Little White Lies

by Lesley Lokko

  ‘That’s your good fortune,’ Sylvan said. ‘That, and youth. You’re young.’

  ‘Not that young,’ she said and there was a smile in her voice.

  ‘Would you like another one?’ He moved closer, holding out his packet.

  ‘Thanks.’ The smile was still in her voice. She bent towards him, cupping her hands around his as he lit the cigarette for her. She was very tall and quite plain – even with her mask on he could see she was no beauty. But there was something powerfully attractive about her. He caught a faint whiff of her perfume as a breeze fanned across the terrace and she moved from the doorway, brushing past him to sit on the edge of the balustrade. She raised the hem of her dress, as women do, and balanced herself carefully. They were looking at each other but their faces were concentrations of expression in the darkness rather than individual features. He put out a hand to help her up and was suddenly overcome with an awful, helpless desire of the kind he hadn’t experienced since he was a youth. ‘I—’ He stopped. His face was inches from hers. There was a few seconds’ pause then he leaned forwards slowly and with great delicacy and erotic hesitancy, kissed her, drawing her soft, willing lips into his own.

  40

  REBECCA

  There was a burst of clapping and laughter as someone correctly identified Robbie Williams that sent the startled nighthawks circling into the night sky. Rebecca, whom no one had even spoken to, let alone unmasked, was growing impatient. She looked around for the others. As usual, Annick was in the middle of a group of young men; Tash was nowhere to be seen. She walked over, holding her own mask firmly in place.

  ‘Have you seen Tash?’ she asked, raising her voice over the noise of the crowd.

  Annick shook her head. ‘Haven’t seen her for a bit. You know what she’s like. She’s probably running around making sure nothing goes wrong.’

  Rebecca nodded glumly. Annick’s young man was clearly keen to get back to business. She left them to it and wandered into the main hall. The staff rushed back and forth with trays of food and champagne. A woman with a headset clamped to her ear was shouting out instructions, military-style, a complete contrast to the genteel, tasteful sophistication outside. It was clearly going well. She glanced at her watch; from what she remembered of the timetable, dinner was about to be served. Where the hell was Tash?

  She wandered around to the rose garden at the rear of the house. The band was playing a song she recognised. She walked up the side steps to the terrace, humming lightly to herself. She stopped suddenly. A man was standing a few feet away from her, bending over someone whose hands clawed roughly, passionately at him, pulling him into her. Her jaw dropped. It was Tash. She recognised her dress. But who the hell was the man standing over her? His dinner jacket was stretched tightly across his broad shoulders. She peered at the card on his back. Sliver of A Country. Takeaway (US). Recognition crashed over her like a wave. It was Annick’s father. She and Rebecca had chuckled over the card earlier. She stared at them for a second, a tidal wave of embarrassment and disgust rising up through her body. In the moonlight she caught a glimpse of Tash’s face, her head moving slowly from side to side, her mouth open. She moaned softly, her voice a gentle counterpart to his ragged breathing. They were utterly absorbed in each other. She backed away silently, too shocked to breathe. She found herself flattened against the climbing roses, their small thorns pricking her through the thin fabric of her dress. Tash and Annick’s father? She clapped a hand over her own mouth, then inched her way backwards. After what seemed like ages, she reached the grass where she could no longer be seen. She picked up her skirt and ran back towards the house. She rounded the corner and stopped abruptly. Annick was coming towards her.

  ‘Did you find her?’ Annick shouted. ‘Dinner’s just about to start.’

  Rebecca shook her head, still too shocked to speak. Her fingers were twisting themselves nervously against her dress. ‘No, I—’

  ‘What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’ Annick drew level with her, putting an arm on hers.

  ‘Nothing! I . . . I just . . . I’m just feeling a bit . . . hungry.’

  ‘Well, dinner’s about to start. You sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Yes! I’m fine. I’m fine,’ Rebecca insisted. She couldn’t bring herself to look Annick in the eye. Some awful remnant of what she’d just seen must surely be reflected in there?

