Little Liar

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Nick nodded and followed Bob to the lifts. It felt as if he was underwater. ‘I’ll let you go,’ he said, putting on his jacket. ‘Go on ahead if you’re in a rush.’

  He checked his watch. It was nearly four.

  His mother would be picking up the children and Marina would get there soon after. Unless he hurried it would be prime time: homework; the assault of the day’s stories; playground injustices; teacher’s praise; skinned knees. In between it would be what was for dinner and who was making it. Then there would be no garlic or no peppers and someone would need to run out. He would arrive in the midst of this rapid current – food, bath time, pyjamas, stories, sleep.

  And then it would be too late. He and Marina would both be exhausted and incapable of the emotional energy that it took to communicate as two loving adults.

  He needed time with her to explain himself. He hoped that he could make her understand. Impatient, he pressed the button for the lift and then pressed it again, feeling a strange, controlled desperation, as if he was screaming on the inside.

  11

  Marina

  When Marina got back to the house, it was empty. She had walked fast from the station at Farnham and her skin was moist with sweat. She stood for a moment, rubbing her temple, trying to remember what had happened. She had experienced it all so emotionally, so that it had been a blur – the office revelation, the fight in the street.

  She looked at her watch. Betty would have collected the children already. She picked up the phone and began to dial her parents-in-law’s number to tell them she was home early and would be right over, but then hung up, letting some of her weight lean on the receiver. She couldn’t go right now. She needed time.

  Upstairs, she ran a bath and then slipped under the surface, letting her head fall back to soak her hair. Water flooded her ears. Under the surface she heard the echo of the tap dripping. She raised her shoulders out of the water and wet her face, then took a deep breath in and out.

  There were no bubbles, just salt, and her naked body wavered under the surface of the clear water.

  Real rape.

  Brutal rape.

  It sickened her, but somehow it had not shocked her.

  She knew he looked at pornography. There had been times in their marriage past – pregnancy, the pain of stitches – when she hadn’t wanted him inside her. She knew he had used it then, but she had not known that he was still using it, and watching it on the iPad that they had bought only eight months ago for the children.

  She hadn’t wanted to know what he was watching; had not sought it out.

  Steam and heat opened her pores and she swallowed, her throat clotting as she processed what she had heard today, what she knew about him and what she had sensed.

  She sunk down deeper, lifting one leg to rest her foot near the tap. She felt suspended by the water, floating, open.

  It had been in the flat in Balham, the first they had shared together. She remembered the bedroom almost exactly, the solid pine bed and the mismatched bedside tables, one in oak and one in mahogany; their old digital alarm clock with the faulty display so that the numbers five and eight were hard to distinguish. The worn, blood-red carpet and the cheap woven rug. A clothes rail instead of a wardrobe. An old-fashioned dressing table with a triptych mirror.

  They had been together for two years.

  The fingers of his palm spread between her shoulder blades. The gentle knock of the pine bed against the wall. Suddenly he reached for her hand, but as she was curling her fingers to receive his, he pulled her wrist back so that she pitched face down. At first it felt awkward and then uncomfortable. His weight was still on her, hand on her spine.

  ‘Stop, let me up,’ she had said, her voice muffled by the mattress.

  He kept going. The faint pant of his breath.

  ‘Stop,’ she said, louder, trying to press up with her arms, but finding herself pinned.

  She managed to get her left foot up against his body and kicked. She had strong legs. Not only did she succeed in getting him off her, but she pushed him right off the bed. He fell against the dressing table and then sat watching her, chest rising and falling. One leaf of the triptych mirror folded closed in the impact.

  Marina sat on her heels. ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Sorry. Just got carried away. Sorry.’

  He got back on the bed, smoothed her hair and kissed her shoulder, and then they continued.

  Her wet toe touched the hot tap; it burned and she swiftly withdrew her foot back into the water that was already starting to cool. She sat up and washed her face and hair, then got out and roughly towelled herself dry. In their bedroom she was flushed and dizzy and sat down on the bed for a moment.

