‘Work? You mean writing airhead shit for the bits of the papers that everyone chucks in the bin? Still in your pyjamas at nearly six o’clock—you call that work?’
Olivia didn’t stand up, but she swung her legs round and straightened her back. ‘I’m a journalist,’ she said in a jagged voice. ‘I write about
books
. Books are not airhead shit. My work is worth as much as yours.’
Like hell it is.
‘Once or twice, it’s true, I’ve written articles about fashion or shopping, and you’ve stored that up to use against me in your campaign to prove that everything I do is a load of frivolous crap.’ Olivia wiped her eyes.
‘Diversionary tactics,’ Charlie said flatly. ‘Don’t think I don’t know them when I see them. I see them a lot.’ She’d always thought Liv was proud to be frivolous, believed frivolity to be a good worth striving for.
‘You know what? I don’t even mind you thinking that my life’s work is a huge waste of time. Maybe if I did what you did, I’d feel the same about anyone who didn’t have to deal with dead bodies and psychopaths every day. I’m sure I would.’
‘I’m not in CID any more, not that anyone seems to notice.’ Charlie sighed. ‘These days all I see is questionnaires and evaluation forms.’
‘What I object to is that you don’t even bother to pretend!’ Liv was determined to have her say. ‘You
constantly
put forward this view of the world in which you’re essential and I’m completely worthless and useless, and you expect me to . . . to
subscribe
to it!’
‘Oh, please. When do I put forward—?’
‘All the time! With your every word and action, with every face you pull. Did you know I’m writing a book?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Neither am I.’
‘I
am
!’
‘You used to say that all the time when we were teenagers. You never wrote more than a paragraph.’
‘Okay, fine, that’s true!’ Finally, Olivia stood up. ‘What Dom said’s also true. How come it’s okay for you to be as blunt as you like but not for anyone else? He told you there was no case to make and you’re blaming him because it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.’
‘ “No case to make,” ’ Charlie sneered. ‘I see you’re fluent in legal bullshit-speak.’
‘Dom called you a pyschopath’s ex-girlfriend because that’s what you are! You always will be. Fucking deal with it. Doesn’t mean it’s
all
you are. He didn’t say it to be vicious, and he wasn’t revelling in your powerlessness or rubbing anything in—that’s bollocks. He’s just . . . unusually straightforward. You don’t know him like I do.’
‘No, I’d need to open my legs a bit wider to achieve that, wouldn’t I?’ Charlie wasn’t ready to be mature and sensible about anything. Not yet. That she could see she would eventually have to be infuriated her, created the need to do more damage.
‘Shouldn’t be too hard for you,’ Liv retaliated. ‘Think back to before you got engaged to Simon. You had your legs spread so wide most of the time, I’m surprised you managed to walk. You were the human equivalent of a T-junction.’
Charlie tried not to show her shock. Could Liv have thought that up on the spot, or had she formulated the insult long ago and been waiting ever since for the perfect opportunity to deliver it? Had she shared it with Lund? Had they laughed about it together?
‘Any bloke who fancied it could have taken a run at you from a distance and got a hole in one,’ Liv added for good measure.
‘Golf slang,’ said Charlie. ‘Mum and Dad would be so proud.
Dommie
told me you’ve been trying to turn them against Simon and me.’
‘That’s rubbish. He can’t have said that—it’s not true and he doesn’t lie.’
‘Saint Dommie!’
‘He might have said I’m surprised they haven’t expressed concern about your marriage plans. I
am
surprised.’
‘And I had to hear that, and more, from someone I’d gone to for
help
, a lawyer who, as far as I knew, had no other connection to my life! If I’d known you and he were an item, do you think I’d have let him . . .?’ The question hung in the air, incomplete.
‘Let him what?’
See my desperation.
Charlie couldn’t say it. She’d told Olivia about Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall, but she’d taken care to present herself as far less bothered than she was. She’d made flippant jokes—‘Crazy bitch. Do you think she fancies me or something?’—to hide the depth of her distress, and thrown in the Ruth-Aidan-Mary Trelease story as a distraction, to direct the focus away from herself. Now that she’d demeaned herself in front of Dominic Lund, he was in a position to tell Liv exactly how wretched and messed up Charlie was, if he hadn’t already, and there was nothing she could do about it.
