Everything but the Truth

by Gillian McAllister

  Should I be asking this sort of thing? I could no longer remember what it was like to be in a normal relationship. Was this an interrogation or was it acceptable? I held my breath, waiting for this miniature mystery to be solved. Waiting to see what it led to. If the birds took flight or stayed.

  At that moment my phone rang. It was Dad. He always called me, had not quite entered the twenty-first century of sending updates by text message. I answered because I had to.

  ‘We’re on Argyle soil,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said woodenly.

  ‘Do we need directions from here? The roads are so windy,’ Dad said.

  ‘Call if you need me.’

  ‘I’ve got Kate, too.’

  ‘I know.’ I started making wrapping-it-up gestures, though he couldn’t see me.

  ‘Oh, and we didn’t know whether to bring wine or what. I mean they’re bloody whisky connoisseurs, aren’t they? But then if we brought whisky that wasn’t theirs –’

  ‘See you soon,’ I said, jabbing the red button on my phone and turning back to Jack.

  I was still holding the letter but, sadly, he capitalized on – or allowed himself to be distracted by – the interruption, and turned away from me.

  ‘Did he say they’re nearly here?’ Jack said. ‘I could hear him booming.’ He darted a quick smile at me.

  I looked at the phone, as if it might hold answers for me, and then up at him. He was looking at me expectantly. His eyes were friendly, not guarded. Safe and warm.

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t know where Mum and Dad are,’ he said. ‘You should probably put something else on, though.’ He turned to me. He indicated the dressing gown I was wearing, palm up, his index finger outstretched. There was something intimate about it. Something proprietary. And then he turned away from me and opened the dishwasher and began loading it, even though only a plate and a knife lay on the counter. The dogs came running, as they always did when anybody made noises with crockery, and Jack addressed them, saying, ‘Lads, lads, lads. You’re ten hours from dinner time. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.’ He looked up at me and grinned self-consciously. ‘Aren’t they greedy?’ he said.

  Wally kicked then, one of his earliest kicks. Not the first, but nearly. It was less a kick and more like somebody was stroking my insides with a feather, but it was nice nonetheless. Only I ignored it, at first, and later recognized it as a source of inner knowledge, as though Wally were saying: no, you’re right, I think that’s strange, too.

  ‘I don’t really think we’ve finished,’ I said, pushing the letter towards him, like he was a difficult patient evading treatment.

  He glanced quickly at it and took it off me. He peeled the Sellotape back – his fingers stilled over it, momentarily, and I thought he knew – and pulled the letter out. He crossed one leg over the other as he stood at the counter; a pose so casual I wondered if he thought we were having a completely different conversation to the one we were actually having. He sighed, his eyes looking down at the tiled kitchen floor. But it was his hand I was looking at. It was moving. The tips of his fingers fluttering, like they did when he was thinking quickly.

  ‘I used two surnames for my writing, for ages,’ he said eventually, but the pause that had come before it had gone on and on. ‘Douglas for the news and politics reporting and Ross for the travel. So I could happily get pigeonholed with each name. But I gave up the politics. Prefer the travel. It’s just old – marketing.’ He held it up between his index and third finger. His words were casual but his tone wasn’t. Could I ask about Matt Douglas? He looked at me as he scrunched up the letter, then lifted the lid of the kitchen recycling bin and pushed it inside.

  He flicked the kettle on and it roared to life. The dogs jumped, then left the room.

  ‘Decaf coffee, then? Can’t find the herbal stuff.’ He waved a mug at me.

  I nodded because I didn’t know what else to do. My brain was whirring, landing on different facts like a fly, then taking off again. ‘Why Douglas?’ I said.

  ‘Mother’s maiden name. Oh no, now you can answer all my security questions,’ he said. He didn’t do anything I thought he might do: look at me quickly or nervously. Address the Douglas issue. Tell me to mind my own business. Maybe I was wrong, I remember thinking. Maybe I was totally mad, down a dead-end cul-de-sac of my own imagination.

