Lie With Me (17 page)

‘It was very brief. I wanted to say . . .’ I tried to judge the tone right – gentle concern with a smidgen of mortification. ‘How sorry I am that she died.’

Tina blinked slowly; possibly she moved her head but so slightly I wasn’t sure. ‘It’s awful, I know.’

‘Was she ill?’

‘Andrew doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s a bit of a taboo subject.’

‘An accident?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was: a terrible accident.’ We had reached the drive up to the house and she changed gears sharply, indicating and checking her mirrors. I opened my mouth to ask more, but there was a look in her eye as if she might be about to cry.

I said: ‘I’m sorry.’

I didn’t want to upset her. There were other ways I could find out.

Chapter Twelve

The house was sun-baked; the walls trembled in the heat. A black swimsuit hung, bat-like, from a limb of the olive tree; a plastic bottle of Ambre Solaire stood upright by the leg of a chair: otherwise there was no sign of habitation. It was silent – the builders had stopped. The empty terrace dazzled.

Tina put the towels to dry and sat outside at the table while I tooled around in the kitchen, making us a pot of tea with the Red Label sachets I found in the cupboard. Several flies droned, spiralling in head-height patterns. The breakfast plates lay unwashed in the sink: a smear of butter, a crescent of crust. Someone had left a scrunch of money on the counter – a few coins loosely wrapped up in a five-euro note. Andrew’s trunks only had a flimsy pocket so I slipped both the note and the coins into the cigarette packet I had rolled, James Dean-style, into the shoulder of my T-shirt.

I carried the tea out on a tray. ‘Ah, lovely,’ Tina said. ‘Will you be mother?’ and then, after I had poured and she had taken her first sip, ‘I needed this. Isn’t it funny how a hot drink can be so refreshing!’

I think about Tina quite a lot these days. She was a warm, interesting woman; wrong for Andrew. She could have been anything if she had followed her own instincts, if she had wriggled out from under the yoke of his control. I always liked her. Perhaps things would have turned out differently for me if I’d married a woman like her.

At that moment, she released her hair from the linen scarf that tied it back. It bounced free, springing in an auburn halo around her face. She ruffled her fingers in it and then raked it behind her ears, with an apologetic laugh.

‘You should grow it long,’ I said, smiling at her. For a moment, I let myself imagine her naked body rising above me, her hazel eyes half closed, the full breasts she liked to hide tumbling free.

She blushed, as if she could read my thoughts. ‘Andrew likes it shorter,’ she murmured. ‘Easier to keep neat. And at my age . . .’

‘What age?’ I said, as charmingly as I could.

‘Oh don’t flirt, Paul. I gave that all up when I went through menopause.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘It was an
early
menopause,’ she said, with a small smile. ‘I’m vain enough to tell you that.’

I smiled back and, when a few moments had settled, asked after her painting. Was it something she wanted to do more of? She looked thoughtful: ‘I don’t really have the talent.’

‘Those pictures in your kitchen – they’re wonderful,’ I lied.

‘I used to have more time,’ she said, ‘when I was younger, before the kids . . .’

We talked about her various jobs then: how she had left the City for a better work/life balance, how she had struggled with the pressures of bringing up children, of being a good enough parent. She worried about them both – of course she did. The shop was a wonderful compromise and had brought her fulfilment. She loved a new delivery of yarn, took an almost sensual delight in organising the balls by colour or texture, how balancing the accounts was an oddly satisfying task, how a grateful customer made a hard day worthwhile.

I was enjoying listening to her, touched by the obvious pleasure she felt in her work, finding I was actually interested in what she had to say; questions sprung from me unbidden! Did she advertise? How did she attract custom?

‘Word of mouth.’

‘Does it work?’

‘Usually, and when it doesn’t, we lasso them with balls of cashmerino aran and drag them in off the street,’ she replied.

Who was looking after the business in her absence? She stuck a sign in the window announcing annual holiday. No, she wouldn’t necessarily lose customers, wool being a seasonal purchase. ‘People knit in winter,’ she said, ‘and play tennis in summer.’

I laughed. ‘I think you move in different circles to me.’

She looked at me, once again almost fondly. ‘I expect I do.’

