A Few Little Lies

by Sue Welfare

  In the indoor market, Dora wound her way between the brightly coloured stalls and stopped just long enough to buy a huge pot plant. She wasn’t good with plants, but this one was a splendid monolith of verdant excess, and would cover up the coffee stain on the sitting room carpet very nicely.

  She glanced up at the clock above Boots – ten past eleven. Lillian should be long gone to her newspaper luncheon. It was going to be a good day after all. Now all Dora had to do was go home and whip up a culinary masterpiece.

  Back in Gunners Terrace, sunlit and familiar, any residual menace dissipated by the light, she unpacked the car, making a final trip downstairs to bring up the plant. She was half way across the pavement when Sheila blustered around the corner and eyed her accusingly.

  ‘Morning,’ said Sheila brusquely. ‘I’ve been really worried about you. You said you’d ring. I’ve left dozens of messages on that machine of yours. Did you get the cakes?’

  Dora let out a little sigh of frustration. She hadn’t checked the machine to see whether Jon had changed his mind about her invitation either. She backed towards the door and gave it a hefty shove.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, without a shred of sincerity.

  Sheila tried to wrestle the plant pot out of Dora’s hands. ‘You’re getting very unreliable. It’s not like you at all. So, are you all right, then? I thought maybe you’d have thought about going to the doctor’s.’

  Dora stood to one side and let Sheila bustle into the hall then dropped the door latch with her chin.

  ‘No, I’m fine, really. I’ll get you the money for the cakes when we get inside.’

  Sheila stopped mid-stride. ‘What about all this burglary business, have you heard anything else from the police?’

  ‘No, here, just give me a hand with this plant, will you?’ She struggled upstairs with Sheila, executing an impressive turn on the landing so that she could get the foliage through the door without ripping half the leaves off.

  Inside, Dora’s kitchen was bright, light and she knew, as far as Sheila was concerned, suspiciously tidy.

  Sheila’s face immediately betrayed her curiosity. ‘Expecting someone, are you?’ she demanded, as she peeled off her coat.

  Dora hefted the plant up onto the table. ‘Yes, funnily enough I am …’ She hesitated, looking down the corridor at the closed spare bedroom door, hoping Lillian had already left.

  Sheila sniffed, waiting for the opportunity to turn her curiosity into words.

  Dora glanced at the clock. ‘Actually I’ve got quite a lot to do today.’

  Sheila sucked her teeth thoughtfully and looked round the kitchen, gathering up question marks like silver bullets.

  ‘There’s something the matter, isn’t there? I thought that the other day when you left the Corn Exchange in such a hurry. Something’s going on.’

  Dora pulled out a chair and slung her coat over it. ‘No, there’s nothing, really,’ she assured her briskly. ‘I’ll just find my purse and pay you for the cakes.’

  Sheila didn’t look convinced. ‘Nerves, I’d go and see the doctor, if I were you. Bound to shake you up, being broken into like that. He’ll give you something, help you cope. Is that why you’ve taken a lodger in? Makes sense – someone else about the place.’ She paused, redeploying her questions. ‘So, who are you expecting, then?’

  There had been a wildlife programme Dora had once watched, in which a shoal of piranhas had stripped the carcass of an ox, bite by bite, until only the bones were left. Sheila had the same tenacity; little questions, like barbed teeth, bit into her mind.

  Dora held up her hands in resignation. ‘No-one special. A friend,’ she said, wondering how much of the truth she could escape with.

  ‘What, one of your writer friends? Jill, is it, or that girl you were at school with? I saw her last week in Freeman Hardy and Willis. She said she hadn’t seen you in ages. She said she’d give you a ring.’

  More tiny teeth, another little bite.

  Dora sighed. ‘No, it’s not a school friend.’

  Sheila’s eyes lit up like flares. ‘Not a man?’ she gasped incredulously.

  Another bite – snip snap.

  ‘Yes, a man.’

  Sheila smiled and leant back. ‘Anyone I know?’

  Teeth close to the bone now.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Sheila squared her shoulders and eyed Dora. ‘And he’s coming here?’

