Little Liar

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Nick swallowed, feeling the heat of his daughter’s sleeping body against his chest.

  8

  Angela

  It was two o’clock. Her first day back at school since the suspension and the hospital and everything else and Angela was bunking off. She hadn’t gone back after lunch.

  She was on a swing in Ashburton Park, half way between school and home. She kicked the strange spongy tarmac with the heel of her Converse while Adam threw the other swings up and around so that no one else could play on them. It wasn’t like little kids came here anyway – the place smelled of dog pee. Adam wasn’t her boyfriend, but they had done this before.

  The suspension had been cut from her record and she was no longer in trouble for bashing Jasmine, but she wasn’t allowed out at playtime or lunch and had to eat in the classroom with a dumb support teacher. She felt at once forgiven and blamed. She had slipped outside after asking to go to the toilet.

  Being at school was torture.

  Everyone at school knew what had happened. Everyone was talking about her.

  Angela wasn’t sure how it had got out that she had accused Mr Dean, but the other children in her class were talking about her behind her back and sending messages about her. Jasmine’s mother had even put it on Facebook, which would be hysterically funny if it wasn’t pathetic.

  When Adam was finished with the swings, Angela stood up.

  He lunged at her and she flinched, but he was only reaching for the swing that she had vacated.

  ‘No, leave just one. You have to leave just one,’ she said, putting two hands and all of her weight onto the swing to protect it.

  ‘How come?’

  He had ridges shaved in one of his eyebrows and it made him seem asymmetric, although his face had a harsh proportion. Mean but good-looking, all flat brow and straight nose and defined jaw.

  ‘Well, you’ve wound up the others, so leave the little kids one to swing on.’

  ‘All right.’

  She stood up and began to walk away. He took a cigarette from a packet in the pocket of his tracksuit bottoms and put it to his lips. Instead of lighting it, he slipped the cigarette behind his ear, ran and kicked the swing into the air.

  Angela stood and watched him, resigned, not surprised but sad, because that was what boys were like.

  Adam jumped up and caught the swing in two hands and swung it away again before his feet even touched the ground. The athleticism in his body was mesmerising. He knifed into the air and spun the swing in mid-air before landing on one foot. He was just trying to be a vandal and yet he held such grace and poise. He was two years older than her: fourteen going on fifteen. He still looked like a boy but there was hardness about him.

  Done, only just out of breath, Adam swaggered back to her, taking the cigarette from behind his ear.

  ‘I’m a perfectionist,’ he said in explanation, shaved eyebrow rising and a smirk on his lips.

  She turned away from the swings. There was a derelict building in the middle of the park, with one wall painted bright pink and covered in graffiti underneath its caved-in, tiled roof. Adam headed towards the trees at the edge of the park along the railway line, and Angela followed.

  It was an ash tree they were up against – one of the tallest trees in the park. A deep hollow ran up the trunk so that it looked like a vertical canoe or a coffin. Adam tried to wedge her into the space. The trunk was right between her shoulder blades when Adam pressed her. She smelled the wet leaves and smoke from his soft cotton shirt, the salt of his hair. They were hidden in a corridor of tall trees – a canopy blocked out the sky. There was graffiti on the trunks of the other trees, white and black swirls of spray paint.

  He kneaded her and she stood with her chin up looking at the light filtering through the trees. There was a pain in her throat. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. It was like a dream she often had, where she was trying to scream but no voice came out. Adam was touching himself and breathing hard. He was sucking her neck and it felt good and hurt at the same time. There was a shrill trill of songbirds high above, or was it in her head? It felt like that morning when she woke up and she wasn’t dead – the same sickness and high-pitched throbbing in her ears.

  He was inside her bra – that strange little vest bra that her mother had bought her. He breathed on her neck and her shoulder and Angela wondered if she was supposed to do something to help him, but she just stayed where she was – the rough bark of the ash at her back. She felt removed from herself, as if she was up in the sky above the dark canopy of the trees, with the invisible songbirds, or as if the tree trunk at her back was a control bar and she was a marionette dancing without will.

