The Lying Room

by Nicci French

  Mabel wasn’t in her bare room, or anywhere else in the house. Neve went into their bedroom, cleaned her teeth, undressed and climbed into bed. She could hear Fletcher in his study and then his footsteps as he came down the stairs and opened the door. She lay propped on her pillow and watched him as he pulled his clothes off, leaving them scattered on the floor. He was still quite slim but all his weight seemed to have redistributed itself: his legs seemed thinner and he had the beginnings of a middle-aged paunch. His chest was hairier than when they’d first met and there was hair on his back as well. He was pale, soft-looking. When he took his glasses off, his eyes seemed naked.

  When had she last looked at him properly? When had he last looked at her? When they had first got together – that wild weekend they’d been remembering at dinner yesterday; the first heady weeks – she had been able to feel him when he came into a room without turning round. Electricity had sparked between them. Sleepless with desire, she had felt alive with energy and hope.

  Now they were growing middle-aged together, wrinkles on their skin and grey in their hair, and they barely noticed each other. They didn’t go out on dates. They hardly looked up if the other entered the room.

  And so she had fallen for Saul, who made her feel desired again. And now she knew about Sarah – though she had no idea if it was a secret flirtation, a fling, or a full-blown affair. She didn’t know how long they had been seeing each other or what Fletcher felt about her or if it was still going on. Did it make her guilt less, that he had also deceived her?

  He climbed into bed. ‘I’m knackered,’ he said, turning off his bedside lamp.

  Neve just murmured something in response.

  ‘You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In a couple of days’ time,’ he said, ‘Mabel is supposed to be going to university.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Will she?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe not.’

  ‘It’s crazy,’ he said.

  ‘Which bit?’

  ‘How we don’t even dare ask her outright. We probably won’t know until the morning arrives if she’s leaving.’

  He turned and shifted, pulling his pillow under his head, making himself comfortable. His back was towards her.

  ‘Sleep well,’ she said.

  She turned off her own light and closed her eyes. She was so tired that the room seemed to spin, the bed tip. Her mind hissed with thoughts. Fletcher’s breathing deepened.

  Saul had died because of her. Someone had meant to kill her, and Saul was just collateral damage. She thought of his dark hair, his bright eyes, his eloquent hands, the way he was carefree, merry; the way he smiled at her and said her name. Neve Jenny Connolly. The poem came to her:

  Jenny kiss’d me when we met,

  Jumping from the chair she sat in;

  Time, you thief, who love to get

  Sweets into your list, put that in!

  Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

  Say that wealth and health have miss’d me,

  Say I’m growing old, but add,

  Jenny kiss’d me.

  She would never say that poem out loud at parties again. But when she was old herself, she would still remember it, remember him, feel the heat of his desire. Where was it now? Who’d taken it and what were they going to do with it?

  She let herself imagine what would have happened if on that Wednesday morning she had simply called the police. They would have arrived; she would have told them the truth – the whole truth, the simple, bare fact of their illicit affair and her discovery of the body. Of course, everyone would have had to learn of her infidelity, but that seemed like a small thing now. She had thought it would destroy Fletcher, and her family, but Fletcher had been having his affair with Sarah all the time.

  Then there was Mabel. If Mabel had told her the truth, she had only gone into the flat after Neve to clear away evidence, thinking her mother had killed Saul. If Neve had pressed those three buttons on her mobile, Mabel wouldn’t have become involved at all. And she had already known about the adultery.

  But if Mabel had gone into the flat before Neve . . . The thought ticked away in her skull. What then?

  Fletcher murmured something and turned slightly. Neve lay with her forearm over her eyes, trying to press herself into deeper darkness. How would she ever sleep, with her mind on fire like this? And she was hot. The menopause, panic, sadness, and the memory of what she had done and what she had lost. That he would never be in the world again. That her daughter was in peril. That her life was a house of cards.

  At last she slid from the bed and pulled on an old cotton dressing gown; she crept from the room and went downstairs. The house was full of people sleeping, breathing deeply, dreaming. She went into the kitchen and then out into the garden, which was mysterious in the moonlight.

  She looked back at the house. Every window was dark. She thought of her children in their sleep. She pictured Connor, wrapped into a stout, bristle-headed ball, and Rory stretched out, his forearm over his eyes. She’d been so concentrated on Mabel’s danger that she had taken her attention off them. They were affected by all of this as well, although they didn’t realise it. She felt the impulse to run back into the house and gather them both to her as if they were still babies and she could make everything all right. She sat down on the grass beside Whisky’s hutch and called him and after a few moments he pushed his nose out and chirruped at her. Neve picked a few dandelion leaves and pressed them through the wire; he nibbled at them, whiskers twitching.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Neve didn’t turn. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I think I’ve gone beyond tiredness. But why are you up?’

  Mabel kicked at the scuffed grass. ‘That detective . . .’ she said.

  ‘He doesn’t know anything. That alibi you gave me . . . We have to stick to it now. You came to the allotment with me on Wednesday morning. But don’t say anything else like that. OK?’

  Mabel shrugged, then nodded.

  ‘It’s best to stay as near to the truth as possible. When you lie, you’re setting yourself a trap.’

