‘Meredith Vincent, you’re a hard woman to track down,’ said an accented voice Meredith vaguely recognised as belonging to someone she disliked.
‘Who is this?’
A laugh. A smoker’s cough. She thought, Ah no, not him. Please say it’s not him.
His next words confirmed it: ‘It’s Iain McKinnon from Big World.’
Meredith couldn’t speak. ‘The Pointless I’, she and her fellow band-members used to call him, a play on the unnecessary vowel in his first name as well as his capabilities as a marketing manager.
‘Merry, are you there?’
‘Don’t call me that. It’s not my name,’ she managed.
‘Sorry, Meredith. Long time, no speak, hey?’
She had forgotten how affected his South African accent sounded. Why did he even still have an accent? He’d lived here since before apartheid was abolished.
‘How did you get my number?’
He laughed again. ‘It wasn’t easy, hey. I had to get a private detective on the case!’
He pronounced it ditictive.
‘You did what?’
‘Yah. It took him a good few weeks. Hiding in plain sight, you are. We thought you’d left the country! In a million years I’d never have thought you, of all people, would end up working in a shop. I mean, it’s not like you need the money!’
‘I’m the manager,’ Meredith said, immediately hating herself for it. She did not have to justify herself to Iain McKinnon, the lecherous creep. He represented everything that she had eventually come to loathe and detest about the music industry, with his fake, smarmy smiles and assumption that every woman wanted to rip off his clothes … And when he discovered that she didn’t, he’d threatened her.
‘You know where I work?’ She felt as if the walls of her living room were folding in on her, one at a time, bang, bang, bang, bang, squashing her beneath them.
‘I know where you work, I know your address and home phone number, I know where you buy your groceries, where your brother lives … the detective guy was top notch. Cost an arm and a leg,’ he said proudly, as if she should be congratulating him instead of feeling that it wasn’t just her room that had collapsed, but her whole world.
She had been found, by a man she wouldn’t trust further than she could throw.
He seemed to read her mind: ‘Merry, I’m not the guy I was back then, I swear. Obviously you know I never had anything to do with … what happened to you … I was just a pushy bastard who wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘You blackmailed me, Iain.’ Nausea bubbled in her gut.
He coughed. ‘Well, I think that’s too strong a word … I just suggested that it might not be a good thing for it to be made public knowledge…’
She noted that he knew exactly what she was referring to.
‘It’s sad,’ she said, her hands shaking, ‘when I think how worried I was back then. I thought I had to do what you said. But I was naïve if I thought you had my best interests at heart. Because if it had been this big scandal – which I don’t think it would’ve been anyway; so what if I was sleeping with a woman? – you thought it would have harmed you as well. You were our label manager. If Big World hadn’t re-signed us because I was in a relationship with a woman, you’d have lost your most successful act.’
She was trying to act blasé, but in truth she was worried – more than worried. Not about him, not anymore, but because she’d been unearthed. Dug up like a hibernating mole, blinking and afraid. Neither she nor the police had ever been able to prove that what had happened to her back then was connected to him – to his blackmailing her – but it would forever be linked with him in her memory.
‘Actually, no biggie,’ he said airily. ‘It wasn’t like I was on commission. They’d have just assigned me to another band. But that’s not the point. I shouldn’t have got involved in that way. I was … wrong.’
The last word was extruded with difficulty, as if he had speech constipation.
‘Is that why you’re ringing me now? What do you want?’
She would have to move. Leave the country, start again.
‘Right, so, I have something amazing to tell you! You gonna be so psyched. Are you still in touch with the other guys?’
‘If you mean Cohen, then no. They hate me, if you remember.’
Meredith had read enough bitter interviews with her former band members over the years to know this was true. After her sudden and inexplicable defection in ninety-five they had laid low for a while, then employed a short-lived series of alternate female lead singers, none of whom had set the charts alight for them. They’d eventually disbanded a couple of years later. She knew she’d hurt them, personally as well as professionally – they had been such good friends – but she hadn’t ever dared contact any of them again, or even try to explain, for fear of discovery.
He made a ‘pffft’ noise. ‘Ah, that’s all in the past!’
The man was unbelievable.
‘Iain, it’s all in the past. I don’t know what you want from me, but if it’s anything to do with the band, the answer is a definite “no way”. I don’t care what it is.’
‘We should meet for a drink, so I can explain it better.’
‘Not happening.’
‘Don’t be like that! Don’t you want to make half a million quid this year?’
He laughed. ‘Come off it! I don’t believe you. That’s what you’d get for a reunion. Only has to be three weeks, headlining one of those retro eighties tours. The promoters are desperate to have Cohen top the bill, how about that! You don’t even have to leave the UK.’
‘Iain, I’m hanging up now, and if you ever contact me again, I’m going to report you to the police for harassing me.’
‘Wait! You can’t. I mean, you can’t want to say no to that, surely?’ He tried another tack. ‘Even if you don’t need the money, you must have charities you support. Think what they could do with five hundred grand!’
He found me, he found me, he found me. The panicky voice inside her head swelled, drowning out his words, and she only heard ‘charities you support’. It took all her effort to keep her tone low and calm.
‘So, you’re suggesting I quit the job I love, get in a tour bus with a load of blokes who hate me for ruining their careers, stand on a stage in black PVC – when I’m over fifty – and not even keep the money? Plus, have the world’s press looking for all the skeletons in my cupboards, demanding to know why I quit in the first place. Are you off your head? I mean, you of all people should know why I’d never in a million years contemplate it, not for all the money in the world.’
‘What do you mean, me of all people?’
She tried not to snap at him. ‘You know, Iain. You know what happened to me: why I left the band the first time. You talked to me right before—’
‘Yah, and the police talked to me! Grilled me for hours, they did. Where was I? Who was I with? What was I doing? Yadda yadda.’
She maintained a stony silence. She couldn’t just hang up and block him, it was too risky. He knew where she lived now, and he didn’t give up easily. Everything was ruined.
‘What do you want, Meredith?’
Perhaps it was because his voice suddenly softened, or perhaps it was the directness of the question – one she asked herself a lot but that nobody else ever had, not even Pete – but her throat tightened, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.
She tried to deflect it: ‘Right now, I want you to go away and swear you won’t tell anybody where I live or what I do.’
‘No … I mean, what do you want out of your life? You don’t have a husband – or wife – or kids. How do you want people to remember you?’
‘Well, it’s sure as hell not by having a comeback on some shitty eighties reunion tour.’
Iain sighed, and she could tell he’d lost patience. ‘Right. I’m trying to help, Meredith. I thought you’d be interested, hey. It could change your life for the better. But never mind. I’ll text you my number in case you have a change of heart.’
I’ll delete it straight away, she thought. And then change my own number. ‘Swear you won’t tell anyone where I am,’ she begged.
He promised, but she didn’t believe him.
When the call was finally over, Meredith sat down slowly in the big wingback chair overlooking the garden. Two blackbirds pecked at the early blackcurrants beginning to ripen on the bush outside the window. She watched the cat, Gavin, unsuccessfully stalking them, weaving around the budding canes.
She believed she had – eventually – got what she wanted from her life. A home, a job she liked, friends, and over the years a gradual lessening of the excruciating fear and paranoia. But Iain’s call made her realise that in an instant she could be right back to where she’d been, twenty-two years ago, and it was a place she never, ever wanted to revisit.