Complicit (14 page)

‘What don’t I understand?’

‘This isn’t about not working. It’s about – about not being me. Anyway, I don’t want to leave Lola. It would be like ripping my heart out.’

‘But you’re always wanting to leave her!’

‘No. Not like that. Just – you know, moments of flight.’

‘Are things getting worse between you and Richard?’ I asked. I was trying to behave in the way I would have done a few weeks ago; I was trying to remember how to be myself, the self I seemed to have temporarily mislaid in all the madness and horror. ‘You can always tell me.’

‘Huh,’ she said. She seemed about to say more, but visibly stopped herself and started marching around the flat, interrogating me about my plans for redecoration. Apart from ripping out old kitchen units, which I had no idea how to do, painting and putting up a few shelves, I didn’t have any, but that was fine because all of a sudden Sally had lots, most of them not particularly helpful. She wandered around commenting on cracks in the plaster, rapping on walls. I didn’t mind now. I didn’t feel like talking or even thinking, and it was restful to sip my milky coffee and let my mind go blank while Sally had ideas that I wouldn’t be able to carry out in a million years. The milky coffee tasted like some sort of baby food but it was warm and probably had useful vitamins and minerals in it.

When Sally briskly announced that we had better get on, I was almost disappointed. ‘So what do we start with?’ she said.

‘Painting this wall,’ I said. ‘That’s really all I had in mind for today. One wall would make me feel better.’

Sally looked at it doubtfully. ‘Doesn’t it need an undercoat?’

‘My idea was that we just keep painting until we can’t see any of the colour underneath.’

‘Strictly speaking, you ought to fill that big crack.’ She ran her fingernail down it.

‘The paint will fill it in,’ I said. ‘A bit. This is only temporary. If I ever have any money, I’ll do it properly. In fact, if I ever have any money, I’ll move.’

‘You’ll meet someone soon,’ said Sally, out of the blue, her words sliding under my guard like a knife between my ribs. ‘I predict it. You’ll meet someone and fall in love again.’ She added, a bit wistfully, ‘Men adore you.’

I stared at her, stricken, and couldn’t speak.

‘Oh, Bonnie, don’t look at me like that! I didn’t mean anything,’ she said.

‘It’s fine,’ I managed.

‘Me and my big mouth.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘Is it because of Amos?’

‘No. No.’

‘Come here. Hang on, give me your mug – you’re spilling the dregs.’

As she took it from me, Sally suddenly looked at me, apparently surprised and confused at the same time. Our eyes met, and she blushed a deep crimson. She went back into the kitchen with the mugs, and I heard the tap running. It didn’t take long to wash two mugs, but it gave me time to collect my feelings. In my one attempt at professionalism, I spread an old sheet under the wall we were going to paint. Not that the carpet deserved much protection: it might have looked better with splashes of paint on it. I took the sheet away again. When Sally came back she seemed distracted.

‘I’ve got these brushes,’ I said, aiming for cheerfulness. ‘You can have the big one or the little one.’

She didn’t hear me.

‘I said –’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘This sounds stupid. I couldn’t help noticing your neck.’

I flinched. I had almost forgotten about the bruise, which had faded to a dirty yellow now, and was a bit puffy. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. I couldn’t think of a single good reason why I would have a bruise on my neck. ‘An accident.’

‘No. It’s not that,’ she said, and blinked several times. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude, but you wouldn’t mind telling me where you got that necklace, would you?’

Twisting uncomfortably, I peered down at it. Why on earth had I put it on? My mind went fuzzy. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just picked it up somewhere.’

‘Would you mind if I looked at it more closely?’

‘Is there a problem?’ I heard myself say. What was up? Had I made some sort of mistake?

‘No, no, not at all. I’d just like to look at it.’

‘If you want,’ I said, and unclipped it. I gave it to her, draped over my palm. She took it and examined it closely.

‘You think it’s worth something?’ I said, making a feeble attempt at a joke.

‘This is a bit embarrassing,’ said Sally, ‘but I think it’s mine.’

The air seemed suddenly cold. ‘You
think
?’

‘I mean I’m sure it is. It was a present when we were on holiday in Turkey. From Richard.’

