The Furies: A Novel (32 page)

‘Excuse me.’ I get up to find the bathroom, which is next to the front door. I pour cold water onto my hands and pat my face and the back of my neck. I sit on the edge of the bath for a moment. There is a small glass bowl with tiny silver discs in it. I can’t work out what they are, and I have to reach over and pick one up before I realise they are batteries for a hearing aid. Of course I knew she would go to prison or a secure unit or something. But she could plead guilty to manslaughter. Surely that would be enough? How punished did we need her to be?

I walk back into the kitchen to find Lisa Meyer and Eleanor still discussing the consequences of Mel’s guilty plea. In the six months that have passed since Mel was arrested, Eleanor has come to terms with the fact that her daughter will be incarcerated for several years. And nothing ever surprises Lisa Meyer. It’s just me who is shocked.

‘But she didn’t mean to do something terrible,’ I say, so loudly that Eleanor jumps. I moderate the volume. ‘I know she didn’t. Your daughter isn’t a bad person.’

Eleanor dips her head, not noticing Lisa’s single, tiny head-shake.

‘Have you got her diary?’ I ask. I am certain that this will reveal her to be the decent girl I think she was, before everything went wrong. Wouldn’t that help?

Eleanor frowns. ‘No,’ she says. She thinks for a moment. ‘Mel used to write all the time, last year. She started it after you asked them to, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t think any of them really bothered except her. Maybe Carly kept one for a few weeks. But Mel used to mention that she was writing hers.’

‘She must have taken it with her into the secure unit,’ Lisa Meyer says.

‘Yes, she must,’ Eleanor agrees. ‘But you can check her room if you want.’

As she leads us along the hall, Lisa Meyer glances discreetly at her watch. She is clearly regretting that she didn’t have this conversation on a conference call.

Mel’s bedroom is ordinary: two shelves of books, mainly young adult novels; posters of actors and of a band I don’t recognise and couldn’t name; a desk with a few ring-binders lined up along the wall, their spines neatly labelled with the subjects she studied. There are a few books, an illustrated Greek myths, a book about tragedy, a pile of magazines. Her computer is unplugged, and the desk shows a discoloured patch next to it: the police must have removed it, I realise, and then brought it back and put it in the wrong place. The bin hasn’t been emptied since she was arrested, I don’t think: there are tissues and a broken ring-binder in it.

Eleanor notices me looking, and puts her hand up to her hair. ‘I’m sorry it’s a mess,’ she says, though it isn’t. ‘I haven’t managed to…’

‘It’s OK,’ I reply.

This doesn’t look like the room a murderer lived in. It looks like a room a child lived in.

‘Could you ask her, when you next visit?’ I ask. ‘Ask her where the diary is?’

‘Yes, alright.’ Eleanor nods, and the floating strands of hair which she had placed behind her ears come free again. ‘Unless you wanted to visit her, while you’re up here?’

‘Alex has to be back in London by tonight,’ Lisa Meyer says, quickly. ‘Another time, perhaps.’

We’re there for another hour, drinking more tea, trying to comfort her. When we leave, Eleanor hugs me, like a daughter. I squeeze back, because I don’t know what else to do. The car is waiting right outside, and the driver springs out of his seat to open Lisa Meyer’s door for her. He begins the return journey to the airport. Lisa Meyer asks once if I am alright. Then she opens her shiny silver case and removes her laptop, making swift notes as we drive along.

Hi Lex,

That’s a pun. Did you get it? An ilex is the Latin word for an oak tree. Are you impressed I know that? You should be. I haven’t started gardening, before you think I’ve lost my mind. God, imagine if that was the therapy here. Fuck, that would be lame. I’ve started a course in Latin. The Centre head here is really cool. A bit like Robert, actually. Except she’s a she. She asked me what I was interested in, since I didn’t seem ‘engaged in my learning plan’. Yeah, I know. It’s like they have a weird condition.

I told her I wasn’t engaged in it, because it’s basically more fucking collages (Jono would love that). And I prefer learning stuff to being bored. So she’s found this online course for me to learn Latin. I don’t know if they’ll let me learn Greek so I can read your plays properly. That might be good. Or maybe not.

