What She Left: Enhanced Edition (31 page)

Interviewee hugs herself, then cries …

Interviewee cries.

What Cooke’s doing is sick. He promised me it was a tribute, but it’s turned into a character assassination. I can’t believe I ever cooperated with his grave-robbing. I’m supposed to be a communications expert FFS. I had the best intentions, but grief clouded my vision. This is it, though – I’m having no more to do with him and am urging all my and Alice’s friends to do likewise.

He’s worse than the gutter press – as if delving into her past wasn’t enough, now he’s picking over the remains of her last few hours.

He’s even gone on record as backing Luke, piously asserting that we have to have confidence in the authorities, but how can you trust them when you hear about these miscarriages of justice?

I’ll be honest, Cooke’s not normal. I liked him at first, but he wants to talk about me more than Alice, keeps rattling on about how I should follow my dream of returning to full-time study. ‘You’d definitely get a place, especially if I put a word in with the powers that be,’ he said.

‘Thank you, but it wouldn’t be Southampton,’ I explained. ‘Too many ghosts.’

‘I wasn’t necessarily referring to this august establishment. My reputation may not be what it was, but I’m not atrociously connected
in academic circles. Not that you’d need a reference from me. You’re intelligent, you’re sensitive, you’ve got experience of industry so institutions would be positively falling over themselves to get their hands on you – and if they weren’t they jolly well should be!’

Then the other night – surprise, surprise, his wife just
happened
to be out – he took a call so I had a snoop around (Alice used to say inquisitiveness was a good trait!) and in one of his drawers he’s got this file of pictures. Not like what we’d been amassing, these were extra, and stashed in the middle of them – it was all grainy, like a print-off of a digital scan of an old-fashioned print – her as a KID on a beach. I was totally weirded out and then, because I was terrified of arousing his suspicion, had to sit in the dining room with him, the image of Alice in a pink polka dot bikini, water wings on her arms, burnt bright into my mind, while he slavered on about the ‘stages of grief’ like he was reciting a text. It’s as if there’s a bit of that man missing. Every fibre in my body was screaming:
Run …

He talked about guilt but where can I begin with that? The guilt at not being with her that weekend to take care of her, the guilt at not picking up her texts, her voicemails, the guilt at not being a better friend? And then (we always used to argue about whether you could begin a sentence with ‘and’, but she was unmovable on it being fine … it even reminds me of her when I use brackets because she did that a lot) there’s the anger. Anger at how old men get to stockpile pictures of her as a child in a cossie and philanderers like Luke get to go out drinking again when he’s lied to the police. Chloe and Lauren reckon I shouldn’t be so horrid to him, but why shouldn’t I be horrid? If I let this anger go, it’s like I’m letting her go.

I’m going to quit blogging. I figured speaking out was being true to Alice’s memory, but it’s not. We might need to fill in the gaps, but attaining closure for ourselves won’t bring her back. This prurient preoccupation with detail, this compulsion to clasp logic when it doesn’t necessarily exist, that’s not how you show respect. The specifics of her final few moments, they’re hers not ours … they’re the
only secret she will be left with at this rate, especially if Cooke publishes his godawful book.

Public opinion seems to be uniting around the theory that she was on her own at the end, so beyond that I suppose the precise details are irrelevant. Ignore Cooke, he’s a sad, discredited deviant who’s fixated with intrigue and scandal where it doesn’t exist. Hasn’t got enough excitement or drama in his own life, that man, so he’s seeking it vicariously. Whether she slipped on a muddy bank or tripped over a tree root or paused to gaze out in wonder at the shimmering blackness and crumpled. Even if she decided in her drunken state that it was, you know, time to go to sleep, let’s let her keep that private at least. Her final mystery. Fitting, in a way.

She had a romantic streak, our Alice, a weakness for red roses, doomed heroines, tear-smudged ink on love letters. (Alice Palace, right now my tears are falling on to the keyboard.) So you, Alice, getting lashed and toppling into a river … If you hadn’t died, it would be hysterical, a story we’d wheel out at get-togethers – Francesca’s birthday is only four weeks away; you’re going to miss that now, aren’t you? So very
you
, missus.

Death is random and if you fight that, the questions drive you mad.

‘There’ll be enough unanswered questions to fill a book,’ Alice’s mum said to me during one of our many late-night hours-long tearful conversations.

Drunk girls do fall in rivers and drown.

Before I leave the best friend I’ll ever have to sleep in peace, I need to set the record straight on one final thing. Our feted, lauded academic, who hoards pictures of children in swimming costumes – you mustn’t believe a word of what he says in his book. Because he’s got an agenda; there’s more to him than meets the eye: he’s a pervert and he assaulted me. When I made my excuses and stood up from the dining-room table, his hand, it gripped like a vice.

Publish and be damned, hey Lissa?

 

Comments on the above blog post:

 

I’ve tried emailing and ringing you to no avail, so I’m left with no choice but to leave a comment here. I can appreciate you’re upset, but what you are making are extremely serious – and unfounded – allegations. If you don’t delete them within twelve hours, I will take legal advice. I’m very disappointed in you, Megan.

Jeremy ‘Silver Surfer’ Cooke

 

‘Take legal advice’ – you don’t scare me, Professor Cooke. I won’t be intimidated by a bully like you; Alice wouldn’t have wanted that. I’m allowed an opinion. I’m quitting blogging, but not because it would suit you and what’s already here stays live out of respect for Alice, which in case you haven’t noticed – you and Luke and the rest of the vultures – is a privilege my best friend never had.

Megan Parker

 

Megan, you’re totally losing it. Can’t believe you’d write this about Jeremy. He’s a sound bloke and that stuff you’ve been posting about me, it’s shite – yes, I did get taken to the station but I was let go, i.e. NOT charged. The police wouldn’t have done that if they’d had the slightest suspicion about me. Alice would hate us fighting over her memory so don’t get all holier than thou – yes, you were her best mate but you hadn’t visited her for ages. One mention in a shitty PR mag as ‘one of the thirty under thirty to watch’ and you turned your back on your old friends. Besides, Alice told me the last time she’d rung you, you’d had a right go at her.

Luke A

 

Why were the police so keen to talk to you then, Luke, if you’re innocent? They must have had a reason or they wouldn’t have dragged you to Southampton, and they might have let you go, but that doesn’t mean they can’t subsequently charge you. I’m sick of
people dissing me because in one stupid interview I dared to mention she wasn’t perfect. With real friends you don’t need to pretend they’re perfect. I was her oldest friend, not some temporary boyfriend! Actually it’s disrespectful to make out she was a nun – she liked a few glasses of vino, she liked to get pissed; it’s not a crime. You of all people should know that, though I bet she didn’t share the story about the weekend she was here in December, did she? When she got so drunk she fell down the stairs and knocked me flying in the process! Suppose I imagined that, did I?!

Megan Parker

 

Yeah and I bet you were just as bad.

Luke A

 

Actually, I wasn’t, so there. For the record, I wasn’t drinking and it was your fault, if anyone’s, she was so hammered, because it was the day after she discovered you’d been putting it around in Prague and she was upset and needed some company, so don’t preach to me!

Megan Parker