Lie With Me (16 page)

‘I know,’ I said. ‘God. Poor kid. I mean, I suppose they know what they’re doing?’

‘Of course they do,’ Alice said. Louis had slunk down again on to the sand and she gave him a nudge with her foot. ‘Come on, stand up. Let’s go.’ She seemed unaffected by the boy’s arrest. In fact, if anything, she looked relieved. She gave me a perky smile and set off towards the kayaks without a care in the world.

Chapter Eleven

The water beneath me didn’t look cobalt blue as it had from a distance, but black and threatening, full of danger. Beneath me were crags, jagged pumice with snags and dips, sudden patches of darkness.

I worried about tipping over, sinking down into the abyss. I tried to concentrate on the paddle, on the angle of the blades. It was hard work and I was out of breath, that nasty hot feeling scouring the back of my throat. The big yellow life jacket they’d made me wear was chafing beneath my armpits.

The hotel receded, two white cubes above the swell. To my left was a small island – ‘Serena’s rock’? Alice had left me to my own devices: ‘You don’t mind, do you? I need to keep going or I’ll capsize.’ She was way ahead, paddling side by side with Andrew. Tina had volunteered to drive Louis round, but Phoebe and Daisy, Frank and Archie kept doubling back to taunt me, weaving back and forth to show how easy it was, and then setting off again at mocking speed. ‘Got the hang of it now?’ Frank yelled at one point, and then added something that made Archie laugh.

I battled round the chain of rocks at the mouth of the bay. It seemed to take ages. I kept hacking at the water, not cutting through it. By the time I had got round them and then fought the current to change course, I was alone. The others I could see had reached the small cove, and were pulling their boats out of the water. Tina was standing at the edge, a hand shielding her eyes. She waved, and I raised an elbow in reply. Salt stung the corners of my mouth. I ploughed on. Alice and Andrew were bent down over the boats, heads close. Louis was sitting on the other side of the inlet, throwing stones into the water. Why hadn’t Alice told the policeman he’d been at the nightclub? Did she think he might be involved, or worse
know
? No, it was more likely just a natural instinct to keep her son out of trouble. But still – Andrew should have encouraged her to tell the truth. It was the right thing to do – whatever Louis’s involvement. It didn’t surprise me he hadn’t. There was something unsavoury about Andrew, something
off
, a discrepancy between his actual physical standing and how he wanted to be seen. I kept coming back to the way his eyes had followed those young German girls, and then how he had lied about doing so this morning. At least, for all my failings, I was honest. I was the one she should be listening to, not him. I felt a twinge of something unfamiliar, and realised it was what it might be like to occupy the moral high ground.

I reached the shallows to cheers and cries of congratulation. Archie and Frank had been despatched to help me out of the water: ‘One, two, three, yank,’ Frank shouted, heaving the kayak with exaggerated effort. As I divested myself of my yellow straitjacket, a small smile played around Phoebe’s lips. ‘Nasty bit of chafing there, Paul,’ she said. ‘You might need some cream.’

She was lying on a towel. I let my eyes run over her body. ‘Are you offering to rub it in?’

‘Fuck off.’

Alice separated from Andrew and came over. She put her arms around my shoulders and held me, laying her head briefly on my shoulder. I felt the damp swell of her Speedo against my chest, causing me to stir, even through my exhaustion. ‘Poor Paul,’ she said, kissing my sunburnt shoulders.

‘You should have said you’d never done it before,’ Andrew called. ‘Though how you could have reached forty-four without once rowing a kayak, I’ll never know!’

He laughed to hide the jibe. A little knife, that was his weapon of choice.

Tina was kneeling on a threadbare tartan rug, laying out rolls and tomatoes and unfolding greaseproof packets containing ham and a plastic-looking cheese. She reached into a coolbox for a bottle of beer and thrust it into my hand. A rash of freckles had sprung up across her nose and cheeks; she’d caught the sun. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Cure for all ills.’

I thanked her and rummaged among the bags on the ground until I found my cigarettes. I perched on a rock to smoke while the others milled around on a patchwork of rugs and towels, picking at the food. It wasn’t much of a beach, small and pebbly, but we had it to ourselves. A path led through a sharp incline of trees to a strip of road, a silver stripe across the hillside. Most of the stones, white and oval, were stained with black tar. The air smelt unpleasantly of sulphur. In a crack between rocks, litter had collected, including a rolled-up nappy.