‘Why
are
you so upset about this Ruth Bussey woman, Char? I don’t get it. Okay, it’s weird, I agree, but she’s probably harmless. ’
‘Covering an entire wall with articles about someone and pictures of them is stalker behaviour,’ Charlie recited in a monotone. ‘Stalkers can flip and they can attack. Sometimes they kill. Don’t fucking tell me this woman’s harmless—you know nothing.’
‘You’re right,’ Liv snapped. ‘She’s probably waiting outside with a Kalashnikov pointed at the front door.’ Seeing Charlie’s murderous expression, she shrugged and said, ‘See? Whatever I say, it’s the wrong thing. I’m sick of being your punch-bag. This isn’t about me—it isn’t about Dominic. It’s
Simon
you’re angry with, Simon who’s making you miserable . . .’
‘Here we go again!’
‘You’re jealous because I’m getting laid and you, despite being engaged, aren’t!’
Charlie’s vision narrowed to a slit. A shimmering red tunnel opened in front of her and she allowed it to suck her in. She lunged for Olivia’s computer, held it over her head and threw it at the wall. The crash it made when it hit was painful to listen to—the sound of irrevocable damage. Charlie closed her eyes, remembering too late the other reason she’d come to Olivia’s. ‘Shit,’ she whispered. ‘I needed that computer. Can you try to boot it up for me while I get a drink? What have you got that’s strong and alcoholic?’
‘I haven’t backed up my work,’ said Olivia shakily. ‘That’s three days’ worth of—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie interrupted her martyr speech. ‘You’re a saint, Dominic Lund is a saint and I’m a sack of shit, okay? And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.’ She headed to the kitchen in search of vodka, calling over her shoulder, ‘Just get that fucking machine to work.’
There was no vodka. Absinthe would have to do. Charlie poured the pale green liquid into a tumbler and took two big gulps, hoping it would work fast. Not fast enough. She downed the rest of the glass, then poured another. She took her phone out of her pocket and switched it on. Five missed calls from callers who’d withheld their numbers. Unusual. There was one message, from Simon. ‘Where the fuck are you? Ring me as soon as you get this.’ Charlie listened to it again, trepidation making her stomach churn. Something was wrong. He knew where she was; she’d told him she was going to London to see Lund.
She rang him, got his voicemail, left a message saying she was worried, that she was at her sister’s now and he should ring her as soon as he got the chance. Then she glugged more absinthe, jabbed ‘118118’ with her thumb and got the number for Villiers girls’ boarding school in Wrecclesham, Surrey. Might as well ring now, put off facing Liv for a few more minutes.
The voice that answered the phone sounded as if it belonged to a woman who had been put on earth to do nothing but answer telephones with perfect politeness. Though all it said was, ‘Villiers, good afternoon,’ it conveyed a sense of delight in anticipation of being able to help anyone with anything, and made Charlie feel less awkward about posing her question.
‘This is going to sound strange,’ she began.
‘That’s perfectly all right. I can do strange. Frequently have to,’ said the woman. A secretary, Charlie assumed. ‘You should hear some of the calls we get.’
‘I’m after the name of an ex-pupil of yours who went on to become a writer. Does anyone spring to mind who fits that description? ’
‘A fair few,’ said the woman proudly. ‘You should come and look at our boasting gallery some time.’
‘Can you give me some names?’ Charlie reached for the pad of A4 paper and pen that Olivia kept near the phone; though, irritatingly, not so near that you didn’t have to lean to reach it and risk pulling the phone’s base off the shelf. As the woman name-dropped women writers, Charlie made a list. She’d heard of only one of the six the secretary mentioned, and put a cross beside her name. She hadn’t committed suicide; Charlie had seen her on
Question Time
last week.
How to ask if any of them were dead without sounding crass, or making the secretary clam up? ‘Are . . . as far as you know, are all these women still writing?’
A gasp of alarm came from behind Charlie, followed by the sound of the absinthe bottle and her glass being pulled along the worktop, away from her. She turned to find Olivia glaring at her, miming surprise at how little was left in the bottle. She waved the list of women writers in front of her sister’s face.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can help you there. We try to keep up with our old girls’ careers as best we can, but there are so many of them. Let me think . . .’
‘I’ll put it another way,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you know if any of these women definitely aren’t still writing?’
