Little Liar

by Julia Gray

  By the time I stepped onto the stage I was bone-dead-tired, with a head full of ladders and snakes. But even so, I think I raised the bar considerably for the second performance of A Doll’s House that was also the last. I pushed myself that little bit further, reaching for greater emotional depths, trying to convey Nora’s desperation, her conflicting desires, with both subtlety and power. I didn’t even look for Bel and Azia and Zubin, to see if they were there, because I could not afford to take myself out of Nora Helmer. I assumed her, as though her skeleton were mine, and when the curtain fell I clung to Megan’s hand and knew that this was a higher and finer up than there had ever been before.

  Now I understood why Phyllis Lane mourned at the end of her productions. When it was all over, and Mrs Tomaski was warbling praise and donations were clinking in buckets, I realised that my Nora was dead. I would never see her again. Evie’d left a pile of shoe boxes in the dressing room in order to collect small accessories and store them together. Taking one, I filled it with Nora’s things. False eyelashes. Sheer tights. A stick of foundation. My scribbled-on script.

  It wasn’t until I came out, when the audience had mostly gone and they were sweeping the theatre floor, that I saw her, sitting at the back, her feet up on a seat, as usual.

  ‘Darling, you were marvellous,’ said Bel, in her most English-English accent.

  She was wearing a red-and-gold kimono, one I’d never seen before, and a bowler hat.

  ‘And Azia and Zubin? Did they like it too?’ I asked, as she hugged me fiercely and I hugged her back.

  ‘They thought it was too, too marvellous,’ Bel told me, taking me by the arm and leading me away through the car park. ‘They had to go, buzzing off home. Good little worker bees.’

  ‘I saw your dad …’ I began.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t know … I hope …’ It was hard to express myself, for once. ‘I think he’s going to think about everything. I did what I could.’

  ‘I know you did, honey,’ she said. ‘So long, Lady Agatha Shithead.’ She turned and gave the gates a smart salute, turning it at the last minute into a raised middle finger. ‘God, I’m glad I never have to come back to this place. What you got there?’ said Bel. She was looking at my shoe box.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Just rubbish.’ I pushed it into the bin on the corner as we passed.

  ‘Now we must have an after-party,’ said Bel. ‘Where would you like to go?’ She reeled off various places: a house party in Shoreditch, a squat party in Brixton, a rave in Kings Cross. All had possibilities, by which she meant the music would be loud and the drinks free-flowing.

  ‘Anywhere’s fine with me,’ I said. ‘Whatever you want to do.’

  I was actually quite hungry; what I really wanted was dinner somewhere cheap and near. But I didn’t suggest it. I wished Azia had stayed. I wanted to hear her observations; I needed an objective dissection of the play. Marvellous was not enough. I wondered what Bel had really thought.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Bel, whistling shrilly for a cab. ‘Giacomo’s boat! He’s having a do. Someone’s birthday. We’ll crash it. Perfect.’

  I protested: ‘But that’s miles away.’

  She was already instructing the driver, in the expansive, confident way that she had. I wondered where Cody was. Out doing her bidding elsewhere, perhaps. She lounged back, boots on the flip-down seat, as though she were at the cinema. From her pocket, she took a blister pack of pills and a hip flask. I watched her medicate herself, not asking what it was that she was taking. I’d see soon enough from the effects.

  ‘Nora’s a bit of a heartless cow at the end, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘Just to waltz off and leave him.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think she’s brave. She realises he values his reputation more than he values her – as a person, not as an idea …’

  ‘Maybe it was just the way you played her.’

  I looked at her sideways; she was grinning wickedly, showing her missing tooth. Her bubble-hair was growing out, clouding around her ears.

  ‘Just kidding,’ she said.

  ‘Isn’t Giacomo annoyed with you still?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, all is forgiven. He never holds a grudge for long.’

  From this I inferred that someone had paid him back for the damage to his property, though it wouldn’t necessarily have been Bel. A Chaka Khan song flared on the radio – Ain’t Nobody – and Bel tapped on the screen in front of us, asking the driver to turn up the volume. She sang along loudly, kicking her heels. I turned and looked out of the window. I hoped Bel wasn’t going to make me pay for the taxi; she had a habit of doing that. I only had an emergency tenner in my jacket pocket. To Hampton Court in a black cab would be at least £35, if not more. My stomach gave another flip of hunger.

