Telling Lies to Alice (21 page)

“So why didn’t you?
Oh, God, Jack
. . .
No
. . .” My stomach got there before my brain. I knew I was about to be sick.

I catapulted myself across the kitchen, one hand clapped over my mouth, leant over the sink, and threw up. Brandy and bile. Revolting.

I bent over, heaving, aware that Jack was watching me. “Still in one piece?” he asked, when I’d finished.

“Just about,” I said shakily.

“Here,” Jack offered me his brandy glass. “Rinse your mouth out.” I shook my head and stuck my face under the tap. When I stood up, he was beside me, holding a towel.

I let him lead me back to the table. He sat down opposite me again. I knew the answer, but I had to ask. I had to hear him say it.

“It is Kitty in that car, isn’t it?”

“Alice . . .” Jack looked down at his hand as it inched along the table towards mine. He rubbed my arm with the backs of his fingers for a moment, then stopped.

“It is, isn’t it?”

He went on staring at his hand. I jerked my arm away. “Don’t bother lying to me, Jack. I know it was Lenny’s car—it was in the paper. The bit you tried to hide from me.”

There was a long silence.

“Tell me!”

“Yes.”

“Now tell me it was an accident.”

Jack’s hand began to crawl towards my arm again. It looked like a hairy crab. I shut my eyes tight. “Just—
please
—tell me it was an accident.”

After a moment, Jack said woodenly, “It was an accident.”

“Thank you.” I got up. “I’m going to make some tea.”

Jack hovered behind me as I filled the kettle, lit the gas, and put some tea in the pot. I couldn’t concentrate. Every time I turned round, he was there, blocking my way so I had to step round him, and inside my head—well . . . chaos. It had to be an accident, I kept thinking. Lenny was drunk. Kitty’d asked for it, she’d done it, it was her, not him, HER, he couldn’t help it, the car must have got out of control, and—perhaps he wasn’t even in the car, perhaps she’d taken it—stolen it—that’s it, wouldn’t put anything past her . . . But then . . . Lenny’d taken her to the party, hadn’t he? After she’d blackmailed them HE’D STILL TAKEN HER TO THE PARTY. Why? Why had he done that? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
Don’t blame the camels.
He’d written it. Oh, God.
It must have been an accident,
clamoured my brain.
It must have been because I WANT IT TO BE.
Again, I had a sudden impression of Kitty’s face, a come-hither look over her shoulder, enticing and mocking at the same time, and that
smile
—“Shit!” A mug slipped through my fingers, plummeted to the floor, and smashed.

“Let me do that,” said Jack. “You sit down.”

I slumped on the chair beside the dresser.

“You’re shivering.” He pulled the throw off the back of the sofa and draped it over my shoulders. After a moment, he put a mug into my hand. “Three lumps,” he said. “You’re in shock. Drink it.”

I struggled to make my hand and mouth cooperate as tea slopped down my chin onto my T-shirt. After a few swallows, I gave up. Jack held out his cigarettes. “Want one?”

“Why not?” He lit it for me and handed it over. After a while, I said, “Val . . . did she know?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to show her the film—she made me. She kept saying she couldn’t believe we’d been that stupid.”

“She’s not the only one.”

“I know.” Jack stood looking at me, smoking and flicking the ash into the sink. I had no idea what he was thinking.

“If that’s true,” I said slowly, “Val made you show her that film, then . . . why did you have to show me? I mean, you came here to get Lenny’s copy of the film, didn’t you? That’s why you went through my room, isn’t it?”

Jack was silent.

“Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, it was.”

“After they’d found the car, you wanted to be sure—that’s really why you came, isn’t it? Never mind all this guff about wanting to see me again. But why didn’t you just
ask
for it? You could have told me it was something else—old footage, anything. I’d have believed you. That can wasn’t labelled.”

Jack turned away from me and stared out of the window. “I don’t know . . . it’s all such a
mess
. When I was up in your attic looking for it, I never meant to watch the bloody thing—all I wanted to do was get rid of it, but I found myself . . . with the projector, and again, I didn’t intend . . . and even while I was setting it up, I didn’t know
why
I was doing it, and then you came down . . .” Jack ran water over the stub of his cigarette, dropped it in the sink, and turned round to face me. “I was angry, Alice. I wanted to punish you.”

