A Few Little Lies

by Sue Welfare

  Ironic really, she thought, tipping the lipsticks, eye shadows, little jars and tubes out onto the dressing table. Her everyday life was spent exploring the fictional boundaries of wild passion, while she spent every night alone with a neutered ginger tomcat.

  It felt very odd putting on serious eye make-up. Turning the little pot of eye shadow over between her fingers, Dora looked at the faded label on the bottom. God alone knows where or when she had bought it. The surface was dry and crusty from lack of use.

  It had taken most of the afternoon to decide what to wear. There had been a flurry of washing and tumble drying and ironing between Jon’s phone call and now. Eventually, Dora had settled on a delicate jade-green blouse, navy trousers and a long matching jacket. The jacket hung on the back of the bedroom door, on a hanger, in case fried chicken was out.

  The flat, newly painted in patches, glistened unnaturally and there was a disconcerting whiff of pot-pourri spray polish in the air. She grimaced at her reflection, suddenly feeling extremely foolish. She was bound to drop grease on her best blouse. It would be hell to get out. After all, why the fuss? This was simply fried chicken with an old friend, nothing more, just a quiet meal for old times’ sake. She snorted, who was she trying to kid? She slipped the freshly ironed trousers and blouse on over her best bra and matching knickers, feeling about fifteen and just as uncertain.

  Finally, gilding the lily with a touch of lipstick, she looped a pretty navy, peach and jade scarf around her shoulders and checked the clock again.

  Did ‘about eight’ mean eight? Quarter to? Quarter past? Tying the scarf in a loose knot Dora went into the sitting room, flicked on the gas fire and stood nervously looking round, plumping cushions, tweaking things into submission.

  Maybe the flat would look better with a few magazines around to make it look more homely? Sheila had tidied away most of the ambient chaos.

  The drawers were stuffed with bits of paper, the odd spoon, cotton reels, cassette tapes, discarded cardis … Glancing at the cupboard, Dora considered the merits of holding back a tower of debris while trying to find something that said, ‘together woman, with contented satisfying lifestyle’. It didn’t do to look too needy.

  In the kitchen cupboard were some magazines Sheila had brought to line Oscar’s cat litter tray, but the People’s Friend and the local church magazine weren’t exactly the image Dora had in mind. The decision was whipped away by the intercom bell ringing.

  Dora glanced into the mirror one last time before hurrying into the office and pressing the call button. She stopped short of pushing the entry button – another thing she remembered about being fifteen was that it didn’t do to appear too eager either.

  ‘Hello?’ she said warmly.

  There was an abstracted scuffling noise through the loudspeaker.

  ‘Is that you, Jon?’ Dora suddenly felt a tiny creeping tremor of disquiet. ‘Jon?’

  She moved across to the office window and craned to see who was standing in the street below. In the twilight the street lights were still dull; it was impossible to see the door below, her view interrupted by the porch.

  Another dark glittering thought made her gut contract – was the downstairs door locked? She desperately tried to remember. She’d arrived home soaked through to the skin, the girl from the shoe shop had followed her inside and then the phone had rung. Peering into the shadowy street below, Dora knew with a sickening certainty that the door downstairs was unlocked.

  She stepped back to the intercom. ‘Who is this, please?’ Speaking more firmly now.

  Nothing came over the speaker. She hurried into the hall and dropped the catch on the flat door, sliding the security chain on behind it. It would be simple to open it and look down the stairs but she didn’t want to contemplate what might be waiting outside.

  A tight sick feeling lifted into her mouth. Images of Lillian Bliss’ animated handsome face filled her mind, memories of walking into the flat to find it wounded and in disarray. The sense of excited expectation trickled away like water. She shivered, letting the fear wash over her in uncomfortable shivering waves.

  Back in the office, the little call button flashed brightly once more and then went dead. She hesitated for a second and hurried over to the office window, grateful she’d left the office lights off.

