The Long Fall (27 page)

Six

After cleaning her teeth to get rid of the taste of vomit, Kate took a long, hot shower to soothe away the evening. It didn’t work. Her fingertips still itched; the guilt at what she had caused to happen to Beattie still ate away at her concave stomach.

At least, she thought, as she towelled herself dry, Tilly was going away in the morning. At least she wouldn’t be walking down Bridge Lane at night for another six months, when all this would hopefully be in the past, where it belonged.

She went down to the kitchen, filled a large glass with the remainder of the third bottle of red and took it up to her office, where she found an email from Jake.

Skype me
, it said. Just that.

Like a finger click from her past.

As she stared at the screen wondering what she was going to say to the man she was beginning to think of as The American Shit, she thought about Beattie’s split lip, about the look on her face as she stood in the doorway earlier that evening, her knees tattered, her palms ripped.

The whole thing was monstrous. It was thirty-three years after the deed he was demanding that they pay for. She had to stand up to him or they would be lost.

Firing up Skype, she found that Jake_1959 had asked to be her contact and was there, online, waiting for her call. She supposed – possibly cruelly – that with his disability he had little else to do in his life other than hound her and Beattie. He could make it his full-time job, if he wanted.

She called him and waited. She was just about to give up when he answered, his image looming full into view on her large monitor.

She sat back a little, keeping her distance. Then, emboldened by the wine, and before he had a chance to get a word in, she launched herself at him.

‘How could you do that to Beattie? I can’t believe you. You send me completely unreasonable demands and then you expect me to jump when you whistle and do what you want straightaway without question? Don’t you think I’ve got a right to know that you’re going to use my money well? I know you and your appetites. I – I –’

She stopped, her legs trembling. Jake, too, was shaking. His whole body was in spasm, as if he were having some sort of fit.

She leaned forward and squinted at the screen. Was he all right? Was something happening to him? Might he be suffocating? Was his breathing machine letting him down? She watched carefully, willing it to happen.

Waiting to watch him die in front of her eyes. Again.

But, with the terrible rattle and whoosh of the breathing apparatus, she realised that, far from dying, he was laughing.

Laughing at her.

This could have – should have, perhaps – fuelled her anger, but instead she felt as if she were crumpling, shrinking. She saw her image in the corner of the screen getting even tinier in her big, expensive back-friendly work chair. Tears pricked at her eyes.

‘Oh my dear. Oh little Em,’ Jake said, after he had regained his composure. ‘My, can’t you just stamp your little foot until it hurts? Where did you learn to speak like that? From your wealthy, powerful, perfect husband? Or is there some rich-bitch wife/entitled mom school?’

‘You set some thugs on Beattie,’ she said, hearing her voice squeak over the vowels. ‘Again.’

‘Did I? Oh, oh, I’m sorry. Did they get carried away? Oh, I do hope she’s OK.’

‘She’s at the hospital now.’

‘Hospital? What? In case she can get some compensation? That greedy little fuck.’

‘Don’t talk about her like that, and no. The police need to have a doctor’s report on her injuries.’

‘Police? Oh, please don’t tell me you’re doing something stupid. I know you’re careless. Evil, possibly. But I didn’t have you down as stupid.’

Evil. Kate looked down at her hands, which hung over the keyboard like sparrow’s claws. ‘She told Mark she was mugged, so he called the police.’

Jake tilted himself forward so that his face was very close to the camera. She could see right up his nostrils, where a lump of something clung to a hair. How could she once have desired this flesh?

It wasn’t because of his disability, she told herself. If it were Mark in that position, she would take care of him and feel exactly the same about him as she did now he was strong and active. Even – though she didn’t manage to wholly convince herself on this point – if he were to balloon in weight and lose himself under a forest of facial hair. Not that, if she were caring for him, that sort of thing would happen.

So then there she was again, tied up in knots because, if she had loved Jake and if the terrible things hadn’t happened, then perhaps, even if he had ended up disabled for some reason or another, at least he would be slimmer, with better hair.

She almost laughed out loud at the depths of her shallowness.

‘Jake.’ She put her hands flat on the desk and positioned her face right up against the monitor. If it weren’t for the world wide web spanning the distance between them, they would be as close as lovers. ‘You brought all of this on yourself. If you hadn’t attacked Beattie, then none of the rest would have happened. Perhaps,’ she said, looking straight into his startling eyes, ‘we would be together now.’

‘Oh Emma,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘You’re killing me.’

