‘Let him what?’
See my desperation. Charlie couldn’t say it. She’d told Olivia about Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall, but she’d taken care to present herself as far less bothered than she was. She’d made flippant jokes—‘Crazy bitch. Do you think she fancies me or something?’—to hide the depth of her distress, and thrown in the Ruth-Aidan-Mary Trelease story as a distraction, to direct the focus away from herself. Now that she’d demeaned herself in front of Dominic Lund, he was in a position to tell Liv exactly how wretched and messed up Charlie was, if he hadn’t already, and there was nothing she could do about it.
‘Why are you so upset about this Ruth Bussey woman, Char? I don’t get it. Okay, it’s weird, I agree, but she’s probably harmless. ’
‘Covering an entire wall with articles about someone and pictures of them is stalker behaviour,’ Charlie recited in a monotone. ‘Stalkers can flip and they can attack. Sometimes they kill. Don’t fucking tell me this woman’s harmless—you know nothing.’
‘You’re right,’ Liv snapped. ‘She’s probably waiting outside with a Kalashnikov pointed at the front door.’ Seeing Charlie’s murderous expression, she shrugged and said, ‘See? Whatever I say, it’s the wrong thing. I’m sick of being your punch-bag. This isn’t about me—it isn’t about Dominic. It’s Simon you’re angry with, Simon who’s making you miserable . . .’
‘Here we go again!’
‘You’re jealous because I’m getting laid and you, despite being engaged, aren’t!’
Charlie’s vision narrowed to a slit. A shimmering red tunnel opened in front of her and she allowed it to suck her in. She lunged for Olivia’s computer, held it over her head and threw it at the wall. The crash it made when it hit was painful to listen to—the sound of irrevocable damage. Charlie closed her eyes, remembering too late the other reason she’d come to Olivia’s. ‘Shit,’ she whispered. ‘I needed that computer. Can you try to boot it up for me while I get a drink? What have you got that’s strong and alcoholic?’
‘I haven’t backed up my work,’ said Olivia shakily. ‘That’s three days’ worth of—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie interrupted her martyr speech. ‘You’re a saint, Dominic Lund is a saint and I’m a sack of shit, okay? And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.’ She headed to the kitchen in search of vodka, calling over her shoulder, ‘Just get that fucking machine to work.’
There was no vodka. Absinthe would have to do. Charlie poured the pale green liquid into a tumbler and took two big gulps, hoping it would work fast. Not fast enough. She downed the rest of the glass, then poured another. She took her phone out of her pocket and switched it on. Five missed calls from callers who’d withheld their numbers. Unusual. There was one message, from Simon. ‘Where the fuck are you? Ring me as soon as you get this.’ Charlie listened to it again, trepidation making her stomach churn. Something was wrong. He knew where she was; she’d told him she was going to London to see Lund.
She rang him, got his voicemail, left a message saying she was worried, that she was at her sister’s now and he should ring her as soon as he got the chance. Then she glugged more absinthe, jabbed ‘118118’ with her thumb and got the number for Villiers girls’ boarding school in Wrecclesham, Surrey. Might as well ring now, put off facing Liv for a few more minutes.
The voice that answered the phone sounded as if it belonged to a woman who had been put on earth to do nothing but answer telephones with perfect politeness. Though all it said was, ‘Villiers, good afternoon,’ it conveyed a sense of delight in anticipation of being able to help anyone with anything, and made Charlie feel less awkward about posing her question.
‘This is going to sound strange,’ she began.
‘That’s perfectly all right. I can do strange. Frequently have to,’ said the woman. A secretary, Charlie assumed. ‘You should hear some of the calls we get.’
‘I’m after the name of an ex-pupil of yours who went on to become a writer. Does anyone spring to mind who fits that description? ’
‘A fair few,’ said the woman proudly. ‘You should come and look at our boasting gallery some time.’
