Lie With Me

by Sabine Durrant

  ‘Well, actually,’ I propped myself up on my elbow, ‘I’ve had an interesting day.’ I was planning to tell her about Daisy and Artan and about mending the van. I was expecting both pieces of information, in their different ways, to draw us closer.

  But she had got to her feet, and was peeling off her clothes. ‘Tell me later,’ she said, standing there naked. ‘We’re meeting Yvonne and Karl at Nico’s in half an hour and I’m desperate for a shower.’

  Nico’s was smaller and prettier than Giorgio’s, with gingham tablecloths and a cascading vine over the terrace. Yvonne and Karl were sitting alone at a long table over by the water when we got there. Alice wended her way round the chairs to reach them, holding my hand to make sure I followed close. Yvonne stood up and Alice pushed me forward. ‘Darling Yvonne, this is my friend Paul, whom I told you about in the car. He’s staying with us for the week.’

  Yvonne put out her hand and I stood for a moment, clumsy and awkward, staring at her. She was small and slight, with a thin face and long hair; the skin under her eyes was rough like sandpaper. Her dress was a floral cotton one with cap sleeves – it was an old one of Alice’s; I recognised it from a photograph – and it hung off her, gaping at the neck. She was smiling, showing stained teeth.

  I bent down and hugged her, feeling the rub of the crucifix that lay around her neck. The damp of her lipstick brushed my cheek.

  ‘I’m actually here for a fortnight,’ I said, pulling away, ‘unless she’s forgotten.’

  Yvonne stretched her mouth into a wider smile and Alice laughed. ‘Sorry. A fortnight. And this is Karl.’

  He was smaller than Yvonne, an ancient pocket-rocker with grey stubble, sunken cheeks and a faded blue tattoo of an elaborate lizard behind one ear. When he shook my hand, a square gold ring on his forefinger jabbed the flesh at the base of my thumb. ‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ he said.

  Around me I was aware of the others greeting Yvonne, Tina embracing her, Louis knocking over a chair, Daisy sitting as far away from me as possible. I pulled out the empty chair next to Karl. The waiter brought us menus. Andrew ordered wine: ‘Or Karl, would you prefer beer?’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind,’ Karl muttered.

  ‘And a beer for my esteemed friend,’ Andrew said.

  Alice, who had taken the head of the table, was talking with animation to Yvonne, asking her about her hotel room, was it cool enough, did they have mosquito nets, were the pillows comfortable?

  I thought Yvonne began to look a little irritated. ‘It’s fine,’ she answered shortly. ‘It’s what we expect. It’s all fine.’

  Karl leant into me. ‘Alice wants everything to be perfect,’ he said. ‘She’s like this every year. None of it makes any difference.’

  ‘Where is it that you’re staying?’

  ‘It’s up there somewhere –’ he gestured with his chin. ‘It’s got a nice pool, and some of the rooms have sea views, though ours hasn’t. The first year we came, the year we lost Jasmine, we stayed at the Barbati Beach Apartments and after that they used to give us a discount. But they bulldozed it to build that big posh hotel—’

  ‘Delfinos.’

  ‘Same manager, but . . .’

  ‘People forget,’ I said.

  Karl shrugged. ‘Yeah. People forget a lot of things.’

  The teenagers were sitting at the far end of the table. I looked over just as Daisy looked over at me. Her face suffused red. I smiled and gave a very small nod. It turned out it felt nice to have something on her.

  ‘Is there any point?’ Karl said.

  I turned back to him. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘In the car, Alice said you were on holiday in Pyros, actually in Agios Stefanos, the night Jasmine went missing but that you don’t remember anything about it so there was no point asking you.’

  ‘No, she’s right, I’m afraid. That night is a bit of a blank.’

  He nodded. ‘One too many shandies, was it?’

  I was beginning to feel disordered. ‘Absolutely. Several too many, in fact.’

  ‘I recognise you, though.’ He narrowed his eyes, biting the side of his lip. ‘Yes, definitely. You were out in the street.’

  ‘I don’t think I was. I think I’d already gone.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He tapped the side of his head with his finger. ‘I’ve got a head for faces.’

