The door flew open and a small bristly dog dashed out and started to sniff at her trainers. She was glad it wasn’t a big dog. Angela looked up. It was Mr Dean. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and he looked tired and then cross. He looked more normal than she remembered, but she hadn’t seen him in a while and had been looking at his internet photos. He had a dishtowel in his hands. His face fell when he recognised her.
‘Hi,’ she said, swallowing.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I dunno. I wanted to see you.’
‘Angela. Are you kidding? What the f— You could get me into real trouble. You have to get out of here. How did you get here?’
‘I came on the train. It was all right. I had to change at Clapham Junction was all.’
‘How did you find me?’
Angela shrugged. She felt shy.
‘Well you need to go home. Jesus Christ, what do you think you’re doing?’
‘I wanted to see you.’
Mr Dean put his face in his hands. He stood like that for a few seconds and Angela wondered if he was crying, but then he took his hands away and he wasn’t crying at all, but his face was red.
‘You can’t just come and see me.’ He stepped outside and looked up and down the street.
‘You’re on your own?’
She nodded.
‘I can call you a taxi to take you back home.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘You can’t. Don’t you understand that what you’re doing right now means I’m breaking the law? It’s illegal for me to be near you, because of what you said about me.’
‘I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen to you.’
Suddenly there was the sound of feet on floorboards and a little girl stood in the hallway. ‘Daddy?’
Nick turned and shouted at her. ‘Get back in there. Luca?’ He picked up the little girl and carried her into the living room. Angela heard Nick talking to his son. ‘Look after your sister and stay in here.’
Angela stepped into the hallway.
Nick shut the living-room door. There was the sound of crying from inside, perhaps because he had raised his voice. Angela was disappointed in him.
He was frowning, but barely looked at her. He picked up the phone in the hall and began to dial, but made a mistake or forgot the number and hung up again and began to redial.
‘I don’t have enough cash in the house for the taxi.’ His neck was red. ‘Can you get the train back again? Can you do that?’
‘I think so. I mean, I got here, so … yeah.’
He turned to her, hands on hips and face angry, desperate. It reminded her of his face in the YouTube video where his character was about to be tortured. He opened his wallet and flicked through it, counting notes. Angela felt her arms heavy at her sides, panicked that he was going to just give her a tenner and push her out of the door.
‘What do you want?’ He was still flicking through his wallet, counting money.
‘I wanted to see you is all. I wanted to tell you that I miss you being at our school.’
His chest was heaving, as if he had stopped running suddenly.
‘I drew a portrait of you. I didn’t bring it with me.’ She wouldn’t say anything about the baby. She wondered if he knew.
He swallowed and she watched the Adam’s apple on his neck bob up and down. The little girl was still crying inside the living room. The noise was distracting and made Angela feel embarrassed. In her imagination, Nick would have invited her in. She might have played with his kids while he got her a Coke.
‘Listen, you really need to leave. I’m serious.’
Angela looked at the carpet. It was dark red. It made her think about the blood that had come after she had sex for the first time. Her mum had thought it was her period, but it hadn’t come yet. It wasn’t time. She blinked because she felt her eyes burning. She didn’t want to cry, but she felt sad that he was asking her to go.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quietly.
The tears from the living room had stopped and now Angela heard the clock ticking in the hall. She kept staring at her trainers against the red carpet. She hated herself suddenly, fully, from the inside out. She was stupid and ugly and no one would ever love her. She couldn’t remember why she had come all this way, but she wanted Mr Dean to put his arm around her again. She wanted him to touch her. Maybe if he touched her, she would feel as if she were real.
‘Angela, stop doing that …’
She looked down. She hadn’t been aware of doing anything but now saw that she had been scratching her left wrist with her long nails. She hadn’t felt a thing but she had drawn blood. She looked at her wrist, red like the carpet.
The living-room door opened and a little boy appeared. He was dark like the little girl but seemed very like Mr Dean – the same mouth.
‘Dad, what is it?’
Nick pointed at the little boy, ‘Stay in there, like I told you.’
The little boy hesitated, staring at Angela with enormous brown eyes, then turned back into the living room and closed the door.
‘I didn’t think you’d be like this.’
‘Like what?’ he said, throwing the dishtowel over the banister.
‘I thought you’d be a nice dad, not shouting.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘Why did you have to come here?’
‘I missed you.’ She felt a lump in her throat.
His face looked hurt and angry, hands on his hips, his chest still heaving.
‘I still have that thing you gave me.’
‘What thing?’
‘The pen. I didn’t tell. I didn’t tell anyone you gave it to me, but I like it a lot. I used it to draw a picture of you – the outline anyway – before I painted it.’
‘Are you trying to get me in trouble?’ he snarled. ‘Is this another deliberate ploy?’
She felt afraid of him for the first time.
‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, Angela … you tell the police that I, that I …’ it hung in the air, unspoken, ‘and then you turn up here. But let me tell you, what you’re doing right now is worse than saying that I … This could really finish me, and I don’t know if you’re naive or if this is all part of the game, but it’s not funny. It’s not funny at all.’
