The Liar's Chair (3 page)

I stand with my head bowed, looking at the muddy toeprints smudged on the tiles.

‘Rachel,’ he comes close and whispers in my ear. ‘If I find out you were with someone else last night, I won’t stand for it.’ His lips touch my skin, so gently
it’s a tickle.

He leaves the room and the dog trots after him with her collar tinkling, already having chosen whose side she’s on. As David passes the door, he pulls it gently and it winds shut in slow
inches, closing finally when his footsteps have passed out of earshot. Facing me on the back of the door is my filthy coat; a tiny bomb of disorder against the smooth white wood. I fish inside the
pocket for the watch from the roadside, and find it warm and damp. I hold it to my ear. It’s still ticking. On the metal back is a smudge of blood which must have come from my hands after
touching the man. The liquid has settled and dried into the letters of an inscription, ‘
TO MY PA
’. I hear David’s footsteps coming back and I scan the room
for a hiding place, levering up the top of the false shelf which hides the toilet cistern. There is a gap down the side of the tank, and I tuck the watch in there before quietly lowering the shelf
and standing back in the middle of the room. I shiver under the towel as a draught of outside air curls up my legs.

In the bedroom I dress into nightclothes and take a sleeping pill. It’s afternoon when I lie down, the autumn dusk coming in, and my thoughts scatter and jerk through
different scenarios: what if I’d been driving more slowly, what if I hadn’t been drunk, what if I’d come home last night instead of staying at Will’s? My mind won’t
settle, continually taking me back over the same questions, as if by repetition the impossible will resolve. All I can do is wait to be pulled into the familiar world of medication, and as the
effects of the tablet trickle into my system I have half-waking dreams of a road rolling in front of me and a man leaping at the car. I swerve to miss him but no matter how hard I turn the wheel he
keeps being sucked towards the bonnet. Cold panic bolts through me as I watch his body contort into a scrum of bones, and his hands leave inky streaks on the metalwork. The car absorbs him. Over
and again these images circle my brain before finally the dream falls away and is replaced by a welcome void.

Six hours later I wake, and the walls of my bedroom have dulled in the evening dark. My back aches as I sit up in the bed, and my scratched arms scuff on the sheets. I take a
few seconds to adjust before the vision of the man’s face hits me afresh. With a punch of dread I realize that nothing has changed and a man is still dead.

A distant smell of smoke hangs in the room, and with it comes a flash of memory from when I was a little girl at home in my bedroom. Cigarette smoke crept up the stairs from the lounge. Mum and
Dad had guests and for some reason I was scared to leave my room and use the toilet. Tonight, though, the smoke is from a bonfire. I put on my dressing gown and, using a chair as support, haul
myself out of bed. On woozy legs I cross the room to the unshuttered window. The floor beneath my feet feels fluid as I’m caught in a sticky netherworld between sleep and reality – a
third dimension where the edges of my consciousness glow and bob. It’s dark but I keep the light off. The stark glare would be too much reality to bear.

On the driveway the roller door of our garage is half-way up and inside the light is on. My car has been driven in, and the bottom edge of the bonnet is visible, dented into a steel drum of
fractured colour. A man walks round the car and crouches to examine the damage. My stomach lurches at the sight of him – a stranger already involved in my secret. Then I see David walking
across the driveway. His face is lit a soft amber by the light from the garage, and he calls something to the other man I can’t hear. The man stands and ducks under the metal door, bumping
his head in the process before crossing the driveway towards David. He rubs his crown with a chuckle. David laughs back and looks relaxed, bordering on joyful, in a way I’m not used to
seeing, and my legs start to shake. I run for the toilet, banging into the door frame in the process. As I pee I wrap myself tight in my dressing gown to stop the shiver.