‘Everything always tastes so much more delicious when you eat it outdoors,’ Tina said after a bit.

No one bothered to say anything, though Alice, who had hardly eaten a thing, made a noise of agreement at the back of her throat.

‘Paul – are you going to eat?’ Tina called.

I waved my cigarette in the air, gestured to the beer lodged between my knees. ‘I’m fine. Maybe in a minute.’

‘That’s why you stay so slim,’ she sighed. She had made herself a sandwich, and she opened her mouth around it and took a messy bite. ‘I’m going to start the 5:2 diet when I get home.’

‘It works better for men,’ Andrew said.

‘Are you saying I’m a lost cause?’

‘I think you’re perfect the way you are,’ I said.

‘Bless you, Paul,’ she said.

Phoebe and Daisy had laid out towels and were sunbathing in matching swimwear – hot pink strapless bikinis. They were talking quietly to each other. I began to concentrate on the shapes of their mouths. The subject was Kylie’s brother, Sam, the young lad we’d seen being taken by the police at Delfinos and whether he could possibly be guilty of rape.

‘He didn’t look the type,’ Phoebe said.

‘What
is
the type?’ Tina, who had been eavesdropping too, said. ‘It’s an important lesson, you two. Appearances can be deceptive.’

I looked across at Alice. She had picked up a pebble and was studying it. ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘They might just have wanted to talk to him as a witness, not a suspect.’

Alice looked up at me, and then away. She threw her stone high into the sea and leant back, eyes closed, face up to the sun.

‘I think he went home early anyway,’ Daisy said, propping herself up on her elbows. She called to Louis who was sitting in the shade of a tree, picking delicately at a ham roll. ‘You talked to him, didn’t you? He left about the same time as you, long before us. Weren’t you going to walk up together?’

I watched Alice. She didn’t move.

‘I don’t know,’ Louis muttered, looking down. ‘I got a bit lost.’

‘I didn’t hear any of you come in,’ Tina said. ‘I was dead to the world.’

I waited. Surely Alice or Andrew would tell the truth now? When neither of them said anything, I opened my mouth to speak – I could quite innocently just say what I’d seen – but then thought better of it.

Tina said, ‘Anyway, that poor girl. I hope she has a good support group and she isn’t in hospital in a foreign country on her own. I hope her parents have flown out, or if not, she has a nice friend to look after her.’

‘She was with a big gang,’ Phoebe said carelessly. ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’

I thought about the people Laura had been with: the bottles of beer, the shaved heads. ‘Her friends didn’t look much cop to me,’ I said.

Alice turned to look at me. ‘How do you know anything about her friends?’

I had spoken without thinking. I stubbed out my cigarette carefully and said: ‘If she is the girl I’m thinking about, she’s called Laura. She was with a load of skinheads on my bus up from the south yesterday.’

‘I thought you got a taxi?’

I felt the heat rise into my face. ‘Um . . . I got a bus in the end.’

She looked at me with an odd expression. ‘But I thought you said . . .’

‘Yeah, silly me – I don’t know why, but I lied.’

I climbed down off the rock and picked up a tomato to eat. Warm juice spurted down my chin. I wiped the liquid with the back of my hand and sat down on the pebbles, making a show of getting comfortable next to Alice. I was aware of her shifting very slightly away and of Andrew’s eyes on both of us. How typical. They were the ones behaving reprehensibly, but I was the one who now felt in trouble.

I would get tar on the seat of the trunks, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t mine. Nothing here was mine, I realised unhappily, no matter how hard I pretended.

After lunch, as Louis had rallied, we swapped places. I took a lift back to the house with Tina, leaving him to paddle by kayak back around the headland. I watched them all push off from the shoreline, and shouted ironic advice and encouragement – ‘that’s it; well balanced, nice clean strokes’ – trying to use humour to wrest back control of the situation.

The car was reached by a climb through trees, along a rough path, half stones, half pine-needles. The air was sharp with eucalyptus. Above us, a bird of prey circled, a hawk maybe, its shadow curling and slanting. Tina clambered a way ahead, though I could hear her exhaling loudly, letting out small cries of astonishment at the gradient. I was carrying the bags and paced steadily behind, glad to have a few moments alone with my thoughts. I had a lot to think about.

