Now You See Me (31 page)

I walked past the house again and again, the door shut smug behind the scraggy trees. But I didn't go in. I went to the Botanics and sat on a wet bench among the dead sticks of the rose garden. It wasn't all dead sticks, there was one straggly white rose browning at the edges, sagging under its own wet weight.

A man with a damp moustache sat down next to me. ‘Cheer up, might never happen,' he said. ‘Spare a fag?' I told him that I didn't smoke. He said he'd climbed Mount Kilimanjaro without any oxygen once. And who knows, maybe he did. Who cares. I gave him the chocolate coffee bean.

In the end there was nothing I could do except go back. I stepped through the door. There were a couple of envelopes on the mat, a brown one, bill, there had been lots of those. I left it. The other was a creamy square. I picked it up. I walked through into the back but no one was there, not even the dogs. The telly wasn't on and Doggo wasn't in his chair. A false flame flickered in the fire. A sinking in my gut said he'd gone. Just gone. Why wouldn't he?

I went upstairs and stood in the lighthouse room looking at the phony storm. His stuff was still there. The real fire was hot. If he'd gone, he hadn't been gone long, someone had tended it and lately. Anyway, he would have taken his stuff. He would only be outside, that's all. Only in his stupid garden. I knelt down beside the fire. The tidy writing on the envelope was Sarah's. I could hardly be bothered to open it but I did.

9th Jan

Dear Doggo
,

OK, I get the message. I feel exploited by you and by Lamb. You are living in my house but won't even phone me. I've had flu but I'm better now. I'm coming back. While I was in bed with flu I had lots of time to think. Lamb said something crazy before I left that morning. She said you were a murderer. I just laughed. I was still high from … well you know. And after all her other terrible lies. But all those hours in bed alone, aching and coughing, I started to think. And I remembered something too, something about an escaped prisoner, someone dangerous, some connection with Sheffield. I'm sure this is crazy and I'm going to end up feeling incredibly stupid, but I don't care. If you don't ring me when you get this I'm phoning the police. Please ring and tell me how stupid this all is
.

Love (believe it or not) Sarah
.

I screwed it up and chucked it in the fire. How stupid. How hysterical.
Get a grip
, I would have said if I could see her. She would never do it. Call the police. Why would she? What a liar. Love.
Believe it or not
. If she loved him, she wouldn't. What good would that do? Anyway she would wait a few days, give him a few days. What if the letter got delayed in the post? What if it got lost?

I went downstairs and into the room that was once Zita's. I looked at the floor and the walls. A sunbeam jittered on the dusty floor. There really was no sign that anybody had ever burned to death in that room. No sign and no smell at all. It was just an empty room. It didn't affect me one bit.

Of course he was in the garden with the dogs. He was smoking a fag, his back turned to me. I stood and watched him for a while. He was lost in thought. He looked just the same. I stared at him and thought,
you lied to me
. I refocused and tried to see him differently. As a liar, the murderer of his brother, a girl, an unborn child. A person who lived with that.
A liar
. But no matter how long I stared at him, I couldn't. He was wearing an old sweater unravelling at the sleeves and all he looked was dear and familiar to me.

‘Hi,' I said.

‘Fuck.' He clutched his chest. ‘Nearly gave me a heart-attack.' He grinned as if he was really pleased to see me. I looked with interest at his grin. Funny how that contraction of muscles, that naked slash of teeth, means
happy
, means
friends
.

‘This is where fountain goes.' He walked across the mud and pointed. ‘And then a kind of stream leading down to pond. Here.' I stood there staring at him. He was moving like a puppet but you couldn't see the strings. ‘With goldfish,' he said and squinted at me. ‘What's up?'

‘I've been talking to your mum.'

‘That where you've been? And maybe a little bridge across. Or would that be too …'

‘Proper talking,' I said, ‘about
everything.'

‘Oh yeah?' He ground his fag out in the mud. ‘Come here.' He held his arms out but I didn't move. His eyes were naked metal in the sun. I could have stopped there. He was just a grinning puppet but the grin was falling off. I looked past him at the mound where Norma was buried. I saw he'd made a cross with twigs and poked it in the earth. Words shrivelled in my mouth.