  The ringing in her ears and the sharp scent of the leaves seemed to combine. The sound and the smell overcoming her, so that she thought she might pass out.

  Adam suddenly pulled away from her and she watched him tugging at his jogging bottoms. He lost his balance on the uneven path that was threaded with tree roots and swayed for a second, before steadying himself on the wire fence and straightening his hoodie.

  ‘You don’t have any tits yet. It’s just fat,’ he said, smoke whispering from his mouth into the mature green of the trees.

  Angela shrugged and turned to her right, looking through the branches of ash at the swings all wound up out of reach.

  Life felt like that just now. Like the swings. Taken out of her control. Spiteful. A cruel joke. Unfair.

  ‘Yeah, well you’re a prick anyway,’ said Angela, half-smiling, picking up her school bag and marching across the playground. ‘See you.’

  She was only fifteen minutes’ walk from home and she headed towards the exit on the other side of the basketball courts. She didn’t turn around to see his face, but she heard him spit.

  9

  Marina

  Marina woke up ten minutes before her alarm sounded and turned towards Nick. She loved the smell between his shoulder blades first thing in the morning. He was still sound asleep. She threw an arm over him and discovered Ava curled into her father, thumb in her mouth. Sleep now submitted to consciousness. Marina embraced them both as anxious thoughts of the day ahead encroached on her mind. The last few weeks had been fraught. Nick’s parents were helping out as much as they could, but all the flow had gone out of their lives since Nick had been unable to care for the children alone.

  She shuddered and rested her cheek in the space between Nick’s shoulder and ear, causing him to stir but not wake. She had a busy morning, a government presentation, but had taken the afternoon off so that she and Nick could meet the lawyer, Faldane, together. Nick’s police bail would be up in one week, and Marina hoped Faldane was going to tell them everything would soon return to normal.

  Ten more minutes.

  For ten minutes, she didn’t need to wake and deal with this. She could fall asleep again. Almost immediately, she fell heavily into a hot, confused dream where she could hear screaming and taste blood.

  It was a November day, overcast, a light misting of rain. She was seven years old and holding her father’s hand. They were in Madrid, having left their home in Valencia behind just the day before. She was standing in clothes she had worn for two days because their belongings had been sent ahead and they had not yet been unpacked. They had travelled by train to be greeted by her paternal grandparents. Marina and her sister had been kissed and squeezed and pinched and passed from one relative to another. Cousins and aunts and uncles.

  Now they were at the matanza. It was Marina’s first slaughter and she was not sure what to expect, but she was hungry. A pig was going to be killed and then they were going to feast. There was an atmosphere of celebration but practicality – a strange utilitarian brutality – in the air, even before the pig was brought out.

  It wasn’t very warm, but her father was sweating – she could see from the stains on the armpits of his shirt when he raised his arm to gesticulate to his friends. Her mother was frowning as she had been since they left Valencia. They were in
Madrid on her father’s bidding – his promise. They were there for his dream – no other reason. They had mortgaged the farm and Marina and her sister had changed schools so that he could open a restaurant in the capital.

  A wooden stool was set in the middle of the courtyard, and a length of rope placed on top.

  The air was brisk but pungent with the smell of raw chopped onion and crushed garlic. Marina stood on her own as the pig was led out, a rope around its neck, pink snout tasting the air, keen eyes framed by long bleached lashes.

  ‘What will happen?’ Marina asked her mother, who said nothing, but smiled and put a warm hand on the top of her head.

  Marina’s Aunt Amelia, who had been busy making preparations, took her by the chin and planted a kiss on her forehead as she passed. Aunt Amelia smelled of garlic and the place where her fingers had touched Marina’s cheek was sticky and burned, causing Marina to rub the sensation away.

  The crowd gathered around the pig and Marina was pushed forward by her father as he moved closer to get a better view. The air throbbed. Everyone gathered, drawn like a seam around the violence to come.

