Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

She leans back into her chair, satisfied, eyes cast up to the glass again.

“It was nice. We went up top and had a lie-down on the back seats and ate some chicken. Had a drink. That’s when they got all our faces.” She says it pensively.

“Anyway, I poured some Jack Daniel’s on the back seats and lit it up with one of those free papers, as a joke. Ash starts laughing ’cos he didn’t think I’d do it, and the whole back bit of the bus goes straight up in flames. So we’re all laughing and throwing more papers on it ’cos it’s fucking messy up there anyway. And it’s burning really hot and stinking, so we go outside to watch. Ash is telling everyone I did it. And now the whole double-decker’s on fire. People passing are high-fiving and fist-bumping me ’cos it looks completely mental. We got some insane photos on my phone. Don’t look at me like that,” she snarls. “I’m not completely retarded. I wasn’t posting the pictures up online or anything.”

“Holli, how did you get caught?” My tone neutral.

Her eyes slip off me. Challenge dropped.

“Turns out I’d been caught on someone’s mobile phone footage, of the bus on fire and us watching it. Ash saying I’d done it. There was a photo on the front page of the local paper the next day. Me watching the bus burn. They used it in court. They got the footage of us on the bus too.”

I’ve watched the burning-bus footage. Holli, her eyes bright like a kid at a fireworks display, joyful, alive. Her friend Ash a menacing wall of muscle and sportswear beside her, her protector. It’s unsettling to watch, the laughter, the excitement, the pride. It’s chilling, given her demeanor now, to know what it takes to make her smile.

“And are you excited to go home soon, Holli?” I have little expectation of an honest answer here but I have to ask.

She shoots another look across at Amal. A pause.

“Yeah, it’ll be good. I miss my crew. I wanna put some normal clothes on.” She shrugs her loose sack of a sweater. “Get some proper food in me. They’re basically starving me in here it tastes so disgusting.”

“Do you think you’d ever do something like that again, once you’re out, Holli?” I ask. It’s worth a shot.

She smiles, finally. Sits up in her seat.

“Definitely not. I won’t be doing anything like that again.” She’s smirking again now. She’s not even trying to lie well. She has every intention of doing something like that again. The conversation is starting to make me feel uncomfortable. For the first time, I wonder if Holli has mental health issues. I want this interview over now.

“And what are your plans for the future?”

Instantly her demeanor changes; her face, her posture, shift. She looks smaller again somehow, vulnerable. Her tone of voice is suddenly normal, a normal twenty-three-year-old woman. Polite, open, friendly. The change is deeply unsettling. I have no doubt that this is the face a parole board will see.

“Well, I spoke to the prison charity about helping to speed up my sentence. I want to give back to the community and prove I can be trusted again. They’re going to help me get a job and work with my probation officer to help me get back on the straight and narrow,” she says, full of sweetness and light.

I press her.

“But what do you want, Holli? For the future? What do you want to do with your life once you get out of here?” I try to keep my tone flat but I can feel the flavor of my own words.

She smiles again, innocently. She’s getting a rise out of me and she’s enjoying it.

“That would be telling. I just want to get out of here first. Then I don’t know. You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you? But expect…great things, Erin. Great things.” Her unnerving smirk is back.

I look to Amal. He looks back at me.

This is the utterly terrifying shape of things.

“Thank you, Holli. That’s a fantastic start. We’ll call it a day there,” I say.

I turn off the camera.

We’re having a dinner party. I know it’s probably not the best time for it, given everything that’s going on right now, but the wedding is fast approaching. Five weeks now, and I still need to ask someone a very important favor.

They’ll be here in an hour. I haven’t changed or washed yet, let alone started cooking. We’re cooking a roast. I don’t know why. I suppose it’s fast and it’s easy and it’s something Mark and I can cook together. He’s doing the meat, I’m the trimmings. Mark very much enjoyed that as a metaphor for our relationship when I said it earlier. A rare moment of levity. The joke has quickly evaporated, though, and now I’m standing alone in our state-of-the-art kitchen, staring at a cold fleshy chicken and a mound of vegetables.

—

Mark’s not doing well, hence my lateness today. I’ve sent him off to get ready. It’s been just over a week now since he was fired and he’s been pacing back and forth ever since—in the living room, in the bedroom, in the bathroom, barefoot, while shouting into the phone at people in New York, Germany, Copenhagen, China. We need a night off. I need a night off.

I’ve invited Fred Davey and his wife, Nancy, over for dinner tonight. It’s actually been planned for a month now. They’re practically family. Fred has always been there with support and advice, ever since I met him on my first job, assisting on his White Cube documentary. I really don’t think my doc would be in production if he hadn’t brainstormed with me and written so many letters with BAFTA letterheads. And lovely Nancy, one of the warmest, gentlest women I’ve ever met, never misses a birthday, an opening, or a get-together. My surrogate family, my tiny makeshift support structure.

There’s still no sign of Mark in the kitchen, so I make a start on the food myself. He’s been on the phone for half an hour already, trying to chase up yet another lead on a new job. It turns out that the feelers he’d mentioned on our anniversary morning have come to nothing, and that his “friend” in New York is the one who landed Mark, and ultimately us, in this mess. By the time I got home the day he lost his job, Mark had figured out that Andrew in New York had been responsible for everything. Andrew had rung Mark’s desk and somehow mistaken Greg’s voice for Mark’s voice—I have no idea how this happened because Greg is Glaswegian. Anyway, Andrew mistook Greg for Mark and told him that someone from the New York office was going to be ringing him later in the day with a potential new job offer.

Greg, creep that he is, no doubt glowing with pleasure, then went straight to their boss and dutifully informed him of the phone conversation.

Andrew in New York had apparently not responded well to being implicated in this cock-up and had consequently soured the potential New York job offer. All that maneuvering just to save himself the ignominy of apologizing for the mistake he made in the first place. But then, you see, in the banking world apologizing is a sign of weakness. And weakness doesn’t inspire confidence, and, as we all know, the market is built on confidence. Bull you win; Bear you lose. Hence Mark, now unemployed, standing half dressed in our living room shouting at the house phone.

He tells me that all’s not lost. He’s spoken to Rafie and a couple of other work friends and there are at least three possibilities floating around, if not more. He just needs to hang tight for a few weeks. There’s nothing more he can do himself at this stage. Even if he gets an offer, he can’t start till after garden leave, which means until mid-September. An enforced vacation. At any other time of my life I would absolutely love that idea, but now that the filming’s actually started I’m going to be swamped until the wedding. Bad timing.