I can remember Lee becoming hysterical, aged five, when Mum tried to put a stripy cardigan on him. ‘It’s messy!’ he screamed. ‘There are things on it! Take it off!’ Mum did, straight away. Everything that frightened Lee as a toddler was immediately removed by our parents: patterned clothes, bananas, books with scary pictures in them, the cuddly penguin in his bedroom that apparently shrieked at him at night while everyone else was asleep, the bicycle he fell off and couldn’t forgive.
Mum and Dad would have performed a similar life-improving service for me if they’d been able to, except in my case it was trickier. I didn’t mind what I wore or ate, and wasn’t scared of any of my toys or books. I wasn’t a fussy, high-maintenance child like Lee. Nothing made me unhappy apart from the other members of my family, and Mum and Dad could hardly remove themselves from my orbit. They didn’t realise they needed to; they thought I was the problem.
Perhaps they were right.
I sit down at the glass-topped table in Melissa’s kitchen, my least favourite room in her house. It looks as I imagine a morgue would look if morgues had yellow jars labelled ‘Tea’, ‘Coffee’ and ‘Sugar’ on their windowsills: white tiles on the floor and on the walls; stainless-steel appliances, sink and taps; chairs with thin metal legs that make me think of insects from science-fiction films and scrape horribly against the floor if you shift in your seat even slightly. There’s a clock on the wall that’s past its best; its tick sounds louder and more intrusive every time I visit, like the string of an instrument being plucked hard and then left to settle.
I always sit facing away from the clock so that I can see out of the window. Still I can’t escape the geriatric ticking, and always half expect Melissa to place an exam paper down on the table in front of me. I would fail, of course.
Being here makes me long for my own kitchen. For both my kitchens: the one in Enfys Road that I left behind, and the one in Bartholomew Gardens where Adam is now, preparing his and the children’s supper. I can see him clearly, even though I can’t see him at all. He’s taken off his jacket and shirt and put on a T-shirt, probably his Rolling Stones one. He’ll have the radio on, and he’ll keep muttering about how boring each station’s offering is and changing the channel at the same time as holding an uncooked meatball, which he’ll squash accidentally and blame on whichever pompous presenter or inane DJ has annoyed him most recently. This will lead to not-entirely-serious grumbling about the BBC having no right to be government-funded when it’s so blatantly sub-standard.
If I were with Adam now – and I long to be – I would bury my face in his dark wavy hair and he’d put his arms round me without thinking, still moaning about the radio, and I would know that I don’t need any other man in my life apart from him.
I don’t. Not after today’s shocks. I just want to feel safe, whether or not I deserve to.
You know exactly what you deserve. And you keep getting it, don’t you? From King Edward, from Gavin …
He is no less dead …
My breath catches in my throat. I freeze. What was it, the thought that flashed in my mind before disappearing? It was there, and felt huge, but it’s gone now. For a fraction of a second, I knew something … and then I didn’t. Something about Gavin and the words ‘He is no less dead’? Did I have the answer and lose it, or is my mind playing tricks on me?
There.
Gone.
Melissa fills the kettle. ‘Well?’ she says. ‘What’s this request you think I’m going to refuse?’
Her voice cuts through me like iced wire. For a split second, I see everything clearly. I think, It’s you. You’re the danger to my family, you and Lee. I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now if it weren’t for you two. A moment later, though the words linger as vividly in my mind as letters inscribed by burning sparklers on a black night, I have no idea what they meant to me when I was so sure they were the truth.
I make an effort to compose myself. ‘It’s about the Sunday we went to the auction,’ I say. ‘There’s a chance a detective from Spilling Police might get in touch with you and ask you if my car was missing a mirror that day. A wing mirror.’
Listening to my rehearsed introduction, I have a better idea than the one I arrived with. I was planning to ask Melissa to lie for me and tell the police that my mirror was missing when it wasn’t. Stupid. I ought to know from depressing experience that she cares more about her principles than about me. Why be kind when you can be right? – that’s her motto. Which means I must be more devious.