  My brain reared wildly back in time, trying to recall past conversations with Alice. I thought she had said I’d left the village in a taxi long before Jasmine went missing. I racked my brain for a genuine memory of my own – nothing.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said again. ‘It’s certainly the sort of thing I hope I’d remember.’

  At the head of the table, Alice was telling Tina and Yvonne the story of the goats – making vigorous gestures with her hands as if trying to propel the anecdote along, filling it with life and air. I imagined the narrative sinking to the floor without her efforts, limp and shapeless, and felt a welling of sympathy. What a pact with the devil she was engaged in, pretending Jasmine was still alive, pretending there was still hope. And I noticed how Alice was the woman here I felt most sorry for, not Yvonne, and how odd that was.

  Karl tapped my arm to get my attention. ‘You’re a writer, Andrew told us.’

  ‘Yes, I write novels.’

  ‘I’m not really a reader, though one of my mates down at the local has published a book about philately – I say “published”. He paid for it himself. Ah, thanks.’ His lager arrived and he took a long slug.

  ‘And what do you do?’ I said.

  He put the glass down. ‘Work-wise I’m at B&Q, on the replenishment side of customer services, but I began as a roadie. Big Tallulah? Steve and the Sunshine Boys? The Krooks?’ He looked at me enquiringly. ‘None of them ring a bell?’

  I shook my head apologetically.

  ‘That’s how me and her met, back in 1995. She was a lovely singer, sang like a bird, though she gave it all up. She hasn’t sung a note since Jasmine left us.’

  He stopped and looked across the table at Yvonne.

  Alice was leaning over to point at items on Yvonne’s menu. ‘I think you should order moussaka. You like that.’

  ‘It’s a good thing I have you to tell me what I like,’ Yvonne said, putting the menu down. She seemed exhausted, letting her arms drop by her side as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

  ‘I don’t suppose anything has been the same since then,’ I said, turning back to Karl.

  ‘It’s a fucked-up world,’ he replied. ‘I can’t tell you what a hole she’s left. I don’t know. It can make you angry.’

  ‘What was Jasmine like?’ I said, after a beat.

  He folded his napkin into smaller and smaller squares. ‘She was a handful, I won’t tell a lie. Had a lot of tonsillitis and missed a lot of school, got a bit behind. But she loved her rabbits, though Yvonne was always having to nag her to clean out the hutch. They were at each other a lot, those two – fighting all the time, but it was just the age, you know? Jas had just got into Eminem, boys, doing everything to wind her mother up. Flashpoints.’

  I looked to the other side of the table, where the younger members of our party were all on their phones. ‘Teenagers can be trying,’ I said. ‘I realise that.’

  Karl pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and removed a photograph. It was a picture I’d already seen of Jasmine – the one with the ginger cat held up to her cheek. But this picture wasn’t cropped and in shot was a table piled with dirty takeaway cartons, a half-eaten pizza, a spilt bottle of beer, a different kind of kitchen to the one you might imagine – filthier, more out of control. Flashpoints.

  Karl’s voice seemed to get stuck at the back of his throat. ‘She had a wicked smile. Has.’

  Food arrived and Andrew snapped to it, bossing the waiter around, directing lamb kebabs and swordfish steaks. Yvonne and I had both ordered the moussaka, though I noticed she only picked at hers.

  Andrew was squeezing lemon on to his calamari with
one hand while gesturing at Phoebe to pass him the jug of water. ‘Big excitement here this week,’ he said. ‘Poor girl was raped after a night at the club.’

  Louis muttered something.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Alice, her eyes on him.

  ‘I said silly slapper.’

  ‘Louis!’

  ‘It’s what Paul called her.’

  My feet jerked forwards so violently, my chair legs scraped. ‘No I didn’t.’

  Andrew stood up. ‘Louis. That’s not a good thing to say.’

  He shrugged, and Alice put her hand on Yvonne’s. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  Yvonne moved her hand away. ‘Have they found the rapist?’ she asked.

