The Lying Room Page 17

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be formal about this. Obviously it’s great to have you all here. This was all a bit unexpected, but it’s the sort of thing we should do more often. It’s the sort of thing Neve and I used to do. And it’s my fault we stopped, because I’m—’ He stopped, looked momentarily bewildered. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say. I know this has been a strange and difficult week. But for someone here, Bernice’ – he gestured towards her with his wine glass – ‘it’s been terrible in a way we can’t begin to imagine. I’m not going to make a toast or anything like that. I just think we should acknowledge it and hope that an evening like this can be some sort of comfort.’

  He looked towards Neve for approval. She gave him a small nod.

  There was a murmur of sympathy when he had finished and then an awkward silence, as if people weren’t quite sure whether it was decent to continue their normal conversations. Jackie Cornfield was the first to speak.

  ‘I suppose friends are everything at a time like this.’

  ‘I’m a stranger here,’ said Bernice. Neve realised that Bernice was on her way to being very drunk, but being drunk in her case meant being more tightly wound up than ever, like a coil that’s about to spring horribly free. ‘Perhaps I’m a stranger to my friends. Perhaps everyone is a stranger in the end.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Will and then looked startled.

  ‘You should see me with my cat,’ Jackie said cheerfully. Nobody knew what to say to that.

  Another pause. The guests were hesitant to change the subject. It felt disrespectful.

  ‘The rest of you are old friends, aren’t you?’ asked Bernice.

  ‘Really old friends,’ said Jackie. ‘And getting older.’

  ‘Remember that weekend?’ said Will.

  ‘What weekend?’ said Tamsin. ‘There were lots of weekends.’

  ‘The weekend,’ said Gary, a slow smile spreading across his face. ‘It was when we went to that house in the country. It was owned by someone’s friend. Where was it?’

  ‘It was my friend,’ said Jackie. ‘Or actually, it belonged to her parents. It was a place outside York.’ She started laughing and then covered her mouth. ‘Actually it wasn’t funny. They had to bring painters in and builders. I didn’t realise smoke could do so much damage. They never forgave me.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Bernice.

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Jackie. ‘We made a fire in the fireplace and it spread a bit.’

  ‘I only remember it in flashes,’ said Gary. ‘I remember Fletcher letting off fireworks and I remember that they had a pool and at about four in the morning we all took our clothes off and jumped in.’

  ‘Oh God, I remember,’ said Renata and took a gulp of wine. She pointed across the table at Will. ‘Was that where you and me had our thing?’

  Will shook his head and smiled, but he looked slightly upset at her casualness. ‘Our thing was earlier,’ he said. ‘In our second year.’

  ‘I get confused,’ said Renata. ‘I had a thing with almost everyone.’

  Neve looked nervously over at Mabel. She hadn’t touched her plate, but she had finished her wine.

  ‘I remember what people were wearing,’ said Jackie. ‘Renata had a leather jacket with zips.’

  ‘I remember that,’ said Renata. ‘I wish I still had it.’

  ‘And Neve had an embroidered sort of cap. She always wore hats.’

  ‘I’ve still got it somewhere,’ said Neve. ‘It’s hard to wear hats when you bike everywhere.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Gary, ‘the last thing I remember was finding their drinks cabinet and working our way through all the weird bottles at the back that they’d brought home from holiday.’

  ‘That was when your parents got together,’ said Renata animatedly to Mabel, who stared at her stonily.

  ‘Yeah, so though it didn’t feel like it at the time, it was the beginning of the end,’ said Gary. ‘People settling down.’

  ‘I hate that expression,’ said Jackie.

  Neve did remember it, stumbling into a strange bedroom, their hands on each other, a sense of coming home at last: for why had she not known before that it was always going to be Fletcher that she ended up with? What had happened to them, she wondered; what had happened to Fletcher, who would never let off fireworks now or jump into a pool naked?

  ‘Someone opened the door on you,’ said Renata. ‘Do you remember? It was you, wasn’t it, Gary?’

  ‘Not me. I think it was Will.’

