The Liar’s Chair Read online

  For Rob, Bea and Billy. Always.

  And for Terry Whitney, a gentleman and a gentle man.

  Alison Marling, we miss you.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  1. ECHO CHAMBER

  2. TINY BOMB OF DISORDER

  3. SMOKE IN THE BEDROOM

  4. 1976

  5. GRAVY

  PART TWO

  6. TEN WRAPS

  7. DIRTY FOOTPRINTS

  8. INK STAINS

  9. 1979

  10. PENCIL POINT

  11. HUNGRY DOGS

  12. STYROFOAM COFFEE CUPS

  13. DOG FOOD

  14. BONES

  15. 1980

  16. A STRAND OF PLATINUM HAIR

  17. BALLS OF MERCURY

  PART THREE

  18. BEER CAN

  19. CHRYSANTHEMUMS

  20. 1981

  21. A STRING OF STARS

  22. GRAVEL

  23. A FRAGMENT OF TIME

  24. HOPE IS ENOUGH

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  1

  ECHO CHAMBER

  The journey is key, the arrival always a disappointment.

  It’s half an hour home from my lover Will’s place on the coast to the house in the Sussex countryside I share with my husband David. The way back is simple, and I map in my head the journey in front of me: along the clifftops and through endless bland towns until I reach Brighton, with its clutter of cheap hotels on my right, and to my left the sea. At the junction of the pier, I’ll funnel through the city then head for the hills. But as I drive down from Will’s prefab bungalow, rain thudding the bonnet, instinctively I branch away from the main drag, choosing instead the back route: the near-empty roads that see-saw through the countryside and allow me to drive fast and carefree. After one drink-driving ban I know where to avoid, and the country route means fewer police. Not that it’s their habit to stop a woman driver in a top-of-the-range, brand-new Mercedes on a Saturday morning, but the taste of alcohol still furs my mouth and I want to have some fun. I want to take nine of the ten chances available to me.

  The road leads me north, past endless mini-roundabouts and the homogeny of industry that rings every sizeable town. Here the buildings have given up all civic pretence to beauty and efficiency: half-dead shrubs in forecourts fidget in the wind, gates hang heavy with chains, and grey-washed walls wear the tags of bored and artless teenagers. Then, after a final roundabout, the town spits me out into the open relief of green. I head towards the Downs where the route glues to the base of the hills and the land curves up sharp into a heaving sky.

  Summer is ending, at last, and all those extended, overheated weeks are finally blowing their top. Windscreen wipers whine at full speed clearing a radar shape on the glass, and outside the morning sun is obscured and the world is compressed to a small frame of black. The wheels of my car hit a puddle and fan a satisfying hiss of water into the air, but the noise is quiet and separate from inside my vehicle; even the motor is soft, its volume cushioned by immaculate engineering. Here in my mechanical kingdom I am insulated, normal life is suspended, and it’s only the speed and the distance. Nothing can touch me. Not even David.

  I detour down a small wooded lane wide enough for one car, speeding up and slowing down with the smallest amount of leeway, knowing exactly how far to hug the widths and bends familiar to me from years of driving these roads. I swerve past an old horse-box parked up on the verge: blankets at the windows, smoke rising from a tacked-on chimney. Rust-coloured panels patchwork the new-age hippy wagon.

  There’s no pavement and the tarmac’s scraggy edge borders straight on to the soft earth of the woods that lie beyond. If I nudge the steering a fraction too far, the tyres judder on gravel and mud for a few metres until I right them with a playful swerve on to the opposite side. Trees heavy with a late-summer harvest arch over the lane, and their branches entwine overhead to form leafy tunnels. Spatters of roadkill and weeks of fallen fruit mix with rain on the road’s surface, so that at times it seems as if the car is skating. I turn the wheel and change gears instinctively, my thoughts of David – and the ten CAPITALIZED text messages he sent this morning – contained and measured by my driving, as if I’ve capped off my brain and left the worst thoughts behind, to be collected again on arrival. I jumble together an excuse: a surprise call from an old school friend yesterday, too much to drink so a hotel was best – the alibi will have to do, I’m too hung-over to be creative – and I pray my recent good behaviour will be enough to convince David that staying away last night was a one-off, a small error in our otherwise ordered marriage.