  Alice exchanged a glance with Andrew. Her lips downturned slightly at the corners, and she gave a small shake of her head. Her earrings reflected the candlelight. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  I went to the bathroom after the meal, stared at my face in the mirror, tried to make it look relaxed, normal. I had a cigarette and was gone longer than I intended. When I got back to the table, only Tina was sitting there. The others, she told me, had wandered off – some to buy ice creams, others ‘to get some air’. Yvonne was feeling emotional, she admitted. Alice had offered to walk her home.

  ‘Did she want Alice to walk her home?’ I asked.

  Tina smiled, raising her eyebrows very slightly. ‘I don’t think she felt she had a choice.’

  The waiter brought the bill over and asked if we were ready to pay, or whether we would wait for our companions. I threw my head back and stared at the roof.

  ‘My turn, I suppose,’ I said, straightening up. I took my wallet out of my pocket and eased out my credit card, careful to shield the condoms as I did so. ‘I think I said I would get this one.’

  Tina turned the bill over and winced. ‘Let’s go halves,’ she said. ‘It’s quite hefty.’

  ‘Thank fuck,’ I said, settling in my chair once our cards had been accepted and returned.

  She laughed, studying me. ‘Poor Paul,’ she said.

  I sat back, expecting another of our cosy chats, a comfy corner carved out of our mutual isolation, perhaps a nightcap. The restaurant was emptying out, and a song that I liked was playing – a jazz standard that made me want to click my fingers and sway. I had an aggression or a sadness in me that needed releasing. But Tina didn’t seem to share my mood. Poor Tina. I wouldn’t have told her about Daisy, even if I hadn’t promised not to. She had enough worries of her own. She breathed in sharply and stood up. ‘I think I might join the kids in an ice cream,’ she said. ‘Do us a favour and nip to the supermarket? We need mineral water and toilet paper, and more coffee for the morning. I think that’s it, don’t you? Unless you can think of anything else we’re out of?’

  I shrugged, having no clue about what the house needed or didn’t need.

  ‘OK then,’ she said. ‘I told the others we’d meet at the car in fifteen minutes or so.’

  She left the restaurant, waving at the owner who was drinking with a friend by the door. I downed my glass of wine and finished what remained of hers, and after a few moments, I followed suit.

  The village was busy, as it always was at that hour, that tide-turning moment when families were starting to leave and young people were streaming in. From the nightclub across the bay, music throbbed, a heavy bass, with the intermittent high shriek of a whistle. Coloured lights flashed and strobed.

  I wandered slowly up to the supermarket. It was bright in there, and hot. Three men hovered by the alcohol. In the bakery section, the pastries looked shrivelled. I bought what we needed, and walked out into the square, idly looking around. I was about to walk up to the car, when on the other side of the street, I caught sight of Andrew going into Nico’s. I crossed over quickly, assuming he was returning to pay the bill and looking forward to telling him that I had dealt with it, but inside there was no sign of him. I scanned the street, and again I thought I saw him, heading in the direction of the nightclub.

  It was hard work to pass with any speed through the meandering holidaymakers. I managed to keep his head in sight until my foot caught the back of a sandal, and the person wearing it, a large man with bulbous calves, turned to glare. I apologised but, in that fraction of a second, I lost concentration. When I reached Club 19, at the end of the strip, Andrew had disappeared.

  Four teenage girls in tight skirts and heels were pausing at the entrance, to pull down their skirts, to shake out their hair, before going through the door.

  I was curious. I followed them in.

  The club, dimly lit and still quite empty, had a bar and a few tables. A young boy in wide jeans and a tight white shirt was standing behind the decks, big metal watch dangling from his wrist, headphones strung around his neck. Several teenage girls were swaying self-consciously against the walls. Up close, their skin flashed blue, and yellow and red.

  I stood for a moment, shopping bags dangling. Girls in hats and denim shorts, and tiny off-the-shoulder black dresses, legs and lashes, eyeliner, trembling clavicles. The music, the thump and grind, the ear-aching drone. And I knew, with sudden clarity, that I’d been here before. I’d met a girl that night after I’d split from Saffron and gone back with her to her rented room. And if I didn’t remember much else it was because she was just one girl in a stream of girls. And how old I felt now, how beyond all that. All I wanted, I realised, was to leave it all behind. Now I’d met Alice, it was within my grasp. I could be that person.

