The Liar's Chair (20 page)

I look to the distant trees for the dog but nothing comes. It’s hard to see in the darkening weather, and I trample further into the field towards a small elevation of mud. As I get
closer, I see that the mound has hair and limbs. An animal is on its side, ribs forming miniature hills and valleys through the soaking fur. It’s the dog. Its mouth is open. Tongue like old
ham. Still. Dead.

I sit down next to the dog and hold Seamus’s watch in my pocket. There are no more steady ticks to filter time, and the minutes pass slowly, as they would have done for Seamus and his
friend before I took them both away. Wet earth soaks through my clothes to my skin, until I’m chilled fridge-blue.

Hills emerge from the clouds as the worst of the rain leaves the field as abruptly as it came. A bird swoops and hovers, helicoptering steadily in the air before diving down, but it’s too
far away to see if it caught its prey. How fast the mechanics of nature reveal themselves. If I lived here I would learn to judge what was coming, its beauty or its ferocity, but I don’t live
here. I inhabit David’s world.

The clouds drift to another field and in their place comes a quiet dusk. Shadows fall like tired old bones.

Two dead now, and both my fault.

Deliver me from evil.

Let the worst have me. Let me feel.

It’s nearly the end of the summer term and I’m doing my homework on the dining-room table when Uncle Peter calls round. Mum’s still at work. Peter asks if he
can sit with me for a while and have some water – it’s hot and he’s thirsty. He takes tiny sips from the glass, watching what I’m doing, and says he can help me; geography
was his favourite lesson at school, ‘not as long ago as you think, Rachel. God knows how I ended up working in the police force.’ His eyes follow my hand and my writing comes out
messier than usual. Peter pulls his chair close until the wood of our two seats squeaks together and our bodies almost touch. His breath smells of burnt sugar and tobacco. With his right arm curled
round my book on the table, he leans his left side towards me, and his other arm relaxes in the space between us. His hand is out of sight under the table in between our chairs and his fingers
brush my skirt.

The homework is glaciers and oxbow lakes. Peter’s forgotten his glasses so he moves closer to get a better look at the words, then he flicks through the textbook one-handed. Some of the
pages don’t turn first time and he has to give them another prod with his fingers. All the time his other hand is a still lump next to my leg. He asks about school and friends and what other
subjects I plan to choose for my O levels. Then the fingers of his secret hand spread out like a slow spider and climb up my skirt and on to my thigh, and at first I don’t think it’s
really happening. The hand slides over the top of my leg and down into the middle. I shake. Then I stand up. The book I’m holding drops to the floor.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I say.

He leans back in his chair and pulls his pipe from his pocket. His legs flop wide open. ‘Yes, that would be lovely, thank you, Rachel.’ He fills his pipe without looking at it,
keeping his eyes on me, smiling.

I go into the kitchen and boil the kettle. It’s quarter to five and Mum’s due home soon, so I decide to peel the potatoes for supper. In the afternoon heat, the mud from the
vegetables dries quickly on my hands and makes my skin all tight and cracky. The peelings go brown. Next I remember that the larder’s a mess so I decide to take out all the tins and bottles
and stack them on the table. Uncle Peter comes into the kitchen and leans in the doorway watching me, lighting his pipe with long whistling sucks. I crouch down, putting all my effort into getting
the last things out of the cupboard, and then I hear the clunk of his pipe as he leans it in the ashtray next to the sink. Peter’s legs crack like sticks as he bends his knees and settles
behind me, curling his body beetle-shell round my back. His thighs rest along the outside of my legs and his breath is on my neck. I put my ear to my shoulder to get rid of the tickle. One of his
hands is on the floor next to me, his fingers spread out to steady himself, and he brings the other hand up to my chest.

The back door rattles. Mum’s home. Peter stands up. I look sideways to see him grab his pipe and lean against the kitchen worktop. The hair that covers his bald patch hangs forward over
his eyes, but he doesn’t touch it, only smiles at Mum as she comes through the door. I turn my head to see her wide eyes flicking between the two of us.

‘Peter, darling,’ she says, ‘whatever are you doing here so early?’ She drops her bags on the table and fiddles with her hair, looking in the mirror by the back door.
‘I really wish you wouldn’t surprise me like this, I’m not remotely prepared.’