  ‘But Douglas’s … Matt Douglas,’ I said. I couldn’t resist.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ he said easily. ‘Matt Douglas had the assault. The big punch-up.’ He turned to me and smiled.

  It was a friendly smile, sinister only because of its context. If it had been anybody else, I would have said it was a threat, that smile.

  He provided explanations for everything. The email was about Matt. They were both called Douglas.

  I stared at him, watching for any sign he was lying. My curiosity had turned to suspicion, like a clay pot slowly hardening.

  I couldn’t press it. They would ruin things, my accusations. They always did. I remembered the look Ben had thrown me, after the final accusation when he came home late. ‘I won’t do this any more,’ he had said. Not angry. Not upset. Just sad.

  Accusations did things to healthy relationships. Like a pickaxe to an ice block.

  I looked at Jack’s body language. It was open. Trusting. Happy. A normal Saturday morning during which I was just getting to know my boyfriend and his writing aliases. Surely?

  Jack poured the coffee. He asked me to get the milk and I did so and handed it to him, all the while thinking: what is your name?

  ‘Where exactly are they?’ he said. He looked at the place where his watch would be, even though his arm was bare, still damp and glistening from his shower.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, about as capable of conducting a meeting between our parents as I was of flying a plane or performing in Swan Lake.

  ‘Douglas is the most common surname in Scotland. And Ross is the second,’ Jack said with another smile. ‘I’m common.’ He nudged me then, referencing an in-joke which already felt ancient.

  ‘Working class, you,’ I said automatically.

  I made my excuses after that. I left my coffee, growing cold on the counter.

  18

  I had less than five minutes. And, depending on what I found, I had to call it off. Tell my father to turn the car around.

  My phone was discarded on the bed. I went upstairs to get it and took it into the living room with me, sitting by the window so I could look out on to the drive. I opened my phone’s cover like it was a treasure chest, intent on asking Google instead of Jack.

  He was still faffing in the kitchen. I should have excused myself. Gone home. But I couldn’t, not without alarming him, embarrassing myself, annoying everyone. And I couldn’t risk that. Not if it was for nothing. I’d look it all up right now, in those five minutes, and then I’d know.

  I was nearly there. The loose thread was dangling, lengthening; it just needed to be pulled. I typed Jack Douglas into Google.

  ‘You left your coffee, madam. The finest decaf for the finest pregnant lady,’ Jack said. He brought it to me and thankfully disappeared again.

  I considered telling him I was looking for things to do in Oban, but stopped myself. Good liars didn’t over-explain.

  I looked down at the screen again as he walked back into the kitchen.

  I typed: ‘Jack Douglas Atrocity’.

  No results.

  I removed the quotes and got a million results. The most common surname. Douglas. I had no hope of finding out who this man was; what he had done.

  I began working my way through them, regardless. I kept looking at the door in case Jack emerged.

  Jack Douglas (record producer) – Wikipedia, the free …

  Jack Douglas | LinkedIn

  Jack Douglas – Microphone Lab

  I sighed in frustration, clicking the last link only, which took me to a website about Jack Douglas the record producer, holding a pair of microph
ones up with a smile.

  ‘How near are they?’ Jack said, emerging again. He looked at me, still in his dressing gown. ‘Stay in that, if you like,’ he said. His eyes lingered over my phone in my hands, slightly closer to my chest than I would usually hold it, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Will you call Dad?’ I said. And then the lie escaped; I was unable to stop it. ‘I’m doing emergency research on Oban.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he said with a grin. ‘Not satisfied with visiting Londis and the only Thai restaurant?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He got his phone out, dialled a number, and wandered back out of the living room.

  ‘It’s Jack,’ he said, and I heard my dad boom back.

  I looked at my search again and typed ‘Douglas’s Atrocity Rears Its Head Again’ into the search box.

  No results found.

  This time, Google suggested something, though it wasn’t helpful.

