The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  From the other side of the coffee table Graham scooped up the discarded pencils and pieces of paper and tidied them away, then he reached beneath the table and pulled out the battered Monopoly box.

  ‘I’ll be the racing car,’ he said. ‘What do you want to be? Char, you in?’

  It was Saturday evening. The first week of the new school term. Mum and Dad were at the Bunch of Grapes in Northolt with Doug and Judy Farrelly, who had once been their next-door neighbours but now lived in Kilburn, which meant she, Charlotte and Graham had the house to themselves. At the moment Grandma Lake was taking a nap in her room, and with any luck she wouldn’t bother to get up and come down before retiring to bed. The crunch would come at eight thirty when Grandma Lake liked to watch The Les Dawson Show.

  Graham leaned forward, carefully placing the little red racing car on the board.

  ‘Do you want to be the ship or the boot or the dog, Char?’ he said.

  Charlotte continued to stare at the television. Ted and Julie from Ipswich were attempting to spin a potter’s wheel.

  For the last year Charlotte had spent every Saturday night at Zoe’s house and Jennifer had been out with Darren. But Charlotte hadn’t gone over to Zoe’s since the start of the summer holidays. And Darren was going out with Roberta Peabody even though he’d said, not three months ago, that Roberta had a nose the size of Concorde. And tonight Julie Fanshawe was having a pyjama party because her parents were in Marbella for an entire fortnight and here was Jennifer at home sitting in Dad’s armchair playing stupid games with Graham.

  Darren wouldn’t speak to her. He wouldn’t even say why.

  Sod him.

  She peered across at Charlotte. There had been graffiti in the girls’ toilets in the last week of term. Jennifer had seen it. She didn’t know who’d written it but she knew what it said and she knew why it was there.

  Someone needed to say something. She needed to say something.

  Graham began to count out a wad of brightly coloured Monopoly notes. She didn’t know what she should say and Charlotte didn’t look up, so the words—whatever they were—remained unspoken.

  There was a thump from upstairs followed by the creak of a floorboard and they all looked up.

  ‘Golf Romeo Alpha,’ Graham announced ominously, which was police-radio code for the letters GRA: Geriatric Relative Alert. Grandma Lake, evidently, was awake and up and about. Perhaps she’d fallen or knocked something over? They waited silently but no further sound came and, anyway, she’d call out if she’d fallen over. Everyone lowered their eyes. Graham picked up a thick wad of red five-hundred-pound notes and patted them into a neat pile.

  On the television the audience applauded and Ted and Julie from Ipswich waved goodbye. Squeezed tightly into the farthest corner of the sofa Charlotte studied the program’s end credits as though they held the key to some great mystery.

  Jennifer observed her with a sideways glance. Everything she did with Charlotte was sideways now. She didn’t look at her anymore, she peered at her from underneath her fringe or around a corner or through a doorway or over the top of a magazine. Charlotte sat with her arms locked around her knees gazing with vacant eyes at the announcer who previewed a forthcoming program. The Les Dawson Show came on and Jennifer thought, Why has she come downstairs? Surely it can’t be because she wants company—not our company, anyway?

  The television audience broke into tired sit-com laughter. Graham had given up on the Monopoly board and the three of them stared gloomily at the screen and Jennifer thought, if Graham wasn’t here this might be the moment I could say something. She could say, for instance, that Tina Davies in 5B had seen Adam Ant last week in Sainsbury’s in Ruislip. That he was buying breakfast cereal. The whole school was talking about it.

  The audience laughed again and Graham remained in the room and Jennifer said nothing. She realised that Charlotte didn’t care about Adam Ant. That she didn’t even listen to records anymore, that she no longer went over to Zoe’s house.

  What had she been doing over at Zoe’s house all those Saturday nights?

  No one really believed that, Jennifer reminded herself. Not that.

  ‘Alright then, Battleships,’ said Graham at last, as though this was positively his final offer on the games front and if they didn’t accept this, well then frankly they were all in for a pretty dull evening.

  ‘Oh, grow up,’ said Jennifer.

  Why didn’t Charlotte go over to Zoe’s house anymore? And why hadn’t Zoe come round to their house all summer? Not once during the entire six weeks. Not one phone call. Perhaps her family were away on holiday?

