The Long Fall (37 page)

‘So how did you get to Athens, then?’

‘I InterRailed in my year orf,’ Beattie said, her voice almost royal in its Englishness.

‘I mean,’ Kate said, realising now that she had to play along, ‘how did Luanne and Jack get to Athens?’

‘How they got to Athens . . . well, now. Luanne had this job in JEFFERSON CITY OHIO as a care assistant for this old, old woman. She took the job and for a whole fucking month she lived in the old, old bitch’s giant stinking house, cleaning up her shit, finding out where things were kept, all the jewellery and the bank statements and, Jesus, she found out the monster – and, believe me, this lady was nasty – was loaded. So she forged her signature and withdrew a load of money at the bank and stole the jewellery, and then the bitch got suspicious and started flinging all these accusations around and threatening to call the police and then, well, Luanne was in deep shit, so she had to make good and sure the old woman couldn’t tell no one nothing no more.’

Kate gasped. ‘You killed her!’

‘D’uh.’ Beattie’s voice had taken on a new accent Kate hadn’t heard before. It was rougher, harsher, but it sat more easily with her cigarette-roughened tones than anything else she had heard coming from her mouth. ‘So Luanne and Jack knew when they were making their plan that they were going to have to disappear after, which was a good thing because they had always wanted to get out of FUCKING JEFFERSON CITY OHIO. So, never one to do things by halves, Luanne made this plan that after the deed they would go to Europe, somewhere they still have plumbing, but where there was little likelihood of some poky murder somewhere nowhere in America being any kind of an issue. They flew into Madrid – they had such great sex there in Spain, Emma, your mind would have popped – and moved real quick. By the time the cops worked out what happened to the old bat and who did it – Luanne wasn’t the kind who’d work under her own name, after all – our two fugitives were in Greece, lost in a muddle of bad paperwork, with shiny new identities.’

‘Jake and Beattie.’

‘You got it. Beattie was just a temporary name-change, but Jake was official. He even had his new passport, though you really don’t want to know how he came by that.’

‘The Australian who gave me a black eye . . .’

‘Nope, but similar. That Ozzie bastard just wound Jake up the wrong way, but the payback I doled out on him – oh yes, Jake was a fighter, but he was never a killer, the wimp – made a problem for us. We had to get out of Athens fast, so you were lucky there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jesus, you are so dense, girl. I was going to be Emma James, of course. There was enough of a similarity. I could have gone anywhere as you. I have your voice just right, don’t I? Bit more of a northern accent you had back then, though, eh?’ Beattie’s voice wove in and out of accents and identities so quickly that Kate felt quite dizzy.

‘What were you going to do with me?’

‘What do you think? You were lucky those Greek brats turned up on those rocks up by the Parthenon, and then, with that Australian, it all got too difficult to do the deed in Athens. So we decided to go along with your stupid island idea. It presented an opportunity. Do it out there, with no one to see, then fuck off back into the world as Emma James.’

‘So why didn’t you, then?’ Kate asked. Her need to know the truth now outweighed everything, but she also knew that Beattie was enjoying the telling of the story, and by egging her on, she was buying time and space for Tilly – and, she was beginning to suspect, for herself.

But at this point Beattie tensed up, and Tilly squirmed as her foot tightened on her throat, just where her carotid artery pulsed under her skin. Kate slipped her hand in her bag and grasped the handle of her knife, ready to move.

‘Goddamn Jack,’ Beattie said, through clenched teeth. ‘The cheating skunk, he fell for you with your little-girl-lost, waif-and-stray shtick. He couldn’t take a strong woman like me no more, the weakling, the milksop, the
bastard
. The American Shit. Like that, Emma? Another shit for your shit collection. He begged me to save you and I realised he would get me if I tried to go ahead. We had quite a fight about it that last night. HE DID EVERYTHING I TOLD HIM UNTIL HE MET YOU, EMMA.

