The Likeness: A Novel (19 page)

He passed me my glass and filled his own. “To homecomings,” he said.
In the moment when that glass passed from his hand to mine, something sent up a high wild warning cry in the back of my mind. Persephone’s irrevocable pomegranate seeds,
Never take food from strangers;
old stories where one sip or bite seals the spellbound walls forever, dissolves the road home into mist and blows it away on the wind. And then, sharper:
If it was them, after all, and it’s poisoned; Jesus, what a way to go.
And I realized, with a thrill like an electric shock, that they would be well able for it. That poised quartet waiting for me at the door, with their straight backs and their cool, watchful eyes: they were more than capable of playing the game all evening, waiting with immaculate control and without a single slip for their chosen moment.
But they were all smiling at me, glasses raised, and I didn’t have a choice. “Homecomings,” I said, and leaned over the table to clink their glasses among the ivy and the candle flames: Justin, Rafe, Abby, Daniel. I took a sip of the wine—it was warm and rich and smooth, honey and summer berries, and I felt it right down to the tips of my fingers—and then I picked up my knife and fork and sliced into my steak.
Maybe it was just that I needed food—the steak was delicious and my appetite had resurfaced like it was trying to make up for lost time, but unfortunately no one had mentioned anything about Lexie eating like a horse, so I wasn’t going to be asking for seconds—but that was when they came into focus for me, that dinner; that’s when the memories start to fall into sequence, like glass beads caught on a string, and the evening changes from a bright blur into something real and manageable. “Abby got a poppet,” Rafe said, dumping potatoes on his plate. “We were going to burn her as a witch, but we decided to wait till you got back, so we could put it to a democratic vote.”
“Burn Abby, or the poppet?” I asked.
“Both.”
“It is not a poppet,” Abby said, flicking Rafe in the arm. “It’s a late-Victorian doll, and Lexie will appreciate it, because she’s not a Philistine.”
“I’d appreciate it from a distance, if I were you,” Justin told me. “I think it’s possessed. Its eyes keep following me.”
“So lie her down. Her eyes close.”
“I’m not touching it. What if it bites me? I’ll have to wander the outer darkness for all eternity, searching for my soul—”
“God, I’ve missed you,” Abby told me. “I’ve been stuck with no one to talk to except this bunch of wusses. It’s just an itsy-bitsy dolly, Justin.”
“Poppet,” Rafe said, through potatoes. “Seriously. It’s made from a sacrificed goat.”
“Mouth full, you,” Abby told him. To me: “It’s kidskin. With a bisque head. I found her in a hatbox in the room opposite me. Her clothes are in bits, and I finished the footstool, so I figured I might as well make her a new wardrobe. There are all these old scraps of material—”
“And then there’s its hair,” Justin said, pushing the vegetables across to me. “Don’t forget the hair. It’s horrible.”
“It’s wearing a dead person’s hair,” Rafe informed me. “If you stick a pin in the doll, you can hear screaming coming from the graveyard. Try it.”
“See what I mean?” Abby said, to me. “Wusses. It’s got real hair. Why he thinks it’s from a dead person—”
“Because your poppet was made in about 1890 and I can do subtraction.”
“And what graveyard? There’s no graveyard.”
“There is somewhere. Somewhere out there, every time you touch that doll, someone twitches in her grave.”
“Until you get rid of the Head,” Abby said with dignity, “you don’t get to slag my doll for being creepy.”
“That’s not the same thing at all. The Head is a valuable scientific tool.”
“I like the Head,” said Daniel, glancing up, surprised. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It looks like something Aleister Crowley would carry around, is what’s wrong with it. Back me up here, Lex.”
Frank and Sam hadn’t told me, maybe they’d never seen, the most important thing about these four: just how close they were. The phone videos hadn’t been able to catch the power of it, any more than they’d caught the house. It was like a shimmer in the air between them, like glittering web-fine threads tossed back and forth and in and out until every movement or word reverberated through the whole group: Rafe passing Abby her smokes almost before she glanced around for them, Daniel turning with his hands out ready to take the steak dish in the same second that Justin brought it through the door, sentences flicked onto each other like playing cards with never a fraction of a pause. Rob and I used to be like that: seamless.
