A Few Little Lies

by Sue Welfare

  He grinned. ‘I think we’re supposed to get a chance to eat what we’ve ordered. Maybe we could give it another try, some time soon?’

  Dora nodded. ‘I’d like that.’ She watched the headlights for a few minutes before speaking again. ‘Did you find out how Lillian is?’

  Jon shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet, I’ve said I’ll drop in and give her a look.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll drop you off first.’

  ‘You don’t have to, I’ve always wanted to see what it is that policemen do.’

  Jon laughed. ‘Trust me, it’s not that impressive.’

  A peculiar silence dropped over the two of them. Dora wondered if it was too late to salvage the remains of the evening, and whether she had the courage to suggest he came round after he had been to Lillian Bliss’ flat.

  As the lights of Fairbeach glittered ahead of them on the dual carriageway, Jon said, ‘Maybe now I can convince my boss that these breakins are linked.’

  Dora sighed. Safe ground. She felt the tension easing again.

  ‘I don’t understand. What do you think they’re looking for?’ she said. Maybe she could just slip the invitation into the conversation, quickly without dwelling on it. ‘Presumably whatever it is they want, they haven’t found it yet? My place, Calvin’s? Now Lillian’s? What is it?’

  Jon made a thoughtful sound in his throat. ‘No idea, but I think we should take another look into it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dora. ‘I’ll ring Calvin tomorrow.’

  Jon glanced across at her. ‘Actually, I didn’t mean you,’ he smiled. ‘Try and resist any temptation you might have to go snooping around. I’m supposed to be the policeman, remember? Whoever this guy is, whatever his reason, keep out of it and make sure you give that security firm a ring.’

  Dora, suitably chastened, nodded.

  When they pulled up outside the flat, Dora wondered if she should invite him inside. Part of her just needed the comforting presence of another person coming upstairs with her. Jon switched off the engine. ‘I’ll see you upstairs.’

  Dora nodded dumbly. ‘Thanks,’ she said, suddenly daunted at the idea of going up to her flat alone. ‘I’ve had a …’ She stopped. ‘I was going to say, I’ve had a lovely evening, and I have, but it sounds so corny.’

  Jon grinned. ‘Me too, next time I’ll leave my pager at home in a drawer.’

  He leant a little closer and tipped her face towards his. She didn’t resist as he pressed his lips to hers. He smelt so delicious, the heat of his body made her shiver. She felt the desperate little flicker of desire igniting again and jerked away.

  ‘I’m not used to this,’ she spluttered. ‘I’m very out of practice.’

  His eyes were alight, like tiny, intense dark beads in the street light. Dora fought to catch her breath.

  ‘We won’t rush it then,’ he said softly. ‘Shall we go upstairs and see what the cat’s been up to while you’ve been out?’

  She nodded, trying to swallow down the frantic tattoo of her pulse.

  Outside it seemed very dark and cold, despite the street lights. As soon as she opened the car door, Dora sensed they were being watched. It was a little raw, electric knowing, something ancient and instinctive that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  ‘Jon,’ she whispered, turning back towards him.

  He looked across at her, instantly registering the anxiety in her voice. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s someone in the alley beside the shop.’ Her voice was barely more than a breath. How she knew, or why she was so certain, was beyond her.

  Slowly, Jon turned, and she watched, mesmerised, as he pulled a torch out from under the seat of the car. A split second later a stunning searing beam of halogen light cut through the darkness like a solar flare. Trapped inside the spotlight’s unforgiving eye, a figure cowered against the alley wall.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ snapped Jon, even though it was obvious that the person was no threat.

  Dora, no longer afraid, hurried across the road towards the alley. Whoever it was had long wet hair, bare legs and was wrapped all around in an oversized raincoat. Between the person’s fingers, Dora could see terrified blue-green eyes, sprinkled with distinctive gold flecks.

  ‘Lillian?’ Dora whispered in disbelief as the girl turned, blinking, eyes swollen and tearstained, into the light. She let out a long thin mewl of terror and clung to Dora like a child.

