After She Fell: A haunting psychological thriller with a shocking twist
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‘Hah! Here we are.’ He waved a piece of paper triumphantly.
‘Thanks Bud.’ She breathed again as she plucked it from his fingers and turned to go.
‘And Alex?’
‘Yes?’ She tried not to laugh. Him and his e-cigarette just didn’t look cool.
‘She sounded desperate. Don’t know what she wanted, but stories involving corrupt MEPs always sell. Better if it’s a sex scandal. Didn’t she marry that much younger man recently?’
‘Mark Munro?’
‘That’s the one. Some city whizz-kid.’
‘They got hitched about this time last year. Whirlwind romance and a summer wedding abroad.’
‘And he’s younger than her.’ Bud looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe—’
Alex raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought The Post was a serious paper, not given to Hello!-style splashes or sidebars of shame reporting. And no one gives a toss if a man marries someone considerably younger than himself.’
‘Ach, cut your feminist whining. And in these days of falling circulation we’ll take anything.’ He grinned. ‘Almost anything. As long as you write it in the right way. So, if there’s a story there—’
She grinned back at him. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be the last to know.’ She winked before closing the door, knowing the story about organ trafficking would have to wait until she’d seen Cat.
So the next day Alex found herself sitting on the white leather settee inside the Devonshires’ mews house. It was a house furnished for comfort: deep pile carpets, squashy sofas, one of those artificial fires that hung on the wall and cost a fortune. Tasteful paintings, from emerging artists she presumed, covered the neutral walls. A table here, a large pendant lamp there. A desk in the corner that was covered with bits of paper (rather like Bud’s, Alex thought) was the only discordant note in the room. But there was no mistaking the atmosphere of deep sadness; the grief like a weight pressing down and squeezing out the air.
Catriona Devonshire perched on the edge of the settee, sucking on a cigarette as if her life depended on it. The fingers that held the cigarette trembled. The nails were bitten, nail varnish chipped. Her husband, Mark, tall, dark-haired and with the boyish good looks of a thirty-something film actor, stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, his shoulders tense with … what? Worry? Anger? It was difficult to tell. She could still remember the snide headlines in the papers about cradle snatching and toy boys. His expression, as he looked at his wife, was one of concern. It must have been difficult for him – headlines when he married Catriona – headlines when her daughter died.
‘Coffee?’ said Catriona, suddenly leaping up, manically stubbing her cigarette out in an ashtray perched on the arm of the settee. The ashtray wobbled, but stayed put.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ said Alex who could have done with something, but the preponderance of white around her made her certain she would spill it. ‘But you have one.’
‘I’ve already …’ she indicated a table by her side. ‘Everyone who comes makes me coffee. Even Mark makes me coffee. As if coffee could help.’ She sat down again. ‘Thanks for your letter, by the way. About Elena.’ Her eyes glistened.
‘It was the least I could do. I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes.’ She stared at nothing, twisting her hands together. She turned her head and looked directly at Alex. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Cat—’
‘You weren’t here when I needed you.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Alex wanted to say more: to explain about Sasha, about how her life had been, about how much she had missed her best friend. But today wasn’t about that, wasn’t about her. It was about Cat and what she, Alex, could do to help. She blinked away tears as she leaned forward. ‘Cat,’ she said gently, ‘you asked me to come here.’
‘Yes.’ She began tapping her foot.
‘Against my better judgement.’ This from Mark, who turned to give her what Alex could only think of as a sorrowful look mixed with annoyance. Interesting.
‘Mark, please—’
He sighed. ‘Oh Cat, you know my views on this.’
‘I do. But I have to try and understand, don’t you see? She was my daughter.’ Catriona scrabbled down the side of the leather cushion and brought out a rather squashed packet of cigarettes. Taking one out, she lit it with shaking hands. Alex caught Mark’s frown of disapproval. Surely he couldn’t begrudge her this?
He looked directly at Alex. ‘But to bring a journalist into the arena is asking for trouble.’ His voice was calm.
Alex wondered what arena she had been brought into. Was she here as a friend or as a journalist? It was obvious which side of the fence Mark thought she sat on. She shifted on her seat.
Catriona looked pleadingly at Mark. ‘She can help. She’s my oldest friend. I trust her.’
