The Long Fall (9 page)

EMMA

1 August 1980, 2 p.m. Athens. The Milk Bar.

This is the shittest thing.

So Ena was still fast asleep when I woke sweating in the sun with a hangover from hell. I left her a note and went out to try to call Mum and Dad again. I knew they’d be waiting for my call – it’s been twelve days since I’ve been gone. I also felt, fool that I am, that at last I had some good things to tell them – about finding a friend and all that.

After a three-hour wait, I finally got through to them. It was soooo good to hear their voices. They don’t understand what I’m doing – I’m not sure if I do myself, actually – but they’re just so excited to hear from me. They weren’t expecting me to be in Greece yet. What happened to Italy? Dad asked. I couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. I made up something about a train strike. He seemed to swallow it.

I sounded like I was having fun, they said.

I did. I really believed I was when I called them. I really thought my luck had changed.

Now, trying to take it in as I sit here in The Milk Bar, I realise I just want to go back to our cosy little house and have Mum’s shepherd’s pie and feel a bit chilly and cuddle up with them in front of the fire, and go out on the hills with Patch and Dad, and go fishing and feel the mist on my face.

I said I’d call them in two days’ time, but perhaps I’ll go back early instead.

Perhaps I’ll just head home tomorrow.

I stopped on the way back from the phone place to buy some pills. The first chemist’s shop refused to serve me. He said he couldn’t understand me, but that was bullshit. But the second didn’t seem to give a toss, and sold me Valium and ‘slimming pills’ while gawping at my breasts.

The final part of the day’s budget went on a litre-bottle of really rough-looking red wine – grand total about fifty pence.

I took my shopping back to the Peta Inn to find Ena, excited about the day and night we were going to have. Climbing the four flights of stone steps to get to the roof nearly made me pass out. My heart was thumping in my chest, and my vision was swimmy. No food for, what, six days? Apart from beer, I suppose. That’s a sort of food, isn’t it? Enough calories, anyway.

I wove through the sea of heat-shimmery metal bunk beds to where Ena and I slept. I thought she might be there on the lower bunk, shading herself from the sun. I thought she would be waiting for me.

But there was no Ena. Her bed was stripped of her sleeping bag. Her book – she was reading
The Women’s Room
, which she said she’d lend me when she’d finished – wasn’t there, nor was the jumble of clothes and flip-flops and scarves she had stashed under her bed.

Had someone stolen all her stuff? And, if so, where was she?

Even though the place is full of strung-out travellers and druggies, Dimitri the owner says that thefts are very rare so long as everyone carries their valuables with them and stashes their rucksacks and camping gear in the baggage store, which only he’s got the key for. It’s also his way of making sure no one does a runner – he’s supposed to keep our passports, but he doesn’t have everyone’s because he’s overcrowded and the tourist police sometimes do checks. Ena said most of the hostel owners do that. ‘It’s why,’ she told me, ‘it’s so easy to just disappear here. Athens just swallows people up.’

Remembering this, I started to get worried for her.

I checked my own bed – everything was just how I’d left it when I got up.

I looked around. Apart from two sleeping Dutch hippies who’d arrived noisily in the middle of the night, the place was deserted. The sun had just left its highest point of the day, so anyone sensible would have gone looking for shade in the National Gardens, or a bar.

From the street below, I heard a girl’s laughter echoing up the sides of the building. Thinking it could be Ena, I rushed to the parapet – a wall about four feet high at the edge of the roof. There’s this story about how, two years ago, a girl either fell or jumped off it and died. I thought about her as I looked down. It’s a hell of a drop.

On the street below, a group of girls and boys about my age were walking right down the middle of the road, weaving in and out of the mopeds and small open delivery trucks that buzz around all day with their loads of watermelons and beer and sacks of beans. I leaned over the parapet to get a better look. One of the girls – the one who was laughing the loudest – had the same hair and walk as Ena. I nearly called out, but then she looked round to say something to the boy behind her and I saw that it wasn’t her at all.

For safekeeping, I stuffed the wine down the bottom of my sleeping bag. Then I headed downstairs to look for her. The communal kitchen was empty, except for the resident mangy old dog dozing under the table.

