Lie With Me

by Sabine Durrant

  ‘What did I do? What did I do wrong?’

  I was half drugged, but I remember her mouth on mine.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The workers had been creeping closer. The following morning they started in the copse just beyond the swimming pool. The jack-hammer destroying what was left of the wall woke everyone up. ‘Ignore it,’ Alice said in my ear. Her breath was damp and hot. A wrench of the sheet as she turned away. ‘It’s the only thing to do. Keep on as usual.’

  The sun was out, the sky a clear new blue, the world dried out, soil-cracking hot. Yesterday had been dull and then patchy. But this was the kind of heat that we’d come for – the kind of heat we deserved. Alice got up and went down to the pool, hoping to shame the builders into stopping, and I followed her. Artan was cleaning out the filter. I remember his cap stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans, the back of his head, the scraping noise. Andrew and Tina came down the steps, and Tina asked after my head. ‘I’ve got some aspirin up at the house,’ she said. ‘You should drink lots of water.’

  Andrew sneered. ‘Bit late for that.’

  Daisy arrived soon after, and peeled off her sundress, her slim body olive-brown. Artan watched her as she arranged herself on a towel. I remember that. And I remember thinking she knew he was watching and feeling mildly turned on by that, and also guilty, as if there was something I still had to do. Was Phoebe already with us? Details at this point matter. Yes. I remember stepping past her to reach an empty sunbed. I remember noticing the bleach of her hair against her dark roots, and the deliberate attempt she made, seeing me, to cover herself with a towel.

  I don’t remember the exact moment the construction stopped. It had been off and on all morning. I don’t remember a shout, the alarm first being raised. If I had heard it, I would have assumed a problem with the machinery. Possibly distant shouting filtered through into my consciousness. I was still fuzzy from the booze. I expect when the noise stopped, I sank with relief into the silence.

  On the sunbed, the world was still – that’s the impression I have, thinking back. Alice, lying on her front – her head turned to one side, a rigidity in her neck, the hand that held a book trailing on the ground. The laced pattern of the pool reflected on the underside of an umbrella. Gnats in the grass. Olive leaves silver in the sun. A hornet low and dangerous across the pool, a gurgle from the water filter.

  But then the voices changed and grew louder – an urgency in them, an alarm. Shouts like bullets. The sound of a car bumping up the field. The roar of a motorbike. Footsteps running. Boots on cracked vegetation, getting closer. I remember sitting up and seeing, through slowly clearing eyes, Gavras. Right there. In the scrub just below the pool, in the dappled shade of the low trees. Muscles bulging below his shirt sleeves. Too dark to see his face, but an arrow in his head – no, a twig caught in his hair, at an angle. Gavras took a few steps forward, out of the shadow, up the slope. There was something ghastly about his expression. Did he mouth something to Alice? I’m still not sure.

  Things I remember next: a violent clatter as Andrew’s sunbed jack-knifed. Alice running towards Gavras, and then away again back towards me, stumbling, stubbing her toe, her face stretched. Tina, throwing her dress on back to front and saying, ‘What is it?’ and Phoebe and Daisy wrapping themselves in towels and standing by the barbecue, and Andrew bent double, the tips of his shoulders pink with sunburn, scrabbling on the ground under the collapsed lounger for his phone. I remember seeing Artan talking quickly, in a language I didn’t recognise, to one of the labourers, and Gavras shouting into his phone in Greek.

  But most of all, I remember Alice’s voice, over and over again: ‘They’ve found her. They’ve found her.’

  I was extraordinarily calm. I felt like a bystander, a witness. Gavras put the phone back in his pocket and pushed his palms out at us, gesturing for us to go up to the house. I righted Andrew’s sunbed and picked up his phone. I rescued a towel that was dipping into the pool. And I put my arm around Alice’s shoulders and forced her up the path after the others. She was limping. Her toe was bleeding. She left smears of blood on each step. I made her sit on a chair while I washed it. I took her foot in my hand and inspected the loose flap of skin on one side of the toe and once I had stemmed the flow, I wrapped it tightly in some toilet paper. The blood soon began to seep through.