  ‘Definitely not me,’ said Will. ‘It was Jackie.’

  ‘Oh God, I can’t remember any of that,’ said Jackie. ‘Maybe I was too drunk. I remember everyone roaring with laughter,’ she added.

  Mabel was staring at each of them in turn, wrinkling up her nose slightly.

  Neve heard the others talking and laughing about that party of long ago. Yes, she thought to herself, there had been something wonderful about it, a dream of laughter and joy and possibility. She remembered someone telling her – Gary, she thought, his arm in hers – that she was kind and he was glad to have her as a friend. She remembered dancing with Renata and Tamsin, holding hands in a circle and smiling until her jaw ached. She remembered cooking pasta at three in the morning. She remembered thinking she would remember these days forever. But there had also been the following morning, grey and drizzling, everyone tired and hungover. She had an image of being in the back of a car being driven back, leaning on Fletcher’s shoulder. She glanced at Bernice.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You must feel like you’ve wandered into a college reunion.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘We’re all feeling awkward,’ said Tamsin. ‘We don’t know whether to talk about Saul or not talk about him.’

  ‘I don’t mind talking about it,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if I’m not thinking about it. My husband being dead, that is. Killed. What should I be thinking about?’

  There was a silence as people decided how to respond.

  ‘So, well, what have you actually been doing?’ asked Will awkwardly. ‘Have you been spending time with the police? I don’t know if it’s all right to ask a question like that.’

  ‘You don’t want to hear about my troubles.’

  ‘We’d love to hear you talk about your troubles,’ said Jackie.

  Neve silently cursed her.

  ‘When they first came to see me,’ Bernice began, ‘I didn’t even feel upset.’ She looked from face to face. ‘I still don’t really, not properly. It’s so – ridiculous. So melodramatic.’

  Neve looked at Bernice with a sort of fascination.

  ‘I always thought that Saul had had, was having, an affair. I’m sorry, is that the wrong thing for a grieving widow to say? Am I not meant to speak ill of the dead?’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ said Jackie soothingly. ‘You must say exactly what you want to say.’

  Bernice took a large gulp of wine. Neve grimaced at Fletcher to try to stop him but he didn’t seem to notice and leaned across and refilled her glass.

  ‘The police were certainly interested by that,’ said Bernice. ‘Who’s the most likely person to kill an unfaithful husband?’

  ‘But surely they couldn’t think that?’ said Jackie.

  ‘I don’t know what they think,’ said Bernice. ‘But this detective, this Hitching person. Detective Chief Inspector Hitching, he was talking to me like a friend. I don’t know whether he’s trying to lull me’ – she took another large gulp of wine – ‘into a sense of security. I’ll tell you what he told me.’ She looked around the table. ‘I’m talking too much. You probably don’t want to hear about this?’

  There were murmurs of reassurance from around the table. Neve tried to think of some way of bringing this to a halt but she couldn’t think of any.

  ‘What Hitching told me is that the murder shows every sign of being sudden and violent and unexpected.’

  ‘How do they know?’ asked Tamsin.

&nbs
p; ‘He said that Saul hadn’t tried to defend himself. So it all happened very quickly, but then the whole murder scene had been tidied up. Not just that but the flat had been tidied up. Cleaned from top to bottom. It was apparently done with a hammer. But the hammer wasn’t there.’

  ‘How do they know it was done with a hammer then?’ asked Gary.

  ‘They took me to the flat,’ said Bernice. ‘I hardly ever went there. But I helped buy things for it when we first bought it. I remember a hammer because I used it for hanging pictures. It was kept in a tool drawer. It wasn’t there.’

  ‘It’s so terrible for you,’ said Will.

  ‘Does anyone want a second helping?’ asked Neve.

  As she spoke the words, they immediately sounded crass and unfeeling but they actually came as a relief. Everyone said how wonderful the food was and that they couldn’t manage another mouthful.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to,’ said Fletcher, ‘because I’ve made cheesecake. I hardly ever cook and when I do I have to talk about it a great deal and people have to make a huge fuss of me.’

