‘For God’s sake!’ I shout.
David’s brogues come clanging down the stairs and he leaps forward and holds on to me. ‘Don’t worry, Kelly, I’ll take it from here.’
‘You fucking bastard.’
‘Rachel, baby, I told you not to come in, it’s too soon. You’ve been through so much.’
‘Too right I have.’ I lunge at him but he wraps me tighter in his arms, stroking my head with rough hands.
‘Shh, baby, it’s all right.’
I break away and race up the stairs to see another man in my office sitting at my desk, all my things stacked in a cardboard box at the side. David chases after me but can’t reach me before I get to my desk.
‘You didn’t waste your time, did you?’ I say. ‘How long have you been planning this?’
‘Rachel, this is crazy, you’re not thinking straight. You’re my wife, I love you.’
The man at the desk looks startled, and he stands with his arms stuck to his sides. My diary is open on my desk in front of him.
‘What are you doing with my stuff?’ I ask him.
‘I was inputting your appointments to the computer. You know, to make it easier for when you come back.’
I pick up the book and hurl it in the man’s face. The diary hits his temple and he cries out as he holds his hands over his face, expecting more. David comes up behind me, clamps his arms round me and frogmarches me into his office. He locks the door behind him and takes out the key then walks behind his desk. I stand in front of him shivering.
David remains standing and breathes in and out slowly. He leans over his desk, balancing his weight on to his steepled hands, and looks at me.
‘No one will believe you, Rachel.’ Another breath. ‘You have no friends. Even your sleepover buddy won’t be answering his phone any more. Or dealing his shit coke.’ He delivers his words with slow ease, and I hold my hands together tight in front of me to stop them from shaking, turning over in my mind the three days David’s had to prepare for this moment, and what could have happened to Will in that time. David stands up straight. ‘This is the end of it, the last of your behaviour I’ll tolerate. If you don’t stop you’ll see that your little holiday with the dogs isn’t the worst I can muster.’
I blink so the tears won’t come. I open my mouth to speak but there is nothing I can say and no way I can win this. I turn from David and rattle the door. ‘Please, I want to go home.’
David comes round to the door and stands in my way. ‘Why don’t you go to the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up. Have a little self-respect. Even for a nutter you look terrible.’ He opens the door and walks out, shutting it behind him. Through the panel I hear him say, ‘Graham, I’m so sorry. Guys, everyone,’ he calls to the office. ‘I’m sorry you had to witness that. Rachel’s going to be OK, she just needs some rest, it will take time, that’s all. We’d both appreciate your discretion in this matter while she gets her life back on track.’
I go into the bathroom to throw some water on my face. As I look in the mirror I realize David is right. I do look insane.
14
BONES
Every time I’ve tried to contact Will these last few days, his number rings out then goes to voicemail. I keep telling myself no one else would bother to keep his phone charged, but without hearing his voice I’m desperate to know for sure that he’s safe. In the absence of any other course of action, I’ve forced myself to believe that David hasn’t yet got to Will, and the meaning of Will’s silence is simply that he does indeed hate me.
There’s been a fire at the protestors’ camp in the woods. No one was killed but two people have been hospitalized with burns. Accusations of arson and thuggery fill the headlines of the local news. The leader of the protest movement is in prison accused of supplying class A drugs. The police found a huge haul at the camp when they were investigating the fire, the drugs somehow having danced away from the flames. It will take some time to get the accused, Tyrone Aldridge, to trial, but it will be long enough for the trees to come down. Tyrone’s previous record was for dealing cannabis, and will probably contribute to the weight of evidence against him, although its seems that class As are a whole new venture for a man who claims to need little of what money can buy.
All of David’s phone calls are taken in private these days, but I catch snippets of his conversations with my ear to the door when the dogs don’t give me away. Enough to tell me he was involved in these events. David’s constant snuffling nasal drip tells me he’s still sourcing coke, only now it must be from a new connection, and without having to ration his intake in accordance with my ability to supply, he’s clearly upped his daily quota from functioning to dependent. He jumps when the dogs bark, and scratches as if there are insects beneath his skin.