  We hit one red light, then another; the meter crept up.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked her. ‘D’you want to stop somewhere on the way and have dinner?’

  ‘Oh, Giacomo always has food,’ said Bel. ‘Maybe even a barbecue.’

  My up was fast dissolving; not going down as such, but more thinning out onto a kind of plateau. I felt edgy and light-headed, both sleepy and awake. Another song came on the radio and Bel carried on singing, although I wasn’t sure she knew what it was. As she shifted about on the seat, I heard the clunk of her hip flask. I watched her, toneless and joyful, her fine-boned face striped amber by the emerging street lights as we drew nearer to Constantine’s wharf.

  Pause. Freeze. Bel and I are climbing out of the taxi, her arm around my shoulder, her sleeve brushing against my skin. Here is the wharf, with the chain of boats at their moorings and their elegant, childish names lettered on their sides. Just past the late-June sunset, there’s enough light about to give the scene a kind of magical clarity. Bel is wearing white boots with little spike heels; I am wearing jeans and a T-shirt underneath my jacket; the smudges of my stage makeup. We are holding hands like children as we huddle at the driver’s window. Me and Bel; Bel and me.

  It’s a frame I am almost fond of freezing.

  Bel pushed a bundle of notes into the driver’s hand.

  ‘You look a lot like that Kate Winslet,’ he informed her. ‘Need a receipt?’

  ‘No thanks, my good man,’ she said.

  She was still holding my hand as we walked away towards the dark-blue Morgan le Fay. The sun slipped down over the horizon, spangling the river with a spillage of fine gold rays. It was very quiet. There was no sound of a party. But it was still early.

  ‘Bel,’ I said. ‘I actually don’t feel that great.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly! We’ll dose you with medicinal cocktails and you’ll be right as rain in no time. It’s theatre; it’ll do that to you. The buzz wears off. I understand completely. Just give it an hour or two. Besides, I just paid an arm and a leg for the taxi.’

  She propelled me closer, and I thought about how there would have been a time, three or four months ago, when I’d have given an arm and a leg myself, to go to a party on a boat with Bel. Now I hung back.

  She took a low bow, ushering me ahead. ‘After you, sweet pea. Leading lady. You really were fabulous, by the way. I felt rather in awe of you.’

  I decided that the sooner I went to this party, the sooner I could leave it. That sometimes worked, with Bel – if you showed willing to go with her somewhere, no matter how late it was, she often didn’t mind if you left not long after arriving. I walked across the gangplank, the Thames a muddy scrawl below, and onto the deck. The door to the wheelhouse stood partially open. Flowers, some alive and some dead, stood in terracotta pots at the prow of the boat.

  ‘Oh!’ said Bel, behind me. ‘I left something in the cab.’

  I turned back but she waved at me: stay there.

  ‘Go right inside, angel. You’re shivering. Go down and say hello to Giacomo. I’ll be back in two seconds.’

  She flapped away, her kimono a goldfish flash against the grey of the quay. She was a
famous leaver of objects; usually I checked to see if she’d deposited the contents of her pockets on the seats of restaurants and taxis, but this time I hadn’t looked. I put my hand against the door and pushed it; it swung open, and I stepped into the wheelhouse, where Zubin had slept in a chair while the party churned below with greenish revelry.

  ‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Giacomo?’

  There was no sign of life. A lamp with an orange shade burned in the corner, otherwise it was dark inside. I hesitated, wondering if I should go any further. I was beginning to feel loose-limbed with hunger. I couldn’t hear Bel. Descending the steps, I saw no one about. Perhaps Giacomo had gone to the shops. I sat down on the banquette, suddenly too tired to stay on my feet. Why was I so far from home? It would take me over an hour to get back. I longed for my bed. And where was Bel?

  For answer, the door to the wheelhouse above me clicked shut.

  ‘Bel?’ I called, going back up the stairs.