‘If you’re asked, can you please, please tell the police my car had both its mirrors when I drove you to and from the auction?’ I say. Now I’m begging: a little treat for Melissa’s ego. I hope she enjoys it, since it’s unlikely to happen again. ‘I know it was irresponsible of me to drive to London, then Grantham, then back to London with a missing wing mirror. It’s not something I make a habit of doing, and, honestly, I’ll never do it again if you’ll help me get the cops off my back just this once.’ I put on my best desperate-sinner-praying-for-mercy face. It’s probably indistinguishable from my normal everyday expression, come to think of it.
‘No. No.’ Melissa’s shaking her head as she pours milk into a mug for me. She looks scared, as if she thinks I might be able to force her to agree. ‘I’m not lying to the police for you, Nicki. No way. It might only be a minor driving offence, but—’
‘Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Have you heard about Damon Blundy?’ A name I haven’t mentioned in Melissa’s presence for a while …
She drops the teaspoon she’s holding. It lands with a bang on the white granite work surface. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s dead. He lived on Elmhirst Road in Spilling. Near me.’
‘Yes, I knew that.’
‘Really?’ This strikes me as unlikely, yet I can’t see why she’d lie about it.
‘Not the road name, but I knew he lived in Spilling. I read his column about how he had to leave London because there were too many ugly people in it. Of all the places he’d ever visited, the Culver Valley contained the most attractive women, so he was moving there.’ Melissa spins round to face me. ‘And that’s why you moved there, isn’t it?’ she asks with a tremor in her voice.
‘So that I could meet attractive women? No.’ I laugh to disguise my discomfort.
‘What’s Damon Blundy got to do with your wing mirror?’ Melissa asks as she puts my mug of tea down on the corner of the table furthest away from me. I have to stand to reach it.
‘He’s been murdered. Elmhirst Road, where he lived, is on my route to the kids’ school. It was full of police yesterday. They spotted my car, asked me how long I’d been driving without a side mirror. I told them it had only just been snapped off that morning.’ Who’d have guessed it was possible to come up with so many variations on the same lie? ‘I thought that’d be it, but they got all serious on me, wanting to know if anyone could back up my story, asking who’d been in my car and how recently—’
‘And you mentioned me? Thanks a lot.’
‘I didn’t want to mention anyone, but I panicked! I didn’t feel comfortable lying once I realised I’d brushed up against a murder investigation. Don’t …’ I raise a hand to stop Melissa from stating the obvious. ‘I knew I’d lied already, about the mirror. That’s why I didn’t want to make it worse. I wish I’d told them the truth from the start.’
‘Then why don’t you? You still could.’
‘Or I could stick to my story and you could back me up?’ I offer her what I hope is a winning smile with lowlights of appropriate humility. ‘If the police believe I genuinely lost my mirror only a few minutes before they saw my car on Elmhirst Road, I’m pretty sure they’ll let me off. I told them I was going to take the car to the garage as soon as I’d dropped off Ethan’s sports kit at school, and look.’ I pull the keys to my rental car out of my handbag and wave them in the air. ‘I hired a car to drive here, like a good responsible citizen.’
‘How can yo
u live like this, Nicki?’ Melissa squints at me, as if I’m forcing her to look at something gruesome she’d like to turn away from.
Me. I’m that thing.
Fuck you, best friend. I haven’t killed anyone. I haven’t even driven without a wing mirror – not recently, anyway. And nothing bad happened to any living thing – human, plant or animal – when I did. I’m not going to feel guilty about a so-called sin I committed that harmed no one.
‘Scheming all the time, covering up, calculating … How can you bear it?’
‘It’s called life on the planet earth,’ I snap. ‘For those of us who aren’t perfect, that is.’
I shouldn’t let her rile me. I ought to be savouring my success. Plan B worked. She hasn’t said, ‘But, Nicki, your wing mirror wasn’t missing when we went to the auction in Grantham. What are you talking about?’
What Melissa isn’t saying is ideal. Couldn’t be better. It’s what she is saying that’s hard to take.
