The Lying Room Read online

  Then with a rush of relief, a thought struck her. He’d been there when she received that text so he couldn’t have sent it. But the relief was short lived, because as she pictured him that morning, sitting in the kitchen with a plate of toast and marmalade in front of him, she remembered that he’d been fiddling with something on his mobile. Or a mobile; the text had come from an unknown number. He could have sent it to her while sitting a few feet from her.

  She looked at the grim list. Bernice, Renata, Gary, Fletcher: a woman she barely knew but had injured, two of her closest friends, her husband. As an afterthought she added Charlie, just because of the look of naked hatred she had seen on his face.

  She needed to find out what they had all been doing on the morning Saul had been killed, she thought, and scribbled a note down on the creased brown paper.

  The deli was filling up with people. Neve stood up, pushed the paper into her pocket and left the money for the coffee on the table. She got a basket from the entrance and put several still-warm croissants and cinnamon buns into it, then two mangoes and some blueberries. She got some milk, in case they’d run out, and twelve eggs. She paid for them, waved goodbye to Erico, then stopped at the door and took out the list, because of course there was a name she had left off it. She fished in her backpack for the pen. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy; the letters she formed seemed far off, something seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

  Mabel, she wrote.

  And that changed everything. If it was any of the others, even Fletcher, they needed to be discovered and punished. But Mabel was her daughter.

  The rain had stopped. There were streaks of blue in the sky. Leaves were falling from the plane trees on her road.

  She opened the front door and stepped inside, at once smelling the sweet reek of alcohol. The floor was sticky underfoot. Nobody was downstairs. Almost certainly they were all still asleep. As she passed the sitting room, she saw Tamsin was sprawled on the sofa, fully dressed but with a blanket spread over her. Her mouth was open and her hair undone. Neve paused a few seconds and watched her. At least she wasn’t on the list.

  There were empty wine glasses on the surfaces and bowls with a few olives still in them. Neve went into the kitchen, where a plastic bag flapped over the hole left by Connor’s football. Fletcher had obviously made an attempt to clear up. The dishwasher was full of clean plates and glasses and a few pans were stacked beside the sink. Neve took off the old jacket and rolled up her sleeves. She opened the windows to let a breeze blow through the stale air. She emptied the dishwasher and filled it again with the rest of the dirty dishes, scraping remains of food into the bin and creeping into the living room to retrieve the glasses. She put the empty bottles in the recycling. She swept the floor, not wanting to use the vacuum cleaner in case it woke anyone. She sprayed and scrubbed the surfaces. She wiped the table and then rubbed wood polish into it. She put all the drying-up cloths into the washing machine. There was a bloody tissue on one of the chairs from where she’d cut her hand. She looked at the wound and saw it was still slightly bleeding. She looked down at her grey dress and saw the blood that was smeared over it. Renata’s blood. She felt slightly sick.

  She made herself some tea and then she remembered the guinea pig. She went outside and squatted by his hutch and Whisky appeared and squeaked at her in an inquisitive fashion. She hadn’t cleaned the hutch out for days. She took some of the dirty straw out, then pushed in bundles of clean straw. She heaped the bowl with food, and refilled the water bottle. That would have to do for now. For a few minutes she stood in the garden with her cooling tea and watched him busily eat. She looked back at the house and as she did so the curtains in Rory’s room were drawn back and she saw his face appear, like a pale smudge. He saw her and waved, pressing his nose to the glass so it squashed, and she waved back cheerily. How would she get through this day?

  Rory sat at the kitchen table scooping cornflakes into his mouth.

  ‘Where shall we bike?’ he asked and Neve had to pretend she’d remembered.

  ‘I’ll have a think,’ she said.

  She had a shower, dressed while Fletcher gently snored, threw her dress in the wastepaper basket because she never wanted to touch it again, and then came downstairs to put the pastries in the oven and boil water for coffee. Tamsin shuffled blearily into the room.

  ‘I don’t feel quite the ticket,’ she said. ‘What time did you get home?’

  ‘An hour or so ago.’

  ‘Is Renata OK?’

  ‘Well, her hand is.’

  ‘What a night,’ said Tamsin. ‘You certainly know how to throw a party.’

  ‘It was a one-off,’ said Neve.

  ‘Did you see Charlie’s face?’

  ‘Yes.

  ‘Did you know?’

  Neve hesitated a beat too long and Tamsin’s face turned to one of wounded surprise.

  ‘She told you and not me,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘She only told me a couple of days ago,’ said Neve.

  ‘Still,’ said Tamsin. ‘It makes me feel a bit on the sidelines. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh you know – you’re always the one people turn to for comfort.’

  ‘That’s not true at all.’

  Connor and Elias stampeded into the room. Neve chopped the fruit into a bowl, put yoghurt on the table, laid out breakfast things and made coffee. When Fletcher appeared, he put an arm round her shoulder. His face was still puffy from sleep.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘I will be later,’ she said. ‘I seem to have got a second wind.’

  ‘That was some dinner,’ he said. He seemed, she thought, almost proud of it.

  ‘How was Mabel after I left?’

