by C. L. Taylor
“And?” It’s just one word but I can hear the irritation behind it.
“The Prince Regent has been shut for renovations for the last two weeks.”
Brian doesn’t so much as blink. “I didn’t go to the Prince Regent.”
“Where then?”
“Aquarena.”
“You went all the way to Worthing for a swim?”
“Something wrong with that?”
“Brian, you haven’t been for a swim for months.”
“Which is why I fancied a dip.”
“Stop lying.” I stand up. “Please, just stop lying.”
My husband sits back in his chair. “Lying? I think we’ve established who the liar is here, Sue. Or would you like to take back your apology from five minutes ago?” When I say nothing, a small smile plays on his lips. “What did Charlotte write in her diary?”
“Where have you been going at the crack of dawn every day?”
Brian says nothing.
I say nothing.
We stare at each other, eyes locked, neither of us willing to back down.
Ding-dong.
The sound of the doorbell makes me jump. A split second later, I’m out of the study, relieved of the excuse to escape. I think I hear Brian call my name as I hurry down the stairs but I don’t turn back.
“Coming!” I call as I cross the hallway, pass through the kitchen, and walk into the porch. Milly follows me, nudging her empty food dish with her nose as I open the front door.
I can’t see anyone through the glass pane, so I open the door and peer outside, half-expecting to see someone strolling down the driveway, but it’s empty. Whoever rang our doorbell must have sprinted away the second their finger left the buzzer.
“What’s that, Milly Moo?” I turn back to find the dog gnawing on something. I take a step closer and crouch down. It’s a brown padded envelope.
“Where did you get that?” I distract the dog with a well-chewed tennis ball, slip the parcel away from her, and sit down with it at the kitchen table. My name is written on the front in blue pen, but there’s no address and no stamp. I turn it over. Nothing on the underside either, just a strip of brown packing tape holding the flap closed. Whoever rang the doorbell must have pushed it through the letter box.
I peel off the tape and slip a finger under the flap to open it. I can barely breathe as I upend the envelope and tip the contents onto the table.
Something pink and glittery lands on the cotton tablecloth with a clunk.
Charlotte’s phone.
Saturday, October 20, 1990
I didn’t hear from James for three days after the incident with his mum.
He finally rang yesterday. I’d expected him to be contrite, but he acted like nothing had happened and asked what my plans were for the weekend. I said I’d been invited to have dinner with some mates and he was welcome to join us if he liked. I said how much I’d like him to meet my friends. It was, after all, nearly two months since we’d met, and he still hadn’t met anyone I was close to.
“Helen and Rupert?” he repeated down the phone, after I told him whose house we were going to. “The same Rupert you fucked at university?”
I hated that, the way he said “fucked” like it was something dirty that I should be ashamed of.
“No. Rupert, my very good friend who I happened to have sex with a very, very long time ago. Not that that matters.”
“It matters to me.”
“Well, it shouldn’t. It didn’t mean anything then and it certainly doesn’t mean anything now. Helen’s not bothered, so why should you be?”
“Helen’s not in love with you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t come then.”
“And leave you alone with some guy who fucked you once and would probably love to fuck you again? No chance.”
“James!”
“What?”
“I’m going to put the phone down now.”
“Don’t. Suzy, I’m sorry. That all came out wrong. I’m still smarting from what happened on Tuesday. Forgive me, darling, please. I’ll be very well behaved at the dinner party.”
“You promise?”
“Of course.”
James was drunk when I met him at Willesden tube. So drunk he could barely stand, never mind speak. I took one look at him and told him he should go home. He refused.
“I’ll be the entertainment,” he said. “I tell really good jokes. What’s brown and sticky?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and he was being very good-natured and affectionate. Maybe it’ll be fun, I told myself. At least he won’t be uptight about meeting Rupert.
I knew the night was going to turn into a nightmare when thirty seconds after we’d walked into Hel & Ru’s flat, James pointed at a Formula One framed print on the sideboard and said, “Only twats are into Formula One. Only a dull mind could watch a car go around and around a track ad infinitum.”
“I think you’ll find,” Rupert said, turning back, “that the number of laps depends on the track and that the sport demands a finite number of laps, otherwise there’d be no winner.”
“A blah blah blah blah blah.” James waved a hand in his direction, then just as Rupert disappeared into the living room, said, “Posh twat.”
I angled him into the bathroom and closed the door. He stumbled backward and collapsed onto the (lid closed, thankfully) toilet. “If you keep this up, we’re leaving.”
He grinned. “So we don’t have to have dinner with Twattle Dum and Twattle Dumber and two other Mad Twatters? Excellent.” He tried to stand. “Let’s go!”
“Not me.” I pushed him back down again. “You.”
“No, Suzy.” He pulled a face. “Please let me spend the evening with Fat Arse and Dull Face.”
“That’s it.” I yanked on his hand so he was upright. “You’re going home. I’m calling you a cab.”
