the full horror: Jake knew that Tilly was in Greece.

  She crawled to her desk, knelt up and logged on to Facebook, pulling up Tilly’s home page. Her relief at seeing that she had posted just the night before, when she got on the boat, was tempered by the chilling suspicion that this was how Jake had kept tabs on her. Tilly had over fourteen hundred friends. She couldn’t possibly know them all in person. So her journey, from Gatwick to Athens, and now the fact that she was headed to Ikaria, were visible to all those people.

  Kate opened up Tilly’s friends list. Of course, there was no one called Jake Mithras. She scrolled down, examining the photographs, until she came to one she recognised all too well. A boy called Stephen Smith had long, dark, curled hair, the most beautiful, full, cupid’s bow mouth and extraordinary eyes, as blue as the Aegean. A boy called Stephen Smith was Jake Mithras in better days.

  Days before the fall.

  Kate sent a friend request to ‘Stephen Smith’, to let him know she knew what his game was.

  She logged out of her own account and tried to break into Tilly’s, with the aim of un-friending him. She tried all the possible passwords she could think of, changing letters, adding significant dates. She tried Snowball – the name of Tilly’s hamster when she was little – Gwel an Mor, the house in Cornwall, which she knew Tilly loved. None of them worked. Then she tried variations on a Martha theme, still with no luck.

  It seemed that, unlike her tormentor, she had no knack for hacking.

  She tried to Skype Tilly, but she was offline.

  Slapping the table in frustration, she logged back on to her own account and, in desperation, sent Tilly a private message:

  Tills. I have to ask you to stop talking about what you are doing on Facebook. I’ve just read this article about two recent cases of young people from wealthy families travelling in Greece being tracked down and kidnapped because of what they post. You need also to go through your friends list and delete anyone you’ve never met in person. It’s nothing to worry about, but better safe than sorry.

  She hoped that didn’t sound too neurotic. She could imagine Tilly reading it and thinking she was just going off on one again.

  She stood, closed her arms around herself, and looked out of the window. The sweet smell of a cake in the oven crept up the stairs and again, absurdly, she felt hungry. Or was it fear? It was hard to tell the origin of the coldness gnawing at her insides.

  Both, possibly.

  But what on earth was Beattie doing down there, baking again? Kate and Mark hardly ever ate sweet things, so whatever she was making would probably go to waste, without Tilly there to eat it.

  Tilly.

  Kate hoped she was safely on the ferry to Ikaria. She’d looked up the schedules online – how much easier it was now that you didn’t have to stumble around a dockside to unearth that sort of information – and noted that the total journey could be up to twelve hours, depending on stopping points – faster than in 1980, but only just. If Tilly had managed to get on the night boat, she would still be en route. Kate couldn’t imagine that they had Wi-Fi on Greek boats, so that would be why she wasn’t available on Skype. She was probably just lying in the sun on deck, reading a book, enjoying herself, relaxing.

  Kate started looking at travel websites, checking how long it would take her to get on a plane, fly out there, find Tilly and bring her back. Then she imagined the reception Tilly would give her when she arrived, and instantly dismissed the idea.

  But, thanks to Facebook, Jake now knew exactly where Tilly was.

  Kate tried to calm herself down. She checked Ikaria’s size. How many cyber criminals would there be on a place like that with its population of just eight thousand, four hundred and twenty-three people? Would they even have Internet access there? But of course they would: she had found the population figure on the island’s website.

  But, of course, if Jake wanted to get to Tilly, he would find a way. It seemed that anything was possible for him.

  For one crazy moment, she considered calling the police. But she couldn’t. To do so would mean the end of everything. All her secrets would be out, everything would fall to pieces, and Tilly’s world would be devastated.

  No. Surely there were other, less damaging ways out of this?

  She just had to find the money.

  In one day.

  One day to keep Tilly out of harm’s way.

  The thought made her mouth feel cold and dry.

  Seventeen

  She shook her body into action, pulled herself to her feet and ran downstairs to her bedroom.

  ‘Everything all right, Emma?’ Beattie called up the stairs.

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ she replied.

  Even though Beattie was very adept at switching from one to the other, Kate wished she would call her by her new name. And to yell like that. What if Mark or Tilly came in unexpectedly and heard her calling her Emma?

  But of course, neither Mark nor Tilly would do that, would they? They were both away. It was just Kate and Claire now. Or Emma and Beattie. They could shout out their old names to their hearts’ content.

  Kate went to her walk-in wardrobe and pulled out the drawer that concealed a safe containing her most precious jewellery.