  My explanation logged, and I’m free to indulge my favourite driving fantasy, which takes me further along the road to a place I’ve never been – somewhere, anywhere – until my car runs out of petrol and fate decides the end point like a pin in a map. The scent of last night is still on my skin and I wonder if, when I’ve found my new home, I would call Will, or whether it would be best to start afresh. Perhaps today is the day to find out, and I press the accelerator, the country road barely holding the width of my car, and imagine the place where I’ll make a new life for myself. Where I’ll be effortlessly healed.

  Ahead of me is an oak. The enormous trunk would span the girth of two horses, and the branches weave into the sky. A near-perfect U in the road rounds the tree. I change down a gear and steer sharp, wheels gripping the wet road as the engine rises an octave, and each tree and shrub is a streak of green past my window.

  Then, a white band of skin. Wide eyes. A crack. The body flips forward – smash against the windscreen. Glass shatters. I stamp the brakes, too late, and whatever I’ve hit flies over the car in a floppy cartwheel, crumpling on the road behind. I skid to a halt, engine still running, my breath panting in and out, sharp and shallow, seconds or minutes. I check my rear-view mirror. On the road behind is a smudge of red from the tail lights; twenty metres from that, a pile. Thick dark liquid spreads on the tarmac. Nothing moves apart from the rain which pounds the ground.

  ‘It’s just an animal,’ I whisper, then say it loud to make it real. ‘It’s just an animal.’

  Easing the car into gear, I manoeuvre a five-point turn and edge closer until I’m a metre away.

  Clothes not fur. Fingers not hooves.

  Swaddled in a heavy coat, his face always covered by a scarf and hat, I recognize him: a local homeless man who trudges the roads near my house.

  I teeter from the car, step forward, then crouch a few inches away. Rain soaks me and runs down my face, gathering at my eyebrows and chin. The scarf round the man’s face has come loose and it exposes a woolly beard. A long ugly nose.

  I shut my eyes for a few seconds.

  Who was the last person to be this close to him?

  Panic pinballs in my chest. When I open my eyes I tug at the scarf to cover him up and return him to the being he was a few minutes ago, but the fabric is caught under his head. His neck is slack like a broken doll. From my pocket I take out my mobile. It slips like a fish from my shaking hands on to the wet tarmac. I grab it and press random buttons to bring it back to life, then wave it above my head – but there’s no signal.

  The man’s smell is sharp and strong with a feral bite – earth mixed with old piss – and it flips my memory to a time when I saw him at the village shop close to my house, where the same aroma had filled the room. In the shop he had with him his trademark briefcase: his unique and infamous logo of eccentricity. The bag made you look twice when you saw him walking with a gentle limp. It was the kind of case in which a gentleman would take his papers to the office, someone who had important work to do.

  Here at the roadside, I check around him. The briefcase is nowhere to be seen.


  My legs ache from crouching and I gather my skirt round my thighs, the material wet and clinging. The rain slows but drops have collected in the trees and fall with heavy raps on to the bonnet of my car. I lean closer to the man and lay my palm on his back. No breath. In the distance there’s a rumble, a tractor maybe emerging from a barn and on to the road? I sit back on my haunches and my legs wobble, reminding me of the bottle of whisky I shared with Will less than six hours ago.

  Breathe. I breathe.

  I wait. For what? Nothing changes.

  The man is dead.

  I have taken something away. I cannot put it back.

  ‘If you can’t lie, Rachel,’ my mother used to preach, ‘then it’s best to say nothing at all.’

  My pulse slows a fraction and I take a longer breath. A calm of sorts, a lifting away.

  I stand and walk round to the man’s head. My hands shake as I ease them under his warm armpits; his limbs are loose, and I lever him up to test the weight. His head lolls on to his chest as if he’s asleep. He’s surprisingly light; malnourished and skinny under the layers of clothing, like a wet dog without the cushion of its fur. I test a drag. It works. I can do it.