She threw herself back in her chair. Was he taking the piss? Was he being serious? She didn’t know. She had no idea how to approach him.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘who did Beattie say mugged her?’

‘Some kids.’

‘Some black kids?’

‘Yes.’

Again Jake started shaking. ‘Oh, good ol’ Bee. We can rely on her for some Down South casual racism, heh?’

‘She comes from New York, remember.’

‘What?’ Jake stopped shaking. His chin fell into his neck. ‘Oh OK. Yeah, New York. I always think of her as Southern, with all that la-di-dah genteel middle-aged shtick she seems to have built up around herself. She’s a total drag now, ain’t she, Emma? An energy drain. A vortex. Don’t you think? Not like you, I bet you’ve still got it when it counts, eh? Still a little firecracker.’

‘Don’t try to turn me against her,’ Kate said, rubbing the back of her neck. ‘It won’t work.’

‘Oh, you’re so faithful. Such a good friend after all these years.’

‘You are so full of hate, aren’t you?’

‘WOULDN’T YOU BE?’

‘I don’t want to talk about this any more. It just goes round and round in circles.’

‘Well,’ Jake said, levering himself slightly away from the camera, ‘let’s get down to business. You think, Emma, that you can make demands of me.’

‘I just asked for—’

‘Well, you listen here. You forfeited your rights to ask anything of me thirty-three years ago on a cliff in Greece. OK?’

‘But—’

‘You really lucked out, didn’t you? Good health, the impossibly good-looking, kind and loving husband. The clever, pretty daughter. All that money. The lovely place in Battersea, the beautiful house with the far-reaching blue sea and sand views in Cornwall. Strange name,
Gwel an Mor
.’

‘How did you—?’

‘They tell me it looks lovely.’

‘WHO tells you?’

‘My homies. My peeps. Surely Beattie told you? It wouldn’t be like her to miss out on a bit of melodramatic gossip. These people I exercise my arcane computing skills for are not the nicest of guys. But they bear immense gratitude to me, and they help me out in whatever ways they can. And you should be grateful too, at what I’m offering you.’

‘What do you mean, “offering” me?’

‘You don’t believe you deserve any of all that luck you’ve landed, do you? And rightly so. That silly little charity of yours is just your small way of feeling better about it all, isn’t it? Because even little Martha’s tragic death didn’t help, not really, did it?’

He had to stop talking to take another in-breath. Then he continued:

‘Emma, my LOVE. Remember: my offer is to help you out here. With your reparation. You pay me what I need, without asking too many questions, and, hey, you feel better. Who knows, you might actually start to enjoy yourself a little more. Remember what happened on Ikaria? The day before you tried to kill me?’

‘I didn’t try to kill you.’

‘Semantics. Remember when we kissed?’

Kate closed her eyes.

‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’

She nodded. The tears, which had threatened to engulf her since she realised he was laughing at her, finally appeared.

‘But I don’t think you’ve been able to enjoy yourself, since, have you? Whatever’s eating Emma James? Eh?’

Kate said nothing.

‘Not talkative? Oh well. We can get round to that some other time. I’m pretty pooped now, and I should imagine that you are too, after the evening you’ve had.’

‘How do you know so much about me?’

‘Takes one to know one, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m nothing like you.’

‘Really? I would have said we were both of a piece.’ He paused again, while the machine gave him breath. ‘This is what happens next. I want that money in my account in three days. What happened to Beattie was just a hint at what this old crip can do. I am serious. Believe me. If you do not let me have my money, you will really, really regret it.’

He did something with his good hand and a message popped up on the screen.

‘I’ve just sent you a link to a YouTube video. It’s private at the moment, but I’ve made sure you can use it, my Face of Kindness. Or should I say Kate62.’

‘You know my YouTube account.’

‘Why wouldn’t I? There’s a load of stuff I know about you, Ems. Like I say, the video is private at the moment, just between you and me. But I can easily, easily make it more widely available should I deem it necessary. In the meantime, I wish you well, my lovely Emma.’

He moved to disconnect himself, but then he paused, frowning, as if struck by a new thought. ‘Oh yes. Do you know that your daughter walks home at night with her headphones on? You really should discourage that, Emma. It’s not at all safe. Not for a pretty girl like that.’

Anger cut through Kate’s tears, sizzling them like a hot knife.

‘ALL RIGHT!’ she said. ‘All right. I’ll get the money to you. But it’ll take five days.’

‘It will take three days.’

Kate rubbed her stinging eyes.

‘All right. Three. But I want your word that when you’ve got it, you’ll not bother us any more. Not me. Not Beattie.’

