The Fall (13 page)

They’d have to have it black. Any chance of biscuits? In the fridge were Yorkshire teacakes and he couldn’t help himself saying, ‘You’re from the north? Really?’

She didn’t look round. ‘My mother lives there. In the Peaks.’

‘I’m from the Lakes myself. Barrow.’ His accent came tripping through, running up like an eager dog. ‘God, you never see teacakes in the south.’

‘Have one.’ She couldn’t have been less interested.

He brought her tea and she ignored it, even though he slipped a coaster under it, a floral one he was sure had been her choice. ‘Haven’t you been eating, then?’ She was even thinner than before.

‘No. I was desperate to lose weight for today too – didn’t realise this would be the best way. To have my life ruined, I mean.’

‘You need to eat.’ He took out his phone.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Ordering a pizza.’

‘What – no! I don’t eat pizza. What—’

He held up his hand. ‘Yes, hello? Can I order a pizza – have you got a Hawaiian? Large one, please.’ He told them the address and hung up.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Girls always like Hawaiians.’

She tutted. ‘Yeah, because we’re all the same. I won’t eat it.’

But when it came she picked at one slice, then another, finally eating three, which he suspected was more than she’d had all week. His pineapple bits were lined up along the edge of the box lid, never could stand fruit on savoury food. ‘You look less peaky now.’

‘Who are you, my mother?’

‘Hope not. You said she did your head in.’ He whisked away the box and napkins, tidying the mess up efficiently. Once the pizza was finished and he’d taken a few details about the graffiti, Hegarty felt he should go. He wouldn’t be able to do much. He picked up his jacket and draped it over his shoulder. ‘Have you thought about what you’ll do? Are you going back to work?’

She winced. ‘I couldn’t. This wedding, it’s all I’ve talked about for months.’

‘You should go in,’ he said gently. ‘Try to keep things going.’

‘For when he comes back, you mean?’ For the first time she looked up.

He made a vague noise. ‘He’d want you to look after yourself, wouldn’t he?’ And she would need a job to pay legal fees.

Charlotte let out a shaky breath. ‘Maybe I’ll try to go in on Monday.’

‘Good.’ He resisted the urge to stroke her tousled hair. ‘I’ll be off. Look after yourself, Miss Miller. And you should really keep your doors locked.’

‘Please, don’t call me Miss – oooh!’ A big sob tore out of her and she put her hands up to her mouth. ‘I just realised!’ She had turned pale green, and he thought for a moment she might faint. He’d never seen a girl faint before – none of the Barrow locals would ever do something so weak – but Charlotte looked as if a wind could blow her away.

‘Easy now, sit back.’

‘It’s when you said Miss – I realised. It was meant to be Mrs today, wasn’t it? I was going to be Mrs Stockbridge.’ She barked out a short bitter laugh. ‘Everything was going to be different.’

Well, it certainly would be, but not as she’d hoped.

‘Officer? Is there any chance . . . Are you still looking into the case?’

He said nothing for a moment. ‘We still are, of course. But there’s a lot of evidence against him, you know.’ That was putting it mildly.

Her face was blank, like she couldn’t take it in.

‘You take care,’ he said again, tearing himself away from her bright hair and bruised face.

As he opened the door to leave, a man was standing in the corridor, staring at an iPhone with a map open on it. His hair was greying, and his suit must have cost more than Hegarty paid for his first car.

‘The door was open. I was looking for number three.’

‘Yeah, you’ve found it. I was just leaving.’

The two men sized each other up. Charlotte heard the voices.

‘Hello?’ Tremulous, she was coming to the door. She stared at the man as if she’d seen a ghost. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

The man said, ‘Well, the tickets were booked, so I thought I’d do some business, and then— Christ, what happened to your
face?
’

A choking sob rose up in her and her eyes glazed with tears again. ‘Oh, Daddy. It’s all ruined. Everything’s ruined.’

Hegarty shut the door on them and went home, where he played
Pro-Evolution Soccer
and ate an M&S Korma in front of the telly, alone in his small flat with the blare of sirens all night long.

Keisha woke up in a strange place – her mum’s bed. Ruby had Keisha’s old room now, and she didn’t think she could stand sleeping in there with the kid’s things all round.

Her mother, so prudish, had written down what she needed from home in case anyone overheard ‘pants’ or ‘nightdress’. Mercy was on nil-by-mouth but she still asked for ‘a little something sweet’.