  The twilight had leeched everything into a chilling monochrome, stripping the colour from the bricks and the hoardings. Under the street lights, a stockily built hunched figure hurried across from her side of the road, hood up, hands stuffed into his pockets. As he got to the far kerb he glanced back up at the flat. Dora stepped away from the window, but not before catching sight of his pale plump face, rendered anonymous by the light of the lamp above him.

  When she looked again, he was gone, and the only thing she could hear was the manic rhythm of the pulse in her ears.

  She stared into the street, wondering whether it would be better to go downstairs and lock the street door. A millisecond later, a car pulled up on the far side of the road and she sighed with relief as she recognised Jon Melrose climbing from the driver’s seat.

  ‘There was someone downstairs, a man,’ Dora said far too quickly as Jon stepped into the hallway. ‘Just before you arrived.’

  Jon looked at her, dark eyes registering concern.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He glanced back over his shoulder into the dark stairwell. ‘Would you like me to go downstairs and take a look around?’

  Dora swallowed down the metallic taste of fear. ‘He’s gone and I’m fine now. The intercom rang and I thought it was you.’

  ‘Did you see who it was?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘I couldn’t see him clearly from the window. He’d got his hood up and he didn’t answer me when I asked him who he was.’ She laughed nervously. ‘I’m overreacting, aren’t I? It was probably just a mistake. He realised he’d got the wrong address and pushed off.’

  Jon lifted an eyebrow. ‘Well, you’ve got me convinced,’ he said dryly.

  Dora realised that it wouldn’t take a lot to make her cry. She looked up at him, trying to regain a sense of control. Her mind was full of disjointed jigsaw-piece thoughts.

  ‘The builder,’ she said flatly. ‘The girl downstairs from the shoe shop said the builder was coming round. It might have been him.’

  So why hadn’t he spoken? Dora stopped again; for some reason something Calvin had said over lunch appeared in her mind.

  ‘I can’t find my diary either –’

  John grinned at her. ‘Hang on a minute. Are these the cryptic clues?’

  Dora frowned, sifting thoughts, looking for the straight edges, corners and bits of sky, trying to make some sort of sense of what she was feeling. ‘Why don’t you go through into the sitting room.’

  She opened the kitchen door a fraction and then thought better of it. Her diary ought to be in the office. She turned round, ignoring Jon and threw open the office door.

  Inside it was very still and unnaturally tidy. Her eyes worked along the shelves, touching spines. She looked around, eyes searching frantically for the slim maroon book, by the phone, on the directories, on the coffee table, working backwards and forwards from the doorway, coming to the same conclusion over again and over again. Her diary wasn’t there.

  In the kitchen? She opened drawers frantically, turning over piles of accumulated junk, while on the kitchen unit beside her the kettle clicked off the boil. She didn’t notice Jon in the doorway.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  His voice surprised her. Dora stared up at him and realised with astonishment that she had forgotten he was there.

  ‘Something Calvin said. The people who broke into his office took his filofax, nothing else. My diary’s not here, either.’ She opened the fridge to take out a pint of milk and glanced into the freezer compartment – stranger things had happened.

  ‘Where was it?’

  Dora pointed into the office. ‘Usually I keep it by the phone, but it’s not there now.�
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  Jon nodded. ‘And what? Keep appointments, pour out your soul?’

  ‘It’s mostly “dentist, two thirty”, that sort of thing. I keep them for years, so I don’t have to copy out phone numbers and things like –’ She stopped and headed back into the office. Above the doorway was a narrow shelf where she stacked diaries from previous years. It was a habit. Old numbers, old contacts, stacked away in Boots A5 diaries that went back to the 70s.

  She wasn’t certain exactly what her expression said, but it made Jon hurry into the office to join her.

  ‘They’ve all gone,’ she said lamely, pointing upwards. ‘I kept all the old ones up there.’ Something icy shivered in her belly. The breakin wasn’t random; whoever had been there had come for a reason. Dora didn’t know whether that made it better or worse. Open-mouthed, she stared at Jon.

  ‘Did the fingerprint lads come in here?’