‘I’m on earlies this week,’ he says, ‘and my shift’s ended. Thought we could go for a drive or something.’ He stands in exactly the same position, legs
crossed out in front of him like a ski slope, back against the counter, and he sucks on his dry pipe. I don’t know why Mum hasn’t noticed it’s not lit. ‘Anyway,’ he
says, ‘Rachel here’s been taking care of me, haven’t you, sweetie?’ Finally he smoothes his hair back across his head with a steady hand.

All the food from the larder is out, stacked on the floor around me, and I sweep the dusty corners of the cupboard, glancing over my shoulder to see Mum checking her face in her compact and
dabbing her lipstick with a hanky. She stops mid-action and looks at me.

‘Whatever are you doing, Cinders? And change out of your school uniform before it gets dirty.’

In the larder I brush all the crumbs, cobwebs and hollow woodlice into the dustpan. It’s even hotter in the cupboard than in the kitchen. I turn to Mum and say, ‘I’m not
hungry. Is it OK if I go to my room and do my homework?’

‘Do what you like. As long as you clear that lot up first. I’m not putting everything back after my day at work. It was hellishly busy.’

‘Oh, my poor darling,’ Peter says as he slides over to Mum and puts his arms round her waist, pressing himself to her. ‘Did all those ladies queuing for their groceries give
you a hard time?’

Mum swipes him with her hanky and pretends to struggle away. ‘You terror. Just because I’m not arresting bank robbers and duffing them up in the cells.’

Peter draws her close and tries to plant a kiss. Mum shakes her head from side to side a couple of times, but she’s smiling, so Peter puts his hands on both her cheeks to hold her steady
then kisses her on the lips.

It’s silent for a bit, and so I re-stack the larder, clanging the tins on top of each other. Behind me I hear Mum and Peter moving into the sitting room and I turn to see their backs as
they go through the door. Mum holds his hand and leads the way. She walks sort of slinky like a little girl. Then I hear the
clunk clunk
of her shoes as she kicks them off. I imagine her
sitting in her favourite position in the lounge: legs stretched out on the footstool with the seam of her tights stretched over her toes, the material dark from the damp inside her shoes.
She’ll have an arm flung in a loose semicircle over the top of her head.

‘Bring some ice through, will you, sweetie?’ Peter calls.

‘And make sure you take your books upstairs with you,’ Mum adds. ‘They’re all over the dining-room floor, you messy little princess. The house is in such a state. It
looks like there’s been an intruder.’

I clear my schoolwork from the dining room and take it into the kitchen, where I finish stacking the cupboard. Mum and Peter are giggling. Then the noise stops. The back door’s still open
from earlier when Mum came home but inside the house the air doesn’t move, like I’m stuck in hot jelly. I look into the garden at the grass and flowers still lush. It hasn’t
rained for ages and the garden won’t stay looking so nice for much longer. Next to the sink, the potatoes and their skins have turned orange. I throw them all in the bin – if Mum
doesn’t see I’ve started then she’ll probably forget all about food tonight.

‘Ice,’ Mum calls from the sitting room.

I get the ice tray from the freezer. It’s metal and solid. My fingers stick to the aluminium container as I pull the lever to break the cubes apart. The handle is jammed with the cold and
the squeaky noise makes my teeth go funny. Daddy used to hate this ice tray, so he taught me how to use it. Mum and her friends call me ‘Big Chief mixer and chiller of drinks’. I run
the hot tap, holding the tray under the stream. The water scorches my skin but the metal warms and unglues my fingers. Too hot and too cold at the same time. I wonder if it would be worse to die in
a fire or from cold. I know you go into a kind of sleep when you’re freezing, but fire’s probably quicker, and if the smoke gets to you first, it would be painless. Ice cubes rattle
into the sink.

As I walk into the lounge, Mum slides off Peter’s lap and sits back in her place on the sofa. Her hair is messy and she prods at it with her hands, but it doesn’t make any
difference. After I leave the room, she shuts the door behind me.