  She had not lingered on it at the time, all those years ago, but somehow she had sensed that he had been acting out something violent that turned him on. There had been other times when he had held her throat when they were making love and she had told him she didn’t like it; and once or maybe twice, when he was behind her and she couldn’t see his eyes, it felt as if he had forgotten who she was.

  The sound of the front door closing made her sit up. From downstairs, Nick called for her but she didn’t reply. His feet on the stairs. She stayed where she was on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a towel, waiting for him to find her. She didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t have the words for it, in Spanish or in English, but it frightened her.

  ‘There you are!’

  His face was blanched with worry. He was holding a rolled-up newspaper that he tossed onto the bed, before falling to his knees and placing his hands on her hips.

  ‘I am a malparido, okay? I’m not proud of any of that.’

  She met his eyes, that tawny tiger’s-eye glow. Despite everything, love for him flooded her. ‘I can’t talk about it. Not right now.’

  ‘It sounded worse than it is, I promise. You just … click and get led places.’

  She looked away from him and then stood up, brushing his hands away from her. It wasn’t just what had been said in Faldane’s office. She knew him deeply. Surely he knew that he couldn’t hide anything from her. ‘I need to go and get the kids from your mum’s.’

  She turned from him, but she could see his face in the mirror, strained.

  ‘Marina, please? I’m sorry. I’m in real trouble here and I don’t want to fight with you, too. I spoke to Bob after you left and he said I could get fourteen years.’

  She turned to face him. He was shaking.

  ‘And then this! Melissa texted me to say I was in the paper.’ He handed the newspaper to her, opening it to the correct page. The photograph of Nick shown was a promotional still from Scuttlers.

  Marina took the paper from him and read it quickly.

  ACTOR BAILED AFTER SEXUAL ASSAULT ON TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL AT CROYDON ACADEMY.

  A twelve-year-old year eight pupil has been violently sexually assaulted at her school in Croydon.

  Actor and drama teacher Nicholas Dean, who had a recurring role on the award-winning BBC drama series, Scuttlers, was arrested and questioned over the alleged assault before being released on police bail.

  Dean runs a drama and media skills company called ACTUp and regularly tours schools delivering drama workshops. The actor’s contract with the school in Croydon has now been terminated.

  Dean’s agent, Harriet Moore, of Artists United Agency, refused to comment. The victim cannot be named for legal reasons. The investigation continues.

  Marina tossed the newspaper onto the bed. She was shaking, overwhelmed. She wanted to talk to him, but was afraid of the complex mix of emotions inside her and he wasn’t her priority. She had children to look after.

  ‘I need to get the kids from your mum’s.’

  She dropped her towel, turned her back to him and began to get dressed.

  12

  Angela

  Angela sat in her father’s car watching her parents talking on the doorstep. She was glad that she could only see their
mouths opening and closing, her mother frowning and her father waving his hands in response. She didn’t need to hear. They were talking about her.

  As she waited, Angela dug into her backpack and found an opened packet of M&Ms and put one sweet after another into her mouth, watching avidly through the side window.

  She took her phone out of her pocket. Adam had sent her a SnapChat picture of his stomach and hips, a slope of muscle and then hair:

  Thinking uv u x

  Angela drew the phone closer to look at his strange belly button. They had only fooled around outside. She had only seen him naked in parts, through the pictures he sent her, an electronic mosaic of his body.

  There was another message from Jasmine and Angela shivered as she thumbed it to read:

  Dean fingered u? Like fuck. Ur a liar and everyone knows it.

  Angela put her phone in her pocket. Her father was making chopping motions with his hands to emphasise some point. It was like being at the movies, only this movie was her life.

  She had not said a word to her father about Mr Dean, but her mother had told him. Her dad was a policeman and now the police were involved. Angela was worried. She didn’t want to talk about it to him, but he was sure to say something when they were alone.

  ‘What did he say?’ Angela had asked her mother when she admitted she had told her father everything.