  ‘My flat,’ she wailed. ‘They’ve written horrible things on the wall. They said I’m a slag. A slag,’ she repeated, and burst into a hot explosive cascade of tears. Still clinging to Dora, she took a long deep ragged breath. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

  Dora held her closer. ‘It’s all right now,’ she said in a soothing gentle voice, stroking Lillian’s damp hair. ‘Let’s go upstairs and you can tell us all about it.’

  Fishing in her jacket pocket, Dora gave her keys to Jon.

  ‘Did you see anybody?’ Dora asked, as she handed Lillian a mug of tea. Downstairs, Jon was putting a message through to Keelside police station.

  Lillian Bliss shook her head. She was so pale her eyes seemed to dwarf the rest of her face. Huddled on the sofa she looked like a Disney rabbit. Without make-up, with her slicked down wet hair, she could easily have passed for twelve.

  She curled up onto the settee, knees up, arms wrapped tight around them, dragging the coat around her. Oscar, sensing a poor lost soul, curled up alongside her and made comforting, uncharacteristic small talk, rubbing his furry, wedge-shaped head against her until she was forced to take him in her arms. Once he was settled, Lillian turned her entire attention to the cat, and hummed soft noises in the back of her throat.

  Dora went to find Jon. ‘I think she’ll be okay, she’s in shock.’

  ‘Did you ask her if she’d got a diary or a phone book at the flat?’

  ‘She said she’d got her address book in her bag, she’s got that with her.’

  Jon nodded. ‘Right, I’ll go and take a look at the flat and then I’ll come back, if you don’t mind –’ He stopped, reddening slightly. ‘I was going to ask if I could come back anyway.’

  Dora lifted her eyebrows. ‘Really?’ She smiled at him. ‘And there was me worrying about how I could suggest you dropped by for a coffee without sounding easy.’ She giggled and stepped into his arms. ‘I really have had a good night. Thanks for inviting me.’

  Jon’s colour intensified. ‘You know what makes this difficult?’

  Dora felt he didn’t want an answer.

  ‘It’s that I really want this to work out. You know, me and you? We wasted an awful lot of time, didn’t we?’

  She didn’t get a chance to answer this time around, he kissed her instead and she felt her heart kick back into a tango.

  ‘You have to go,’ she said in an undertone, as she felt her whole body respond to his touch. ‘You’re supposed to be going to Lillian’s flat. Remember?’

  Jon groaned.

  Behind them, the door opened slowly. Lillian Bliss, cradling Oscar, stood framed in the doorway. If anything she was paler than before, one hand lifting to her lips. She took an unsteady step over the threshold.

  ‘I think I’m going to be –’

  ‘Sick,’ added Dora ruefully, stepping to one side as Oscar leapt into the hall and Jon sprang back. She caught hold of Lillian, who was swaying dramatically.

  ‘Come on,’ she said in a businesslike tone. ‘Why don’t I run you a bath, I’ll get this cleared up in a minute or two. Don’t worry about it.’

  The smell made Dora’s stomach heave. She beckoned to Jon. ‘Come on, you’d better be going too.’

  He looked almost as pale as Lillian as he edged towards the door.

  ‘I’ll be back in a little while,’ he said.

  Dora, one arm supporting Lillian, grinned. ‘I was banking on it.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean, can she stay here?’ Dora hissed into the phone.

  At the far end of the line, C
alvin Roberts coughed uncomfortably. ‘She can’t go back to the flat yet. It’s a complete mess. And I can hardly ask Sarah if she can come round here and stay with us, now can I?’

  Dora growled. It was nine o’clock the following morning. Dora had hardly slept a wink all night. Jon, on his return, had arrived wearing the role of policeman, and when he’d left, well after midnight, Dora had felt immeasurably cheated – all this, and it appeared that Oscar had defected to the enemy.

  ‘Why can’t Lillian just go back to her flat?’ she snapped.

  She already knew the answer. In the sitting room, still in a state of shock, wrapped in one of Dora’s shapeless dressing gowns, Lillian Bliss was talking in an undertone to Oscar. She was still ashen and painfully close to tears. Even a night away hadn’t quite stilled her fears from the previous evening.

  Dora let out what she hoped was a long calming breath.

  ‘Right,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ll go and pick up some clothes for her this morning. The flat will need to be cleared up – can you arrange that?’ She stopped, aware that she was struggling to sound calm. Why was she giving him any option?

