Chapter 8
‘What do you mean, fished out?’ I stared at Jilly, her overfull glass of lager spilling onto her fingers and jumper as she spoke.
‘Well, that’s the story going round.’ She licked ineffectually at her hand, spilling more as she did so.
‘And is she OK? Did she fall in? Did someone rescue her? Who is it? Do you know?’ The questions tumbled out at speed and Jilly actually took a step back.
‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. Just a rumour; you know how these things start.’
‘OK. OK.’ I tried to speak calmly, tried to slow my heart rate that was making me speak almost gibberish.
‘Fell in apparently. Maybe too much to drink? It’ll probably be on the local news tonight.’ She looked me up and down. ‘You haven’t heard back from Brian Sykes then?’
‘Who?’ I couldn’t for the life of me think who Brian Sykes was. ‘Oh, right. No, no. Nothing.’
‘Oh, well, you tried.’ She smiled benignly, her tone holding only a modicum of sympathy.
‘Sorry, must go. Meeting a friend…’ She trailed off.
‘Are you OK?’ She glanced across at Clare who was hovering, trying to make sense of what Jilly was saying.
‘What’s up? Is it the Brian Sykes thing? Have another go, maybe.’
‘Do you know any more about the girl?’
‘Which girl? Oh, who drowned?’ Jilly took a slurp from her glass.
‘Erm, English student I think, as far as anyone knows. Look there’s whatshisname over there.
Student Union bloke. Can never remember his name.
Far too left wing for me.’ She gave a little moue of disdain.
‘Didn’t you used to have a thing with him, Anna?
He might know.’ She waved her glass in Roddy McClellan’s direction, spilling more lager as she did so, and then set off behind me.
I pushed through the laughing, jostling crowd towards Roddy.
‘Oh, hello, Anna. How you doing?’ He didn’t appear to give a flying wotsit for my health.
‘This girl…’ I began.
‘The one that’s been pulled out of the canal?’
I nodded, leaning into him as he bent his head towards me. He smelt of fags, sweat and beer, his long hair greasy, his skin unhealthy. How on earth had I wasted my first few months here at Leeds on him?
‘Listen, between you and me, and I shouldn’t be telling you this, Anna, but it’s some girl called… Fiona…?’
‘Fiona?’ Hope soared.
‘Faith?’ Roddy pondered the conundrum. ‘Felicity. That’s it. From London. Cracking-looking bird from what I hear. Can’t say I know her.’
‘She’s my housemate,’ I said dully.
‘Fuck!’ Roddy stared and then pulled me into him, my head banging into his fetid armpit. ‘Look, do you want to… you know? Have a drink? Come back to mine?’ He stroked my hair, his hand reaching for my backside in a little squeeze.
I gave him a look, ran back to Clare and, taking her arm roughly with one hand and my book bag with the other, manoeuvred her out through the crowd, through the door and out into the rain.
‘It’s Fliss,’ I said, bursting into tears. I set off walking, no idea where I was heading, where I was going, walking almost in circles in an effort to move away from this terrible thing I’d just been told. ‘It’s Fliss, Clare.’
‘Fuck!’ she said, her retort echoing that of Roddy, five minutes earlier. ‘And is she? You know…?’
I nodded. ‘I need to walk. Need fresh air. Oh, bloody hell, Clare, she’s dead. In that disgusting rat-pee-infested canal.’
Clare reached for my hand, and I let her hold it, both of us finding comfort from the other’s proximity.
After ten minutes walking in silence and the rain, Clare said, ‘I’ve got a stitch, Anna, and I’m soaked. Let’s get the bus. Come on.’
I imagined the DI and his sidekick would be back at the house, questioning Katy, waiting for Clare and me to return.
But nothing. Something as dreadful as this, and yet the status quo seemed as it was before we knew the truth; the clock ticking its relentlessly steady beat in the kitchen, the door to the kitchen open at its usual forty-five degrees, the first step on the stairs to be avoided at risk of catching one’s heel in the threadbare excuse for a carpet.