‘Can you give me some names?’ Charlie reached for the pad of A4 paper and pen that Olivia kept near the phone; though, irritatingly, not so near that you didn’t have to lean to reach it and risk pulling the phone’s base off the shelf. As the woman name-dropped women writers, Charlie made a list. She’d heard of only one of the six the secretary mentioned, and put a cross beside her name. She hadn’t committed suicide; Charlie had seen her on Question Time last week.
How to ask if any of them were dead without sounding crass, or making the secretary clam up? ‘Are . . . as far as you know, are all these women still writing?’
A gasp of alarm came from behind Charlie, followed by the sound of the absinthe bottle and her glass being pulled along the worktop, away from her. She turned to find Olivia glaring at her, miming surprise at how little was left in the bottle. She waved the list of women writers in front of her sister’s face.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can help you there. We try to keep up with our old girls’ careers as best we can, but there are so many of them. Let me think . . .’
‘I’ll put it another way,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you know if any of these women definitely aren’t still writing?’
Olivia snatched the pen from her hand. Next to each name she wrote something, rolling her eyes as if Charlie ought to have known: ‘Still writing poetry about muddy puddles that no one buys.’ ‘Depends what you mean by “still writing”. She puts her name to about four books a year, but they’re all “co-written”, i.e. written by unknown skivvies.’ ‘Yes—she’s good—I tried to lend you one of hers but you vetoed it because it was set abroad and in the past.’
‘May I ask what your interest is?’ A note of caution had infused the impeccable voice, enough to convince Charlie that she and the woman on the other end of the phone were thinking, at that moment, of the same person: the woman Mary Trelease had painted dead. Charlie closed her eyes. The absinthe was starting to make its presence felt; her veins were buzzing.
‘It’s sort of personal,’ she said. ‘I can promise you that anything you tell me will go no further.’ Recklessly, she added, ‘I think you know which of these women I’m asking about, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you.’ Shrill and defensive. Was it something I said?
Beside the name of the woman Charlie had seen on Question Time recently, Liv had written, ‘Ideas above her station—thinks writing formulaic thrillers qualifies her to interfere in politics.’ Every name on the list had one of Liv’s mini-essays beside it apart from one: Martha Wyers. Charlie pointed to it. Liv shrugged, then, in case that wasn’t clear enough, drew a big question mark next to it.
‘Martha Wyers,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s not writing any more, is she?’
‘I cannot help you,’ the woman repeated firmly. ‘If you care about Martha or this school at all, please don’t pursue it. There’s been enough suffering already without journalists digging for dirt and causing even more.’
‘I’m not a journalist. Really, I’m not going to—’
‘I should never have given you her name.’ The words were breathy and indistinct, as if she’d pressed her mouth too close to the mouthpiece. She hung up.
‘Any luck with the computer?’ Charlie asked Liv.
‘You’re slurring your words. Of course not. That’s nine hundred quid you owe me, plus a two-thousand-word article about why endings are as important as beginnings in fiction.’
‘Instalments do you? Tiny ones? Where’s the nearest internet café?’ Charlie was already heading for the front door.
‘Right here,’ said Olivia drily. ‘I’ve set up my other laptop. You can use that. One condition: would you mind not hurling it at the wall?’
‘You’ve got two laptops?’
‘It’s handy—you never know when one’s going to be smashed up by a
vandal.’
‘I’ve said I’m sorry . . .’
‘Sarcastically, yes. I don’t suppose it’ll matter to you, but I bought the second laptop to write my book, and that’s all I’ve ever used it for. I didn’t want it to be used for anything else.’
Charlie stopped at the entrance to the lounge. ‘I can go to an internet café,’ she said. ‘Make up your mind. Do you want to help me or not? Only in exchange for praise, presumably.’
‘Use it. I’ve set it up,’ said Liv wearily. ‘What’s going on, Char? Any chance you’re going to tell me?’
Charlie clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. When the Google screen appeared, she typed ‘Martha Wyers, Villiers, suicide’ into the search box. Nothing came up that looked right. The first page of results yielded a selection of science journal articles by a Dr Martha Wyers of Yale University. ‘Don’t give me this shit,’ Charlie moaned at the computer.