‘I had a fight with my dad. I can’t stay with my mum anymore because I stabbed her, with your pen.’ He was looking at her, unblinking. ‘I stabbed her in the face with your pen and then she didn’t want me to live with her anymore.’
Nick covered his face with one hand. ‘What?’
‘My mum was being horrible to me. I didn’t mean it but I was really angry with her. But she’s okay now.’
Nick sighed.
‘So what … now you’re living with your dad?’
‘Yeah, I’m with my dad but I fell out with him, too. He wants to take me for an abortion but I think my mum should go with me for that. Only she hates me.’ Angela caught her breath. She had mentioned the baby. She hoped he knew.
He said something under his breath, which she thought was a swear word, and walked away from her, towards the kitchen. Angela waited for him to return, looking at the family photographs that were set in white frames and placed on the wall by the stairs. There were shoes by the door in different sizes.
Mr Dean came back with a cotton pad soaked in disinfectant and a large plaster.
‘Give me your wrist,’ he said, quickly.
She placed her hand in his. He didn’t look at her, and her wrist stung when he pressed the cotton onto it. She felt his anger in his brisk movements. Her eyes flooded with tears and she bit her lip. She hung her head and tears rolled down her cheek. She was crying because of the warmth of his hand beneath hers.
He saw her tears as he was preparing to stick the plaster and frowned but became more gentle as he pressed the dressing against her wrist.
‘Ever since that first day, I worried about you. I thought you needed someone to listen t
o you, someone to care.’
Angela’s throat closed, and she took small gasps, trying to compose herself, trying hard not to embarrass herself by really crying in front of him. She had liked him too on that first day. He wasn’t like a teacher. He was a like a real person and she liked the way he touched her, squeezing her shoulder when she did something he liked. She tried to talk now, to respond, to tell him that she had felt the same, but it was impossible. She could talk and then feel the shame of bursting into tears, or she could stay quiet and calm. She nodded at him, and sniffed, salt at the back of her throat.
‘That’s all I was ever trying to do,’ he continued. ‘Care for you. Everyone told me you were a nightmare, a problem child, but I thought that you just needed … special attention.’
Choking, Angela nodded.
‘And then when we were doing those posters and I saw how you could draw, I thought that was it. I thought you were into art and so drama really could help you out. I remember going home feeling really committed to finding a way to help you.’
A spasm of breath left Angela and his face darkened.
‘That was all it was,’ he said, his face suddenly bleak. ‘And now you do this. You come here, putting me and my family at risk.’
A sliver of fear sliced through her; she wasn’t sure what he meant.
He went to the kitchen and began to open cupboards and slam them closed. She wondered what he was going to do to her. He opened a biscuit tin and slammed it onto the kitchen surface. Change inside rattled like a snare drum. He stood there, hunched, flushed, counting coins and then dropping them into his pocket. There was no sound from the children in the living room.
Nick walked back towards her and pointed at her with a mean, cruel twist to his face, his eyes no longer brown but black.
‘Stay here.’
He ran upstairs and Angela waited as he had ordered, staring at her feet and then touching the plaster. Her wrist stung.
His feet sounded on the stairs. He was holding something in his hands, a bowl or a cup. He set it down near the phone and it was only then that she realised it was a piggy bank. He opened it and began to pull notes from inside and then force them into his wallet. Angela wondered if the piggy bank belonged to one of the children. If it did, she felt sad for them. She hadn’t thought he would be this way. His hands seemed to shake, raking inside the pig with his fingers.
Not looking at her, he picked up the phone in the hall, listened for a moment and then pressed one of the keys before hanging up. A cold feeling clutched her heart as she wondered if he had just called 999.
Eyes still black and forbidding he held out his hand; it was full of cash. ‘Take this.’ He filled one of her hands with coins and folded the fingers of her other hand over a pile of notes that were crumpled from being inside the pig. ‘I called you a taxi. You’ll need to give the address of your dad, mum or whoever. That should be enough.’
‘Will it be so much?’
‘I think so, yeah.’
‘I could get the train again. I think I can …’
‘I’ve called the taxi. You shouldn’t be anywhere near here. It’s too far to Croydon and you could get lost. It’ll be here any moment. You take the money and go straight home, and tell no one that you saw me or that you were here.’
She liked this. Another secret between them. She nodded slowly, but he was still frowning at her. She stuffed the money into her pockets and the action loosened the dressing on her wrist.
He turned his back on her and opened the door, then stood on the doorstep, looking up and down the street. Light fell through the coloured glass of the door and made patterns on the wall. She watched his back and smiled to herself, remembering. She let her thumb creep into her mouth.
The warmth of Mr Dean’s hand on her shoulder blades. His face close enough that she could smell his clean, minty breath. Well done, Angela, well done.
Jasmine on one side of him and Angela on the other, so that their hands were around his waist while a classmate took a photo. The muscles under his shirt, hard. The weight of his arm on her shoulder. That flutter under her ribcage because she was touching him and he was touching her.