‘I’m worried about you, Nicki. You’re going to come a cropper one of these days.’
‘You hope. You’ll have been painstakingly good all these years for nothing, won’t you, if I get away with the heinous crime of being me?’
She’s taken a mug from the cupboard to the left of the window and is shaking decaffeinated instant-coffee granules into it straight from the jar. ‘My answer’s no,’ she says quietly. ‘I’m not prepared to lie to the police for you. People can end up in prison for that kind of thing.’ She brings her mug of coffee over to the table and sits down opposite me. ‘And when I tell Lee about this conversation, he’ll probably ring the police.’ She sighs.
Nice of him.
‘You know how he feels about honesty.’
I nod. ‘So … you’re not going to tell him?’
‘I don’t know.’ Melissa’s mouth twists. ‘I’d rather not be put in the position of having to make these horrible choices!’
‘Again … life on the planet earth. Sorry.’ I don’t sound it, because I don’t feel it. ‘You don’t like the idea of Lee landing me in it, but you’re not prepared to lie for me if the police contact you? Interesting ethical distinction. Might there be some cowardice and hypocrisy involved?’
‘Nicki, stop.’ A tear rolls down Melissa’s cheek. The sight of it makes me stiffen. The last time I cried in front of her – three weeks and five days ago, after my first encounter with the sand-haired policeman – she told me that whatever I was upset about was bound to be my own fault, and declared herself unwilling to hear any of the details.
I’m equally incapable of comforting her now. I like to think I’m open-minded, but it’s hard to sympathise when I’m me, and having me as a friend is the cause of all her pain. Even I don’t think I’m that bad.
‘Are you trying to arrange it so that I won’t be able to speak to you at all, Nicki?’ Melissa blurts out. ‘Is that what you want? Maybe you’d like me to be so frightened of what you might say that I don’t open the door to you any more, or take your calls.’
‘Frightened? What’s the worst I’m going to do, Melissa? Oh, wait, I’m not going to –’ I mimic a prissy voice ‘– put you in a difficult position, am I? No, as it happens, I’m not. You put yourself in that difficult position when you decided to shack up with my brother!’
Even if I live to be a hundred, I doubt I’ll ever forget the way Melissa chose to tell me. I remember the date too: 24 May 2010. She rang me up and, without saying hello, asked, ‘How would you feel if Lee and I … you know, sort of got together?’
‘Lee? My brother Lee?’ He and Mel had recently met for the first time in many years at my birthday party a few months earlier. As far as I was aware, they hadn’t seen each other since that night. Realising that there must have been subsequent secret contact between them didn’t especially bother me; unlike my mother, father and brother, I don’t feel I have an automatic right to know everything about those close to me. I’m not against secrecy; it’s hypocrisy I can’t stand – people who preach honesty and straightforwardness, then keep you in the dark when it suits them.
People like Lee and Melissa.
‘Yes, your brother,’ Mel said nervously. ‘Sorry if this comes as a bit of a shock.’
I knew it must have taken all her courage to ask for my opinion and so her feelings for Lee must be serious. In normal circumstances, Mel would have preferred to disappear off the face of the earth, leaving no trace, than instigate something that might be contentious.
Don’t do it. Avoid him. He’s not normal. He’ll destroy you. These were the first things that flashed through my mind, but I didn’t say any of them. I decided I was being unnecessarily melodramatic, and I loved and love my brother, in spite of everything. I didn’t want to tell Mel the horror story I could have told her; it wouldn’t have been fair to Lee if I had. We all make mistakes, I thought. We all deserve a second chance. Lee was a child when all the bad stuff happened; he couldn’t be blamed, could he?
I realised Mel was waiting for my response. I could feel her growing anxiety pulsing out of my phone. ‘It’s not really up to me, is it?’ I said diplomatically. ‘I mean, if you and Lee want to start seeing each other, it’s none of my business. I’d be unreasonable if I tried to stop you.’
‘Yes, but I still want to know how you’d feel about it,’ Mel said. ‘I’d hate to do anything that’d upset you, or change things between us.’