Olivia snatched the pen from her hand. Next to each name she wrote something, rolling her eyes as if Charlie ought to have known: ‘Still writing poetry about muddy puddles that no one buys.’ ‘Depends what you mean by “still writing”. She puts her name to about four books a year, but they’re all “co-written”, i.e. written by unknown skivvies.’ ‘Yes—she’s good—I tried to lend you one of hers but you vetoed it because it was set abroad and in the past.’
‘May I ask what your interest is?’ A note of caution had infused the impeccable voice, enough to convince Charlie that she and the woman on the other end of the phone were thinking, at that moment, of the same person: the woman Mary Trelease had painted dead. Charlie closed her eyes. The absinthe was starting to make its presence felt; her veins were buzzing.
‘It’s sort of personal,’ she said. ‘I can promise you that anything you tell me will go no further.’ Recklessly, she added, ‘I think you know which of these women I’m asking about, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you.’ Shrill and defensive.
Was it something I said?
Beside the name of the woman Charlie had seen on
Question Time
recently, Liv had written, ‘Ideas above her station—thinks writing formulaic thrillers qualifies her to interfere in politics.’ Every name on the list had one of Liv’s mini-essays beside it apart from one: Martha Wyers. Charlie pointed to it. Liv shrugged, then, in case that wasn’t clear enough, drew a big question mark next to it.
‘Martha Wyers,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s not writing any more, is she?’
‘I cannot help you,’ the woman repeated firmly. ‘If you care about Martha or this school at all, please don’t pursue it. There’s been enough suffering already without journalists digging for dirt and causing even more.’
‘I’m not a journalist. Really, I’m not going to—’
‘I should never have given you her name.’ The words were breathy and indistinct, as if she’d pressed her mouth too close to the mouthpiece. She hung up.
‘Any luck with the computer?’ Charlie asked Liv.
‘You’re slurring your words. Of course not. That’s nine hundred quid you owe me, plus a two-thousand-word article about why endings are as important as beginnings in fiction.’
‘Instalments do you? Tiny ones? Where’s the nearest internet café?’ Charlie was already heading for the front door.
‘Right here,’ said Olivia drily. ‘I’ve set up my other laptop. You can use that. One condition: would you mind not hurling it at the wall?’
‘You’ve got two laptops?’
‘It’s handy—you never know when one’s going to be smashed up by a vandal.’
‘I’ve said I’m sorry . . .’
‘Sarcastically, yes. I don’t suppose it’ll matter to you, but I bought the second laptop to write my book, and that’s all I’ve ever used it for. I didn’t want it to be used for anything else.’
Charlie stopped at the entrance to the lounge. ‘I can go to an internet café,’ she said. ‘Make up your mind. Do you want to help me or not? Only in exchange for praise, presumably.’
‘Use it. I’ve set it up,’ said Liv wearily. ‘What’s going on, Char? Any chance you’re going to tell me?’
Charlie clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. When the Google screen appeared, she typed ‘Martha Wyers, Villiers, suicide’ into the search box. Nothing came up that looked right. The first page of results yielded a selection of science journal articles by a Dr Martha Wyers of Yale University. ‘Don’t give me this shit,’ Charlie moaned at the computer.
‘Are you sure it’s not the same person?’ Liv asked, peering over her shoulder.
‘I doubt it.’
‘Check,’ Liv advised.
‘Thanks for that tip. Of course I’m going to check,’ said the part of Charlie that, in the presence of her sister, was permanently frozen at the age of fourteen.
Google was bursting at the seams with Dr Wyers’ details and achievements. It didn’t take long to find a CV. ‘Born in 1947 in Buffalo. Never lived in the UK, never attended Villiers school . . .’
‘It’s not her,’ said Liv.
‘No.’
Charlie tried ‘Martha Wyers, British writer, suicide’ and ‘Martha Wyers, British writer, Villiers, murder’ with no success. Yale’s Dr Wyers wasn’t letting anyone else get a look-in.
‘You can find out, can’t you?’ she asked Liv. ‘Martha Wyers was a writer, you know everything there is to know about books . . .’
‘Was Martha Wyers killed by a stalker?’
‘What?’ Seeing her sister trying so hard, looking so helpful and enthusiastic and making completely the wrong connection made Charlie want to hit her. She ought to ring Simon again. Why had he sounded so riled? He was the one she needed to talk to. Would he pursue the Martha Wyers angle?