Telling Lies to Alice (31 page)

“You’re talking rubbish,” growled Jack. “Leave her alone.”

“That got your attention, didn’t it? You bastard. I might as well have been your housekeeper! After everything I did . . . What do you think my life’s been like, Jack? Have you got any idea? Sitting up waiting for you night after night, everyone knowing what you got up to, never having a bloody holiday—what do you think it’s been like?” she screamed at him.

“I stayed with you, didn’t I?”

“You stayed with me so you could screw around and then make an excuse and run back to your wife! We were your insurance policy, Jack. Me and the girls. Oh, I know exactly what you thought—I heard you once, talking to Lenny. You were too much of a bloody coward to do it any other way. Even after Kitty, when you promised, and then Susie got ill and you . . . you just . . . Don’t you understand
anything,
Jack? There are some things you can justify, and some things you can’t. Like abandoning your daughter when she needed you. Like killing a ten-year-old boy.”

“Stop it.”

“After you left—when Susie was ill—I thought about taking that tape to the police, Jack, I really thought about it. But I didn’t, and you know why? Because of the girls. You might not have cared about them, but I did.”

“That’s not true.”

“No? You don’t remember, do you? You really don’t remember. . . . Do you know what he said?” she asked me. “Susie was eight. We were having a row, shouting, and we thought she was in bed, but she must have come back down. Jack said he’d only married me because I was pregnant. I said, ‘I didn’t do it on my own,’ and he said, ‘No, it takes two to make that much of a mistake.’ We didn’t know she was there. Standing in the doorway. First I thought she couldn’t have understood, but she had. I’ll never forget the look on her face. She ran away from us, upstairs, tripped on her nightdress and cut her knee . . . I got a plaster for her and put it on and I was trying to tell her it was all right, Daddy didn’t mean it, but she just sat there, stiff, like . . . like . . . wood . . . I tried to cuddle her, but she pushed me away, and she wouldn’t say good night, or . . .” Val faltered and stopped. The pain in her face was awful. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said to me. “You don’t know. Susie never forgot it. Last year, when she was in hospital the first time, she said to me, ‘It’s my fault you and Dad aren’t happy.’ She said she was sorry. . . . She never felt loved, Jack. I did everything, everything I could, to try and make up for it, but you . . . you didn’t even try. Never . . . not once. You didn’t even try.”

“I wish . . .” Jack cleared his throat. “I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“Is that all you can say?” Val shouted. “Is that it?”

“Yes,” said Jack dully. “Yes.”

Val stepped back, the gun at her side. “Fuck you, Jack,” she said coldly. “Fuck . . . you.”

Jack gestured weakly at the table. “Fuck you, too. Don’t respect . . . ashes . . . can’t even . . . that . . . fuck you.”

“You killed her, Jack.”

“You asked me . . . come back . . . that’s what you said . . . you wanted it . . .”

“I thought you needed me.” Her hand shook as she raised the gun and pointed it at Jack. “But you don’t. You don’t care . . . you don’t care . . .”

There was a sudden eruption of sound from the front of the house—the dog, barking hysterically, and a second later, the jagged crash of a window being broken. Val looked wildly round the room, the gun jumping in her hand. Jack leant forwards as if he was going to stand up, and Val took a couple of steps towards him. “I love my girls, I love Rosie . . .” Jack made a grab for her leg, unbalancing her, and she tottered above us, ankles wobbling, and for a moment I thought she was going to fall over, but she steadied herself and kicked out at him.

“Get back,” she shouted, against a background of baying from Eustace, punctuated by smashing noises and clattering glass as whoever it was knocked out the rest of the window. “Get away from me! Rosie hates you! She never wants to see you again—she told me.”

“You’re lying.”

“No.” Val shook her head violently. “You don’t care . . . you don’t care . . .”

Through Eustace’s din, I heard a door open—footsteps in the hall—

“Lying . . . bitch . . .” Jack’s feet slipped from under him as he tried to stand up.

I clung on to his arm. “Stop it, Jack—don’t—”

“She hates you!” screamed Val.

