‘You don’t need to lock the door, baby,’ he says, and comes close to the steamed-up screen. ‘Where have you been? I was so worried.’
I turn my back and stand in the jet of water, glancing over my shoulder for a second to see his features take on focus in the fog.
‘Are you OK?’ he says.
‘I’m fine. Just finishing up.’
He moves backwards in the room, his body a hazy shape, then returns to me with the glowing expanse of a towel, open and ready in a silent command. I turn off the water and step into the fabric with my head down. Wet hair slicks my face. David wraps me in the cotton and pushes his fingers through my hair to take it back off my face, forcing my head up in jolts as he does so, and trying to catch my eyes with his. I keep my gaze downwards.
‘You have no idea how worried I was.’ He holds me tight in his arms and kisses my wet head. ‘I was about to call the police. Why the hell didn’t you return my calls?’
The bassline of my hangover throbs behind my eyes. I nuzzle into his shirt, hiding my face as my nostrils fill with the odour of dry-cleaning chemicals. Upstairs, David has another five identical shirts, plus duplicates of the tailored jeans and brogues that make up his casual weekend uniform. He places his hands on my cheeks and turns my head up to him. I keep my eyes shut.
‘Why won’t you look at me?’ he says.
I open my stinging eyes.
‘Have you been crying?’
‘No, I’ve got soap in my eyes.’
He leans forward and kisses both my eyelids then folds his arms round me again. It’s good to be held and I want to give in, release everything and hand over to David as I’ve always done, but this time there’s too much to tell and I force the sob back down.
A pause.
‘Rachel,’ he says, ‘I need some answers.’
I take a deep breath and speak into the towel. ‘I’m sorry. I met an old school friend, it was last minute, I got carried away. Sometimes, I don’t know, I just get sad about Mum, and last night I felt I needed some space. I checked into a hotel to sleep off the alcohol.’
‘A school friend? You should have told me, baby, I was really worried, I missed you.’ He slips his hand inside the towel and rubs the curve at the small of my back. My skin fizzles. ‘It’s not how we do things here. Is it? We have an order to things, a duty to each other.’
I look up, though he’s not much taller than me. His thick blond hair melts in the steam.
‘Well?’ he says, holding my chin with his other hand and looking directly into my eyes. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ This close, the detail in his eyes is magnified, and dark spots pepper the green irises. The whites are bold and bright. ‘We spoke about your episodes, and it’s not how it’s meant to be. It’s not our path. I won’t put up with any of that rubbish again.’ His hand rubs my back with more pressure. ‘No more locked doors, no more lies. We were doing so well, weren’t we, baby? You need to toe the line. I can’t keep bailing you out.’
I look down and move away from him, freeing my arms to grab the towel that’s falling from my shoulders. The cuticles of my toenails are darkened by mud, and I remember the man’s dirty hands and what looked like blue ink stains on his fingers. I take a breath to stop the urge to vomit.
David paces the floor. His shoes make a rhythmic tap and squeak on the tiles. One of the dogs, the older bitch and David’s current favourite, has come in too. She paces with him. He stops. She sits at his side. He holds one of her ears between his forefinger and thumb and rubs the fur gently as if it were a child’s soft blanket. The dog cocks its head sideways towards him and sits motionless. David looks down and smiles at the animal. Then he lifts his eyes and scans the ceiling and walls, bringing his gaze to rest on the sink. His fingers stop moving. The dog whines for him to continue but David lets go and turns to me.
‘What’s this?’ he asks, one hand pointing at the thick scum around the edge of the sink. His gesture is poised in mid-air for dramatic effect, and he holds it there a beat too long. ‘Why is the sink so dirty?’ He moves towards me, and as he gets close I go limp. I stand in front of him as I’ve learnt to do, not blinking or moving. His breath is hot on my face and he talks softly, in monotone. ‘Tell me, Rachel. What’s going on? What happened? The truth. Now.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I hit a deer.’
‘A deer? Where?’
‘On Blackthorn Lane. It came out of nowhere. It was injured and frightened and I tried to help but it ran into the woods. I chased it but it got away.’