Katy was still upstairs and, without another word, we both headed up towards her room.
Halfway up, we stopped as there was a loud knock at the front door.
‘That’ll be the police again now,’ I said, going back down. Clare carried on up to break the awful news to Katy, and I went back down to let them in.
‘Why on earth did you tell the police I’ve been seeing your friend? That I was her boyfriend? That she’d been staying with me in my room?’ He was speaking even before I’d opened the door fully.
‘Sorry?’ I stared at him, not quite grasping how the two police officers I’d been expecting had morphed into Theo Mandeville.
‘Which bit didn’t you understand? Do you want me to repeat all that?’ Theo was obviously finding it difficult to keep his temper.
‘Sorry,’ I said again. I didn’t seem to be able to articulate any other words.
‘Look, can I come in?’
I opened the door to him, and he walked past me, uncertain which door to go through. ‘In here.’ I overtook him and he followed me into the kitchen.
‘What’s going on? I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Anna.’
‘So?’ Theo moved to the kitchen sink, leaning against it as he shot me a questioning glare. I was about to speak, when Katy and Clare came back down the stairs and joined us.
‘This is Theo,’ I said to Katy.
‘Theo? As in, you know…? Theo?’ If the whole thing hadn’t been so awful, I’d probably have laughed at the change in Katy’s demeanour as she realised who the unexpected arrival standing in the kitchen was.
Theo lifted his hands towards Katy in a gesture of irritation. ‘Sorry, you seem to know who I am. Have we met?’ His clipped vowels were unable to betray his clear exasperation.
Katy’s usual composure appeared ruffled. ‘Well, you know…’
‘No, no, I don’t.’
Katy started again. ‘I believe you’ve been seeing a lot of Fliss…’ Sounding a bit like an investigating officer herself, she trailed off as she saw Theo’s face.
‘But why?’ Theo seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘Why would you believe that?’ He air-mimed the word crossly. ‘Who said that?’
I took over. ‘Well, she did. Fliss did. She led us to believe that she’d been seeing you for quite a few weeks now. Out most nights with you.’
‘Not with me, she wasn’t.’ Theo folded his arms, tucking both thumbs into the warmth of his black sweater and I realised it was very cold in the kitchen. He glared at each of us in turn.
‘She’s dead,’ I said, tears welling. ‘Fliss is dead.’
Theo stared at me. ‘Dead?’ He went pale and reached for a chair, pulling it out before sitting down heavily at the table. ‘The police didn’t say. They just said they were making enquiries; that I appeared to know her and where was I yesterday evening?’
When none of us replied, he went on, ‘So, how did she… you know…? Was it a car accident? I know she had that yellow Mini.’
‘Oh, so you did know her?’ Katy, her confidence returning, folded her own arms.
‘If by knowing her, you mean she was always turning up, wherever I was, in that damned yellow car of hers, then yes, I knew her. Pretty hard to hide that yellow colour. And, as I told the police, yes, I did give her some tips on playing squash. She came down to the courts, a few weeks ago, when I was down there on my own practising.’
‘She drowned,’ I blurted out, interrupting Theo. ‘She went missing – we thought she was with you – but she was found in the canal.’
‘Shit! I’m so sorry. Fuck, that’s awful.’ He reached for the roll of kitchen towel we used as napkins and hankies, tearing off a piece and handing it to me. I wiped my eyes. ‘I told the police,’ he went on, ‘I hadn’t seen her for ages. Weeks.’
‘She said she was out with you most nights,’ Clare said. ‘Dressed up to the nines, lovely clothes, out for dinner with you at fancy restaurants.’
‘As I say’ – Theo stood to leave – ‘she wasn’t with me. Sounds like she’d found herself some sort of sugar daddy.’
‘A sugar daddy!’ I was cross at the implication. ‘Fliss wasn’t like that.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Theo said tiredly. ‘I’ve told the police all I know, told them where I was on the dates they asked about.’
