The Furies: A Novel (31 page)

‘No-one.’

‘It’s not a very sophisticated code,’ Lisa Meyer mutters, skimming back through the letters.

‘She just wants to believe that the letters will reach me. And she’s disguising her identity and mine because they’ve persuaded her that she shouldn’t be writing to me. But no, she probably won’t get a job at MI5.’

‘Brayford has taken a big risk. He must have known there was a strong chance she’d check. Have you written back?’ she asks.

‘No.’

Lisa Meyer tilts her head. She is testing the weight of my answer.

‘I think you might have to,’ she says. ‘I want to know who told Brayford that lying to his client is a reasonable course of action. It can’t be her mother, I don’t think. More likely to be the father. But if it is him, and he’s the one trying to use you to ameliorate his daughter’s position, I want to know for sure.’

‘Does it really matter?’

‘Information is always better than a lack of information,’ she says simply. ‘The more we know, the better prepared we will be. You need to write back. Use your real name. Tell her to reply via my office if you don’t want to give her your address.’

‘No, it’s fine. I don’t mind if she knows my address.’ The unsaid words hang in the air between us. What’s she going to do – come here and murder someone in front of me?

‘If you’re sure,’ Lisa Meyer says.

‘She’s just a child. She made a mistake – a terrible mistake, I know, but it was still a mistake. She’s not a homicidal maniac, she’s a sixteen-year-old girl.’

Lisa Meyer’s face is unreadable.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Write. Tell her you don’t know anything about her lawyers, and you certainly didn’t send them. Tell her she should try and find out who did, because they’re lying to her and they’re lying about you. And if you possibly can, do it before the final post today,’ she adds. ‘We’re on a deadline, Alex. The court date is only a few weeks away, and you need to bear in mind that knowledge is crucial. Not just for you. For Mel.’

Dear Alex,

I got your letter! I wish I could send you mail, but our computer time is all checked and stuff here. No phones or laptops or anything much. I don’t mind as much as I thought I would. If you’d asked me if I could go without the internet twenty-three hours a day, I’d have said no way. But it turns out that you just do things differently – now I’m writing letters instead. And it’s really exciting when the post comes in the afternoons. Well, it arrives in the mornings, but it has to be checked through before we get it. I don’t know why. It’s not like you’d be sending me a map of the building and its weak spots, is it?

I didn’t know you were living back down south again now. It was nice of Robert to forward my letters. I’m sorry you left Rankeillor. They must really miss you there. I bet they blame me, right? For you leaving? Do you blame me, too? I know that must be why you left. Because you were going to stay, weren’t you? You were going to stay on there permanently and now you’ve had to start a new life all over again. Or have you just gone back to your old life? Do you have another job? Have you seen your mum? Tell me everything. It’s boring here, so any news from outside is more exciting to me than it is to you.

I’m not bitching though, honestly. I like it here. Well, maybe not ‘like’. But it’s OK, is what I mean. I don’t prefer it to being at home or anything, but it is kind of easier being here. At first, you think everything’s decided for you: you have to be at this place at this time for this thing, which makes me feel a bit itchy. I don’t like being told what to do. But actually, the people who work here are really nice. So if you tell them that you don’t want to have counselling first thing in the morning, they try and change it so that you get it after lunch. They like us to feel like we have control over our lives. Or as you’d say, agency over our fates. Right?

So, that’s weird, about the lawyers. You didn’t send them, but they definitely said you had. I told the Centre head here that I wanted to see them again, and she passed the message on, and the young one came back. His name’s Adam. You said you’d met him – he’s pretty hot, isn’t he? I like the way his hair curls into his collar, and his eyes are almost green – did you notice that? Cute, anyway.

Plus he blushes when you ask him why his boss is a fucking liar. He goes all burbly, um, er, well, I can’t imagine how, I mean, well, er, yes. I told him point blank that he could either tell me the truth or fuck off out of my life so I could have some peace and quiet to read a fucking book. And then he saw I wasn’t kidding, and said it was my dad who was paying him, but that my dad had asked them to keep that hidden from me, ‘if at all possible’ (he put little air quotes round that like a total numpty), in case it ‘antagonised me further’.

