Flying Under Bridges Read online

  I tell the psychiatrist all this and there is a long pause and I don’t know what to do. No one has ever taken this much interest in me before. I realise that I have stopped sewing and the blue thread has drifted out of the needle. The situation looks hopeless. I look at the wayward yarn, feeling as though I’ve never threaded anything before. The psychiatrist is waiting. I’m not sure that we’re getting anywhere and I don’t want anyone to blame Adam. It really wasn’t his fault, so I add, ‘Don’t think that Adam and I don’t get on. We have a lovely life. I mean there’s … the house.., it’s all double-glazed.’

  The psychiatrist carries on staring at me. He obviously doesn’t think I’ve finished. I fumble with the thread, but his eyes are boring into me.

  ‘Of course, there were lots of people who said, “How could you?” when I married him. “How could you marry a man named Adam?” I have to say I still wonder myself. You see, I’m Eve. Adam and Eve. Well, it was hardly something to put across the front windscreen of your Cortina. And, of course, we live in Edenford. Adam and Eve of Edenford. It was awful. Shame, because everything else about him seemed so … acceptable. He’s older than me (fifty-five next birthday, but he doesn’t want a fuss). I liked him. He was kind and I couldn’t very well say, “I quite like you but we can’t possibly get serious unless you change your name.” So that’s me. Mrs Adam Marshall.’

  I want to talk to the psychiatrist about my dreams. Perhaps he could help me. We have to sit here anyway. I dream it is pitch black and I am scared, but then I find a torch. The batteries are weak. I should have changed them. That is my fault. I am stumbling around a dark room and I suddenly realise that I am inside my own head. The room is quite empty except for a long row of old-fashioned metal filing cabinets. They are all neatly labelled but the drawers are open. The drawers are open and all the files have spilt out on the ground. The floor is covered in scraps of information but I can’t get any of it back into the filing cabinet— ‘What else?’ demands Big Nose.

  ‘What else?’ I can’t think what else. ‘Well, I’m forty-five. Forty-five.’ God, we’re going to get back on to the menopause in a minute I think, so I change the subject. ‘I suppose I have achieved some things. Let’s think. I have a son called Tom and a daughter, Shirley. Well, obviously you know about Shirley. She was.., anyway, I’m somebody’s mother.’

  ‘What do you think about your children?’

  What do I think about them? What a ridiculous question. I don’t think anything. They are in my blood, in my limbs, under my skin. I don’t think about them, I am them. Think? What does any mother think about her children? They are what I’ve done with my life. They are my contribution to the world. I haven’t written anything, invented anything, built anything. I did once think of an idea for a cot bumper which played a tune when the baby hit it with its head but, of course, it never came to anything. No, I have made two children. I am very good with coughs and scraped knees and a complete whiz at chicken pox. Of course now I am also a killer. Is that what Shirley will come to think?

  Does she need to think it was an accident? I can tell them that. I can, Inge.

  My inquisitive friend is staring at me. I think it must be rather dull for him listening to people whinge all day. No wonder he looks so miserable.

  ‘Tell me about your daughter,’ he says.

  But I can’t. I can’t think about Shirley. I can’t talk about her. Not yet. I try to change the subject.

  ‘Did you know,’ I say brightly, ‘there’s a woman in the cell next to mine who is on remand for throwing a brick through her own window? Don’t you think that’s bizarre? I mean, how can she be a menace to society? I tell you what I think it is. It’s because we’re not supposed to. Women. Be violent, I mean.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, we’re not. Men kick and punch things and that’s all right. They’re meant to. We’re supposed to worry about the colour of our kitchen tiles. And I’m not saying that’s wrong. I thought it mattered too. My kitchen took an age. To me it was the most important room in the house.’

  ‘Why?’

  I look at the learned enquirer. Only a man could ask such a question.

  ‘Because I spend the most time there.’ I carry on with my sewing. He sits staring at me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.