Speaking of Jono, he and Carly came to see me yesterday. That’s why I didn’t write then. It was weird seeing them after all this time. Really strange. They seem exactly the same, whereas for me, everything’s different, isn’t it? It was all a bit awkward at first – lots of stilted hellos, and Carly hugged me and Jono didn’t know what to do and then he hugged me too, which was unexpected. I think he’s got fatter – I could barely reach round him. And then he said, you’re not armed, are you, and Carly jabbed him with her elbow, but I thought it was funny so I laughed and then they laughed and it was OK.

I don’t want you to think I’m laughing about what happened, though. I do know, Alex, that it isn’t funny. Honestly. But sometimes, when I think about that day I don’t know how to feel. It’s like something I dreamed or watched, something that happened to other people, not to me and you. When I talk to the counsellor about it, she says it’s a dissociative state. She says it will take a long time before I can come to terms with what I’ve done. And she says it’s OK that I don’t know how to process it at the moment.

Do you think that’s true? Because there are moments, tiny flashes, like a migraine, when I feel really, really awful. And then they flash away again, just as fast. And if you asked me what I’m afraid of, and I told you the truth, I would say this: I’m afraid it’s those moments that are real and the rest of the time is the lie. And that what she means when she says I’ll come to terms with it is that it’ll switch round, and I’ll live in those bits, the migraine moments, and the good stuff will be what happens in short flashes – with Carly and Jono, or learning Latin, or writing to you. Just tiny bites of happy, and the rest of the time will be bad. Is that what happens when you do something terrible? And if it is, how do you learn to live with it? How do I?

You visited my mum last week, didn’t you? She liked you – she said so. She said you might come and see me sometime, but it probably won’t be here, will it? I’ll be moved after my trial. Or maybe I won’t for a bit. No-one knows yet. But you can still come, you know. I’ll send you the new address.

My mum said you were upset that I am pleading guilty. I don’t want you to be upset, Alex. You of all people know I have to plead guilty, don’t you? That’s how it works – you do something bad and then you have to pay. Like Orestes and Electra in your plays. We never got that far in class, did we? But I read it anyway. I brought the book with me, and I read the final play of the trilogy in here. The Eumenides, I mean. That’s a pretty word, isn’t it? They sound nicer than they are. The Kindly Ones – that’s what it means, isn’t it? Except they aren’t kindly at all. They’re terrifying vengeful goddesses with black fire all around them. I’ve been drawing them in art class (I can’t get out of all the collage bullshit, you see). I’ve enclosed a sketch of one here. It’s not that good, but I’m getting there. The trick is to do it in charcoal, you see, and not pencil. That was Carly’s suggestion, actually. She was always better at art than me.

Anyway, I want you to understand that I’m not pleading guilty because I want to be punished, I’m pleading guilty because I have to be punished. It’s in the play, Alex – if society doesn’t punish its criminals, the gods do.

I don’t think that black-fire-breathing monsters will come after me, or anything. I’m not crazy. But those flashes, the moments of blackness – those are my Eumenides. And I can’t live with them, not if they get any bigger. I’ll be better off in prison, honestly. You have to let me do this. I can’t really explain it to my mum – she pretends she understands, but I know she just thinks I’m mental. She hasn’t read all the plays that we have, Alex, so she doesn’t get it. But you have, so you should understand.

My mum says you want to find my diary. You won’t find it, you know. Not if you looked for a year. I want it that way – it’s private. My mum says you think it will show the jury that I’m just an ordinary girl who got a bit confused, or something. But I don’t want it found, I don’t want it read, and I don’t want it in court. It wouldn’t help, anyway. And even if it would, that isn’t what I want.

I hope I haven’t upset you. I just need to do this properly. I need to do things right, for once. Write soon, though. Tell me you’re OK with everything. I’ll be worrying about it till I hear from you. My counsellor says that kind of statement is passive-aggressive. Jesus.

Love, Mel

4

Adam is in the coffee shop when I arrive, drinking something frothy and eating what might once have been a muffin. On second glance, I’m not sure if he’s eating it, or merely rendering it down to crumbs. He has a messenger bag on the floor between his feet, and his right leg is twitching so fast it makes his whole leg quiver. He’s gazing at the muffin remnants.

‘Hello.’ I stand in front of him, and he starts to his feet.

