Final Cut(14)

My friend. She means Jess, my assistant, of course. Monica must’ve been at the meeting.

‘Yes,’ I say, as warmly as I can. ‘And believe me. No one is.’

Before she can answer, Liz arrives with the tea. She puts down a cracked teapot and gives each of us a mismatched cup and saucer, then, once she’s exchanged a few words with Monica, withdraws. I remember Gavin saying that not everyone thinks Daisy’s death was suicide.

I go on: ‘I’m just trying to understand what happened.’

She takes her time to answer. Discomfort flits across her face. After a second she glances over to where Liz sits watching us, then to the girls who followed us in. She lowers her voice. ‘Come outside for a smoke?’

We step out into the cold. She lights a cigarette with jaundiced fingers before offering the pack to me. I’m tempted, but resist. There’s no way I’m going back to that, not after all this time. She blows the blueish smoke out through her nose.

‘What’ve you heard?’

‘Just that some people aren’t so sure she killed herself.’

‘That so?’ She takes a deep breath and lowers her voice. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘all I can tell you is she were a lost soul. From what I heard, she were having boyfriend problems. The usual, you know.’

A lost soul? Boyfriend problems? My ex floats into view. I see him telling me he’d had enough. It was my work. I was cold. It was over. I was upset, yes. Much more than I let show. He was the first man I’d trusted. I cried. I swore I’d never fall in love again. I stopped short of watching a shitty movie with my flatmate, just. But I didn’t reach for the bottle. I didn’t jump off a cliff.

‘Monica. People don’t do that just because someone dumped them!’

‘Some do.’ She hesitates. ‘Look, I don’t know. Maybe it was more than that.’

‘Like?’

‘Who knows?’ She stubs out her half-smoked cigarette on the wall. ‘Look, it were tough, back then. With no body and that. Folks don’t want it raked up. It’s history. They want to forget. That’s all. An’ I reckon you’d be better off forgetting it, too. I mean, it’s not like knowing why she jumped is going to bring her back, is it?’

‘Of course not. But—’

‘So what’s the point?’

The truth, I want to say. That’s the point. The truth. And it’s what I do, my stock-in-trade. But then I think of Black Winter. Did the truth help any of those girls?

‘Look,’ says Monica, her voice softening. ‘Whatever you make of us, we’re just ordinary folk, y’know? Minding our business like anyone else. I mean, you may not realise it, but my livelihood relies on visitors here, now. Most folks’ does. We can’t have this film putting anyone off coming. Understand?’

For a moment it sounds like a threat, but she’s smiling.

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘But I’m not making an advert for the village, you know. Come to Blackwood Bay and have all your dreams come true.’

She grinds the stubbed cigarette into the ground with her boot. ‘I’ve been watching the films.’

I hesitate. I don’t need her approval. Yet I can’t stop myself.

‘Yes?’

‘We all have. We just … we want the village to be known for something other than that.’

‘I get that.’

She smiles sadly. ‘Daisy was lonely. That’s what I think.’

‘I was told she had a friend? What happened to her?’

‘She ran away. Don’t recall where.’

The wind blasts up the hill and, even though I feel it only in the most abstract, distanced way, I shiver.

‘Who was she?’

My words sound wrong, mangled, like someone else is controlling my tongue, but she doesn’t notice.

‘Girl from out near Malby way. They went to school together but, like I say, she ran away. There were rumours she turned up in London, but I don’t know anything about it.’

No, I want to say. No. It wasn’t that. They barely knew each other. Maybe Monica is confused. Maybe she has the wrong person. Maybe another girl went missing back then.

But no. I’d know about that. Surely?

‘So three girls went missing?’ I say, aware of how stupid I must sound. ‘Daisy, Zoe, and this friend?’

‘Daisy didn’t go missing. She killed herself. And her friend turned up, they say. But yes.’

‘This friend,’ I say, and it’s like my throat is stoppered. I have to force the words out through thick sludge. ‘When did she run away?’

‘I don’t remember exactly. Around the same time Daisy died. Why?’

I feel like I’m clinging to a cliff face, about to fall.

‘What was her name?’

‘Sadie,’ she says, and though I suppose I should’ve been prepared for it, should’ve braced myself, the name thunders through me. It echoes like a scream in a darkened room and threatens to tip me off balance. ‘She were called Sadie.’





Then





8


So many of those days in the London hospital blur into one, but I do remember the day I found out who I was, the day I was born again. The day I became Alex.