  ‘You’ve got two days, Calvin? Capisce? Two days and then you have to find a way round this. I want Lillian Bliss out of my flat, out of my life. Two days, forty-eight hours, this is not open to negotiation.’ She stopped again, thinking aloud. ‘Where did Lillian live before she came to Fairbeach? What about her family? Can’t you arrange for her to go home for a little while?’

  There was a lengthy pause, then Calvin cleared his throat. ‘Leave it with me.’

  Dora snorted. ‘Remember, two days, Calvin,’ she repeated, and hung up.

  When Dora went back into the sitting room, Lillian looked up at her with fear-rimmed eyes. ‘I’ve got a cat,’ she said.

  Dora nodded. ‘Really, where? At home?’

  ‘No, at the little flat I’ve got over in Keelside. I was going to go and pick him up once my new place was all decorated. Couldn’t have him there while the men were in, leaving the doors open and that sort of thing. The girl downstairs, Carol, is looking after him at the moment.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I wish I’d stayed there now, no-one would ever have broken in there.’

  Dora sensed the incoming tide of tears. ‘Why don’t we have some breakfast and then we can go down to Anchor Quay and pick up some clothes?’ She glanced at the discarded raincoat on the back of the sofa. In the kitchen, rinsed out and hung over the clothes horse, was the swimsuit Lillian had been wearing under it.

  Lillian sniffed, eyes widening. ‘I don’t think I ever want to go back there,’ she whispered unevenly.

  Dora painted on a bright, shiny, uncharacteristic morning smile.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine in the daylight and I’ll be there with you.’ Still Lillian looked uncertain, so Dora played her ace. ‘Or, if you like, you can borrow my clothes until we can get you some more. I’m sure I can find something to fit you somewhere.’

  Lillian stared and blinked.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, in a little voice. Composing herself, she smiled. ‘You did say you’d come with me, didn’t you?’

  Dora nodded. ‘I’ll drive you down in the car after we’ve eaten. And the police want you to make a statement.’

  Lillian screwed up her nose. ‘I told that policeman all about it last night.’

  Dora nodded. ‘That’s right, but he isn’t really involved in the case, they still need an official statement.’

  Lillian considered for an instant, composure rapidly returning. ‘He was quite tasty.’

  Dora flushed. ‘Who?’

  ‘The bloke who was here last night. Really nice eyes. I always look at their eyes.’

  Dora took another deep calming breath; two days. Two days and Lillian would be gone.

  7

  Lillian’s new flat was on the top floor of a converted Victorian warehouse. Huge arched and circular windows, an architectural happy face, looked out over grey waters of the Western Ouse. Downstairs, in the elegant flagstoned foyer, there was still a breath of new varnish hanging amongst the lush green plants and inviting, lovingly restored old timbers.

  If Josephine Hammond from the Fairbeach Gazette was anywhere in the vicinity, Dora certainly had no desire to be seen with Lillian. Before they left Gunners Terrace, Dora had rung the caretaker to arrange for them to be let in through the fire exit, and now crept along the service road, parking at the back of the building near the rubbish bins.

  Lillian climbed the stairs reluctantly. The door of the top-floor apartment was wreathed with police incident tape.

  Dora slipped the key into the lock whilst Lillian hovered unhappily behind her, as if the vandals or their wraiths might still be trapped inside. Dora stood aside once the door was unlocked. The apartment was a mess. She could easily understand why Lillian hadn’t wanted to stay. For some reason, the sense of violation seemed more extreme because everything in the apartment was so new. Pristine plaster work, with barely time to harden, had been ruined, gouged down to the brickwork. Aerosol obscenities on the newly stripped wood looked like open wounds. Bright new furniture, some still in its plastic wrappings, had been overturned and slashed, cast up, left like flotsam on the shoreline in the wake of an invisible destructive tide.

  Dora walked around slowly, wondering why it felt so very disturbing, while Lillian scurried around behind her, stuffing things into bags and gathering things up in her arms.