‘Why would you do that? What would be the point of catching an injured deer? Did you think you could wrestle it into the car and take it to the vet’s?’
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It was stupid of me.’
David inhales and exhales loudly through his nostrils, and his eyes skitter around the room, this time coming to rest on the bin liner with the remaining heel of a shoe stabbing through the plastic. ‘So why are you throwing away your clothes?’
‘Because they’re dirty.’
‘So wash them.’
‘They’re beyond cleaning.’
David comes up close again and opens the towel. He holds my arm as he scans the scratches on my forearm, raising the limb higher than is comfortable. Old acne scars pock his cheeks, the silent reminder of the imperfections of his youth. His grip is firm on my upper arm and his pupils jog between each of my eyes. ‘Rachel, what’s going on? You’re a mess. Why didn’t you tell me about the deer in the first place?’ He leans forward, I lean back, and he sniffs the whisky-filled air in front of my mouth. I turn but it’s too late. His jaw drops open. ‘Good God, Rachel, you must have drunk the whole bar! Did you have doubles for breakfast?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how late it was when I finished drinking, and then I knew I had to get back to you, I knew you’d be worried, and I thought I’d be OK to drive.’
‘You’re not making any sense, Rachel. Where were you drinking until the early hours and who is this mystery school friend of yours?’
His face is composed, though my arm stings as David intensifies the pressure and squeezes my skin into white lumps between his fingers.
‘Tell me her name. Give me your phone, I want to call her.’
My brain tries to focus on another excuse, but the juggernaut of the accident sidewipes every thought. All I know for certain is that David’s reaction to discovering my affair with Will would be more extreme than his response to finding out I’ve killed a man.
‘He was on the road,’ I say, my tears spilling out again. ‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. It was raining hard and the car, it . . .’
David moves away to get a tissue. ‘Stop crying,’ he says, handing me the paper. ‘I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’
I wipe my face. ‘I’m sorry . . . there was a man. Oh God, there was a man on the road.’ I sob into the tissue then look up to see David’s face turn red. I pull my words together. ‘The car, I was going too fast. I couldn’t stop in time.’
‘My God!’ He clasps his hair, then seizes me by my shoulders and shakes me. ‘What have you done?’
‘I didn’t mean to. I knew I was over the limit and I panicked.’
He stops still and stares with round, unwavering eyes. ‘Rachel, you need to tell me everything.’
‘He shouldn’t have been there. I mean, not in this weather, not on that road.’ I put my arm up to David’s shoulder, but he pulls away. ‘Hardly anyone walks there, even in good weather.’
‘I can’t believe this.’ He paces up and down, then smashes the flat of his hand against the tiled wall. ‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s gone,’ I whisper.
‘What did you say?’
I shout, ‘He’s dead!’ The noise makes me wince.
‘Jesus!’ Again he paces. ‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know.’ I’m gabbling now. ‘But I’ve seen him before. He’s a homeless man, the one who walks everywhere. No on
e will miss him.’
‘How do you know?’ With the heel of his hand, David rubs the frown at the bridge of his nose. ‘Did you call an ambulance?’
‘No.’
‘Where is he now? Is he still on the road?’
‘No.’ I laugh weakly but David flicks his eyes at me and I stop. ‘Why do you think I’m in this state?’
‘What have you done with him?’
‘I dragged him into the woods, far in, away from the road. You can’t even see the cars from where I left him.’
‘Good girl. Did anyone see you?’
‘No.’
‘What about on the way home?’
‘A couple of cars. Only a few. No one I recognized.’
‘And did you drop anything? Did you have all your things with you when you got back in the car?’
‘Yes, I did. I do.’
‘And the car itself?’
‘It’s a mess. The windscreen, the front bonnet’s crushed, one of the lights—’
‘Enough.’ David holds up his hand. ‘I need to think.’
The room’s growing cold and my skin is speckled with goosebumps, like a plucked chicken. I hold the towel tight round me. David walks up and down, running his hands through his hair, his fingers leaving tramlines.