Now I’d brought it all to the front of her mind, she began to think out loud about the things she should be doing: re-orders to make, website designers to chase, course dates to finalise. This year, they’d be offering Starting to Knit, Beginners’ Crochet and Learning Fair Isle. ‘In fact,’ she gulped back her tea and brought her hands together in a determined little clap, ‘I might get on with some emails while it’s quiet.’

She went into the house, leaving me alone. The bags from the car were still on the ground where she had dumped them and I rummaged until I found my phone. Signal was terrible on the terrace and I walked round to the front yard. It was strongest, three bars, over on the far side, and I leant against the door of one of the outbuildings, to write the text to Alex I’d been composing in my head since the car.

It was a little awkward. I’d only seen him once since he’d got back from New York. He and his boyfriend Zach had invited me to supper and the experience had been traumatic. Alex cooked a spelt barley risotto with kale, surprisingly delicious, and they were full of Alex’s new job at the LSO, Zach’s latest Bikram yoga business, their plans to redecorate the bathroom. I’d hoped their return was temporary; I realised, sitting on the sofa like a guest, Persephone kneading my knee, that I was wrong.

Alex had suggested a coffee soon after that, and then later a trip to a concert. I hadn’t made the time for either. Looking back, I suspect that as a flat-sit was no longer an option, I’d lost interest in the friendship. But Alex was my only link to a certain aspect of my past. I sent him this text:
Hello. Sorry I haven’t been in touch – madly busy with work. Couple of ?s. 1st off, do you remember Andrew Hopkins’s sister – Florrie? Two years below us? Did you know she was dead?

It whooshed off. I waited for a while. No reply. I peered, for something to do, through the filthy window that took up the top panels of the double doors. Beyond it, a crochet pattern of spider webs, the hulking form of a vehicle. Hermes. I considered this for a moment, then turned the handle, expecting it to be rusted stiff, but it turned smoothly.

I stepped in. The door, on a vicious spring, snapped shut. Inside was a smell of grease and hot plastic and rotting earth. It was gloomy; a grimy strip of glass near the roof let in a grey light. Against the far wall, a row of shelves held ancient bags of unmixed concrete, battered pots of paint, a few dirt-smeared plastic containers. The truck itself, a white Toyota, was an ugly rusty thing. I couldn’t think why Alice was bothered with it. It looked ashamed of itself with its face to the wall, hidden away. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had sat in it. Years, probably.

Now I was here, a small thought wormed itself into my mind. Perhaps it was a simple thing that was wrong; to do with water, or oil. I had seen my father change those often enough on his old Morris Marina. The unscrew, the glug, the re-screw. The dip, the wipe, the re-dip. A fantasy grew: my macho credentials re-established; Alice’s arm-flinging delight; grudging respect from the others.

To reach the bonnet I would have to go further into the shed. There wasn’t much room between the vehicle and the wall, just enough for a person to squeeze through, but the walls were black with dust and I wouldn’t be able to get by without getting dirty. I paused, fastidiously averse. And then my phone buzzed: a text from Alex.

Hello stranger.
Course I remember Florrie. Poor girl. One of your conquests, wasn’t she? Friend of Gillian’s. Surprised you didn’t know. Tragic.

I typed quickly:
How?

This time his reply was immediate:
Suicide. Overdose I think.

I leant back against the wall, felt the grit of the concrete against my head. An overdose. Suicide. Leukaemia or a car accident: these were the horrors I’d been imagining. Yet, in my mind, they hadn’t really been horrors at all. I’d incorporated the thought of them into the narrative of her life without real upset. But suicide was different. I couldn’t avoid the thought of Florrie in this – Florrie’s thoughts and feelings, her state of mind, her problems at work, whatever had gone on in the life she had led.

Shit
, I typed.
Wish I’d known
.

Of course, I knew why I hadn’t known. I wasn’t in touch with anyone who might have told me apart from Alex, and he had been abroad so much of the time. Gillian – she was a friend of mine too. She and Alex and I had lived together in our second year, but I’d lost touch, just as I’d lost touch with most people – unless, like Alex, they were of use to me. It was what I did. It was how I was. But the success of my novel, first the flurry of the bidding war and then my brief period of so-called fame, when there were literary festivals and award ceremonies and photo shoots (‘Ten Young Writers to Look Out For’) . . . it had all encouraged that aspect of me. Why trudge to Peckham to see Gillian when I could be having cocktails in Bibendum with the arts editor of the
Sunday Times
?

