Telling Tales Page 10

  “He’s asleep. He doesn’t know.” She looked at her watch. It was nearly four o’clock, already getting gloomy outside. “Perhaps we should get back.”

  “Aye,” Wendy said. “You get on before it gets right dark. And take care now.”

  But when Emma left she didn’t lock the door behind her guests. She lit the cigarette and returned to the iron, as if she sensed that she was in no danger.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When they returned from the Point it was dark and the doors of the pottery were padlocked shut. The square was deserted. It could have been midnight. Inside the house, Emma felt suddenly safe. There was that relief of coming in and slipping off her shoes and making tea, which she remembered from when she’d been working. Perhaps that’s all that’s wrong with me, she thought. I’ve been spending too much time in this house. I can’t appreciate it. Perhaps it’s time to think about going back to work.

  James was up. He’d drawn the curtains in the living room and banked up the fire. The walls in this room were dark red and hung with large pictures in gilt frames which he said he’d inherited from ancient relatives. He loved it. When they came in he was sitting on the leather sofa reading a newspaper, but he stood up and took Matthew from her, held him in the air above his head.

  “That was a long walk,” he said. He didn’t sound anxious and she felt resentful. There was a murderer on the loose and he wasn’t even concerned. Instead he stood leaning against the window sill looking around the room, beaming.

  “We went to see Wendy.”

  “She’ll have liked that.”

  “She thinks the person who murdered Abigail Mantel could still be living round here.” #

  He frowned. “I suppose it’s possible. Does it bring that all back? Like a nightmare? Of course, I can’t possibly understand what it can be like.”

  She was surprised and moved, went up to him and kissed his forehead.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said. “Not to either of you.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t I cook? You get the baby ready for bed, then put your feet up.”

  She thought this was how it could be. She could give up her dreams of Dan, who after all was edgy and unpredictable, not even likeable if she thought about it seriously. They could be content, the two of them. She could make small concessions, like going willingly to church with him, and taking more interest in his work, like initiating regular if unimaginative sex, and he would take care of them. For some reason she knew she could trust him to do that. He would agree to her returning to teaching, even if he didn’t much like the idea. Their marriage would survive without argument or disturbance; it would be at least as happy as that of most of their friends. Was that what she wanted? And anyway, did she deserve it?

  When she came downstairs from settling Matthew to sleep, James was in the kitchen. He was standing at the workbench chopping onions and garlic, concentrating so hard that he didn’t hear her approach. He’d changed into jeans and a thin woollen jersey. There was nothing between the jersey and his skin and

  Emma found herself thinking, with an odd excitement, about the faint irritation this must cause. She stood behind him and slid her hand beneath the jumper, moved her fingers down the knots of his spine, inside the waist of his jeans. He turned, still with the knife in one hand, a bulb of garlic in the other, disarmed. He bent and kissed her forehead, ran the tip of his tongue over her eyelids.

  “Why don’t you leave that?” she said. “We can have it later.” It was an experiment. Could she forget her fantasies of Dan Greenwood and learn to make do with reality? A quiet domestic life?

  James reached behind him to replace the garlic and knife on the bench. It was as if he had his hands tied behind his back. All the time he was kissing her, and just for a moment she felt herself relaxing.

  Then there was a banging on the door. The heavy knocker was rammed down three times. In the quiet house the sound seemed to echo. Emma immediately imagined Vera Stanhope standing there. She was certain it was her, could picture her, legs apart, putting all her weight behind the knocking.

  “We could ignore it,” James said. Emma thought the suggestion was half-hearted. It would be too daring for him, and already he was feeling slightly embarrassed by his abandon.

  Ske came to his rescue. “No.” If it was Vera Stanhope she wouldn’t go away. She would stand there all night if necessary, get a warrant and smash in the door.

  Emma had been so convinced that the inspector would be standing there that she almost felt cheated. She’d been planning an angry outburst. Do you realize my baby’s asleep? I’ve already told you everything I know.

  The figure on the doorstep was taller than Vera Stanhope, better proportioned, almost athletic. He’d turned away and was looking out at the square. His long hair was tangled. He wore a thin waterproof anorak and there was a small rucksack at his feet. It was the last person she would have expected.

  “Chris,. What are you doing here?”

  He turned to face her. His face still had the brooding quality he’d developed as an undergraduate. She’d thought it was a pose, a way of attracting women, but now it seemed to have become a habit. There were dark shadows under his eyes, emphasized by the light over the door, which also made his features more angular than she remembered.

  “I’ve come to see my sister,” he said. “Of course.” He bent and pecked her abruptly on her cheek. His lips were icy. “I hope you’ve got some beer in there. Otherwise we’ll have to send James out to find some. I’ve been travelling all day. I’m desperate.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Last bus from Hull. It took bloody hours.”

  “You should have phoned. I’d have come to get you.”

  “I don’t believe in cars.” He laughed. She couldn’t work out if it were a joke at his expense for having such uncomfortable principles, or if he were mocking her for taking him seriously. She’d never known how to react to him. Although she’d been the older one, she’d always been intimidated by his intelligence. The gap between them had grown wider since Abigail’s death. Neither of them had made the effort to bridge it.