  She punched in the code – Martha’s birth date – extracted her jewellery box, carried it through to the bedroom and tipped the contents out onto the bed. There was the white gold and diamond neckpiece that Mark had given her for Tilly’s birth. It was so valuable, she hardly ever wore it. She could just pawn it rather than sell it, and when Mark sold the artworks, she could just slip off and buy it back. It would just
be like a loan, Mark unwittingly buying his daughter’s safety, in the same way that, through the charity money, Martha was looking after her sister.

  She put the necklace to one side, along with a solitaire diamond ring with a stone so large she almost thought it a little vulgar and which had been Mark’s present to her for her fortieth birthday. She had worn it only twice, so it would be extremely unlikely that he would notice its temporary absence. She looked at the delicate platinum and opal bangle he had commissioned to celebrate the day of Martha’s birth. It, too, was worth a lot of money and she never, ever wore it for fear of losing it. But she put it back in the box. To run the risk – however small – of forfeiting that particular piece to a moneylender was too nightmarish to contemplate.

  Keeping her selected items out, she returned the box to the safe and put the drawer back in front of it.

  Then, grabbing her handbag from her dressing table, she pulled out her wallet and threw her credit cards on the bed. She had three. One gold and two platinum, all with high credit limits. She could raise a quarter of a million that way and the jewellery would probably pull in another seven hundred and fifty thousand. That made one million pounds, one and a half million dollars. One third of what she had to raise.

  She threw the whole lot down on the bed, slumped down onto the floor and laid her head on the duvet cover.

  It was hopeless.

  She got up, pulled out the drawer again, opened the safe and, retrieving the jewellery box, once more tipped its entire contents onto the bed. There were ten remaining pieces, probably worth about another two million pounds, which would just about do it. She ran her fingers over the flawless stones of a slim, yellow diamond necklace that Mark had bought for her thirtieth, slipped on the diamond eternity ring he had given her when she set up Martha’s Wish. Every single piece had a meaning, and she was loath to part with them, but, she reminded herself, they were just stuff. Just a means to an end. And what was at stake here, she knew in her heart, was Tilly’s safety – something more precious to Kate than all the fine gemstones in the world.

  There was a gentle knock at her bedroom door.

  ‘Emma? Can I come in? I’ve brought you a whoopie pie— oh, my!’

  Without waiting for an answer, Beattie had opened the bedroom door, and she stood there with a tray laden with the fat fruits of her morning’s labour, her mouth open wide at the display of riches on the bed.

  Kate scrabbled the lot together and put them back in the box.

  ‘Wow, aren’t they pretty?’ Beattie said, coming over and peering in before Kate could shut the lid. ‘Are these real?’ She pointed at the yellow diamond necklace.

  ‘Yes,’ Kate said, closing the lid.

  ‘Oh, please can I see?’ Beattie said, sitting next to Kate on her bed, and putting the tray down at her side. ‘I just love diamonds.’

  Reluctantly, Kate opened the box and handed the necklace to Beattie. She didn’t want to appear mean. ‘I was just taking a look through them. They all mean so much to me.’ The last thing she wanted was for Beattie to know what she was planning to do. She just wanted to get it all out of the way quietly and quickly, so that only she and Jake knew about it.

  Beattie held the diamonds up to the light. ‘So pretty. Did Mark buy them for you?’

  Kate nodded and gestured to the jewellery box. ‘He bought all of these. Each one has its own story, its own memories.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Beattie reached in the box for the large solitaire. ‘Do you mind?’ she said, slipping it on her finger, where it sat tightly.

  ‘Not at all.’ Kate handed each piece to Beattie, telling her why Mark had bought it.

  ‘You are so, so, lucky, Emma,’ Beattie said, looking down at the glittering mound of precious metal and stones piled in her lap. She started to put it all on – every ring, bangle, bracelet and neckpiece. ‘What a catch that man was. You couldn’t have asked for anything more for your life, could you?’

  ‘I’ve been very fortunate.’

  ‘Have a whoopie pie, honey. Celebrate your lot in life!’

  Kate took one and bit into it. ‘Nice,’ she said, forcing herself to swallow the mouthful of cake.

  ‘They’re my specialty. The girls would always get so antsy when I was baking them. Though, of course, I have no one left to make them for now.’ Beattie twirled in front of Kate’s full-length mirror admiring the jewellery. ‘So pretty.’

  It wasn’t right to wear all the lovely things at once and jumble them up together like that. She looked like a little girl dressing up. Kate wanted to tell her to take it all off and give it right back to her. Seeing all those memories twisting and turning in front of her made her feel uneasy, as if everything might suddenly fall off and disappear down cracks. Beattie held her jewel-encrusted fingers out to the mirror as though offering them for a suitor to kiss. Then she dropped her hand and looked round at Kate.