Local news bulletins talk of children from the camp being taken into care, and their tearful mothers plead to the camera. It terrifies me to think of loving someone that much – it’s far easier to turn in on myself, or squash things down. This long-held practice of denial cultivates flashpoints of pain in the day-to-day mechanics of eat and sleep, though there was a soft place I used to visit when I thought of Will. This has now gone, replaced by an ache which at times grows so vast even I cannot endure it, and the only thing to topple it is alcohol. So I drink all the time now, whatever I can afford, which is generally supermarket own-brand spirits. Being back at home in the aspic of order and David’s rules, I bear the self-loathing in a creeping fog of booze. Compliance is easier than trying to outwit him, and there’s a simple reassurance in the habit of our relationship, like returning to my natural state. In the sterile environment of our home, my subjugation is a martyr’s weight, the cloak of David my own self-imposed muzzle. It’s only at night when the hungry dog visits my sleep that I’m reminded it’s still possible to put some things right.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon and David’s at work. He’s on location today with a recently appointed head of TV for a satellite channel. She’s turning up to check in on a production, and David’s gone under the guise of the big overseer of the project, but really he’s there to pitch new ideas. It’s the first day David hasn’t called me at home on the hour, every hour. I received only one call this morning and then one at lunchtime, so I take this rare opportunity to drive to Blackthorn Lane. The petrol gauge flashes red. I park in the same car park as before, where three padlocked Portaloos have joined the digger at the edge of the tarmac. The route into the woods is wider now, scarred by Caterpillar tracks and lined with tree stumps and piles of logs. This woodland has seen more action in the past couple of months than it has in the last few decades as Alex’s grand scheme for an estate of detached houses, fenced and gated to keep out the rabble, has finally been given the go-ahead.
In the back of my car, I lift the boot cover and take out my dad’s old winter coat from its hiding place. The jacket I’ve been wearing up until now is lightweight, and when David cleared my clothes he didn’t leave me anything warm. Or perhaps that was part of his plan to keep me at home. This coat is broader than my shoulders and the hem touches my calves, but beneath it’s like I’ve disappeared. With the musty wool close round me, I make my way from the car park and into the woods in the direction of the caravan. The burnt-out camp is further up the road, but the faint char of wood still hangs in the air.
Rain has blackened the trees with a steady patter that echoes against the bare walls of nature. Deep swallows of mud-soup suck at my boots. There’s barking in the distance but it’s too energetic to be the dog I’m looking for, and moments later an excited Great Dane bounds from the trees. The dog’s fur and paws are filthy, and it leaps up to my height and covers me in dirt. I push the animal away but it growls. A man strides from the woods in knee-high wellies, his angular body pressed inside a scuffed waxed jacket. It’s Alex.
‘Get down, get down,’ he calls from a distance. ‘Suza, come here.’ Then he shouts, ‘DOWN, GIRL!’ The dog scampers back to him. He holds her lead in his hand lik
e a whip and fastens it to her collar. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says as he comes closer. ‘Rachel? Is that you? I didn’t recognize you.’
‘Hello, Alex.’
‘Are you OK? God, I’m sorry about the mess.’
I look down and wipe my front with my gloves, turning the paw prints into streaks. ‘I’m fine. Nothing the cleaners can’t handle.’
The dog jumps and barks again. ‘Stop it,’ he shouts, but she’s still trying to get at me. ‘Enough!’ He smacks the dog’s nose with the end of the leather lead. She yelps and falls into line. ‘The bitch gets very excited when she’s in heat.’ Alex moves closer to me, his complexion cracked with red veins. ‘Does David know you’re here?’ The animal’s whine is high and she pulls at her lead, rasping for air as the collar pinches her windpipe. She sparks up again and barks, making me jump, and Alex re-swipes her nose.
‘I don’t know what’s got into her,’ he says. ‘We don’t come across many people on these walks any more, not since the diggers moved in. I like to come up here and check on progress as much as I can. My family’s been after these woods for years now, so it gives me great satisfaction to see all of our hard work finally coming to fruition.’ He studies my face and I look down. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
The dog circles his legs, tangling her lead round him so that he jolts and spins to retain his footing.