  Dora nodded and slammed the kettle under the tap. ‘Yes, he’s coming here. He’s coming here tonight for dinner.’

  Sheila drew her lips together into a little rosebud of deep contemplation. ‘Brave of him, has he ever tasted your cooking?’ She paused. ‘I’m surprised you’re bothering with men after all this time, at your age.’

  Dora swung round, trying to swallow her indignation.

  ‘What do you mean? He’s a good friend, he –’ She stopped herself. If she wasn’t very careful she would end up letting Sheila strip the ox right down to the white gleaming bones. She plugged the kettle in.

  ‘We’ll have a quick cup of tea and then I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go,’ she said coolly.

  Sheila watched Dora’s face. ‘There’s a lot more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there, Dora?’ It wasn’t really a question, more of a statement.

  Dora blew out a slow steady stream of air, trying to catch back hold of her life. A few seconds later the intercom bell rang. Sheila clambered to her feet.

  Dora shook her head. ‘No, no, stay where you are. I’ll get it. You just make the tea, I’ll go and see who it is.’ She pulled the office door to behind her while she pressed the call button.

  ‘Morning, Dora. As I was in the neighbourhood, I thought I’d drop in. Are you feeling okay after yesterday?’ Jon Melrose’s deep voice echoed around the office.

  Dora sighed. ‘Almost.’

  ‘Do you mind if I come up?’

  Dora glanced back over her shoulder towards the kitchen door.

  ‘If you must,’ she sighed, and pushed the entry button.

  She heard Jon jogging up the stairs and jerked the door open before he had a chance to knock. He stepped inside, looking unnervingly gorgeous, and grinned.

  ‘Morning. My excuse is, I’ve come to check on what time we’re having dinner.’

  ‘Eight-ish. Would you like a cup of tea while you’re here?’

  Jon shook his head. ‘Afraid not. I can’t stop long, we’ve come to see someone in Fairbeach. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. By the way, after Lillian’s breakin I think we may have some movement on the breaking and entering. I wondered if you’d come to the station and take a look at some mug shots we’ve got. How’s it going with –’

  As he spoke, from the corner of her eye Dora could see Sheila getting to her feet.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sheila, stepping into the hall, eyes taking down every tiny detail in shorthand.

  ‘Hi,’ said Jon pleasantly.

  Sheila extended a limp, ladylike hand. ‘I’m Sheila, Dora’s sister. And you are?’

  Jon smiled, shaking her hand. ‘Jon Melrose, I’m a friend of Dora’s.’

  Sheila sniffed. ‘Having tea, are you?’ She was using her best telephone voice.

  Dora tried to suppress the desire to throttle her. She had held the forced smile on her face so long it felt as if rigor mortis had set in.

  Jon held up his hands. ‘Thanks, but no thanks, I’ve really got to be on my way.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sheila briskly, adding a dot to every i on her mental notes. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think I just heard the kettle click. Nice to have met you, Jon.’

  She retreated, leaving the kitchen door open just a fraction. Dora imagined her pressed against the other side, straining to hear every last word, and grinned in spite of her discomfort.

  ‘I just wondered if there was anything you wanted me to bring tonight?’ Jon asked softly, moving a fraction closer.

  Dora felt her heart flutter – he was pla
nning to kiss her. She struggled to catch a breath but without success as fleetingly his lips touched hers. She looked up at him in astonishment.

  ‘I’ve driven all the way over here just to do that,’ he said mischievously. ‘So, anything else you want?’

  Dora, her mind doing a series of erotic back flips, flushed crimson. ‘No, that’ll do just fine. Come here, I’d like to do it again.’

  Jon laughed and kissed her less gently. ‘I promise not to bring my pager.’

  There was a quiet intense silence where Dora tried hard to marshal her thoughts back into a nice neat heap.

  ‘What about if I bring a dessert and the wine?’

  Dora nodded, the pulse still fluttering in her throat. ‘That will be fine, bring something sweet, sickly and wildly overindulgent,’ she said, struggling to sound normal.

  Jon glanced again at his watch. ‘About eight-ish then?’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she muttered unsteadily, guiding him hurriedly back out onto the landing.