I tried to force my brain to think. It was like starting a rusted-up machine. The necklace had come in the satchel from Liza’s flat. How could it possibly belong to Sally?

‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘They can sometimes look alike.’

‘It’s the one I always wear,’ said Sally. She held it up. ‘There’s a new clasp here, where the old one broke. I got it replaced. It doesn’t quite match.’ There was a silence as we looked at each other. What was going on? Was Sally accusing me of having stolen her necklace? No. She was as hesitant as I was. And when she spoke her words came in a rush: ‘It’s an easy thing to do,’ she said. ‘It must have happened when you were rehearsing. I must have taken it off – to do the cleaning or something like that. It gets caught. You know how it is. And you just saw it and put it on automatically, the way you do.’

That was all rubbish. You don’t put on other people’s necklaces by mistake in the middle of a music rehearsal. She was making excuses for me. Almost apologizing to me. And, anyway, I knew I hadn’t picked it up at her house.

‘It’s the sort of mistake anybody could make,’ she said, almost babbling. ‘You pick up the wrong thing, put it on automatically. I was wondering what had happened to it. Richard would have found it really strange if he’d seen you wearing it. That would have been funny.’

Her expression showed that she didn’t find it funny at all. Now I knew. Sally had left the necklace at Liza’s flat. Sally and Hayden. I looked at her. Her cheeks were red. She knew. And now she also knew that I knew. She must do. And what else did she know about me? What did she suspect about me? What did she suspect about Hayden? What did she think had become of him?

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘What a stupid thing to do. I must have picked it up without thinking. You need to watch me. Next thing I’ll be forgetting my own head. Ha ha. Lucky you saw it. Well, let’s do some painting.’

I prised the lid off the tin of paint with a screwdriver. It looked like white, or sort of white, but the colour was called ‘String’. We started slapping it on. Sally seemed to have lost her eagerness to talk.

Sally and Hayden. Hayden and Sally. Was it possible to be jealous of a dead man, to feel retrospectively betrayed by someone whose body I’d just got rid of? After all, it wasn’t as if I’d had any illusions about him. If there was music being played, he would join in. If food was put in front of him, he’d eat it with a hunger that was never satisfied. And it was the same with women. A desperate woman, lonely, neglected, bored. He would make her feel better, special again, alive again. He would run his hands over her body and tell her she was beautiful, and she would become beautiful. I tried not to picture them in bed together, naked bodies entangled, his familiar smell. The way he smiled, a smile that started slowly and seemed to spread over his entire face, warming it. For a moment I stopped, dripping paintbrush in hand, ambushed by the loss I felt.

I went back to my task, slapping almost-white paint over the dreary beige surface. When had it happened? Where had I been when it was going on? Was it when I was at that music festival? It must have been, yes – but had he moved into Liza’s flat by then? I couldn’t remember. My brain was clogged with sludge. What deceptions had been necessary? I tried to remember what, if anything, Sally had said to me about Hayden or Hayden to me about Sally. Anyway, this was stupidly, wickedly wrong – what right did I have to feel betrayed? What right on so many levels?

And what did Sally know? Did she know about us? She must, unless she was forcing herself not to.

There was something satisfying about the glutinous texture of the paint, the squelching sound as I pushed the brush into it and twirled it so that it didn’t drip. I would almost have liked to push my hands into the tin and smear the paint onto the walls.

Hayden with Sally and Hayden with me. But, of course, throbbing behind all those questions there was something else, something much more important, the ocean under the rippling waves. The necklace had been left in Liza’s flat. It must have been on the bedside table. Perhaps it was like a superstition: before committing adultery, Sally might have thought it appropriate to remove the necklace her husband had bought her. The feel of it on her neck while she was wrapped around Hayden might have put her off. So it was lying on the bedside table where somebody had seen it and thought it was mine and sent it to me. What for? Was it a warning? A kind of statement? I know you’ve been there. I know you left something of yourself there. You can’t escape. Nobody escapes.

Meanwhile Sally and I were beside each other painting. It was grotesque. I made myself break the silence. ‘How’s it going?’ I said.

‘I’m not sure this is going to cover the colour underneath,’ she said.