  They gathered up the plates and Fletcher came in with his cheesecake and a couple of bottles of sweet wine from the back of the drinks cupboard. The cheesecake disappeared in a matter of minutes, to Fletcher’s visible satisfaction. The sweet wine was drunk so quickly that Fletcher had to bring two more bottles of wine along with a bottle of whisky and some tumblers.

  Neve had tried to go easy on the wine but she felt in a state of shock and poured herself some whisky. Gary left his seat and came round to her end of the table and leaned down between her and Tamsin.

  ‘Having a good evening?’ he said with a smile.

  ‘I’m the host,’ said Neve. ‘You’re only as happy as your least happy guest.’

  ‘Everybody seems pretty happy. I’m happy.’

  Neve thought he seemed drunk.

  ‘But this is what you do, isn’t it?’ he continued.

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You bring people together. Like this.’

  Neve felt like saying that the really unexpected, not to say uninvited, person at the table was Gary himself. He leaned in even closer so that she could smell the alcohol in his breath.

  ‘I didn’t expect . . . you know.’ He nodded towards Bernice, who was only a couple of feet away. But Neve saw that she was bent towards Renata and Jackie. The conversations at the table had split into groups.

  ‘She needs help,’ Neve said to Gary.

  ‘And she turned to you. It was like the merger.’

  Neve was bemused. ‘In what way was it like the merger?’

  ‘We were worried we were going to lose our jobs. You just seemed fine about it all. But I’m glad that she’s turning to you.’

  ‘She’s not turning to me,’ Neve said in a whisper.

  When the doorbell rang, Neve wondered if she had forgotten someone. As she got up, she asked if anyone was expecting an Uber but nobody was. She opened the door to find Charlie standing there, unsmiling.

  ‘I’ve come to collect Renata.’

  ‘Come and join us,’ said Neve. ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘I don’t think that will be possible.’

  They came into the room as Fletcher was entering from the kitchen with a hastily improvised cheese board, some crackers that Neve knew were stale, and a bottle of red wine. He put them down on the table and turned to Charlie.

  ‘Hey, man,’ he said and approached him, holding his hand out, but Charlie stepped aside slightly to avoid him.

  ‘I thought you were just popping over for a drink,’ he said to Renata.

  ‘Did you?’ said Renata. ‘I did actually have a drink but I was invited to stay for dinner. So I did.’

  ‘You should have said.’

  By now all conversation had ceased and everyone had turned to look at Charlie.

  ‘We need to support each other,’ said Renata. ‘This is Bernice Stevenson. Saul’s widow. She was telling us about what’s happened. About her difficult time with the police.’

  ‘Please . . .’ said Neve, feebly trying to intervene.

  Charlie interrupted her, speaking very slowly and clearly. ‘Did you tell them about your own difficult time with the police?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘What difficult time?’ asked Bernice.

  ‘She just had to clarify a few things,’ said Neve.

  ‘She can speak for herself,’ said Charlie. ‘It was about telling the police that she had been to your husband’s flat after she’d told them that she hadn’t been to it.’

  Bernice looked round at Renata, then at Neve. She frowned, licked her lips several times. Her face became stiff, like it was made of china or hard plastic. She looked back at Renata once more. ‘It was you,’ she said slowly. ‘It was you.’

  There was a silence so thick that Neve could almost taste it.

  ‘You and Saul.’

  Neve, looking at Bernice’s expression, realised that Bernice had had no idea.

  Renata stood up very suddenly so that her chair fell back with a clatter on the wooden floor. She was still holding her whisky glass.

  ‘You fucker,’ she said to Charlie. ‘You fucking fucker.’

  She ran out of the room and Charlie ran after her. There was a sound of tramping feet and shouting and then a smashing of glass. Everyone at the table was just looking at one another. Nobody spoke and nobody moved. At last, Renata came back in. She looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve . . .’