I went to the reception desk where Dimitri was sitting, smoking and counting money, a bottle of Coke at his side.

‘Yeah?’ he says.

‘Have you seen Ena?’ I ask him.

‘Ena?’

‘The tall Australian girl on the roof.’

‘She go,’ he says, scratching the back of his neck. His skin glistens with grease and sweat.

‘Go?’

He moves his head down to one side and slightly closes his eyes – which seems to be the Greek way of saying yes. ‘Israel,’ he says. ‘Kibbutz.’

‘When?’

‘This morning.’ He shrugs and goes back to his counting.

Ena has gone. Ena has left me.

I don’t know why I’m taking it so badly. I suppose it’s because I was making plans for us. I’m so stupid. I get so carried away. She didn’t owe me anything.

So why do I feel so betrayed?

SHE COULD AT LEAST HAVE SAID GOODBYE.

The reception area’s in the entrance to the hostel, which must have been quite a grand house once. It’s the coolest place in the whole building, with its high ceilings, stone floors and shuttered windows. But even so, when Dimitri told me about Ena going to Israel, the heat closed in on me. I steadied myself against the wall, trying to use the cold marble to short fuse the faint I could feel coming on.

I needed to eat.

When I felt a bit less wobbly, I came here, the bar we were in last night. I’ve got a beer, a new pack of Karelia and some chips, which are too greasy and burn my mouth, but I’m on my third portion, forcing them down.

There’s a tall, skinny boy sitting at one of the tables and I just looked up and caught him watching me. He smiled and looked away. He’s got long, dark, curly hair and weird blue eyes. I reckon he’s probably English, or American. He doesn’t look like a creep, but you never know.

He can fuck right off, then.

Goodbye, Ena. Getting it all out like this is helpful. It’s like I’m writing her out of my life.

1 August 1980, a bit later. Athens. Peta Inn roof.

I’ve just found something.

I’m up on the roof again. The Dutch hippies have disappeared, so I’m all alone now.

When I got back, after I had thrown up all those chips – they came up like thick yellow slugs – I climbed up onto my bunk bed. The metal of the frame was almost too hot to touch, so I held on tight to feel the burn. Rummaging in my sleeping bag for the wine, I found something else in there: Ena’s copy of
The Women’s Room
. She’s left a message inside the front cover:

Hey, Ems! I finished this. It’s really cool. You should read it and learn from it. We can all be strong women if we work at it. Even you, little Em! Ena xxxx

That last line’s like being slapped in the face. What does she mean by that?

How must I have come across to her?

Am I so obviously the walking wounded?

I HATE THE FRENCH SHIT.

I hate him so much for making me like this.

I hate myself for letting him do it to me.

Should I hate Ena, too, then? But she doesn’t owe me anything. To her, I was just this weed, this victim, this weakling girl she had a couple of drinks with.

She saw right through me.

I’m transparent, like tracing paper.

KATE

2013

Kate almost didn’t go to Starbucks.

She filled the intervening days with her usual refuge activity of cleaning the house. She pulled everything out of already pristine cupboards, scrubbed them out and replaced their contents more neatly. She steam-cleaned each of the four bathrooms and the sauna. She stripped and waxed the maple floorboards of the guest level.

But all the activity failed to chase the date, time and venue for the meeting from her memory. It kept repeating itself in her mind like a mantra:

Upstairs, New Oxford Street Starbucks, midday, Thursday.

She tried to obliterate it with alcohol, sitting alone each night drinking one, sometimes two, bottles of wine. Mark was away on business and Tilly was busy either working or saying goodbye to friends in far-flung corners of London, so there was no one to curb or criticise her excesses.

When she woke up hung-over and alone on the Thursday morning, she thought perhaps she might just not go out. The idea of leaving the house suddenly seemed like an enormous challenge to her. She found the West End hard to bear, anyway. All that noise and dirt; all those people squashing around her with their smells and their germs.

She had dared to begin to hope that, with the help of time, and the success of Martha’s Wish, she had made some headway at being more like the almost normal woman she had learned to be before Martha’s death. But no. Just the sight of Beattie’s name pulled her all the way back to the horrors of the distant past.

And Beattie had said she was desperate.