‘It’ll do.’

Before

Neal arrived with a bottle of white wine, cold, with little drops of condensation on it, and with a smile so eager and confident it was like a knife being pushed into me. I looked at him standing on the doorstep, his hair brushed into uncharacteristic neatness. He was wearing a lovely linen shirt that he must have ironed before he left his house.

‘Hello, Neal,’ I said. I felt like a murderer, waiting to deal the fatal blow.

‘What happened?’

I touched my fingers lightly to my swollen cheek. ‘I fell over.’

‘You look like you’ve been in a boxing ring.’

‘It looks worse than it feels,’ I said untruthfully.

‘Where did you fall?’

‘Does it matter?’ I said. I hadn’t prepared the follow-up line. I tried to think of something plausible. ‘In the bathroom. Standing on the rim of the bath trying to reach something off the top shelf. My foot slipped and I just crashed down. I hit my face on the edge.’

‘Ouch,’ Neal said sympathetically. ‘When?’

‘Yesterday evening.’

‘It looks pretty fresh. I tried to call you then but there was no reply.’

‘I was probably lying on my bed holding ice to my cheek,’ I said. It was only half a lie.

‘I thought we could go for a picnic,’ he said. ‘If you feel up to it, of course. It’s a lovely day.’ And he kissed me on my mouth, very gently so as not to hurt me. I felt his lips smiling slightly against mine and drew away.

‘Let’s go inside,’ I said.

In the kitchen, I put the table between us. ‘Tea or coffee?’ I asked, playing for time.

‘Neither,’ he replied. There was the faintest frown on his face now, a tremor of anxiety passing through him.

I filled the kettle and turned it on, my back to him so I wouldn’t have to see his face. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said.

‘That doesn’t sound good.’ He was trying to keep his voice unconcerned.

‘You and me,’ I said.

‘It’s been ages since I felt like this,’ he intervened, trying to cut off what he knew I was about to say. ‘You know that.’

‘I’ve done you wrong.’ I winced – the line sounded as if it was lifted from a corny country-and-western song, yet it was what I felt. I had done him wrong.

‘I closed down so I wouldn’t get hurt.’

‘I’m not ready,’ I said hopelessly.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It happened too fast, at a strange time in my own life.’

‘I don’t want to rush you.’

‘I think we should just be friends.’ I felt ashamed even as I was uttering the glib words.

‘What happened? I don’t understand.’

I turned to him, made myself look him in the eye. ‘Nothing happened, Neal. I thought things over.’

‘I read it all wrong.’ He rubbed a hand over his face as if there were cobwebs on it. ‘I thought you felt the same as me.’

‘It was lovely, Neal, but I’m not someone you want to have a committed relationship with.’

‘But I do want to,’ he said. He wasn’t giving way. He wasn’t letting me off the hook.

‘It’s no good.’

‘Is there someone else?’

‘That’s not it.’

Something in his expression had changed as he stared at me. ‘There is,’ he said. ‘And your face. It wasn’t an accident, was it? Someone hit you.’

‘That’s enough,’ I said. At last he had given me an excuse to get angry and kick him out and I seized it. ‘You should go now.’

Neal walked round the table and stood a few inches from me. He lifted his hand and touched my bruised face. ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily, Bonnie.’

‘You need to go.’

‘It’s not over,’ he said.

‘I’m not just jerking you around.’

‘It can’t be over. I won’t let it be. I’ll wait for you to change your mind.’

I felt a prickle of unease on my skin. ‘You didn’t hear what I said.’

‘I heard you. I just didn’t believe you.’

Hayden arrived an hour later. I opened the door and pulled him inside. We didn’t speak. He pressed his lips to my bruise, then undid the buttons on my shirt. I knelt on the floor and untied his shoelaces. When I looked up at him, there was such hunger on his face that I almost cried out. We had sex standing against the wall just inside the door, both of us still dressed, and then we went into the bedroom. He took off my clothes very slowly and stared at me as though I were miraculous, touched me as though I were breakable. We lay together on my bed for hours, sometimes holding each other and sometimes simply gazing. I felt as though I were looking deep inside him, at a place people rarely got to see.