How fucking bizarre is that? My dad hasn’t even visited me here beyond once, because I wouldn’t take his phone calls and I ignored his letters. And I don’t miss him, because I hardly ever saw him anyway, because we don’t even live in the same city. And then suddenly he’s all Jason fucking Bourne subterfuge. That’s the right word, isn’t it? Subterfuge. I like the sound of it, but actually it looks even better written down. I’ve looked it up: it comes from Latin. It means to escape secretly. You probably know that already, though, don’t you, Alex?

Anyway, my dad is clearly busy with his girl-bride, isn’t he? Isn’t it weird how the plays we were reading began to happen in real life? My mum hates him enough to be Clytemnestra, easily. So I suppose that makes me Electra, doesn’t it? I don’t mind that – it’s a pretty name.

Actually, I wonder if he is still planning their wedding, or if I’ve spoiled that for him too. Maybe she’s left him, because of his scary awful daughter (that would be me). It would be hilarious if that had happened. Wouldn’t it? If he’d gone all mid-life-crisis-cliché and then she’d left him when she found out what kind of father he is. It must look really bad, having a daughter about to stand trial for murder. You couldn’t mention that on a first date.

But I’m definitely not going to see him again now I know about this whole lawyer thing. Why would they say you’d sent them? I asked Adam, but he was really vague – just muttered about how they wanted me to feel safe talking to them, and that obviously my mother hadn’t sent them so his boss had to think of something else. Really fucking dubious. He said they had a few questions about you, but I told him he’d have to fuck off until I’d spoken to you. He said, and I quote, ‘That was the very thing we were hoping to avoid, Miss Pearce.’ Like a fucking vicar would talk. When I asked him why he didn’t want me talking to you, he just blushed and burbled again.

Write back soon. Tell me how you are. What’s it like where you’re living? Is Reigate in London? Or nearby? Are you working in London? Tell me everything, but don’t spend ages replying, because I’d rather hear from you soon and have you miss things out than wait ages for a letter. Please, I mean.

Love, Mel

PS Adam tried calling me Mel, but I told him we weren’t friends, so he could call me Miss Pearce. You’d have been proud of me. I think. I hope.

x

3

I meet Lisa Meyer at Edinburgh Airport. I have flown in from Gatwick, and she’s come from City Airport. My plane arrives an hour before hers, so I wait in Arrivals, surrounded by presentation bottles of Glenmorangie and toy bears in tartan capes. I haven’t been in this airport for ages – I’d forgotten how small it is. It doesn’t seem possible that planes can fly from what appears to be nothing more than a tiny shopping mall, but they do. Lisa Meyer steps into the Arrivals hall with a silver travelling case hovering behind her. I wonder how much she had to pay for one which never snags its wheels on the uneven flooring or tips to one side.

‘Alex, you’re here,’ she says. I’m not sure if she was worrying I wouldn’t come because I’d be scared, or because she has deemed me the kind of person who misses flights, caught in a maelstrom of lost passports and misplaced boarding passes.

‘Yes,’ I say. I have given up trying not to state the obvious when talking to her. I think perhaps very beautiful people have that effect, so that their lives are filled with people describing the weather, or commenting on the furniture. It’s possible Lisa Meyer’s existence is duller than I have previously considered.

At the exit, there’s a man to our left, holding up a piece of A4 paper on which he has written Lisa Meyer’s name. Of course she has booked a cab. I can’t even see her on a bus in my imagination. The driver takes us across the road outside and into the ground floor of the car park opposite. His taxi is one of those minivans that could hold eight people, easily. He takes Lisa’s case, swings it expertly onto the back seat, then stands back so I can untangle my bag and put it on the seat myself. Lisa has already given him the address and he is soon pounding towards the city centre. As we drive down Corstorphine Road, past the zoo, I feel a brief pang. I would like to go and see the pandas, which made the national news when they arrived after I’d left Edinburgh. But there is literally no-one I could go with: even Robert wouldn’t want to go to the zoo, unless there was an outdoor production of
A Winter’s Tale
by the bear enclosure.

The driver turns down Lothian Road, heading towards Bruntsfield. I can’t tell if I’m car-sick or just frightened. But by the time we pull up outside Mel’s building, I can feel sweat dotting my forehead. It isn’t a warm day. Lisa Meyer takes her case from the car, and tells the driver to wait. He glances up at the parking sign, which demands a residents’ permit, but he doesn’t say anything. She slams the door, and looks over the roof of the minivan to me.