  They were criminals, thought Neve, working out how to cover up what had happened. Neither were looking at each other.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘One question. Did you take a file from the flat when you were there?’

  Mabel looked puzzled. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A file has gone missing. It was in the flat.’

  ‘Well I didn’t take it.’

  ‘You’re sure.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She kicked at the grass again.

  ‘Right. Just stay out of all of this from now on. Do nothing, say nothing, leave it to me.’

  ‘I’m quite scared,’ said Mabel in a small, flat voice. ‘I don’t want to go to prison.’

  Neve waited, thinking she was about to reveal more, but instead Mabel said, ‘Sometimes I feel like some horrible, vicious creature is alive inside me and gnawing its way out with its sharp teeth.’

  Neve nodded. ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘You won’t let me go to prison, will you?’

  ‘No. I promise.’ Although how could she make such a promise?

  ‘I’m going to bed now.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Neve.

  But she stayed outside, staring and staring at nothing; thinking and thinking of nothing, drained, and for this short pinch of time, while everyone else slept and the moon hung like a flag in the sky, she felt oddly peaceful. She sat on the grass and she fell asleep.

  She woke up hours later, stiff from the hard ground and cold and damp from dew. She didn’t know where she was at first. She heard birds singing, though it was still dark. Everything felt unreal. She even wondered if she was asleep, if this was a dream. She walked across the wet grass and softly into the house, feeling like a ghost, padded up the stairs. In her bedroom she took her clothes off in the dark, just let them fall, and got into the bed. There w
as a murmur from Fletcher as he felt her weight moving the bed.

  6

  A Trip to the Country

  The next morning, Neve took Rory and Connor to school, and as she left them at the gates, she almost bumped into Sarah. They both laughed as if they were sharing a secret joke, being a woman on a Monday morning at the school gates. Sarah looked fresh-faced, immaculately turned out. She even smelled immaculate, of lemons and pine needles. Her smooth cheeks were flushed. Neve thought she seemed very slightly ill at ease – or perhaps she had been like it for some time but Neve hadn’t noticed. She tried to imagine this woman, who presented herself so carefully to the world, with Fletcher. Her Fletcher, anxious, gloomy, clever, creative, kind.

  ‘Good to see you,’ she said, forcing a smile.

  ‘You too. Recovered from your mad weekend?’

  ‘Not entirely. Can I have a word?’

  ‘I’m in a bit of a rush,’ said Sarah. ‘I need to get to work.’

  ‘So do I, but I can walk with you.’

  They walked in silence for a couple of minutes. The sky was overcast, promising rain. The air smelled of autumn, leaves were turning. Neve looked across at Sarah. She was several inches shorter than Neve. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but there was something about her that was composed and pleasing. She and Neve weren’t friends – Neve didn’t even know what her job was; something financial or managerial – but they had always been friendly and supportive of each other: two mothers trying to do the best they could. And Connor and Elias were as thick as thieves.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Neve suddenly. ‘Can we stop walking for a moment?’

  They stopped and Sarah looked at Neve warily. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this.’

  Sarah waited. She put up her hand – no wedding ring, manicured, and nails painted a mushroom-pink colour – to her face for a moment, her hair. The air between them was thick with tension.

  ‘There is something I need to ask you.’

  Sarah’s eyes flickered. She licked her lips. ‘What?’

  ‘Does Fletcher want to leave?’

  ‘Leave? Leave what?’

  ‘I’m not going to shout at you. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to make a scene. I just want to know: is Fletcher planning to leave?’

  ‘Leave?’ Sarah repeated the word as if it was a foreign language. Her voice was scratchy.

  ‘Us. Me. The children.’

  Sarah’s face was suddenly pale except for little flecks of pink. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Just answer.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sarah very slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Does he hate me? Is he angry with me?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Sarah. ‘Not like this. I’m not comfortable with this.’

  ‘It’s not exactly a comfortable situation. Please, just tell me.’

  ‘You have to believe that I never meant—’

  Neve held up her hand. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hear why you did what you did, or anything like that. I want to know how Fletcher seems to you.’

  Sarah looked at her in puzzlement. ‘How he seems?’

  ‘What’s his mood? Guilty? Happy? Angry?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘He’s not happy, that’s for sure. And I don’t think he’s angry. He’s a bit down. I don’t know. Maybe he’s resentful.’

  ‘Resentful? What of?’

  ‘You’re the successful one. You’ve got the job. The friends. Everything’s fine with you and everyone likes you.’

  That almost made Neve smile, except that just then she didn’t feel like she’d ever smile at anything ever again.

  ‘You’ve always been nice to me,’ said Sarah. ‘I don’t want you to hate me. Women always blame the other woman.’

  Neve looked at her hard and saw the blood rising in Sarah’s smooth cheeks.

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘I don’t blame you. I just—’

  She stopped. Everything was wrong: years of Mabel on the edge, her betrayal of Fletcher, Fletcher’s betrayal of her, Saul’s murder and her cover-up and now the whole world careering out of control. And here she was, talking to her husband’s lover calmly, as if it was a bureaucratic obstacle. Because the truth was that she didn’t care. She knew that one day she would. Soon enough she would feel jealous and she would feel wretched and she would feel sad. But it was like a pain that stood to one side, waiting for its time. Now, she could only think of Hitching with his folder, Mabel with her terrified face, the abyss yawning in front of her.