  ‘I took ages with the tiles. The man at the All Squared Tile Centre drove me mad. Hadn’t a clue. “I know what I want,” I said to him. “I want mushroom tiles.” You know, that lovely, soft, just-picked colour. He had no idea. Backwards and forwards with ceramic samples until at last we found what I wanted. Adam put them in. He says they look brown.’

  ‘Are these the things you think about?’

  They aren’t, of course. I haven’t thought about my kitchen at all until now. The time when all that mattered seems such an age away. Everything has changed. I don’t know what to tell him. I think about strange things now. I’ve been reading the Bible. Shirley gave it to me. I used to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica but they won’t let me have that many volumes at once in here. I don’t understand it. The Bible. It’s nice, lots of it, but I want to know why there doesn’t seem to be a single woman’s opinion from Jesus’s time. If the Virgin Mary was the mother of God, might she not have made some notes? I don’t say this because I realise it’s silly. I mean, she had other kids. She must have been just as proud of them. Anyway, she was probably too busy round the house. The Old Testament has Ruth and Esther. I thought Esther was a woman writer because there’s a whole bit in it at the beginning about what some curtains looked like, but then it talks about ‘Queen Esther’ as if she were someone else entirely. Ruth has her own book, but it’s very short and I can’t work out if she wrote it or if it’s just about her. The thing is.

  ‘So you are a mother,’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’ And I want to scream. Of course I am a mother or I wouldn’t have done this and— ‘And your own mother?’

  ‘She’s dead now, but it took some doing.’ My attentive listener’s head snaps to attention. I realise what he’s thinking. Perhaps this case is more exciting than he thought. Perhaps I am the Rosemary West of the Home Counties. He sees a book in it, maybe a film from the book, chat shows, Oprah Winfrey…

  It seems a shame to shatter his world. ‘I mean, she was sick for a long time,’ I say. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  He crashes back to the prison service. ‘What was she like? Your mother.’ I try to think. Mother was just Mother, but I know that won’t do.

  ‘She worried. She was always worrying. What people would think, what they might say. She wanted to be a star, but she wasn’t. She was just a sort of dim light that never went out. One of those light bulbs that you can’t really see by but you feel you shouldn’t change yet either.’

  I don’t want to talk about my mother. I just want to tell him that it is all my fault and I do feel bad and yet I didn’t have any choice and.., if that’s what everyone wants to hear, that’s what I’ll tell them. It’s what I told the police. It really doesn’t matter what happens to me now. I did what I had to do. I’m not important in all this. That’s the point. It’s the end of my session and we never get to the point after all. I go back to my little room. None of it seems to get to the point. I killed my daughter’s fiancé and I don’t think she’ll ever understand. Please, tell her that I love her.

  Love,

  Eve

  Chapter Two

  The beginnings of things are sometimes hard to find. In the beginning was the word and the word was God. And before that? Nothing apparently, but human lives aren’t really like that. They twist about taking unexpected turns and link up in the strangest ways. Like trying to find the end of that tangle of string in the kitchen drawer, it is not always clear-cut where a particular story in someone’s life starts. Certainly the changes that were to come about in both Eve and Inge’s lives occurred long before Eve finally ended up in prison. You could probably look back and pick any number of days in the early s
ummer of that same year and say that was when events began to unfold. The story has to start somewhere, so take that day in May, May 3rd actually, when Inge Holbrook drew up at Television Centre.

  It was a mark of her achievement that she was always allowed to park at the Horseshoe, a turn in the drive right outside the BBC’s main building with only five or six highly prized car spaces. Inge Holbrook, gold medallist for Great Britain, four hundred metres sprint, 1976 Olympics, still fantastically fit at forty-plus, but too famous to be made to walk from the multi-storey. She slipped her silver Mercedes SLK Kompressor in next to an idling limousine and stepped out. She looked fabulous: blonde (since 1987), tanned (since Christmas in the Caribbean), long legs (since for ever) and an aura of success, which can never fail to be attractive. Inge was one of the ‘faces’ of the corporation and she enjoyed every minute of it. She headed for the entrance known as the Stage Door. It was the old main entrance at the heart of the building. The BBC had spent millions making a new glass entrance and foyer, but had brilliantly placed it miles from anywhere anyone wanted to be. Everyone tried to avoid using it. A curious symbol for the entire place. If you wanted in at the BBC, it was best to try to sneak an entrance at the side.

