by C. J. Skuse
‘Maybe?’
‘Maybe? She spent forty-five minutes doing this.’
‘Yeah, I know, but you look gorgeous with or without make-up to me.’
‘Oh, you liar.’
‘I’m not lying!’ he laughs. ‘I fell in love with you when you had badly dyed black hair and mud all up your leggings and you walked into the RSPCA crying with that broken duck in your arms.’
‘Aww, yeah, you did. Did you get the book for Paddy?’
‘Yeah, and I got Isaac a really nice scarf. Armani.’ He checks his watch. ‘I’m getting a bit worried about time. When’s the latest we have to be back at St Pancras?’
‘Half three.’
‘I think we should get cracking, babe. What floor are the luggage lockers on?’
A man called Horace meets us at Gare du Nord with a sign saying Kemp-Lowland on an A4 placard which makes us giggle, even though we haven’t talked about marriage yet. Horace doesn’t speak much English but my time in France talking to delivery guys and builders means I know more than the average expat, and I manage to make conversation in his air conditioned Mercedes throughout the three hour journey. I tell him all about our two weeks spent with Sean’s parents in Surbiton. Our visit to Dad’s grave in Scarborough. I don’t think he understands but he nods politely like he does.
He offers us the odd mint from a small green tin and in between falling asleep and playing I-Spy, and talking about what Christmas presents we bought in London, me and Sean cuddle up and stare out the window at the beautiful French countryside streaming past as the sky darkens and the clouds disappear within it. Eventually Horace puts the radio on – French news. I pick out the odd phrase. A school bus accident in the Loire Valley. The presidential visit to Malta. Football results.
‘Nous y sommes presque,’ he eventually announces.
‘Uh, pardon?’ says Sean.
‘Uh, we are… arriving in the soon?’
‘Oh right, merci.’
The Mercedes swings right down the country lane, barely wide enough for a small car, let alone us. ‘C’est trop difficile.’
‘Oui,’ I laugh, even though it’s not remotely funny. And it’s then that I see the shape in the distance.
‘Where’s the house then?’ asks Sean.
‘It’s not a house,’ I tell him. ‘It’s a chateau. Château Eleanora.’
Horace is concentrating hard on the road ahead, what little there is of it. And all of a sudden he stops outside a pair of tall black gates with a sign outside them, hanging from a little fence post. Château Eleanora, entrée.
‘I’m sorry, this road c’est… trop étroit. You have to… with the feet?’ He makes the gesture of fingers walking along his forearm.
‘That’s where she lives?’ Sean cries. ‘That massive place over there?’ He points out the two peaks, just visible behind the hedge and lit by floodlights.
‘Yeah. I told you it was big.’
‘I take your bags for you,’ says Horace.
‘No, no it’s fine. We can do it,’ I tell him.
‘Non, madame, je devrais t’aider.’
‘We will be fine. Merci beaucoup Monsieur.’ I get a €20 note out of my purse and hand it to him. ‘It was a… great journey, Horace. Un voyage magique!’
This makes him laugh. ‘Okay Madame. Au revoir Monsieur.’
‘Au revoir,’ says Sean as we stand on the grass verge with all our bags around us and watch as the car backs up along the road in the direction we have come.
‘They’ve applied for planning permission to widen this part of the road,’ I explain to him. ‘Isaac’s working on it with the French notary but it’s proving to be a bit of a pain in the old derriére. Come on.’
Sean’s staring through the gates with his mouth open. ‘Wow.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s the most incredible place I’ve ever seen.’ And then he laughs. ‘It’s like the Magic Kingdom.’
‘I know! What’s so funny?’
‘I used to imagine playing in a castle like this when I was a kid. Me and my brother used to imagine being knights and riding little hobby horses around it. But in reality it was a large cardboard box.’
‘Well this ain’t no cardboard box,’ I say, pressing the button on the gates. ‘This is very real. Wanna come in?’ He nods enthusiastically, like a little boy.
There’s a click on the intercom. Paddy’s voice. ‘Yo.’
‘Hey, Pads, it’s me. We’re here.’
