She didn’t know how long she stayed. She looked at the machine he was attached to, which had a number of readings displayed on it, a heart rate and other things. At one point he sighed, and a bubble appeared at his lips. At last she got up.
‘They thought I might have done it,’ she said, all in a rush, but he showed no sign of hearing her. ‘Did you think of that?’ His hand fluttered in his lap, wasted but still recognisable, the scar on his broad thumb where an adze had slipped. ‘I could have stopped you.’ Something was in her throat, threatening to choke her.
She looked into his face, and behind the slack mouth, the dull eyes and the raw skin, the hair that had been cut as he never cut it, in there somewhere was her father. Water leaked from his left eye, the side he’d lain on, the eye that had rested sightless on the bloody hall carpet. Damage.
As she turned to go she saw a closed-circuit camera above the door, a red light blinking. So they hadn’t trusted her.
Chapter Six
She had her hair cut very short over lunchtime, the week before they would leave for the wedding. She walked back, crossing the square in the clean June sunshine that filtered through the big London plane trees, and a man looked up from a bench when she passed: without hair to shield her she felt conspicuous. She had put her mother’s scarf in her bag that morning, to give her the nerve for the haircut; she took it out now and leaning to look at her reflection in a car window she tied it quickly, knotting the heavy, slippery silk twill at the nape of her neck. A spy, a girl from an old movie. But as she came out of the lift at work she pulled it off hastily and felt the nakedness all over again.
Her boss Gerry peered at her over his glasses, bewildered, when she crossed the office. ‘Respect,’ said Kay, brought to her feet behind her computer terminal, but she looked distinctly taken aback.
At thirteen Esme’s hair had been long and wavy, split-ended, tangled and streaked from the sun: it blew around her face when she cycled along the bumpy track into the village. Her mother didn’t want her to cut it: a week after she arrived in Cornwall Alison had taken the kitchen scissors to it in her aunt’s cluttered bathroom, chopped it to below her ears and added a pack of black dye bought at random from the chemist’s into the bargain. At sixteen she got glasses – she’d started having trouble reading the school whiteboard – and the disguise was complete.
‘Suits you, actually,’ said Kay, when she’d recovered. But the question still hung between them: Why? When she looked at herself in the mirror Alison found herself quite unable to say whether anyone who’d known her as a thirteen-year-old would recognise her now. She felt a little itch of uncertainty. Was this what she wanted to look like? She had no choice.
She saw Paul that evening. There’d been no shopping trip in preparation for the wedding, much to Kay’s disdain; with Paul Alison had stuck to her line that she had something to wear although in fact she had no idea. And Paul had got them a wedding present on his own, he didn’t like wedding lists, he said, he’d chosen something himself.
Opening the door to her now he put his hand to the thick short hair, standing up from her forehead. ‘Pretty,’ he said, but his eyes had darkened, looking at her.
She came past him. ‘It’ll grow out,’ she said carelessly, not meeting his eye.
Her sisters had both had long hair too, theirs much fairer than hers, fairer even than her mother’s: the memory of that hair, their light, shifting eyes jolted her, after all this time. She’d trained herself not to see her sisters: they were there, always there, but they inhabited a soft dark place in her head, hidden as though behind a curtain. When this wedding was over it would stop, these images would stop, thought Alison, letting her bag drop onto the sofa. She sat beside it. Her head felt odd, shorn, cold.
‘No, I like it,’ he said, leaning down over the sofa behind her, and for a moment he let his hand rest on the back of her neck. Then it was gone, he was gone. ‘I got you something.’
She recognised the logo on the box. A line appeared beside his mouth as he gave her that half-smile, looking down at her on the sofa, searching her face. Watching. No one had ever examined her before, as he did – it was as if he was memorising her.
‘For our holiday,’ he went on, standing, as if he’d read her mind. ‘Drink?’ He was by a long veneer sideboard, where he kept booze, odd bottles of foreign aperitifs made of things like artichokes. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘No tonic.’