Standing in that dark shed, I had a moment of regret. My finger hovered over the ring icon. It would be nice to speak to Alex, just for a chat. Find out how the LSO was treating him. Ask after Persephone. I stopped myself: God knows how expensive a call would be. Instead, I quickly padded out another text:
Thanks.
I put the phone back in my pocket.

I had lost interest in the van now so I left the shed and walked back round to the terrace. I poked around the house a bit – abandoned bedrooms, clothes and headphones scattered. Only the teenage boys used the sitting room, and there were mugs abandoned on the floor, a glass on its side, a curl of corrugated paper from inside a packet of biscuits.

A door from the sitting room opened into Tina and Andrew’s bedroom. It had been left ajar and, as it was so quiet in there, I peered in. Tina was asleep on top of the bed, laptop nudged to the side. One arm was thrown above her head revealing the dark crease of her armpit, her dress twisted tight across one breast.

I left the house quietly, grabbed a drying towel, and took the path down to the pool.

Artan was standing at the deep end with a long pole in his hand, scooping insects out of the water. Light flickered on to his face. His cheekbones threw shadows. I felt a moment of shock, seeing him. How long had he been there? How quiet he was. I greeted him and he put his hand up, fingers spread. ‘Five more minutes,’ he said.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘No hurry.’

But I felt self-conscious now. How could I lounge, recumbent, as he toiled? So I left my towel on a chair, as if that had been my intention, and wandered into the scrubby wooded area just beyond the pool: eucalyptus and pine, saplings mainly, tiny dry leaves under foot. Sun splintered the shadows. I was at the edge of the property – beyond the copse was the field where the construction had begun.

A low white wall, half collapsed, marked the boundary and I decided, to give Artan time to finish, to do a loop, walk through the field, over the gate and back up the drive. I took a couple of steps forward and tripped. I looked down and saw the raised lip of an old well, too small to fall into, and thick with leaves, but I had hit the bony bit of my ankle and I had to rub it hard to stop it hurting.

The walk round was pleasant: the air still hot but the sun much less intense. Bees hummed in long-stalked yellow flowers. A thousand cicada clocks ticked. In the distance, a row of tall thin cypress trees, emblems of death, formed quills of dark green against the landscape.

The diggers had their noses in the ground as if grazing. No sound from the guard dog, though I was careful to keep to the edge of Alice’s property and to tread as quietly as I could. From the gate, I could just make out, under a temporary tin hut, a black and tan shadow, prone, legs and tail flopped to one side. Smaller than I’d imagined from the depth of the bark, and painfully thin – you could see the curve of its ribs. ‘Poor mutt,’ I murmured as I climbed gingerly over the gate. The bar rattled as my weight sprang free, and the dog was immediately on its feet, rushing forwards, yanking on its chain. It began to bark and didn’t stop. I heard it all the way up to the house.

I was asleep on a bed down at the pool and then suddenly I was awake.

The air was musky, and full of bugs. The sun had long slipped behind the hill. The pool was navy-black.

Up on the terrace I knew something was wrong. They were all back. Andrew and Tina were standing looking awkward and Alice was sitting between them on a chair, her face pale, her lips almost bloodless. Her dress was damp in places where her swimsuit underneath was wet.

‘Oh God, are you all right?’ I said, the moment I saw her face. ‘Are you ill?’

I stepped forwards but Andrew put out his arm to stop me. ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘We’ve got it under control.’

‘What?’

Andrew said: ‘It’s nothing. She’s had a bit of a shock, that’s all.’ He spoke slowly, his voice calm. Someone was being patronised – and I thought it was me, but then wondered if it might be Alice. There was a tension in the air between him and Tina, as if they were scared of her, or worried about breaking her. Each word, each action, was being carefully chosen. Andrew turned and put his hand on Alice’s shoulder. ‘Take a few deep breaths,’ he said. ‘There. Come on. It’s important that you’re calm.’

‘I know.’ She patted Andrew’s hand and kept it there.

‘Poor Alice,’ Tina said. She was standing by the kitchen door. The light was on behind her and mosquitoes buzzed above her head. ‘I’m going to make some tea,’ she said. ‘I think we could all do with some.’