The gates buzz open slowly to welcome us.
Watching his reaction, I knew that nothing could have prepared Sean for the sight beyond that first set of trees. I love looking at his face as it dawns on him. I see it all over again through his eyes as we round the bend with all our bags and the chateau appears to us at the end of the long grey gravel track. It’s straight out of a fairy tale. Bordered by spindly trees and endless areas of short lawns. All around the main steps of the chateau are tiny lights, square-bottomed glass tumblers with stubby candles in them, embracing the castle in a fairy ring of natural light. No other words are needed. They would only have been clichéd exclamations of pure surprise anyway and the occasion doesn’t need it. The lights in the tumblers are dancing for us just as adequately.
‘I can’t walk fast enough with these bags,’ he laughs.
I stop walking, drop all the bags to the side of the drive and take his hand.
‘Let’s run then.’
He drops his bags too and grips my hand tighter and we run the rest of the way towards the building, lit by a distant crescent moon and the light of a thousand Christmas lights in the trees lining the route. We have to get closer to it, to touch it, to stand beneath it and feel as small as we are. As small as we have always been.
The double doors open at the top of the steps and everyone’s there, backed by a yellow glow from within. Paddy wheels his chair down the ramp with his little girl Estelle on his lap, as her sister Helene follows close behind. The girls are already in their pyjamas. Everyone else comes down the steps – Isaac and his husband Joe, both in their Christmas knits, Joe holding their sleepy son Jonah in his Rudolph onesie, and Paddy’s wife Lysette has tears in her eyes because she always has tears in her eyes at anything in the least bit sentimental. She’s a Disney fan, like me, but it’s not so bad watching the endings now – she cries more than I do. Arthur, Sean’s dog, bolts out of the door and gallops up to Sean, jumping up into his arms. The Duchess sits in the Grand Salon window licking her paws, backlit by the Christmas tree lights.
The boys all greet Sean with a hand-grasp which turns into a hug, and Foy greets me as usual with a hug so vital and true, it’s like medicine.
‘You got even fatter since I left,’ I laugh.
She yanks my plait. ‘Oi, don’t you start, I get enough of that with this lot.’ She strokes her bump and hugs me again. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t get into the Christmas spirit without you here, but now you are, it can begin. Hey, Sean, how are you?’ And she envelops him in a hug as true as mine.
‘I’m good thank you.’ He’s still a bit awestruck I think. ‘It’s like the Magic Kingdom!’
‘Can you do our hair, Auntie Ellis?’ Estelle asks me.
‘Of course, go and grab our bags along the drive. Don’t peep inside, will you?’
‘Race you?’ says her sister and she and Helene both sprint off into the darkness.
Scants appears behind everyone else, smiling broadly, which looks odd on him, but not exactly out of place. He’s holding a glass of what looks like red wine.
‘It’s hot Ribena, don’t worry,’ he says, holding it out for me to sniff. And he folds me in a hug as well, kissing me on the forehead. ‘How was your journey?’
‘Great, thanks. Dad’s got his headstone now. And Sean helped me plant some roses around it.’ I show him the picture we took of it on my phone.
‘Looks great.’ He hugs me again. ‘And so do you two. You look happy. I’m very p
roud of you, you know.’
‘Yeah I’m proud of me too,’ I say. ‘It was a nice visit but it’s good to be home.’
Maybe this is all too good to be true; that’s what I keep thinking as I’m opening my presents that Christmas morning.
Maybe, I think, as I watch Scants smiling with his hand on Foy’s belly, as she puts on her paper hat at the dinner table, I will wake up one day and all of them will have gone and I’ll be rattling around in this place on my own.
Maybe, I think, as I sit with Sean and with his parents playing board games with the little ones and plaiting the girls’ hair before the afternoon film, it’s all just a gorgeous dream.
Maybe the smells of Christmas puddings and logs burning on an open fire are wafting over to me from a nearby cottage in Carew and I’m still in the old treehouse, freezing to death as the snowflakes float down on me and Foy is dragging my body across the snow, screaming my name.
My name.
