Lie With Me

by Sabine Durrant

  My agent had emailed too. He’d read through the last thing I’d sent him and he was very sorry but ‘it wasn’t quite for him’. He’d also ‘been thinking’ and in the course of trying to ‘pare down his list’, he wasn’t sure I was still ‘the right fit’.

  I drank my bitter coffee down in two gulps and binned his email along with the spam.

  The analogue clock counting down on the screen showed five more minutes. I was about to call it a day. Instead, I had an idea. I opened a new window, and in the header for Google search I wrote: ‘Florence Hopkins, suicide’ and waited.

  The internet searched; a circular disc spun across the screen. Several results.

  Florence Hopkins Death Records

  Birth, Marriage & Death (BMD) Unwanted Certificate Services

  Eighty Suicides Linked to Coalition Cuts

  Alan Sugar Slams Katie Hopkins for Controversial Comments

  But halfway down: Funeral for Tragic Cambridge Student

  I clicked, waited while the disc spun again, and then a window opened on the screen – it was an article from the Hampshire Chronicle. Two photographs began slowly to download. One was a family group, of parents clinging to each other, a young man with his arm out to steer them into a car. The other was of a young girl holding a sparkler, the glitter throwing flints of light on to her face. She had spiky hair, and a wide smile, and a familiar large gap between her two front teeth.

  The article was short: ‘David Hopkins, a local businessman, and his wife Cynthia are supported by their son Andrew at the funeral of their beloved daughter, Florence, who died two weeks ago. Florence, known as Florrie, a student at Cambridge University, had been suffering from depression since the spring. ‘She was a wonderful person, a joy to teach,’ said her former headmistress. ‘She is a great loss to the college community and to her family.’’

  ‘David Hopkins, who is understood to have stood down as managing director of Akorn Investments, was unavailable for comment.’

  I looked at the date at the top of the article. July 1994.

  It took a moment to sink in. Her funeral was a month after I left Cambridge.

  A motorbike-scooter wailed past the cafe. I felt the legs of the plastic chair bow as I rocked back. My fingers held the table. I felt the scratch of sugar on the Formica table, the stickiness of it under my nails.

  I have been in league with cruelty . . . and charmless callous ways.

  She had killed herself a matter of weeks after we had dated – or whatever it was we had done. Hell: we had dated. I had thought of her death as nothing to do with me. But it was. It was the girl I had known who had killed herself, not the imaginary person she had become. We had got to know each other in April or May that year. She killed herself so soon after, in July – a month I had spent being cosseted by publishers, making the deal, being interviewed for the Bookseller, my talent held up and marvelled at like a precious jewel.

  I sat in the cafe and I thought about Florrie properly for the first time since any of this had happened. I remembered listening to music in her room, the roughness of the wall above her bed, the thin, cheap texture of her pillow. A sunflower motif. A polka-dot top in a slippery fabric. I remember kissing her. I must have slept with her, too, but the precise memory was just out of reach. I had seduced a couple of girls in her year – freshers’ week was particularly busy – but Florrie? Of course I had. All my relationships had been sexual. Why would it have been any different with her? I felt regret, and sadness, and a vague sense of guilt – that letter I’d scrunched up and thrown in the bin. Poor Florrie. And did this new information affect my relationship with Andrew? With Alice? Were there conversations I needed to review? Behaviour of my own I needed to think more about? Surely not. Florrie had been depressed, mentally ill. It was nothing to do with me.

  The man behind the counter was staring at me. ‘More money?’ he said. ‘More internet?’

  I shook my head and pushed back my chair. Its plastic legs tangled with the plastic legs of the chair behind, and I kicked at them to separate them. And then I was out in the street, walking away from the cafe.

  I had already started the engine when I remembered the lye. Under normal circumstances, I would have given up. But I was in a mood, dazed still by the news about Florrie, and grateful for a task both to distract my mind and delay my return.