He stops and stands with his back to me. His shoulders heave up and down with his breath. He’s mumbling but I can just make out his words: ‘This is not how it’s supposed to be.’ Then he spins round to face me, his eyes alight. ‘I will deal with the essentials, the car, these clothes,’ he points at me, ‘but you need to keep quiet.’ He ties a tight double knot in the bin liner. ‘We will carry on as if nothing has happened. This,’ he waves his hand around the room like a conductor, lending me a granule of eye contact in the process, ‘all that we’ve built – our marriage, this house, our business – it all stays the same. We cannot let this spoil how far we’ve come.’
I stand with my head bowed, looking at the muddy toeprints smudged on the tiles.
‘Rachel,’ he comes close and whispers in my ear. ‘If I find out you were with someone else last night, I won’t stand for it.’ His lips touch my skin, so gently it’s a tickle.
He leaves the room and the dog trots after him with her collar tinkling, already having chosen whose side she’s on. As David passes the door, he pulls it gently and it winds shut in slow inches, closing finally when his footsteps have passed out of earshot. Facing me on the back of the door is my filthy coat; a tiny bomb of disorder against the smooth white wood. I fish inside the pocket for the watch from the roadside, and find it warm and damp. I hold it to my ear. It’s still ticking. On the metal back is a smudge of blood which must have come from my hands after touching the man. The liquid has settled and dried into the letters of an inscription, ‘TO MY PA’. I hear David’s footsteps coming back and I scan the room for a hiding place, levering up the top of the false shelf which hides the toilet cistern. There is a gap down the side of the tank, and I tuck the watch in there before quietly lowering the shelf and standing back in the middle of the room. I shiver under the towel as a draught of outside air curls up my legs.
3
SMOKE IN THE BEDROOM
In the bedroom I dress into nightclothes and take a sleeping pill. It’s afternoon when I lie down, the autumn dusk coming in, and my thoughts scatter and jerk through different scenarios: what if I’d been driving more slowly, what if I hadn’t been drunk, what if I’d come home last night instead of staying at Will’s? My mind won’t settle, continually taking me back over the same questions, as if by repetition the impossible will resolve. All I can do is wait to be pulled into the familiar world of medication, and as the effects of the tablet trickle into my system I have half-waking dreams of a road rolling in front of me and a man leaping at the car. I swerve to miss him but no matter how hard I turn the wheel he keeps being sucked towards the bonnet. Cold panic bolts through me as I watch his body contort into a scrum of bones, and his hands leave inky streaks on the metalwork. The car absorbs him. Over and again these images circle my brain before finally the dream falls away and is replaced by a welcome void.
Six hours later I wake, and the walls of my bedroom have dulled in the evening dark. My back aches as I sit up in the bed, and my scratched arms scuff on the sheets. I take a few seconds to adjust before the vision of the man’s face hits me afresh. With a punch of dread I realize that nothing has changed and a man is still dead.
A distant smell of smoke hangs in the room, and with it comes a flash of memory from when I was a little girl at home in my bedroom. Cigarette smoke crept up the stairs from the lounge. Mum and Dad had guests and for some reason I was scared to leave my room and use the toilet. Tonight, though, the smoke is from a bonfire. I put on my dressing gown and, using a chair as support, haul myself out of bed. On woozy legs I cross the room to the unshuttered window. The floor beneath my feet feels fluid as I’m caught in a sticky netherworld between sleep and reality – a third dimension where the edges of my consciousness glow and bob. It’s dark but I keep the light off. The stark glare would be too much reality to bear.
On the driveway the roller door of our garage is half-way up and inside the light is on. My car has been driven in, and the bottom edge of the bonnet is visible, dented into a steel drum of fractured colour. A man walks round the car and crouches to examine the damage. My stomach lurches at the sight of him – a stranger already involved in my secret. Then I see David walking across the driveway. His face is lit a soft amber by the light from the garage, and he calls something to the other man I can’t hear. The man stands and ducks under the metal door, bumping his head in the process before crossing the driveway towards David. He rubs his crown with a chuckle. David laughs back and looks relaxed, bordering on joyful, in a way I’m not used to seeing, and my legs start to shake. I run for the toilet, banging into the door frame in the process. As I pee I wrap myself tight in my dressing gown to stop the shiver.