‘So when I got hold of your diary and read about that horny little Frenchy giving you it in France, well, I knew what kind of story would upset you most about Jake.’

‘No!’ Kate said, something molten and rotten welling up inside her. ‘You lied and lied. You got me up here and we tortured him and all he wanted to do was save me from you.’

‘Yep. Oops.’ Beattie put her little finger in her mouth and sucked it like an Orphan Annie. ‘But don’t you see? He had to die. He was no use to me at all.’

‘But why did you let me go, though? Why didn’t you kill me like you’d planned?’

‘It was the look in your eyes after you did it.’ Beattie pursed her lips. ‘You know what, honey? I saw a tiny bit of myself in you at that moment and, well, I just couldn’t bring myself to finish the job.’

Shaking, Kate narrowed her eyes at Beattie. ‘I’m nothing like you. Nothing like you at all.’

‘And besides,’ Beattie went on, smiling broadly at her. ‘What would be the point of assuming the identity of somebody who had become a murderer? Kind of defeats the point.’

Seeing Tilly’s eyes register this information, Kate stopped thinking. Knife held high, she launched herself at Beattie, whose absorption in her own storytelling had put her off-guard. The speed of the attack pushed her away from Tilly, but she escaped the trajectory of Kate’s knife, looping herself round, ready to act with her own weapon.

As Kate faced her warped doppelganger, Beattie started laughing.

‘You’ll never beat me at this, girl,’ she said, again in her true Luanne voice. ‘I been cutting people since I was twelve.’

‘I murdered an innocent man,’ Kate snarled back at her.

Tilly made a noise behind her, but Kate couldn’t take her eyes off her foe.

‘What did you want from me?’ Kate asked.

‘Oh, don’t put it in the past tense yet, honey,’ Beattie said. ‘I ain’t finished yet. I told you already. I want your life. I have your wardrobe, I have your daughter – although she’ll be going the same way as you after I’m done – and I have most of your money. The one thing standing in my way is you. At last your time is up. You gotta go, honey.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Kate said, launching herself at her. But, true to her word, Beattie caught her arm, knocked the knife from her hand, and pushed her backwards to the ground, falling heavily down on top of her, her full weight winding her, thumping into her bones.

‘We never did get to do this, did we?’ Beattie said, grinding her pelvis into Kate’s. ‘Ain’t that nice, eh? Mmmm.’

If Kate had had any food in her stomach, she would have vomited. But she was empty, drained of everything. Caught. Powerless.

‘So, no knives, honey,’ Beattie went on, breathing her stale tobacco breath into Kate’s face. ‘I don’t want your pretty, skinny body cut none. If they find you, which they won’t, will they – we know that you don’t get found if you go over the edge, don’t we? We’ve done the trial run, after all – but if they
do
find you, I want it to look like an accident or perhaps even some tragic double suicide: poor mother and daughter throw themselves off of the cliff. Not that they’ll ever find out who you are, even if they get to you before all them little nibbling fishies.’

‘Giorgios knows who I am,’ Kate said.

‘He knows you’re called Emma,’ Beattie said, looking lovingly into her eyes. ‘He doesn’t know where you’re from, what your “real” name is; he doesn’t know about me.’

‘He does, though,’ a male voice said softly, behind them.

Beattie looked round sharply. Giorgios was standing about ten feet away, his great-grandfather’s gun pointed directly at her.

‘Get up,’ he said.

Beattie made to move away from Kate, but instead grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up so that she stood in front of her, shielding her from the gun. Kate felt the knife cut into her throat and she thought for a second how that would spoil it for Beattie when her body was found. Through the corner of her eye, she saw Beattie’s Triskelion tattoo on the arm that held the knife to her throat, distorted with tension.