Jake’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her. ‘You have my word, Ems, then, if that’s what you want. Three days, mind. And don’t forget to look at that little YouTube clip, will you?’

‘Why are you so—’ Kate started to say, but the familiar Skype parting sigh evaporated him from her screen.

With both hands, she scratched her scalp until it nearly bled. Her stitches throbbed, her skin felt as if it might crackle right off her.

Dreading what she might see, she clicked the link Jake had messaged her.

Looming up into the YouTube window was her own, thin, worried face, sitting exactly where she was at that moment – it was almost as if she were looking at herself in a mirror. The background noise was different, though. Instead of the traffic that rumbled ceaselessly up and down Battersea Bridge Road, there was the sound of Jake’s breathing machine, and a shuffling sound that could or could not have been a dog somewhere near the microphone.

‘No, no. That’s not what I mean,’ her mirror-self said.

‘So which part of it are you sorry for?’ Jake’s voice rumbled close to the microphone. ‘Pushing me off a cliff and killing me? Or not realising that you hadn’t actually succeeded, and leaving me for dead?’

Kate watched herself. The lump in her throat – was it an Adam’s apple or a swollen thyroid gland? She had never really noticed it before – bobbed up and down as she swallowed.

‘I’m sorry for all of it.’

‘SAY IT PROPERLY. Sorry for WHAT?’

Her reply – her confession – was distant, crackled, out of synch with her lips. But there it was. Filmed. Posted. Ready to show the world unless she paid up.

The bastard.

Her heart thumped against her ribs. She wanted to get on a plane, track him down and really kill him, properly this time.

But what good would come of it?

She didn’t believe in evil. But if she did, what Jake was doing was exactly that.

She put her forehead on her keyboard and, once more, she wept.

Seven

Despite the weariness that came with feeling that her entire being had been wrung out, Kate had to take three pills to knock herself out.

So she didn’t wake when Mark came in from looking after Beattie. Nor, once again, did she even stir when he got himself up and disappeared to the office.

She had the consolation of knowing that he had been home, though. As was his nightly habit, he had thrown two of his three pillows onto the floor when he went to sleep. Following her own morning routine, she replaced them when she made the bed in her classic five-star hotel turndown style.

She performed a couple of yoga asanas, just enough to raise the grogginess that clasped at her like a shroud. Then she stood in her walk-in wardrobe deciding what to wear for her visit to the bank. The night before, after watching her YouTube performance, she had transferred almost all the cash from various accounts to the current account she shared with Mark, which, thankfully, he never looked at or touched.

The sum she then had to transfer to Jake so far exceeded even their private bank’s Internet floor-trading limit that she would have to go in and authorise it in person. So today, after taking Tilly to the airport – something she was now viewing more with relief than trepidation – that was where she was heading. She planned to explain the money transfer away as something to do with a property development project in the States.

Planning her wardrobe for the day, she laid out a simple woollen tunic and matching trousers to wear to take Tilly to the airport at eleven. For the afternoon, she chose a well-cut Prada suit which she had worn a couple of times in the past for meetings with potential Martha’s Wish donors. It made her look business-like and in control, a far cry from what she was actually feeling.

She laid the suit out on her bed, and selected shoes, stockings and the simple gold necklace Mark had bought her when he first saw her in the suit. He enjoyed accessorising any special outfit she bought – so much so that most of her jewellery had been acquired this way.

She shouldn’t feel so uneasy about the bank visit – she was an old hand at playing the rich woman. Even so, the role always seemed to require some effort.

Still in her workout clothes, she ran upstairs to her office and found her passport and birth certificate, ID for the bank, to safeguard against money laundering. She looked at her papers – real enough but certainly false – and admired the irony that they would do the trick.

Her mouth hangover-rough and dry, she decided to make herself a cup of tea before she showered.

But when she opened the door to the kitchen, she almost yelped with shock. She had thought herself alone in the house. But there was someone else sitting at the kitchen island, bundled in one of her snowy-white guest dressing gowns, eating a bowl of her own special muesli. Kate’s initial instinct was to bolt for the door – Jake’s comments about his ‘peeps’ being ‘not necessarily nice’ rose high in her mind.

But then the figure turned to face her and Kate saw, with some relief, that it was only Beattie.