  Dora picked her way through the debris, unable to stand still, righting tables and standing lamps back on the shelves. She did it without thinking, aware only that she needed to re-establish calm and order. A cream leather sofa had been disembowelled, white foam entrails cascading out like snow over an oriental rug. Outside the beautiful old arched windows, the slow waters of the river glided past like dusty silk.

  Dora straightened the curtains. Poor little Lillian Bliss. She had barely had time to claim the flat for her own before it had been violated and snatched away from her. She didn’t have the resilience or the emotional connections to the things inside to claw the apartment back. Lillian didn’t feel safe there now because she hadn’t had any time to make it feel safe in the first place.

  Dora arranged a flurry of pastel cushions onto the window seat. A crescent of emulsion was soaking into the new oatmeal carpets, cream on cream, self-coloured defacing.

  Dora read the bile green words across the chimney breast: ‘slag’, three feet high, written with considerably more venom than the insults on her own walls.

  Behind her, she heard the bedroom door slam shut with a dark finality. Lillian had barely been in the apartment ten minutes. She kept her eyes lowered, as if the graffiti on the champagne-coloured walls was shouting too loudly for her to cope with.

  ‘All done,’ she said in a tiny voice.

  Dora turned and nodded, cradling the keys in her hands. She looked the girl up and down. Lillian was carrying a single bulging suitcase, with clothes peeping out between the fastenings.

  ‘Is that all you want?’ Dora asked gently, but Lillian had already turned to leave.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, guiding her towards the ageing Fiat. ‘Let’s get back home and have something to eat.’

  When they drove out into the main street, Dora spotted Josephine Hammond hunched in her car, yawning, cradling a mobile phone. It had obviously been a long night for her too.

  The policeman who turned up after lunch to take Lillian’s statement treated her like a child.

  ‘So, then, what did you do next?’ he said very slowly, as if the stunning blonde might have trouble comprehending sentences of more than two words. After they had picked up her clothes, Lillian had gone back to Dora’s flat, painted on a happy face and was now curled up on the sofa, cradling Oscar.

  ‘I went for a swim,’ she replied in her seductive breathy voice. ‘There’s a swimming pool in the basement at the apartments – and a gym and a sun bed. I’ve used them ever since I moved in. You have to book the sun bed, so I go in the
evenings.’

  At least that explained why Lillian had arrived in the swimsuit and her wet hair.

  When the girl leant forward, the young police officer followed the progress of her chest with an impressive single-mindedness.

  Dora sighed and went back into the office just in time to answer the intercom bell as it rang.

  ‘Hello, are you up there?’ asked a familiar voice.

  Dora glanced heavenwards. ‘Hello, Sheila. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. I’ve brought the new parish magazine round for you.’

  Dora flinched, visualising Sheila’s reaction at meeting Lillian in her sitting room. ‘Actually, I’m just on my way out.’

  Sheila sniffed. ‘Have you got the police there again?’

  Dora, one finger still on the call button, grabbed the jacket that was hanging on the back of her chair and picked up her handbag. If she didn’t head Sheila off at the pass very soon she’d be demanding to be let in.

  ‘Are you going to open the door then? I can’t stop long. There’s a bring and buy at the Corn Exchange at two.’

  Dora was already out in the hall. She stuck her head round the sitting-room door. ‘Excuse me, just got to pop out for a little while.’ Neither Lillian nor the policeman looked up or said a word. Dora headed downstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  Sheila was outside on the path, red-faced and obviously annoyed.

  ‘I only popped round to see how you were,’ she said, peering into the dark shadow of the stairs above Dora’s shoulder.

  Dora forced a smile. ‘I thought we’d go out for a coffee at that new place in Market Street. Unless of course you’re in a hurry?’

  Sheila stared at her. ‘What, one pound twenty for one of those little glass jug things? It’s instant, you know. They refill them out the back. Are you feeling all right?’

  Dora nodded, pulling her coat closed and tidying her hair with her other hand.

  ‘Fine. How are the kids? I wouldn’t mind going to the bring and buy.’

  For a split second, as Dora was about to force march Sheila down Gunners Terrace, she had an odd feeling, fleeting but distinct. She glanced back over her shoulder. This was the same feeling she had had the night before, when she and Jon had discovered Lillian Bliss in the alleyway – an icy unnerving certainty that someone was watching them.