Maybe the images in my head are all false ones, flickering candles in a dying light. Visions in a Christmas bauble. Shadows in the snow.
Maybe I’m already dead and this is my Heaven. I don’t know anymore, what’s real and what’s not. What are lies and what are truths. And I don’t care. Because if this is my death, I can certainly live with it.
Author’s note
It was my big sister, Penny Skuse, who first planted the seed of this idea in my brain. Penny came up with the concept of The Alibi Clock when she was at film school. In her graduate film of the same name, a woman is having her hair washed in a salon. She chats with the hairdresser and gradually reveals details about herself, her husband, children and the blissful security of her marriage. The next time we see her, she’s in a different salon, wearing different clothes, spinning a different yarn. This time she talks about her life as a businesswoman, her independence and her ambivalence toward children. Another time, in another salon, she has yet another appearance and persona. Finally, we see her back at her sparsely furnished, dingy bedsit, sitting in the centre of the room in the only threadbare chair, staring into space. It has all been a pack of lies.
This was all there was of the story – a woman who lies about who she is and lives a very lonely life at odds with all her tales. We never find out her true identity. The title struck me as being something I could work with because the concept was so strong – a clock which tells one time, chimes another with neither one being the truthful time. I thought ‘Who could this woman be? What is the truth and why is she running from it? What’s happened to her to bring her to a life of compulsively telling lies? If there’s such a thing as an Alibi Clock, then who is the Alibi Girl?’
And so a pendulum began to swing in my mind. And it is here where it finally stops.
C J Skuse, March 2019
Acknowledgements
This book was a pain in the arse to write, frankly, but it wouldn’t exist at all without the help and inspiration of the following people:
My sister, Penny Skuse – thanks for letting me steal your concept and run off with it. And for being ‘Mother Pen’ and taking us on day trips. And for always being the voice in my head that says ‘You’re being a twat’ whenever I’m being a twat. Which is a lot.
My auntie, Maggie Snead, for all the ‘grist’ for my mill – and no, Auntie Chelle isn’t you, don’t worry.
My cousin Emily Metcalf – thanks for putting me up in your mansion while mine was being decorated. And all the spins around the car park on our Lamborghinis. And the trips to the skittle alley supermarket for Jurassic Chum.
My cousin Matthew Snead – thanks for annoying us as kids. And introducing us to Moonlighting so we could be pretend detectives. And for the assault courses. And for letting us play with your Star Wars toys.
My agent Jenny Savill for your continued belief in me. You must be utterly insane.
My editor Clio Cornish for believing in this story and helping me to unpick it from that cowpat of a first draft.
Everyone at HQ/HarperCollins who works so hard for all my books all year round.
All the people who’ve taken the time to respond to my annoying little queries along the way, namely Kate Kaufman at the College of Policing, Lisa Cutts, Kate Bendelow, Neil Dickerson and Cassie Powney.
Did you enjoy The Alibi Girl? Keep reading for an extract from Sweetpea, another dark, twisty and shockingly funny thriller from C J Skuse – out now!
Sunday, 31 December
Mrs Whittaker – neighbour, elderly, kleptomaniac
‘Dillon’ on the checkout in Lidl – acne, wallet chain, who bangs my apples and is NEVER happy to help
The suited man in the blue Qashqai who roars out of Sowerberry Road every morning – grey suit, aviator shades, Donald Trump tan
Everyone I work with at the Gazette apart from Jeff
Craig
Well, my New Year has certainly gone off with a bang, I don’t know about yours. I was in a foul mood to begin with, partly due to the usual Christmas-Is-Over-Shit-It’s-Almost-Back-To-Work-Soon malaise and partly due to the discovery of a text on Craig’s phone while he was in the shower that morning. The text said:
Hope you’re thinking of me when ur soaping your cock – L.
Kiss. Kiss. Smiley face tongue emoji.
Oh, I thought. It’s a fact then. He really is shagging her.