‘Yeah, right. Doctor said your cholesterol was through the bloody roof.’ Keisha kind of enjoyed scolding her mother like this. It made her feel maybe she was being an OK daughter after all, and it was a nice change from always being the one in the wrong. ‘They said you could have a cup of tea tomorrow. Nothing else.’

Mercy sulked. ‘So I can die of thirst then.’

‘You’ve got a drip!’ Somehow Keisha understood without being told that the drip was for liquids, so they didn’t go through your stomach, and you couldn’t puke up if you needed surgery. ‘I’ll need the key, Mum. I didn’t bring mine. Oh, shit.’ She’d just remembered again – Chris had her key. Or at least it had been in the flat, but maybe he didn’t know. If the almighty God her mother believed in existed at all, he didn’t know.

Mercy was half-asleep. ‘Language . . . In my bag . . . Don’t be making a mess now. Get Ruby up for school . . .’

Keisha wanted to say it, but didn’t. Ruby wasn’t there any more. She’d vanished, who knew where.

Back at the house she bolted the back door and went round to check all the windows. There was no reason he’d come back, was there? Maybe he knew Ruby was in care. Maybe he’d try to find her – but no, that was daft. Chris was far too lazy to try to track down a kid through the foster system, wasn’t he? She had to think that even if Ruby was gone, she was safe. She fell asleep thinking of her daughter in a snug room, all the windows locked and a burglar alarm, maybe a huge foster dad who did boxing . . .

The next day she packed up her mum’s things, the knickers bigger than T-shirts, the nightie like a sheet, her toothbrush and Bible. Some Tena Lady pads – Keisha threw them into the bag, embarrassed to think about why her mother needed incontinence pads. She was only sixty.

When she left the house to walk the short way up to the hospital, past the fancy cafés of Hampstead, she looked about her and drew up her hood. You never knew who might be around, did you?

Mercy seemed better that day; that is, she was grumpy as fuck. ‘Tchuh, this nightie! I will be shamed, so old.’

Keisha sank into the plastic chair. ‘How was I meant to know?’

‘This nurse, she don’t give me a bath today. How can I keep decent for the doctors?’ It was true Mercy was giving off a bit of a cheesy whiff.

‘They said you could get up today. Didn’t they?’

She waved an impatient hand. ‘One say this, one say the other ting. I want to go home. Where’s my baby?’

‘I dunno. I was on hold for, like, an hour yesterday. Couldn’t get through to Sandra.’ Sandra was probably at a seminar on using people’s names a lot when you talked to them, or some shit like that.

‘You call them again. She can come home with me.’

‘Sure, sure.’ It wasn’t worth discussing now, what was going to happen with Ruby. Since Keisha had nowhere to live, would they let her move in with her mum and the kid? Then she’d have her back, in a way. But what if
he
came?

Her mother was rustling impatiently through the local paper, which she’d insisted Keisha bring from the gift shop. ‘Look, look. Here.’ She tapped a small notice in the back.

‘So, it’s a funeral. What about it?’

‘You will go.’

‘Me? You’re joking.’ Keisha hadn’t been in a church since she left her mother’s.

‘They will not let me go, even though I am in good health. But you must go for me – a good church family. Such a terrible thing, ah!’ She sucked at her teeth. ‘I cry when I hear it. These gangs over here, it is just as bad as Kingston when I left. That poor lady! To lose a son!’

Irritated by the suggestion that losing a son was worse than a daughter, Keisha said, ‘Who are you on about?’ She peered at the paper.
Funeral service for Anthony Johnson
, it said. The name rang many bells; big, heavy, dull ones. ‘You knew him?’

‘His mother, from church. Good Christian lady. This boy, not so good, but he would have come round. Ah, God, have mercy!’

Keisha remembered him, his hand halfway up that girl’s skirt. ‘I can’t go.’ What if
he
went? He’d gone to the court case.

She was definite: there was nothing she wanted to do less than go to a funeral, in a church, of someone whose death she maybe knew too much about, and possibly have to see the guy who’d beaten her up and given her mother a heart attack. But then Mercy had a big wheezing fit, flapping her arms and turning an even darker shade of plum, and the nurses came rushing over and gave her oxygen, and elbowed Keisha out of the way. She heard mutterings about prepping her mum for theatre.

‘What is it? What’s happening?’ She turned between them, the doctors, the nurses, these people in red and blue entirely focused on wrapping her mother up in tubes and stopping the awful choking noise.