  As Inge headed for her meeting, a harassed-looking man in spectacles and a grey suit ploughed out of the automatic doors, followed by a long-established black comedian. They were in a heated debate, which they stopped only for a moment in order to acknowledge Inge as she passed.

  ‘A decision, I just want a decision,’ the comedian kept repeating.

  The two men headed for the waiting limo and the suit got in while the funny man shuffled off to be hilarious with a cab driver from the rank.

  Inge waved to the women at reception and took the lift up to the fifth floor. She walked along the silent corridors of Light Entertainment. The doors of the tiny offices were all tightly shut. Even the small glass panels bearing the occupant’s name had been papered over from the inside so that no one could see in. Behind them everyone was presumably being lightly entertaining, but not so entertaining as to let any of it seep out to the nation. It still felt strange for Inge to come here. This had never been her floor in the past. She had come up through sports presenting but sport was now officially an entertainment. Inge was no longer a journalist but an entertainer. The corridor wound round in a giant circle as Inge passed huge colour photos of herself at Wimbledon, at the FA cup, the Olympics, winning at the Olympics. Her life, career and hairstyles played out for ever in front of the world.

  Paul Roe, Controller of BBC1, had a large office at the far side of the building with, as a mark of his importance, an even larger waiting-room. He also had two secretaries. One to jump when he called and the other to look impressive with the coffee machine. Inge strode in and managed to make them both jump.

  ‘God, Inge, sorry, you’re here,’ said the senior one called Trish. It was an English sign of instant subservience to have the word ‘sorry’ in an opening sentence. Inge didn’t know if Trish was ‘sorry’ Inge was here at all, ‘sorry’ in general or just ‘sorry’ in case something might turn up to be sorry about. It was hard to tell. Trish had a voice unique to a particular breed of women who work in outer offices. It was ingratiating and yet pitched high enough to encourage the gathering of dogs from distant parts.

  ‘Coffee?’ squeaked the junior one called Sue in an even higher and more impossible range. Inge always wondered about these voices. They were emitted by very thin women who seemed intent on taking up as little space in life as possible. Both physically and vocally they occupied the minimum square footage necessary for existence.

  ‘Black, thanks.’ Inge smiled at them, she smiled at the coffee machine and she smiled at a small, wild-haired man hunched on one of the leather chairs in a corner. Inge smiled a lot. She was famous for smiling. She was accessible. She was the people’s friend. It was what made old ladies she had never met before hug her in Tescos.

  ‘I’m afraid Paul is running a little late,’ squealed Trish. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And she was sorry. Inge smiled and everyone was sorry. It was the correct balance of power. They were sorry and Inge was gracious. Inge smiled some more and took her coffee. Paul was always running late. Everyone at the BBC ran late. Inge had never run late. She wondered about it as an excuse at the Olympics.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t win a medal. I was running a bit late.’

  Inge moved to the hairy lump in the corner. He twitched and seemed unsure whether to get up. She put out her hand.

  ‘Hi, I’m Inge Holbrook. I don’t think we’ve met.’

  He stood and managed to fall over his own feet, knocking his coffee from the glass table.

  ‘God, sorry, yes, of course, I mean, I know.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘In development.’ The twenty-something young man blinked at her and swallowed hard as he took a grey hanky from his pocket and attempted to clear up some of the spilt drink. He wore ancient, creased, black trousers upon which it was impossible to tell where the coffee might have landed. Inge smiled.

  ‘I meant your name.’

  This was clearly a new concept to the man in development.

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Um,’ said Inge encouragingly.

  ‘Nick. I’m… Nick… in development.’