  ‘He was hurt and angry,’ Donna had replied, tapping a cigarette on the back of the packet to loosen the tobacco.

  Angela had said nothing, keeping her face very still, but her mother said, ‘Don’t be stupid, he’s not angry at you. He’s angry at that bastard of a teacher.’

  Angela wondered how her mother had read her thoughts. She wondered where they had leaked, her mouth or her eyes.

  ‘He’s not a teacher. He’s an actor,’ Angela replied.

  ‘Whatever he is,’ her mother lit her cigarette and her cheeks hollowed, ‘he needs bloody castrating.’

  Angela had had to Google castrate. Sometimes her mother told her that she was violent and would end up in prison. Clearly, Donna was one to talk.

  ‘That’s us, Angel, we can hit the road.’ Her father slammed his door shut and sighed as he put two hands on the steering wheel.

  He called her Angel, which was nearly her name. Her father had given her the name Angela because he said she had looked like an angel right from the start, yet it had never felt right for her. Sometimes her mum called her Ange and that was okay because it felt grownup, but she hated Angela – all three syllables extended the way her mother said them – and Angel the most. She wasn’t an angel. She was a bad person.

  Stephen turned the key in the ignition and the radio came on gently in the background. They pulled out onto Shirley Road and then turned right onto Addiscombe Road. ‘What do you want for tea? Do you wanna just get pizza? I could pick it up on the way.’

  Angela heard strain in her father’s voice. Usually on the drive to his they would chat about everything – music or some YouTube video she’d posted. Sometimes they even talked about school and her mum. She could talk to her dad about everything. Today he sounded funny. It was the voice he used when he was lying to her mum, or lying in general.

  Stephen leaned over and turned the radio up a little, as if suggesting they didn’t talk. Trees lined Addiscombe and Angela noticed how they were together in the distance, but grew apart as the car drew closer. It felt like her life, how she could never get to the point where she wanted to be. She decided that her father was uncomfortable because of what he had heard about Mr Dean.

  ‘All right, pizza then.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. You’ve had a tough time. Don’t want to force my cooking down you as well.’

  Angela turned to him, but he was watching the road, taking the turn-off for South Croydon. He was chewing his lip and staring at the road ahead. She wondered if he was thinking about castrating Mr Dean.

  Just after five, they pulled up outside her father’s apartment. It was the kind of place that looked nicer from the outside. The exterior was swanky – clean and new with tan bricks and white plastic windows, but inside it was dark and claustrophobic. Angela had the pizza on her lap and the box warmed her thighs. She wanted to just stay in the car by herself and eat the pizza, but that wasn’t an option.

  Angela walked ahead of her father up the stairs to the front door then stopped, looking up at the CCTV camera he had installed to monitor people who came near the apartment. The scrutinising eye of the camera viewed her with detachment. She stood aside so that he could open the door and disable the burglar alarm. A rapid high-pitched beeping sounded as Angela lifted the lid of the pizza and smelled the cheese and salty pepperoni. The throbbing noise stopped and she stepped inside the flat.

  Probably because he was a police officer, her dad liked a lot of security at home. You can never be too careful. There was still a burglar alarm at the other house, but Donna had disabled it as soon as her father moved out. That’s the last thing you need when you’ve got a headache, and what’ve we got worth stealing anyway?

  Better safe than sorry, her father had always said.

  Inside, his flat was warm, almost hot because he left the heating on all the time. Angela liked it that way. Her mum was stingy with the heating. Since her father had left home the temperature had literally dropped – when her dad left he had taken the warmth with him.

  Angela put the pizza on the counter in the tiny kitchen and went to her room to unpack, while her father opened a cupboard in the hall and reviewed the CCTV footage from the day. He did it every time he came home, fast rewinding through images of neighbours carrying shopping, and the postman smoking at the bottom of the stairs. He said there were too many people up to no good.