  Did you mean Religion Rears Its Ugly Head Again?

  I looked at the search, frowning. Then searched for Jack Douglas’s Atrocity.

  One result. I opened the Herald Scotland article eagerly. A sign-in prompt popped up and I tried to read around it.

  9 JANUARY 2001

  THE JURY found … 41-year-old Jack Douglas’s atrocity, said Judge Benson, was …

  Forty-one? The article was from 2001, which would make Mr Douglas now in his mid-fifties.

  I rolled my eyes. What did I expect to find, anyway? A damning crime? So he used his mother’s maiden name sometimes: so what? So his friend assaulted someone: so bloody what? Douglas was the most common name in Scotland; Jack said it himself.

  Jack appeared in the doorway again. ‘What colour should the skin under your eyelids be?’ he said to me. He looked worried.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What colour should it be if you pull down your lids?’

  ‘Erm, pink,’ I said, still looking down at my phone. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Very close. I’ve had loads of iron lately and mine’s white.’

  ‘White? Really?’ I said.

  Jack’s body physically moved backwards, the way it always did when he panicked, rearing up like a stallion.

  ‘Yes. Why? What does that mean?’

  It was as though there were two Jacks: the Jack in my mind and the gentle, vulnerable, anxious, funny man in front of me.

  ‘Are you telling me you think you have no iron in your body? When you feel perfectly healthy?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are they white? Or a pale pink?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘White: yes or no.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re fine, then.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ Jack didn’t move, though. ‘Thank you,’ he said, looking at me. ‘You’re totes the best.’

  I would usually have smiled. He was often using language like this. New slang. But this time I ignored him.

  He went back upstairs. The dogs followed him. They went everywhere with him.

  Jack called down: your dad will be five minutes. My hands were clammy and cold, and my stomach was churning.

  I typed the search query again, this time putting the ‘Jack Douglas’ and the ‘atrocity’ in separate quotation marks. I added an asterisk. It was a way to tell Google that you weren’t sure of one of the words. I’d learnt it when googling rare conditions I couldn’t spell at work, as a clueless junior doctor.

  Did you mean John Douglas?

  I stared at the words on the screen. John? John? Of course. John and Jack were often the same name, after all. Especially in Scotland.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘They’re here,’ Jack called, then thumped down the stairs and opened it with a hearty hello.

  The dogs padded after him, and I was dimly aware of a commotion: the dogs running out the front, Dad expressing mild surprise.

  ‘Rach, you’re not even dressed,’ Kate said, walking into the living room.

  I looked up at her. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said with a faint smile. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘You don’t look pregnant. You look unemployed,’ she said. ‘This place is insane. Like a National Trust property. Get dressed, anyway. I’m doing you a favour being here. Dad-sitting.’

  Usually I would have nodded, and thanked her, but I didn’t. Instead, I angled the phone away from her and clicked on Google’s suggestion.

  I watched the searches populate. John Douglas. Bingo.

  19

  ‘Seriously, why aren’t you dressed?’ Kate said. ‘Where are Jack’s parents?’

  ‘At the shop. You’re early.’

  ‘Yeah – Dad told you he left later than he did. He was adjusting it. He thought it would take ages. You need to get dressed. He’s been so excited all the way up.’

  ‘Hang on. I’m just …’ I said. I was scrolling frantically through Google’s pages.

  I clicked a link which had the words ‘John Douglas’ and ‘crime’ in it. Google must have substituted the word ‘atrocity’ for similar words, too. It was a tabloid. It was slowly loading.

  ITEM 5

  HTTP 404: File not found.

  The page cannot be found.

  The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed or is temporarily unavailable.

  Please try the following:

  If you typed the page address into the Address Bar, make sure that it is spelt correctly …

  I wordlessly stood up and walked upstairs, sitting back down on the end of Jack’s bed, my iPhone in my lap.

  Next, I googled John Douglas Scotland.