‘Are you sure it’s not the same person?’ Liv asked, peering over her shoulder.
‘I doubt it.’
‘Check,’ Liv advised.
‘Thanks for that tip. Of course I’m going to check,’ said the part of Charlie that, in the presence of her sister, was permanently frozen at the age of fourteen.
Google was bursting at the seams with Dr Wyers’ details and achievements. It didn’t take long to find a CV. ‘Born in 1947 in Buffalo. Never lived in the UK, never attended Villiers school . . .’
‘It’s not her,’ said Liv.
‘No.’
Charlie tried ‘Martha Wyers, British writer, suicide’ and ‘Martha Wyers, British writer, Villiers, murder’ with no success. Yale’s Dr Wyers wasn’t letting anyone else get a look-in.
‘You can find out, can’t you?’ she asked Liv. ‘Martha Wyers was a writer, you know everything there is to know about books . . .’
‘Was Martha Wyers killed by a stalker?’
‘What?’ Seeing her sister trying so hard, looking so helpful and enthusiastic and making completely the wrong connection made Charlie want to hit her. She ought to ring Simon again. Why had he sounded so riled? He was the one she needed to talk to. Would he pursue the Martha Wyers angle?
He’d tell you you’re crazy, that’s what he’d do. Aidan Seed says he killed Mary Trelease. Mary Trelease painted Martha Wyers, who killed herself. No reason to think Martha Wyers was murdered by Seed or anyone else. Except that Jan Garner had talked about murder, Mary mentioning murder in connection with the dead woman writer. ‘No, Martha Wyers wasn’t murdered by a stalker,’ Charlie told Liv impatiently. ‘Not as far as I know, anyway.’
‘You don’t know if she was murdered or if she killed herself, so why don’t you search for Martha Wyers, writer—keep it simple? ’
It wasn’t a bad suggestion, except that Charlie was unwilling to let her sister see her following instructions and infer from that that she’d made a good point. As luck would have it, Liv’s phone started to ring and she went to the kitchen to answer it.
Charlie typed ‘Martha Wyers, writer’ into the search box and was about to press ‘enter’ when Olivia reappeared, red in the face, agitated. ‘That was Simon.’
Automatically, Charlie stood up, holding out her hand for the phone. Why hadn’t he rung her on her mobile? When she saw the expression on Liv’s face, her arm fell to her side.
‘What?’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Char,’ said her sister. ‘It’s bad news.’
Dear Mary 4 March 2008
This is something I never thought I’d do. Like you, I saw a therapist for a while, and like you I found that it didn’t achieve much. Unlike your therapist, mine recommended letter-writing, but I suppose it amounts to the same thing. You want my story—this is it.
In my old life, I was a garden designer—before I moved to Spilling I had nothing to do with art or artists. I had a thriving business and won awards for my work. In 1999 I won the principal BALI (British Association of Landscaping Industries) award for the third time in three consecutive years. There was a six-page feature about me in Good Housekeeping magazine, with pictures of my gardens that had won prizes, and interviews with the people I’d designed them for. As a result of this publicity, my services were in demand. I had a sudden influx of new clients and a waiting list three years long. Some people got impatient and decided to go elsewhere. Others were happy to wait their turn. Only one woman fell into neither of the above categories.
She phoned me and left a message, saying she needed to speak to me urgently. When I rang her back, she told me she was sick, and asked if there was any way I could fit her in sooner. She didn’t specify what was wrong with her, but said she didn’t know how long she had left to enjoy her garden, and as things stood there was, she said, ‘little about it to enjoy’. I considered telling her I had made prior commitments to other people and didn’t want to let them down, but decided in the end that, in such an unusual case, it was better to be flexible. None of my other clients or prospective clients was terminally ill.