“Why?”

Jack looked at the floor, shaking his head. “I was jealous. You and Lenny, it was so . . . I didn’t have anything like that in my life, and it was the way . . . I don’t know. He wanted to spend all his time with you, and if he wasn’t with you, he was talking about you and I couldn’t get him to concentrate on the stuff we were doing, and . . . Oh, I don’t know. We’d always talked about girls a lot, but it was . . . you know, just part of it, it wasn’t
everything
. . . . I told you—it was the
way
he talked about you, that was different.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, he was always telling me things you’d
said
.”

“Like about the threesome, you mean?”

“Not just that. But that thing with Kitty—” Jack turned round to get himself another cigarette, and I almost missed the rest of what he said. “I talked him into it. I thought it would be like old times.”

I stared at him, speechless.

“The funny thing was . . . afterwards, he blamed you for it, not me. He said if you hadn’t left him—”

“I left him because I came home and found Kitty’s knickers under my pillow and I couldn’t take any more of it!”

“I don’t mean that. You’d been spending a lot of time away—”

“My grandfather was
dying,
Jack. What was I supposed to do? Not see him?”

“No, of course not, but Lenny was lonely. He couldn’t cope on his own, you know that. And I suppose . . . all right, I encouraged him. I was seeing a bit of Kitty—well, a lot of Kitty—and she liked Lenny. She’d met him before a few times—and . . . you know . . .” Jack shrugged. “It was only to take his mind off things. It was nice to have things back to how they were before,” he said defencively, “have a bit of fun.”

“Fun!” I spat, “a bit of
fun
! Jesus, when I think—the dates—you must have been planning your—your—while my granddad . . . I can’t take this in.” Suddenly I was on my feet, screaming at him, “Why’d you
do it
?” and before I knew what was happening, the mug had left my hand, hit him squarely in the chest, and exploded on the flagstones. Jack stooped to pick up the pieces, a dark stain spreading across his shirt. I leant against the dresser and watched him in silence.

“We’ll be drinking out of the horse trough at this rate.” He straightened up and tipped the pieces into the bin.

“I had to talk him round,” he said, inspecting his fingers for slivers of china, “and then I phoned Kitty, and she was keen, so . . .”

“Why didn’t you just do it at Lenny’s?”

“He didn’t want to, and obviously my place was out of the question. Kitty said she wasn’t sure about her flatmate, but she knew somewhere—”

“I bet she did.”

“So we just left it up to her. She organised the whole thing. Christ, Alice, when we found out, you can’t imagine . . .”

“No,” I said, “I can’t imagine being that stupid, for one thing.”

“You’ve got every right to be angry—”

“Thanks for giving me permission.”

“I’m just trying to explain what happened, that’s all.”

“I don’t understand why Lenny blamed
me
.”

“He felt you’d abandoned him.”

“I
told
you . . .”

“I know, I know. But Lenny didn’t see it like that.”

I nodded, remembering the fights we’d had over me going on working at the club, when he’d wanted me to stop and I wouldn’t. He could never understand why I needed it.

“He was in love with you, Alice. He needed you.”

“So did Granddad.” I stared at a splash of tea on the skirting board. Jack was right. What a bloody awful mess.

“It was like a nightmare. After . . . when we were in America.”

“You said.”

“When he told me he didn’t want us to work together anymore . . . looking back, he’d been building up to it while we were in the States, but at the time it felt like . . . well, just out of the blue. Betrayal. He was my best friend, Alice, and I’d lost him. I couldn’t believe it. Val kept on yapping about how it was all for the best, but she didn’t understand. Apart from anything else, it was professional suicide. Findlater hated the idea.”

“I remember. Tell me, why did you tell Val and not him?”

“Had to, after the party.”

“Why?”

“Needed help. Kitty had a copy of the film. We had to get rid of it, but we could hardly go round to her flat—we’d have been recognised—so I asked Val. She got it.”

“How did she get in? Did you have a key to Kitty’s flat?”

Jack hesitated. I watched him with a sinking heart, knowing what the answer was going to be. “You didn’t, did you?”

