Now – 31st March
The journey back to London is a blur. Six hours lost to a fruitless search for memories I don’t have and certainties I desperately need. I keep replaying the conversation with Callum, looking for some hint I missed, some nuance that would let me believe he was lying. But I know he wasn’t.
I’ve been in such deep denial this last couple of weeks. I was convinced everything would turn out right. I backed off from Ella when I should have pressed her harder, because, I suppose, on some level I knew that pushing her would have brought us to a truth so terrible I wouldn’t be able to ignore it.
And, maybe, it was partly because I know how much of this is my own fault.
There was that moment, standing in 402, looking out across the city before I snatched the curtains shut, when I made a decision there was no going back from. I was drunk and stoned and yet I fervently believed it was the wisest course of action. A few more minutes’ breathing space and perhaps I’d have made the right decision instead of the easy one, told Ella to call the police, explain that she was only defending herself, promised I’d back her to the hilt.
She wouldn’t have done it, of course, because she knew what the most basic investigation would uncover and how quickly her claim it was an accident would be undermined.
But when she refused, I would have learned she was lying and I could have walked away. I wouldn’t have been entirely innocent, but innocent enough to keep from being a proven accessory after the fact.
Except . . . would I have walked out of there and left her to defend herself?
No.
In my heart I know I wouldn’t have.
I’ve always gone too far for the sake of my friends. It’s the curse of us without proper families to overinvest in people who don’t deserve it. We know we’ll be wrong many times, end up giving and giving to someone who only takes, but we think it’s worth it to find the one person in a hundred who turns out to be something more than family.
Carol was one of them. We crossed lines for each other, made sacrifices without being asked or thanked, without even pausing to consider the outcome. Because that’s what you do for the rare individual who feels like your sister/mother/daughter combined. Losing Carol is going to hurt more than losing Ella.
I’m starting to think I might actually hate Ella.
It’s been creeping up on me since I exposed that first, seemingly unimportant lie of hers, when she told me she’d never seen him before and I unearthed the photo of them together. Lying is a form of violence. It’s an act of contempt. She lied to me because she didn’t trust me with the truth and because she was so confident of my continued support that she had no fear of me abandoning her if I found out.
And I didn’t.
Not after that first lie, or the second or the third or however many she racked up before we got to the big one. Not an accident but murder.
A brutal murder. Because if what Callum said was right – if what the police told him during questioning is right – then Ella must have knocked that man down and sat astride his chest, her hands full of his hair as she repeatedly smashed his head into the tiled fireplace.
She’s dangerous.
I never saw that coming.
A normal person pushed to violence recoils after they’ve struck the first blow. They see themselves from the outside, rendered strange and ugly by the act, and they hate and fear what they’ve just done. They drop the weapon. They stumble away.
They don’t make sure to finish the job.
The train pulls into King’s Cross and I wait for the other passengers in the carriage to gather their things and leave before I get up, stretching the long journey out of my legs, flexing my numb toes.
Outside the same people are smoking under the canopy to avoid the rain or rushing towards the Tube trains they’ll probably miss or the long queue for taxis. I want to walk, I need to move again, but the rain forces me on to a bus that’s so busy I find myself standing.
By the time it empties enough for me to get a seat, we’re in Camden and I’m stepping off again into rain that is thinner now and more invasive, stinging my face and plastering my hair to my skull within a minute. Other people caught out by it rush past me, heads down, and I feel a moment of kinship with each and every one of them. We are life’s gamblers, too devil-may-care to pack an umbrella in our bags at the start of the day.
I thumb the buzzer at Ella’s shared house and the same boy opens up as last time I was there, still glued to his phone, and he lets me in without question.
Upstairs I knock on Ella’s door, softly at first, then harder when she doesn’t answer, and harder still, now shouting at her to let me in.
The door of the neighbouring flat opens and a girl looks at me with a flash of annoyance. She’s in her dressing gown, getting ready to go out, with her black hair teased into an elaborate rockabilly do but her make-up unfinished; only one false eyelash on, giving her a faintly menacing Clockwork Orange vibe.
‘She’s not there,’ the girl says. ‘It doesn’t matter how hard you knock.’
‘Are you a friend?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Who are you? Her mum?’
I lie. ‘Yes, she was supposed to meet me here.’
‘Oh.’ The girl’s annoyance gives way to discomfort, she bites her lip. ‘Look, I don’t want to get Ella in trouble or anything, but you should probably know, she’s been arrested.’
The hallway tips and turns around me and I reach for the wall to steady myself. The girl takes half a step towards me but doesn’t seem to know what to do next.
‘When was this?’ I manage to ask.
