Based on a True Story (18 page)

“Kenneth,” she hissed. “Ken, get off me for a minute.”

“Mmmm,” he muttered.

She wriggled sideways until she’d worked her legs out from under his. With one great heave she shoved his shoulders and dragged herself from under him. She tumbled to the floor, panting, and collected her breath.

“Gusta?” he mumbled into the pillow.

She leaned over, pushed the hair away from his ear, and whispered: “Don’t worry, love. I’ll be right back. Just need to fix myself up.”

He let out a noise that was either sigh or snore. She slid one hand under his cheek and turned his face away from the pillow so that he could breathe. When Charlie was little he’d slept the same way, face buried in the pillow and arms outstretched, as if he were floating in water. Every night she’d tried to nudge his face to the side, but invariably he’d woken up screaming. After a few nights she let him be and hoped that nature was wise enough to wake him before he stopped breathing.

She picked up one of Ken’s hands and dropped it; it fell to the sofa with a satisfying thud. Knees creaking, she got to her feet, trailing one hand through his hair. Maybe they should have had one last shag. It might have done both of them good. She stepped over a river of brandy trickling from the neck of an upended bottle. Too late now. Once he realized she’d drugged him and stolen his life’s work, it was unlikely he’d want to sleep with her again.

In her handbag she had a list of instructions for disconnecting the computer that she’d taken down from Alma over the phone. She crept out into the hallway and pulled it free:
SAve ffilesto thumb mute fxn BACKED UP IN CLoud??
It might as well be in Sanskrit. As quietly as she could, she began to climb the stairs.

As she reached the top she heard a muffled groan from the living room and stopped, her heart galloping. What if she had done permanent damage? She was used to mixing poisons, but that didn’t mean everyone was.

When it was quiet again, she moved through the upstairs hall. The doorway to his bedroom was open, and Augusta saw he’d put a vase of tiger lilies on the dresser. Her favourite flowers. She fought down an unwelcome pang of regret. She was turning back into the hall when a loud bang came from downstairs, and she jumped. It sounded as if two heavy knees had hit the floor. Buggery fuck. She tiptoed out of the bedroom.

To her right, the door to his office was closed. Holding her breath, she reached for the knob. Unlocked, thank God. She could see his laptop on the desk, blinking in the darkness. She flicked on the lights and consulted Alma’s crumpled instructions. What in God’s name was a wrLESS rotter? There was a rat’s nest of cables attached to the computer, each one serving some unknown purpose. In despair, she picked one of the wires up. What if she just snipped it with her manicure scissors?

From the living room downstairs came an unearthly noise, like a bear awakening in its winter cave.
Arroooooogghhh.
Quickly, she began yanking the cords from the computer. One refused to budge and she clawed at it, hands shaking. Finally she realized she needed to pinch the plastic clip at its end, and it slid from the computer. Her prize was free.

Scooping the laptop up in one hand, she turned to head for the stairs. What if this wasn’t the only copy of his book? What if he had it on a disc or something? No, that wouldn’t be Ken. It was not like him to take two steps when one would do.

There was a crash from the living room, the sound of a bottle falling to the floor. She crouched at the top of the stairs, the computer nearly slipping from her damp grasp. As quietly as possible she began to creep down the stairs, crouched below the level of the banister. One of her knees popped, loud as a firecracker. Over the top of the banister she could just see into the living room, where a beastlike shape swayed against the light.

Fuck. She slid one foot cautiously down to the next step and as she did her toe caught in the hem of the red dress and she slid down the last few steps like an out-of-control bobsledder. The laptop came loose from her grip and skittered down the steps, landing with a clatter on the tiles of the front hallway.

Lying on the floor, her skirt hiked up to reveal knickers that said Friday (it was Wednesday), she waited for the axe to fall. Ken lumbered into view in the sitting room doorway. He swayed like a giant fir tree and she could see, even in the dim light, that his half-closed eyes were confused.

“Gusta?” he muttered, and took a step toward her. As he did, his foot tripped over the empty brandy bottle, the last of its brave fellows. He didn’t make a sound as he lurched forward, arms flailing, though his head made a terrific crack when it hit the edge of the stairs.

Now you’ve done it
, Augusta thought.
Now you’ve done it, now you’ve done it, now you’ve killed a man
. Terrified, she crawled over to where he lay. Was he already dead? Holding her breath, she leaned toward him and pressed her ear to his mouth. Oh God, he wasn’t breathing. She leaned in closer.