  On the television two fat elderly comedians sat wedged onto a sofa in drag, vast sagging fake breasts resting on their folded arms.

  Could Zoe have been on holiday for six weeks? And after term had started? But Jennifer didn’t know whether Zoe had been at school this week or not.

  There was a creak on the stairs, then the door to the lounge was pushed open and Grandma Lake shuffled in wearing fluffy powder-blue slippers and a floral dressing-gown. Everyone looked up then looked away again.

  She made her way across the room and lowered herself down onto the sofa, losing her balance at the crucial moment, so that she fell backwards with a whomp of fake leather that made Charlotte bounce upwards. Once this would have made Jennifer laugh but nowadays, after a year, it just made her despair. The television audience laughed again and a second or two later so did Grandma Lake, a curiously high-pitched, girlish giggle that was faintly disturbing. It reminded Jennifer that Grandma Lake had probably once been a girl herself.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ announced Grandma Lake, suddenly and to no one in particular. ‘Not with all that racket.’

  The idea that Grandma Lake’s operatic night-time snorts and snores could be interrupted by any noise they themselves could make seemed unlikely but no one was inclined to remark on this. Except perhaps Graham.

  ‘Sierra Oscar Bravo,’ he announced cheerfully, which meant Silly Old Bat.

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’ said Grandma Lake.

  ‘Ow!’ protested Graham, his face suddenly flushing red with shock and pain because the slap had been unexpected, because Jennifer had hit him harder than she had meant to. He kicked her shin in retaliation then sat there with arms folded angrily.

  Charlotte said nothing.

  There had been graffiti in the girls’ toilets. It had turned up in the last week of term.

  Jennifer shut her eyes.

  It was Julie Fanshawe who’d seen the graffiti first and perhaps it was Julie who had written it. She’d come bustling into registration full of it, bursting with the importance of it, flushed with the excitement of someone else’s downfall, of her own immunity. And what had she, had any of them, expected Jennifer to do about it—defend the family honour? You couldn’t just march in there and wash it off, everyone would have thought you’d had something to do with it. That you were a part of it. That you had something to hide. That there was some truth in it.

  Jennifer had had nothing to do with it. Nothing. And everyone knew that there was no truth in it. But she had run over there anyway because she had to know. And she’d seen Charlotte standing outside the toilet block. Just standing there and she’d known that whatever it was, whatever was written on the wall, Charlotte had seen it. That she had been too late.

  Charlotte stood up and stabbed at the television set and The Les Dawson Show vanished, replaced by a film on ITV. The Magnificent Seven. A parched, desert landscape and a crumbling Mexican village.

  ‘’Ere! I’m quite partial to Les Dawson,’ protested Grandma Lake, but no one moved to change the channel.

  Jennifer had had nothing to do with what was written on the wall of the girls’ toilets. All she had said was one little thing to one person. Just an observation really, a stupid throwaway line. And everyone knew Charlotte and Zoe were always together. There was already talk. There must have been. That’s what schools were like. You said one little thin
g to one person and before you knew it...

  ‘And I can’t be expected to sleep when your mum and dad are out in that car,’ said Grandma Lake. ‘Not until I know they’re back safely. Can’t sleep a wink till then.’

  This was patently untrue but no one said anything. Besides, most of what Grandma Lake said was aimed at the television and required no response.

  Jennifer realised she needed to do something. That someone had to do something. They couldn’t all go on sitting here, staring at the TV indefinitely.

  On the television bandits rode into the village. Their leader entered the cantina and lit a cigar while the villagers looked silently on.

  Charlotte hadn’t moved. She had been wearing the same jeans and black sweatshirt for four days now. Why didn’t anyone else see? The same clothes for four days? Four days!

  A sudden burst of gunfire shattered the silence and a lone Mexican peasant fell dead in the dust, a red circle on his back.

  What was worse—no one else seeing or this constant state of dread in case someone did see? But so far no one had noticed. What were they all doing?

  What they were doing was talking to the television or sipping beer at the Bunch of Grapes in Northolt or waiting impatiently to play Monopoly.

  But what if Grandma Lake stopped talking to the television? What if Graham gave up the idea of Monopoly? What if they both noticed Charlotte sitting there, saying nothing, in the same clothes she’d had on for four days? What then?