‘Oh, hi, honey,’ she said, swivelling round on the tall white stool. A couple of stitches protruded from her lower lip and her black eye had bloomed to the colour of a Victoria plum. ‘Yes. I’m still here, I’m afraid. I’m really sorry. It was a hellish long evening. The hospital took hours: the ER looked like a battlefield, loads of kids with knife wounds, drunken women bleeding and screaming. It was like hell. And the police station was pretty much the same. I tried to insist, but Mark wouldn’t hear of me going back to the hotel. He’s very forceful, isn’t he? Very insistent, once he gets an idea.’

‘Yes,’ Kate said, putting on the kettle.

Beattie held her hands in front of her and examined the grazes on her palms. ‘You don’t expect it from a moneyman, but he’s almost suspiciously kind. And your guest suite is gorgeous. Better than my hotel by a million miles. So thoughtful too, to provide dressing gowns and slippers and toothbrushes and whatever a body needs.’

Kate nodded. She liked to keep everything on the guest floor ready for visitors. Although, since Martha died, she had fallen out of the habit of playing hostess – the rooms had seen only a handful of occupants in all that time.

‘You don’t mind me helping myself to breakfast?’ Beattie indicated the muesli. ‘I was just so starving.’

‘How are you feeling this morning?’

‘Bit sore, but I’ll survive. They just cleaned me up, then I made up some story for the police.’ She smiled. ‘I was so vague, I don’t think there’s any chance of them picking up the wrong boys.’

‘Tea?’

‘Do you have any coffee? I don’t really do tea in the mornings.’

Kate reached down for the coffee beans. ‘I’m going to the bank today to move the money over to his account,’ she shouted above the noise of the grinder.

‘That’s a relief, then, hun.’ Beattie passed her hand over her forehead. ‘God bless you.’

Kate winced. Beattie’s gratitude clearly showed that she put the previous night’s attack down to her not instantly giving in to Jake’s demands.

‘I could get my taxi to give you a lift back to your hotel after he drops me off.’

‘Ah,’ Beattie said, awkwardly running the nail of her index finger over her stitched lip. ‘Um, you see, I’m not at the hotel any more.’

‘What?’

‘Like I said, Mark is quite insistent,’ Beattie said. ‘He told me that, particularly as Tilly is off and away, you’d both love to have me here as your guest. Someone’s going round to pick up my stuff and bring it here this morning – Mark got me to call the hotel last night to authorise it. He’s also going to settle my bill for me, because he thinks those boys stole my purse with my wallet in it. Jake’s guys did in fact take it, so he is actually helping me out of a tricky situation.’

Kate carried on making the coffee, her back to Beattie. How could Mark not consult her first before inviting Beattie to stay? This was going to complicate everything. Every time she looked at her, it was like having her nose rubbed in her past. And she’d have to live this whole new subset of Beattie-related lies whenever Mark was around.

Beattie slipped off the kitchen stool and took Kate’s hands. ‘I’m so sorry, Emma. Believe me, I didn’t want to move into your space. I know it’s going to make everything really awkward for you. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And, to be honest, not having to pay for the hotel is going to be a real help. Thanks to Jake I’m right up against it, as you know.’

‘When are you due to go back?’ Kate said.

Beattie looked at her feet. ‘So my passport was in my purse. I’m going to have to get it back or buy a new one. Mark said he’d ask his secretary – Serena, is it? – to sort out an appointment at the embassy. But I’m afraid I didn’t buy a return ticket,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t really afford it. And I didn’t know how long all this was going to take.’

‘Well, it’s nearly all over,’ Kate said. ‘I’m getting the money to Jake this morning, and I’ve got his word that this’ll be the end of it. I’m happy to get you a ticket back home just as soon as we get you sorted with your passport.’

‘Thank you so much.’ Beattie hugged Kate tightly, then stepped back, dabbing at her eyes with the dressing-gown belt, leaving a little smudge of mascara on the towelling. ‘Both of you – you’re so kind.’

But it wasn’t really kindness that was motivating Kate, more a desperate wish for this episode of her life to be over.

‘Here’s your coffee,’ she said, handing Beattie a mug.

‘Thank you so much,’ Beattie said again, taking it back to her bowl of muesli. Kate sat opposite her, cradling her cup of tea. She knew she shouldn’t be worrying about such a thing, but at least there was no danger of Mark taking a fancy to her friend. In the chunky dressing gown, with her hair unbrushed and her facial injuries, Beattie looked rough as hell and at least ten years older than her. She was also, Kate reckoned – and this was a calculation she was used to making when she looked at other women – two and a half times her weight.

Checking herself, she tried a more humane train of thought: poor Beattie, with her dead husband and grown-up kids. She must feel quite alone in the world.

As if she could read Kate’s thoughts, without warning, Beattie put her coffee down and covered her eyes with her hands.