  His fingers closed around her shoulders and this time he held her close to him. He kissed her hard, tipping her face towards his. She shivered as she felt the beat of his heart through her clothes.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, glancing back into the flat, ‘not now.’

  He looked down at her with bright shiny eyes and kissed her on the end of the nose.

  ‘Soon though,’ he murmured, and loped off down the stairs. At the bottom he hesitated and then lifted a hand in farewell.

  Trembling, Dora closed the door behind him.

  Sheila was out of the. kitchen like a featherweight boxer closing in on the final round.

  ‘Was that him?’ she hissed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dora, trying to make it sound as if she had nothing else to add. ‘He’s a policeman.’

  ‘Is he sorting out this burglary thing for you?’

  Dora nodded. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘I suppose he must meet a lot of women that way,’ Sheila observed.

  Dora sighed. ‘Have you made that tea yet?’

  On the other side of Fairbeach, while Dora drank tea with Sheila and finally paid her for the cakes, Lawrence Rawlings was alone in his dining room. He was standing beside an oak table, resting his hands on its smooth cool surface and looking, without seeing, into the garden.

  The table had been made by a master cabinet maker, Arran van Bellsin, in the summer of 1820. It had been delivered to Fairbeach on 7 September of the same year, and had stood beneath the window for as long as Lawrence could remember. He stroked the grain of the timber with something that felt uncannily close to love.

  In the cupboard, in his study, was the original bill of sale, signed by a venerable ancestor, his great-great-grandfather perhaps? Lawrence frowned – he really ought to remember, he used to know. If he closed his eyes he could imagine every single stick of furniture in the dining room – in the entire house, come to that. Perhaps reflection on the unchanging nature of some things was part of the ageing process; he certainly seemed to be spending more and more of his time doing it these days.

  The very idea that Calvin Roberts would one day run his hands over the little table and not consider its provenance but its worth, chilled Lawrence down to the very marrow.

  He could feel a groove under his fingertips. His father had told him that his father had been left in the dining room by a nanny, left to sketch a view from the window, while she went off for an assignation with the footman.

  Bored, rebellious, a small ancestral Rawlings had etched a tiny furrow in the impossibly hard surface. Sarah knew where it was too, and Lawrence had found her on Sunday – while Calvin was committing political buggery with that arsehole Phelps – running her hands over the table top, unconsciously finding the shallow groove like a touchstone.

  He wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t stand for it. He would buy Calvin off, force him to leave Sarah. Mercenary bastard, it wouldn’t take much, particularly if Lawrence had the evidence that Calvin was committing adultery.

  Lawrence sighed. What an old-fashioned word adultery seemed – it would break Sarah’s heart, and Lawrence wasn’t altogether convinced that getting rid of Calvin was the lesser of two evils. Was it Sarah’s happiness that drove him or was it something else? Wasn’t it really an unpleasant glacier-cold hatred for the man, for taking something of his and using it with such disdain, such casual abandon?

  Lawrence ran a fingernail across the groove. Things must have been simpler when the table had been crafted by Arran van Bellsin, much simpler. Indiscretions discreetly hidden. People who had been brought up to know their place and expect no more or less. Jack Rees would have understood how he felt. Jack always understood and always had an answer. A tiny crystal shard of grief cracked somewhere in his solar plexus.

  Outside the dining room window, daffodils bobbed cheerfully in the sunlight, making fun of his pain.

  And then there was Alicia Markham. He wondered what it was she wanted, but instinctively he had already guessed. What she knew was quite another matter.

  His man had told him that she hoped to find something to assure Phelps’ success in the by-election. Scuppering that alone would be ample reward, thought Lawrence, though exactly what Alicia hoped she might find was completely beyond him.

  Lawrence straightened his jacket. Perhaps he would have what he wanted by Friday, in which case he would ring Alicia and politely decline her invitation to lunch – that would give him even greater pleasure.

  When Calvin and Lillian arrived back at Gunners Terrace from their lunch at the Echo, Calvin refused, point blank, to take Lillian’s cat in his car to Anchor Quay. It was late afternoon, and Lillian was standing in Dora’s hallway, surrounded by a selection of her worldly goods, waiting to move out and pulling a tearful face.