  Marina’s father lifted her sister Pilar onto his shoulders. Marina stood between both her parents. She held her father’s hand and slipped her other hand into her mother’s back pocket.

  Two men grappled the pig and forced its screaming body between their legs before it was hauled over the waiting bench. One of the men held the pig with his thighs and his hands while the other man bound it. The rope caught the pig’s ear and trapped it over its eye. Marina tapped her father’s stomach, wanting to ask if the pig would be uncomfortable with the rope cutting across its ear, but her father only nodded and squeezed her shoulder, which meant he did not want to answer her questions just now.

  The man who was straddling the pig punched it with something that looked to Marina like a large pen.

  ‘Why did he do that? What’s that?’ she called up to her mother, tugging on her hip pocket.

  ‘Electric shock, to stun it,’ said her mother, not turning to her.

  The pig screamed with such high-pitched human vigour that goose-pimples appeared on Marina’s arms. She saw the pig struggle, watched the realisation of what was going to happen shine in its one uncovered eye. Even though her mother said it had been stunned, it kept screaming and Marina thought it sounded like a baby that needed to be comforted. Pilar had sounded like that just a few years before, her naked body rigid with temper.

  Her cousin Pedro, who had a ponytail that fell to the middle of his back, came out carrying a large knife. The man who had roped the pig now lifted up its snout so that the animal’s throat stretched out long and white, like her father when he visited the barber. The pig’s white hooves clawed at the air.

  Pedro stuck the knife into the pig’s throat and cut right down to its heart. Marina squeezed her eyes shut and when she opened them, her Aunt Amelia was holding a blue bucket below the wound on the pig’s throat, catching the blood. Her hands and her forearms were dark red, almost black with the blood. Splashes landed on her white, rolled-up sleeves and again Marina wanted to point this out to her mother, but said nothing, leaning into her instead. Her father was dancing around now, bouncing Pilar, who was giggling and holding onto his hair.

  The first thing that Marina noticed was the silence. It felt unusual, furred, warm. The pig was no longer screaming and there was no other sound, although she could see people dancing and laughing and calling to each other.

  It was as if the absence of the pig’s screams had swallowed all other sound.

  There was a flush of heat at the nape of her neck and she was falling, falling hard and heavy.

  Marina woke up with a jolt of electricity in her limbs. She was still nuzzled into Nick and she jarred him awake.

  ‘What time is it?’ he said, turning onto his back and putting an arm over his eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I was dreaming,’ Marina said, still trying to find the stills of the dream but only remembering falling.

  Ava woke up and curled into a ball, face down on the bed as was her habit. She resisted consciousness for the first few moments and then sprang into life, launching herself onto the bodies of both her parents as Marina’s alarm sounded and seconds later Luca’s feet pounded on the stairs.

  Marina had held it at bay, but now, it was morning.

  These days, they had to get up earlier so that Marina could accompany Nick on the drop-off to the childminder, but the morning routine before they left the house was unchanged: Marina got herself ready while Nick dressed the children, then Marina gave them breakfast while Nick walked Rusty.

  After her shower, Marina sat before her dressing-table mirror, still partly asleep, thoughts hot and heavy in her mind. She didn’t wear much make-up, but she liked to line her upper lids with soft kohl and dot her sunspots with concealer. She had liquid rouge that she swore made her look five years younger, and she now smudged this onto her cheekbones and temples and rubbed until she glowed.

  She blasted her hair dry quickly and then tucked it into a messy French knot. She stood and glanced at herself quickly in the mirror on the wardrobe. Grey suit, white blouse. Today she was presenting to the Department for International Development before crossing town to meet Nick with the lawyer. She looked at her reflection, wondering what people would see in her today. She looked the same as ever: professional, approachable. The only sign of the chaos unfurling in their lives was the shadow of tiredness under her eyes.

  Rusty came into the bedroom as Marina was putting on her jewellery. The little dog whined slightly.

  ‘Don’t cry to me. He’ll take you out when he’s ready.’

  She smiled at herself in the mirror. It would have to do.