She had no idea what it could be about. But she couldn’t keep away. She had to go and see her.

It had been a long time. Time enough to forget, perhaps. But not really.

You don’t forget those sorts of things.

‘Pull up here, please,’ she said to the taxi driver, a little before they reached Starbucks. Despite the relentless, ice-pick rain, she needed a few steps to right herself.

As she drew the collar of her mac around her ears and put up her umbrella, the taxi took off, aquaplaning on a puddle and soaking her legs. By the time she pushed open the coffee-shop door, she was regretting her decision to walk the last couple of hundred yards.

One of the issues she had with crowds, other than the sheer press of their humanity, was that she always had a sense that everyone was looking at her. The only way she could cope with this was by mentally hazing the space between herself and the world. It reminded her of when she used to get stoned – the fogginess gave a greater objectivity.

Of course, with her famous picture doing the rounds, the staring problem was now more real than imagined. She had taken pains to make herself less recognisable with a sheepskin hat and the dark-rimmed glasses that she normally only used for reading. But, even so, she was certain that a man glanced oddly at her as she passed him in the street, despite the fact that he was hurrying past her, huddled against the cold and the wet.

As she entered the warm, coffee- and vanilla-scented interior, she forced herself back into focus. She hadn’t been able to face breakfast, and the smell of lunchtime paninis warming up made her feel queasy. She glanced around to see if she recognised anyone, but of course Beattie had said she’d be upstairs. To put off the moment, she queued for a chamomile tea.

‘In or to go?’ the barista asked.

‘In,’ she said, passing up the final possibility of escape. The barista set out a china cup and saucer.

The upstairs room was crowded and fugged with the steam rising from cups and wet coats. She had to take her specs off, because they were entirely clouded over. Juggling glasses, cup and rolled-up umbrella, she stood at the top of the stairs and cast her eye around.

And there she was. Sitting at the far end of the room, her back to the wall, looking out, but not yet seeing her. She was unmistakably Beattie, despite the extra pounds and years, and the change in her hair, which, like Kate’s, was now fair and wavy. There was also a tension in the way she held her body; her face looked strained. Hardly surprising, though. Kate was sure she didn’t look so relaxed herself.

She waited until Beattie’s gaze settled on her. Then, without a smile, Kate nodded and headed over towards her. As she approached, Beattie stood with a stiffness that suggested some minor mobility problems. Kate focused her anxiety on how to greet her. A kiss would be wrong, surely? But a handshake seemed too formal, somehow.

Beattie short-circuited the moment by stepping forward and drawing Kate to her in an embrace. As she was pressed to this unfamiliar, soft body, Kate smelled cigarettes and a perfume she didn’t recognise. She tried not to appear too held-back, but she really wasn’t a hugger.

‘Thank God you came,’ Beattie said as she held her, her voice far deeper and gravelled than it had been.

‘Good to see you,’ Kate lied, breaking away to take off her hat and coat. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Sure is,’ Beattie said, removing her own coat from the seat she had saved for her. This meant that Kate had to sit with her back to the room, which was never her favourite arrangement. But there was nothing she could do about it without appearing unhinged or high-maintenance, neither of which seemed to be a good idea for this meeting.

The two women sat and looked at each other in a silence that didn’t quite deliver its threat of being uncomfortable. Even allowing that she was a few years older than Kate, Beattie was considerably more weathered. Deep lines grained her face, and her skin was thicker, coarser. Kate supposed that this was probably down to the cigarettes she could smell on her. Or sun exposure, perhaps.

Above dark rings, Beattie’s eyes were still green, but, inevitably perhaps, the colour had faded from them over the years. She was nervy, too, which reminded Kate painfully of the last time she had seen her. She kept biting at her bottom lip, running her teeth along the edge, grimacing slightly. For a moment, Kate thought perhaps she might have developed a tic, but it wasn’t that. She was nervous about something. Though that was hardly surprising, given the circumstances.

‘How are you?’ Kate said. The minute the words left her mouth, she cringed at their inanity. That wasn’t what she wanted to ask.

‘I’m fine,’ Beattie said, smiling. But Kate could see this wasn’t entirely the truth. ‘It was that charity picture,’ she said. ‘That’s how you were found.’