  A man I asked outside the supermarket suggested another shop – a five-minute walk in the opposite direction to the town centre. It was more of a shack really, a hotchpotch of homewares, packet food, and what looked like car parts. Two men in vest tops sat on chairs outside it, drinking tiny glasses of coffee. One of them, overhearing my conversation with the owner, gestured me over and, after establishing I had wheels at my disposal, gave me complicated directions, which I only half followed, to Praktiker, a shop on the other side of town.

  I returned to the car and drove aimlessly for a while in circles on the outskirts of Trigaki. I found myself deep in the mini-industrial area when I saw the large red sign reading Praktiker across a low-slung home improvement centre.

  Inside, among the ranks of paints, buckets and small-scale agricultural equipment, I was directed to a row of large plastic bottles, which, I was assured by an overalled assistant, was lye – sodium hydroxide. As I paid, it struck me that the container was identical to the container I had picked up in the shed. Perhaps I needn’t have gone to so much effort.

  The police were back. The same car parked in the yard – white with blue writing and a strip of rust above the front right wheel arch. Bloody hell. Groundhog Day. Were they ever going to leave us alone? I pulled up behind as close as I could.

  Tina met me as I was getting out of the car. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got a visitor? What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing.’

  She took the box of shopping out of the boot and carried it around the side of the house. I followed, hands empty but for the plastic bag containing the bottle of lye.

  The terrace looked different without the sun, the view flat. No light and shade, no pools of sunshine, no pockets of shadow, just gloomy. The spikes of lavender in their black-streaked pots looked menacing.

  Voices at the far end by the kitchen door. Gavras standing, a cup of coffee in his hand; a burst of laughter, all chummy.

  He saw me coming towards him and he handed the cup of coffee to someone standing half in the kitchen, then made a wiping movement with the ball of his hands, knocking them together, removing crumbs.

  ‘Mr Morris,’ he said. ‘We were beginning to think you were never coming back.’

  ‘Just doing a spot of shopping,’ I said. ‘We’re having a barbecue.’

  Alice stepped out of the kitchen doorway. She was wearing the Topshop bikini, with a towel over her shoulders – an odd choice, I had time to think, for an overcast day. She did her thing with her lip, biting it, twisting it to one side. ‘Paul. Lieutenant Gavras has some questions . . . Could you . . .’ She raised both hands, palms out. ‘Do you want to do it here?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, before realising she wasn’t addressing me. I had already sat down. The cushion was damp; I felt the wetness seep into the seat of my trousers. I rested the plastic bag at my feet.

  Gavras looked at Alice, and he looked at his watch, and then, making a decision, he pulled the chair out opposite me and sat down, too. He was carrying a briefcase and he snapped the clasp and took out the notebook from the previous day.

  I turned my head to catch Alice’s eye. Tina was moving about in the kitchen now, putting away the shopping. The suck of the fridge, the click of cupboards. Otherwise, the house seemed quiet. ‘Where are the others?’ I said.

  ‘They’ve gone into Stefanos for a coffee.’

  I nodded, as if it were a matter on which my opinion had any bearing, and turned back to the policeman. ‘OK. So what’s this about? More about the dog? How can I help you?’

  ‘So, Mr Morris. I
am sorry to inconvenience you in the middle of your holiday. Nothing . . . nothing . . . too important.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I can’t believe how busy I’ve been this week. A rape, a dog with his throat cut. Normally it is so quiet here in Agios Stefanos. How much more interesting life has been since you arrived, Mr Morris.’

  I shrugged. ‘Neither of those things have anything to do with me.’

  Gavras spun his open notebook round and peered down. ‘A few minor matters,’ he said in a conversational tone. ‘A couple of curiosities.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You arrived, you say, on the Thomas Cook flight from Gatwick on Monday?’

  I tried to will the blood not to rise to my face. I had a split second to decide. If Alice hadn’t been present, I’d have told the truth. But in that split second, I cared more for her opinion than his. I managed to say, ‘Yup . . .’