  ‘Is it still going on?’ she asked. ‘You and Fletcher?’

  Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. A single drop rolled down her cheek, then another.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Yesterday, in your garden, he said we needed to talk.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I don’t think I can discuss it with you though. Like this.’

  ‘Is he in love with you?’

  Sarah looked around desperately as if she were worried about being overheard.

  ‘Shouldn’t we go somewhere? Have a coffee.’

  ‘I don’t have time for anything like that. I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sarah, taking a deep breath. ‘I don’t know if he’s in love with me and I don’t know if I’m in love with him. I was so lonely and miserable and he saved me. Or that’s how it felt. He noticed me. I felt good about myself again. Though terrible as well,’ she added hastily.

  Neve nodded.

  ‘And as for Fletch,’ Sarah continued, looking past Neve, into the plane tree whose leaves were yellow and red and brown (Fletch! thought Neve savagely. Nobody calls him Fletch. It makes him sound like a dog), ‘I don’t know. Sometimes, he seemed . . .’ She swallowed hard. ‘This will come out wrong. He once said that he felt like he’d been drowning and now he could breathe again.’

  Once more, Neve remembered being with Saul, lying with him in that dark little room, and hearing herself gasping, like a person coming up for air.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

  ‘Has he done this before?’

  ‘I don’t know if he’s done things . . .’ Sarah paused as if she couldn’t quite say the words. ‘Like this before. And I don’t get it. Why are you being so calm? Why aren’t you shouting at me or crying or attacking me? That would be better than this.’

  ‘Has he said anything about me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah, blinking quickly several times, as if she had something in her eye. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean . . .’ She stuttered to a halt.

  Neve wanted to ask: does he love you enough to want to kill me? Does he hate me enough to want to kill me? What she really wanted to find out was if Fletcher knew about her and Saul.

  ‘Did he ever . . . ?’ How should she say this? ‘Did he ever say anything about paying me back or anything?’

  ‘Paying you back?’ Sarah wrinkled her nose. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t really mean anything. You said he was resentful of me. Just because of my work and things? Nothing specific?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Neve wanted to shake her. ‘He didn’t think I was having an affair or anything, did he? I mean, because I have lots of friends,’ she added lamely. ‘He might have felt jealous.’

  ‘I don’t know. We didn’t talk about things like that. I don’t think I was just a way of hurting you, if that’s what you mean.’ She sounded angry. That was easier for her than guilt. ‘It wasn’t all about you.’

  ‘Do you still want him?’ asked Neve.

  Their gazes met, locked.

  ‘You have to know that this isn’t the sort of thing I do,’ said Sarah. ‘This isn’t me.’

  She was wiping tears away from her eyes now. Neve instinctively put out a hand to touch her and then withdrew it. Without another word she turned around and walked towards home. As she strode quickly along, she thought of what Sarah had s
aid. Fletcher resented her because she had the safe job and he was at home. But Fletcher had always hated being part of any organisation. He hated his creativity being stifled. So the agreement had been that she would be the one who did that sort of work. She would free him to follow his own course. And what had he done? She thought of Sarah, all freshness and curves and ripeness. Just for a moment she imagined them in bed together and then she caught herself. What right did she have even to think such a thing? She thought of herself and Saul. Herself and Saul in bed together. What a farce it all was.

  As she opened the front door, Fletcher was standing right in front of her, like a rebuke. She gave a start and at the same time felt a huge pang of regret and shame.

  ‘There’s someone here for you,’ he said.

  Neve walked into the living room. A woman was sitting in an armchair. When she saw Neve, she stood up. She was wearing a grey suit and Neve recognised her immediately. She was the detective who had accompanied Hitching to the office. She took out her identification and showed it to Neve.

  ‘I’m DC Ingram,’ she said. ‘Hitching wants to talk to you.’

  ‘When he wants to talk to me, he usually just turns up at the house, or at the office.’

  ‘If you’d just come with me. There’s a car outside.’

  ‘I was about to go to work.’

  ‘You can phone them in the car.’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  Ingram gestured towards the door. ‘Please,’ she said.

  Neve mumbled a few words to Fletcher and then she didn’t speak for the next twenty minutes. She sat in the back of the car and looked out of the window without seeing anything as it drove towards Holborn. They drove round the back of the station through a heavily reinforced gate. She got out in a walled car park alongside armoured vans and was led into a small back door, along a corridor and up some grey concrete stairs that looked like a fire escape. They met nobody, saw nobody, though there was a sound of voices. She was led into a room with no windows, no pictures, no decoration, a simple table and three steel and moulded plastic chairs. Ingram placed one of the chairs next to the table and gestured Neve to sit down. Then she left the room. Neve took out her phone. No signal. There was a sound of footsteps and the door opened and Hitching came in, followed by Ingram. He was holding a bundle of folders and something else – Neve couldn’t make out what – something electronic. He put both of them on the table.