Footsteps closer now, outside the door—Val looked up—her skirt whirled next to my face as she swung towards the door—Jeff fell through my mind, the hole in his chest, and I shouted, too late, “Don’t! Don’t come in!” and then the door was kicked open and there was Fred holding up a spade like a weapon. He looked at us and we looked at him and he said, “Oh, Jesus,” and Eustace started barking again and Val turned, but this time like slow motion, she was pointing the gun at us—Jack or me, I couldn’t tell which—and Jack turned to me and she was shouting his name over and over, “Jack! Jack!” and then he said in my ear, “I’m sorry,” and yanked my arm so I was in front of him like a shield. I saw the muzzle of the gun come towards me in a big black blur and closed my eyes and then Val shouted again and Jack shoved me down across his lap. Then everything was blasted apart in a deafening explosion and Jack’s body bucked and then slackened underneath me and the only thing I could hear was the ringing in my ears.

I don’t know how long it was—a minute, two minutes at least before the ringing subsided—and then I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was my hand curled into a fist. There were spots on it like freckles and all down my arm where none had been before and I blinked and saw they weren’t brown, but red—blood—Jack’s blood spattered on me and I thought,
I’m alive, I’m alive,
and then I felt something wet on my other shoulder and Fred’s voice came from miles away, saying, “Don’t turn round . . . Alice, don’t turn round . . .” It sounded as if he was choking and I raised my eyes and saw Val’s face white and shocked and her mouth gaping open and Fred said, “Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus Christ . . .” As I crawled off Jack’s lap I heard Val making sounds, mewing and wordless, and I stood up, swaying, and saw she had the gun by her side and she was looking down at it and knew I must take it away from her and make her safe because her distress was so terrible, that was the only thing that mattered and I had to keep looking at her, not at Fred, not Jack,
no don’t look at Jack don’t turn round
just concentrate on her and connect with her,
keep looking at her make her look away from the gun
. . .

I wasn’t afraid, I felt no fear or shock but just an overwhelming need to reach her—I could feel Fred’s eyes, his concentration on us, but he was outside, somehow, as if the two of us, were sealed together by the intensity of her pain and that was the only thing . . . I felt nothing but the need to reach her, somehow, just to speak her name.

“Val.” Her eyes, huge, muddy, and lost, stared into mine. I felt, rather than saw, her bend her arm and bring the gun up so it was clutched against her stomach . . . her chest . . .
Talk to her.
My brain felt paralysed.
Say something, anything
. . . “Val,” I repeated. The word seemed to take a long time to reach her, as if it was hovering in the air between us. “Val, it’s all right . . . it’s going to be all right . . .”

She took a step back and I saw her hand shift and her finger tighten around the trigger. Now the gun was tilted upwards, to her chin—she blinked, then squeezed her eyes shut—“Rosie,” I said. “Your daughter Rosie. What about her?” The gun twitched against the cords in her neck. “Rosie needs you, Val.”

“She . . . she . . .” Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it.

“Rosie,” I repeated. “Your daughter. She needs you.”

Another whisper. “Rosie.”

The gun—and Val—started to shake, the muzzle banging against the point of her chin. “Think about Rosie.” She opened her eyes and I held her gaze as she slowly lowered the gun, and then I extended my hand and felt her push it, still warm, into my palm and release her grip on it. I closed my fingers over the handle and felt her fingertips graze my knuckles, and I knew she wanted something to hold so I transferred the gun from my left hand to my right and let her have that one, instead, and that was how we stayed—side by side, quite still, holding hands, not speaking—until the police arrived.

Maynard’s Farm, Duck End, Oxfordshire
Friday 3 September 1976

It’s rained. The first time in two months, according to the radio. And then it goes and does it on Bank Holiday Monday. The garden needed it, though—there’s only so much you can do with bathwater.

I got a cassette in the post this morning with a note.
Dear Mrs Jones, I am a neighbour of Valerie Flowers. She has requested that I send you this article in confidence. Yours sincerely, Felicity Manville.
I suppose she must be the neighbour that Lenny told me the story about—the burning dildo. Obviously a better friend to Val than Jack thought. It’s a home-recorded tape with “Donna Summer” written on the card and a list of the songs. It must have been Rosie’s, and Val must have swapped them, but it’s odd . . . she must have taken it from the car after she’d tried to run me over, because she didn’t have a bag or anything. Perhaps she wanted to taunt Jack with it. She didn’t come here intending to kill him, I’m sure of that. But this tape . . . if it’s what I think it is, because there’s no label on the cassette, then the ruined one the police have must be just music. That must be why they haven’t asked me about it.