My main feeling was that I was fucked. These four had harmonies close as the most polished a cappella group on the planet, and I had to pick up my line and join in the jam session without missing a single beat. I had a little leeway for weakness and medication and general trauma—right now they were just happy I was home and talking, what I actually said was beside the point—but that would only carry me so far, and nobody had told me anything about a Head. No matter how upbeat Frank had been, I was pretty positive that the incident room had a sweepstakes going—behind Sam’s back; not necessarily behind Frank’s—on how long it would be before I went down in a spectacular fireball, and that most of the spread was clustered under three days. I didn’t blame them. I should have got in on the action: a tenner on twenty-four hours.
“I want to hear the news,” I said. “What’s been happening? Was anyone asking after me? Do I have get-well cards?”
“You got hideous flowers,” Rafe said, “from the English department. Those huge mutant daisy things, dyed lurid colors. They wilted, thank God.”
“Four-Boobs Brenda tried to comfort Rafe,” Abby said, with a one-sided grin. “In his time of need.”
“Oh God,” Rafe said in horror, dropping his knife and fork and putting his hands over his face. Justin started to snicker. “She did. She and her bosom-age cornered me in the photocopy room and asked me how I was
feeling.
”
That had to be Brenda Grealey. I couldn’t see her being Rafe’s type. I laughed too—they were working hard to keep the mood up, and Brenda was starting to sound like a geebag anyway. “I think he quite enjoyed it, deep down,” Justin said demurely. “He came out reeking of cheap perfume.”
“I almost asphyxiated. She pinned me up against the photocopier—”
“Was there wucka-wucka music playing in the background?” I asked. It was feeble but I was doing my best, and I caught Abby’s quick sideways smile, the flick of relief across Justin’s face. “What on earth have you been watching in that hospital?” Daniel wanted to know.
“—and she
breathed
all over me,” Rafe said. “Moistly. It was like being molested by a walrus soaked in air freshener.”
“The inside of your head is a horrible place,” Justin told him.
“She wanted to buy me a drink so we could
talk.
She said I needed to open up. What does that even
mean
?”
“Sounds like she’s the one who wanted to open up,” Abby said. “So to speak.” Rafe made a fake gagging noise.
“You’re disgusting too,” Justin said.
“Thank God for me,” I said. Talking still felt like poking black ice with a stick. “I’m the civilized one.”
“Well,” Justin said, giving me a small, tucked-in smile. “Hardly. But we love you anyway. Have more steak; you’re eating like a wee bird. Don’t you like it?”
Hallelujah: apparently Lexie and I shared the same metabolism, as well as everything else. “It’s gorgeous, silly,” I said. “I’m still getting my appetite back.”
“Yes, well.” Justin leaned across the table to spoon steak onto my plate. “You need to build up your strength.”
“Justin,” I said, “you’ve always been my favorite.”
He flushed right up to his hairline, and before he could hide behind his glass I saw something painful—what, I couldn’t tell—flick across his face. “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “We missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” I said, and gave him a wicked grin. “Mostly because of hospital food.”
“Typical,” said Rafe.
For a moment I was sure Justin was going to say something else, but then Daniel reached over to refill his glass and Justin blinked, the flush subsiding, and picked up his knife and fork again. There was one of those content, absorbed silences that go with good food. Something rippled round the table: a loosening, a settling, a long sigh too low to hear.
Un ange passe,
my French grandfather would have said: an angel is passing. Somewhere upstairs I heard the faint, dreamy note of a clock striking.
Daniel cut his eyes sideways at Abby, so subtly I barely caught it. He was the one who had done the least talking, all evening. He was quiet on the phone videos, too, but this seemed to have a different flavor to it, a concentrated intensity, and I wasn’t sure whether this just didn’t translate well onto camera or whether it was new. “So,” Abby said. “How’re you feeling, Lex?”
They had all stopped eating. “Fine,” I said. “I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy for a few weeks.”
“Are you in any pain?” Daniel inquired.
I shrugged. “They gave me supercool painkillers, but most of the time I don’t need them. I’m not even gonna have much of a scar. They had to sew up all my insides, but I only got six stitches on the outside.”
“Let’s see them,” Rafe said.
“God,” said Justin, putting his fork down. He looked like he was seconds from leaving the table. “You’re a ghoul. I have no desire to see them, thanks very much.”
“I definitely don’t want to see them at the dinner table,” Abby said. “No offense.”
“Nobody’s seeing them anywhere,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Rafe—I was ready for this one. “I’ve been getting poked and prodded all week, and the next person who goes anywhere near my stitches gets his finger bitten off.”
