‘Sort of.’ I leant back, and changed the subject. ‘Andrew said you do a lot of work for charity?’
‘I’m on various boards. Finding Jasmine is my main commitment. It’s what I feel most passionately about. Andrew helps me. In many ways, it sums up what I was just saying. You know, Jasmine wasn’t a sweet little middle-class blonde toddler like Madeleine McCann. She was fourteen. But that’s still a child. She deserved just as much police, and media attention, and yet no one seemed particularly interested.’
‘Well done, you, to have done one thing to rectify that,’ I said, trying to sound interested myself.
She picked up the lighter from the table where I had placed it and turned it over in her hands. The words ‘Diptyque’ flashed silver against black in the light from the lamp. ‘I know you’re a terrible womaniser,’ she said. ‘I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here.’
I was taken aback. ‘I’m not,’ I said.
‘Not what?’
‘A terrible womaniser.’
‘Andrew says you’re a bad man.’
‘Really? Gosh. Well, I don’t know what he means by that . . .’
‘He says you treat women badly. You don’t respect them.’
‘Really? He says that?’
She was looking at me very carefully now.
‘Maybe,’ I said, doing my best to muster a sleepy smile, ‘I just haven’t met the right woman.’
Her coffee cup was on her knee and she put her finger into it to scoop out the last of the foam, and dabbed it on her tongue – a flick of white on pink. Her eyes were right in mine as she did so. Was she flirting? It seemed unlikely, and yet bizarrely flattering if so. (Despite everything she said, she still wanted me.) ‘I must go,’ she said, not moving.
What did I have to lose? I shifted my leg very slightly, steering myself gently towards her, shoulders already manoeuvring into position. She limboed out from under me, stood up and shrugged on her coat, doing up the buttons, enfolding her body in the straps of her bag: putting herself away.
At the front door of the building, I kissed her clumsily. I had had a bit too much to drink. My mouth impacted with a corner of her lips and rested there wetly. She pressed her hands flat against my chest. I could feel the warmth of her palms through my shirt. Was it attraction or rebuttal? An inch in either direction, a finger slipped between the buttons, and her motive would have been clear. But I wasn’t sure. I sensed a rigidity in her elbows, a tension in her forearms, and I was almost relieved when she pulled away.
She rang the next day, much to my astonishment. In fact, I stood up when I heard her voice, already scanning the flat for a dropped lipstick or forgotten scarf, some reason for her to have called. She was walking. I could tell by the shortness of her breath. She said something about ‘putting a date in the diary’ and I imagined her leaning against a wall and hoisting that big appointments book out of her bag.
It turned out it was tea she was suggesting. That Saturday, if I were free. Phoebe would love to ‘pick my brains’ about journalism if I was really sure; perhaps I could put some work experience her way.
I should have said no. The evening had not been a success. But I was vain and flattered, and was idly interested in the thought of Phoebe, and so I said yes.
Chapter Four
She lived in Clapham in a tall, narrow Georgian house on a fairly busy road. Next door was a dump: the front door painted in rasta stripes, a shopping trolley half buried, upside down, in overgrown vegetation. Rap thumped from an upstairs window. Alice’s house in contrast possessed an air of shabby gentility: peeling grey railings topped with acorn finials; cast-iron pots trailing the brown remnants of last summer’s geraniums; an empty ‘Riverford’ box waiting for its weekly replacement of organic veg.
The girl who answered the door had a small oval face between hanks of long blonde hair. She was wearing tiny denim shorts over black tights, the top half of her body swathed in an enormous hand-knitted cardigan. When she saw me, she turned away to shout ‘Mum!’ up the stairs, and then, to me, ‘Yeah, do you wanna come in?’
She walked ahead, and I followed her along the hall, down a narrow flight of stairs, into a basement kitchen: Aga, pine table, pots with herbs, a smell of baking and daffodils, with a strong undertone of garlic. A tabby cat clattered out of a cat-flap, but a brown Labrador, sitting in a corduroy dog bed in the corner, stretched out its front legs and then slowly lumbered over, tail wagging, to thrust its nose into my crotch.