  She held up her hand. Neve thought she was holding ribbons and then saw it was blood. She jumped up and ran towards Renata. She looked at the hand. She saw not just blood but the whiteness of exposed flesh and stringy, sinewy things. It was really deep. She took the hand in hers, feeling a sharp jab of pain and saw that a small shard of glass was now embedded in the heel of her own hand. Blood was bubbling up.

  ‘I’m getting her out of here,’ said a voice behind her.

  She looked round. It was Charlie, with his hand on Renata’s shoulder.

  ‘No,’ Neve said.

  Now Connor and Elias were standing in the doorway, round-eyed and fascinated, befuddled with sleep.

  ‘Come on,’ said Charlie.

  ‘She needs an ambulance.’

  ‘We can deal with this.’

  ‘No.’ Fletcher pushed Charlie back, away from Renata. ‘You need to get away from her.’

  It looked for a moment as if there might be an actual fight.

  ‘Out,’ said Fletcher.

  There was blood everywhere. Fletcher called the emergency service. Jackie tied her long, sequinned scarf very tightly round and round the bubbling wound. Will told Renata to hold her arm up and, when she didn’t do anything, lifted it up himself. Tamsin had her arm wrapped around Renata and was saying that help would come soon. Fletcher noticed that Neve was also bleeding and shouted for someone to get plasters from the bathroom. Gary pulled tissues from his pocket and dabbed at the cut. Neve noticed he looked slightly green. Mabel, crouched in a chair and gazing at the scene, no longer looked self-possessed and womanly but like a frightened child again. Bernice said and did nothing; she sat still and upright in her chair, occasionally lifting her glass to her mouth with a mechanical gesture. It was like she was watching a play.

  Renata’s face had a ghastly pallor and her eyes were glassy. ‘Am I going to die?’ she asked. ‘I’m too young.’

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ said Neve.

  She looked towards Bernice. ‘You might want to go home,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  Bernice stared at Neve as if she was talking in a foreign language. She lifted her glass, found it empty, and reached out for someone else’s.

  Neve put on a jacket that belonged to Fletcher, picked up her backpack and went with Renata in the ambulance, everyone gathering at the door to see them off.

  ‘Sorry to leave you with all this,’ she said to Fletcher. ‘Can you get the boys back
to bed?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Ring me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Fletcher.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just, sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘All of this.’

  ‘Oh that,’ he said. His smile didn’t look like a smile.

  The Accident and Emergency department was heaving. It was a Saturday night after all. There was a drunk man who was claiming loudly and often to have been bitten by a fox. There were teenage girls and boys with head wounds and twisted ankles and strange rashes. There was a man walking backwards and forwards, shouting unintelligible things at no one in particular. An old woman, sitting on a chair at the front with a grey face, was coughing so hard Neve thought she would break a rib.

  But they were whisked past all of these people, into a cubicle with torn green curtains. Renata lay on the stretcher with her eyes half closed. They’d bandaged her wrist in the ambulance and it lay beside her like a strange animal.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ said Neve.

  Renata reached out her uninjured hand and held Neve’s wrist. ‘Do you promise you’ll still be here?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘We’ll talk after. Now you’re going to have your wound seen to.’

  Neve rang Fletcher, who was still up, dealing with the wreckage of the evening. He told her that Bernice had gone soon after the ambulance left, but Tamsin, Will and Jackie had stayed on, drinking tea and going over what had happened. ‘It was quite jolly,’ he said.

  ‘Jolly?’

  ‘You know, Blitz spirit.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Did you know?’ he asked.

  ‘Know?’

  ‘About Renata and Saul Stevenson.’

  ‘She told me yesterday evening.’

  ‘That’s what you were talking about outside the pub.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘It was a secret.’

  ‘We don’t have secrets like that, do we?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  She went into the waiting room, where she sat for a long time among the churn of people who turned up through the small hours. Some of them seemed barely injured – one young man had a cut finger that he held solemnly in front of him, wrapped in a sheet of tissue paper. Some looked remarkably ill, grey and thin and defeated. A man in unbuttoned pyjamas and walking boots rocked on his chair a few seats from Neve. A middle-aged woman was sitting alone with a violent black eye.