Mark shook his head. ‘Oh, very well, Cat. I can see you’re not going to budge.’
Catriona smiled sadly at Alex. ‘Mark doesn’t think I should be talking to you; he says we should go to the police. But I really don’t think they’ll do anything. When it happened, when Elena died …’ her voice faltered, ‘I told them it was impossible for Elena to have killed herself. She wasn’t depressed or anorexic or bulimic. She would have told me. She was looking forward to coming home. We were going skiing in the New Year with another couple and their two daughters. She was thinking about university. Everything. She had everything to live for.’ More desperate sucking on the cigarette. ‘She didn’t kill herself. I know she didn’t.’
Alex tried to keep her expression neutral. So this was what it was about: Catriona’s daughter. She had seen the results of the inquest and knew the verdict had been suicide.
‘Cat,’ she said. ‘The inquest—’
Catriona leapt off the sofa, knocking her cup over, spilling the coffee. ‘Fuck the inquest,’ she shouted.
The three of them watched as the brown liquid spread across the white leather. Alex wondered if it would stain and how much it would cost to get out.
Catriona looked out of the window. Alex knew she wasn’t seeing the London street, but was seeing her daughter, her beautiful 17-year-old daughter. ‘Fuck the inquest,’ she said, quietly this time.
‘Was it an accident?’ Alex kept her voice neutral.
Catriona rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
Mark stood impassively. He sighed. ‘My wife thinks Elena was murdered,’ he said.
CHAPTER 3
ELENA
May: twenty-nine weeks before she dies
It starts halfway through the summer term.
Wednesday at two o’clock in the afternoon. For weeks after, I knew I would remember the exact moment when I felt someone watching me. Stupid really. I thought it was bollocks when people said the hairs on the back of their neck stood up, but that’s exactly what I felt right at that moment.
I am plucking the petals off a daisy: ‘Knob.’ Pluck. ‘Dick.’ Pluck. ‘Knob.’ Pluck. ‘Dick’ … What does it matter? My mother’s husband, my new stepfather, is both of those – and more. I throw the daisy on the ground. How could she have done it? Replaced Dad like that? And he’s younger than her, for Christ’s sake. I want to cry.
I look around, take the scrunchie off my wrist and gather my blonde hair away from my face and up into a ponytail. I am sitting on the grass by the tennis courts revising for my AS levels. All four of them. That’s the trouble with this damn school – they push and push and push until you feel as though your head is going to fucking explode. Surely your brain can only take in so much knowledge? The trouble with my brain is that the knowledge goes in and then bleeds out. I like Art and English, but I know my teachers want me to take Physics and Maths to A level. What the fuck for? I don’t need Physics and Maths. I need English and Art. I want to take English and Art, no matter what my teachers or my mother and new stepfather say. My new stepfather. Even as I think it I still can’t believe it. What did Mum do that for? Was it for the sex? Eeugh, please. Too much information. Mark Munro makes pots and pots of money. Some sort of banker wanker. And the bloody headlines when they got married! Jeez! You’d think no one in the world had ever married anyone younger than themselves. But there was such a lot of crap written and spoken about it all, especially as Mum is well-known and a bit older. There are times when I feel quite sorry for them. But, still …
‘Get your exams then you’ll have choices,’ Mark said to me just after he’d married Mum, when he thought he could get away with trying to be something like a dad to me.
I wanted to tell him to get fucked. You aren’t my dad.
And it always makes my insides curl up when I think about my real dad: dead from an asthma attack when I was only ten. But I can remember him, I really can. And the good times, like when we went to the seaside together – just me and him – leaving Mum to network or phone Obama or something. We paddled and swam and built sandcastles and had ice cream and fish and chips and ate them sitting on the harbour wall, watching people go by.
He wouldn’t have made me come to this school.
I shade my eyes from the sun. The Queen Bees are lying some fifty metres away, stretched out sunbathing, shirts tucked under their bras, skirts hitched as high as they dare, books discarded by their sides. Looking like razor shells in a row on the sand. They don’t seem to care about revising. Lucky sods. The line shifts, sits up, looks around. Queen Bee Naomi Bishop’s plump lips (courtesy of a so-called doctor in a clinic on Harley Street) are moving and I guess she’s talking about catching the rays and the glories of having a tan. Or perhaps she’s whining about something more meaningful like what colour to paint her nails at the weekend, and, of course, the acolytes are breathing in every word. When I first arrived at the school, full of simmering resentment because I felt Mum had listened to Mark and had pushed me away, I was courted by the Queen Bees.