  She realized she was still standing in the doorway, blocking his way into the house. She moved aside.

  “Come in. James is cooking supper. I’m sure there’s beer.”

  The kitchen was at the back of the house and she led Chris through. During the day it seemed dark and rather gloomy, but now, after the chill of standing on the step, it was warm, even welcoming. James had returned to chopping onions. He sliced them into fine, almost translucent semicircles.

  “Will there be enough food for three? Look who’s come to supper.” Her voice sounded unnaturally bright. She wasn’t really sure how well the two men got on. They seemed pleasant enough to each other, though once, in an unguarded moment, James had told her he thought her brother arrogant. It was true, she thought. Sometimes Chris gave the impression that he despised the whole world, apart perhaps from a couple of Nobel scientists.

  James looked up from the chopping board. He must have heard Chris’s voice at the door and had his response already prepared.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s great to see you.” He paused for a beat. “Do Robert and Mary know you’re here? We could invite them round too.”

  “God, no.” Chris was horrified. “I need a good night’s sleep before I can face that.”

  James slid the onion from the board into a frying pan.

  “There’s beer in the fridge,” he said. “You can get me one too.”

  When Chris had his back to them James rolled his eyes and pulled a face. What was that about? Chris’s attitude to his parents, or his own disappointment that they would no longer have the evening to themselves? Emma couldn’t tell.

  They would eat in the small narrow room which led immediately from the kitchen. Emma lit candles and set the table, while Christopher went upstairs for a shower. James moaned gently at her through the open door
while he prepared a salad.

  “Really,” he said. “Chris could have given us some warning. We might have been busy. Who else would just turn up on the doorstep like that?”

  “He’s very focused,” she said. “He decided he wanted to visit and that was it. He wouldn’t think much of anything other than how he’d get here, once the decision was made.”

  Christopher had always been like that, even when he was quite young. He would become obsessed with an object of study or a project. All his energy would be taken up with that. Other school subjects would be dealt with in a cursory, detached way, but his teachers would know that his mind was elsewhere. The fixation would end as suddenly as it had begun and he would move on to something else dinosaurs or gravity or an obscure composer. He had stuck with seabirds for a surprisingly long time. Perhaps the puffins had come to bore him and that was why he was here.

  At the time the family had put his sudden passions down to the eccentricity of an academic. Now Emma wondered again when the fixations had begun. With the move to Elvet or Abigail’s murder? And were they as harmless as they had seemed at the time or the indication of a deeper disturbance? She wished she’d made more effort to understand him when they’d both been living at home, decided that his appearance was a good sign. It wasn’t too late to understand him better.

  They ate at first in silence. The wind had dropped to a murmur, but Emma was aware of it still in the background. She made a few attempts at conversation, asking about Christopher’s work, the flat in Aberdeen, but soon realized that he was exhausted. He sat with his left elbow on the table, resting his head on his palm, holding his fork in his right hand, pushing pasta into his mouth. She could tell James disapproved. He had an obsession about table manners. Occasionally Chris’s eyelids would droop, then something would jerk him awake and he would stare wildly at them for a moment as if he’d forgotten who they were. He had drunk the beer and most of a bottle of Australian red. Emma considered what problem might have brought him home. Could he have become addicted to drugs? Is this how someone who was suffering withdrawal might behave? She had no idea. Perhaps his depression she thought he probably was depressed was the result of the end of a love affair. It didn’t occur to her that Chris’s arrival in Elvet could have anything to do with Abigail Mantel.

  They had moved on to the cheese and fruit. James said to him, quite gently, “Look, you’re obviously tired. Go to bed whenever you like. We won’t mind.”

  “No!” Christopher’s head jerked back in spasm again. “It’s no good. I won’t sleep yet.”

  “Well, I think I’ll go. I’ve got an early start in the morning.” He gave Emma a meaningful look. Perhaps he thought they could carry on where they’d left off when Chris interrupted them.

  “I won’t be long.” But she was careful to keep any hint of promise from her voice. And she knew him. Once James was in bed he would go straight to sleep.

  She waited until he’d gone upstairs then fetched more wine from the kitchen, opened it and poured ‘each of them a glass. It was the most she’d drunk since she’d found out she was pregnant. She’d never had to play big sister before. As a child she’d been the needy one. Chris had been independent, self-contained.

  “What is it, Chris?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

  He sat upright for the first time, looked directly at her.

  “Don’t you know?” Brutal, cruel. “Really, are you so thick that you never realized?”

  She felt her eyes prick with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a mess. I haven’t slept since it all started again.”

  “What?” she demanded. “What started?”

  Abigail Mantel. All that.”

  “Jeanie’s suicide was only in the paper yesterday.” She couldn’t make sense of it.

  “That was what made me come, of course,” he said. “But it started long before that. There was that piece in the Guardian. It seems as if people have been talking about her for weeks.”