  Louis, huge and ungainly in a pair of pyjama bottoms, came out of his bedroom. ‘What’s happening?’

  Alice said: ‘It’s something to do with Jasmine.’

  Tina shook her head. ‘We don’t know that.’

  I looked up from Alice’s small, bleeding foot. ‘We don’t know anything,’ I said.

  No one came for hours. We huddled on the terrace, like actors in an Agatha Christie novel, waiting to be told what to do. Andrew, changed into beige chinos and a pale pink Fred Perry, went down to the pool to find out ‘what the hell was going on’ and was sent back. Gavras had asked permission to use the house for access and he had given it. ‘That’s all right, Alice, isn’t it?’ She nodded. Tina brought out some cold lamb chops, left over from the day before, and some tomatoes. Nobody ate. I cracked open a beer and then, watched by the others, wished I hadn’t.

  Archie and Frank walked down to the end of the drive and said the lane was blocked with police cars. They had stretched tape across the gate. ‘It can’t be another dog,’ Frank said. ‘They didn’t bother with tape for Paul’s dog.’

  ‘The dog Paul murdered,’ Phoebe added.

  ‘It wasn’t my dog,’ I said. ‘It had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘We should ring Yvonne,’ Alice kept saying. Her foot was still up on a chair, the blood-stained paper unravelling. She didn’t notice. I reaffixed it whenever I could get near her. ‘Just in case. She’d want to know.’

  ‘We shouldn’t.’ Andrew shook his head, and then nodded a few times, watching to check she understood.

  ‘It’s the way he nodded at me,’ Alice said. ‘I can’t get it out of my head.’

  She buried her face in her arms and rested them, crossed, on the table. Every few seconds her body convulsed in a silent shudder.

  ‘They might not have found anything. It might just be that one of the workers has been injured,’ Tina said. ‘Broken his leg or something. An industrial accident. They’d send for the police if it was serious. If machinery was involved. If it was the company’s fault.’

  ‘It’s Jasmine,’ Alice said, lifting her head. ‘I know it is.’

  Shadows shortened and then began to lengthen. The three boys had gone into the house and were playing on the Xbox. Tina was clearing up in the kitchen. Phoebe and Daisy had retired to my fag seat and were watching something on an iPad. Alice and Andrew were sitting, side by side, staring at the sea. I was pretending to read my book.

  A middle-aged man in a blue suit came round the side of the house, holding a briefcase, walked straight past, and descended the path down to the pool. Two younger women in white overalls followed a few minutes later, carrying heavy bags full of equipment. One of them nodded, but neither of them spoke. A few minutes later, the older man in the blue suit returned and stood on the edge of the terrace with his back to us, making a phone call. His suit jacket was cheap and too tight – the central seam was beginning to pull away.

  Alice lifted her head. ‘I wish we could speak Greek,’ she said.

  ‘How does he know we don’t speak Greek?’ Andrew said. ‘How does he know we don’t understand every word?’

  ‘It’s just so rude. Treating us like we don’t count.’

  I was looking at her while she spoke so I saw it on her face: the precise moment they came up the path. I saw her eyes darken, the hollows in her cheeks sink, the colour in her lips drain away.

  A small procession. The women in the white overalls came first. When they reached the terrace, they stood silently on either side of the path, waiting. Two men were bringing something up, carrying it between them, at the lowest reach of their arms, slowly, carefully, gingerl
y, keeping their burden level, trying not to jolt it. It was light. The men weren’t struggling under the physical weight. But there was something in their posture, in their expression, as if this was the heaviest burden they’d ever carried. The first man, Gavras’s handsome sidekick, appeared at the top of the path; following him a few feet behind, the bald policeman from the beach. When they were both on the flat of the terrace, they laid their burden down.

  It was a stretcher. On it was a piece of plastic sheeting. And under the plastic sheeting was an angular mass, flat, pale, soft, darkness, a smear of mud. Cloth and bones, and sinew. Not much. A handful of dust and dirt. The bald policeman leant forward with his elbows on his knees to get back his breath. Angelo, Gavras’s sidekick, crouched down to readjust the plastic, to tuck it in at one side. He did it delicately, with reverence. His throat moved; he swallowed, closing his eyes.