  Her father had rented this flat since he left the family home. All the other rooms in the flat looked the same as they had when he moved in, but Angela’s room was better. He had bought her a TV and a bedspread with love hearts on it, which Angela thought was too young for her.

  The room had just one tiny window and the walls were a pale apple green. There were three mirrors – one on the back of the door, one above the dresser and another full-length mirror that tilted in the corner. This meant that if Angela sat at a certain point on the bed, she could see herself from all angles.

  Under normal circumstances, she didn’t like looking at her reflection. She always looked away, particularly if she saw herself in profile or if she caught a view of herself from behind. The mirrors in her room in her dad’s flat felt judgemental. They were like the eyes of girls at school who didn’t like her, people like pretty, dark-eyed Jasmine.

  Her room at home was full of her past: the pine furniture that she had written her name on with a school compass; old, worn stuffed toys that she had kept since she was little; the forget-me-not wallpaper she had chosen herself covered with all of her drawings and paintings; the photograph in a heart-shaped frame of her family five years ago when Angela was seven. In the picture she was grinning even though her two front teeth had just fallen out.

  Like a hotel room, her bedroom at her father’s was forever new. She could never quite make her mark on it. She had tried to hang a couple of sketches: portraits of pop stars and drawings of sweet peppers and a sheep’s skull that she had done in art class – but the Blu-Tack wouldn’t stick properly to the shiny walls.

  Angela opened her bag and put her pyjamas underneath her pillow. She had brought a book with her: a hardback book of European oil paintings that her mother had given her. Angela liked looking at the pictures but hadn’t read a word. Most of the paintings were of women without their clothes on and they were all looking out of the picture, as if they knew they were being viewed. Angela put the book on her bedside table and then emptied the rest of her backpack onto the bed. She noticed immediately that her tablet was missing. She had thought her bag felt too light when she left her mum’s, but with everything else going on she had not double-checked. She realised she had probably left it in h
er bedroom at home.

  She sighed, looking at the objects that had spilled onto the bedspread: her toothbrush and clothes and a Mars bar in case she got hungry in the night. Nestled against a sweater was her calligraphy pen. It was long and old-looking with a sharp gold nib. She held it in her hand as if she were about to write, then pressed the nib against the skin of her arm. Gently, so that it only scratched, she wrote ND. He had given the pen to her: Mr Dean. It wasn’t just any old pen. It had been a prop on the set of his TV series, Scuttlers, and he’d given it to her after he saw the lettering she had done on a poster he’d asked her group to create.

  It’s one of a kind, just like you, he had said to her. Don’t tell anyone I gave it to you or they’ll be jealous.

  Angela tucked the pen in the front pocket of her bag.

  ‘Dad?’ she called.

  There was no answer. She opened the cupboard in the hall but did not find him there. The monitor showed an image split into four quarters reflecting different views of the front door. There was a safe in there too, which looked so heavy she didn’t know how he had managed to get it in there. Angela sighed and looked for him in the lounge but he was not there either; nor was he in the kitchen, which was now filled with the sweet smell of warm pizza dough. She went towards his bedroom and the door was ajar.

  ‘Dad?’

  She nudged the door open, but the room was empty: the tight folds of the bed linen, all the surfaces clear – except for lamps and a clock. In the corner of the room was his Versa Climber pointed towards the window. He said the police had made him get fit and he wanted to stay that way. She had watched him use it several times: arms slick with sweat, T-shirt darkening down his spine, arms and legs pumping as if he were running fast although he was standing still, looking out onto Croydon. He had once described Donna as sedentary. Angela had had to look that up. It meant ‘sitting down a lot’ and, to be fair, her mum did.

  On the chest of drawers there was a photograph of Angela when she was a baby, beside a picture of her grandmother, her dad’s mum, whom Angela had never met because she had died before she was born. Her grandmother’s eyes were like her father’s – round and close together. Donna had told Angela that her grandmother had been an old bitch who was mean to her father, so Angela wasn’t sure why the picture was in his bedroom. She presumed that Donna had been holding grudges and exaggerating.