I edged away, and found a chair at the table. The house was quiet, except for the distant sound of television and the muffled pummel of next door’s bass. Phoebe stood by the Aga, twisting her nose ring. She was not that much younger than Polly, my recent squeeze, but I sensed her contempt for me, or perhaps specifically for the leather jacket I had chosen to wear. Or perhaps for the shoes. (New white Converse – I wasn’t sure about them.) Not that I particularly cared. Her looks did nothing for me either. She was pretty enough but her hair was badly bleached and her eyebrows were plucked into high thin arches. Half-waif, half-whore. Not my type. I mean – one or the other, surely.
I made a stab at conversation. ‘So – Phoebe, is it? I hear you’re planning to study English at Leeds. Is the course any good?’
She tipped her head and said, with unnatural politeness: ‘I hope so. I’ve been told it is.’ She closed her mouth at the end of each sentence as if she were sipping at the words, speaking slowly to an elderly relative. ‘I haven’t yet had a chance to visit.’
The dog was still nudging away at my groin, which I discouraged with movements of my knee. ‘Oh well, you’ve got plenty of time.’
‘You were at Cambridge, Mum said. With Uncle Andrew. They were talking about it last night.’
Uncle Andrew? Last night. I felt uneasy. ‘Where is your mother?’
She went to the foot of the steps and shouted: ‘Mum. MUM. He’s here.’
A fraction of silence and then a distant shout and a series of soft thumps. ‘He’s here? Oh, why didn’t you say? Louis – that’s enough TV!’ Her feet hammered the last flight of stairs and she burst into the room. She was wearing tight running trousers, a silver-grey zip-up tracksuit top, and caramel Uggs. Earrings like tiny, tiered chandeliers dangled from her lobes.
‘Paul! Thank you for coming.’ She swept over, all movement and light, her hair loose. She pushed the dog out of the way. ‘Off, Dennis. Leave the man alone.’ She kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Phoebe, have you thanked him for coming?’
‘Yup,’ Phoebe said.
‘Right, well, I’ll make some tea. You two get chatting.’
Phoebe and I looked at each other. I suspect we both felt we had done our chatting. I had a sinking sense of dread that I was about to be revealed as a fraud. I tried to cover the embarrassment, pompously drilling Phoebe about her expectations of journalism and delivering a small, rather more heartfelt lecture on the shrinking of newspapers and the competitive nature of the job market.
Alice, drying her hands on a tea towel, said: ‘Phoebe would love some work experience after her A levels. Wouldn’t you, Phoebs?’
‘Yes, I would,’ Phoebe said with the same sibilant over-pronunciation as earlier. ‘If you could help?’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘I thought I might get a job at a magazine – maybe something at the New Statesman, cos I’m into politics, or maybe Vogue? Mum said you might have some contacts I could use. Everyone says it’s all about who you know.’
‘I’ll have a think,’ I said calmly.
She drew her cardigan tightly around her. ‘Or maybe telly? Do you know anyone there?’
I stared at her. ‘Not really.’
Her phone made the noise of a hunting horn and, looking at it, she said: ‘Mum, can I go to Dolly’s now?’
Alice said: ‘Yes, OK, but I want you back tonight.’
Phoebe stood up. ‘Bye,’ she said to me over her shoulder. ‘Thanks.’
A hole at the back of her tights reveale
d a patch of blue-white skin like a bruise.
‘It was nothing,’ I said.
Alice straightened a large picture on the wall, a framed collage of photographs, black and white, full colour, sepia; big smiles, funny costumes, exotic holidays: family life at its most boastful. In the centre was a photograph of a man on a beach, with a baby on his knee, curved brown arms and summer stubble, eyes wrinkled against the sun – Harry. He looked handsome and manly. Here he was in the middle of his world: skiing holidays and skippered yachts, champagne, blonde heads and Rolex watches. Men like him had made me angry all my life, everything they had, everything I didn’t. I felt a sharp jolt of envy and resentment, immediately followed by a more comfortable, of thought. Harry was dead and I was sitting in his kitchen.
Alice had moved away from the picture and was tidying up rather aimlessly, as if she had a purpose other than me for being there. A series of clatters and a male shout from upstairs. ‘MUM. Going out!’