She pulled at the ribbon around the box, but she knew already. There were layers of tissue, she could imagine the salesgirl with her startled eyebrows and her tight-buttoned dress folding the fine light stuff inside. ‘Oh,’ she said, panicked and excited at once.
Inside the shop’s changing room, a thick heavy curtain behind her that muffled whatever the salesgirl and Kay had said to each other, Alison had hardly dared look at herself when she’d tried it on, but she remembered the thrill of the garment’s unfamiliarity, the weight and coolness of it. It was something for an older woman, it was dressing up, it promised things. Kay had tugged at the curtain, her eyes appeared at the gap, an oh had escaped her, sounding almost put out and she’d pulled back straight away, out of sight. When Alison had come out and shaken her head to the assistant Kay had frowned. ‘Just as well,’ she said. ‘I’d have had to kill you for it, looking like that.’
He still had his back to her. ‘Did Kay tell you…’ She must have done – but Alison couldn’t imagine any such conspiracy. She held it up. She didn’t even know what it was supposed to be, for sleeping in? Or drifting about. She put a hand to her cropped head, thinking, stupidly, wrong time to cut your hair. But she couldn’t stop looking at it.
‘You like it.’ Now Paul had turned, a bottle of gin in one hand.
She looked up at him over her shoulder. ‘How did you know?’ she said.
‘I was in Soho,’ he said. ‘I was on my way to lunch with someone and I saw you go in there, with that woman you work with.’
‘Kay.’ Something in his voice made her wonder if he didn’t like Kay. Had they ever even met?
‘I went back later,’ he said. ‘She told me what you tried on. The girl.’
‘Clever,’ said Alison. She thought of him talking to the foreign girl in her tight-buttoned uniform, in the dark room hung with expensive things to be worn in bedrooms. But she wanted the slip: she pulled it into her lap, mine.
‘Thank you,’ she said. Paul set the gin bottle down, came over and stroked her cheek. ‘You don’t mind, then,’ he said.
‘Mind?’
‘You’re a pretty independent girl,’ he said. ‘Woman.’ She flushed.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said.
‘I’m going out for some tonic.’ He reached for his wallet, and the door swung behind him.
Alison had never been in his flat alone before: she was aware of that before the door even clicked shut. Did this mean something, that he trusted her, for example? It occurred to her as she stood from the sofa and let the slip fall that one of the reasons they’d got this far was that she had showed as much respect for his privacy as he had hers. Which meant that there was plenty she didn’t know.
She didn’t know if it was the knowledge that he’d watched her go into the underwear shop without disclosing himself, or that he’d been on his way to lunch with someone whose name he hadn’t told her, but she was curious; suddenly, greedily, childishly curious. How long would it take him? There was an off-licence and convenience store at the foot of the building, with a security-grille for a window. Often a queue.
Three paces and she was inside the bedroom. She skimmed the shelves with her hand, coming away with dust; she looked at the objects on his side of the bed. An old watch with a heavy link strap, two books, both by colleagues of his, a packet of paracetamol in the little drawer. She turned. Unhesitating as a burglar, she went to the walnut chest. A single silver-framed photograph stood on it; she’d glanced at it a dozen times but had never picked it up. Nosy: never be nosy, you might get him nosy back. It was a pict
ure of Paul, alone on a clifftop, arms folded across himself, shirtsleeves rolled. He must have been thirteen or fourteen; he stared at the camera, composed. She pulled open the top two drawers, the place everyone hid secrets.
Striped cotton boxers in rolls and two unopened packs on one side, on the other black socks, grey socks, a belt, ties, everything neat. A small box sat inside the curled belt; she lifted it out, didn’t even need to open it to know that it contained a ring. A large square stone that looked to her like a diamond, a setting from early last century. His mother’s? Quickly she put it back: the socks shifted and she saw something else, disguised among them. Something wrapped in a heavy woollen cloth, khaki, not clean. She cleared the socks and looked down at it nestling there, bewildered as she saw an outline that seemed ridiculously familiar. A child’s toy? She picked up the small bundle, and its weight was alarming, it was too heavy to be a toy. She set it down again with clumsy hands and stared at it. Then unrolled it. It was a gun. A real one.
