Where the Rain Gets In (4 page)

Katie smiled.

“Oh yes,” she said. “He’s that alright.”

Carmel’s phone rang. Katie looked up at
the time; it was exactly ten-thirty.

“You’d best put him through,” she said
to Carmel. She walked into her office and closed the door.

“Mike?”

“Katie, how are you? Thanks for taking
my call.”

“I had to – if only to get my assistant
to do some work today.”

“I’m sorry about that. I thought if I
let her go I’d never get through to speak to you. Would you apologise to Carmel
on my behalf?”

Katie could hear the nervousness in
Mike’s voice.

“On your behalf? Yes, I’ll apologise to
Carmel on your behalf. Why are you calling, Mike?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m here in Dublin
today, and I thought we might meet up – if you’d like to, that is.”

“We agreed never to contact each other
again,” she said. “Under any circumstances – do you remember? So why are you
calling me?”

“But that was such a long time ago,”
said Mike. “And I’m in Dublin so rarely these days. I saw your column in the
paper yesterday – it’s very good, you know – and I thought, well, why not?
You’re such a public figure now – what harm could it do to get in touch?”

“Cut the crap, Mike! I want to know why
you called. We had an agreement and you just broke it – why?”

Katie knew how easy it was to get sucked
into Mike’s pleasantries; she knew how overwhelming they could be.

“But Katie,” he said, “does all that really
matter any more?”

“I asked you a question,” said Katie.
“If you’re not going to be straight with me then I’m hanging up, and you won’t
be put through again. You have one minute to explain why you called before I
put down the phone.”

“Katie – ”

“One minute, Mike.”

Katie watched the second hand tick
around the face of the clock on her wall. A minute wasn’t long enough to get a
grip on hearing Mike’s voice again; not long enough to come to terms with Mike
getting back in touch. The very mention of his name – Nice Guy Mike – upset
her, and Katie could feel her defences crumbling; defences she’d spent half a
lifetime creating. It was a shock rather than a surprise, because she feared
the past coming back into her present. She was scared of what that past might
drag along with it. If she let in the past, she let in worry and anxiety; she
let in guilt and regret, and, if she was honest with herself, she let in
loneliness. So she used the minute’s silence to reconstruct the barriers in her
mind. She breathed deeply and deliberately.

“Katie.”

Mike spoke exactly on the minute, if
only to stop Katie putting down the phone.

“Why did you call?” she asked. More
silence. “Mike?”

“I’m in trouble, Katie. I’m in trouble,
and I need your help.”

“We agreed never to contact each other,”
repeated Katie.

“I know, but – ”

“We agreed for this very reason – that
if either of us were in trouble, we wouldn’t drag each other down. And now
you’re here, phoning me at my workplace; you’re setting up a connection, a
lead, from you to me. Where are you calling from?”

“From a public phone box, in the lobby
of a hotel.”

“Where people can hear you?”

“No, it’s quiet.”

“And you were using that same phone to
speak to Carmel? How did you pay for the call? You weren’t pumping coins into
the slot for an hour – your credit card?” Mike didn’t reply.

“Are you fucking stupid, Mike? I’m
putting down the phone – don’t call me again.”

“Don’t go, Katie, please – I need your
help.”

“You never needed anyone’s help, Mike,
least of all mine. Whatever you’re playing at, I’m not interested. These are
the exact circumstances in which you – you, Mike – said not to call. This was
your rule and you made me swear to it. God knows there were times . . . I could
have tracked you down because I needed you, but I didn’t. And now you’re doing
what we swore we’d never do, and knowing you Mike, knowing you, there’s another
reason behind this and I don’t want to know.”

“You don’t take much tracking down,”
said Mike. “All I have to do is open the newspaper and you’re there.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to
contact me, it doesn’t mean all bets are off. Maybe I thought it safer to keep
a high profile. What isn’t safe is for you to call me at the first sign of
trouble.”

“I received a letter from the FBI,” said
Mike.

“What?”

“The FBI – they wrote to me, telling me
I’d be receiving a subpoena to appear in a U.S. court of law.”

“Bullshit!”

“Bullshit or not, they know who I am.”

“Counting cards in Vegas isn’t a crime,”
said Katie.

“You know as well as I do this isn’t
about counting cards in Vegas. I’m a U.S. citizen, remember; I could end up
doing a serious amount of time in prison.”