She was not going to give in, though. This woman had twice planned to kill her and, worse than that, she had turned her into a murderer. She wasn’t going to allow her to get away with it. Remembering a move learned in the self-defence classes she had taken with Tilly, she suddenly looped her arm into Beattie’s, pushing away the knife and forcing her to drop it. At the same time she jabbed the elbow of her other arm back into Beattie’s ribs, winding her. Then she turned and thrust her backwards, up the slope towards the edge of the cliff. Beattie stuck her heel in and launched herself back at Kate, but the odds were stacked against her, because Kate fought now with the strength of a mother protecting her young, her anger further propelled by the weight of all the wrong Beattie had done to her, all her life. She charged at her and shoved, using the force of every tendon, every muscle, every fibre of her body.

Beattie tottered backwards, her arms windmilling in the air, her feet trying to stay on the edge of the cliff.

The momentum from Kate’s ruthless bulldozing and the weight of her own body propelled her unstoppably backwards.

She reached behind her, as if searching out a surface to halt her trajectory. Finding nothing, she toppled flat into the open, thin air.

Kate had seen the same look of terror many years ago in this same place, on a different face.

But she had never before seen a pair of eyes so filled with rage.

And then, with an almost audible whoosh, and just like Jake before her, Beattie was gone.

Kate rushed up to the edge of the cliff and watched as that bulky body tumbled down onto the rocks some hundred feet below, bouncing, breaking, smashing. She watched as the waves licked at her, gently pulling her to them; Poseidon making love to his Medusa.

It was over.

The monster was slain.

Kate wondered if Beattie’s last thoughts had been that she was going to join Jake at the bottom of the ocean. The thought made her smile. Of course, Beattie had no idea that Jake was on land, tucked safely into the hillside.

And then she came to her senses. She realised what she had done, and who had been watching. And listening.

She turned, appalled, to face Giorgios and Tilly.

PART FOUR

NOW

6 May 2013 (Easter Monday), 6 a.m. Ikaria. Giorgios’s taverna.

I’m still up after the busiest night Giorgios and Elpiniki have ever had. The last revellers – Eirini and Ilias, aged ninety-four and ninety-eight respectively – have just tripped off to bed after a full night’s dancing, drinking and eating. G. and I wondered as they went off hand in hand if they were going to her bed or his.

Oh, my poor feet ache from running around with plates, but it’s good for the business, and it makes Giorgios happy. So the pain is sweet.

For the record: I’m trying not to take pills, I’ve stopped drinking and I’m really trying to eat.

But without my little helpers, even though I’m tired, I can’t sleep.

Damned sobriety.

So here I am. I’m going to try my hand at a journal again. Now I can once more tell myself the truth.

I’ve got a strange ride ahead. It’s like jumping off into the blue. I don’t know where I’m going to land, but it feels surprisingly OK.

Giorgios is a great help. Who knows what the future holds? But he says I can stay here as long as I like. As long as I need. Which may well be for ever.

Before I move forward, though, I need to put down what has happened since I killed . . .

I killed . . .

Since Beattie went over the cliff.

Tilly called again yesterday. She says it’s weird without me in the house, but Mark has calmed down ‘a little’.

But that’s not the right place to start. I need to go further back.

Two weeks ago we went into Agios Kirikos after putting Tilly and the Rothko on a plane for Athens. Sitting in a café eating souvlaki – bread and all – I found a Wi-Fi signal for my iPad. After long deliberation – I had no idea what Pandora’s box I might be opening – I downloaded my email. With some relief, I saw that there was nothing from anyone. It was as if, away from this island, I had ceased to exist.

But that was a good thing. It was better I was forgotten. I felt awful about Mark, about the money, but, as far as I could see, there was nothing I could do about it. It had gone, and that was that. Giorgios – and Tilly, in fact – have convinced me that, as far as the money was concerned, I acted with the best possible motives.

Tilly was safe, and that was good enough for me.

I hoped her turning up on Mark’s doorstep, with the Rothko, which would easily cover the money I took . . . Well, I hoped she might be able to explain it to him. At least he’d listen to her, and she was primed from six days of me and Giorgios trying to explain everything.