When I come out of the en suite I look again from the window and see the two men closer together, still talking, their stance casual, as if they are friends or brothers tinkering with a car on a
Saturday afternoon. David doesn’t have a brother any more. The one time I insisted on meeting his parents, we went to their house for lunch. The walls and mantelpiece were covered in photos
of David’s older brother, who died when David was a toddler. Any remaining surface was taken up by china cats, dusted to a shine. His mum spent most of that lunchtime crying in the kitchen,
and his dad glowered at the table as he alternated into his mouth forkfuls of roast dinner, sips of tea and drags on cigarettes that were chain-lit from an overflowing ashtray. Halfway through the
meal David stood up and left, his chair falling flat on the floor behind him. I waited for him to come back but he didn’t. Watching David tonight, he has more ease with this stranger –
brokered through their task of covering up a murder – than he ever gained from a childhood of being the wrong boy.

I turn from the window to light a cigarette and realize that my face is wet with tears. My fingers shake so much it’s difficult to line up the match with the end of the cigarette. I
haven’t smoked in the house before, but now is not the time for domestic niceties. I take a drag and imagine I hear the crackle of the burning tobacco as if I were in a film. I take another
drag and the noise gets louder. Ash drops on to the thick-pile carpet and I stare at the mess, willing myself to do something about it, but the message won’t send to my muscles. Instead my
hand moves towards my mouth, feeding in more nicotine. This same hand lifted glass after glass of whisky to my mouth last night, touched Will’s face and pulled him to me. Only hours ago it
steered a car round a sharp bend in the road and dragged a dead man into the woods. Deep in the undergrowth where he now lies, his body will be stiff, his skin and muscles breaking down. I wonder
how long it will take until all that’s left is bones.

Looking outside again, David has disappeared. I scramble through the upstairs rooms checking from each of the windows until I catch sight of him walking from the pool of the security light near
our back door towards a small metal incinerator which sits on paving stones near the trees. He pokes a stick through the grille. Sparks whirl up and around him as his face glows from the flames.
There’s a pile at his side, and from it he picks up a piece of fabric, possibly a towel, and lumps it on to the flames. The material extinguishes the fire for a few seconds, but soon the
embers sparkle through until again the flames take hold and tower above his head. He bends down and picks up another item, probably the bathrobe I wore earlier. Next, my shoes and my cashmere
sweater. Then small containers, possibly shampoo bottles. I think of the plastic oozing through the gaps of the incinerator and spotting the charred ground underneath. Tomorrow the birds will peck
at the hardened globs and take the poison to feed their chicks.

Barking carries from the distant undergrowth that rings our garden. It’s too dark to see the dogs but they’ll be excited by this unusual nocturnal activity, bounding in and out of
the acres of shrubs and trees that camouflage our six-foot fence and buffer this sizeable estate from the outside world.

An image of the dead man’s face crashing against the windscreen springs up at me again. From the epicentre of his skull, the glass fractures into a cobweb. I hold my hand over my mouth. My
skin still smells of damp earth even though my hands have been scrubbed clean. I squeeze my eyes shut and see the briefcase fluttering into the undergrowth, then with a start I remember the watch
hidden in the bathroom.

I tiptoe downstairs, back into the fallout of my earlier entrance: across the hallway my muddy footprints lead the way to the bathroom where inside they turn into a scuffle. The sink is still
rimmed with scum, and the shower and bin are dotted with muddy handprints. Tears burst through and I bite my lip to hold in the sobs. From behind the toilet cistern I retrieve the watch. Above the
hammer of my heartbeat I listen out for footsteps.

Back in bed, I check the watch is still ticking. The time reads 9.20: only half an hour slow. Twelve hours ago I was at Will’s house. I wish I’d been brave enough to do as I so
desperately wanted and stayed with him for the day, then none of this would have happened. My head buzzes with exhaustion and I’m terrified I may fall asleep with the watch still in my hand,
so I stash it in the divan drawer under my mattress, then take another sleeping pill just to be sure. The remaining foil-wrapped capsules are on my bedside table. If I took them all at once there
would be enough for me to sleep for good.

I don’t know when David comes to bed but I have a vague recollection we have sex, though it could have been a dream. The rest of the night is swallowed by an oblivion of
medication, and when I wake the next day, it seems like only minutes have passed.