  Walking backwards, I move him away from the road and into the undergrowth, twisting my head in nervous jerks to see the way. The woods are thick and dark. Trees creak. My shoes sink into the wet earth and brambles scratch my stockings. The further I go, the more difficult it becomes to drag him, and I stumble backwards over a log and sprawl on the ground with my skirt torn. Red liquid streaks down my arm but I don’t register pain, so it must be his blood, and I carry on to where, even after the long summer, the ground is boggy and the road disappears from view. Here there is no one, only the daily wars of ants and spiders. I spread him out on the earth and wrap his face with the scarf, as he would have been before the accident, then cover his body with fallen branches and lumps of damp leaves, careful that nothing pokes into his skin. His large blue overcoat is soaked with rain and the laces of his trainers are undone.

  The air is still and dense. Watching. I stand for a moment trying to remember something from the Bible, perhaps the Lord’s Prayer which we droned through daily in the icy school chapel, ‘Our Father, forgive us our daily bread.’ It’s been a long time. Again a distant rumble, thunder or perhaps a car. I turn and retrace my way along the groove of undergrowth splayed by the body, and a heel breaks off my shoe. As I pluck the inches of plastic from the wet earth, I can’t imagine how anything so thin can support me.

  Back at the road, the rain has washed most of the blood from the tarmac; only a tiny river of pink has pooled at the edge before dropping off into the earth. In the direction I was headed before the crash, the funnel of trees opens into a circle of light. Back the other way it’s silent and dark. The only vehicle I passed earlier was the horsebox, but that was about a mile back, and the smoking chimney meant it was probably moored in for the day. No one else has come. No one has seen. Further up the road though there’s something on the ground I hadn’t noticed before and I run to it, my actions jumpy and fractured, like a reel of film that’s been spliced and sped up. I’m more desperate than before; I thought I was done, I thought I’d made it and the risk was over. As I come close to the object I see it’s the man’s briefcase, open but empty. I grab the case without a moment’s thought and heave it up with arms stretched long, flinging it away from my body into the woods. The case spins like an injured bird, and falls deep in the undergrowth with a leafy crash. Back towards the car now, and as I run my feet kick at something which skitters and sparkles: it’s a watch on a broken leather strap, the glass face shattered. He must have kept it in the briefcase instead of on his wrist as the tear on the strap is old and frayed. I hold the watch to my ear. There’s no tick. The time reads 10.52 – the time of impact? – but with a couple of winds and a gentle bang against my palm, the second hand starts moving again. I break into a run now, gripping the watch inside my pocket as the second hand pulses against my palm, and only when I’m back inside the safety of my car can I settle enough to try and work out what to do next.

  I sit on the front seat for as long as I dare – probably only seconds, but it feels like hours – before shutting the door and starting the engine. All around me, the branches of the trees tumble in the echo chamber left behind by the storm.

  2

  TINY BOMB OF DISORDER

  It’s a fifteen-minute journey home from the accident site, but I’m certain it takes longer, though I don’t check the time. A few cars pass but the roads remain quiet after the storm. Finally I drive through metal gates and on to our driveway, the rough wet tongue of gravel rolling towards an enormous white cube. The house has never felt less like home.

  My car scoops round the semicircle of our driveway, and I park with the boot pointing towards the house, the damage on the bonnet hidden. The rain has stopped but dark clouds still cover the sun. On all three floors of the house, the lights are on. Bright rectangular windows study my approach. I imagine David inside, inspecting the rooms for my presence or absence – though I’m not sure which he prefers – his polished shoes pressing into the thick bedroom carpet, and the wool leaning back up as he passes, his imprint vanishing.