She was a primary school teacher, in her early thirties, married with no children, and lived in a village close to the Leicestershire-Lincolnshire border, on Woodmansterne Lane, a narrow road with detached fake stone cottages, modern but trying to look old, hidden behind hedges as solid as concrete walls and thick-trunked trees that seemed to stand guard on both sides. I thought as soon as I heard the street name that it was unusual and a little bit sinister. It made me think of a stern woodman, whatever one of those was. My reaction was too mild to be called a premonition—the most I can say is that I felt something I didn’t normally feel when I noted down clients’ addresses.
Woodmansterne Lane was the perfect place to live if you wanted privacy, she told me the first time I went to the house. She was obsessed with privacy, mentioned it constantly, whenever we met. On the wall by the front door there was an oval-shaped plaque with the words ‘Cherub Cottage’ painted on it. The name was her invention. For our first meeting, she wore a smart grey suit—the sort no primary school teacher needs to wear to work—with sheer black tights and enormous dog’s-head slippers that made her look utterly ridiculous.
I can still picture those dogs’ faces, as vividly as if they were in front of me. Each one had a red cloth tongue dangling diagonally from its mouth.
On my first visit to Cherub Cottage, I also met her partner. He was a pharmacist who said very little, but when she spoke, which she did ceaselessly, I could see him trying to gauge my reaction to her. He was better looking, better dressed and younger than she was. When I first met him he was twenty-six. He seemed to have no quirks of his own, though he tolerated hers without complaint. As I saw more of her, I realised how much he had to put up with: she would not allow any food to cross her threshold that didn’t come from Marks & Spencer; she forced him to redecorate their house from top to bottom every year, and new curtains and carpets every three years; she sent a tedious, self-aggrandising round robin letter to everyone they knew at Christmas, full of exclamation marks. Reading the one she sent me, I could hardly believe it wasn’t a parody. Some of her household appliances had names. The microwave was called ‘Ding’, the doorbell ‘Dong’.
During that first discussion the three of us had, I kept trying to include her partner and find out what he wanted Cherub Cottage’s garden to be, but whenever I succeeded in coaxing an opinion out of him, she automatically said, ‘No,’ and corrected him. From what I managed to glean from him, in between her negations, it seemed he was happy with things pretty much as they were. The front and back gardens they’d inherited from the previous owners of Cherub Cottage (or number 8, as it had been in those days) couldn’t have been more traditional: lush green lawns surrounded by flower beds on all sides. He said he wouldn’t mind if I filled the gaps in the beds, that he thought they ought to be fuller—that was the only adjective he could think of to describe what he wanted—but when I started to talk about a riotous, voluptuous planting plan, he nodded eagerly. ‘A cottage ought to have a ramshackle
garden,’ he said, before she leaped in with one of her ‘no’s.
‘I don’t want it messy,’ she said. ‘Any flowers, I want them colour-coordinated and in rows, not sticking out all over the place. Can you pick up a pink and purple theme? Pink roses, and purple slate in the beds instead of dirt? I saw that in a magazine.’ She always said ‘dirt’ when she meant ‘earth’.
I was used to working with clients who valued my opinion, who looked to me for guidance, and I would have felt like a criminal if I’d taken her money in exchange for making her garden uglier. As tactfully as I could, I explained that I didn’t think purple slate would work. ‘That’s more suitable for very contemporary-looking houses,’ I said. ‘I know your house isn’t old, but it’s a country cottage first and foremost. I’m not sure we want to depart too much from the traditional—’
‘It’s not about what you want, it’s about what I want!’ she said, putting me in my place. ‘It’s my inheritance from my Auntie Eileen that’s paying for it, so it’s my opinion that counts.’ Even knowing she was ill, it was difficult to feel sorry for her. I suggested to her that perhaps she ought to look for another garden designer; I took pride in my work, and could see already that the garden she was going to force me to create for her was one that would embarrass me. There would be no BALI award for Cherub Cottage’s new garden, that was for sure, not if I gave her what she wanted: something pretentious and out of keeping with its surroundings.
‘I chose you because you won that prize,’ she said. Then, pointedly, ‘I haven’t got time to find another designer. I don’t want to get stuck in a sourcing loop.’
The Dead Lie Down: A Novel Page 26