  ‘I am very sorry.’ Gavras had come up behind and was standing at the top of the path, his face grim. ‘Mrs Mackenzie – I . . . I am so very sorry.’

  Alice had stood up. Her hands were pressed to her cheeks. She was staring at the body on the ground with pity and terror in her eyes. Blotches had appeared on her throat.

  Andrew took a couple of steps forward and the chair behind him clattered over. His eyes were hollow. ‘Is it a body?’ he said. ‘Is it Jasmine?’

  Tina in the kitchen doorway let out a moan.

  ‘I can’t say anything for sure, but we have found some remains. I’m sorry.’

  I felt a hard lump at the back of my throat. Even at this point I was still expecting a different explanation. Some ancient horror, some mechanical mishap, some misunderstanding. Now I could feel their shock like ice on the surface of my own skin. I could feel it burning on every nerve ending.

  Angelo got back into position, checked he was in sync with his partner, and the two policemen lifted the stretcher up again and carried it, past the teenage girls, around the side of the house and out of sight. The women in the white overalls followed. Gavras stayed where he was.

  ‘It seems extraordinary if she was here on this land, so close to the house for all these years,’ I said.

  Alice spoke for the first time. Her voice came out gravelly, almost inaudible: ‘Have you told Yvonne?’ She cleared her throat and repeated the question more loudly. ‘Have you told Yvonne?’

  Gavras put his head on one side. ‘We don’t know for sure that it is Jasmine Hurley. Relevant procedures need to take place.’

  ‘You’ve found a body, haven’t you? Who else is it going to be? Of course it’s Jasmine.’

  ‘Mrs Mackenzie, I understand you are upset . . .’

  ‘HAVE YOU TOLD YVONNE?’

  Gavras stood up. ‘I’m on my way to talk to Mrs Hurley now. Some of my men will stay on the property while we arrange for a thorough search.’ He looked quickly from left to right, apparently overcome by indecision. ‘Um, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Is it all right if . . . We’ll need to search. We’ll need to talk to you, if it’s . . . Even if it isn’t . . .’ He seemed to have lost his confidence, his arrogance.

  Andrew stood up and took control. He put his hand out – an invitation to Gavras to shake it. ‘We’ll be here. No one is going anywhere,’ he said. ‘Is it all right if we use the house? Yes? That OK? We’ll just be here.’

  Gavras took his hand. ‘Thank you. Yes. Yes. I am sure that is . . . yes. I will . . . I will be back in, um, due course.’

  He turned and took a step away and then he paused. ‘Mr Hopkins? If I could have a word?’

  Andrew peeled himself from the table, resting his hand very lightly for a moment on Alice’s shoulder, and the two men walked together across the terrace where they stood in conversation.

  I tried to follow their lips, to read what they were saying.

  ‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ I said to Alice.

  She didn’t answer. I turned. Her phone was on the table but she’d gone.

  ‘Alice?’ I called. ‘Tina?’

  No answer.

  Andrew was walking back across the terrace.

  ‘Paul,’ he said. ‘A word, if I may.’

  A word. Same phrase Gavras had used. I didn’t answer but nodded. He had to run everything, organise everyone.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, then. I should tell you the lieutenant is particularly keen that you shouldn’t leave the house for the time being. I’ve told him I will ensure that.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I know a lot else is going on but he still has a few further questions for you, regarding your relationship with Laura Cratchet. Nothing to worry about unduly.’

  ‘Laura Cratchet?’ It took me a second to work out who he meant. ‘I have no relationship with Laura Cratchet.’

  ‘I’m only repeating what he said.’ He was loving it. The little fucker.

  I stared at him but I wasn’t going to stare him out. Behind him the sea crawled. A motorboat sped, churning a tiny white path like an aeroplane trail.

  I went straight to the bedroom to look for Alice. Tina was leaving as I got there. She brushed past me in the doorway. ‘Be kind,’ she murmured.

  Alice was lying on the bed, her dress wrinkled up and twisted around her thighs, damp, her face buried in the pillow.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you were wrong.’ I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair, noticed the pearls of perspiration on her forehead. ‘I’m so sorry. If it’s right. It’s just awful – for Yvonne, for you, for everyone.’