She rolled her eyes.
‘Which one’s that?’ I said.
‘Louis. Frank’s at a friend’s.’ She stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Take a coat; it’s raining!’
Heavy footsteps and the slam of the front door.
‘I never made the tea.’ She consulted her watch. ‘Oh fuck it. Glass of wine?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say no,’ I said.
She opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of Merlot, which she opened with a Screwpull, clutching it for traction between her thighs – rather sexily actually.
‘Do smoke.’
She handed me a chipped saucer and threw open the window above the sink. It was raining modestly. Declining to have one herself, she sat back, subtly shielding her nose and mouth with her hand. After a bit she began to shuffle a pile of papers in front of her, absent-mindedly chewing one lip. When I asked what they were, she told me they were flyers for the dinner-ball benefit in aid of Finding Jasmine. She said, her voice high and tense, that this year was the ten-year anniversary and they needed to raise more money for ‘the next phase’. Yvonne, Jasmine’s mother, was coming down from Sheffield and she wanted everything to be perfect.
She passed me one of the flyers. On the front was a photograph of the young Jasmine, wearing a flowery bandana and holding a ginger kitten to her cheek, and next to it a computer reconstruction of how the missing girl might look now. I studied the picture as she was talking: a pretty twenty-three-year-old with a high forehead, narrow face, blue eyes, large mouth. It was probably inappropriate, but my instinctive response was to wonder whether the people who construct these composites err, out of tact, on the side of pulchritude.
I didn’t say that of course. I nodded slowly, hoping to convey a heart full of empathy and commiseration. ‘Poor girl,’ I said. Alice slumped back in her chair and took a first big gulp from her glass and then delicately wiped the wine from the corner of her lips.
I swirled my glass, watching the wine swing and crumple like crimson velvet. ‘Do you really think she’s alive?’
She looked me straight in the eye. ‘I think she is alive.’
I gathered up what I could remember, sweeping the details together. ‘But the mother’s boyfriend . . . wasn’t there something . . . Didn’t the police . . .?’
‘No. The police were wrong about that. And he’s been cleared. It’s absurd that anyone – you! – should still think that. They wasted so much time. It’s true Karl and Jasmine had a volatile relationship. She was jealous of him taking away her mother’s attention. And he’s that kind of bloke, bit of a talker, still a bit of a child himself – not old enough to be the adult in the situation. He and Jasmine had rowed that night, it’s true. But if you had seen his grief . . . and the way he has supported Yvonne over the last ten years. No. He didn’t kill her.’ She shook her head, small angry shakes. ‘No.’
‘Where’s Jasmine’s dad in all this?’
‘He left Yvonne when she was pregnant.’
‘And were there ever any other suspects?’
‘Not really.’ She shook her head again. Her earrings rattled. ‘A few eyewitness accounts of strange men hanging around, but nothing concrete. Migrant workers from Albania, but . . .’
She took a swig and put the glass back down on the table. The wine shuddered. Her mouth pursed, tight, angry. ‘There was never a body. On an island like that – that’s important. They searched the coastline, the hillsides thoroughly. No ferries left that night and by the next day the police were at the port watching. Everyone was out, looking. The sea isn’t tidal. So no. Instinctively I just know.’
‘She ran away?’
‘Perhaps. Or she was taken. Illegal adoption rings are rife in that part of the world. And then Pyros is so close to Albania, you only have to get across the channel . . .’
‘But would a teenage girl be a likely candidate? She was fourteen, did you say? Wouldn’t that be too old?’
‘Yes. I suppose. Though the other possibility is prostitution. One of the things she argued with Yvonne and Karl about was that she was going out all the time – she’d met a boy in the village. He never came forward. For a long time we investigated the possibility that she had been taken to Athens. It’s an unbearable thought. I don’t know, but I will find out. I won’t rest until I do. I know that’s a cliché . . . but . . . if you’ve ever known a mother lose a child . . . the not knowing. It’s unbearable, the pain. It never goes away.’
‘And what about the idea that she might have left of her own accord?’