An old gun. She grasped for an explanation. A memento? Old but she didn’t know how old: it was chunky scarred black metal with a cross-hatched metal grip, a handgun. It had Herstal Belgique stamped above the trigger, and there were some numbers. The khaki it was wrapped in looked old, certainly. Had his father served? Now she was embroidering, a dead mother who’d given him her engagement ring and a war hero for a father. Too young to have had a father in the war. She searched through their conversations, coming up only against how little she knew. One thing she was sure of, as she heard a sound from the stairwell, was it was none of her business. A gun. He’d find her with it in her hands and there was nothing she could do.
The doorbell rang and her heart jumped, hammering. He hadn’t taken his keys: she was saved.
Carefully, Alison replaced the gun in the bag and pushed it under the socks, slid the drawers closed quietly, went into the bathroom as unhurriedly as if sleepwalking, flushed the lavatory, walked out again. She picked up the slip from the sofa as she passed, to explain the rush of blood to her face.
Not a crime, to own such a thing. Or was it? Was it odd? A historian might own such a thing, a teenage boy might. A farmer or the owner of an isolated house might, to shoot rats. More of a crime to be searching through someone’s drawers.
Had it been loaded?
She opened the door.
Chapter Seven
It’s Gina from her childhood that she dreams of, the night before they go, or at least she thinks so. Even awake, somewhere in the recesses of her mind Alison confuses Gina with Kay; they both share the sly sharpness, the knowingness, looking sideways at her, laughing. They both tug at her with their promises of friendship.
In the years between Alison has often wondered about Gina – she thinks about her more often than she does her mother, or the twins. Joe is the worst, she hardly dares ever approach Joe in her mind, she is terrified of remembering his smile, the frayed edges of his jeans at the heel, the way he would swing himself onto his bicycle. She didn’t even dream of him: it was one thing she did ask the therapist in that stuffy little room with the plastic flowers on the table, and the box of tissues. ‘Why not?’ The woman said, sadly, ‘Your brain’s protecting itself, I expect. It … it may change.’
The therapist never promised anything, Alison noticed that, as if she might get sued, and she never gave advice either. Always little tentative suggestions – it was one of the reasons Alison stopped believing in her. Take up swimming, drawing, walking. The situation seemed to her to require something more extreme, not sensible civilised suggestions. It wanted some violent and dangerous therapy: jumping off high buildings with a rope around you or that kind of deep-water diving where you go down to the limits of your lung capacity and pass out. Or total denial.
Gina had looked nothing like Kay. Strong-willed and bold, she’d been tall and well-developed, breasts and everything at fourteen, too big for the crowded mess of the small terraced house where she lived with her father. When she was eleven her mother had left them for another man and her dad worked on the cargo boats, running freight around the coast for days at a time, Ipswich to Gravesend, mostly sand, he once told Esme, coming in glassy-eyed with the booze and uncharacteristically forthcoming. Esme generally steered clear when he was home. He worked sober, then drank when he came back. Social services were kept in the dark and Gina fed herself with money he’d dish out to her every couple of weeks. ‘He’s all right,’ was all she’d say of her father. ‘Better than being in care.’ Esme’s mother made noises but she never told on Gina.
Gina did badly at school: she could hardly write, Alison happened to know. She simply wasn’t interested: partly a matter of hating every authority figure, every teacher, on principle; partly a matter of recklessness. But she wasn’t stupid.