‘What is it?’ Kate put an arm out across the counter, alarmed. ‘What?’

‘I didn’t want to tell you this. I’m too ashamed,’ Beattie sobbed. She reached out and wound her hot, wet fingers around Kate’s. ‘You see, I don’t have a home to go back to. The girls don’t know it, but I had to sell our house. There’s nothing left for me in San Francisco; just a storage facility full of the furniture I couldn’t get rid of.’

‘You had to sell because of Jake?’

Beattie looked at Kate and nodded. ‘He’s like that, Emma. He took everything I had and then he wanted more. He blackmailed it out of me, with threats that he was going to tell everyone what you and I did to him, and those creeps trailing me all the time, everywhere I went. I’m so scared he’s going to do it all over again to you.’

‘He gave his word. I’m paying what he asked for and no more,’ Kate said. ‘And let that be the end of it. If he’s had all that money from you, he has more than he’ll ever need.’ She looked at Beattie and tightened her grip on her hand. ‘Don’t be scared.’

The thought struck her that, as with Martha’s Wish, good could come out of terrible events. She, Kate, had it in her power to look after this poor creature in front of her, to use the shadow of Jake’s awfulness to be kind and good.

She stood, walked round to Beattie and took her in her arms. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. You can stay here as long as it takes for you to get yourself sorted with a plan. As long as it takes for you to feel safe from Jake.’

‘Will that ever happen, though?’ Beattie said, her face pressed against Kate’s shoulder.

‘Of course,’ Kate said. ‘Of course it will.’

‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ Beattie said, holding Kate tight.

‘Oh!’

Kate could hear the gasp all the way upstairs in her shower room.

‘Oh,’ it came again.

She threw a towel around herself and ran downstairs to find Beattie in the hallway, an open empty suitcase in front of her and a sheaf of papers in her hands. A brown envelope lay at her feet.

‘What is it?’ Kate said, stopping on the stairs.

‘It’s Jessie and Saira.’ Shaking, Beattie handed over the papers.

What Kate saw – holding the print-outs away from her eyes because she didn’t have her reading glasses on – was a series of photographs of Beattie’s daughters going about their daily business. In one, the bigger of the two was unloading plastic carrier bags of food into the boot of a station wagon. In another, the other young woman, who had permed dark brown hair and weary eyes, was in a café laughing at someone out of shot. The images had the grainy quality of photos taken from a distance.

‘Jesus,’ Kate said, handing the pictures back.

‘He’s got people
that close to them
.’ Scowling, Beattie pulled out one of the sheets and held it up for Kate to see. It was of the larger daughter unlocking a front door, the station wagon now parked in the driveway. Both car registration plate and house number were clearly visible. ‘That’s Jessie’s house.’

‘How did you get these?’ Kate asked.

‘Mark’s driver just brought my stuff back from the hotel. Didn’t you hear the doorbell?’

‘I was in the shower.’

‘I took the liberty of answering. I thought it might be him. But he said this was all there was in my room. My empty suitcase and this envelope full of pictures. Everything else has gone.’ Beattie’s voice started to rise in pitch. ‘Disappeared. All my clothes, my papers, my toiletries, everything. He’s taken it all. They must have gotten my key from the purse they stole. I’ve got nothing now but my torn dress and bloody coat from last night.’

Still clinging on to the photographs of her daughters, Beattie sat on the stairs and sank her head in her hands. Gently, Kate took up position at her side and put her arm around her.

‘What did the hotel say?’

‘They told Mark’s guy they’d be happy to help me with my insurance claim, but they aren’t responsible if I kept my key in my bag rather than handing it in at reception.’

‘Oh Beattie, I’m so sorry.’

‘I haven’t any insurance, Kate. I was doing all this on a budget. It seemed like an unnecessary expense. But the worst of it is these pictures.’ She threw the pile of papers onto the hall floor. ‘He knows where both my daughters are. If he lays a finger on either of them . . .’

‘It won’t come to that, Beattie. I’m getting the money to him today and I’m sure we can find you something to wear. This’ll be over by tomorrow.’

Beattie put her hands in front of her face and shook her head. ‘I don’t deserve all this kindness. I’ll never be able to repay you.’

Kate held her tight. ‘Don’t worry about anything, Bea. I’ve got this.’

A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the front door. It was Tilly, back from her trip to say farewell to her co-workers. By the time she had unlocked the door and entered the hallway, Beattie had stuffed the photographs back into the suitcase and the two women were standing there in line, like a reception committee.