‘Found?’

Beattie reached over with her right hand and, in a move that was shocking in its intimacy, pushed up Kate’s sleeve and held her by the elbow. Then, with her free hand, she revealed her own forearm.

And there they were, the matching tattoos, their Triskelions, their marks of Hecate, the Triple Goddess.

‘You haven’t changed all that much,’ Beattie went on, her American accent sounding more southern than Kate remembered. ‘Apart from the hair, of course. But that’s what clinched it.’ She traced her finger around the curlicues of ink on Kate’s arm. ‘Not many of these around on this sensitive bit.’

‘Ridiculous place for a tattoo.’ Kate smiled, retrieving her arm. She rolled down her sleeve.

‘Remember how it hurt? Jesus, Jake cried, I swear,’ Beattie said.

At the mention of that name, Kate jolted like she had been hit.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked, once she had gathered herself back together.

‘I’ve got some news for you. Something has come up. We’re in a mess, Emma.’

‘I’m Kate now.’

‘Sorry, yes, Kate.’

Kate waited for Beattie to say what she had to say. She was certainly drawing the moment out. Her clothes, she noticed, while not brand new, were of a quality: Donna Karan coat, Mulberry handbag. And, although her hands showed her age, her nails were neatly manicured. None of this should matter, but Kate was relieved that, like her, Beattie seemed to have found a comfortable life.

Eventually, Beattie took a sip of her cappuccino. ‘This charity of yours. You lost your daughter, huh?’

Kate nodded. What did this woman want?

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

Kate didn’t like it when people said that. It always sounded like they were making out it was her fault. It felt like they were ramming it down her throat.

But Beattie wasn’t to know that.

‘You have another daughter, yes?’ she said. ‘Tilly?’

‘How do you know that?’ Kate frowned.

‘Some website back home.’

Beattie pulled up a page on her phone and passed it across the table to Kate. It was a photograph of her, Mark and Tilly coming out of the restaurant they had eaten in after the
Hello UK!
interview. Kate, who had recently thrown up, didn’t look too good. In fact, she was actually scowling. The picture was captioned
Face of Kindness
?

‘Is that your husband?’ Beattie said. ‘He’s hella handsome.’

‘I had no idea someone was taking our photo. Sorry. That’s just freaked me out.’

‘Yeah, weird, isn’t it? Rat-asses, aren’t they, the press? Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. She looks like a lovely girl, too.’

‘She is.’ Kate took a sip of her tea, then cradled the cup in her fingers.

‘I’ve got daughters, too. Here.’ Beattie pulled a wallet out of her handbag and showed her two passport photos of two plump, staid girls in what looked like their twenties. ‘Good girls. Not like we were,’ Beattie said, tucking the photos away again.

‘Are you married?’

‘Was. My husband was a surgeon. But, rest his soul, he got taken away.’ Beattie smiled again, and Kate realised that what she had taken for tiredness in her eyes was more like sadness.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, it was over a year ago. I’m beginning to learn how to live without him.’ Beattie drew her arms around herself and shrugged. ‘It was hard. It gets easier. You’d know that from losing your little girl.’

‘Yes,’ Kate said, finding herself rubbing her nose.

They sat in silence for a few moments, the background noise in the coffee shop – soft rock, lovers’ chatter, a child’s prattle – surrounding them like a muffled blanket. At last Kate couldn’t bear it any longer.

‘So tell me what this is all about, Beattie. What’s this news you’ve got for me? I thought the idea was that we weren’t going to see each other ever again.’

Beattie put her hand on Kate’s elbow. ‘I didn’t want to do this, but you need to know. He’s on to you, too, now.’

‘What? Who?’ Kate said. ‘What are you talking about?’

Beattie leaned forward, put her lips to Kate’s ear and whispered the words she had come from the other side of the Atlantic to tell her.

Words Kate never thought she would ever hear.

Words that changed
everything
.

Kate’s cup seemed to take thirty-three years to hit the floor. When it finally landed, it clattered and smashed, splashing hot tea over the legs of the man sitting behind her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said as she tried to get up to grab a napkin to help him. But then the floor came up to greet her. On her way down, she caught her temple on the corner of the table and then she knew nothing more.