In the dream Gina was running, out along the horizon towards the little church, fast and fearless. She was running away, and Alison was behind her. They reached the end of the spit where the marsh dissolved into shingle and mud but Gina didn’t stop, Alison fought through the mud after her and into the grey tide where they twined around each other, down under the surface. Under the water Gina’s eyes were open. She spoke, bubbles rising from her pale lips in the clouded water. ‘He’s still there,’ she said. ‘It’s still there.’ And her face wavered, shifted in the water: it was Kay, it was Gina. It was someone else, someone she couldn’t name.
Alison woke up.
It was eight by her mobile, and Paul was coming for her at nine. He’d never been to her place before: she looked around, trying to see it through his eyes. A little bolthole for a scared rabbit. Where once it had been an untidy burrow heaped with crumpled clothes and piled books, now it looked neurotically neat. She sighed and got out of bed. So far her suitcase only contained the slip, still folded in its dark tissue. On impulse she dropped her trainers in on top, and a sports bra, but the dark red still glowed.
Kay had been impressed. ‘He actually took the trouble to find out what you wanted?’ she’d said, eyebrows up under her chopped fringe. ‘He didn’t just buy you a bit of scratchy red tat?’ And shrugged. ‘I suppose that’s cool.’
She’d told Kay about the gun too; her eyes had widened. ‘Jesus.’ Then she’d gone quiet for a bit and finally had shrugged, unwillingly. ‘Second World War’s his thing? Men, though. Collecting gas masks and that stuff. A bit weird, if you ask me.’ They’d laughed.
Dodging the issue of the wedding outfit she put in jeans, a shirt, a jersey, thinking, there’ll be wind off the sea, feeling memory press against her. A swimsuit. She held it up, frowning, and something happened, the feel of the water from her dream and from further back flooded her senses. The memory of swimming out in the estuary off someone’s battered little dinghy, out by the power station’s cooling wall and the water marvellously, unnaturally warm.
And suddenly a face – broad, serious, a direct gaze from under a straight fringe – looked back at her from down the years. The woman who’d asked her those same questions over and over every day for a week after the murders. The policewoman whose eyes had not left Esme’s, unwavering in their inquiry even as the too-full mug of tea burned her hand. And with the realisation it was as if Alison had answered a ringing phone and the policewoman was there on the other end and about to speak. Alison held her breath. The murders. She had never called them that, not even in her head, because that would have made her father a murderer. She reached up into the cupboard where her dresses hung and took a handful down. One of them would do.
The police hadn’t told her much of anything, during that terrible endless week, only asked her questions and dutifully she had answered. It only occurred to her much later that she could have screamed and shouted and demanded to know: also that they might not have told her anything because she could be a suspect. She had had blood everywhere when they came for her, her hands, legs, feet, even a smear on her neck, and there were bloody footprints on the hall carpet she didn’t remember leaving. That was one of the things they’d ask
ed her, over and over, which rooms she’d been in afterwards, with blood on her feet.
Alison knelt with the dresses in her hands, laying them in the suitcase, as the questions they’d asked her all those years ago rattled in her head like grit in a wheel.
Shoes. Head down, she put in a pair of sandals she liked, with fine gold straps. She’d worn them at a work do one time and a man had knelt down to look at them.
Of course the policewoman still existed, she might even be still there, behind a desk at the police station. And with a pulse of certainty Alison knew that if no one else recognised her, the policewoman would. Her doorbell rang shrilly and she crossed the landing to the front window to look down.
Below her Paul stood looking into the square, his back to the door. He had his hands in his pockets, shifting on his feet, impatient, and for a split second Alison thought about not answering. Then he turned, and looked up.
* * *
She’d delayed as long as she could in London, showing him around and registering the look of silent dismay he gave the battered hallway and the shared bathroom (a stale flannel over the sink, a ring round the bath). She moved him along, to her room. ‘It’s all right, I suppose,’ he said dubiously, glancing inside, the yellow light reflected off the big tree. ‘Well, short term, anyway.’
She stopped. ‘What, until I hit the big time, you mean?’ she said. An arm around her shoulders, he laughed, squeezing her against him and smiling down.
The Crooked House Page 4