Rain falls steadily outside, and even though it’s a new day, the stale fumes of yesterday’s events hang inside me. I put on my gown and slippers and go downstairs, still groggy and
partly sedated, to find that David is out. There are no barks so he’s probably taken the dogs for a walk. The hallway has been cleaned and the downstairs bathroom is pristine. A new bar of
soap is in the shower along with fresh shampoo bottles, and the hand towel and bin liner have been replaced. There’s not a fingerprint of mud on any surface. My errors have been erased.

David must have been in here last night scrubbing the corners with a toothbrush, his OCD cleanliness kicking in as I’ve seen happen before at times of stress, though haven’t
witnessed for years. When we were first starting up in business, before the success of Teller Productions, this micro-sorting and deep cleaning was his route towards control and order, and was
undertaken in private, like binge eating.

He was more prone to failure at the beginning, his businesses experimental, but he was smart enough to use his mistakes as lessons to springboard the next enterprise. Even though money was
intermittent, sometimes only topping up our student grants, when the cash did flow it was a warm blanket for us both. He itemized in a notebook all of our income and expenditure down to the penny,
as if by printing the numbers on the page he had more control over their flow. To him the profits were a barometer of success and the more he made the less his need for clinical order. These
flushes were used to pamper me through my final years of study. I was dressed and groomed in ways I’d never known before, and from then on there was no reason to go back to the person I had
been, scratching around in my bedsit with the thermostat on low, and a trail of one-night stands who substituted for real affection. Instead I shone at David’s side; he was my guardian angel
and I was his creation. He revelled in my achievements, encouraging me to work harder, to get the best degree of my year group. It was only with me that he wasn’t competitive, as if by
choosing me he had melded our intellects together, and could claim my better grades as his own. Looking back, I realize that David spotted things in me that I knew nothing of at the time: that I
was separate, and malleable, and desperate for anything better.

I check outside the front door. The roller shutter on the garage is now fully open and my car is gone. Next to the front door is my briefcase with laptop inside. I take the bag through to the
kitchen and make some coffee in an attempt to clear the fog from my head. The warm liquid does little to take the chill from the house. I stand and sit, then move across the room, but nowhere feels
right or safe in the silence, and I’m terrified to go back upstairs. Each time I blink, the dead man’s face jolts behind my eyelids.

The back door scratches open and the dogs burst through into the boot room with David behind them. In the dividing door between the kitchen and this other room is a glass panel, and I watch as
David takes off his coat and boots. His hair is wet. I’m not sure where to look, but before I decide he catches my eye and smiles. He comes through, puts his arms round me and presses me
against the kitchen worktop with his whole body, kissing me in a way he’s not kissed me in years.

‘It’s just you and me, baby,’ he whispers in my ear, his cheek damp against my face. ‘I’m going to make everything right.’

A small tear of relief trickles down my cheek. I lift up my arms and return David’s hug. His body is warm, and I think of the limp limbs I dragged into the woods yesterday. My hands jump
away.

He kisses me again. ‘You’re all mine,’ he says.

I haven’t heard these words for years, this mantra from when we were first together, and a spark of pleasure surprises me as it twists in my gut. For a brief moment I miss how we used to
be, back when David’s passion was needy and he wanted only me for company, ignoring phone calls and ordering takeaways so that we never had to leave the bedroom. I wonder if I can fast-track
back to the person I was then and become the chosen one again, relinquishing control and letting David’s rules set order to the days. When we met, no one else could even look at me without
chancing the wrath of his glare. He gave me boundaries and curfews, rules for my friendships even though most friends were long ago dismissed, and the feminist in me bowed to the little girl who
wanted to be loved. Over time, after the newness between us waned, instead of resisting I translated the rigidity into love; I had been smothered but at least someone cared enough to keep me in
line. It was the same up until two years ago when I met Will and we began our affair. From that point on, the meticulously crafted machine of my life began to disassemble.

‘Nothing can touch us, baby,’ David says.

‘I—’ I try to say, but David’s mouth is on mine again, his hot tongue reaching inside, and there is no room for my words. His eyes are shut but I keep mine open. Just
outside my vision stands the man from the road. With icy fingers, he reaches through my skin, holds tight and rocks my bones from the inside.