Summer Lies Bleeding (32 page)

‘You are not going to die here, Kerstin,' he says. ‘Your life is not going to end like this. You are going to have a long, wonderful life with people who love you. Whatever you have done; there is always a way out; a way to happiness.'

She turns to look at him and in that moment he sees she is ready to come down. Her eyes are full of trust; like Cosima's when he taught her how to ride a bike and she kept looking up at him, to see if he was still holding on to her; to see if he was still there.

She is shivering badly now and Seb is concerned that any sudden movement could send her falling. He extends his arms out to her; locks his eyes onto hers and smiles.

‘Come on Kerstin, take my hand,' he says.

He feels her hand brush his and he grasps it tightly.

‘Good girl,' he whispers. ‘Now the other hand. I'm here, I won't let go. It's going to be all right.'

But as she turns and holds out her hand a voice cuts through the silence.

‘The police are here, Kerstin.'

She shakes her head as Cal approaches and she looks at Seb pleadingly.

‘Kerstin, the police are here,' repeats Cal, lunging forward to grab her shoulder.

‘No,' yells Seb.

And with that word Kerstin closes her eyes, tightens her grip on Seb's hand, and begins to count.

*

‘Do you know what? You're starting to annoy me, love.'

Mark glares at Stella as they stand in the middle of the room, face to face.

‘Do you know he's been fucking her,' he yells to Yasmine, whose face is smeared with tears. She shakes her head at him. ‘Oh yeah, big time. I saw them with my own eyes; all over each other in the street. The man can't help himself; he fucked
her like he fucked over my sister; my sister Zoe Davis, who he threw out on the street to be butchered, like a piece of meat. Here have your kid.'

He throws Cosima across the room; and she screams hysterically as she falls into Yasmine's arms.

‘The police are here,' whispers Henry but Yasmine doesn't hear; she is enveloped in her daughter, holding her face to her chest.

But Mark hears him and looks up to see two police officers heading towards him. He has to end this properly; he has to go down fighting and as the first of the officers approaches he grabs Stella and plunges the shard of glass into her stomach.

‘That's for Zoe. See how it feels, you snooty bitch,' he yells as he pulls out the glass and watches as Stella falls in a heap by his feet.

‘No!' shouts Stella, her cry drowned out by the police radios and the mass of uniformed bodies bearing down on Mark.

She lies on the floor and looks down at the red patch of blood that is seeping through her white dress, her head feels woozy, but she knows she has to cling onto consciousness; she must not close her eyes. She feels someone hold her arms; hears people scream but she is above it all; she feels herself slip away; the room begins to fragment and she knows that she has to keep her eyes open if she is to stay alive. She stares at the faces bearing down on her; willing one of them to be
Paula but as a dark screen comes down over her eyes she knows that this time she is on her own.

*

In the seconds it takes to fall through the air, hand in hand with a stranger, Seb sees it, as clear and bright as the red lights glistening on the BT Tower. He sees a beach covered in driftwood; an empty bed in a cold dorm in a wretched boarding school; he sees fireflies dancing on the surface of a lake and a little girl sobbing in a beautiful green dress. He sees his life; all thirty-seven years of his time on this earth, spread out before him as he tumbles down into the darkness.

‘I should go,' says Stella. ‘I have a lecture to give this afternoon.'

‘Yes,' replies Henry. ‘Even in death life must go on.'

Stella smiles at him as they make their way across Battersea Park.

‘It was a beautiful memorial service,' says Stella, tucking her freezing hands into the warm folds of her coat. ‘Spine tingling to see all his paintings up there, what a collection; it's so sad.'

‘Yes,' says Henry. ‘What a legacy he left to us all. And the Sebastian Bailey Arts Scholarship will launch this month in a blaze of publicity. He would have liked that.'

Stella flinches; though she only knew Seb through fleeting encounters she knows that parties and publicity and launches were not what he was about. His legacy was greater than that; it was flesh and blood.

They reach the deserted North Carriageway and as Stella bids Henry goodbye and watches as he disappears through the park gates she hears a shout; a child's voice floating across the parkland like a wind chime.

‘Stella,'

She turns and watches as Cosima comes towards her, flanked by her mother and grandmother. She is holding something in her hand; a thin parcel wrapped in gold tissue.

‘I want you to have this,' she says, her childish voice, lowered with pain. ‘It's a present for you.'

Stella takes the parcel and gently unwraps it and as the gift falls out into her hands, her eyes fill with tears. It's a tiny fairy, dressed in a green silk dress; the blonde curls of its hair cascading in loose coils down its back.

‘Oh, Cosima,' says Stella, taking the doll and holding it to her cheek. ‘It's beautiful, thank you. I love it.'

She tries to hold back her tears for the sake of Yasmine who had stayed so composed for the duration of Seb's memorial service, but it's no use and as she crouches down to hug Cosima, she starts to sob.

‘Thank you, Cosima,' she says, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her winter coat.

‘This is the fairy that helped you,' says the little girl, returning to the arms of her mother and grandmother. ‘The one who made you better.'

*

The crypt inside Cologne Cathedral is cool and dark and Eva Engel pulls her shawl tightly round her shoulders as she shakily lights the white candle and places it onto the metal shelf.

She closes her eyes and begins to recite the Lord's Prayer but the words will not come; instead she stares at the candle, watches as the pale yellow flame grows stronger and stronger until it is a vibrant orange glow.

She hopes her daughter is at peace now; hopes that whatever demons disturbed her in life have fallen silent in death. And she wasn't alone; thank God she wasn't alone. In the months following her daughter's death she was comforted by several letters from that nice young man who was with her in her final hours. She has a lot to be thankful to Cal Simpson for; if it wasn't for him she would have never been able to piece together the last few moments of Kerstin's life. She would have been happy, Eva thinks, that he was given her role at Sircher Capital. As he said in his letter, it was a beautiful legacy.