‘What?' he said.

My lips moved for a moment before I could speak. ‘
You
. You killed your brother?'

He didn't look down or away when I said it, he kept his darkening eyes on mine.

‘Yeah, she read all about it in the papers,' I said. ‘They call you the LOVE-HATE Man.'

The scars on his knuckles showed shiny through the frayed cuffs of his sweater. His shoulders rose. We just stood there as if time had stopped and the weird thing is I had a sudden vision of the fountain. The fountain, the stream, the pond, even a flicker of goldfish. Just how it would be.

‘Didn't mean to kill him,' he said in a flat voice. ‘I was off my head. Didn't mean it.'

‘K,' I said, ‘if you say so. What was all that about a knife? All that stuff you told me, about revenge?
You called me a liar!'
I couldn't stop myself from shouting when I got to that.

‘Lamb …'

‘I'm going to get some milk.'

I don't know if we even needed milk, all I knew is I couldn't bear to be near him a moment longer. I walked fast with that smoke taste rising in my throat again. I didn't give a toss where I walked, I didn't even look, just let my legs scissor scissor scissor, slicing the air to rags.

I ended up in the park. I didn't notice where I was until it started raining, soaking through my clothes, but I just kept on walking. Trust. I had trusted him. Trust, the word gone dull, the rusting T of truth. Thinking about burning. Of all the people in the world for me to fall in love with, someone who'd done arson. Foul word, like arsey person. I stopped and spat to try and get the taste out of my mouth. And he had lied to me. Called
me
a liar. Falling in love, yes that is what I'd done. And
trusting
and he had lied to me. Worse than that. I had
believed
him. The river was tumbling towards me over its stones, dragging its ripped-off roots and branches, a lost football bouncing madly on the top.

I couldn't stop walking until my head was sorted and if it never got sorted then I'd walk till I dropped. And who would care? People were panicking about as if they thought it would kill them to get wet. The rain turned to hail and the hail stabbed cold needles in my scalp and face and tiny nuggets bounced up around my feet. Good. It stung, good.

How
can
you ever know another person? Or even know yourself. How can you trust? The hail turned to sleet and it was like walking through interference on the telly, long white streaks rushing at my eyes. If you can't trust then you're alone. I had to blink even to see and a runner came past, face wet red, stuttering through my lashes. But you can never trust.

My fingers vanished, my scalp froze, my boots squelched, bubbles squeezing out between the laces. But it came suddenly clear to me. Like light filtering between my ribs. I wanted him. The liar. I wanted him. Whatever. We were both liars,
so?
At least we knew that. Most people don't, do they, most people,
you
, you lie and think you get away with it. Don't you? Don't you? At least I
know
with Doggo now. At least he knows. He must not go. He might be gone already or be going now.

I swivelled and ran back the other way. Spikes of ice lashed at my back. There was no one else out. The swings swung empty in the playground. The swollen yellow river hurtled past and I ran to keep up.

He was not in the garden and not downstairs. The dogs were there and on the table a bit of paper, I thought it was a note but it was just an address. I picked it up. Underneath written
My gran
. Nothing else, nothing personal, nothing about love, not even my name. I thought he'd gone. Just gone. Leaving me to take Gordon back. Leaving me alone.

But even if he
was
here I'd be alone because I could not trust him. There is nothing for it but to be alone. You're no less alone if someone's with you. You only think you are. That is what a voice was saying. I didn't know if it was true, is it true? Please, is it true?

No
. I wanted him. He was a wanted man. We were both liars and we knew it. So that was OK. That was a kind of trust. We'd always
know
that we were lying. That is more honest, I think. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and yelled his name over and over again. I would have yelled for ever, yelled till I dropped dead, but then the front door opened behind me.

I felt so stupid, the echoes of my shouts shuddering in the air. I turned round as he stepped in and banged the door shut. He flicked the Yale lock down and stood with his back against the door as if he was keeping someone out. His curls had turned to glittering tendrils. Gordon pattered past me to welcome him back.

