by Bella Mackie
The casino is in the middle of nowhere, but surrounded by a strange little cluster of restaurants and bars, which means I can park in the car park with no fear of sticking out like a sore thumb. I do a quick stroll around it to ensure that the Artemises’ Mercedes isn’t yet here, and then I head over to the entrance. I’m not going in – for one thing I’m not a member and for another, I don’t want to be picked up on the casino CCTV. Instead, I hover in the darkness between the club and a bar called Rays. This place looks like an out-of-town shopping centre and I half expect to see a Homebase. It’s hardly glamorous – I’m surprised that my grandparents deign to visit. Then again, they choose to spend their old age in a gated community in Marbella, a place which makes Florida look like Renaissance Italy in terms of culture.
I’m angry that I’ve given myself so much time. I’d bet on my grandparents being the kind of people who worry if they’re not home by 11 p.m., but what if they’re secret night owls? I can hardly hang around the car park with a few sparse bushes for cover. I lose my nerve and head back to my car, to regroup and go over the route again. As I’m walking, a silver saloon creeps up the drive, hogging the middle of the road, headlights on full beam. I hold my breath, squinting at the number plate, but it’s unnecessary. I see Mrs Artemis, her miserable expression and the resplendent blowdry which frames it in the glass. I hear a giggle, and quickly retreat between two cars until I realise that the sound came from me. I’m clearly more excited than I’d thought. At least part of me is looking forward to this.
The elderly couple get out of the car slowly, Jeremy throwing the keys to the valet and barely glancing at his wife, who’s gingerly stepping onto the pavement, clutching her Chanel like a child holds onto a teddy bear. They head into the casino without a word to the valet or the doorman, just silent statues there to show respect to the great and the good, I suppose. Still, statues can’t wipe their arse on your leather seats like a valet can (and hopefully does).
For the next two and a half hours I sit in my car. I eat a disgusting cheeseburger and resolve to give up meat when I get home. I smoke three cigarettes and vow to quit back in London. I listen to some terrible Spanish radio and veer between manically tapping my feet and obsessively checking my mirrors to see whether the Artemises have emerged yet. A younger crowd is pulling up, it seems the casino gets livelier as the night goes on. I’m guessing that this probably means the olds push off earlier, and I’m right. The steps are soon busy with women swathed in Hermès scarves and men waving car tickets. They are all wearing expressions which signal a mix of wealth and angry entitlement. Bang, there they are. Kathleen with a gift bag, stumbling just a little. Jeremy with a cigar. Must have been a fun night. I’m glad. I’m not a monster. It’s nice that they’re leaving the world on a high note. It’s more than Marie was given, but I must be the better person here. I’m going to decimate their entire family, the least I can allow them is a goody bag and a spin at the roulette table.
They head down the steps and Jeremy gives the valet their ticket. This is my cue. I turn on the engine and head out of the car park. I’ve told you I haven’t planned this, and I’m not being falsely modest. I have a vague idea, which seemed pretty solid back in London, but now I’m here, I’m not in any way confident that I’ll even get the chance to try it out. But I’m here, driving fast down the windy roads below the casino, following the route that the Artemis seniors will hopefully take to their villa. After a few minutes I turn onto the cliff road, darker and more bumpy. I estimate that I’m about ten minutes ahead of the couple if they drive cautiously, and I need to find the right spot – I marked it the other day, but in the dark the road seems to want to conceal it.
I’m going too fast, and I can feel the lump in my throat taking up its usual place, threatening to overwhelm me. WHERE IS THIS FUCKING SPOT? I breathe through my nose, and talk to myself out loud, ‘You’ll find it, you’ve got time, Grace. It’s OK.’
I drive past and brake, just like they teach you to do in lessons, as if anyone ever does a perfect emergency stop in real life without causing a pile-up. But the road is dead, and all I can hear is cicadas. I do a U-turn, which takes a few goes in this ridiculous vehicle, and pull into the lay-by, letting my breathing return to normal, waiting for the lump to go. I’ve got a clear view of the road from here, and if I’d missed this spot, I wouldn’t have had another before they arrived home. I wait, drinking in the silence.