‘I’m fine,’ I say again. ‘I needed some fresh air, that’s all.’
‘Yes, I see,’ he says, leaning in. ‘I heard you’d been having a few . . . um. Well, not been feeling yourself.’
The wind sweeps a fresh blast of drizzle into my face. I pull the coat round me and Alex watches my hands near my chest for a second too long. His mouth opens to a slit. Inside the hole of his lips it is black.
I take a couple of steps back. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.’ The dog sniffs my leg and moves up to my crotch. I push hard at her muzzle and walk away.
Alex nods in the direction I’m travelling. ‘You’ll not get far up there. An area’s been cordoned off but the police have finished with it now.’ He begins to walk towards the car park as the dog yanks him along. ‘Nasty business. Still, no one that’ll be missed. They’ll be doing us all a favour when they shift that pile of junk anyway,’ he calls. ‘You should be careful out here after dark. It’s not the safest place for a woman on her own.’
He disappears into the trees. Only the barking and his calls travel back on the wind. I worry what he’ll say to David. I’ll call Alex later, I decide, and ask him not to mention having seen me.
I have an extra bag, heavy with dog food, wire cutters and a torch. The strap slips from my shoulder. I hoist it up. In the distance, a horizontal white line shudders in the wind, and as I get closer the material comes into focus: white plastic striped blue with the words POLICE and DO NOT CROSS. It circles the trees around the caravan, and closer in, next to the vehicle, more tape is propped up on metal canes. Some of the strips of plastic are broken and they flip and snap in the wind. The police have linked Seamus’s body to the caravan during my three lost days, but I already have everything of importance – Seamus’s paperwork, plus the photo of Claire – so they’ll still have problems identifying him. For now Seamus belongs to me.
At home I’ve been researching Manorhall Construction on the internet, the company from which Seamus received payslips, and the business through which David’s money has been filtering. Information is scant; there were only a couple of archived news items from the seventies relating to this same land – a large area was to be cleared to make way for flats to house the overspill of employees at a new cement works. After a protracted court case over Seamus’s on-site injury, the legalities unearthed other business malpractices, but from there the online trail goes dead, almost as if the information’s been deleted at source. I imagine Alex would hate having this damning information in the public domain, and he has enough money to erase his mistakes.
The treasure Seamus discovered in these woods is again in danger, but there would have been little he could have done this time round to stop the encroaching development. Even so, he gave the woods an extra thirty years. I think again of Claire. If Seamus was my father, it would matter to me how he lived.
I look behind and around me, and when I’m confident I’m alone, I duck under the police tape and track the now well-worn path towards the caravan.
My torch shines through the windows to where the walls have been stripped and the surfaces have been cleared of cans and clutter. The mattress is uncovered revealing a topography of stains, but everything else is gone, the caravan an empty shell. Seamus has been erased. One of the tiny skeletons he collected is outside on the ground. Broken. Small fragments of bone are pressed into the mud by the imprint of a shoe. I reach down and collect the pieces, trying to put them back together, but they’re too damaged. I slip the bones in my pocket. Around the caravan the ground has been scuffed, and in places dug to below the mud where there is tarmac. I work at the patch with my boot and see that the grit extends underneath and around the caravan; the vehicle is parked on hard standing. This could have been part of the original construction, and the track probably extends all the way down to Blackthorn Lane. How else would Seamus have driven a caravan here? Nature has worked fast over the years to make good and reclaim its territory.
As I walk to the other side of the vehicle, I look past the fence to the empty field and the distant hills where a wall of heavy cloud moves closer, dragging underneath it a streak of rain that smears the gap between land and sky. The landscape is more beautiful now than when the sun shines; the undisguised brute force of bad weather is the true face of nature, not the coffee-table books of butterflies and flowers we admire from inside our centrally heated houses. A rush of wind from across the open ground catches my coat. I undo the buttons and the material shafts up and open. This is how Seamus lived. I sense him here. Putting my bag on the ground for a few moments, I hold my arms out on each side to let in the weather.