I’m lying in bed looking out of the window. I shouldn’t be up here at all—it’s the middle of the afternoon and there’s lots to do, but I get so tired. I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed recently—sleeping, or just lying here thinking. It feels like a safe place to be. Like when I had chicken pox as a kid. That was in summer, too. Granddad used to come and read to me in the afternoons, and I’d lie there, listening, getting drowsy . . . lovely clean white sheets . . . I wish he was here now. I’ve tried to tell him about it, in my head, but I keep getting muddled. I don’t remember the end part at all, just the sirens and cars, shouting, then seeing the policemen in the doorway and coming towards us and Fred behind them and Eustace barking and barking . . . That was when I saw Jack, when they banged on the back door, that’s when I turned round. She’d shot him through the mouth. Jack was slumped against the wooden chest with his legs out in front of him. His head was drooping, turned to one side, and I could see the wound where the bullet had gone through his face—his mouth was just a red, blasted hole, slack and open with skeins of blood and saliva hanging down onto his clothes, so much blood all over his shirt and jacket—it was on me, too, I didn’t realise, but later—not just the drops on my arms, but the wetness I felt on my shoulder, his blood, when they cleaned me up I saw . . . and on the floor and soaking into the wood of the chest, blood and pieces of his teeth and jaw, little fragments everywhere, that side of his face, that I couldn’t see because it was against the chest, it was just . . . disintegrated—bone is so hard, you wouldn’t think . . . but they found it embedded in the chest, bits of his face, and the bullet . . . I could hear the shouting, outside, “Open up, open the door!” and I was staring at this great red hole that was his mouth and it went on and on and Eustace was barking and I was still holding Val’s hand—or she was holding mine, I don’t know—but I couldn’t let go, even when they came in, I couldn’t let go of her hand.

They told me Jack would have died almost immediately—the wound and the shock. They took the chest of drawers away for evidence. I don’t want it back. I never want to see it again.

Val told the police straight off that she’d shot Jack, before they even said anything, and they took her away . . . they took Fred, too. I thought I was going with them but they took me to hospital. I suppose because they didn’t know whose blood it was, and when I tried to move my legs just collapsed underneath me. I remember looking over at the door and wondering if I’d ever get there because it seemed such a long way away, and then not much else after that, really, until we got to Casualty.

The police questioned me for ages. I told them about Jack and Lee and Jeff and Val and . . . they asked me about Kitty, because of Lenny’s car, and I told them what Jack had told me, that it was an accident. I told them about Danny Watts and the film as well, but I don’t know if they believed me. They took me back to the station and asked more questions and in the end they said I could go and someone brought me home. Mrs. Anderson was here. She said Mr. Anderson had gone to fetch my mum so I wouldn’t be on my own—he’d found the address in my book. I don’t know how he managed to persuade her, but she’s downstairs now. . . . She hasn’t come up much, except to bring food. Tomato soup, mostly. I’ll turn orange if I have much more of it.

I don’t feel like going down to talk to her but I’m glad she’s here. I’ll have to go through it all again at some point, because of the trial. They’ve charged Val with murder. There’s no date yet—too soon, I suppose.

I don’t want to talk to anyone at the moment, except Granddad, and that’s only in my head. And Eustace, of course. He’s here now, lying under the window in a patch of sun. He only leaves the room to use the garden, then he’s straight back. The doctor gave me some pills to help me sleep, and that’s really all I want to do. Without the dreams, though. I don’t have the dream about Kitty anymore, thank God, but the new ones are horrible, everything mixed up—Jack trying to tell me something about Lenny, only he can’t talk because his jaw’s hanging off and he’s trying to hold his face together with his hands but it keeps slipping and his voice is like a record getting slower and slower and his mouth is coming apart at the corners and disintegrating into a red mass and Lee’s there, too, and I can hear him screaming but I’m behind the stable door and I can’t help him because I’m locked in and I know he’s dying and I can’t get to him . . . then I wake up and it’s me who’s screaming . . .