When I arrived at the road, Tina was leaning against the car, fanning herself with her hand. ‘Phew. Hot work,’ she said. ‘I’d have died if you hadn’t offered to be my pack horse.’

A convoy of quad bikes, topped by teenagers in vests, snarled by, like chainsaws on wheels.

I waited until they had rounded the bend, a skirt of dust in their wake. ‘At least I’m good for something,’ I said. I’d meant to sound flirtatious rather than self-pitying, but Tina took a step forward. ‘Don’t worry about Andrew,’ she said. She made a strange darting movement with her hand, curling it into a fist and pressing it into my cheek. Sympathy in a lunge. A feint retreat. If I’d been a child I wonder if she’d have squeezed my cheeks, pushed her face into mine. She took her hand away and sat next to me on the barrier. ‘He feels responsible for Alice and sometimes he gets carried away.’

I said: ‘Thing is, I wouldn’t mind being responsible for her myself.’

Again I must have misjudged the tone. I’d been wondering on the way up whether to tell her about Louis being drunk, about Andrew and Alice covering for him. I knew I wouldn’t now. Tina looked at me for a long time. I half laughed under her scrutiny, felt the prick of tears, bit the side of my lip, looked away.

‘You’ve fallen for her, haven’t you?’ she said eventually.

It was a peculiar moment. I had had no idea until that point of the truth of it. Perhaps I was feeling over-sensitive because of the rape and the worry about Alice. Or perhaps it was the delayed trauma of the kayak trip and relief that it was over. My insides weakened and for a second I found it easier not to speak. I gave a nonchalant shrug and eventually managed to say, ‘I’m not good enough for her. That’s the problem.’

She said, ‘Was that why you lied about taking a taxi? To make yourself sound more suitable?’

‘Probably. Yes.’

We were leaning in, facing the road. But she spun round to face the view. ‘I’m sure you are good enough. I’m sure you’re just what she needs. She just needs to realise it, to relax into it. She’s not quite herself this week. She’s worried about Louis. And losing the house isn’t easy. On top of everything.’

I turned round too. The prospect before us was of trees and sky and the large dark body of Albania, but on a triangle of sea, a few small shapes wriggled slowly towards the headland. ‘On top of
what
, though?’ I said. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be on holiday?’

She sighed lightly. ‘You wouldn’t understand. It’s never completely a holiday here. It’s almost like a duty. Alice has always carried Jasmine’s disappearance on her shoulders.’

‘But why?’

She sighed again, more heavily. ‘Partly, I suppose, because she was there when it happened, lived through that night and the days that followed, the police interviews, the search . . . We all did, I guess. But Alice – it’s just the kind of person she is – took it more deeply than the rest of us. And now, the end of the lease, having to give up the house . . . Here’s the thing about Alice. You don’t know her as well as I do. Alice
has
to be in control. She always has. She doesn’t trust anyone else to do anything; she is only happy if she has charge of it all. I love her dearly, of course I do, but she has this belief that unless she is at the centre of everything, nothing holds together. Without her in the driving seat everything goes wrong.’

I frowned. ‘That must bring a few problems.’

‘It’s just the sort of person she is,’ she said again.

We were both quiet on the drive back to the house. I was disarmed by drowsiness: a combination of physical exhaustion, upset, heat and the soporific effects of Mythos. Tina pressed in a CD, a compilation they brought to Pyros every year: a private joke in musical form. Through half-closed eyes, I watched olive groves rise and dip, the sea and sky merge and separate. I sang along sleepily to the second track, a haunting song about cruelty and betrayal.

‘You’re familiar with this one, then?’ Tina said.

‘Yeah. People used to play it a lot at college.’

Her face flashed towards me and then back to the road. ‘Everything But The Girl. “Charmless Callous Ways”. It was Florrie’s favourite. Apparently.’

Florrie
.
I opened my eyes and sat forward.
Was it the song that brought the memory back?
An image of that oval pixie face, the slight overbite, flickering in candlelight across the table from me. The Maharajah Tandoori. Dancing wildly in the buttery during some party, a clumsy drunken kiss on the corner of King’s Passage, and another physical memory: the slither of her sheets, the roughness of an over-washed cellular blanket.

‘It’s funny I wasn’t aware you’d gone out with her,’ Tina mused.