“Yeah, but you’re also a British citizen
– and an Irish one too, come to that – I can’t imagine them prosecuting you.”

“They don’t like being made fools of,”
said Mike.

“It was over twenty years ago; they’re
hardly going to pursue you after all this time.”

“But they are doing, aren’t they? We
fucked them over and they don’t like it. And what I hear about U.S. prisons, I
don’t much like either.”

“You’re not going to prison, Mike.”

“We messed with their precious system,
and we cheated them out of their money. There’s nothing they care more about
than their money.”

“But it wasn’t even that much,” said
Katie. “I mean, it was a lot of money at the time, but by today’s standards it
was nothing.”

“We proved it could be done – that’s
what’s pissing them off.”

“You proved it could be done,” corrected
Katie. “I just went along for the ride.”

“And the money,” said Mike.

“Yes, the money, but until you called
there was no connection from me to that money. I’m not the one being
subpoenaed.”

 “I’m scared,” said Mike.

“Bullshit again,” said Katie. “I don’t
know what it is you’re up to Mike but – ”

 “I’m not up to anything. I just need
to see you; I need to talk to you.”

“You want to meet?”

“Yes, I’m in Dublin today, and I want to
see you. I’m in the Gresham. I’ll be here until three this afternoon. If you
ask at reception, they’ll let you know where to find me. I understand if you –
”

“No,” said Katie. “You can’t do that,
Mike. I have a life here; you can’t just walk back into it and ask to see me
again – not after twenty years.”

“I know how it must look, and I don’t do
it lightly – ”

“I don’t care how lightly you’re doing
it – the answer’s no. I have too much to lose here for it to be fucked up by
you. I appreciate everything you did for me Mike, but that was a long time ago
and I can’t go back there.”

“Please Katie – ”

“No! I’m going now Mike, and I don’t
want you to call again.”

She put down the phone and looked at the
receiver. She looked at the receiver for a long time. It didn’t ring again
until Carmel called through to remind Katie she had a meeting scheduled for
eleven; everybody was here waiting.

Part 2

K
atie first met Mike on the day she
started college. She was twenty years old and nervous. She shuffled along in a
line of law students, and waited to collect her timetable for the year. There
was a lot of noise in the corridor – a lot of loud and anxious conversation.
Everybody seemed to know everybody else, and Katie couldn’t understand how. It
didn’t occur to her that they might be as nervous and as apprehensive as Katie
was, and show it in a different way. All she saw was a confidence that bordered
on arrogance; unlike Katie, they had every right to be there.

This was Katie’s first real contact with
a massed body of university students, and she wasn’t too sure what to expect.
The morning had been reassuringly anonymous – she registered with the
university, was issued with a library card, and directed to the Bursar’s office
to pick up her grant. She did what was asked of her, and retreated to her flat
in Hulme for lunch. But the afternoon was different: this was her introduction
to the Law department. If she was determined to go through with this – and she
was – she had to learn how to talk to these people. So she watched and listened
and waited in line.

A desk was set up outside a lecture
theatre. Three employees from the Law department – the secretary and two of her
assistants – gave each student a seminar and lecture timetable, and directed
them into the theatre. Katie had deliberately toned down her usual clothes –
she wore her black combats, a plain top, and her leather jacket – but she could
see immediately that her appearance made the secretary uncomfortable. Katie had
hacked her hair short with scissors before leaving for the college that
morning; that might have been okay, but she also insisted on wearing an open
razor blade on a chain around her neck. It was this that was freaking out the
secretary.

“McGuire,” said Katie, as she stepped up
to the desk. “Katie McGuire.”

The student next to Katie looked up and
smiled.

“Really?” he said. “My name’s Maguire.”
He turned back to the secretary’s assistant. “Mike Maguire,” he said.

The coincidence of the names was too
much for the secretary to let go.

“Now what are the chances of that?” she
asked, beaming. “Out of all these people – you’re not related, are you? No, you
spell your names differently, I see.”

The other student held out his hand to
Katie.

“I’m Mike,” he said. “I’m an M-A-G
Maguire; I take it you’re an M-C-G?”

Katie saw the outstretched hand, but
didn’t know what to do. Well, she knew she should shake his hand, but she
didn’t expect the boy to be so formally polite – it didn’t seem a very
student-like thing to do. And he was just a boy – Katie knew she was a year or
two older than most first years, but this Mike looked to be about fifteen. Yet
he had the assurance of a twenty year-old that Katie could only wish for.