What it felt like for her to know the truth! To be free of the dread of her finding out . . .

Well, it’s like stepping into the light after the longest, darkest night.

I was just about to put the iPad away and finish my souvlaki when an email arrived in my personal account.

When I saw the name of the sender, I blinked and shook my head.

It was from Jake Mithras.

I stabbed at the screen to open it.

Dear Emma, it said.

This is Sam here. Soon I’m going to shut down this email, and try to forget all about Jake Mithras. After that I will never contact you again, I promise. But I need to tell you how sorry I am. I am shamed by my actions. I thought it was only cash. You know, extortion . . .

Only extortion!

. . . I swear I had no idea what Luanne was really up to, that she wanted to wipe you and Tilly out. Obliterate you, she said. I only found that out when she joined us up on the cliff and we’d tied Tilly up.

I’d thought we were just going to leave you both up there, then take that painting and disappear . . .

I knew that, in fact. Tilly told me.

She’d met the man who’d told her he was called Jake when she was having breakfast in Agios Kirikos after getting off the boat. He sat down and started talking with her and they realised they both had a shared passion for theatre. She said she felt almost instantly that she could trust him. He reminded her of her Uncle Julian, in fact. She said she ‘was almost a hundred per cent positive he was gay’.

When, after they had talked non-stop for two hours about Ibsen and Shaw and Sondheim, he’d offered to take her round in the jeep he had hired, she hadn’t even hesitated. They had a great weekend, hiking along mountain tracks, visiting villages full of really old people. They stayed in a bed and breakfast near a beautiful beach called Nas, where a river pooled and met the sea by a temple of Artemis, he in one room, she in another. Not for one minute did she feel threatened by him in any way.

On the Monday evening, he’d taken her up to the cliff, supposedly to show her the sunset. When they reached the top, she had been shocked to find the woman she knew as Claire up there waiting for them. She hadn’t believed it when this big gentle new friend of hers had turned on her and helped that woman – who was nothing like the kindly figure she had met in London – tie her up.

And then Beattie told this man – whom she called Sam – what she wanted him to do when I turned up.

Tilly had no idea, of course, that I was on the island. But the shock of that discovery was obliterated by the realisation that this woman wanted this Sam man to kill us both.

Then Sam started arguing with Beattie. He said he wanted no part of it. Beattie put the big knife to Tilly’s throat and said she’d kill her outright if he didn’t ‘Goddamn shut up’ and do as he was told. That was when he told Beattie he was quitting, and started walking away.

‘If you hadn’t turned up then, Mum,’ Tilly said, ‘I think she would have killed me.’

. . . I’m not violent, Sam’s email went on. It was just like a really well-paid role-play gig. I’m just a broke actor with bills to pay . . .

He’s not violent.

Beattie must have faked every single injury I ever saw on her. The real Jake hadn’t attacked her back in 1980, poor boy: she’d done it to herself. His only crime was trying to warn me about her. There were no henchmen in San Francisco or London. In her grim determination to get at me, Beattie beat herself up. Several times, in the most grim horrible ways.

There was no husband, there were no daughters, just a life of bad luck, prison and meanness.

Of course, Sam had no idea of the extent of her madness.

None of us did.

She was fucking good, wasn’t she?

Everything that happened back in Greece thirty-three years ago was set up by Beattie or Claire or Luanne or whoever the hell she was. It was like some sort of reality TV game, but for real, and twenty years ahead of
Big Brother.
I was duped, led, forced into pushing Jake off that cliff, unwittingly punishing him for the ‘crime’ of falling in love with me.

So does that mean I’m less responsible for what happened? What I did?

I don’t know.

It doesn’t feel like that at the moment. Perhaps it will later.

Sam’s email went on to tell me his version of what happened before I turned up on the cliff – which was exactly the same as Tilly’s. If he hadn’t done such awful things, I think I’d quite like him. But then I’m a fine one to talk, aren’t I, about doing awful things?