‘Please!’ She never said please. ‘What’s going on?’

One of the nurses looked at her quickly, then away to the clipboard. ‘She might need surgery. Please, you need to let us work. Wait outside.’

As they whisked her mother’s body away down the long squeaking corridor, Keisha heard herself shouting, ‘OK, I’ll go! Mum! I’ll go to the bloody funeral!’

On the Sunday after the not-wedding day, Charlotte had to make her first visit to Dan in HMP Pentonville, and she was so nervous she almost vomited when she cleaned her teeth. The brandies her father had poured down her at Claridge’s the night before didn’t help. She had to get a grip. It was only Dan.

Her father hadn’t offered to go with her. He couldn’t anyway – you had to book. This was just one of many things she hadn’t known last week that she now had to. Dan was allowed more visits because he was on remand. Three times a week, they said, as if that was
generous
. It was a strange state to be in, since technically you were innocent, not convicted of any crime. But you were in prison, and your girlfriend – almost your wife! – had to get permission to come and see you.

God, what did you wear to visit your (innocent) fiancé in prison? She tried to put together an outfit that would make her look pretty, but not too tarty and not too well-off – she didn’t think they got many bankers in prison.

He was leaving already, her father. Stephanie wanted him back to go to an art fair, he said. He’d taken Charlotte out for dinner on what should have been her wedding night. A fancy meal was the last thing she needed, but that was him all over. Spending his money where it would be most conspicuous. Pretending he enjoyed eating liver and quails’ eggs, when she knew his favourite dinner used to be pie and chips.

He’d talked at length about how it was a disgrace that they hadn’t given him a refund on the flight, so he’d decided he might as well come. How it was lucky he’d been able to spend the morning with his broker, not a complete waste of time. Eating her rich, thick
foie gras
, Charlotte was too dulled to be upset. She kept thinking,
Now we’d be sitting down to eat. Now we’d have the speeches
.

Her father had ordered brandies and talked about the financial crisis. ‘I always said there was too little discipline in the banks. No wonder they have all these claims for stress at work. Stress! They don’t know the meaning of it. Aren’t you eating your dinner, Charlotte?’

She should tell him that if he really wanted to pass for posh it was ‘supper’, not dinner. ‘Oh, I am, just slowly.’ She tried to take a bite.

‘I’ve been thinking, now all this wedding business is knocked on the head, you might like to think about coming out East. Lots of opportunities there.’

She put down her fork. ‘Dan’s not even had his trial yet, Dad.’

‘Doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.’

Dan was always so good with her father, humouring his tetchy opinions, letting himself be lectured about wine and cars.

‘Dad, he needs a lawyer. Can you – do you know how I do it? I don’t know what to do, and the money—’

He misunderstood. Deliberately? ‘Of course he needs a lawyer. Wasn’t his father some big-shot judge? They’ll be able to help, I’m sure.’

Her dad was supposed to have been making his father-of-the-bride speech now, she thought. She’d only asked him out of tradition, and here he was urging her to leave the country, and her fiancé not a week in jail. ‘Excuse me.’ She walked through the restaurant as slowly as she could manage, then bolted into the ladies’ and threw up the brandy and pigeon and
foie gras
in two choking retches. She wiped her face and looked in the mirror at her swollen lip, the stitches still visible, the black and green eye, the whites bloodshot from tears. Her tongue found the gap where her tooth had been and she thought again:
What’s happening to me?

Why get upset? Dan used to say. People don’t change. In so many ways her father, Jonathan Miller, was still the same man who’d shaken her off as she clung to his leg the day he left. She’d been eight, and until yesterday that had been the last time she’d cried in front of him, when he told her twenty years ago that he was moving to some place called Singapore with a Dutch broker called Stephanie, and that no, he wouldn’t be back for her birthday party. Up till now, that had been the worst day of her life.

Abandoning her efforts to find the right visiting-your-fiancé-in-prison outfit, she settled on jeans. It wasn’t as if any of it mattered.

Her stomach churning with nerves, like a combination of a job interview and performing live on stage, she made her way through the quiet Sunday streets. They had always loved Sundays, the one day where Dan would put away his spreadsheets, at least till the evening. The streets were sunny, people walking past with tennis racquets, babies in slings, the women in huge sunglasses and the men in polo shirts. What crap they talked. Jasper’s prep school. Our house is worth less than we paid. Holidays in Sardinia. That was the middle-class enclave she lived in. She’d never felt so left out of it before.