“Arrrggggh,” he groaned, and she leapt back.

An exquisite relief flooded her, and not just because she wouldn’t have to spend her life in a maximum-
security women’s jail. He rasped again, eyes still closed, and she leaned closer. His mouth worked.

“You . . . evil . . . cow.”

Look who’s talking
, she thought, suddenly indignant.

She was on her feet again, one hand feeling for the laptop. Kenneth was lying still, but she could see his back rising and falling regularly. Gingerly she stepped over him and past the brandy bottle, past the Jägermeister bottle, past the empty bottles of wine. The pillow sat crushed on the edge of the sofa and she picked it up, tiptoed back in the hallway, and in one quick motion tucked it under his head. He made a sad noise, but that might have just been the sound of her guilt.

thirty-three

“You see, I’d just had surgery when I changed the password,” Augusta said. She leaned over the service counter with an expression she hoped suggested vulnerability. “Brain surgery, actually. It was quite traumatic. Whole swaths of my past gone. Sometimes I can barely remember the name of my sister here.”

“Daughter,” said Frances.

The clerk looked at them impassively. He was a handsome boy with a fall of dark hair brushing his shoulders, his looks marred only by the single brow that ran, uninterrupted, above his eyes. Those eyes said:
I am merely serving time at CyberKrunch. I am destined for greater things. I will humour your little charade.

“Have you tried your own name?” he said in a monotone.

“Of course I have, darling. All combinations. Augusta, augustaprice, dieaugustadie . . .” He raised an eyebrow and Augusta said, hastily, “Not that there’s any reason that should be the password.”

Frances wondered if he could smell the pomegranate liqueur on Augusta’s breath; it had been the cheapest alcohol on sale in the all-night Rite Aid, their first stop after pulling into the town of Camarillo at 6 a.m. For three hours they’d sat in the parking lot waiting for the computer store to open, Augusta with the plastic gallon jug of blood-red liquid on her lap. Every question Frances asked was met with a grunt, or silence. Silent Augusta was strangely more disconcerting than the one who swore like a stevedore.

“Children?” said the clerk, running his finger over the keyboard.

“I wouldn’t call us children,” said Augusta, pulling herself up to her full, inconsequential height, “just because we can’t remember this one simple thing.”

“The names of your children,” he said tonelessly. “Your daughter, for example.”

“No,” said Augusta. “I wouldn’t name anything after her. But . . .” Her eyes brightened. “Try Charlie.”

“It has to be an alphanumeric,” the clerk said. “Letters plus numbers. What’s his birthdate?”

“1989.”

The clerk tapped on the keyboard. “Nope.”

“Fuckety Christ,” said Augusta, not quite under her breath.

The clerk looked up with new respect.

Frances stirred beside her. “Try Charles instead,” she said.

The clerk returned to the keyboard. “Bingo,” he said. “You’re in.”

Augusta’s shoulders sagged. “Do one more thing for me, would you, love? I need to print off a file. I can’t remember what I called it, but it will be quite a big file.” She beckoned the clerk with a finger; its peeling crimson nail had broken, leaving a point like an arrowhead. “It might smell quite strongly of malice.”

“I’m not going an inch farther with you, Augusta, until you tell me what’s going on. And since you don’t drive, and I doubt you want to be stuck in the parking lot of Camarillo Premium Outlets for the rest of your life, I suggest you talk.”

Augusta was madly flipping through the printout the clerk had given her, searching, mumbling to herself, licking her finger, taking a swig from the liqueur bottle, returning to the pages. At Frances’s words, she looked up.

“I should think it’s quite clear what this is. The holy grail. The end of the trail. The grail returned to earth now.”

She’s even more pissed than usual
, Frances thought. The interior of the car reeked of fermented pomegranates. A sticky ring on the floor mat indicated where the bottle had sat between Augusta’s feet while she slept, snoring, on the drive north.

They’d checked out of the motel in the middle of the night. Augusta had flung her clothes into her suitcase, and then, when Frances failed to move quickly enough, began shoving Frances’s clothes in as well.

“We must move, darling. Chop chop. He knows where we’re hiding.” Frances had tried to ask what had happened, but Augusta merely said, “All in good time. The story will unfold for your delight. But now let’s be on our way. I’ve faced my demons, and now we must face yours.”