‘Come on, darling.’ Queen Bee Naomi always manages to make every statement sound like a command. ‘You want to be one of us. We know the best hot men to shag, the purest smack, and the best high living. You know it makes sense. We don’t ask everybody, you know. Only girls like us.’
I remember I gave them what I hoped was a cool look (Tara said later I had looked cool), even though my heart was beating, like, really, really fast, and said, ‘No thanks’. Just like that.
Naomi laughed, but I thought at the time it sounded a bit strained, you know?
‘You will so regret it,’ warned Jenni Lewis, Naomi’s right-hand bee. ‘You can’t survive on your own in this dump.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said. But I’m not one for cosy confidences, giggling late at night, sneaking out for sex with one of the sixth form boys. Not my style.
As I watch them, trying not to look as though I am another of the Queen Bees, Natasha Wetherby sits up, looks around, flicks her hair off her face. She smiles over at me and blows me a kiss. Yeah, right. I roll my eyes massively. Helen Clements, the mousy one of the group with hair that hangs like a pair of curtains and eyebrows thicker than Frida Kahlo, giggles: a high-pitched noise that carries over to where I’m sitting.
A second group of girls is over the other side of the tennis courts, laughing and talking. Two from my year sit on a bench, revising. Actually revising. Bloody hell. And further away, under a large oak tree, three or four boys from the Lower Sixth are lying down or are propped up on their elbows, chatting. One of them – Felix – is trying to smoke a cigarette, all cocky looks and holding it by his finger and thumb, but sort of looking around as if he’s frightened of being caught. Another of the boys is Theo, in skin-tight jeans and gun-hugging tee-shirt: the current Queen Bees’ heart-throb. I don’t like either of them that much. Felix looks a bit, I dunno, angry all the time, as though it wouldn’t take much for him to explode. He has a mean look in his eye. And Theo? Smarmy. Knows he’s buff, got half the girls here thinking he’s gorgeous. Doesn’t do a lot for me.
And Max is with them. He should be doing games or homework or something with his mates from Year 11, not hanging around with guys from the sixth form. They treat him as a sort of mascot for them, get him to run their errands. I sigh as he catches my eye. Mistake. He smiles that wobbly, tentative smile of his that makes him look as though he’s about to be hit with a big stick. He’s had a bit of a thing about me ever since I found him being pushed around by the likes of Naomi and Natasha. They’d ambushed him in the changing rooms and were pulling his clothes off him, taunting him, laughing at the size of his dick, that sort of thing. He’s a boy that invites taunts. But I couldn’t let it happen and I managed to get him away from them. Since then he’s had a bit of a thing for me.
Now he glances around to make sure no one’s looking at him – no one is, they never do – and he gives me a little wave. I smile back. What else can I do?
‘Hey, Lee,’ Naomi calls across. ‘Whatcha doing? Come over here.’
My best mate, Tara Johnson, who is trying to find a blade of grass wide enough to make a squealy-farty noise, looks at me; almost pleading with me to get up and join them so that she can follow too. She desperately wants to be part of the club. I sigh. I understand Tara’s feelings, I really do. She likes to belong, be liked, to be part of the gang. Always wants to but never quite manages it. Laughed at for being fat and frumpy, for not being pretty enough, fashionable enough or interesting enough. At our old school I felt sorry for her and could protect her, but here at The Drift, life isn’t so easy. Tara has to swim in a sea of piranhas. I mean, I do my best to defend and shield her, but it’s tough. Tara does not fit in. At all. Any more than I do, but I can pretend if I have to. Tara tends to wear her heart on her sleeve. But she’s a good and loyal friend sticking with me through thick and, quite literally, thin. Tara knows most of my secrets. Knows about my depression, my bouts of anorexia; knows the hard protective shell I’m growing after Mum’s marriage to Mark. The shrinks said the eating thing and the depression were because I didn’t grieve properly when Dad died. Mum went to pieces. I had to be strong. There was only her and me at that time, until Mark Munro came along. Then Mum got her life back on track and I was the one who went to pieces. Because I couldn’t control my environment, they said. The only thing I could control was my eating.