‘Alex,’ he says, reaching out a hand covered with crumbs, which he brushes onto the table. We shake hands.

‘Do you want anything?’ I ask him.

‘No, thanks. I mean, let me.’

‘It’s fine.’ I walk over to the counter and order a latte. By the time I return to the table, Adam has jettisoned the plate and swept the crumbs from the table to the floor.

‘How are you?’ he asks.

‘Worried about Mel,’ I reply, and he nods vigorously.

‘Can I help?’

‘I think so. You know she intends to plead guilty?’

He nods again, but smaller.

‘I think her diary would prove that she isn’t…’ I can’t find the words.

‘Isn’t what?’

‘Isn’t a monster. She kept it for the whole year, almost. She wrote her feelings and worries and everything in there. She wrote stories and things for class.’

His nods have scaled back so much, they are almost invisible to the naked eye.

‘I just think if you could find it, if you could show it to the court, then they would realise that she’s not a terrible person. They might not lock her up for so long. She doesn’t deserve to lose her whole youth, does she? She’s just a kid who did something terrible, which isn’t the same thing, is it?’

‘No, quite,’ he says. ‘She hasn’t mentioned a diary in our,’ he pauses, ‘admittedly brief meetings.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t have lied to her about me?’ I suggest.

He tugs at his collar. ‘I’m sorry about that. I don’t have much say in the choices my boss makes. But I admit that was a terrible idea, and I should have told him so.’

‘Charles Brayford made a stupid choice. It means she doesn’t trust him, and she only half-trusts you.’

He brightens. ‘Do you think she does?’

‘She thinks you’re cute. So she told me.’

‘Well, that’s better than before, then,’ he says. He pats away the milk from his top lip with a napkin. ‘I can ask her for the diary, Alex. I can go to her flat and search the place. But you’ve tried that, haven’t you? So she probably threw it out before she was arrested, don’t you think?’

‘Probably. But maybe not: a diary is a very personal thing. People who keep them care about them. And she wants to be a writer. I think it would have been agony for her to throw it away. It’s at least possible that she kept it.’

‘OK,’ he says. He reaches into his pocket for a phone, and brings up a yellow screen, thin grey lines running across it. ‘What does it look like?’ His finger is poised to make notes.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.’

‘Ah.’ He switches the phone back off, and returns it to his jacket pocket. ‘But you’re sure it exists?’

‘She told me she wrote in it.’

His face is almost completely motionless, only one eyelid flicking betrayal. I remember that he is a man who spends a great deal of his working life with liars.

‘Why would she lie about it?’

‘To impress her favourite teacher?’ He shrugs.

‘Her mother says she was always writing in it.’

‘Ah, so she knows what it looks like.’ He’s relieved.

I shake my head. ‘She never saw it either. Mel just told her that she was writing a diary.’

‘Well, then.’ He presses his lips together for a moment, then continues. ‘We’ll find it. But you have to understand that it might not help her. You do see that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She wants to plead guilty because she committed an awful crime,’ he says, quietly. ‘That’s her right, Alex. Even if we’re doing our best to reduce the time she serves.’

‘It was just an impulsive moment,’ I reply. ‘She was with me, she was angry and upset, and she did something impetuous and stupid and someone died.’

‘It wasn’t completely impetuous.’ He’s talking so softly now, that I have to lean in to hear him over the sound of the steamers and milk frothers.

‘What do you mean?’

He looks perplexed. ‘You must know, Alex. You were there.’

‘She just pushed her. If the woman hadn’t been wearing those stupid shoes, she’d have probably kept her balance. No-one could have seen that she would fall, not even Mel. And even then, a few seconds earlier and she would have fallen into the canal, and she wouldn’t have been hurt at all, probably. A second or two later, and she’d have fallen into some shrubs, and the worst that would have happened is a few scratches.’ As I say this, I feel the branches on my wrists and ankles again, poking their way in up my coat-sleeves and between my jeans and my boots. I rub my wrists to ease the phantom itching.

‘But that’s not all she did,’ he says, and looks at me in a manner which would surely be full of meaning if I had any idea what he was talking about.

‘I don’t understand.’

He takes a deep breath, and exhales. He’s gazing at me so hard that I begin to think I have milk or something on my face. I put my hand up to check.