  ‘Have you seen my dad anywhere?’ Annick added, looking around. ‘Maman’s looking for him. I think he’s bored.’

  Rebecca opened her mouth to speak but nothing would come out. It was her best and worst quality, her inability to lie. She could feel the hot, shameful wave of horror seep up through her neck and throat, staining her cheeks. Annick looked at her queerly.

  ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She turned away before Annick could question her any further and began to walk back in the direction from which she’d come. She had no clear idea where she was going, just that she wanted to get away from Annick, but just at that moment, Tash appeared from around the corner, smoothing out the crumpled skirt of her dress. Her hair was dishevelled, dragged loose from her ponytail and her mask was off.

  ‘Oh, there you are!’ Annick caught up with them both. ‘I was wondering where the hell you’d got to.’ She stopped suddenly and looked at them both. ‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’

  Tash looked up. In that moment, her guilt couldn’t have been plainer than if she’d confessed out loud. The three of them looked at each other. A few seconds passed without anyone saying anything, and then Annick’s father walked round the corner. He too stopped. All four of them looked at each other. There was a large, wet stain on the front of Tash’s dress; she put out a hand instinctively to cover it.

  Sylvan Betancourt looked at the girl he’d just screwed on the balcony behind the house and then the penny dropped. He realised who she was. ‘Merde,’ he said quietly. ‘Merde.’

  Annick put up a hand to her mouth. It was a moment Rebecca knew she would never forget. ‘Tash?’ The sound dropped into the silence like a stone.

  Rebecca watched Annick’s father pass a hand over his face in an acknowledgement of shame. For a few minutes they all stood there, locked in the grip of a terrible, fearful inertia. Tash looked at the ground. Sylvan looked at his hands and Rebecca slowly backed away. Annick’s ragged breathing was the only audible sound.

  PART FOUR

  SINK OR SWIM

  ‘If my critics saw me walking over the River Thames they’d say it was because I couldn’t swim.’

  Margaret Thatcher

  41

  2003

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  ANNICK

  London, England

  She rushed into the meeting ten minutes late, flustered, full of muttered apologies and sat down next to the client. Just before her bottom hit the seat there was the unmistakable feel of tearing fabric. Her skirt had split neatly up the seam. There was a startled, stifled giggle from Claire Hungerford, the other trainee solicitor present, and a withering, despairing look from Justin Clark, her boss. Annick went scarlet.

  ‘Right, shall we get started?’ Justin’s voice made it clear he was in no mood to do dress repairs. ‘Annick . . . would you mind bringing everyone up to speed on where we are?’

  ‘Er, yes, absolutely.’ She took a deep breath. She couldn’t risk standing up so she remained seated. For the next half hour, she did her best to forget her ripped skirt and explain instead to the irate young man opposite her why his stepmother had managed to get her paws on his dead father’s £3.5 million estate.

  Forty-five minutes later, her ordeal was finally over. She waited until they’d all filed out of the meeting room before daring to stand up. She twisted round to look at the damage. Her heart sank. The skirt had split neatly up the central seam. She fell back into the chair in despair. She knew why it had split. It was too tight. Simple. She buried her face in her hands.

  �
�Annick?’ Justin suddenly appeared in the doorway. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I’m fine,’ she stammered, mortified. ‘Just . . . just a little tired.’

  ‘Tired?’ He raised an eyebrow. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. ‘Long night?’ he asked mildly.

  Annick almost laughed out loud. ‘Oh, no . . . nothing like that. I’ve . . . it’s the case. There’s a lot to go through, that’s all.’

  ‘Ah. Well, gird your loins.’ He put a sheaf of papers down on the table in front of her. ‘Mrs Hall’s just had these dropped off. I’ll leave you to it,’ he grinned. At the door he turned round. ‘And there’s a dry cleaner’s on the corner,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘They’ll be able to help you out.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she muttered, hoping that he couldn’t see her face reddening. She waited until he’d gone then got up and ran for her coat.

  It took the nice lady at the dry cleaner’s ten minutes to fix her skirt.