  I went to the door and twisted the handle. It was locked.

  ‘Bel, what are you doing?’

  ‘We are going to have a chat, you and me,’ she said, in what was almost, but not quite, her normal voice. ‘Do you remember when we went swimming in the ponds, and I said that if you ever betrayed me I’d drown you?’

  I remembered: green-gold water and her hands on my shoulders. Her laugh as she pushed me under.

  ‘Well, I considered this for quite a while, and I realised, honey, that you’re far too good at swimming. Like the sea snake that you are.’

  ‘Bel, what’s the matter? Can you please open the door?’

  I twisted the handle again, rattled it, pulled at it. Nothing.

  ‘I can’t do that. I’d like you to sit and consider your actions, in silence. And while you do that, I’m going to tell you a story. A fairy tale, in fact. Once upon a time, there was a young girl. She was kind and beautiful and good, with the loveliest golden hair, and everyone who met her loved her at first sight. Now, one day she met another girl, who was lost. She was not so loved, and not so beautiful, but Goldenhair took the Lost Girl under her wing, and the two became friends.’

  Her voice kept growing and fading; she was obviously pacing up and down, making showy hand gestures for the benefit of no one. It was a planned speech; I could hear that. She’d written a script. That scared me. If her speech was planned … what else had she planned to go with it? While she was talking, I reached into my pocket for my phone. I needed to text Darian: Help. Come quickly.

  But I didn’t have my phone. I couldn’t remember whether I’d left it at home, or at school. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that it wasn’t there.

  The orange lamp hummed.

  Bel went on, ‘Now it happened that one day a special troupe of actors came passing through the town, and they were putting on a magnificent performance – a Pageant of Purple Flowers – and they needed one little girl to come and play the part of the Grand Sorceress. Who did they choose? Why, the girl with the golden hair. No one could have been more suited to the part. And oh, her friend pretended to be terribly pleased for her. But inside she schemed fiendishly, thinking of all the tricks she might be able to play so that she could have the part of the Sorceress herself. Because the lost little girl was not a true friend. Not the slightest bit.’

  There was a pause. It was the end of Act One, and she was waiting for the audience to applaud her.

  ‘I must continue,’ said Bel. ‘The day of the Pageant approached, and all the while the Lost Girl kept pretending, helping our golden-haired heroine with her lines, her steps, her outfits … even her hair. But while our heroine’s back was turned, she stole by the dim light of dusk to the ceremonial rooms where our heroine’s family lived.’

  A pause.

  She was breathless now, as though she were carrying something, or moving things about.

  ‘Shall I go on? The Lost Girl crept on tippy-toes until she came to Goldenhair’s father, the Lord of Moving Light. A mighty and all-powerful fellow he was. He loved his daughter very much, but he loved something more than his daughter, and that was Show Business. It was important to him that the Pageant should be a success. The Lost Girl knew this, and she worked on him and worked on him as though he were a piece of embroidery, until he almost believed that it was his own idea.’

  Silence now.

  I wondered if she’d gone. Was she planning to abandon me here, on the boat, until somebody heard me screaming or Giacomo returned? I looked through each porthole in turn. There was no sign of her. But I was sure that she was still there. Then came a slithery sound, a sheet of paper appeared under the door. From the print, I could see that it was an email chain.

  ‘Any guesses, Nora, as to the identity of the villainess?’

  ‘Bel,’ I said. ‘This is madness.’

  ‘Just read the goddamn thing.’

  They were emails between Anton Ingram and Gabriel Glass. How she’d got hold of her father’s emails I hadn’t a clue – but then, it seemed that Bel was capable of so much more than I’d ever imagined. The emails were dated from late the previous night. Anton would have sent the first when he’d got home after our drink in Soho.

  Have an idea, which I’d love to run past you. It seems that Nora – you met her in Cannes, and liked v much – is not only a serious budding actress but knows every word of Clementine. Worth looking into? As you know, I’ve reservations about Annabel, as passionate as I know she is about this opportunity. Let’s speak as early as you like in the a.m.

  ‘I don’t know how I gave him that impression …’ I said. ‘Honestly, Bel! Everything I did was to help you.’

