Telling Lies to Alice (29 page)

Pablo whinnied again, louder this time, more urgent, and we heard hooves thudding across the field. They’ve seen somebody, I thought. In the lane. “Someone’s coming,” I said.

There was a clunk as Jack brought up the gun and put it down on the table, and Val’s fingers tightened over the back of my hand. Jack got to his feet and stood staring at me. I stared back, over Val’s head. “Don’t move, Alice,” he said. His voice was flat. “Don’t even think about it.”

The front doorbell rang.

Eustace, shut in the dining room, started to bark. The bell stopped and then rang again. Val hunched over in her chair as Jack came towards us. She let go of my hand and folded her arms over her stomach, but I knew he wasn’t going to touch her. I clenched my teeth and forced myself to keep still as he walked round behind me, raised the gun, and pressed it against my right temple. I could see it out of the corner of my eye, a black, fuzzy shape, and behind it part of Jack’s face, so close to me that I could feel his breath on my bare shoulder. I jumped as his free hand touched my back, and it took me a couple of seconds to register what he was doing . . . rubbing my skin . . . caressing the nape of my neck. I felt sick.

“Please . . .” I whispered to Jack. “Please don’t . . .”

“Don’t move, Alice,” he muttered into my ear. “Just don’t move.”

We both jumped slightly as the bell rang again—three short bursts this time—followed by shouting. “Alice? You in there? Open up!”

“Who is it?” whispered Jack hoarsely.

“Lee’s father.”

“Alice!” shouted Fred. “You all right, girl?”

“Hello!” Another male voice. “Anybody there?”

“Who’s the other one?” Jack hissed.

“I think it’s Mr. Anderson.”

“Who’s he?”

“The vicar.”

Eustace gave one last, hoarse bark and fell silent. Fred and Mr. Anderson were talking, but we couldn’t hear the words. I concentrated as hard as I could, picturing them standing together on the front step, trying to communicate with them in my mind.
Don’t go. Help us. We need help.
I repeated the words over and over again, like a mantra.

Val stayed hunched over, her whole body quivering. She’s doing the same, I thought. She must be doing the same. I shut my eyes.
Please God, make them help us. Make them not go. Please
. . .

The voices stopped. There was silence, then footsteps, two sets, crunching the gravel by the side of the house, turning the corner by the window, then a different sound as they walked across the cobbles. Jack shifted his weight slightly beside me, banging the gun against my head. We stared at the door.

“. . . quite a mess . . . didn’t recognise the car . . .” Mr. Anderson’s voice, outside the window. “Alice’s car’s here, in the yard.”

“I come looking for my boy,” said Fred. “He’s not been home since yesterday morning. His mum’s worried sick. He come up here with Trudy—Alice asked them to get her a paper, and Lee come back with it, like she said. . . . We thought he’d gone to his mate’s for the night, but he’s only been on the phone this morning, where’s Lee, he’s never turned up. . . . So I come up here. That car—I thought that was him, run over. . . .”

It’s worse than that
. . . I felt tears welling up and closed my eyes.

“No,” whispered Val. “No . . . no . . .”

She tailed off in a whimper as Jack made a noise in his throat like a growl and caught up a handful of my hair, jerking my head back and pulling me towards him so I lost my balance and bumped against his chest. He dug the gun under my chin, forcing my head up even higher. My neck was agony. I’m going to choke, I thought, as saliva ran back into my throat. I know I’m going to choke.

“. . . must have happened last night.” Mr. Anderson again. “Can’t have been earlier, or we’d have heard it—would have made a fair bit of noise, going into the hedge like that. They must have been on their way here—Mary’s reported it, of course, but I thought I’d better nip over to see if they were still in one piece.”

“There’s got to be somebody here,” said Fred. “What about the other car? And she’s got all the curtains closed. Trudy said she wasn’t feeling too clever.”

“Perhaps they’re still asleep.”

“What, with that racket? And she’d be out for the horses, wouldn’t she? It’s gone nine.”

“She might be in the barn.”

“No chance. She’d have heard us.”

“All the same . . . Best to make sure.” Footsteps crossed the yard, out of earshot.

Fred banged on the door. “Alice! You there?”

I’m here. I’m here. Help me.
The pain was spreading across my shoulders and down to my chest. I swallowed painfully, trying to ease the pressure, but it didn’t help. Let go, I begged Jack silently.
Let go.