‘This morning. First thing. A whole load of them came and dragged her out.’ She presses her hand nervously to the back of her lacquered hair, a gesture from the wrong generation. ‘I mean, it’s probably nothing. You know what she’s like, always demonstrating against something. It’s just what happens, isn’t it? The police pull people like her in all the time.’
I nod.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ she says quickly.
I must look terrified because the girl pats my arm and makes a consoling face rendered comic by her one big eye and her one small one. I feel a manic laugh rising up from my chest and swallow it down.
This is it. The police have finally come for her and there’s no way she’ll talk herself free. Because if they’ve taken this long to work it out they probably have a ton of evidence to back up their suspicions. She’s already linked with Quinn in the police database, I guess. She’s a known associate at least, a potential accessory to a crime he went down for and she didn’t, meaning even the slowest copper would see a ready-made motive.
Or am I giving them too much credit?
Maybe this is Carol’s doing. Has she gone back on her promise to wait until Monday?
The girl glances towards her flat, wanting to get on with her evening.
I thank her and walk away, shakily, make it halfway down the stairs before I begin to feel woozy. For a moment I sit on the striped runner, one hand curled around the barley-twist spindle, which has been repainted so many times it’s beginning to lose its form.
Where do I go now?
Home doesn’t feel safe, because what if Ella has talked, spilled everything and pleaded remorse? The police could be waiting for me already.
Then again, I have nowhere else to go and delaying the inevitable won’t change it.
I let myself out and hail a passing black cab. To hell with the expense. Arrest and charge will at least put an end to the tedious frugality I’ve been living with for the last few years. No need for savings when you’re banged up.
The driver is having his own crisis, talking in a hushed voice on his phone to someone I think might be his son, getting angrier as he reminds him how long it’s been since he visited his mother, how he promised he would make more effort.
As we head down Euston Road, I realise I should probably call Milton. Try to set up a meeting before I’m actually arrested. It’s always best to unburden yourself to your solicitor before the police get involved, formulate your plan in private. I’ve never trusted them not to be listening to what’s said in the interview rooms between solicitors and clients.
When I take out my phone I realise it’s been switched off since HMP Addiewell. I turn it on again and see I have four missed calls from Carol, all within the last couple of hours, but no messages. She doesn’t like to leave any more of a trail than necessary.
For a few minutes I watch the streets go by, wondering if she’ll be apologetic or self-righteous. If I’d done to her what she’s done to me I’d cut all contact just to preserve my sanity. How can you expect to chat to someone you’ve just betrayed?
The driver has ended his call but is muttering to himself, shaking his head, saying all the things he wanted to but couldn’t or didn’t think of at the time. I can see how tightly he clutches the wheel and on any other day I would probably ask if he’s okay. I hope he is and that his son visits his mother and that they make peace.
The world is too cold and hostile to give up on people.
I call Carol.
‘I’ve been ringing you all afternoon,’ she says, slightly breathless. ‘Don’t you ever charge that phone?’
‘Ella’s been arrested,’ I tell her. ‘Did you know about that?’
‘What? No. Shit.’
‘Yeah. It is. And you know what happens next,’ I say.
Her old whistling kettle sings a wonky note in the background and I close my eyes, thinking of the endless cups of coffee she made us from it, the hundreds of hours spent in that poky room with its little table and the view across the garden she never bothered with, planning how we would change the world.
It stops singing as she takes it off the heat. ‘Sorry. Look, Mol, you knew they were going to arrest her at some point. It’s probably routine questioning anyway. It’s inevitable when it was her party he died at, right? Just try to chill out.’
Now I know why she’s so chipper.
‘You’ve got in touch with Quinn, haven’t you?’
‘He was out hiking in the wilds with some girl,’ she says, her voice rising with delight. ‘They only just got back this morning.’
Her relief is infectious and for a few seconds I enjoy the feeling, smile and sigh and let my body relax in the seat. I’m happy for her, genuinely. Quinn means a lot to her and I’m happy she hasn’t lost him.
But my problem is still in front of me and in a perverse way it’s just become even more confounding. Because if Ella had murdered Quinn it would be terrible but at least there would be some twisted logic to it. They had history, after all.
I desperately need to talk this through with Carol. Everything that’s happened with Callum, what the police told him and what that means. Who the hell Ella has murdered if it wasn’t Quinn. I need my old friend’s wise counsel, but she isn’t my friend any more, even though she’s chatting away still, like nothing’s changed – like she wasn’t preparing to turn me in to the police – about the group Quinn is with and how she’s considering going over there for a couple of weeks in the summer, see if she can help them out, meet this girl he’s fallen for.
She’s mid-sentence when I end the call and I know that’s the last time I will ever speak to her.
I am absolutely alone now.