He liked Tilly:

. . . Your daughter is the most charming girl. She is full of life and hope and optimism. She reminds me of myself when I was that age. She called me Uncle Jake. She made me feel protective toward her. There was absolutely nothing else in my feelings, I swear . . .

Then he took a few further steps towards redemption:

. . . You thought I abandoned you both after I walked past you on the cliff. But I was there, hiding, listening out, ready to jump in and save you from crazy Luanne.

I even stuck around when that waiter guy came stalking along the cliff edge – I had no idea whose side he was going to be on. All I saw was a man with a gun . . .

So, like Tilly and Giorgios, he was witness to everything. And when it was all over, and he knew Beattie was finished and we were safe, he evaporated away from the island.

. . . Your guy had that gun, after all, and I should imagine I wasn’t your favourite dude at that moment . . .

Too right he wasn’t. But then he signed off with this:

. . . I want you to know that whatever happened on that cliff – both recently and in the past – is safe with me. All I ask is your forgiveness for my part in all of this, all the grief I have caused you and your family. I’m sorry. I was greedy.

Now to my final business with you. I still have access to the money – Luanne gave me fake ID to open the Stephen Smith account. Now I know more about what she was capable of, I don’t want to think exactly how she got hold of it. But it’s useful just for a couple more days.

If you let me have your account details, I will pay the money back to you.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So it turned out he wasn’t such a bad guy, after all. My heart would have broken from gratitude, if it hadn’t been too busy soaring with joy.

Two days after she got home, Tilly phoned to say that Mark had got all the money back, except for two hundred thousand pounds. Before he de-friended her, ‘Stephen Smith’ sent her a private message on Facebook, explaining that it was for his ‘expenses’.

I said he wasn’t such a bad guy. I didn’t say he was an angel.

And Tilly told me yesterday that Mark has now invested the two million for Martha’s Wish in a way that is quite helpful to his own fund, as well as offering a great deal for the charity.

And Patience is none the wiser.

All faces are saved.

At some point he’ll have to explain my absence, but I’m sure he’ll think of something.

When Tilly was here, I told her where my old diaries are hidden in the Battersea house. She’s read them through now, and I’ve asked her to post them on to me, so that I can finally face them and start to figure it all out for myself.

‘In a way, it’s all The French Shit’s fault,’ she said to me when she called yesterday.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, although you were clearly anorexic right from the start, you were a driven and brilliant and adventurous girl – and I know from seeing it in so many girls at school that sometimes that goes hand in hand with eating disorders. But all of that good stuff was pushed out of you when he raped you, wasn’t it, Mum? The French Shit put you in a box that you’ve never quite escaped from.’

That sort of took my breath away. I’d never thought of it like that. I’d always put everything that happened down as my own making.

Perhaps, then, that absolution of thinking of myself as a victim is still open to me?

Tills assures me she understands. She just needs time to absorb it all. And when she has, she will try to explain it to her father, although I have asked her not to tell him where I am.

Not yet.

He’s still very upset, she says.

I feel so sorry for him, for all I put him through. All these years he thought he was looking after someone else, entirely. He was completely mistaken about the nature of the bird he kept in that gilded cage.

But what he had, in fact, was a girl caught in stasis, frozen in free-fall from everything that had happened – here in Ikaria, in Athens, and yes, Tilly’s right, in Marseille.

But now Beattie’s gone, out of the picture, dead, washing around in the currents somewhere out there – Giorgios checks daily and as yet there are no reports of any bodies washed up.

I feel I’ve landed, and the jolt has allowed the real Emma to wake up.

And this Emma can’t believe that Kate allowed herself to live like that all those years.

I don’t know if Mark would ever be able to bear the real Emma James, aged fifty.

We’ll have to see what happens.

I’m just glad the money’s back – especially the Martha’s Wish money. Apart from Jake, that’s the part out of all of this that I feel the worst about.

I don’t feel bad about Beattie, though.

No.

I feel proud.