The patterns on the wall disappeared and the hall darkened, a cloud or the sun moving behind the trees. Angela took her thumb out of her mouth, slick with spit, and let her hand fall on her stomach. Another memory blossomed in her mind.
His hand over her face, pressing so hard that it flattened her nose. Feeling his fingers dig into her skin, the sharp pain of them, nails on the sweaty inside of her thigh. Hot breath whispering, don’t tell.
He came back inside but didn’t completely close the door. He seemed agitated.
‘I meant what I said – just you turning up at my house – being on my doorstep talking to me, means I’m breaking the law. If anyone finds out about this, I’ll go straight to jail for a long time.’ He spoke very quietly, leaning towards her. In the close space of the hall, she could smell him. She wanted to see him smile again, all straight white teeth and the sparkle in his eyes, but his face was serious, eyes dark with anger. ‘Do you understand?’
‘I won’t say anything. I won’t say I saw you.’
‘It’s another really terrible position you’ve put me in. Didn’t you realise that? You must have known that.’
‘I just wanted to see you again.’
‘Why? You tell everyone that I’m a—’ he swallowed his words, as if he had meant to swear, ‘monster, and then you want to come round and see me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She was sorry. She didn’t know what she had expected. The fight with her father swirled in her mind again. Why do you want to kill it? Did you have sex with him? The flare of his nostrils and the smell of his sweat. She had wanted away from him. She had wanted to see that face she had drawn in pastel and charcoal – the eyes that in the picture had been bigger than in real life. She had wanted to feel kindness.
She glanced up at him – his straight nose and long eyelashes, his perfect lips, the line of stubble across his cheek. She would have liked to sketch him from this angle, in profile, frowning at the car in the drive. She picked absently at the dressing on her wrist as she listened.
She put a hand over the dome of her abdomen.
‘Do you think I should get an abortion?’
He raised his eyebrows and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t think that’s something I can advise you on.’
‘I think I’ll probably get one. I’m just scared it hurts.’
She glanced up at him and noticed that his face was still red, as if he was ashamed. She just wanted to die. She felt cracked, like an egg, her insides leaking out. She wanted him to touch her like before, to tell her she was great. She had believed it for just a moment, when he said it. But then she had ruined everything, that morning in the hall after she had taken the pills and Donna was at her.
‘Do you want me to tell the police that I was lying? Do you want me to tell them that you didn’t touch me that way?’
‘The damage is done. If you really want to help me, don’t say that you came to my house. Don’t say anything any more.’
‘I won’t say.’ She bit her lip and then turned to him. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘I don’t have any choice.’ He had that face again – the expression of Max from Scuttlers, tied to a chair and waiting for the first blow. He hadn’t been acting properly, Angela realised, he had just been showing what he looked like when he was really afraid. It wasn’t acting; it was telling the truth.
‘I’m telling the truth,’ she said, ‘I promise I won’t tell anyone, ever.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you think I’m lying?’
Mr Dean said nothing, staring out into the drive, anxious for the taxi to appear.
‘Everybody lies, you know,’ she said quietly, looking down at her wrist.
Suddenly there was a sound of tyres on the gravel, and Mr Dean thrust the door open. A grey car was reversing into the drive.
‘It’s here,’ he said, turning and taking her elbow.
Angela took a step towards the door and stopped, then looked up again into his face. ‘Would you do me a favour?’
He raised one eyebrow at her. ‘That depends on the favour.’
‘Will you give me a hug goodbye?’
He hesitated, his face sad and frightened at the same time. Angela put her arms around his waist. He smelled so clean that it brought tears to her eyes. She felt him tense under her touch and then gently push her away.
‘I just wanted a hug.’ She felt glad for the few seconds he had allowed it.
‘You need to go now.’
Angela walked down the drive and got into the back seat of the taxi. She gave her mum’s address to the driver, and then turned around to watch Nick, who was standing on the doorstep, but he went back inside before she had even pulled out of the drive.
She got out of the taxi on the Portland Road, walked up to her mum’s door and tried the handle. It was locked and she didn’t have her key. She didn’t have anything, except her phone and a few quid change from the taxi ride. She rang the doorbell then waited, heart pounding, unsure how her mother would react. She clasped her elbows, still feeling a shiver from Mr Dean’s hug.
The door swung open. Donna didn’t say a word but her face opened with relief to see her and Angela felt glad. There was still a faint mark on her cheekbone where Angela had stabbed her.
‘I had a fight with Dad.’
‘Really? What a surprise. Come in and we’ll call him.’
‘I’m not going back there.’
‘Ever?’
In the kitchen, a glass of wine had been poured.
‘I don’t know. I want to stay here tonight.’
Her mother leaned against the kitchen counter and scrolled through the contacts on her phone. ‘He’s not going to like it …’
‘I don’t care,’ said Angela.
There was something in her mother’s relaxed disapproval that calmed her. Angela felt something pushing up from inside her. She wasn’t sure if it was the baby or if it was all the things she had never told fighting to get out. So much had happened to her, and she had swallowed it all.
Donna was leaning against the kitchen counter, phone pressed to her ear.
Little Liar Page 20