The elements bluster through me as an ecstasy of feeling. I am alive.
The barbed-wire fence is rusty and the cutters slice through the layers of metal with ease. I tug back the fence with my thick gloves and stamp down the spikes, clambering over the wedge of weeds that’s grown between the fence posts. The soggy earth of the field is like deep glue. Tufts of hardy grass shiver. Then the rain hits, as if the clouds have dropped their skirts.
I look to the distant trees for the dog but nothing comes. It’s hard to see in the darkening weather, and I trample further into the field towards a small elevation of mud. As I get closer, I see that the mound has hair and limbs. An animal is on its side, ribs forming miniature hills and valleys through the soaking fur. It’s the dog. Its mouth is open. Tongue like old ham. Still. Dead.
I sit down next to the dog and hold Seamus’s watch in my pocket. There are no more steady ticks to filter time, and the minutes pass slowly, as they would have done for Seamus and his friend before I took them both away. Wet earth soaks through my clothes to my skin, until I’m chilled fridge-blue.
Hills emerge from the clouds as the worst of the rain leaves the field as abruptly as it came. A bird swoops and hovers, helicoptering steadily in the air before diving down, but it’s too far away to see if it caught its prey. How fast the mechanics of nature reveal themselves. If I lived here I would learn to judge what was coming, its beauty or its ferocity, but I don’t live here. I inhabit David’s world.
The clouds drift to another field and in their place comes a quiet dusk. Shadows fall like tired old bones.
Two dead now, and both my fault.
Deliver me from evil.
Let the worst have me. Let me feel.
15
1980
It’s nearly the end of the summer term and I’m doing my homework on the dining-room table when Uncle Peter calls round. Mum’s still at work. Peter asks if he can sit with me for a while and have some water – it’s hot and he’s thirsty. He takes tiny s
ips from the glass, watching what I’m doing, and says he can help me; geography was his favourite lesson at school, ‘not as long ago as you think, Rachel. God knows how I ended up working in the police force.’ His eyes follow my hand and my writing comes out messier than usual. Peter pulls his chair close until the wood of our two seats squeaks together and our bodies almost touch. His breath smells of burnt sugar and tobacco. With his right arm curled round my book on the table, he leans his left side towards me, and his other arm relaxes in the space between us. His hand is out of sight under the table in between our chairs and his fingers brush my skirt.
The homework is glaciers and oxbow lakes. Peter’s forgotten his glasses so he moves closer to get a better look at the words, then he flicks through the textbook one-handed. Some of the pages don’t turn first time and he has to give them another prod with his fingers. All the time his other hand is a still lump next to my leg. He asks about school and friends and what other subjects I plan to choose for my O levels. Then the fingers of his secret hand spread out like a slow spider and climb up my skirt and on to my thigh, and at first I don’t think it’s really happening. The hand slides over the top of my leg and down into the middle. I shake. Then I stand up. The book I’m holding drops to the floor.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I say.
He leans back in his chair and pulls his pipe from his pocket. His legs flop wide open. ‘Yes, that would be lovely, thank you, Rachel.’ He fills his pipe without looking at it, keeping his eyes on me, smiling.
I go into the kitchen and boil the kettle. It’s quarter to five and Mum’s due home soon, so I decide to peel the potatoes for supper. In the afternoon heat, the mud from the vegetables dries quickly on my hands and makes my skin all tight and cracky. The peelings go brown. Next I remember that the larder’s a mess so I decide to take out all the tins and bottles and stack them on the table. Uncle Peter comes into the kitchen and leans in the doorway watching me, lighting his pipe with long whistling sucks. I crouch down, putting all my effort into getting the last things out of the cupboard, and then I hear the clunk of his pipe as he leans it in the ashtray next to the sink. Peter’s legs crack like sticks as he bends his knees and settles behind me, curling his body beetle-shell round my back. His thighs rest along the outside of my legs and his breath is on my neck. I put my ear to my shoulder to get rid of the tickle. One of his hands is on the floor next to me, his fingers spread out to steady himself, and he brings the other hand up to my chest.
The Liar’s Chair Page 15