‘Are you alright, Alex?’

I nod.

‘Just breathe,’ she says, as she walks past me and crosses the pavement. She scrutinises the bells and presses 1F2. A moment later, there’s a faint buzzing sound and she pushes the door open. Upstairs, the large red front door of an apartment is being held open by a woman I have never met, who must despise me. She looks very much like her daughter: she’s tall and slender, and she dyes her hair the same shade that Mel’s is. The colour of set honey. Her eyes are puffy but not red. She has cried for days, but not yet today.

She looks straight past Lisa Meyer to me, and says, ‘You must be Alex Morris.’ I nod, and she says, ‘I’m Eleanor, Melody’s mother. I’m so sorry.’ And she disintegrates like wet paper.

There’s a beat before Lisa Meyer takes charge. She holds the door for me to follow her, and produces a pack of tissues from her handbag that she hands to Eleanor, who claws at it for a moment before realising it’s unopened. Finally Eleanor peels away the plastic and wrenches one out. She covers her whole face with it, and stands there for a moment like a vandalised portrait. Then she presses it to her eyes and nose, stands perfectly still for a few seconds, and scoops it away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. She offers Lisa Meyer the remainder of the tissues, but Lisa waves them away.

‘I have a bag full of them,’ she says. ‘April is the pollen season.’

Eleanor nods, and leads us through to her kitchen. She switches the kettle on, and it boils in a few seconds. She pulls three mugs off a mug tree, and looks hopelessly at a jar of coffee and a box of tea bags.

‘Tea all round?’ Lisa Meyer says, briskly. ‘Let me.’

Eleanor sits at the kitchen table, and I do the same. Lisa doesn’t ask if anyone wants sugar or milk. She just makes them black, and puts the milk carton on the table.

‘Mrs Pearce,’ she says, calmly. Eleanor blinks hard, and only one small runnel falls from each eye.

‘Call me Eleanor,’ she whispers. ‘Please.’

‘Eleanor,’ says Lisa Meyer. ‘Alex isn’t going to yell at you, and neither am I.’ She looks to me for confirmation, and I nod, vigorously. I have no plans to yell at Eleanor Pearce.

‘I just feel so awful,’ she says. She’s breathing slowly and deeply, trying to control herself. She looks at me. ‘You were there, when she…’ And she breaks off again.

The tiny line across Lisa Meyer’s nose has appeared again, and I suspect she is calculating which flight she will make, given that this afternoon is clearly going to take longer than she’d hoped.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I was there.’

‘And now I hear from Melody that Martin’s lawyers have been trying to…’ She begins to crack and then regains composure. ‘He wasn’t like that when we were married. He really wasn’t. He’s changed.’

‘People do,’ says Lisa Meyer. She’s hoping that if she talks in generalisations, it might reduce the potential for weeping.

‘I know you’re right,’ Eleanor says. ‘But how dare he?’

I haven’t really considered things from this perspective before. And it hasn’t occurred to me that Mel’s mother would, either. I have been braced for her fury: how dare I have encouraged her daughter to read murderous plays, how dare I have not noticed Mel’s growing obsession, how dare I have waltzed into her daughter’s life and then danced off again once the damage was done? And instead, Eleanor is all apology, guilt and grief. Just like me.

‘We really need to know a bit more about how Melody’s getting on,’ says Lisa Meyer. ‘Her trial date is quite soon now.’

The mention of practicalities is what finally dries Eleanor Pearce’s tears.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What do you need to know? She’s going to plead guilty, of course.’

Lisa Meyer nods, as though this is exactly what she was expecting to hear. It isn’t at all what I was expecting to hear.

‘Guilty of murder?’ I’m appalled.

‘Manslaughter,’ Eleanor corrects me. ‘Well, she says she’s going to plead guilty to murder, but her lawyers are hoping the court will only ask for manslaughter. I mean, not hoping, exactly. It depends on… I mean, if she hadn’t… But maybe if—’

‘But won’t she be locked up for years?’ As Eleanor is trying to work out what she wants to say, I blurt the words out. Eleanor breaks off, sobbing, and Lisa Meyer gives me a weary look.

‘She did kill an innocent woman,’ she murmurs.