  I leant against the wall, exhausted by my own life, by the fucking snare of it.

  I didn’t hear him enter. Who could have, above the noise? The room had filled anyway by then. What was one more person, one more body?

  How long had he been there? Not long. A few minutes, seconds, before I turned and saw him.

  He raised his eyebrows at me, tilting his chin. I let a beat pass, trapped, and then I crossed the room.

  ‘Mr Morris,’ he said, when I reached him.

  ‘Lieutenant Gavras.’

  He bent to speak in my ear. ‘This reminds me of that famous English chat-up line. Do you come here often?’

  I pulled away, smiling. ‘Only once or twice.’

  He fixed me with his gaze, his brows heavy. ‘I thought you said you were too old for places of this nature?’

  ‘I am, but I’m looking for Andrew. I thought I saw him come in.’

  ‘You weren’t looking for a date?’

  ‘No. Of course not. I’ve got a date.’

  He nodded a couple of times, sticking out his lower lip. ‘Mrs Mackenzie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Delicate woman. Needs looking after.’

  ‘It’s funny – you’re the second person to have described her as delicate. But yes.’

  ‘So make sure you do.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The others were waiting in the lay-by when I got there. Bats swooped above their heads. Fireflies flickered. I apologised for being late. I didn’t mention my encounter with Gavras. I told them I thought I’d seen Andrew heading into the nightclub and followed out of curiosity. ‘Not me, mate,’ Andrew said, slapping me on the shoulder. He seemed to have picked up some of Karl’s mannerisms, in that irritatingly chameleon-like way of his. ‘Sure it wasn’t some hot piece of skirt? Time to get the old eyesight checked out, if not. It starts declining at your age.’

  I squashed up next to Alice in the back of the car. She kept sighing on the drive up to the house. ‘Glad that’s over,’ she said to everyone; and more quietly to me, ‘Thanks for making so much effort with Karl.’

  Andrew let out a guffaw from the front. ‘Did you hear him tell Paul he was “on the replenishment side of customer services”? You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Shelf-stacker!’

  ‘I liked him,’ I said.

  Alice put her hand on my thigh and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘I can
understand why the police might have been suspicious at first,’ I added. ‘Because of the way he looks, I suppose – but he’d known Jasmine since she was a baby. I think he genuinely loved her.’

  ‘To be honest,’ Alice said, ‘he did most of the parenting.’

  I looked at her, surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yvonne wasn’t particularly maternal.’

  I thought about this more the next morning when Yvonne and Karl arrived for an early swim. Karl was wearing shorts and sandals, both of which looked brand new, but Yvonne was swamped in a wrap-dress, which might have been another of Alice’s cast-offs. Her hair was loose, hanging in curtains on either side of her narrow face, and Alice fetched her a flowery hair-clip, standing back to admire how it looked. She seemed to be peeling off bits of herself and giving them to her. I think if she could have given Yvonne slivers of her own skin she would have done so. She would have flayed herself alive.

  Yvonne didn’t thank Alice for the clip, and I saw her pull it out a bit later, yanking out a piece of hair. She wasn’t grateful for her beneficence; she was bearing it. And of course this was understandable. Here was Alice so desperate to make things right, when Yvonne must be thinking nothing – none of Alice’s silly little offerings – would ever make it right. But I didn’t like Yvonne much. I felt guilty even thinking it. But there was something cold, and beady, about her. I know it seems a bit unfair to judge her on this – she’d lost a child, she should have been allowed to do what she liked for the rest of her life – but she didn’t laugh at people’s jokes, or even try to laugh. Not remotely. And most people do, whatever has happened to them, so it was just odd.

  It was a humid, slightly overcast day – thin white clouds were layered across the sky – and in the dull uniform light, the terrace and the pool looked grubby and grey. It wasn’t just the presence of Yvonne and Karl that ruined the atmosphere; it was also the weather. You get used to the sun and when it goes it leaves everyone feeling flat.

  I volunteered to help Tina make coffee and, alone in the kitchen, I heard myself say: ‘Did anyone ever look at Yvonne for Jasmine . . . I mean was she ever a suspect?’