  Dora shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I think they did the window, the door –’ She stopped, feeling dizzy. She could feel her colour draining.

  Jon guided her back out into the hall. ‘Tell you what, I’ll arrange for someone to come and have a look at this in the morning. There’s not a lot we can do now.’

  Dora was still staring at him. ‘I suppose not. I meant to ask you on the phone whether we were eating fried chicken in or out. Can I safely assume from the lack of chicken about your person we’re going out?’

  Jon grinned. ‘I thought we’d go for a drink first.’

  Dora nodded. ‘Good idea, I think I need one.’

  Dora locked the street door with exaggerated care. She glanced around as Jon went across to his car, half expecting to see the man in the hood or worse. It was darker now and part of her was angry that she felt so vulnerable. Gunners Terrace seemed very quiet, very empty, strafed by a crossfire of dark shadows and street lights. She hurried to join Jon.

  As they drew off, he looked at her. ‘Did you get the locks checked and ring up about a security window?’

  ‘Yes,’ she lied, and then fell silent.

  Jon grinned. ‘Make sure you give the bloke a ring tomorrow.’

  Dora watched the countryside peel off past the car, still annoyed with herself for reacting to one late-night caller and the missing diaries with such an overwhelming rush of fear. Seeing the lights of Keelside, she realised with a start that she hadn’t spoken since they’d driven out of Gunners Terrace and coughed, sorting through her thoughts to find something to say that didn’t sound inane, and failing.

  ‘At least it’s not raining.’

  Jon glanced across at her. ‘I thought you’d gone to sleep.’

  Dora grinned. ‘Sorry, I was thinking. What would someone want my diaries for?’

  ‘Information – you said they took Calvin Roberts’ filofax too.’

  Dora let the silence wash over her again, tacking ideas and thoughts together at random, looking for patterns that looked right stitched side by side. Time and time again the patchwork formed the same image: Lillian Bliss.

  ‘Now what are you thinking?’ asked Jon, guiding the car in and out of the evening traffic

  Dora blustered an apology. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled, turning so that her body and her attention were focused on him. ‘I think I’ve lost the knack of talking to people. I spend a lot of time on my own, with just the cat and a teapot for company. I don’t talk out loud much any more, everything buzzes round in my head instead.’ She paused. ‘I was really nervous about tonight –’

  ‘Coming out with me?’

  Dora nodded, glad of the darkness. ‘Sounds silly, doesn’t it?’

  Jon made a dismissive sound and then laughed. ‘No, not really, I feel the same. Bloody awful, isn’t it? You’d have thought by the time we got to our age it would be so much simpler –’

  ‘Our age? It feels worse now than the first time around. At least when you’re a teenager nobody expects you to feel confident. Now we’re supposed to be worldly wise, know what we’re doing.’ She smiled and pulled a packet of sweets out of her handbag. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy a mint humbug, do you?’

  They were creeping between sets of traffic lights towards the town centre. Jon guided the car into a back-street car park behind the main shopping precinct and switched off the engine.

  ‘We can walk from here. Would you like to go for a drink before we eat? Mac’s on the market place isn’t too bad.’

  Dora nodded. ‘Yes, that would be fine.’

  The tight nervous twist in her stomach still hadn’t quite gone; almost, but not quite. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a pub with a man and felt unbelievably gauche. Jon looked across at her and grinned. The dim light in the car park made his eyes glitter invitingly. He locked up the car and then turned around with his hand extended.

  ‘Pleased you came, nervous or not?’ he said gently.

  She swallowed hard and stepped closer.

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured, feeling his fingers close over hers. His touch was warm and dry and unbelievably comforting. They stood very still, holding hands like two teenagers, for what seemed like an eternity. Dora made the decision to step into the quiet warm space around him just as he decided to lean closer. For a split second his lips brushed hers. She shivered.

  ‘I’ve waited a very long time to do that,’ he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. She tipped her head up towards him and he kissed her again. This time the chaste delicacy had gone. Dora gasped, feeling as if she might drown. When he pulled away he was still grinning.