  With shaking hands I pull on the hand brake, smoothe my hair, then step out into the sour smell of wet grit, praying David won’t see me before I’ve cleaned myself up. My breath is short and sharp as I make my way to the house. I open the front door, and our two huskies – David’s noisy, needy shitting-machines who’ve been poised and barking on the other side – pour through the gap, growling. They circle me and sniff the unfamiliar earth which covers my clothes. I shush and stroke them to let them get my smell, then shoo them back to David where they bound happily as soon as they know I’m not an intruder. I hear David on the phone in the sitting room. ‘No, no,’ he says – his voice pitched soft for such a stocky man, the tone more in line with his height than his weight – ‘you can call me any time.’ His words carry effortlessly through the polished rooms of the ground floor. ‘It’s always good to hear from you.’ A client, I think, or maybe someone from the club, someone who requires the treacle of his charm. David won’t leave a business call halfway through, even to confront his absconding wife. Our dogs yap in the other room, and I suspect they’re bouncing up at him to get his attention, probably licking his fingers as he strokes them with his free hand.

  The hallway smells of mint, David’s signature tea, so he must have a cup on the go. The aroma turns my stomach. An old cardboard box is torn and scattered on the floor – something for the dogs to chew so they don’t damage our nice things. David must have been caught off guard by the phone call to have left them in the house without supervision.

  Behind me the front door closes with a soft clunk and my uneven shoes alternate a tap and a slide. I slip them off and carry them as I make my way towards the downstairs bathroom. Once inside, I lock the door, and it’s only then I take a proper look at myself: the torn skirt, scratches on my legs and blood up my arms. Fingernails full of mud. I hang my jacket on the back of the door then turn on the tall sink tap. Water comes out fast, but the temperature won’t adjust quickly enough, and I wash my hands in the scalding liquid. Steam rises in my face as I bend my arm into the stream and scrub the cuts with soap until they sting. A rose whirlpool is swallowed down the plug. The noise of the gushing water bounces from marbled floor to marbled wall and back again; there’s room in here for more furniture – towels, rugs or any addition of comfort to help absorb the echo – but we never got round to filling the space.

  I slide open the shower cubicle, reach inside and turn on the water. Steam clouds mist the room. Against the wall is a rubbish bin, and I strip off my shirt, skirt and tights, putting everything inside, including my underwear and shoes, then take the liner from the bin and tie it at the top. My hands are still wet as I try to secure a double knot, and I struggle to keep hold of the slippery edges. ‘Damn it.’ I leave it to one side for la
ter. The knot gracefully unspools as I step under the hot pins of the shower.

  With my hands on the glass wall, I bend my head to let the water stream down my face and into my eyes. ‘Dear God,’ I whisper.

  The accident replays in my mind in stop-motion: the man’s face as I rounded the corner, his skull denting the windscreen, the dull thud of his bones against the car. Or was the sound a snap? I squeeze my eyes tight but the moment keeps coming at me, more gruesome each time, and I watch him flip and split, blood spraying from his open mouth, until I’m not sure what really happened and what I’m imagining.

  I hold my head in my hands.

  Tears come, silently at first, then sobs which grow louder above the slash of water until my weeping sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else. I retch a couple of times and, on the third attempt, vomit a whisky bile into the shower tray. Yellow strings of phlegm swirl down the plug. I hold my mouth into the jet of water, rinse and spit, rinse and spit.

  There’s knocking on the bathroom door. I jump. The handle rattles.

  ‘Rachel?’ David’s voice is muted behind the wood, but I sense his urgency. ‘Rachel, what’s going on in there? Are you OK?’

  Shit. I grab the soap and scrub my body, rubbing the tablet over my head and hair, repeating the action at speed several times, forgetting where I’ve washed already, until the muddy water turns pale. ‘Just coming,’ I call. The bottles of luxury hair products that David buys for me skitter under my feet.

  ‘Rachel? Open the door.’ The handle shakes. ‘Come on, let me in.’ I freeze in the jet of water, then the clatter outside the door stops. Silence, so I finish washing and am about to turn off the shower when there’s a scraping of metal. David is opening the lock from the other side. He must have got a screwdriver to turn the latch. I press back against the cold tiles.

  ‘Hang on, I’m coming,’ I say, reaching to find the dial to turn off the shower, but the bathroom door is open before I’ve had the chance and David is in the room.