  ‘Fine. I’ll be the boot,’ Jennifer said picking up the Monopoly counter and placing it next to Graham’s on the board.

  Grandma Lake was asleep, her chin resting on her chest, arms folded across her vast bosom, an occasional snort erupting from between puckered lips and The Magnificent Seven was over halfway through by the time Jennifer bought her first hotel.

  It was after eleven and Charlotte hadn’t moved a muscle, not once, not even to see what was on BBC One. Every time car headlights lit up the hallway and a car engine neared the house Jennifer paused, waiting, but each time the headlights swept on up the street. It was too early, anyway, for Mum and Dad, only just last orders.

  Was no one ever going to go to bed?

  All she had said was one little thing to one person in the last week of term. One little thing...

  What ought to have been another crap Friday night at the community centre’s under-eighteens disco had, surprisingly, not been crap at all. It had been pretty good, in fact. Briefly.

  ‘There’s Adrian,’ Julie had shouted above the synthesised beat of ‘Planet Earth’ and loud enough that anyone could have heard her. ‘He’s coming over!’

  And Adrian Cresswell had come over, weaving between Sonya Marshall and Mark Bickley from 4C who were slow-dancing to Duran Duran, circumnavigating a cluster of white faux leather handbags, and Jennifer had known he was coming over to her. After all, he’d been watching her from the other side of the room for the last fifteen minutes. About bloody time too. She’d been working up to this point since Christmas. A smile here, a word there, a walk home from school, a look across the classroom when Darren wasn’t there, and now it was June, the end of term, and finally Adrian was free of that Jackie Parfitter cow and very, very soon she was going to be free of Darren.

  ‘Alright?’ Adrian had said, throwing back his head and talking to her out of the side of his mouth. ‘Planet Earth’ had ended and Julie had melted discreetly into the background. Yes, Jennifer had replied, she was alright. And Adrian was alright too, in a black button-down Gary Numan shirt, narrow red tie, black straight-leg pegs and black winkle-picker boots with buckles on the ankles.

  And he had said: ‘Yeah, so. I was looking for your sister.’

  That was what Adrian had said. That was what Adrian had weaved his way across the dance floor to say to her: I was looking for your sister.

  ‘Charlotte,’ he’d added, as though she might not know who he was referring to.

  Charlotte!

  ‘You what?’ she’d replied, mystified, and already a sense of things not going as planned had begun to creep over her.

  ‘Well, she never comes here, does she? I was wonderin’ where she goes, tha’s all.’ A shrug. ‘She’s not going out with anyone, is she?’

  ‘Why?’ Jennifer had replied coldly, already aware that she didn’t really want to know.

  ‘I was just wonderin’.’ Adrian had turned away and sipped his Coke and surveyed the disco critically, his foot tapping to Spandau Ballet. Then he’d turned back. ‘Think she’d go out with me?’

  ‘Come on. Your go,’ urged Graham, pointing impatiently at the Monopoly board.

  Jennifer tossed the dice and got a five.

  ‘Park Lane!’ crowed Graham jubilantly. ‘With two hotels, that’s...five hundred pounds, please.’

  Graham always said please when he was fleecing you at Monopoly.

  ‘Park Lane. I went to Park Lane once.’

  Grandma Lake was awake and addressing the television once more.

  ‘We both went. Late summer it were. There were a lovely brass band in Hyde Park and so many handsome young men. A real treat, it was, to take a tram into town. Me and Jem sat on the top deck and shared a bag of sugared almonds.’

  A shot pierced the air and on the television a bandit slumped dead over a low stone wall.

  Think she’d go out with me?

  Adrian Creswell had come over in a black Gary Numan button-down shirt, the one with the red buttons. He had come over to ask if she thought Charlotte would go out with him.

  Julie Fanshawe, along with half the lower-sixth, had been standing just a short distance away, watching and listening. Waiting with barely concealed glee. Meanwhile Charlotte had not ever been there because Charlotte didn’t go to discos. Charlotte didn’t go out. Charlotte spent all her time over at Zoe’s house.

  ‘No, Adrian, I don’t think she’d go out with you, actually.’