  “I didn’t realize she meant anything to you.” i She thought of the evening after she had found Abigail’s body, the two of them looking out of his bedroom window at the moonlit image of the stretcher bearers. He hadn’t seemed upset then, had he? Or had she been so absorbed by her own place in the drama that she hadn’t noticed?

  “She meant everything,” he said. At the time.”

  “But you were young.”

  “Fourteen,” he said. “Given to obsessions.”

  “You can’t have gone out with her?” Abigail had considered herself too sophisticated for the lads in their own year. Certainly she would never have deigned to go out with someone like Chris.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

  “Well then?”

  “I followed her. Everywhere she went. All that summer.” He stared into his glass. “It started when we met up on the Point. The first time you spoke to her. We’d just moved. Dad had dragged us out for a bike ride. You remember?”

  “We were eating ice creams.”

  “Yes!” he was almost shouting. “Yes!”

  “And Abigail arrived in her father’s car and got out to introduce herself.”

  “That was the start of it. After that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Literally. I’d wake up thinking about her, she was there, lurking at the back of my mind all day, and at night I’d dream about her.”

  “She was your project for the summer.” She was frightened by his intensity and hoped to tease him out of it, but he answered her seriously.

  “No. Projects are intellectual. Abigail was more than that. I can’t explain it even now. I don’t expect you to understand. Look at you. Married, a mother, too sensible to have dreams.”

  “Marriage doesn’t stop you dreaming,” she said, but very quietly and anyway, he wasn’t listening. She thought suddenly, If Abigail had heard me say that she’d have pretended to be sick. So predictable. So cheesy. For the first time in years she missed the girl who had been a real friend despite all the later misgivings.

  He went on. “It’s never gone away, you know. If she hadn’t died I expect I’d have moved on, got over her. As it’s I’m stuck with it. A passion I’ll never satisfy. A fantasy I can never make real.” He tried to smile. “Crazy, huh?”

  He reached for the wine bottle. She saw that his hand was shaking. “Do you know I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said. “Not a real one. The occasional fumbled one-night stand. Usually when I’m drunk. Usually with a girl with red hair. But nothing more than that.”

  For a moment Emma said nothing to him. She looked at him across the table, not sure what to make of it. Christopher had never spoken to her like this before. He had never spoken to her about anything important. She wasn’t even sure she believed him.

  “I never realized,” she said in the end. “Why are you telling me now?”

  “Because I had to talk to somebody. I think I’m going mad. I’m not sure what’s true any more.”

  “It is crazy,” Emma said. “You have to let go.”

  And did you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  , “You’re holding onto stuff. What is it? Guilt? You never liked Abigail much, did you? It must have been a shock but I doubt if you felt much grief.”

  “She was my best friend.”

  “No,” he said. “She was your only friend. All you had. And she never let you forget it, did she? She never let you forget how much you owed her.” He held her eyes for a moment. “I always thought,” he paused, ‘that deep down you hated her.”

  “No,” she said, but the image she’d had a moment before, of Abigail pulling faces, of them laughing together, had already faded.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Emma left Chris sitting at the table, staring moodily into his wine glass. He had become silent and unresponsive, and when she said goodnight he seemed not to hear. She climbed the stairs slowly, not prepared to make more effort on her brother, but not yet ready for bed.

&n
bsp; The day before, they’d moved Matthew into his own bedroom. James had prepared it when she was pregnant. A labour of love, because the colours she’d chosen hadn’t been to his taste at all. Under her instruction he’d painted the grubby wallpaper yellow and stuck up a frieze of waves and boats and fish. A mobile of silver stars hung from the ceiling. At the open door she paused to look in. The baby was lying on his back in his cot, his arms flung out, relaxed and floppy as a rag doll.

  As she’d expected, James was already asleep. She stared down at him trying to recreate something of the excitement she’d felt when she’d touched him earlier, but it had quite gone. He didn’t stir when she moved around the room. She began to undress, but still felt too restless for sleep. The wooden floorboards were uncarpeted, stained and varnished and the feel of them on her bare feet always reminded her of PE lessons in the gym at school. One of the teachers had been keen on contemporary dance, and dressed in black leotards, they’d leapt and writhed around the hall to weird electronic music. Expressing themselves. Abigail had thought the exercise ridiculous and made her feelings clear. Emma had been torn. Secretly she’d enjoyed the freedom of the movement. It was like running across a beach towards the sea. The same exhilaration. But because of Abigail, she’d had to sneer too.

  Chris had been right in one sense. After Abigail’s death, school had become more bearable. In the few weeks before the summer holidays and in the first half of the Christmas term she was known only as Abigail’s mate. Afterwards, she had become an object of interest in her own right; the pupils had been curious about the murder investigation, the teachers sympathetic. Under their attention she had flourished.

  Was it that autumn term she’d discovered her facility for languages? It had been a piece of translation, German into English, and when it had come to her turn she’d rattled it off, understanding immediately what the writer had been trying to say.

  “Very good, Emma,” the teacher had said automatically. Emma had come in for a lot of praise since Abigail’s death. As if that was some compensation for the shock of finding a strangled body. Then the teacher had repeated, meaning it, surprised. “Really, that was very good.”