We listened to Fred moving around in the yard, and then Mr. Anderson came back. “. . . you’d better take a look at this.”

I heard Fred say, “You all right?” then two sets of feet crossing the yard, very fast.

It’s Jeff, I thought. They’ve found Jeff.

I started to choke.

I felt Jack’s grip loosen, and he shoved me forwards and pushed me into a chair. I sat with my head down and my arms on the table, retching and trying to catch my breath.

When I looked up, coughing and wiping my eyes, Jack was standing over me. “They’re coming back.” The gun poked the back of my head, pushing me down until my cheek was squashed against the tabletop. I was facing Val, who was staring straight ahead. She looked exhausted, finished, like a shell, two empty eyes embedded in a grey bag of skin. She must know now, I thought. She must know I was telling the truth.

We heard the footsteps again, then Fred’s voice. “
Jesus
. . . My boy could be in there.”

“We don’t know that anyone’s in there.”

“I’m going to have a look.”

“I think that’s best left to the police. They’ll be sending someone anyway, for the car, but I’ll go and phone—Mary’s up there now, so . . .”

“I’m not hanging about. If Lee’s in trouble—”

“I really don’t think—”

“Well, Alice ain’t out here, so where is she? And where’s my boy?”

“He may not be . . .” I couldn’t catch the rest of it. We heard footsteps moving away, then the sound of the gate opening, then closing. Then silence. They’d gone.

I took a deep breath, in . . . and out. The police are coming, I told myself. Soon. Very soon. Just keep calm. Keep Jack calm. It’s only a matter of time. . . . Whatever you do, stay calm.

“How could you?” whispered Val. “How could you?” Her expression hadn’t changed, and she wasn’t looking at Jack. She seemed to be talking to herself. “The boy. She said he was ten years old.” Dear God, I thought,
Oh, dear God
. . . “She said you killed him.”

“Shut up.”

“Tell me it’s not true . . . you didn’t . . . tell me . . .” She sounded bewildered. She knows, I thought. She doesn’t want to believe it, but she knows. “She said you killed him, and those men out there—” She broke off suddenly and lunged forward, taking hold of the urn in both hands and clutching it to her chest.

“Put it down,” Jack muttered. “Leave it alone.”

“No.” Stop it, I screamed, inside my head.
Let go of it.

“Do you want me to kill her?” asked Jack.

Val didn’t answer him. “Please,” I whispered.
“Please
. . .
”

“Is that what you want?” shouted Jack. “Is it?”

Our Father, which art in heaven . . . Our Father . . . can’t remember, Christ, I can’t remember it . . . I saw Val’s hands twisting the lid of the urn, her bracelets scraping against the metal, and I thought, is that the last thing I’ll ever see, her hands . . . but what was she doing . . . what . . .

She was taking the lid off.

“No!” Jack shouted. “I’ll kill her, I’ll—”

“Haven’t you done enough?” She stood up and the lid dropped out of her hand and clattered on the floor, then I felt the gun lifted away from my head as Jack lunged towards her and tried to pull the urn out of her hands. She wrenched it away from him and he lost his balance, falling across the chair, then I was on my feet and backing away, appalled, as Val’s hands jerked the urn upwards and the ashes flew out in a cloud. They settled on the table and chairs and clung in a sticky film on the empty glass. “It’s too late now, isn’t it?” she shouted at him. “Go on, take it! That’s what’s left—have it! Have what’s left!”

She stumbled over to the sofa and sat holding the empty urn, rocking back and forth.

She looked . . . I can’t describe it. Destroyed. Beyond tears. Beyond everything. Jack was sitting on the floor by the chair, the gun loose in his hand as if he’d forgotten it.

His face was rigid with horror. “Pick them up,” he mumbled. “Put them away. Just . . . get them away.”

“How?” I asked helplessly.

“Just do it!”

I looked around the room. A cloth . . . dustpan . . . what? I caught sight of
Charley’s Aunt,
lying on one of the chairs. Scarcely knowing what I was doing, I picked it up and started trying to scrape the ashes into a heap, but it was impossible. They puffed up into the air and settled back on the cover, the edges of the pages, on my skin . . . After a few attempts I put the book down and turned away from the table, my hands shaking. “I can’t do this,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, I can’t . . . it’s . . . horrible. I can’t . . .”