  ‘Mabel can speak, you know,’ said Mabel, stepping into the room. She was wrapped in a large dressing gown. She looked at Neve with an expression that was hard to read, then poured boiling water over a teabag and sat next to Tamsin, sipping it and staring out at the garden.

  There was a ringing at the door, then an emphatic knock. Neve groaned.

  ‘Who can that be? I can’t face anyone today.’

  ‘They’re early,’ said Mabel, as Fletcher went to answer.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Will and Gary are coming to put up our greenhouse.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I hope Jane doesn’t mind,’ said Neve.

  ‘I think that Jackie woman might come as well,’ continued Mabel. ‘She was certainly keen about the idea when she left last night. But then, she was rather tipsy, along with the rest of you.’ There was a note of derision in her voice that made Neve wince.

  ‘Oh, she’ll come,’ said Tamsin bitterly. ‘She’s one of those people who are endlessly enthusiastic about absolutely everything. The party can continue.’ She tore a piece off her croissant and pushed it into her mouth.

  And then Gary, Will and Jackie were in the room, making it suddenly feel small and crowded. Neve turned her back on them and busied herself with making more coffee, putting slices of bread in the toaster because no, as it happened, they hadn’t had any breakfast yet, and yes, they were quite hungry. They made a motley tribe. Jackie was dressed in a long, multi-coloured kaftan that looked like a tent, one that would let in rain at a festival, and one of the stems of Gary’s glasses had snapped so every time he moved his head they slipped down his nose. Will had shaved, but badly; there were small patches of stubble on his cheek. There was an air of relaxed intimacy in the room. After last night everyone, thought Neve, felt thoroughly at home here. The greenhouse was just an excuse.

  She put the toast on the table and sliced more bread. She needed to speak to Mabel, but Mabel obviously didn’t want to speak to her. She needed to lie down on her bed and close her eyes and th
ink. She needed to make a plan. But she was so tired. It was like the tiredness she had felt when her children were tiny and she had seen the world through a film of grease, everything wavering in front of her, nothing holding its shape. She had fallen asleep at the wheel of the car at a traffic lights, the three of them asleep behind her; she’d fallen asleep singing them to sleep; she’d fallen asleep in meetings. Perhaps she could fall asleep now, she thought, standing up like a horse does. Just to shut out the world for a while.

  Behind her, people were chomping toast and slurping coffee and talking over each other. Tamsin was announcing rather solemnly that Charlie had always been mistrustful of Renata because of her rackety past. Into a sudden pocket of silence, she heard Fletcher saying something about secrets and she stiffened. He was telling everyone that he and Neve didn’t even know each other’s passwords for their mobile phones.

  ‘Because you want to keep things from each other?’ asked Jackie.

  ‘Just the opposite. We trust each other, and so we respect each other’s privacy. Once you start suspecting another person, where do you end?’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Will. ‘You can only prove someone is guilty, never that they’re innocent.’

  Neve turned, drying her hands on a towel. She saw Mabel’s bright and mocking gaze. There was a scream lodged in the back of her throat and if she didn’t get out of here soon it would escape and rip through this cosy little gathering.

  ‘Shall we go on that bike ride?’ she said to Rory and his face opened up in pleasure. ‘Back in an hour or so,’ she added to the rest of them. ‘If you’re still here.’

  ‘Oh, I think it will take most of the day to get that greenhouse up,’ said Fletcher. ‘Are there things for lunch?’

  Neve had to choose between two options, both unpalatable. Cycle with Rory on the road, with the cars and the lorries and the buses, or along the River Lea, with its pedestrians and cyclists and, of course, the River Lea with no safety barrier. Rory loved cycling but he was dreamy and also uncoordinated, and the combination was alarming. He would get lost in a thought, drift across a busy road, not see a junction, a van, a pothole, a traffic light. Cycling into the river would be bad but cycling in front of a cement lorry would be far, far worse. So once she had made him put his helmet on, they set off through residential streets and turned north on the towpath, Rory taking the lead.

  They had done this ride before and it had always been a sort of solace to her, a miraculous escape in a world of quiet and greenness, water and birdsong, in the middle of London. As they cycled along, Neve called Rory’s attention to a cormorant flexing its wings and then instantly regretted it. As he looked round, he swerved towards the water and she shouted a warning to him. They halted by the boathouses as a crew of young women carried a boat across the path. Rory stood astride his bike fascinated as they lowered it into the water.

  All the time, Neve was aware of herself as two people. One of them was dutifully pointing out a swan followed by a line of cygnets, shouting out warnings to give way to pedestrians. The second was thinking about events elsewhere. What was happening at home? What were the police doing? Above all, was there someone out there? She couldn’t keep the thought away, as if she were prodding at a loose filling with her tongue. Could it be a stranger, someone she didn’t know? Or could it really be someone she knew, someone on her list? She couldn’t decide which possibility frightened her more – but then the names she had written down went through her head – Bernice, Renata, Gary, Charlie, Fletcher, Mabel – and she knew which was infinitely more terrifying.