They’re not demons
, Frances thought.
They’re my parents, and they love me. They still love me, because they have to.
There was nowhere else to go, so Frances gave in to the pull she’d felt in her gut since they’d arrived. They’d begun to drive north, to the only sanctuary Frances could name. The house she had grown up in, and had left, full of hope.

Frances watched as Augusta skimmed the manuscript, racing a finger down each page before flipping it. They were parked between a pickup truck and a camper van, in a rented car that smelled like a French brothel. Camarillo Premium Outlets was their purgatory.

“I presume this is the lost masterpiece,” Frances said. “Deller’s book. The publisher’s not going to be happy that you’ve seen it before she has.” Augusta ignored her. “Did you sleep with your ex so he’d let you see a copy?”

“Not exactly,” said Augusta. “He passed out before things reached such a dire pass. In a manner of speaking.”

It was stifling in the car, and Frances rolled down the window to exchange pomegranate fumes for the gasoline-scented air of the parking lot. Still she couldn’t breathe.

“What exactly do you mean, in a manner of speaking?”

Augusta was oblivious, turning each page, scanning, cursing, flipping to the next.

“Mr. Romance,” she spat. “What cobblers. And do you know,” she looked over at Frances, eyes wide with disbelief, “
that
appears to be what this bullshit is actually about.” She shook the sheaf of papers. “It’s about love. In the abstract. It’s nothing to do with what happened. Nothing to do with
me
.”

She reached between her legs for the bottle. A tiny drop of red liquid fell on the page, coursing down the margin. A paralyzing thought gripped Frances.
I’m a fugitive
, she thought.
An unemployed, penniless fugitive. I am going to spend the next five years in an orange jumpsuit sharing a jail cell with a woman named Storm.

“So Kenneth Deller has probably already called the police.”

Augusta shrugged. “If he’s got a phone beside his hospital bed.”

Frances lurched from the car, crouched in the shadow of the camper van. She was going to vomit. Her head swam with the fumes, with exhaustion, with her father’s voice: “When you start something, Frances, always try to picture how it ends, and then see it through. That’s your strength, a level head.”

She crawled back into the driver’s seat. “Did you harm him, Augusta?”

Augusta snorted.

“Is there somebody we should call? The police? An ambulance?”

“I already did that, darling, hours ago. I called 999.”

“That is the wrong number!” Frances yelled. “In America the emergency number is 911! Fuck!”

“Well, yes,” said Augusta, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I soon figured that out.” She shook her head. “Language, my dear.”

thirty-four

Frances had no idea how long they’d been parked by the side of the road, staring at her childhood home. On the right, the boardwalk stretched along the clifftops, echoing with the occasional hollow thump of a jogger passing by in the dusk. Frances could hear the ocean crashing against the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs. The white noise of her childhood.

Across the road, she watched her mother pass in front of the wide bay windows, carrying the good candlesticks into the dining room. Her mother had hesitated for only a second when Frances phoned from the parking lot in Camarillo to say that she was on her way with a friend.

Frances had kept her voice brusque, daring her mother to protest at the short notice. But she hadn’t. Instead, with the grace that Frances resented and envied, she said, “I’ll go to the market and get two more chops. It won’t take a minute.” There was a brief silence, the sound of bitten-back tears on either end of the line, and then: “Your father will be so pleased.”

No, he won’t
, Frances thought.
I have no offerings that will please him
. She sat in the car, watching her mother draw the curtains. The house was almost as she remembered: three storeys cross-hatched with Tudor beams, an incongruous Victorian tower jutting from the seafront edge; Frances had hijacked that tower for her own at the age of six, in the grip of princess mania. And yet it was unfamilar, disfigured like an old friend after an accident: two hydrangeas that had once flanked the porch were gone, and in their place was a wooden wheelchair ramp, its pine planks still yellow-fresh and unmarked by salt air.

Augusta slept against the car window, a patch of fog blossoming near her open mouth. What if she had indeed killed Deller?
We’re fugitives
, Frances thought.
We’re fugitives and we don’t even have a hostess gift.

Gently she prodded Augusta’s shoulder, and Augusta shuddered to life. She jerked away from the window, eyes widening at the sight of the ocean: “Are we in Dover?” she whispered. “I’m not allowed in Dover.”

“Wrong side of the world,” Frances said. “We’re in Cambria. My hometown. And that is my house.” She paused. “At least, it’s my parents’ house.”

Augusta leaned across her to peer out the window. She had to fold herself over the purloined computer, which stuck out the top of her handbag. Augusta’s phone beeped, but she ignored it.