Girls at school say Peter’s good-looking, and they ask if I fancy him, but I don’t know, I’ve never had a boyfriend. Most of the girls in my class are going
out with someone. Melanie Blacksmith’s boyfriend is seventeen. He left school last year. He waits for her outside the school gates in his white van. I saw the back doors open once as she
climbed in, and there was a mattress and a dirty duvet on the floor. She smiled at me as she shut the doors, then he sped off and did a handbrake turn at the junction. I thought about her rolling
around in the back of the van next to his tools, and how cross she’d be, but when I saw her again she boasted that they’d smoked pot and had sex.

Sometimes her boyfriend’s older brother waits with him at the gates. His name is Mike and he’s nearly twenty. He has a motorbike, and keeps asking if I want a ride. I tell him I
prefer to walk. Last time I refused he took someone else. She came to school the next day with love bites on her neck, but they looked all blotchy as the cover-up she’d used was the wrong
shade.

Dad’s old study is my bedroom now. I used to sleep next to Mum’s room, but since I moved, if I hear her and Peter at night it’s through several walls. Mostly though I stay
under the covers and lean into the side of Nanna’s old desk, the one that used to be in the hallway. It’s like a piece of Dad has stayed in the house, which is just as well as
he’s getting married again and his fiancée is already pregnant. In his last letter Dad said that money will be tight from now on, and I should ask Mum if I need new clothes.
There’s about enough room in here for my bed and the old desk. ‘Perfect,’ Mum said when we got everything in, ‘this room was made for you.’

In one of the desk drawers are Dad’s old fountain pens. I like to leave them in their places on top of the leaky ink circles so it looks like he’s recently put them there, even
though they roll out of place when I shut the drawer. There’s a writing pad too. The top sheet is heavily lined, and I slide it under the cartridge paper to keep my writing in straight lines.
Apart from Dad, I write letters to my guardian angel. I ask for new school shoes with a wedge, hair that doesn’t frizz in the rain, more time with Mum on her own and a change from eggs on
toast for tea. Sometimes I ask my angel to come and visit me, even if it’s only in my sleep. When I hold a page up to the light, the sun shines through the watermark.

Dad’s left some of his clothes too, and Mum wanted to throw them away. I said I’d look after them in case he ever wants them back. I’ve put them in the airing cupboard
that’s in the corner of my room to keep them safe and dry. Mum never looks in there. There’s a little chair in the cupboard that I use to reach the top shelf. Sometimes I like to sit on
it and shut the door, and when everything is quiet I can pretend that the world has disappeared.

I wander the field, sit in the caravan and allow the damp to move into my bones. By the time I get back to the car park, night has set. A sickly mist haloes the bulb of the
tall street light, and underneath is the same huddle of cars as before. I bang my hands together, blowing into the hollow between my palms, and glance at the warmth and safety of my car waiting to
take me home, to another kind of hell. I pause and check my phone for a signal to see if David has called by holding it high in the air, but this is a dead spot. On the other side of the car park,
bodies are close together, then faces turn to me and one separates.

A man walks towards my car. From his solid pace and the way his skull sits heavy and low on his neck, I can tell it’s the same man from two weeks ago, the one who opened the door as I sat
in my car. Closer, and what’s left of the light illuminates a dusk of features: his eyes, nose and mouth are all too small inside the frame of his big head, as if he’s been crafted from
bad stock. He looks directly at me and I set my eyes with his. Neither of us smiles and there are no words of welcome or reassurance, no room for pleasantries in what will be this most intimate of
exchanges.

We face each other for several long seconds in a duel of anticipation. The man is a good head taller than me and I arch my neck to meet his face, as I imagine I will do later when we are skin to
skin, if it’s him and not someone else. God, let it be someone else.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he says, and turns swiftly, ‘make up your bloody mind.’ He stomps back towards the group of cars, his breath in frantic clouds like a
racehorse on its starters, until he disappears into the black void between the two ends of the car park.

‘Wait,’ I say, and go after him, meeting him in the darkness.

‘Well, c’mon then,’ he says. He stands tall and holds a straight headmasterly arm in the direction of the cars. I expect him to say, ‘Don’t worry, we’re all
nervous the first time,’ but instead he says, ‘Bloody hell, you look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’ I walk past. He follows a couple of beats behind,
and I quicken my step to keep the same speed so we don’t have to walk together.