  ‘Why’s Daddy stopped taking us to school and nursery?’ said Luca, jumping up and down in the hallway so that the pencils in his satchel rattled. ‘It would be easier if he took us like before, so you could just go to work.’

  Nick was taking Rusty quickly round the block.

  Children were so routine-driven, Marina thought, and Luca was incisive. Nothing got past him and he was only six. She feared what he would be like as a teenager.

  Ava lifted her denim skirt to hide her face. When she let it fall, ‘Boo!’ Marina saw that she had banana smeared all over her face.

  She grabbed a wipe from the kitchen and cleaned her daughter’s chin and cheek, causing Ava to twist away.

  ‘No! I want Daddy to do it, not you,’ she cried in a voice of genuine outrage. Marina glanced at Luca, still waiting patiently for an answer to his question. As she was about to toss the soiled wipe into the bin, she noticed a coffee stain on the collar of her white blouse.

  ‘Mierda,’ she whispered under her breath, checking her watch. She had six minutes until they had to be out of the house.

  ‘Mami, eso no se dice!’ Luca called after her in righteous castigation of her bad language.

  Marina had changed her working hours to allow for Nick’s bail conditions. Since Nick was out of action as the main child carer and as no one else in the family had been available for the morning school run, Marina had to cover it. Betty now collected the children from nursery and school and looked after them until Marina was home from work. The perfect balance of their life had suddenly been knocked out of kilter.

  ‘Why can’t Daddy take us?’ Luca asked again, this time in Spanish, as Marina walked downstairs buttoning a fresh shirt of a tone that did not quite match the grey of her suit.

  ‘We explained already,’ Marina replied in Spanish. ‘We are a family and we all need to help each other out.’ She checked the contents of her briefcase, making sure she had everything she needed: phone, presentation, wallet. ‘Sometimes we need to share the load.’

  ‘But he doesn’t need help. You are the most busy.’

  Marina felt a smile forced from her. She loved him. She grabbed his face with one hand and planted a kiss on his eyebrow. ‘Precioso.’

  The key turned in
the door and Nick and Rusty entered. The little dog paraded back and forth as if he had been gone for weeks, then streaked to the kitchen to lap water. Marina acknowledged a prickle of irritation that Nick had not dried the dog’s feet. The hall carpet needed replacing because it had gathered the dirt of their lives, but it would last a year longer if the dog was dried after every walk. In the mornings, especially, Nick let it slip.

  Still in his sweatpants, he hung up Rusty’s lead and tried to squeeze Marina’s waist as he passed – headed to the kitchen to put out Rusty’s breakfast.

  ‘Can you just get them in the car?’ Marina said, brushing him off and tugging at the cuffs of her shirt. ‘We’re running late.’ She was feeling stressed. Normally she would be reviewing her notes on the train just now, not worrying about mashed banana and coffee stains.

  Swiping a nude lipstick over her lips in the hall mirror, Marina acknowledged she was annoyed with Nick for being dressed as if it was the weekend – as if he might go back to bed. She heard him mixing dog food in a bowl and pouring Rusty fresh water.

  It was years now that she had been out-earning him, and sometimes she felt as if she was the parent in their relationship – the responsible one – but even although he had always earned less, and his job had been less important, she had taken heart that their rhythms had kept in synch: up at six, dressed and showered, out the door by 7.15.

  She took a deep breath as she buttoned her jacket and checked herself in the mirror again. In the reflection she could see Nick on his knees talking to Luca. She knew he would be trying to provide a better explanation in answer to his question.

  Once the kids were dropped off, Nick drove her to the station and then she had to run to catch her train to Waterloo – not even time to kiss him goodbye.

  ‘See you at two,’ she said, grabbing her briefcase.

  On the train, she took her phone from her pocket and texted to Nick:

  Have a good morning. See you later. Love you xx.

  Since the police had taken his phone he had bought a strange, lightweight Nokia that had cost fifteen pounds. He had a new number. It wasn’t even a smart phone.