  ‘Do you still have your boarding pass, or ticket?’

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  He nodded very slightly. ‘So you were still at home in London on Sunday night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the property you own at . . .’ He looked down at his notebook and read out Alex’s address in Bloomsbury.

  I hardly faltered. ‘That would be correct.’

  ‘Odd,’ he said musingly. ‘The registered owner of that property is a Mr Alex Young.’

  Alice took a step closer. She was frowning, her head on one side.

  I said: ‘Alex Young is the freeholder.’

  Gavras studied me, his chin lifted, the corners of his mouth downturned. ‘Ah. I see. We can return to that. At any rate, wherever you left home that morning, you took the Thomas Cook flight, leaving London Gatwick at 5.10 a.m., and landing at Ionnasis Vikelas International Airport, Pyros at 7.40 a.m.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Morris,’ he said kindly. ‘It doesn’t take my team long to check these sorts of things. Passenger lists.’

  I rotated my shoulders as if they were stiff.

  ‘Where are you going with this?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I am just keen to establish that Mr Morris was not in Pyros town on Sunday night at the Pig and Whistle bar?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘And Laura Cratchet is unknown to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Despite the fact that Mr Hopkins remembers you saying hello to her in Stefanos earlier during the evening of the rape, greeting her –’ he looked down again at his notes ‘– “like an old friend”?’

  ‘I think she said hello to me first. I had seen her on the bus.’

  ‘And noticed her?’

  I closed my eyes briefly. ‘Enough to recognise her later, that’s all.’

  ‘And when I saw you in the nightclub on your own on Thursday night, you had just wandered in by accident?’

  ‘Not by accident, but as I explained, because I thought I saw Andrew going in there.’

  Alice was standing right next to me now. She brought her hand up and rubbed the ball of it across her eye. Then, taking it away, she said, her voice cool: ‘Mr Morris has confirmed his address and the arrival of his flight from London, and has reassured you that he was neither in Pyros town on Sunday night, nor a close personal friend of the rape victim. Was that all you needed, Lieutenant Gavras?’

  Gavras was writing in his notebook. He put his pen down on the table. ‘One other curiosity.’ He sighed. ‘A conversation we had regarding the guard dog.’

  ‘I didn’t do it – you know that. It was almost definitely Alice’s caretaker, Artan.’

  ‘My question,’ he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘regards your whereabouts during the hours when the creature had its throat cut. To be precise, the trip you took to the Helladic Settlement at Okarta.’

  I said, ‘I don’t see why this is a police matter.’

  ‘Enjoyable, was it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leant back, tucking his shirt into his trousers. ‘It amazes me, Mr Morris, that you found so much to interest you at the Helladic Settlement, since the site is temporarily closed for renovation.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Alice said.

  My eyes felt dry and my tongue swollen.

  ‘I did go,’ I said. ‘I did see the ruins. There was no one in the ticket office to pay; I thought that was a bit odd. But I got in and walked around OK.’

  ‘And you got the bus?’

  I nodded.

  ‘How fortunate you were to find “a bus” going into the interior of the island. Unusual.’

  ‘My mother used to say I had the luck of the devil.’ I looked at him and he looked at me. His eyes were narrowed. ‘So if that’s it. I might go and have a shower.’

  I stood up, without waiting for an answer, and began to walk casually across the terrace towards the bedroom door. As soon as I had my back to him, I felt a desire to run, a sort of explosive panic in my feet. I was ready for the sound of footsteps, for the winding thud of Gavras’s body, for the twist of my arm. But there was nothing. The squeak of my shoes. The cockerel in the distance. Cicadas.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon playing the role of model boyfriend. I attended the barbecue, turning and basting the chargrilled meat, my eyes filled with smoke, my hands scalded by tiny splatters of oil, without complaint. I served up, and I cleared away. I charged people’s drinks. I found fresh ice. The sun broke through the clouds and reminded us we were on holiday. The builders hadn’t yet returned and the peace was like a gift. Pigeons coo’ed and swallows swooped, darts across the pool. There were jokes and laughter. Someone swam – small splashes, sharp intakes of breath, sighs of pleasure. Normally, I’d have slept after lunch, but today I kept myself alert to other people’s needs. Tina forgot her paints and I went back up to the house to collect them. Yvonne was hot in the sun and I moved her lounger to the shade. Frank and Archie needed a third to play a card game called ‘Cheat’ and I was the first to volunteer.