  They passed runners, dog walkers, rowers. When they reached Tottenham Hale, Neve looked at her watch. They had been going for almost half an hour. That would have to be enough. She called on Rory to stop. He looked round and she said it was time to go back.

  ‘We’ve only just started.’ His face showed a look of disappointment that wrung her heart.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘One day we’ll get the whole family together, we’ll borrow a couple of bikes and we’ll cycle by the river like this and we’ll go on and on until we get to the countryside. How does that sound?’

  ‘What? And Mabel?’ said Rory dubiously.

  That simple question hit Neve like a punch. The world in which Neve and Mabel did simple, happy, normal things like go on bike rides on summer days felt unimaginably distant.

  ‘We’ll see. You’re doing very well,’ she said to the back of Rory’s head as he cycled ahead of her. He did genuinely seem to be swaying less. He didn’t reply. She didn’t even know if he had heard her. She sank into a sort of trance, cycling automatically, unaware of her surroundings. She wasn’t tired though, or not in the way that she had been earlier. She was in no danger of drifting off to sleep on her bike. Instead she felt a steely clarity. She started forming a plan. She would go and talk to the people on her list. She would find out where they had been that morning.

  Neve had never paid particular attention to what other people thought of her. If she had considered the matter at all – and she was considering it now, while bumping along the towpath behind the thin figure of her son – she had imagined that people quite liked her. She was someone they turned to for help. They wanted to be her friend. They desired her, a few of them. They confided in her, even when she didn’t want them to. Now she saw herself as someone who could be hated and it was a strange sensation. It was as if the sun had come up in a different place and it made the landscape look completely different, darker and bleaker than the one she thought she had been living in.

  She had not thought obsessively of herself either, but she had, she supposed, considered herself a basically decent person. In this chilly new light she could be seen quite differently: as an adulterer, a liar, a bad friend, a disloyal colleague. She had broken her vows. Well, she hadn’t actually made any vows: when she married Fletcher, she had signed a form in Hackney Town Hall and made – what was it? – a solemn declaration of intent. But in her heart she had made a vow, and she had broken it.

  So she would talk to people. She would try to find out where they had been, what they knew and what they suspected.

  Just then, two further ideas struck her at exactly the same time. She already knew, or believed, that there was a man or a woman out there somewhere who knew about her, who hated her but had killed Saul instead. Now she was suddenly aware that this man or woman was still out there, in the world, right now, walking around or sitting down or drinking a cup of coffee. And still feeling whatever they were feeling. Except that now they had killed someone.

  Her second thought was that if, in talking to people, she actually found something out, if she found out who the person was, what then? What could she do with that knowledge? These two thoughts seemed to flash in her mind alternately, one and then the other.

  There was a sudden scraping sound and she pulled on her brakes but even so she nearly collided with Rory, who had suddenly stopped.

  ‘Careful,’ she said. ‘I almost ran into you.’

  He looked at her with a solemn expression. ‘Where are we?’ he said.

  She looked round. She realised that, in her daze, she had led Rory well past the point where they had joined the river. They were almost at Hackney Wick.

  ‘Are we lost?’ he said.

  ‘Of course we’re not lost. We’re just cycling along the river. We’re going back another way.’

  They followed the path and then turned west on to the Regent’s Canal and headed towards home through Victoria Park. It was becoming a beautiful day now. Footballs were being kicked, Frisbees thrown, in another happier world that Neve felt she was looking at as if through glass. They left the park on the opposite side and there was a last perilous few minutes of Neve watching Rory weave through traffic.

  As Neve pushed her bike into the hall past the great mountain of bin bags that Mabel had piled up outside the front door, she couldn’t hear anything. She felt a sudden faint hope that everyone had gone. She could have some time alo
ne. She could sleep. Think. But then she heard a loud shout from outside and a merry peal of laughter. Rory ran up the stairs and she walked through to the kitchen.

  Mabel was sitting at the table with a boy Neve didn’t recognise. He was very tall, very pale, with long dark hair. He was dressed entirely in black and he was leaning back on his chair, which was creaking slightly as if it were about to break.

  ‘Hey,’ Neve said. She was having to make an enormous effort not to run outside.

  They looked round at her with slightly blurry expressions. Neve detected a familiar smell from them and felt a flash of anger: if they were going to smoke weed on a Sunday morning, they could at least have made an attempt to disguise it.

  ‘Hello,’ she said to the boy.

  ‘This is Louis,’ said Mabel.

  ‘Oh,’ said Neve. ‘Bonjour.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake. Louis isn’t a French name.’

  ‘It is actually.’

  ‘Louis’s completely English.’

  ‘Half-English,’ said Louis.

  ‘What’s the other half?’ said Neve.

  ‘German.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mabel.

  ‘It’s good to have somewhere to escape to. If you need to escape. Where’s everyone else?’

  ‘In the garden.’

  Neve started to head for the garden and then turned.

  ‘We should talk,’ she said in a low voice.

  Mabel looked at her mother with a challenging expression. ‘If you want to say something, then say something.’

  One of the things that Neve wanted to say to Mabel was that this was a time for keeping a clear head but she didn’t.

  ‘Later,’ she said and walked through the kitchen and out into the garden.