  ‘Oh poor Emma. You don’t look like yourself at the moment. What’s eating you? You worried about little Tilly?’ She sat on the bed and put her arm around her.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kate said, trying not to let her shoulders stiffen and forcing a bright smile onto her face. ‘Tills is fine – she’s on a boat at the moment.’

  ‘It’s probably just a release after all that Jake stress, honey. I’m feeling it myself. But it’s safely in the past now and we can truly relax.’ Smiling, Beattie began to take the jewellery off, handing each piece to Kate, who put them back in the velvet-lined box.

  ‘Hey, weird picture,’ she said, nodding at the Rothko when everything had been put away.

  ‘Isn’t it? It’s Mark’s really. All the artworks are his. I could happily live without any of them.’

  ‘Thank God his taste in jewels is finer than his taste in pictures,’ Beattie said, and, despite herself, Kate smiled.

  ‘Where do you keep it all?’ Beattie asked, taking one last look at Kate’s glittering hoard before she closed the box. ‘I mean, it must be worth millions.’

  Kate showed Beattie the safe and made a show of putting the jewellery away as if she wasn’t going to take it out and pawn it the minute her friend’s back was turned.

  Eighteen

  It was impossible to shake Beattie off. After putting the jewellery in the safe, Kate tried telling her that she had to work. But Beattie insisted she needed a break because she looked so ‘awful done in’. Unwilling to seem too desperate to get away, Kate let Beattie lead her downstairs to the kitchen, where there was another almighty mess which needed clearing up.

  Kate felt obliged to help. In any case, Beattie’s idea of clean would probably mean she’d only have to do it all again if she let her do it herself.

  But all the while she was desperate to get away and deal with the jewellery and the credit cards. After all, she had a tight deadline. Beattie made coffee for herself and a cup of tea for Kate, then sat her in front of another damn whoopie pie.

  When Beattie tottered outside to the terrace to have a cigarette, Kate slipped the plates and mugs into the dishwasher and primed herself to be firm and make her exit. When Beattie returned, the stink of cigarette smoke wafting in with her as she closed the door, Kate straightened up and steeled herself.

  ‘I’ve got to go to work now. I really have. I need to write the blog post for this week, and I have to pick some stuff up from the dry cleaners.’ Lies, all lies, she knew that. But wasn’t that her forte? Her own special skill? ‘Will you be all right on your own for a couple of hours?’

  ‘Oh sure, honey. I’ll be fine. I was thinking of taking a little siesta myself. I’ve baked myself quite into exhaustion this morning.’

  It turned out to be that easy to get rid of her.

  Kate almost ran up to her bedroom. Yet again, she went through the whole rigmarole of pulling out the drawer, keying in the safe code and retrieving the box of jewellery. She scooped her credit cards up from the bed, grabbed her handbag and, clutching box and cards, climbed quickly up to her turret office.

  Loggi
ng into the various credit cards, she paid the cash advance limit for each into Jake’s fake Stephen Smith account, taking the precaution of leaving a ten-thousand-pound buffer on one, because at that moment she had no access to any cash whatsoever, and Mark might start asking questions if she couldn’t afford to buy food.

  Then, using Google, she quickly found Mayfair Advances, a company just off Bond Street who pawned valuable items and provided instant valuations and payment through direct bank transfer. Gathering her stuff, she tiptoed hurriedly down the stairs, passing the guest floor with extra caution for fear of waking Beattie. In the hallway she pulled on her coat then ran through the needling rain to the main road, where she hailed a cab.

  The pawnbrokers looked like a jewellery shop from the outside. Kate paid the taxi driver and, with her box of valuables clasped to her chest, she ran inside the building.

  As she burst through the door, the two men inside both looked up at her from behind a glass security screen. She sensed that, on her entry, the mood in the room had changed from relaxed to en pointe. She stood there blinking for a few seconds, her eyes acclimatising to the change from the gloom of a wet spring afternoon to an interior so brightly lit and crammed with shining surfaces and lustrous items that it hit her pupils like acid. The smell of burning tungsten, new carpets and money threatened to overwhelm her.

  Then she realised what she must look like. What had she been thinking? In her rush to get out and do the deed, she had forgotten to prepare for this meeting. Her hair was unbrushed and she wore no make-up. Under her good cashmere coat, she still wore her tracksuit. It had actually been rather expensive, but, nevertheless, it wasn’t an outfit she would ever be seen out and about in. And, to her horror, she realised that she still had her sheepskin slippers on – a daytime look perhaps Tilly could pull off, but not at all becoming on a woman of Kate’s age.

  She saw herself through the eyes of the two men and realised that they had every right to be on their guard.