We stood there for a minute our breath all foggy in the air. ‘So?' I said in the end.

‘Thought you'd fucked off,' he said.

A hectic shiver ran up my spine. ‘Thought you had.'

We stood there, water running off us and pooling on the floor. A green stain from the fanlight tinged his hair and his face was shadowed so I couldn't read it.

‘Where've you been?' My teeth were chattering. A drop of water slithered down between my shoulder blades.

‘You're fucking freezing,' he said. ‘Come on.' He got hold of my arm and pulled me through into the back room which was hot and orange from the fire. He turned it up as high as it would go and a drop fell from his hair and sizzled on the metal edge.

‘Where?'

‘Botanics.'

‘Botanics?'

‘Fucking well looking for you, weren't I.'

‘Oh,' I said. Then, ‘Why did you lie to me?'

He looked down. There was nothing he could say. Nothing he needed to say. Of course he couldn't have told me what he'd done. There are things too awful to be told. Things too awful to believe you've done yourself, to live with. Lies you have to tell. Every word of
me
a lie, to start with.

He looked up. ‘You should get that off,' he said, nodding at my denim jacket which was black with wet. ‘Before you fucking die of cold.'

‘Trying to scare me with all this swearing?' I said.

He half smiled, his shoulders raising a fraction. He was wearing his new jacket and I bet he was dry inside because it was such a good jacket for this weather. ‘Will you … will you stay here?' he said.

‘Why? Where you going?'

‘My mum's.' He said it as if it was a normal and every-day thing for him to say. But I caught the tension in his cheek and knew the effort it was taking to keep his expression bland. I do know that feeling when your throat bulges and your mouth twists down. I looked away. Doughnut was flopped in his usual position on the floor, one ear turned inside out so you could see the pink silk lining.

‘Don't,' I said.

‘I can't fu … I can't leave it.'

‘Don't,' I said again, but I knew he would and that he had to and that it was the right thing for him to do.

‘I'm off,' he said, turning again.

‘I'm coming with you,' I said.

‘No.'

‘I am. You can't stop me.'

He shrugged and a drop of rain trickled from his hair into his beard.

We didn't take the dogs for once. The rain gurgled in the gutters and surged up with every passing car, sloshing the pavement, splashing our already soaking legs. We held hands. The rain made them slippy but we both clung on, our fingers intermeshed.

He speeded up the nearer we got and I know it was in case he lost his nerve. He didn't even pause at the gate but went right on up the path nearly dragging me. He let go of my hand and lifted his finger to the bell. ‘Sure?' I said. His eyes met mine and I jumped at his expression. His finger trembled as he pressed. We listened to the soft sugary ding-dong and then nothing. Not a stir from inside.

‘She's not fucking there,' he said.

Let's go then
, I wanted to say. But I knew she would be there. After the state she was in over lunch. She would be there.

‘Try again,' I said.

He pressed and made the bell go dingdongdingdongdingdong. The rain clung in his beard. His eyes, fixed on the door, were that strange sky grey. No shades today. We stood there frozen in the streaming rain. A bird sang, a sudden crazy streak of sound. Then we heard movement inside and the door opened and she was there.

Her face was blotchy red from weeping and her hair standing on end. She looked from Doggo to me and back again. A ripple passed across her face. Her mouth opened and then closed. She breathed in sharply and grabbed his hands in both of hers as if she would pull him back inside her and then dropped them as if they burnt. Her fingers flexed and fought with the urge to embrace or the urge to tear apart.

I looked at my feet and felt the moment stretch and ache until it was not bearable. I sneaked a look at her face and wished I hadn't. It was as if all the invisible secret things, the inside things, the things no one else should ever be allowed to see, had crept out and were crawling over her features. It was not fair to look.

‘I'll go,' I said. ‘Doggo …
Martin
…' My teeth were chattering so much I could hardly make the words. ‘See you later …' But no one was listening. Doggo looked nowhere but his mother's face.