Headlights. A car dipping in and out of view as it winds down towards me. I’ve got two minutes. I rev the engine, as if this tank needs some extra persuasion, and drive, holding the steering wheel with locked arms. The car comes into view – they are slow, cautious, taking their time. As I abruptly spin the wheel and accelerate towards them, I see Kathleen’s mouth form a perfect O, before she covers her head and the lights blind me. The impact of my swerve forces me back into my seat and I brake fast. The car almost bucks from the command, as if annoyed by the interruption. As I rub my head and look up, all I can see is dust from the road and a satisfyingly large gap in the stubby bushes on the side of the cliff.
I pull the car over, tuck it into the other side of the road and turn off the lights. I’ve got a little time before I have to head back, leaving Amir’s car at the club before I retrieve my hire car and go to the airport. I grab my torch and shakily pull on the latex gloves, breaking the thumb portion on my left hand. The matches and little perfume bottle go in my pocket. I cross the road and hover on the cliff edge. My plimsolls aren’t up for a big scramble and I can’t quite see how far the car has travelled until a scan with the torch shows it about 15 metres down and upside down, cradled by a bush.
I should really turn back, get to the airport, leave the scene clean. Whatever happens now, I can get away. But where would the fun be in my grandparents dying without ever knowing my role in it all? It’s vanity really, and I’m inexperienced in the art of murder – next time I won’t allow myself this indulgence. But I climb down the cliff, holding onto bits of scrubby plants and crouching low so I don’t tumble towards the darkness. I reach the car. It’s hard to tell what’s happening inside, since branches seem to crisscross the doors. I shuffle up the car on the driver’s side and twist my head upside down, shining my torch into the glass. Jeremy is suspended, his head hanging over the seatbelt. He looks uninjured, apart from being very definitely unconscious and upside down. Kathleen is clearly dead, no forensic expertise needed here, since you definitely need your head to be attached to your body to stay alive, and a tree branch has considerately removed that requirement for me.
I yank at Jeremy’s door, but nothing happens. So I try the door behind his seat, and it opens enough for me to be able to squeeze my head in – just behind his seat rest. I stroke his haughty face, now thin and bleeding, and listen to his ragged breathing. I get as close as I can, which is difficult as he’s upside down and I’m twisting like a pretzel, and whisper his name. His eyes open a crack and he whimpers as I begin to speak.
‘Kathleen is dead, Jeremy, I’m so sorry. I don’t think you’re going to make it either, but you’re not alone. Do you recognise me? I’m Grace – your granddaughter. Simon’s daughter.’ He twitches ever so slightly. ‘Yes, Marie’s child. I’m so sorry that we never met before, well, this sad day. But then you made sure of that, didn’t you? You didn’t want me anywhere near your family. That’s all right, Jeremy, I don’t think we’d have got along really. But it wasn’t kind, was it? And so now you have to go, I’m afraid. Not for me, you see, but for my mother. Family first – I know you understand that. Oh, and it’s not just you and your wife, Jeremy. That’s the really good bit.’
Pulling out the perfume bottle, I turn his head towards me as gently as I can, and look into a single grey eye. ‘I’m going to kill your whole family.’ As I say it, I yank his tie towards me, and he slumps. I pull it from his collar, carefully roll it up and stuff it into my pocket. My little Spanish souvenir. Then I open the bottle, and strike a match.
CHAPTER TWO
The guards bang on our cells at 8 a.m., before handing over breakfast on a tray and departing. Obviously it’s not poached eggs and fresh coffee. We are given teabags, milk, and two slices of white bread made so cheaply that I held a slice back last month just to see what would happen to it. Nothing, as it turned out. It curled up at the corners slightly, but other than that was worryingly unaffected. It reminded me of a story we were told at school, about how the poor in the nineteenth century were sold bread which was made with chalk and other inedible substances to pack it out. Prisons, mostly now run by private companies with ridiculous made-up names designed to sound commanding, would probably admire such methods and rue the day food standards were imposed. I don’t have much of an appetite in here as it happens. The prison diet could surely be marketed to those vain Instagrammers who shill appetite suppressants and dubious vitamins. Just eat bland dough three times a day, and trade anything left over for cigarettes – your standard-issue tracksuit will be suitably loose in no time.