“Noooo!” He wrapped his arms around me and, using his weight advantage, pinned me against the tiled wall. He pressed his lips to my neck. “Don’t leave me. Don’t make me go. I promise to be a good boy. Suzy, I want to wake up with you tomorrow morning. Don’t send me home to my bitch of a mother. I’m only being silly because it winds you up. I know how much you love Gingerpubes and her Fat Bear.”
“James!”
“See!” He mimed someone pushing a button. “It’s too easy. Please, Suzy. I promise to be good. I’ll make polite conversation over dinner and everything. I just need something to eat. I’ve only had a bowl of cereal all day.”
“James! That’s not good for you.”
He nestled his head into the crook of my neck. “See, I knew you still loved me. You care that I’m starving to death.”
“Of course I love you, you idiot.” I stroked the back of his head, relishing the feeling of his hair under my fingers. “Even when you do behave like this.”
True to his word, he did behave, even if his contribution to the conversation around the dinner table was more sarcastic than enthusiastic, but he barely said a word on the tube on the way home. I was grateful for the silence. James didn’t have to spell it out, but I could tell from his behavior over dinner that he didn’t like my friends, and not just because I’d slept with one of them.
By the time we finally walked into James’s living room, I couldn’t bear the silence a second longer and asked if he was okay.
He ignored me and crossed the room to pull the heavy velvet curtains closed, taking the time to arrange the folds of material so they hung evenly spaced. When he was satisfied they were straight, he strode over to the mantelpiece and wound the brass carriage clock. His face was expressionless, his mouth a thin line, his pale gray eyes dull. Only the tension in his jaw gave his mood away. I stayed by the door, shuffling my weight from foot to foot. The air was electrified, like a dark cloud was hovering o
verhead, threatening a storm.
“James?” I said again.
“Would you keep your fucking voice down?” He spun around to face me. “Mother’s asleep upstairs, or have you forgotten?”
“Sorry.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I just wanted to check that you’re okay. You’ve seemed a bit”—I chose my words carefully—“unhappy ever since we left Hels’s house.”
“Unhappy?” James stepped closer, towering over me. “Why would I be unhappy, Suzy-Sue?”
I racked my brain, analyzing the conversations we’d had over dinner. Nothing controversial, nothing that referenced my ex-boyfriends (Hels knows not to mention them in front of James), and nothing about my past that he might have found objectionable.
“Nothing?” James took another step closer and tapped me on the forehead with his index finger. “Really? You can’t think of a single thing you might have done to upset me?”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t. I thought we had a lovely even—”
“Liar!” His face was inches from mine, his breath hot and scented with the spices Hels used in the curry we ate.
“I’m not—”
“You are a lying bitch.”
“I’m not, James. I didn’t say—”
“Want a cig, Suz?” He said it in a high singsong voice and I immediately knew what he was getting at. He was imitating Helen, post-dinner, as she leaned across the table and offered me a Marlboro Light before sparking one up herself. My face suddenly felt hot as the blood rushed to my cheeks.
“Hels!” James continued in the same voice, his face bobbing from side to side in front of mine. “You know I don’t smoke anymore. I gave up weeks ago. Remember?”
“She just forgot, James. We used to share cigs all the time at work and it’s a habit. She forgot that I gave—”
“FILTHY FUCKING HABIT!”
I took a step back and wiped the spit from my eye.
“My father died from smoking, Suzy. He DIED. A long, painful death. I held him in my arms when he rasped and rattled his way into the next world, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.”
“But your mum said that—”
James crouched down so his face was just millimeters from mine. “What did my mum say?”
I rubbed my palms against my skirt. “She said that your dad killed himself. You were in the kitchen, talking, and I heard her say that. I wasn’t snooping, I promise. But you’d been gone so long that I just wanted to check that—”
“Bullshit!” His breath was hot in my face. “You were sneaking around, listening at keyholes, looking for secrets.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” I wanted to take a step back, to widen the space between us and diffuse the tension, but I couldn’t. James was calling me a liar and yet he had been lying about the death of his father. “I don’t understand. Why would your mum say your dad killed himself if he died of a smoking-related illness?”
“He killed himself all right—with too much booze and too many cigs—but she was the one that drove him to it. Always going on and on, nagging and bitching and lying and manipulating.”
“But…” I didn’t finish my sentence. His mother said “the day he killed himself” like it was suicide, not respiratory disease. Or did I hear that wrong? Now I was doubting myself.
“So tell me,” he says, prodding me in the chest again, “are you still smoking?”
“No! I haven’t started again, James. I prom—”
“LIAR!”
He was right. I was lying. I hadn’t started smoking again, not regularly, but I had had a quick cig with Hels two weeks ago. We met for lunch, had a couple of G&Ts, and I just couldn’t resist when she offered me a cig. It was just one cigarette, but James wouldn’t understand that. He’d think I didn’t love him enough to keep my promise to quit.
He took another step forward, jolting me with his chest so I was forced to take a step back. “If you’ve lied about your dirty little smoking habit, what else have you lied about, eh, Suzy-Sue?”
I pressed my hands to my mouth. “Nothing.”
“Really? Really nothing?” He yanked my hands away from my mouth and gathered them in his. “You’re not secretly shagging Rupert again?”