They had a point.
And it was so easy to shut myself in my room and devour pro-ana sites and think all that shit was real. Poor fuckers. I was lucky. Mum got me help and I came out the other side. I think it made me stronger. What doesn’t kill you and all that.
But then Mum’s job became more important; she became more important, and everybody wanted a piece of her. She’d get invited to all sorts of things, and at some fundraising event for a cancer charity she met Mark, and boom! that was it. I ceased to be the most important thing in her life and dropped down to third. Plus, I don’t know what Mark’s real motives are for marrying Mum. He’s a bit too young for her so I reckon he’s in it for the reflected glory or something. And I think he was quite pleased when Mum came up with the idea of sending me to The Drift. ‘It’s a good school and you’re really clever,’ she said. ‘And I don’t want to leave you on your own when I’m away, and I can’t expect Mark to look after you.’
Guess not.
And she said she’d spoken to Tara’s mum (who writes the most salacious bonkbusters and has made a fortune) who was looking for a new school for Tara, and they both agreed The Drift – in the back of beyond and then some – was a good idea.
So now I’m here.
Sometimes I want to blame Mark for it all, and hope that one day Mum’ll see sense. Sometimes I think Mum really believes she has my interests at heart. Sometimes I think she and Mark really do love each other. And sometimes I see pigs flying.
But I long for my old London school in the middle of the city: a vibrant centre, full of life. I miss the constant noise, colour, and the different mix of people. I like the never-ending procession of traffic, the street lights that block out the sky, the green parks that give areas of calm among the madness; whereas here it’s dark nights, starry skies, hooting owls, and spoilt rich kids of fading TV stars or blockhead footballers. And the rich kids, who all seem to have been together since day one at the school, and often before that – attended the same prep school, darling – are obsessed with looks and fashion. Tara doesn’t stand a chance. And I don’t want to be a clone. A drone. A Queen Bee. After all, I’ve been there, done all that dieting stuff and it almost killed me. Never again. And as for boys, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. And that’s the problem. I have naff all in common with the Queen Bees, or with any of them. Nor does Tara, but she can’t see that.
‘Come on Lee, come over here. Leave fatso where she is.’ Naomi laughs, and the other members of the gang sitting with her dutifully follow suit.
‘No thanks, Naomi,’ I shout back. ‘I want to stay with my friend. She’s more interesting than you.’ And I grin like a mad woman.
Naomi waves, not fazed by or bothered by the sarcasm. ‘Suit yourself.’
I look at Tara, see her bottom lip wobble. ‘Come on, Tar, they’re not worth it.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ sniffs my friend. ‘You could go and be at one with the Queen Bees any time you like. I haven’t got a fucking chance.’
‘Tar. Haven’t heard you swear before.’ I am admiring.
‘Now you have.’ She is grumpy.
My phone pings.
hi gorgeous.
I look around again. Heart-throb Theo is looking straight at me. It must have been his eyes I felt on me. He smiles.
Oh God, I can do without this. As I say, neither he nor any of his mates interests me. No time for them. He might be the hottest dude in town but, you know, the Queen Bees can have him. I am about to fling my phone down on the grass when I think of something – it might be worth a flirtation just to piss off the Queen Bees. Yeah, could be fun. I text back, hiding a smile.
hi.
I don’t have to wait long for his reply.
wanna hook up later?
Nice chat-up line.
maybe
the old summerhouse?
Original in his destinations too. He sure knows how to woo a girl.
maybe
’bout 8?
maybe. If I can get out
course you can. see you then.
Actually, I feel normal doing that. Not that I have any intention of going. I look across at him. He gives me a small wave and then turns back to talk to his group of mates.
They are laughing, and my face burns.
The skin on the back of my neck prickles. I know someone is watching me. And it’s not Theo.
Hey you, it’s me.