  ‘There you are, love.’ She bit off a last thread and handed it over. ‘I’ve put in a double seam. It’ll last you for the rest of the day at least. You’re never a size ten, though, if you don’t mind me saying. Fourteen’s more like it. Sixteen, even.’

  Annick felt her cheeks reddening again. ‘I . . . it’s an old skirt,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Well, I’d buy a new one if I was you. That’ll be a tenner.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Annick muttered, pulling out her wallet. Size sixteen indeed! She fished out two fives and hurried through to the back. She squeezed herself back into the skirt, let out the top three buttons and hurriedly left the shop.

  She walked back down Cheapside, her cheeks still burning with a mixture of embarrassment and shame. Deep down, she knew the woman was right. In the past year alone, she’d gone up at least two dress sizes. She just couldn’t stop eating. She couldn’t pinpoint when it had begun. She’d always enjoyed her food, but for most of her teens and early twenties, she’d found it easy enough to pass on a second helping or a chocolate bar or two if she thought her jeans were getting a little tight. Now, however, things were different. She thought about food constantly – what she’d just eaten, what she was about to eat, what she was going to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . . and almost every waking hour in between. She generally had breakfast alone in the kitchen before Mrs Price surfaced and was at her desk by nine, having stopped off somewhere en route to buy a croissant and a cappuccino. Another cappuccino and a biscuit or a muffin broke the morning’s routine at eleven and then she spent the next couple of hours deciding what to have and where to go for lunch. And as soon as lunch was over, she began to think about dinner.

  Her life had somehow narrowed itself down to two things: work and food. Aside from the odd drink with colleagues after work, most of whom she didn’t really like anyway, her social life was practically nonexistent. After that terrible evening when it became clear what had happened between her father and her best friend, something inside her had snapped. She just couldn’t face her mother: what she’d seen that evening would be written all over her face. Her father simply pretended it hadn’t happened. ‘Merde. Shit.’ That was it, that was all he said. That was all he would ever say, she knew. It made it impossible for her to return to the palace in Lomé or to the apartment in Paris when he was there. Slowly, as the weeks of silence deepened into months, then a year, followed by another year, she found herself so far removed from the person she’d once been – bubbly, carefree, slim – that there didn’t seem to be any way to bring her back. Anouschka didn’t help. On the odd occasion she saw Annick, all Anouschka could talk about was how fat she’d become. She railed against what she saw as a betrayal of her own beauty. Why must you eat so much? Why don’t you exercise more? Why don’t you have a boyfriend? Where are those two friends of yours . . . what’re their names again? Natasha? Rebecca? Don’t they say anything to you? What could she say? The words wouldn’t come. She turned her face away from her mother’s accusatory glare and thought about what was for dinner instead.

  It was nearly two o’clock. She bought her sandwiches and a brownie and hurried back to the office, passing the Jaeger store on the way. She glanced in the window; there was a sale on. She hesitated. She really ought to get a new skirt. She glanced at her watch. A plain black skirt would go with the jacket she was wearing, though to be honest the jacket was uncomfortably tight as well. Perhaps she ought to try a size fourteen. She walked in, hurriedly pulled a few items from the bulging racks and headed to the changing rooms.

  Nothing fitted properly.

  ‘I’m afraid fourteen’s our biggest size. We don’t go any bigger. Have you tried Marks & Spencer?’ The sales girl spoke to her from the other side of the shut cubicle door. If they’d been standing face-to-face, Annick would have slapped her.

  ‘Fourteen’s fine,’ she muttered. ‘It’s just a fraction too tight.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Annick looked at herself in the long mirror. Her stomach flopped over the waistband and there were large rolls of flesh poking out of the side of her bra. There was no long mirror at home, just the small vanity mirror in the bathroom above the sink and it had been ages since she’d seen herself like this. A lone tear began its slow journey down her cheek. She brought a hand up to wipe it and caught sight of her tattoo. It took her a few moments to steady herself. It was five years since that terrible night and the end of a friendship she’d thought would last for the rest of her life. Rebecca had tried to patch things up, of course, but even she couldn’t understand how it had happened. And Tash refused to talk about it. There’d been no coherent explanation, however painful, that would allow them a way back into their friendship . . . and so it ended. It had taken months for the anger inside Annick to die down and then it had been replaced by something else that was oddly familiar – a horrible, aching sense of loss. It simply slotted in neatly with all the other losses, all the other people about whom she cared deeply but who always, in the end, left her behind.