“No.” I tried to wriggle my fingers free. “Of course not.”
“Going to our favorite hotels for a hot fuck?”
“No!” I wriggled harder and snatched my hands away. “Jesus, James, you need to let this Rupert thing go. You’re obsessed.”
“Obsessed? You’re the one who goes for coffee with him several times a week. And I’m supposed to believe that? That two people who used to fuck each other’s brains out can sit opposite each other, all alone, without their partners and have lovely drinky-poos and not be tempted to get it on again? You must think I’m an idiot.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, James.” I couldn’t believe we were back there again. “How many times do I have to spell it out? Rupert is a friend and nothing more. I’m as attracted to him as I am to Hels who, before you say anything about the so-called ‘sexual wild side’ to me, I’m not attracted to in the least.”
James shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you, Suzy? I could be friends with my exes too, but I’m not because I value our relationship too much. I value you too much. I value you more than anything else in my life. I love you, Suzy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” My heart softened at his tender tone of voice. No one had ever loved me so passionately or so desperately before. No one had ever gotten jealous or possessive before. They’d never cared enough. “And I love you too, James.”
“No.” He cupped my jaw with his right hand and tilted my head up so I had no choice but to look into his eyes. “I really fucking love you, Suzy. You are everything to me. Everything.”
His left hand snaked around my waist, and he pulled me to him, roughly, brusquely, as he pressed his lips against mine. He kissed me deeply, and despite the anger I felt at being branded a liar, I kissed him back.
Chapter
Ten
I snatch up Charlotte’s mobile phone and turn it over in my hands, then peer into the mouth of the envelope. It’s empty. Not a card, not a note, not a Post-it. Nothing. Just the phone.
I sprint out of the house and across the gravel with Charlotte’s phone in one hand, the padded envelope in the other. I pause when I reach the street. Which way would they have gone? I turn right, toward town, and continue to run. I pass a woman pushing a stroller, an elderly lady dragging a shopping bag behind her, and a teenage couple holding hands. I pass the number 19 bus, Bill’s the Newsagents, and three or four pubs. Still I keep running. I don’t know who I’m looking for or where I’m going, but I only slow to a stop when I notice Milly trailing behind me with her tongue hanging out. I’m no spring chicken, but she’s ten years old with a heart condition and fading eyesight. She shouldn’t be running anywhere, never mind down a traffic-fume-filled street with dangers at every turn.
“Come on, girl.” I reach down and pat her head. “Let’s go home.”
***
My first instinct, as I walk back in, is to find Brian and tell him what happened, but I say nothing. Instead I pour Milly a bowl of fresh, clean water and shut her in the porch, then go into the downstairs bathroom, locking the door behind me, and sit down on the closed toilet seat. I press the button on the top of Charlotte’s mobile.
An animation skips across the screen as the phone flashes to life. It takes me forever to work out how to access the text messages, but when I do, a list of names appears. I recognize several of them—Liam, Ella, Oli, Nancy and Misha, two girls from Charlotte’s class—and then a couple of names I don’t. I feel sick with nerves yet strangely exhilarated as I go through the messages, certain that I am about to reveal the reason why Charlotte tried to k
ill herself, but the more I read, the more disappointed I feel, and my exhilaration is soon replaced by awkwardness as I stumble across a thread of messages between my daughter and her boyfriend. Some of them are sexual, but the majority are fun and loving. The text that ends the relationship comes out of nowhere. In the text before, Charlotte tells Liam that she had an amazing evening with him, and then, in her final text to him, the relationship’s over and she doesn’t want anything to do with him. No wonder he was so angry and confused. What follows is a string of texts from Liam, initially hurt and desperate for an explanation, then increasingly agitated and angry. Charlotte doesn’t reply to any of them.
I open the thread of messages to Ella. There’s a brief conversation, two months earlier, about a project they were working on at school, but that’s it. There’s nothing else. Nothing about Liam or Keisha or why they might have fallen out.
I continue to search through her text history—through the ones between Charlotte and her dad (mostly requests for money or lifts), Charlotte and Oli (his version of her request for a hotel room was spot on), and then start going through the names I don’t recognize. The texts between Charlotte and the girls from school don’t reveal anything apart from a bit of gossip about who fancies who. And that’s it. That’s all there is apart from one more name—K-Dog. My heart sinks as I select it. I really thought Charlotte’s phone would provide some answers. I felt sure the mystery would be solved if only—
My skin prickles with goose bumps and I go cold.
My dad’s a sick pervert and I don’t know who else to talk to. Call me asap. Charlotte x
I read the text again.
No, it’s not possible.
He’d never hurt her.
Memories flood my mind. Brian taking Charlotte to the swimming pool. Brian teaching her to ride a bike. Brian giving her a bath. She would have told me if he’d done anything inappropriate or started behaving unusually. Wouldn’t she?
No. I give myself a mental shake. Stop it, Sue. Your first instinct was right. Brian would never do anything to harm his daughter. He loves her. He was devastated by her accident. He still is. But…