  Calvin held firm. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, chomping down hard on his cigar butt, ‘the damned thing can’t go in my car. They always piss all over everywhere. The whole bloody car will stink to high heaven. No.’

  Dora stood in the kitchen door with an empty cat basket in one hand and was trying very, very hard not to speak. She just wanted them gone. Gibson had vanished, like a magician’s rabbit, straight under the sofa in the sitting room, and it would take some heavy-duty stalking and tempting to get him out and into the wicker basket.

  Dora leant against the door frame. After she had got rid of Sheila, the flat had been deliciously quiet. She had tidied, hoovered and polished, cut up onions, chopped tomatoes, all with one eye firmly on the clock and then, while looking for a pair of earrings, had found a face pack in the bottom of the drawer.

  She instinctively knew mixing it up and slapping it on would draw Lillian and Calvin back like a magnet, and wasn’t at all surprised when they proved her right. The face pack had just gone from tingly to crispy-meringue-hard when the doorbell rang. Calvin had lumbered up the stairs, in a filthy mood, with Lillian close behind, trying very hard to smile in spite of it. Neither seemed to have noticed that Dora was covered in crisp pastel-pink goo.

  The frosty chill had lasted while Lillian collected her things, and now seemed to be in danger of thawing with explosive consequences as they reached an impasse over the cat.

  Lillian looked up at Dora. ‘Would you bring him for me?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘I can’t at the moment,’ she said between her teeth. ‘I can’t go out like this and it’s got to stay on for another twenty minutes. After that I’ve got to get ready. A friend’s coming round for dinner.’

  Calvin wrinkled up his nose. ‘I thought it looked tidy in here.’ He took a long sniff. ‘Food smells good though.’ He appeared to be restricting his civility to Dora, which did nothing to make her feel any better.

  He stared at the suitcase and bags around Lillian’s feet. ‘Is this all of it?’

  Lillian, cowed, nodded.

  Dora sighed. ‘Look. I’ll tell you what –’ As she spoke a creamy gobbet of face pack dropped onto the freshly vacuumed floor. ‘Why don’t I b
ring Gibson round tomorrow for you?’

  Lillian nodded. ‘All right. I’ll just go and see if I’ve left anything.’

  Dora eyeballed Calvin. ‘You’ve really upset her,’ she whispered. ‘Is this about sleeping with that reporter, yesterday?’

  Calvin snorted. ‘It wasn’t me. When we got to the newspaper offices there was this group of women protesters outside.’

  Dora stared at him. ‘Because of Lillian?’ she said, now oblivious to the cracking sounds from the face pack.

  Calvin shook his head. ‘No, sheer bloody coincidence. Apparently the Echo ran a story about female rights and managed to upset half the Doc-Marten-wearing feminists in the area. This group have been picketing on and off for about a week, and then Lillian arrives.’ He lifted his hands, miming an explosion. ‘They took one look at her as she shimmied out of my Jag and went ballistic. Threw eggs and flour all over my crombie – the stain won’t come out, you know. It’s completely ruined, a four-hundred-quid coat.’

  Dora sighed. ‘I’ll go and see to Lillian.’

  She went into the spare bedroom. Lillian was sitting on the bed, with her back to the door, apparently staring out of the window.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Lillian’s shoulders were trembling.

  ‘It was really horrible. They called me a painted trollop,’ Lillian gasped in a hot miserable little voice. ‘And then one of them recognised me from off the telly. She said I was betraying my fellow women. Everywhere.’ Lillian’s shoulders were heaving up and down now.

  Dora stroked her hair. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Think what a lovely day you had yesterday at the sex shop.’

  Lillian let out a long throaty sob and turned round. Dora flinched. Even when she cried, Lillian Bliss looked beautiful. One great crystal tear was rolling down her cheek, another poised, like a glittering drop of dew, on her dark lashes.

  She sniffed. ‘And then they started to throw things at us. Tomatoes, eggs –’ She shivered. ‘Good job I’d already changed into that new rubber dress. The man in the office was able to sponge it all off for me. He really made a good job of it.’