  We played at the table under the gazebo, next to a plant with big trumpet-like white flowers and dark pink centres, yellow stamens. The petals were dropping on the ground, where they lay crinkled like tissues. I won the game – the best cheat there, it turned out – and afterwards the boys leapt into the pool. Alice was sitting on a chair next to Yvonne’s lounger and she smiled across at me. ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed, wrinkling her nose. One of the flowers had flopped on to the table. I picked it up and stroked it across my lips. It was soft and velvety, and smelt like almonds. It felt like promise, like sex, like hope.

  I wasn’t worried about Gavras – not now he’d left. They were small lies I’d told; what mattered now was Alice. I’d tell her the truth later, as soon as we were alone. The sort of mistakes I’d made, the kind that were natural to me in the past, I wouldn’t make again. Not now I was with her. Small lies, small errors of judgement – they added up. It was better to be truthful, to be honest, to take care of other people. Take Florrie. Poor dead Florrie. I should have known she was vulnerable; I should have picked up on the danger of it. She had loved me – I could hear her voice whispering it in my ear; feel her lips on my neck, remember pushing my tongue into her mouth, my body against hers. But I had gone to London and left her. That letter, screwed up. Phone calls I didn’t return. I should have been kinder.

  I gazed across again at Alice, hoping to catch her eye again, to convey how I felt. I was different now, I’d turned a corner, all because of her. But she was leaning back stiffly in her chair, her lids closed. Yvonne basically ignored or snapped at her. Nothing was ever right with Yvonne – the meat was burned, the wine too warm, Karl was telling a story she’d heard too many times before. She was sour and strangely resentful, and someone like me might find that suspicious, but Alice stayed by her side, stuck with her. That was the definition of goodness, of kindness. And I would learn from it. Maybe I’d confess about Florrie, explain my guilt. And what else? Artan and Daisy? Should I divulge what I saw? Or should I keep my promise? What was the r
ight thing, the most honest thing? Oh God, it was a minefield. The selfish response to events was so much more straightforward than the morally correct.

  ‘Dropping off, are we?’

  I must have closed my eyes for an instant, and Andrew was leering down at me.

  ‘No. Thinking.’

  ‘Planning your next book?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it.’ He slapped me on the shoulder before heading for the steps. ‘Got some calls to make,’ he said loudly.

  ‘But it’s Saturday,’ Tina said. ‘I thought now you were partner . . .’

  ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  Of course I ruined it by drinking too much. I don’t know what happened. I think the lamb at lunch was too salty and I downed one too many beers or glasses of wine to compensate. Perhaps that was the problem – I was mixing. Or perhaps it was the stress of the day, the shopping trip, and the efforts to impress. I was aware of dusk falling, and the lights flicking from the house, the steps up to the terrace rickety and uneven, the shrubs closing in on me as I climbed. I was aware of Andrew enjoying every minute. ‘Oopsadaisy,’ he said as I stumbled. I tried to make a joke. ‘Oops your own Daisy,’ I tried to say, but I don’t think it came out right.

  A hand under my am, plates clattering, conversation louder and then quiet. The dark bedroom. The cool of the pillow against my face. My head was full of Florrie, and of Jasmine, of dead girls and missing girls, of certainty and uncertainty. My head began to pound and I felt a dread that was like sediment blocking the flow of my blood.

  When Alice came in, I pulled her down. ‘Lie with me.’

  Her body moved close, swellings and dips.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ I murmured.

  ‘You just called me Florrie.’