I looked at Jack. He was trailing his free hand aimlessly back and forth across the lino, staring down at it as if he was mesmerised. In spite of the gun, he looked docile, stupefied, almost babyish. It was grotesque. “Jesus . . .” he muttered. “Jesus Christ . . . I need a drink.” He looked up at me. “Get me a drink.”

I went to the cupboard and pulled out the nearest bottle, then fetched a glass, poured—most of it went in—and handed it down to Jack.

“What is it?”

I looked at the label. “Cointreau.”

He shrugged, drank it, and held up the glass for more.

“For Christ’s sake, sit down,” he snapped.

Do what he says, I thought, lowering myself onto the floor. Keep him calm. The police’ll be here soon. Just be . . . normal. What’s normal? I thought. Nothing’s normal. Val was still cradling the urn, head down. Jack stared at his drink. Three separate people, isolated in their own worlds. How could we have done this? I thought. How could we have got here?

“You’d have been all right with Lenny,” Jack said suddenly, his voice too loud, slurred and sentimental. He’s drunk, I thought, looking at him in surprise, then realised that I’d got no idea how much he’d put away during the night, and the Cointreau must have topped up his alcohol level. “Yeah . . . You’d have been all right. Not like us.” I glanced at Val, but she didn’t seem to have heard him. “He was very kind, you know. . . . We took my old man off on holiday once, years ago, just after my mum died. Spain. Just Lenny and him and me. I thought my dad would enjoy it, because he could be a bit flash, and it was unusual back then, going abroad, but it wasn’t his home turf and I think he was a bit overwhelmed by it all. . . . The second day we were there, he lost his top set in the sea. All the local kids piled in trying to help us find them, but they must have floated away or something . . . all the rest of the week we had these boys coming up to us with teeth they’d nicked off their grandmothers—or it was the same set and they were passing them round, I don’t know—either way they weren’t Dad’s, but everywhere we went there was some kid chasing us with these bloody snappers, asking for money. . . . I said to Lenny, ‘We’ve got to make something out of this,’ but he wouldn’t. I kept saying to him, ‘It’s great, really surreal, and no one’s going to know. . . .’ He said, ‘Your dad’ll know. He’ll think we’re taking the mickey.’ Dad hadn’t said much about it, and I didn’t think he was that bothered, but the day after that we’d arranged to go sightseeing or something, and he wouldn’t come—said he didn’t want to leave his room. . . . I tried to get him a new set when we got back, private dentist, but he wouldn’t let me. Just wanted to forget about the whole thing. I hadn’t realised how upset he was, but Lenny had. He was concerned about things like that, not hurting people’s feelings. He was a good person, Alice. Decent. Fucked up, but decent . . .” He nudged my arm with his empty glass. “Go on . . . He was good, but . . . Shut me out . . . I couldn’t . . . this is fucking evil stuff, Alice . . . fucking poisoning me with this stuff . . .” He drained the glass and held it out for me to refill. “Christ, I wish I’d seen him.”

“You mean . . . before he died?”

“Yeah. I should have gone down there. I knew he was in a bad way, but I was angry with him—I thought he’d fucked everything up—drinking, letting us in for it with Danny Watts, then saying he wanted to tell you . . . tell the police—I couldn’t deal with it, and then when I found out about you two . . . engaged . . . he never bloody told me, not even afterwards . . .”

“So that wasn’t you?”

“What are you talking about? What wasn’t me?”

“It wasn’t you who went to see him. At Ivar.”

He shook his head. “ ‘S what I’m saying, Alice. Should have. Wish I had.”

I thought back.
Not you as well.
That’s what the man said when I went to the house. Not you as well. Perhaps he’d meant . . . Not another
woman
. I looked at Val. “It was you, wasn’t it? You went to see him.”

She raised her head. “Yes.”

It was the day before we went on holiday,” Val said. “We were supposed to be happy, Jack. We were going on holiday, and there you were, a black cloud—you wouldn’t talk to me, or Don, or anyone. It was ruining everything for the girls, and I thought, if I just talked to Lenny . . . Yes, I know, I was trying to help, and it didn’t work.
As usual
. . . .
”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I went there.” Val shook her head. “Lenny wouldn’t let me in at first. I could see him through the window—he wasn’t doing anything—not even drinking—he was just sitting on the bed. It must have been ten minutes before he came to the door. I tried to talk to him, but it was useless. Even if you had gone down there, Jack, it wouldn’t have made any difference. He’d given up. There was nothing I could do. I persuaded him to get into bed, I sat with him for a bit, and then I left.”