“Very nice. A bit Anne Boleyn for my taste, but handsome.” She took a mint from her purse and offered one to Frances. Her phone beeped again and Frances, exasperated, reached for the purse. Augusta slapped her hand away.

“For God’s sake, Augusta,” said Frances, stung. “I wasn’t going to touch your precious computer. I just wanted to help you check your messages.”

Slowly, not taking her eyes from Frances’s, Augusta reached into her handbag and retrieved the phone.

“Evil things,” she said, handing it to Frances. “They’re supposed to connect us, which is utter rubbish. We’ve never been further apart. Idiots chase you down the street taking pictures so they can wank over them later —”

“Mmm,” said Frances, not listening. “Who’s David?”

“David?” Augusta sat up suddenly. She ran a finger over her eyebrows, as if a camera might appear at any moment on this rocky stretch of coast. “David is my agent. What does he say?”

Frances scanned the phone. “He’s left about eight text messages and emails, and they’re increasingly hysterical. Something about a show called
Circle of Lies
?”

Augusta fell back against the seat, oblivious to Frances’s curious stare. She’d always believed that fortune would smile on her once again.
Circle of Lies
. The betrayed Q.C.’s wife. The part she’d fought for and lost. Finally, the producers had come to their senses. They knew the strengths that she — and only she — could bring to the role.

Augusta tried to remember the script, but she’d read it so long ago. A jammy, complex part. She could see it now: the wife would be hurt, but not bitter; afraid, but stalwart. Augusta practiced noble resignation in the car window for a moment, not noticing that Frances had gone white. The girl was staring at a new message on Augusta’s phone, which said simply:
I WILL FIND YOU. YOU WILL PAY.

Augusta was too lost in her daydream to see Frances frantically stabbing the delete key. After a moment, she turned and said, “Let’s meet your parents, shall we? I imagine they keep an excellent cellar.”

They walked across Moonstone Drive and up the long, sloping driveway to the door. Augusta’s heel caught between the planks in the ramp and Frances bent to free her. “It’s new, this ramp,” she said in a rush. “My father’s been in a wheelchair for only a little while. He hates it.”

“Of course he does,” said Augusta, fixing her lipstick in the door’s pebbled glass. “He must think his life is over.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way —” Frances began, but before she could answer the door opened.

Augusta felt an odd jolt of recognition: the woman in the door was Frances in twenty years, Frances with the edges neatly stitched. She had the same dark hair and hazel eyes, but the older woman’s hair was glossy and richly highlighted, her eyes subtly outlined in brown pencil.

Frances stood on the porch, unsure, until her mother stepped forward and wrapped her in two slender brown arms.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

So that’s how it’s done
, Augusta thought.

Frances stood in her mother’s arms for a minute until Augusta coughed.

“Oh,” said Frances, breaking away and brushing at her eyes. “Mom, this is my . . . my friend, Augusta. Augusta, this is my mother, Jean Bleeker.”

Jean extended a hand, the tiny gold charms on her bracelet swinging. There was nothing in her face but welcome, and Augusta marvelled once again at the American capacity to accept with a smile whatever astonishing shit life threw at them.

“I’m delighted to meet a friend of Frances’s,” she said, and beckoned them in.

The marble-floored entrance foyer was nearly as large as Augusta’s London flat, and smelled of something alien and citrus, which after a moment she realized must be furniture polish. As Jean led them through the hallway, Augusta noticed a sawhorse leaning against a wall; the archway to a vast, pale sitting room was ragged on one side, the raw edge of drywall exposed. Jean caught her eye: “We’re widening the doorways,” she said.

Frances had regained her composure: “Where is Daddy?” she asked.

“He’ll be down shortly,” her mother said. “He needs to nap quite a bit these days.”

Jean reached out to touch her daughter’s hair, but Frances broke away and walked across to the bay window that looked over the ocean. Jean stared after her for a minute, and then turned to Augusta: “Well, let’s make you at home. Shall I take your bag?”

Augusta clutched the purse with a convulsive jerk, setting her rocking back. One of her heels clacked loudly in the silence, and she didn’t dare look down to see if she’d cracked a marble tile.

“Thank you, no,” she said, feeling the laptop cool and hard against her chest. “I won’t bother you with my baggage.”

She reached for a smile, but the distance was too great. Jean Bleeker hadn’t noticed; she was staring, once more, at her daughter.