He shook his head.

“So how did you get it?”

“From her bag.”

“But wasn’t that in the car? I mean, in the water?”

“It was in the house. The cloakroom. She’d got changed, remember? Into the bunny costume. She left it there afterwards.”

“So she wasn’t leaving. She hadn’t taken the car.”

“Alice . . . It
was
an accident. We’d all had a lot to drink. You know how things happen—none of us were thinking clearly. But no one would have believed it, especially if they’d seen the film. That was why we had to get it.”

I looked at him and thought, I don’t believe you, either. “Why didn’t you tell me all this last night?”

“I was going to, but you stormed out.”

“What did you expect me to do? Applaud?”

“And then this morning, you were so angry. I had nightmares.” His face crumpled and he began to weep in great, heaving sobs. “I dreamt you took Susie’s ashes and tipped them out and trod on them. It was horrible.”

I stared at him. “I’d never do anything like that. I’m not that sort of person. Come on, you know that.”

Jack buried his face in his hands. His words came out jerkily, through his fingers. “It was—my fault—Susie got ill. The doctor—specialist bloke—he said—she thought if she was slim—get—
attention
.
She
thought she was ugly—if she was pretty, I’d want to see her, be at home more. We always told her she was, but she didn’t believe—took after me, more—big, not like Val and Rosie, felt she was the odd one out—Val must have told the specialist guy that we rowed about me seeing other people—women. Can’t blame her for that, but you don’t know what kids pick up, what they hear—Susie thought—her fault . . .”

I put my arms round him. “Come on . . . Those things, stuff in people’s heads—ideas—they
happen
. It wasn’t only because of you . . .”

“That girl last night, by the graveyard—”

“The hitchhiker?”

“Yes. I thought for a moment—she had a look of Susie, the way she was standing there on her own in the dark, lost. We were filming near Susie’s school once, and I went to see . . . hockey match. All the girls, playing, and she was standing in the goal on her own. The others must have given her their jumpers because she was wearing three or four, and one round her shoulders, like a shawl. . . . She was all bundled up, but she looked so cold—unhappy—I wanted to go over, talk to her, but it was a lesson, and she didn’t know I was there. I thought she’d be embarrassed, she wouldn’t want me to be there, so I didn’t. I just went away.”

“Oh, Jack, that’s so sad . . .” I rubbed his back. He made no attempt to hold me, but we were standing very close and when he moved his arm to wipe his face I felt the gun thump against my hip. The thought
grab it
was so strong in my mind that for a second I thought I might have said it out loud, but Jack didn’t move away. I carried on stroking his back and gradually—very gradually—started moving my right hand lower down, nearer his pocket.

“Val said I never talked to Susie about what made her tick, all that stuff. I told her I’m not a psychiatrist, but she said, show an interest. We didn’t get the chance to talk on our own much, but I’d kept this picture she’d done when she was a kid, copied it out of a book or something, and I was giving her a lift somewhere so I thought I’d ask her about that. It was a horse, galloping along beside a train. I didn’t know if she’d remember, because it was years later, but it was the only thing I could think of, and she did remember, and she told me . . .”

“What did she say?” I murmured, putting my head against his chest. I carried on stroking his back, trying not to break the rhythm, my right hand inching down a little bit farther each time.

“She used to have this daydream, if she was on a train, she’d imagine she was galloping along the embankment on a big horse, and it could keep up and jump over all the bridges and things. . . . She said when she got on the train she’d make a sort of . . . signal, in her mind, and the horse would come outside the window and she’d leave her body in the carriage and jump on its back. So I asked her if she did it in planes as well—we’d been on a few holidays to Spain and places—and she said, ‘No, Dad, don’t be silly. Horses can’t fly.’ That was it really.”

“That was sweet,” I said, trailing my fingers round towards the front of his jacket, not daring to look down in case he guessed what I was up to.

“But I got it wrong. Susie was so excited when she was explaining it, like they used to look at Christmas, she and Rosie, when they were little, and I’d asked the wrong question, and I could see she was thinking, he doesn’t understand . . . and she . . . just closed up again. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it was important to her, and I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”