“How do you do?” he asked. He had an
incredibly strong accent – so much so, that even these few words were almost
incomprehensible to Katie. What she heard was ‘Hadjadae?’ – or ‘Had your
day?’And what had he said about her name? She reached for the timetable
information from the secretary, and walked away without saying a word. She went
through to the lecture theatre, and took the first seat she saw available.

Katie had never been in such a room
before. She took in the tiered seating and the amphitheatre shape, and noticed
how the shelf on which she rested her arms would double as a desk on which to
make notes. The noise in here was even more intimidating. Everybody but Katie
seemed to be talking to somebody. She looked around, but only caught the eye of
Mike as he walked into the room. She quickly turned away, but Mike wasn’t to be
put off. He made his way over to Katie, and sat down next to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean
anything about your name. Maybe we can start over?”

“What,” snapped Katie, “you think the
way I spell my name says something about me – is that it?”

“No, I didn’t mean – ”

“I don’t know about where you come
from,” she said, “but it means fuck all here,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’m – ”

But his politeness made Katie all the
ruder.

“Listen,” she said. “I can’t understand
a single fucking word you’re saying, okay? So don’t bother.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh,” and turned away.

Shit, thought Katie, what a great start.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. And now she
had to sit next to this guy for at least the next twenty minutes. There were
just so many people here – it reminded her of school and that wasn’t good. She
closed her eyes in an attempt to shut out the noise – to shut out the memories
of classrooms gone by – but this was never going to work.

Only when someone approached the podium
down below did the room quieten down. A young female lecturer said a few words
of welcome and a brief explanation of the difference in study methods now they
were at university.

“This is perhaps the only time you’ll
all be here in the one place together,” she said. “If you don’t attend the
lectures, no one will ever know but yourself – until, of course, it becomes
obvious that you can’t keep up with your course work. Seminars and tutorials
are a different matter and are compulsory; failure to attend means failure of
the course.”

There had to be some doddery old
lecturers somewhere within the Law department, but for today at least they were
being kept under wraps. The woman below was young enough to remember what it
was like to be only starting out as an undergraduate.

“You’ll receive no direction during the
year in how to study,” she continued. “If I have any advice to give you now,
it’s this: make the library your home, and read and learn every case history
you can. The whole of English law is in those cases. From here on in it’s up to
you. How you get the reading done is up to you. How you get the essays in on
time is up to you. You’re on your own – so good luck.”

This suited Katie. She’d spent the past
four years studying on her own, and now she’d signed up for four more. If today
was unusual – an aberration – perhaps Katie could just keep her head down and
do the work? But if it were like this every day she arrived for a lecture,
she’d have to find a better way of coping. She’d handled today badly, and
didn’t want the next time to be so bad. It was one thing to keep a low profile,
but quite another to attract attention to herself by being so obsessively
private. She knew she’d been rude, and turned back to the guy sat next to her,
to Mike.

“So many people,” she said. The noise
and conversation started up again as the lecturer left the podium.

“Not for long,” said Mike.

“What do you mean?” asked Katie.

“Well, they deliberately start with too
many students. If they have too large an intake, they can fail who they like
throughout the year.”

“What do you mean?” asked Katie again.

“You heard what the woman said – they’ll
fail about a third of us before the first year is out.”

“But how do you know?” asked Katie. “Why
would they do that?”

“How many people are here?” asked Mike.
“About three hundred – that’s the number of places available on the course. And
only two hundred graduate from this department every year. It’s there in the
maths.”

“But why?”

“So they can be sure of who they
graduate. It’s like a second recruitment process; it gets rid of anyone they
think isn’t up to the course.”

This was news to Katie and a shock; it
must have shown on her face.

“Don’t worry,” said Mike, “I’m sure
you’ll be fine.”

Katie knew it would be hard at college,
but she hadn’t reckoned on such a high chance of failure. Having got there
against the odds – studying alone, catching up on the years of lost schooling,
applying for one of the toughest possible courses – it looked as though her
battle wasn’t over yet. And her first day hadn’t been such a success. She just
didn’t know how to act with other people; she couldn’t go through this every
time she met someone new.

She cut herself badly that night.