  ‘So you said.’ Inge sat down and sipped her coffee. ‘And what do you develop, Nick?’

  ‘Ideas mostly, you know, for… Paul.’ He said the name with sufficient reverence to need to sit down again.

  ‘Programme ideas?’

  Nick nodded and wiped his hands, wet with sweat and coffee.

  ‘How long have you been doing that?’

  ‘Oh, three years.’

  ‘And what sort of programmes? What might I have seen?’

  The question seemed to cause a minor seizure.

  ‘Do you mean on air? Oh.’

  Nick-in-development paled at the thought of actual programmes and was probably only saved a major blood vessel rupture by the appearance of Paul Roe.

  The man responsible for the entertainment and information of a nation stood framed in the doorway. He was slim-hipped, slim-haired and hung on to the last remnants of his thirties by wearing a smart white shirt and Gaultier tie with faded but pressed denims. The jeans were tight and Paul often found it necessary to adjust his genitalia against the inside seam. He did this openly and with no thought of concealment. Inge thought it must be strange to have a penis. To have a part of your body which is never quite where you want it to be. No woman ever walked into a room and suddenly discovered that her left breast had inexplicably moved on to her shoulder blade.

  There was no one in Paul’s office with him. There was no way of knowing what had caused him to ‘run late’.

  ‘Inge! Sorry! Trish, you never said!’ he admonished senior squeal, while giving another cupped flick to his pants.

  Trish took the blame instantly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. Paul shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Then he took Inge’s hand, kissed her warmly on both cheeks and led her into his inner sanctum.

  ‘Have you met Nick from development?’ asked Paul, as he waved Inge on to the leather sofa.

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ve been… chatting.’

  ‘He’s got some very exciting ideas.

  Inge was keen to get on, but it wasn’t going to be easy. She had long ago decided that British men and women have completely different approaches to meetings. Because the women usually have the meeting to get through, three children to collect, a dog to worm and the nagging worry that something was left boiling on the stove, they tend to be rather cut and thrust about the whole thing. Meanwhile the men tend to favour an approach based on the UK road network. They know where they are supposed to be going, but can’t see the point of a straight road. They are quite happy to go round many roundabouts en route while discussing the merits of the straight-arm driving technique. Much foreplay, little substance. Inge didn’t like preliminaries. It was this sense of
urgency that had made her a world-class runner. She took off from the starting blocks.

  ‘I wanted to talk about Wimbledon for next year,’ she began. ‘I’ve been thinking about some junior presenters round the outside courts and—’

  ‘Ah.’ Paul carefully pulled the padded leather chair on wheels from behind his desk. He placed it to one side of the large mahogany work surface. It was a mark of friendliness.

  Inge knew where this was heading. ‘Not Wimbledon? Surely not Wimbledon?’

  Paul shook his head in despair. ‘I know. I’m sorry. Sky just outbid us. Went this morning, I’m afraid. They’ll announce tonight.’

  Inge was almost speechless. ‘Paul, how could this happen? The BBC is Wimbledon. God, there’ll be no sport left. We’ve already lost the Premier League, ITV are going to dance rings around us at the next Olympics, Channel Five got the bloody boat race. If the BBC don’t cover Wimbledon, what are we going to have left? Carpet bowls?’

  Nick shook his head and muttered, ‘Eurosport, I’m afraid.’

  Paul looked down at the very carpet where, but for financial constraints, bowls might have been played. He shook his head for a moment and then bounced up and made for the door.

  ‘Wine, shall we have some wine? Trish! Get some wine.’ Paul circled back into the room. ‘I found this terrific new wine warehouse under the arches in King’s Cross. They’ve done the place up. It was falling down and—’

  Inge found it hard to care less about Paul’s fallen arches. ‘So if not Wimbledon, then what?’ she asked.

  Paul smiled a slight smile of irritation. He liked talking about his wine warehouse discovery. He nodded, adjusted his bollocks for comfort and headed back for the straight road.