She turns and walks away, leaving the candle to burn itself out, until all that is left is a thin, black wisp of smoke.

*

Stella stands watching the three figures depart; their shoulders hunched; their bodies riven with grief. Mother, daughter and granddaughter; a family, joined forever by their DNA; by their memories. Could there have been a happy ending for her and Paula? Could they have created a family together; been happy?
Stella had asked herself this question a hundred times in the months following the break-up but she knew that it could never be. Paula had come running into the hospital talking about rehabilitation and getting home and making healing herbal tea but Stella knew; she knew as she lay in the bed listening to Paula's chatter; she knew it as she had lain on the floor of the restaurant covered in blood and clinging onto life, that the only person who could save her was herself.

She shivers as she thinks how the sharp glass penetrated her skin. And Mark's eyes as he pushed the shard further into her stomach, holding the small of her back with his hand like an embrace. She will never forget the look he gave her as he pulled the glass out: it was almost like he was saying sorry. Despite everything she cannot hate him. It was grief that had made him do it. All the details came out in court: Zoe's death; the breakdown of his marriage; the loss of his grandfather. After all that, his obsession with Seb was the only thing he had to hold onto. She hopes he gets better; hopes he can get the help he needs to build his life again.

She looks at her watch; it's time to go. In just over an hour, twenty-five eager undergraduates will be waiting for her to deliver a lecture on Virginia Woolf's
The Years
; and she will stand at the front of the lecture theatre and tell them about the transcience of life; of five stories interwoven; five destinies playing themselves out against the tumult and precariousness of time.

But before she leaves she takes one last look at the park and the forlorn trio walking back towards the gallery. She watches as the figures get smaller and smaller; as they dissolve into the rain; tiny specks against the wide expanse of green; twinkling like dots of moonlight across the surface of a lake.

I would like to thank the following people for their support and encouragement in writing this novel:

My agent Madeleine Milburn at Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency the best agent a writer could have; Jo Dickinson for her vision and enthusiasm for this book; Stefanie Bierwerth, Kathryn Taussig and the excellent team at Quercus; Mike I'Anson at Helmsley Walled Garden for sharing his knowledge of horticultural therapy; Jessica Jones for her meticulous Spanish translation; Kevin Hanley for his masterly instruction in Chaos Theory and Power Laws; my parents Luke and Mavis Casey for their love, support and faith in me; Nick Ellwood, whose beautiful drawings inspired The Lake, for sharing his artistic expertise and that wonderful quote from Matisse. Finally, my beautiful little boy Luke for reminding me on a daily basis to never, ever, doubt the fairies.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO WRITE?

People first and foremost. I am a great people watcher, something that stems, I think, from being the youngest of five children. I spent most of my childhood listening in to conversations and trying to build up stories and characters around the snippets of gossip I overheard. I love developing a character, fleshing it out and working out how they will react to a set of circumstances. I am also fascinated by the past; how people deal with their own personal history and how certain decisions can change the course of your life.

WHO IS YOUR LITERARY HERO?

Virginia Woolf for her use of language and her boldness in creating a whole new literary form. I love the sombre beauty of her sentences and the way she uses words like scattered petals, throwing them up into the air and seeing where they will land. Whenever I read Woolf it feels like coming home. Like me, she liked to walk across London and once dedicated an entire essay, ‘Street Haunting: A London Adventure', to her journey across town in search of a pencil. Woolf captures both the beauty and the brutality of life; moment by moment, breath by breath.

HAVE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A WRITER?

Yes. When I was a little girl I spent all my spare time writing plays and stories and ploughing my way through the books in my dad's study. My parents introduced me to literature and the power of the written word at an early age. Dad was a journalist and I grew up listening to the sound of the
typewriter bashing out scripts to deadline. The house was full of singing and storytelling and music too, and being the youngest of five I had a wealth of material to draw on from the comings and goings and dramas of my elder siblings. To me writing is as normal and necessary as breathing.

DO YOU HAVE A WRITING ROUTINE?

Yes, and I have to stick to it as I write when my little boy is at school. I am usually at my desk by 9 a.m., coffee in one hand, pen in the other. If I'm writing something from scratch I like to write in longhand first. There's something about the hand-to-brain connection that gets the words flowing. If I'm editing, I will be typing away furiously to a soundtrack that differs depending on what kind of scene I'm writing. Death scenes are usually accompanied by Mozart's ‘Requiem'; psychological scenes by Einaudi. I also try to read before I start writing each morning; something to get me into the mood of the piece, usually a poem or a short story. A particular favourite is Alice Oswald's
Dart
for her hauntingly precise interweaving of voice and landscape.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS BOOK?

The idea for
Summer Lies Bleeding
came after reading of the death of an overworked young city trader and the comments of her colleague who remarked that ‘this city sucks the life out of you'. Through this novel, I wanted to look at the coping mechanisms many of us employ to survive the pressure of city living and how, if left unchecked, these survival tactics can turn into dangerous obsessions. I also wanted to explore the effects of the economic crisis and the isolation and loneliness of urban living; how seemingly unrelated lives can impinge on each other and how, in a city of eight million souls, a stranger can dictate your fate.

‘Thought-provoking and intelligent, Nuala Casey's
debut is one to savour' Elizabeth Haynes

‘Quite the page-turner – an enthralling read'
Londoneer

‘Casey is the latest and no less valid a chronicler
than Colin MacInnes, Jake Arnott or
Zadie Smith'
Huffington Post

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