  She let out a deep, long, trembling sigh, and I forgot my own worry as another of those overwhelming tides of tenderness and pity crashed over me. I thought about all the time and money she had spent on this campaign, how much of her own heart she had given over to it, how the loss of Jasmine, a girl she had never met, had driven her half mad, and I wanted to wrap her in a blanket, and to hold her in my arms, close to my chest.

  I pulled a strand of hair loose and smoothed it back. I said quite a lot more about how much I knew people depended on her, and how extraordinarily self-sacrificing she had been, how much she had supported Yvonne, how much she had personally shouldered, what a burden the hope had been, and what an amazing mother she was. ‘I think you’re . . .’ I began to say, and then my voice cracked, ‘wonderful.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  The afternoon lengthened, the heat sank from the day. After a while, I lay down next to her.

  Andrew was standing in the doorway. A dark shape. He couldn’t have been there long, watching us. He stretched out his hand. Alice’s phone lay on his palm. He said, cupping it with his other hand, ‘It’s Karl. I answered. I couldn’t not.’

  She sat up, stared at him. Her hair clung, damp, to her face. Red creases from the pillow.

  I thought of Salome bringing the head of John the Baptist to Herodias.

  Andrew said: ‘He wants to speak to you.’

  Alice swept her legs sideways off the bed and stumbled across to him, her dress crinkled. She tucked her hair behind her ears and, taking the phone from him, pushed open the door to the terrace. I heard her voice, distinct, outside. ‘My dear Karl. How is she? . . . I’m sure . . . Unimaginable . . . The worst . . .’ A noise, half-sigh, half-shudder. ‘Can she bear to? If she wants to. If she can. Yes, of course.’

  A long silence, and then, her voice clear again, ‘Darling. My darling girl. We don’t know for sure yet, but yes . . . Words can’t express . . .’ A long silence and then: ‘Yes. I know.’

  Andrew had followed her out. I wondered if he had his arm around her.

  ‘We’ve been asked to stay here,’ she said. ‘But I’ll come to see you the moment I can.’ A long pause, and then her voice softer: ‘We don’t know . . .’ Another silence. ‘All my thoughts, all my love . . . Yvonne. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Nothing for a moment, and then she said: ‘She’s gone. She’s hun
g up.’

  Alice came back into the room alone. I was lying where I’d been when she left. I hadn’t moved. ‘How is she taking it?’ I said.

  ‘Still in shock. The police are with her.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘If nothing else, they’ll want to see how she reacts.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever wondered?’

  ‘Paul. Don’t.’

  ‘Would she have known about the well? Whoever killed Jasmine might have known about the well. How close was the apartment block where they were staying?’

  ‘For goodness sake, Paul, not now.’

  She crossed to the bathroom and I heard the sound of water splashing into the sink. She washed her face, I think, and cleaned her teeth. I sensed the dampness of her cheeks when she lay back down, smelt the mint of her breath.

  It wasn’t me that started it. I wouldn’t have dared. She peeled her dress off, followed by the red bikini she was wearing underneath – and, naked, she rolled on top of me, pressing the length of her body against mine, and brought her mouth down hard. I kissed her with some alarm, but equally hard as it seemed to be what she was expecting. She pinned my arms above my head and pulled up my T-shirt. Her hands moved under the waistband of my shorts, her knee thrust between my thighs, her breasts against my chest. She rubbed her body from side to side, pushing much harder than I would have dared.

  In one movement I wriggled my arms free and lifted her until she was underneath me. Her breathing was fast, her eyes tightly closed. She tugged again at my zip. I bent to graze her mouth and then kept her waiting for as long as I could before I was inside her. Her mouth opened, her tongue sought mine. When I lowered my face, I felt her teeth pushing hard against my lower lip. I pulled away. Her hands were tangled in my hair. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said. ‘Don’t you fucking stop.’

  So I didn’t. But I slowed it down. I slowed it right down until she could bear it no longer. And I watched her face again as she cried out, as, finally, she came.