Daniel was still inspecting me thoughtfully. “You tell ’em,” said Abby.
“Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?” There was a pinched, white look around Justin’s mouth and nose, as if even the thought had him in pain. “It must have hurt, at first. Was it bad?”
“She’s fine,” said Abby. “She just said so.”
“I’m only
asking.
The police kept saying—”
“Don’t
poke
at it.”
“What?” I asked. “What did the police keep saying?”
“I think,” Daniel said, calmly but finally, turning in his chair to look at Justin, “that we should leave it at that.”
Another silence, less comfortable this time. Rafe’s knife screeched on his plate; Justin winced; Abby reached for the pepper shaker, gave it a hard tap on the table and shook it briskly.
“The police asked,” Daniel said suddenly, glancing up at me over his glass, “whether you kept a diary or a date book, anything along those lines. I thought it was best for us to say no.”
Diary?
“Dead right,” I said. “I don’t want them looking through my stuff.”
“They already did,” Abby said. “Sorry. They searched your room.”
“Ah, for fuck’s
sake,
” I said, indignant. “Why didn’t you stop them?”
“We didn’t get the sense it was optional,” Rafe said dryly.
“What if I’d had love letters, or—or stud-muffin porn, or something
private
?”
“Presumably that’s exactly what they were looking for.”
“They were fascinating, actually,” Daniel said. “The police. Most of them seemed utterly uninterested: all routine. I would have loved to watch them do the search, but I don’t think it would have been a good idea to ask.”
“They didn’t get what they were after, anyway,” I said with satisfaction. “Where is it, Daniel?”
“I have no idea,” Daniel said, mildly surprised. “Wherever you keep it, I assume,” and he went back to his steak.

* * *

The guys cleared the plates away; Abby and I sat at the table, smoking, in a silence that was starting to feel companionable. I heard someone doing something in the sitting room, hidden behind wide sliding double doors, and the smell of wood smoke seeped out to us. “Peaceful one tonight?” Abby asked, watching me over her cigarette. “Just read?”
After dinner was their free time: cards, music, reading, talking, slowly knocking the house into shape. Reading sounded like the easiest option by about a mile. “Perfect,” I said. “I’ve got loads of thesis catching-up to do.”
“Relax,” Abby said—that small one-sided smile again. “You’re only just home. You’ve got all the time in the world.” She stubbed out her smoke and threw open the sliding doors.
The sitting room was huge and, unexpectedly, wonderful. The photos had caught only the shabbiness, missed the atmosphere altogether. High ceiling, with moldings along the edges; wide floorboards, unvarnished and lumpy; horrible flowered wallpaper, peeling in patches to show the old layers underneath—rose and gold stripes, a dull cream-colored sheen like silk. The furniture was mismatched and ancient: a scuffed card table in inlaid rosewood, faded brocade armchairs, a long uncomfortable-looking sofa, bookshelves jammed with tattered leather covers and bright paperbacks. There was no overhead light, just standing lamps and a wood fire crackling in a massive wrought-iron fireplace, throwing wild shadows scudding among the cobwebs in the high corners. The room was a mess, and I fell in love with it before I was through the doorway.
The armchairs looked cozy and I was right on the edge of heading for one of them when my mind slammed on the brakes, hard. I could hear my heart. I had no idea where I was supposed to sit; my head had gone blank. The food, the easy slagging, the comfortable silence with Abby: I had relaxed.
“Back in a sec,” I said, and hid in the bathroom to let the others narrow things down by taking their places, and to let my knees stop shaking. By the time I could breathe right, my brain had come out of neutral and I knew where my seat was: a low Victorian nursing chair to one side of the fireplace. Frank had shown me photos by the handful. I had known that.
It would have been that easy: sitting down in the wrong chair. Barely four hours.
Justin glanced up, with a faint worried furrow between his eyebrows, when I went back into the sitting room, but nobody said anything. My books were spread out on a low table by my chair: thick historical references, a dog-eared copy of
Jane Eyre
open face-down across a lined notepad, a yellowing pulp novel called
She Dressed to Kill
by Rip Corelli—presumably non-thesis-related, although who knew—with a cover picture of a pneumatic lady wearing a slit skirt and a gun in her garter (“She drew men like honey draws flies . . . and then she swatted them!”). My pen—a blue Biro, the end covered with toothmarks—was still where I had put it down midsentence, that Wednesday night.