  ‘Read on,’ said Bel.

  Gabriel’s response was short and interested.

  Then came another from Anton.

  Suggest we approach Nora and see if we can take things further. I got the impression that she’d be very up for the challenge. Bel won’t be pleased, but I’m prepared to handle things this end.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Bel, ‘Daddy thinks you’re the next best most talented thing since white … sliced … baguette. I don’t know what you said to convince him last night, Nora, but I assume you used all your feminine wiles. You’re a bit of an expert at feminine wiles, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, methinks the lady doth protest. I know what you did to the Art Man.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Your dad did ask me if I thought you were up to it. And I said yes. I said yes in a million ways. I promise you I did.’

  I remembered the previous evening: low-lit club, beautiful people, green-shaded lamp. Another scene in the Drama of Nora, played to perfection. Or so I’d thought. But here I was, on the wrong side of a locked door, and there was a girl in a red kimono with potentially psychopathic tendencies (should I not have seen this, all along?) on the other side, and she was the one with the key.

  ‘I must just tell you the end of the story,’ said Bel, still in that worryingly even tone. ‘Goldenhair’s father thought nothing of casting his own daughter aside. With open arms, he embraced the Lost Girl, who had betrayed her only friend.’

  Her voice got gradually fainter. I began to think she’d gone.

  ‘But they’d both forgotten one small thing,’ said Bel. ‘His daughter was very, very adept at revenge.’

  A little later, I heard the sound of somebody striking a match.

  9

  Denial came first.

  Yellowy flames sprang up like weeds, feasting on the kerosene that Annabel Ingram must have poured onto the deck, and still part of me couldn’t believe that it was happening. No, I kept thinking. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t possibly. But Bel – gone in a whirl of silk and hurtling boots – would, and could, and did.

  With a crackle and a growl those flames – those angry flames – grew bigger, owning the spaces, claiming the boards, reaching for the door with hungry hands. I was forced to accept it: they were real, and they weren’t going anywhere. This was no film set. It was
n’t a conjuring trick. I shrank back towards the stairs as they climbed the walls of the wheelhouse, and while darkness fell outside, the ill-starred Morgan le Fay lit up with light of its own.

  Denial gave way to anger as the smoke thickened. In English and French, I cursed her – and I cursed myself too, for being so unutterably stupid. I’d thought that I was more intelligent than other people. But in my greed – in my blind desire for the part of Clementine – I had ignored every warning, every indication that Bel was not an ordinary, predictable person.

  Could I really have believed that if Anton and Gabriel cast me in Jacaranda that Bel would have somehow just accepted it? Idiot, idiot, idiot Nora, I chanted, while a veil of heat shrouded the boat and anger became fear. To mess with Annabel Ingram was literally to play with fire, and here was the result.

  Back down the stairs I ran, into the now-tidy inner reaches of Morgan le Fay, where the greenlight party had once raged with fire-like intensity. I looked for a phone, but knew in any case that there wouldn’t be time for anyone to reach me. I looked for another door, but there wasn’t one. The small, rectangular windows in the sitting room and the other cabins were locked. Every one.

  I had nowhere to go.

  Now was the moment for panic, and yet somehow it still didn’t seem real. Months of charades and costume parties and makeup and make-believe had diluted my sense of what was, and was not, pretend. But a splutter of singed wood and an almighty groan told me that the wheelhouse overhead was well and truly aflame. Already, fingers of smoke were trailing below deck. Heat bloomed like the malevolent wishes of Morgan le Fay herself.

  Darian warned you, I thought. Azia did too. Anton had no idea what his daughter was capable of. You did. Triple imbecile, Nora; this is nobody’s fault but yours.

  I wished I could have seen Evie to say goodbye. It wasn’t fair that my father and then I should leave her without saying goodbye. Would she be all right? Who would check on her? My head was hazy with smoke; my thoughts untied themselves like shoelaces, became looser, less complete. Like a trapped rat I wandered from the banquette to the kitchen counter and back again, sometimes frantic, other times almost calm. A strange picture came to me of Sarah Cousins, laughing like a witch as she ignited a gigantic Bunsen burner.