  The results were different. Articles about charity events. Articles written by John about politics – acerbic, intelligent commentary about quantitative easing, the SNP, Labour, the Tories. Court reports, from outside Oban Court. More charity events. It was him. I recognized his turn of phrase. I knew it.

  There was a photograph of Jack, captioned up-and-coming writer J. Douglas. It was grainy and blurred, but it was definitely him. He was holding – what was it? A writer’s prize. For J. Douglas. My Jack.

  I raced through the results. At the bottom of the fifth page there was an article about ‘Douglas’s court appearance’. Article not found, it said. The same for the next one.

  I clicked on to page six. Another article was nestled in amongst the charitable work and the politics, right at the bottom. I clicked it thirstily, but received yet another 404 error. There were four more, in total, on the first ten pages of Google. I’d pillaged it, like a burglar ransacking a room. And wasn’t I doing just that, in a virtual kind of way?

  None of them loaded. All 404 errors. I scrutinized the snippets, anyway.

  ITEM 6

  The Scottish Star – News on Twitter – Douglas: Friend or Foe?

  @ScottishStarNews: John Douglas was in his Oban home that Decemb …

  The Disaster in Oban – what really happened? – cached Guardian article on Stumble Upon

  It began as a normal night for Mr Douglas, one that ended in the witness stand of a …

  John Douglas: Profile of a Man Who …

  Guest blog: John Douglas is a university-educated political correspondent and legal reporter. A lefty. But he’s also, now …

  Enemy in the Mist – news archives

  John Douglas committed a crime nobody thinks they ever will. But how …

  Blogger’s commentary on Douglas Day 2: What is self-defence?

  John Douglas has invoked the defence of reasonable force in the Glasgow High Justiciary Court …

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jack said. ‘You look stressed.’ He’d appeared from nowhere. ‘You’re not dressed,’ he added.

  I looked at him. Who was this man?

  ‘Rach?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I locked my phone. I had to see an article. There were too many Douglases. What if I was wrong? What if there was some other John Douglas? I didn’t know it was him. I’d not seen the articles or a damning photog
raph of him in the dock. It could be a horrible coincidence, his second name; his common name.

  ‘Ready?’ he said.

  I got dressed woodenly, like a mannequin in a shop, feeding my arms into the sleeves of my cardigan without really thinking.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Dad called up the stairs.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to do. I suppose I could have stalled more, continued searching, but I didn’t. I was feeble. I just kept the peace.

  His parents arrived as I was scraping my hair back into a ponytail. I heard everyone introduce themselves to each other.

  I arrived at the bottom of the stairs, and Jack was staring up at me, a frown across his features. It disappeared as soon as my eyes met his.

  ‘Finally, you’re being the late one,’ Jack said. ‘Is this a secret Rachel-thing?’ His eyes crinkled at the corners as he looked at me.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I’d have to speak to him, to ask him. But there was something else, underneath that; something I’m ashamed to admit. That I wanted to spend time with him, to pretend I hadn’t just discovered something. To be in love a little while longer. That’s why I stayed, I suppose. Because I loved him; the way he stood at the bottom of the stairs in his scruffy Converse trainers. That his hands were wet, no doubt having just been washed to get rid of the shoe germs.

  ‘When you’re torn between two choices,’ Kate’s tennis coach once said to her, ‘don’t ever try to do something in the middle of both of them. Commit to one of them.’

  But I didn’t do that. I could have ignored it or I could have confronted him, but instead I met myself in the middle. I’d stay, and get him alone, and then mention it, and hope he told me. And then I’d decide what next after that.

  I practised confronting him in my head. I’d be effortlessly insouciant. I would skirt around the details of how the atrocious email had loomed in my mind: so large that I had committed its entire headline to memory. So large that I was merely waiting to see the word Douglas again sitting innocently on his parents’ hallway floor. The details blurred in my mind like the rain smudging the Oban windows as I played out the ideal, movie version of our conversation. He’d tell me everything. And it would be nothing. Nothing at all. Only, I couldn’t imagine how.