When I come out of the en suite I look again from the window and see the two men closer together, still talking, their stance casual, as if they are friends or brothers tinkering with a car on a Saturday afternoon. David doesn’t have a brother any more. The one time I insisted on meeting his parents, we went to their house for lunch. The walls and mantelpiece were covered in photos of David’s older brother, who died when David was a toddler. Any remaining surface was taken up by china cats, dusted to a shine. His mum spent most of that lunchtime crying in the kitchen, and his dad glowered at the table as he alternated into his mouth forkfuls of roast dinner, sips of tea and drags on cigarettes that were chain-lit from an overflowing ashtray. Halfway through the meal David stood up and left, his chair falling flat on the floor behind him. I waited for him to come back but he didn’t. Watching David tonight, he has more ease with this stranger – brokered through their task of covering up a murder – than he ever gained from a childhood of being the wrong boy.
I turn from the window to light a cigarette and realize that my face is wet with tears. My fingers shake so much it’s difficult to line up the match with the end of the cigarette. I haven’t smoked in the house before, but now is not the time for domestic niceties. I take a drag and imagine I hear the crackle of the burning tobacco as if I were in a film. I take another drag and the noise gets louder. Ash drops on to the thick-pile carpet and I stare at the mess, willing myself to do something about it, but the message won’t send to my muscles. Instead my hand moves towards my mouth, feeding in more nicotine. This same hand lifted glass after glass of whisky to my mouth last night, touched Will’s face and pulled him to me. Only hours ago it steered a car round a sharp bend in the road and dragged a dead man into the woods. Deep in the undergrowth where he now lies, his body will be stiff, his skin and muscles breaking down. I wonder how long it will take until all that’s left is bones.
Looking outside again, David has disappeared. I scramble through the upstairs rooms checking from each of the windows until I catch sight of him walking
from the pool of the security light near our back door towards a small metal incinerator which sits on paving stones near the trees. He pokes a stick through the grille. Sparks whirl up and around him as his face glows from the flames. There’s a pile at his side, and from it he picks up a piece of fabric, possibly a towel, and lumps it on to the flames. The material extinguishes the fire for a few seconds, but soon the embers sparkle through until again the flames take hold and tower above his head. He bends down and picks up another item, probably the bathrobe I wore earlier. Next, my shoes and my cashmere sweater. Then small containers, possibly shampoo bottles. I think of the plastic oozing through the gaps of the incinerator and spotting the charred ground underneath. Tomorrow the birds will peck at the hardened globs and take the poison to feed their chicks.
Barking carries from the distant undergrowth that rings our garden. It’s too dark to see the dogs but they’ll be excited by this unusual nocturnal activity, bounding in and out of the acres of shrubs and trees that camouflage our six-foot fence and buffer this sizeable estate from the outside world.
An image of the dead man’s face crashing against the windscreen springs up at me again. From the epicentre of his skull, the glass fractures into a cobweb. I hold my hand over my mouth. My skin still smells of damp earth even though my hands have been scrubbed clean. I squeeze my eyes shut and see the briefcase fluttering into the undergrowth, then with a start I remember the watch hidden in the bathroom.
I tiptoe downstairs, back into the fallout of my earlier entrance: across the hallway my muddy footprints lead the way to the bathroom where inside they turn into a scuffle. The sink is still rimmed with scum, and the shower and bin are dotted with muddy handprints. Tears burst through and I bite my lip to hold in the sobs. From behind the toilet cistern I retrieve the watch. Above the hammer of my heartbeat I listen out for footsteps.
Back in bed, I check the watch is still ticking. The time reads 9.20: only half an hour slow. Twelve hours ago I was at Will’s house. I wish I’d been brave enough to do as I so desperately wanted and stayed with him for the day, then none of this would have happened. My head buzzes with exhaustion and I’m terrified I may fall asleep with the watch still in my hand, so I stash it in the divan drawer under my mattress, then take another sleeping pill just to be sure. The remaining foil-wrapped capsules are on my bedside table. If I took them all at once there would be enough for me to sleep for good.
The Liar’s Chair Page 2