  She wiped the tears hurriedly away with her sleeve. She wasn’t about to let the damn salesgirl see her crying. She picked up the size-fourteen skirt and jacket and walked out with as straight a back and as neutral a face as she could muster.

  ‘I’m afraid your card’s been declined,’ the snotty salesgirl said haughtily, a few minutes later.

  Annick blinked in surprise. Such a thing had never happened to her. ‘Declined? Why?’

  ‘They don’t tell us why. Have you got another one?’ Her very tone implied Annick wouldn’t.

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ Annick snapped and pulled out her gold American Express card.

  There was a few seconds’ wait as the salesgirl swiped the card, then she looked up again. Now she sounded positively triumphant. ‘This one’s not going through either.’

  There was an irritated cough from the person behind her. Annick’s face began to burn. ‘Um, I might have enough cash,’ she said, quickly rifling through her purse. No such luck. Her purchases came to over £300. ‘Could you just put those to one side for me?’ she asked. ‘I’ll go to the cashpoint.’

  ‘If you like. So sorry about the wait, madam.’ The girl looked past Annick.

  She ran outside and looked around for a cashpoint. There was one across the road. She ran across, fished her card out of her purse and put it in. She waited nervously for a few seconds. A message flashed up on the screen. Please contact your bank. She stared at it in disbelief. The card was not returned. She slid the second one in and waited. A few seconds later, the same message appeared and the machine swallowed her card. What the hell was going on? She looked at her watch. It was almost two fifteen. Guimard et Cie, her father’s bank, was on the Strand, at least a ten-minute cab ride away. She was already fifteen minutes late for the office, but what else was she supposed to do? She hesitated, and then stuck her hand out. She would explain everything to Justin later. A cab swerved round and she clambered in. It had to be a mistake. Nothing like this had ever happened to h
er before.

  The cashier glanced at her screen, then up again at Annick. She seemed oddly nervous. ‘Could you just hang on for a minute?’ she asked. ‘I’ll be right back.’ She slid off her stool and disappeared. A minute ticked by, then another, then another. Annick looked nervously around her. She’d only ever been inside the bank a couple of times: once, when she first arrived in England with her mother and once with her father, waiting for him to conduct whatever business he had behind the wooden-panelled doors.

  ‘Miss Betancourt?’ She jumped and turned round. Standing next to the worried-looking cashier was a young man with a badge pinned discreetly to his lapel. Steven Hewlett. Personal Wealth Management. There was an odd look in his face. ‘Would you mind coming with me for a moment, Mrs Betancourt?’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Annick asked, anxiously. What the hell was going on?

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming with me . . . just this way, Mrs Betancourt. My office is just down here. It’ll be easier to talk in private.’

  She followed him, her heart starting to accelerate. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked again.

  He waited until she was seated opposite him. He laced his hands together and cleared his throat. ‘Are you aware of any . . . of anything unusual happening in Togo?’ he asked carefully.

  Annick shook her head. ‘No, nothing. Why?’

  He hesitated. ‘We’ve been issued with a TRO on all your accounts.’

  ‘What’s a TRO?’ Annick asked, puzzled.

  ‘It’s an assets freeze. Your accounts are frozen, in other words.’

  ‘Why?’ Annick’s heart was thumping.

  He looked extremely uncomfortable.

  ‘I think you’d better contact your embassy. I think that would probably be the best thing to do.’

  Annick stood up. She felt dizzy. ‘My embassy?’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, I’m awfully sorry, Miss Betancourt. It’s the first time . . . I’ve not had to deal with a situation like this before,’ he said apologetically. ‘I’m sure everything’ll be fine. It’s probably just a temporary thing, a blip. You know, until things calm down.’