  There. It had ended right there. That was what Jennifer had said. Just that, nothing else. Then she had spun around and swept out, leaving Julie to retrieve her handbag from the pile on the floor and Adrian standing there in the middle of the disco with everyone staring at him.

  Laughing at him.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Graham was busily helping himself to Jennifer’s last fifty pounds and mortgaging off her few remaining properties, joyfully scooping up her set of main-line stations, flipping them over and calculating their mortgage value.

  A croupier, thought Jennifer. He’d make a great croupier.

  On the sofa, Charlotte suddenly looked up and stared at Grandma Lake as though she’d only just noticed her grandmother was sitting beside her. There was such intensity in her look Jennifer held her breath.

  Outside a car approached, its headlights lighting up the hallway. Everyone paused, silent. Waiting. Its engine geared down and the car turned into the driveway.

  Mum and Dad were home.

  Instantly the atmosphere changed. Charlotte turned away and squeezed herself into a tighter ball, her gaze resting somewhere to the left of the television screen. Grandma Lake got unsteadily to her feet and said, ‘Well, that’s them at last. I’m off to bed.’ Graham began to pack up the Monopoly board. Jennifer presumed she had lost.

  A front door key sounded in the lock.

  ‘—always busy, no matter what time of the day or night,’ said Mum from the hallway.

  ‘They should never have put a roundabout there in the first place,’ said Dad.

  ‘Oh, you still up, Mum?’ said Mum to Grandma Lake, who was in the hallway.

  ‘I’m off to bed, it’s past my bedtime. You need your sleep at my age,’ said Grandma Lake accusingly as she commenced her ascent of the stairs.

  ‘Goodnight then,’ called Dad, a little ironically.

  Mum and Dad came into the lounge and Jennifer jumped to her feet. Dad stopped in the doorway, unzipping his jacket. Mum stepped around him, placing her handbag on the sofa, pulling off her coat. The room suddenly smelled of
damp autumn air and alcohol and cigarettes.

  They both stared at her wordlessly.

  This was the moment they were going to notice Charlotte’s black sweatshirt and jeans.

  ‘I won at Monopoly,’ said Graham, pre-empting a question he clearly assumed Mum and Dad were poised to ask. ‘I had everything but Whitechapel and Old Kent Road and Angel and the Waterworks.’

  ‘Doug still owes us for that last round, you know,’ said Dad, turning to Mum and pulling his wallet out of his coat pocket. ‘And I bought him a double, too.’

  ‘Not The Magnificent Seven again!’ groaned Mum, and it became obvious no one was going to notice the black sweatshirt and jeans. No one was going to notice anything.

  ‘No, Adrian,’ she had said. ‘I don’t think Charlotte would go out with you, actually.’ And then she had said: ‘Because she’s already going out with Zoe Findlay, actually!’

  And everyone had stared. Not at Adrian. At her. She’d spun around and run out and no one had come after her and no one had retrieved her handbag from the pile on the floor so that she had had to come back later and get it herself. And the next week there had been graffiti on the wall of the girls’ toilets.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE TOP-FLOOR LANDING of number 86 Randolph Gardens, SW4, was lit by the feeble glow of a single twenty-five-watt light bulb and by the time Jennifer had run up four flights of stairs and negotiated the double-key deadlock in the semi-darkness, dumped her briefcase, coat and keys and reached for the telephone, whoever was calling her had finished leaving their message and hung up and the answering machine was flashing self-importantly.

  ‘Shit!’ said Jennifer.

  She closed the front door, cutting off the feeble light from the landing and plunging her hallway into darkness. Distant hip hop flooded up from the ground-floor.

  Her flat was the converted upper floor of a mid-Victorian terrace in Clapham. An attic, perhaps a servant’s quarters in some other era, it was now the abode of a never-ending stream of unmarried city workers. In that earlier era cattle had still grazed on the nearby common and marshes still bordered some parts of Clapham village. A century and a half later Randolph Gardens was situated in the centre of a triangle formed by Clapham Junction, Wandsworth Road and Queenstown Road station. In summer the rattle of two thousand trains travelling daily to and from Waterloo and Victoria carried over the air. But in January, four flights up, the sounds were muffled: traffic on the main road, a single police siren, a distant shop alarm, hip hop.