‘I wouldn’t feel great about it,’ I admitted. ‘You’re my best friend. He’s my brother. If you and he get together and stay together, suddenly the loyalties start to shift. You know stuff about me that I don’t want him ever to find out.’
‘Nicki, I would never tell Lee anything you’ve told me in confidence,’ Mel said solemnly.
I felt better when I heard those words. I thought, Good. I’m covered. Little did I know that, six months later, Mel would summon me for an important chat and explain that, from now on, I wasn’t allowed to tell her anything that she couldn’t share with Lee. She would continue to keep any secrets of mine that had got in before the deadline, but this was the cut-off point: I was forbidden from confiding in her in future, unless it was something I didn’t mind Lee knowing about too.
‘The thing is, we kind of … are already seeing each other,’ she went on hurriedly, keen to get it over with now that she’d finally taken the plunge. ‘Lee’s asked me to move in with him and … I’ve said yes.’
‘Oh. Well … congratulations.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Mel asked.
I hadn’t said I didn’t mind. I had said, as tactfully as possible, that I did. Or I thought I had. I minded the manipulation: the fiction that they cared how I felt about it, and that their relationship was no more than a vague notion at this stage, awaiting my approval. I later found out that before she’d rung me, Melissa had confirmed her booking of the removal van that would transport her possessions to Lee’s flat the following Friday.
Do what you have to do, and indeed have already done, I should have said, and if I want to tell you how I feel about it, that’s up to me.
‘It’s fine,’ I reassured Mel instead. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy together.’ This is the thing about deception that some people forget: its practitioners don’t do it solely for their own sakes. Often they do it to make others happy. It’s embedded in the training programme we liars go through: we see that when we tell the truth, our instructors scowl, raise their voices, turn red in the face. Anyone who cares more about pleasing other people than about their own happiness – anyone who believes, deep down, that everyone else matters more than they do – learns fluent dishonesty at a young age.
I swallow the last of the tea in my mug. Something inside me cracks and gives way. I can’t keep up my brittle act any longer. ‘What’s happened to us, Mel?’ I say.
Her eyes widen at my use of the old nickname.
‘Does it really have to be this way?’ I will not cry. Will not. ‘Look, we can’t change the facts – I’m a repre
hensible slut, and you’re a self-righteous prig who imagines she has to tell her husband everything, even things about his sister that are none of his business – but can’t we accept each other’s shortcomings and get beyond them? I’m sorry for asking you to lie to the police. Don’t do it if you don’t want to.’
‘It is Lee’s business if his wife and his sister conspire to keep things from him,’ Melissa insists. ‘He’d hate it. You know he would.’
‘And he’d have no right to,’ I say flatly. Please see sense, Mel. Please tell me I can tell you anything and you’ll keep my secrets. You never minded before. You knew I lied – we used to laugh together about the scrapes I’d get myself into. I need so badly to tell you about Gavin.
His name is like an icy hand closing around my heart. I shudder.
‘What’s Lee told you about our childhood?’
Melissa looks uncomfortable. After half a minute or so of silence, she mutters, ‘I know about the … lunatic asylum.’
I force out a laugh, while my heart freezes over.
Did he tell her it turned out to be a hospice? That it was all my fault, that I brought it on myself? I’d ask, but I’m slick with sweat suddenly, and desperate to change the subject. Bardolph House: a name I’d like to forget but never will.
Tell her about Lee. Tell her the full story. They deserve it, both of them.
I can’t. If it would turn her against him, then I can’t do it. And if it wouldn’t turn her against him, I’d want to die even more than I do already.
I’ve gone over and over the dilemma in my mind and always arrive at the same conclusion: it wouldn’t be fair to tell her. She loves Lee, and so do I. To me, he will always be my sweet little brother, wailing about a stripy cardigan and a cuddly penguin. I still want to protect that small, fragile boy who doesn’t exist any more. I try not to let myself think about this; it makes me cry whenever I do.
The Telling Error Page 11