‘There’s a small hippy community on the west coast of the island – a hangover from the seventies. Germans, Scandinavians, a few Brits. They don’t live in caves any more but they’re still a strong presence – occasionally you see them in the tourist towns. I’ve always thought they were involved. That she might be living with them. She was, from everything Yvonne has told me, quite a simple girl, but a bit odd maybe. There’s a theory – quite a plausible one – that she did run away and has been living with them, and has either lost her memory, or been brainwashed, that perhaps she wanted to come home and was prevented, that drugs might have been involved.’
‘But haven’t the police looked?’
‘Yes, but . . . Too late, you know?’
I didn’t really know, and I didn’t really care. I was bored of the subject. The dead girl – because of course she was dead – wasn’t bringing out the best in Alice. I wanted more of the sexily efficient businesswoman from dinner with her deportations and hearings. Or the grubby domestic goddess from Andrew’s house. I remembered the laugh I had wrung out of her in the garden – a girlish tinkle with a filthy undertow; the way she had licked the cappuccino foam from her finger. I knew as well as anyone how life gives us certain roles to play. But I had had enough of her goodness, of feeling in the wrong, of this misery memoir. The Merlot was a good one – fruity and soft, warm blood in the mouth. I’d have another glass and, unless things changed, be on my way.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Let’s lighten the mood. You haven’t come all this way to talk about that.’ She gave a lopsided grin.
I stayed all evening.
Alice found another bottle of wine and, moving with speed around the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and hurling ingredients, produced a bowl of pasta with homemade pesto, and a salad of tomato and cucumber and feta: a Greek salad, in fact, ‘though nowhere near as delicious as the ones you actually get in Greece’.
She made a staggering amount of mess – cucumber peelings left flopping over the dirty Magimix; a glug of olive oil spilt on the top of the Aga, the white plastic packet that the feta came in dropped on the floor and forgotten. Oblivious to the chaos she was creating, she talked in a stream about leaving Pyros. The kids had loved it there when they were younger, but now they had social lives in London that needed to be constantly stoked, they were less interested in coming. Perhaps it was good this summer would be their last. ‘Everything comes to an end,’ she said. She was chopping tomatoes and she stopped in mid-cut.
She gazed out of the window, which was still half open, on to the wet garden. ‘No matter how hard you try to stop it.’
She picked up the knife again, and said, as an afterthought, ‘If you haven’t got any plans this summer, you should come.’
Once it was cooked, she suggested we took our plates upstairs and ate in front of the fire. The sitting room was soft and cosy, with mismatched sofas and mohair throws, thick velvet curtains, and threadbare Turkish rugs. Bookcases lined the alcoves. A corduroy beanbag was positioned in front of the television; headphones and PlayStation handsets were scattered on the floor. The fire was real and, once she had revived the embers with another log, comfortingly warm. The tabby cat was curled against a tapestry cushion and was happy now to be stroked. Alice drew the curtains and I saw her face, for a second, reflected in the glass, a ripple of fractured lights, and I remembered the passage in To the Lighthouse when Mrs Ramsay, serving stew, feels a sense of coherence, of stability. In my case, of course, it may have been the hope of sex.
Alice sat on the floor, with her plate on the coffee table, and I sat on the sofa, elbows awkward, leaning down. When I finished my food and had mopped up the last gritty green juices with a piece of bread, I stood and wandered over to study the bookshelves more closely. Alice was telling me about a Muslim woman from Bexleyheath who, after years of abuse, had stabbed her husband to death with the kitchen scissors. To be honest, the subject was making me feel a bit jangly.
The lower rows contained bestsellers, thrillers, an extensive run of Hornblowers. But on the top shelf was a clutch of old green and orange Penguin editions (Simenon and Ngaio Marsh; George Orwell; The Great Gatsby), and some hardbacks in colourful dust jackets. My eye snagged on a distinctive black spine with a slash of yellow, and I reached up to pull the book out: The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis. I flicked it open. 1973. A first edition.
‘God!’ I yelped.
Alice had been watching me closely. ‘Harry loved Martin Amis,’ she said, her eyes on mine. ‘Public schoolboys often do, I’ve noticed. Sex and money and a rich dollop of self-loathing.’
Lie With Me Page 4