That was when it first started, wasn’t it? You … lying there on the grass, long, tanned legs stretched out in front of you, talking to Tara, texting that boy. And there I was. Looking at you. I couldn’t stop it you know, looking and wondering about you. Thinking, you don’t know how gorgeous you are. Wondering if you would let me get close to you or if you wouldn’t want to know. That’s when I thought: I will try. I couldn’t waste the opportunity. You see, I thought my life wasn’t going anywhere, that I was trapped. But I was frightened, worried about how you might react if I made a move. Then I told myself I shouldn’t worry about it, that I should go slowly and test the water. I looked at you again. You felt me looking at you, didn’t you? You even turned and looked at me, but didn’t see me.
But you didn’t know then that it was me.
CHAPTER 4
June
Murdered.
The blunt word hung heavy in the air.
‘Cat,’ began Alex, her voice still gentle, ‘is that right?’ She’d had plenty experience of living with the thought that someone you loved had been murdered. It was something that never left you: that feeling of helplessness; the useless ‘if only’ thoughts that came in the depths of the night. Alex was still trying to live with all of that.
Catriona sighed long and hard, then sat up straight, her mouth in a determined line. ‘Yes. It is. I feel it in here.’ She thumped her breastbone with her fist. ‘Elena wouldn’t have done that to me. We went through a lot together, especially after her dad died. She wouldn’t leave me this way.’
Alex nodded and thought back to what she knew about the 17-year-old’s death. The teenager had been found in the early morning at the bottom of cliffs not far from her very exclusive boarding school, only days before the school broke up for the Christmas holidays. Alex could imagine what sort of Christmas the Devonshires would have had. She’d been through many of those when her sister’s children had disappeared. She frowned. ‘Cat, forgive me but the police found a text on her phone, didn’t they? To you from her?’
‘Yes, there was no doubt about that. But—’
‘And she had been depressed and anorexic or bulimic or both,’ Mark Munro cut across his wife.
‘No, she had not been either of those things.’ Cat balled her fists. ‘She was well. Completely well.’ The strain on her face deepened the lines around her eyes.
Alex frowned. ‘What made you think she was ill, Mark?’
‘I—’ His eyes darted around the room.
‘Mark?’ Cat’s voice was sharp.
‘Catriona. Can we do this when we’re alone, please?’ He had regained control and his voice was stern.
Cat looked at him then shook her head. ‘No. I want Alex to help me. Us. I don’t want to hide anything from her. But if you’re hiding something from me—’
He stared at Cat for a few moments before wiping his face wearily with one hand. ‘Very well. If you must know I spoke to her. A couple of weeks before … before she died.’
‘What? You never told me that.’
‘I didn’t think it would get this far.’ He went over to a cupboard in the corner and took out a bottle of whisky. ‘Drink?’
‘Mark, you can’t solve this with a drink.’ She let out a hiss through her teeth.
‘I’m not, Catriona. I just want a whisky, that’s all. It’s not a crime.’ He banged a tumbler down on the top of the cupboard. ‘Alex?’
‘Not for me, thank you.’
‘Mark.’ Cat again, pain naked on her face. ‘What do you mean you spoke to her? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘And did she say she was ill?’ interjected Alex. She had to get a grip on this, see what she might be getting herself into.
Mark poured himself a drink then drank it down in one swallow. ‘Not in so many words, no.’ He poured himself another couple of fingers.
‘What does that mean?’ demanded Cat. ‘What the hell does that mean? And why didn’t you say something sooner? Why didn’t it come up at the inquest?’
‘Nobody asked me, and as you know, I didn’t go to the inquest. I was abroad at the time and it wasn’t thought necessary to call me. You know all this,’ he said simply. ‘And I didn’t want to make things any worse than they were. The text had been found and that was that.’
He was too smooth.
‘So you thought,’ said Cat, bitterly.
‘Mark,’ Alex made her voice firm, ‘what made you think Elena was ill?’
He shrugged. ‘Just the way she was talking. A bit lost, a bit helpless. She said things hadn’t been going well at school. I suggested she talk to her housemother or whatever they call them at the school, that’s what they’re there for.’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ said Cat, a break in her voice. ‘I’m her mother.’
‘But you weren’t around, darling, were you?’ her husband said, gently. ‘You were in Brussels. Some high-level meeting or something – I can’t remember now – Elena said she had tried to speak to you but your mobile was off all the time.’