Katie was right in thinking she could
retain some anonymity while studying for her degree. The numbers attending the
lectures were large, but she soon became used to that. Seminars were harder –
Katie had to contribute in these smaller groups, or the tutor would notice and
Katie would drop marks. It was in these early classes that Katie learnt the
skills of argument – that when it came to the rules, there were no rules.
First, she had to confront the snobbery she came across each day, imagined or
otherwise. Katie brought a baggage of inferiority into the class, and felt that
everybody talked down to her; she could take it from the tutors but not from
the students. Then there was the intellectual intimidation, the assumption that
surely she was aware of such and such a case – that what Katie was saying was
nonsense. This happened twice before Katie realised that it wasn’t snobbery,
and it wasn’t arrogance. Only one thing really mattered, and that was that she
won her arguments. She played up her persona as the naïve innocent, or went on
a charm offensive to disarm her classmates, and these worked for a while; but
eventually Katie learnt to depend on her brains. It was, after all, what she
did best.

There were many new accents that Katie
had never heard before. They might have been easier to understand than Mike’s,
but for Katie they were just as strange. When it came to making friends, Katie
remained distant to the point of being rude; if she was thought of badly, she’d
rather that than get to know anyone or – and this would have been worse – allow
anyone to get to know her. She knew from school that people needed to put you
in a box, a category they could be comfortable with, and if Katie’s category
was ‘difficult’ then so be it. If she was to live out in the world, she wanted
to do so on her own terms. The alternative was to give up and go back into
care, this time as an adult, and that didn’t appeal to her one little bit.

Katie had a flat on Bonsall Street in
Hulme. It wasn’t unusual for students to live in Hulme at that time – it was
cheap and close to college – but it was strange for a first year, and unheard
of any student to live on her own. But she was well able to look after herself;
she’d looked after her mother and aunt when she was only nine years old – her
grandmother too for a while. She was discovered by the social services when she
called a doctor to the house; she wanted to know what to do with the dead body
of her grandmother. Until this age she hadn’t attended school, or played with
other children, or anything really, other than cook and clean and skivvy for
the adults in the house.

Katie was taken into care, and for the
first time in her life she came into contact with other children. School was
difficult. Katie never caught up with her studies – she deliberately and
wilfully refused – and she carried the added stigma of living with people other
than her parents. There were repeated attempts and failures to find her a
foster home, but Katie resisted this as she resisted everything. She wore down
a succession of social workers, and her teachers never looked beyond the legal
requirement of Katie attending school. This disinterest suited Katie; she knew
what was expected of her – just like the teachers – and was quite happy just to
go through the motions.

By the age of fourteen, she found enough
privacy to do herself harm. The secrecy of cutting herself became the focus of
her day – not an easy task when you’re in care.

It was only when Katie was no longer
legally obliged to attend school – at the age of sixteen – that she recognised
the use of an education. If you were unsympathetic, you could say she started to
grow up, but Katie had done her fair share of growing up as a child. She
realised that studying for and passing exams could change who she was; it might
even eradicate where she came from, and help her choose whom she wanted to be.
Qualifications were a ticket; she didn’t know where that ticket might take her,
but she knew she needed to be some place else.

Katie had to ask for help – again, not
an easy thing when you’ve alienated just about everybody in your world. She learnt
how to study independently, and was as bloody-minded and determined to catch
up, as she had once been not to learn. She spent a year discovering just how
much she already knew; seven years of compulsory attendance at school had left
its mark after all. The day centre she attended supported Katie’s application
to sit her O' level examinations for the following year, the summer of 1977.
The crisis the exams brought on, and the frenzy of cutting that followed, was
Katie’s real initiation into adulthood. She was faced with the stark
consequences of her choice to better herself; she either did this thing or she
accepted defeat, and gave in. She didn’t give in, but it was hard not to.

Only Katie was surprised at how well she
did in the exams, and it gave her the confidence to go on to take three A'
levels the following year. She also read a great deal for the first time in her
life – studying
The Grapes of Wrath
for her English, led Katie on to a
succession of twentieth century American writers. She loved Gatsby, and Holden
Caulfield of course, but more than anything it was the fact that there was a
whole world out there – or at least a whole continent – that was completely
different to anything Katie had ever known. Like the books, America seemed
accessible. The enormity of the landscape was appealing to her, and Katie
realised just how limited a world she lived in.