‘Out on dates?’ Clare, who’d left the room momentarily, returning with suspiciously pink and outlined lips, pounced.
I glared, and Theo tutted in Clare’s direction, and she went as pink as her mouth.
‘My father’s not going to be happy if this ends up all over the news,’ Theo muttered at the kitchen door. ‘If my name’s bandied about in the papers.’
‘What on earth’s your father got to do with it?’ Katy asked.
‘Oh, nothing. He’s just rather, you know…’ He trailed off, embarrassed. ‘Sorry, got to go, I’ve an essay that should have been in a week ago.’ He put up a hand as I made to stand. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
He gave me one last look, picked up his car keys and left.
I saw little of Theo Mandeville the rest of that term, or the next. Easter came and went, spent at home with Mum and Dad and my two brothers, David and Les.
And then it was the summer term, the weeks filled with revision, last-minute research for seemingly endless assignments and the spectre and then actuality of end-of-year exams. Without Fliss, I was lost, I wasn’t sleeping well, and I began to feel some sense of relief at my not returning to Leeds in the autumn.
The university allowed me to have both Fliss’s parents’ addresses, and I wrote to each of them, telling them how terribly sorry I was at what had happened, how Fliss and I had been such good friends and how I missed her. I heard nothing back from either of them.
Nothing seemed the same without her, and I wasn’t totally convinced I would have wanted to share the house again with Clare or Katy; I seemed to have little in common with either of them any more.
After a couple of weeks of being at the centre of attention as the drowned girl’s housemate, Clare just got on with life, becoming very involved with some bloke from Huddersfield she met at Mr Craig’s, the nightclub in the Merrion Centre in town.
Katy revved up her cycling in a big way, joining the Kirkgate Cycling Club which, as she kept boasting, was one of the city’s true bastions of sporting excellence; the house’s passageway and tiny front garden filled with a plethora of nerdy, bearded enthusiasts, bike clips at the ready, muscled bums shoehorned into Lycra.
I wasn’t to be given the luxury of three months’ vacation, heading off with Fliss as had been planned at the start of the academic year.
Off to spend the summer working on a kibbutz in Israel.
I thought about going by myself, but it all seemed a bit pointless without Fliss, and I was actually glad that my year out with the NUM, back home in Rothersley, was subject to my starting immediately my exams were over, at the beginning of July.
The police investigation into Fliss’s death and the subsequent inquest, almost six months later, resulted in an open verdict.
On a beautiful September morning, the air crisp with expectation over the coming new season, Dad and Frank – who I knew I’d been guilty of abandoning somewhat – both came with me to the public hearing at the coroner’s court.
Frank held my hand as the coroner declared he couldn’t be sure whether, having consumed the amount of alcohol the post-mortem showed she had, Fliss had simply veered off the path as she walked home and fallen into the canal.
There was no doubt death was by drowning, but why she was down there and at that time of the morning – apparently around 6 a.m. – never became clear.
What did come out at the inquest, although DI Crowther had already been round to tell Clare, Katy and me, not long after she died, was that Fliss had a secret life we knew nothing about.
She’d signed up with an escort agency. A fairly upmarket escort agency – if there ever was such a thing – according to DI Crowther, but an escort agency, nevertheless.
While – according to the Elite Ladies owner, called to give evidence at the inquest – offering sexual favours to the clients was ‘frowned upon’, he was forced to concede that, more often than not, there was an expectation of ‘extras’ as a follow-up to dinner, and there was no redress on the girls from his agency for accompanying their clients – often wealthy men here in Leeds on business from overseas – back to their hotel for ‘a nightcap’ or yes, even for the night.
The booted and suited perma-tanned man in his early fifties who I assumed to be Fliss’s father sat at the back, leaving before I had chance to move to speak to him. Of anyone resembling Tabitha, Fliss’s mother, there was no sight.
Clare and Katy were still away on their respective vacations and, while I’d hoped and hoped to see Theo Mandeville at the inquest, there was, in reality, absolutely no reason why he should be.
And he wasn’t.