Kelly asks if I want to talk anything over, tilting her head in what I imagine she thinks is a sympathetic gesture. She knows my final appeal is due any day now, and her recent forays into group therapy seem to have convinced her that she has a bright future in counselling. I have to stifle the urge to explain that the best therapy that Harley Street has to offer wouldn’t help me much, so I doubt that Kelly’s offer of trying to contact my inner child will suddenly fix whatever she imagines might be wrong with me. Besides the fact that Kelly is an undeniable moron, I think talking is overrated. As my mum used to say ‘never complain, never explain’. Although she died inconsiderately early, and left me to rectify the wrongs done to her, which is why I’m here. A bit more complaining might not have been such a bad thing, on balance.
After Kelly takes the hint and wanders off to go and coach someone else, I settle down on my bunk to start writing down my story. I’ve not got long if I want to set it all out in full – the result of my appeal will be with me shortly, according to the long-faced solicitor I’ve engaged, who wears the most beautifully tailored suits when he visits, but spoils the entire look by pairing them with garish loafers. I imagine he thinks these add a touch of character but they tell me that actually he has none. Perhaps a younger second wife bought them in the hope of making him seem more youthful. I wish she hadn’t. Absurd vanity is not a trait I particularly wish to see in a lawyer attempting to get me out of a life sentence. Especially not if my hefty fees encourage him to buy more of the terrible things.
I was born twenty-eight years ago, at the Whittington hospital, the only daughter of Marie Bernard, a young Frenchwoman who had been living in London for three years before falling pregnant with me. After giving birth alone, she took me back to her studio flat in Holloway where I first experienced the boredom and claustrophobia of a confined space and all the limited joys of a toilet in the bedroom. Studio is such a misleading description when applied to property, conjuring images of an airy and large room where one is bound to be creative and perhaps hold chic gatherings where beautiful people hang over balconies to smoke. Our flat was on the fifth floor of a building which housed a chicken shop at ground level. The landlord, perhaps as part of a complicated social experiment to see how many people he could house in one old Victorian building meant for four, had divided up each floor to make three flats each. My mother and I lived in one room, with a small attic window which did not open (either because of an impressive accumulation of pigeon shit, or because said landlord didn’t want us to be tempted to yell at passersby to save us, we never did find out which). This sounds quaintly Dickensian, doesn’t it? It was not. Don’t forget the chicken shop. My mum slept on the pull-out sofa, and I had the single bed. I still get stabs of guilt when I think of how hard she worked, and how tired she was, and yet still always insisted that she liked the lumpy couch. As a selfish child, I didn’t think to offer her the bed. As a grown-up, I splashed out on a king-size memory foam job from John Lewis, but never stopped falling asleep thinking about her on that sofa. It rather ruined the extravagance, if I’m honest.
Marie had come to England because she’d been told she was pretty enough to be a model, and she was. My mother was strikingly beautiful, with olive skin, and shaggy brown hair which she clipped up in a bun no matter how many times I implored her to wear it down. She had that effortless French girl vibe, which every fashion influencer tries to copy now, to varying degrees of success. No bra, ever. Wide slacks and a long gold chain upon which hung a miniature portrait of an old man, his identity lost to time. Before I came along, she’d done a few small campaigns, modelling for high street stores that were long gone by the time I was born. Kookai, she insisted, was the coolest shop of its day, and she kept a rolled-up poster that she’d featured in, which had hung in their shop windows for an autumn campaign. In it, she’s crouched on the ground, a brown cardigan draped over her knees, covering a short dress and platform trainers, which I’ve seen making a regrettable return to high streets recently.