  ‘My God,’ she muttered. ‘It was worth the wait, though, wasn’t it?’

  Jon linked his arm casually through hers. ‘Shall we go for that drink now, or would you prefer to stand here necking all night? Don’t answer that, I think we’d better go for a drink.’

  Dora shivered, relishing the little crackle of desire that arced between them.

  ‘Necking? Where on earth did you get that from? It sounds like something out of a teenage magazine.’ She hesitated. ‘I never thought we’d get this far.’

  ‘What, tonight, or all those years ago?’

  Dora giggled. ‘Both really.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Dora groaned with mock indignation and fell into step beside him. ‘And what do you mean, you’ve waited so long? I used to think about you when …’ She stopped abruptly, feeling the colour rise in her face.

  She used to think about him when she was in bed with her husband, Ray, fantasising about Jon’s lean muscular body while they … She stopped her thoughts as abruptly as the words, and in desperation peered into the nearest shop window.

  ‘Go on, tell me, then,’ said Jon, leaning gently against her, ‘when did you think about me?’

  She heard the teasing tone and smiled. ‘What an egotist! All the time, if you must know. All the time from the day we first met. That’s what made getting ready for tonight so hard – all that expectation all saved up and ready to be unleashed.’

  And Dora had also known, after the first time they’d met, that she could very easily fall in love with him. Which would have been fine, except of course that then she had been married to Ray.

  Peering into the darkened shop window, with Jon beside her, she wondered how long it had been since she’d really thought about Ray. At one time he had figured daily in her thoughts, now he was a vague abstract outline on the distant horizon. A place she’d once known well but which had gradually been reduced to a series of blurry mental photos that left a broad impression but precious little detail.

  ‘Are we looking for something in particular?’

  Jon’s voice snapped Dora back to reality and she blushed, realising they were peering into a lingerie shop. ‘I wasn’t really looking, I was just thinking,’ she spluttered.

  Jon grinned. ‘Really?’ He touched the glass with his finger. ‘I rather like that little cream silk number at the back. What do you reckon?’

  ‘You’d look great in it, cream is most definitely your colour.’

 
; Jon pulled her close with a sudden urgency and kissed her again. She wasn’t up to offering even token resistance and kissed him with equal fervour.

  When they finally parted, he said, ‘We really ought to talk.’

  Dora crept under his arm, relishing the sensation of his body against hers. ‘What is it, obligatory these days? What do you want to talk about?’ She felt rather than saw him shrug.

  ‘Things, all those things grown ups are supposed to want to know, old things, new things, things of significance. The real grown-up stuff.’ He stopped mid-stride. ‘Like that cryptic little note that you sent me when you cancelled our last date at Lacey’s: I kept wondering if I should ring you. Then the next thing I heard was that you’d left your husband.’

  ‘They weren’t dates and I can’t remember what I wrote,’ said Dora briskly, taking his hand and hurrying him along the precinct. ‘I really think I need a drink.’

  Ahead of them, past darkened shop fronts and the harsh geometry of the pedestrian precinct, the road opened dramatically onto a beautifully lit medieval market place. Keelside’s old commercial heart, just a street away from the river, was ringed by half-timbered houses, built from local brick. The soft ochres and creams of the merchants’ houses had a kind of weary splendour, as if they had long grown tired of being picturesque.

  The shopping centre was almost empty; by contrast the market place was bustling with cars and people making their way to the cluster of pubs and restaurants around the edges of the square.

  Jon pointed out Mac’s as they walked between the cars. It stood on one corner of the square and was lit up like a Christmas tree. ‘Over there. Why don’t you start by telling me about what happened between you and your husband.’

  Dora puffed out her cheeks. ‘You go straight for the throat, don’t you? Aren’t we supposed to work our way through the social niceties first?’

  Jon shrugged. ‘Whatever. Maybe it’s my police training – I just thought you might want to talk about it.’