L. was Lana Rowntree – a kittenish 24-year-old sales rep in my office who wore tight skirts and chunky platforms and swished her hair like she was in a 24-hour L’Oréal advert. He’d met her at my works Christmas piss-up on 19 December – twelve days ago. The text confirmed the suspicions I’d had when I’d seen them together at the buffet: chatting, laughing, her fingering the serviette stack, him spooning out stuffing balls onto their plates, a hair swish here, a stubble scratch there. She was looking at him all night and he was just bathing in it.
Then came the increase in ‘little jobs’ he had to do in town: a paint job here, a hardwood floor there, a partition wall that ‘proved trickier’ than he’d estimated. Who has any of that done the week before Christmas? Then there were the out-of-character extended trips to the bathroom and two Christmas shopping trips (without me) that were just so damn productive he spent all afternoon maxing out his credit card. I’ve seen his statement – all my presents were purchased online.
So I’d been stewing about that all day and the last thing I needed that New Year’s night was enforced fun with a bunch of gussied-up pissheads. Unfortunately, that’s what I got.
My ‘friends’ or, more accurately, the‘PICSOs’ – People I Can’t Shake Off – had arranged to meet at the Cote de Sirène restaurant on the harbour-side, dressed in Next Sale finery. Our New Year’s meal-slash-club-crawl had been planned for months – initially to include husbands and partners, but, one by one, they had all mysteriously dropped out as it became a New Year’s meal-slash-baby-shower-slash-club crawl for Anni. Despite its snooty atmosphere, the restaurant is in the centre of town, so there’s always yellow streaks up the outside walls and a sick puddle on the doormat come Sunday morning. The theme inside is black and silver with an added soupçon of French – strings of garlic, frescos of Parisian walkways and waiters who glare at you like you’ve murdered their mothers.
The problem is, I need them. I need friends. I don’t want them; it’s not like they’re the Wilson to my skinny, toothless, homeward-bound Tom Hanks. But to keep up my façade of normality, they’re just necessary. To function properly in society, you have to have people around you. It’s annoying, like periods, but there is a point to it. Without friends, people start labelling you a ‘Loner’. They check your Internet history or start smelling bomb-making chemicals in your garage.
But the PICSOs and I have little in common, this is true. I’m an editorial assistant at a local snooze paper, Imelda’s an estate agent, Anaïs is a nurse (currently on maternity leave), Lucille works in a bank, her sister Cleo is a university-PE-teacher-cum-personal-trainer and Pidge is a secondary-school teacher. We don�
�t even have the same interests. Well, me and Anni will message each other about the most recent episode of Peaky Blinders but I’d hardly call us bezzies.
And it may look like I’m the quiet cuckoo in a nest of rowdy crows but I do perform some function within the group. Originally, when I first met them all in Sixth Form, I was a bit of a commodity. I’d been a bit famous as a child so I’d done the whole celebrity thing: met Richard and Judy; Jeremy Kyle gave me a Wendy house; been interviewed on one of those Countdown to Murder programmes. Nowadays, I’m just the Thoughtful Friend or the Designated Driver. Lately, I’m Chief Listener – I know all their secrets. People will tell you anything if you listen to them for long enough and pretend you’re interested.
Anni, our resident Preggo, is due to drop sometime in March. The Witches Four – Lucille, Cleo, Imelda and Pidge – had spared no expense on the nappy cake, cards, streamers, balloons and booties to decorate the table. I’d brought a fruit basket, filled with exotic fruits like lychees and mangoes, starfruit and ambarella, as a nod to Anni’s Mauritian heritage. It had gone down like a whore on a Home Secretary. At least I wasn’t driving, so I could quaff as much Prosecco as my liver could cope with and snuggle my brain into believing I was having a good time while they were all clucking on about the usual.
The PICSOs themselves like talking about five things above all others:
Their partners (usually to slag them off)
Their kids (conversations I can’t really join in with ’cos I don’t have any, so, unless, it’s cooing over school Nativity photos or laughing at Vines of them wiping poo up the walls, my contribution just isn’t called for)
IKEA (usually because they’ve just been or are just going)
Dieting – what works/what doesn’t, what’s filling/what isn’t, how many pounds they’ve lost/put on
Imelda’s wedding – she only announced it in September but I can’t actually remember a time when it wasn’t on our conversation rota