My mother was too short for catwalk modelling, and her career never took off in the way she had dreamt about when she came to London and shared a flat with two other European girls seeking success. But she certainly had fun for a while. The London nightlife in the early Nineties, was, to hear Marie tell it, a golden age. Evenings at Tramp, a private members club which opened in 1969, were almost as glamorous as when Liza Minnelli used to frequent it. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, she’d lie next to me on my small bed and tell me about the champagne served with sparklers in it, and the leather banquettes in the restaurant, where she would dine with actors and sports stars and dance until dawn. You could smoke inside, she used to tell me, and the richest women wore fur unapologetically. Her life before me appeared to be one long whirl of parties and castings. A woman blessed with such innate beauty doesn’t have to try particularly hard, it’s always seemed to me, and Marie never worried too much about money or the future. Someone would always look after the French girl who never wore a bra and wanted to have fun. Someone will always zoom in on the girl who doesn’t know her worth.
Besides, my mother had already met the man she would give her whole heart to. The man who would become my father. The man who would promise her the world and shower her with gifts. The man who I would grow up swearing to ruin.
CHAPTER THREE
Even now, just thinking about that man makes me tense up. I force myself to breathe deeply. I am a master of self-control. It hasn’t come naturally. As a child, I used to throw tremendous tantrums and dive on the floor if something displeased me, as my mother gazed on in amusement and apologised to those around us. That sense of drama lives on inside me, but I’ve long learnt to keep it in check. If you’re going to execute a plan to, well, execute a bunch of people, you cannot let your emotions run wild. It would all get very messy, and there would be nothing worse than to be found out because you were too self-indulgent to maintain self-control. As when I was a child, I have ended up suffering the indignity of having to use a toilet three feet from my bed. But at least it wasn’t because I gave myself away with a foolish flair for the dramatic.
I am breathing normally again within a minute. Did you know that Hillary Clinton practised nostril breathing when she lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump? She relied on wine as well of course, but losing to such an ignoramus required more. Nostril breathing requires you to breathe in heavily through one nostril, and expel the air deeply through the same cavity. You might scoff, but it helps to calm me down quickly, and it helps to have techniques like this in prison, where you can’t rely on quality pharmaceuticals, or a decent glass of Merlot at the end of the night. At night, when I cannot sleep and my thoughts invariably turn to my life’s work, I often think of Mrs Clinton, up against that flashy orange moron. Whatever her politics, she stood up to a bully who refused to abide by convention or decency. A person like that can drive you to madness without any noticeable exertion, while you employ all the strength you have just to hold the
line and maintain a sliver of your humanity. Hillary had one advantage over me. Her opponent was a man she could walk away from in defeat. Mine was my father. OK, perhaps I had the advantage. Clinton couldn’t kill Trump, much as she must’ve wanted to. I wish she’d had the opportunity, I find it relaxes one far more than plain old nostril breathing.
* * *
Marie met my father in 1991. He was gone before I was born. She made sure that I grew up surrounded by love, but by the time I went to primary school, it became clear to me that this love, fulsome as it was, was only coming from one direction. Other children had daddies, I would tell her, as she fussed over my dinner, or washed my hair in lukewarm water over the little sink. In the beginning, my mother would try to distract me, but by the time I was nine, she understood that my wilful nature was only growing stronger, and she sat me down one day after school, and told me about my father. Most of what I know I learnt from digging around later on, since Marie obviously wanted to give me a Disneyfied version of the man who willingly gave up his seed to create me without a thought about the later consequences.
Marie met him at – where else – a nightclub. He had been a little older, she said (later I found out that he was twenty-two years older. How little young women think of themselves), and he had sent champagne to her across the dancefloor. Marie had sent the bemused waiter away, she was having too much fun dancing, with no need for a bucket of Veuve Clicquot. I have been to clubs like this and I have seen men like my father, night after night, as they make themselves comfortable in dark corners, watching young women putting on a show for whomever they think might be watching, waiting to be invited to a table where someone will buy them prohibitively expensive drinks. If my mother had been like all the other girls, there would have been some dancing, a whispered exchange, perhaps even a pleading dinner or two. And that is where it would have fizzled, just another beautiful girl, just another entitled rich man. Except my mother sent back the champagne. And nobody had ever done such a thing to this particular rich man. I conjure up this moment in my mind from time to time. I like to imagine that he couldn’t stand to watch her dancing so joyously, throwing off his attempts to impress so easily. I can see him now – reassessing, working his reptilian mind harder than usual to come up with a new plan, a way to command her attention. To bend her to his will.