Laughter broke out. Stacey Sellers’ tittering was audible above the general noise. Too late to back out now, thought Charlie. ‘Simon, a good Catholic boy, is bound to have had preconceived ideas about the children of atheist hippies: foulmouthed, loose-living, promiscuous, bent on annihilating themselves and everyone around them.’
One, two, three, four
. ‘And then he met me.’ This time the laughter was deafening. Charlie tried not to feel hurt. ‘And, in fact, he’s now looking at me as if I’ve sprouted horns, so maybe the engagement’s off. I hope not—if it is, all prezzies will be returned.’ As an afterthought, Charlie added, ‘Which means, Stacey, that you’ll get your vibrator back, though I doubt you’ll manage to get much purchase on it, having had two children the natural way. Anyway, moving swiftly on . . . Thanks so much for coming, everyone. There’s plenty of booze left—have a great evening!’
Charlie saw Simon marching towards her while she was still climbing down from the chair.
‘What the
fuck
. . .’ he started to say, but his words were drowned out by Lizzie Proust who appeared between him and Charlie, dragging the Snowman behind her. ‘That was absolutely the best speech I’ve
ever heard
,’ she told Charlie. ‘Wasn’t it, Giles?’
‘No,’ said Proust.
‘It
was
. You were terrific!’ Lizzie hugged Charlie with one arm, keeping hold of her husband with the other. By the time she’d managed to struggle free, Charlie couldn’t see Simon any more.
‘I don’t think it was the best speech your intended has ever heard either,’ said Proust, giving her a wintry look.
‘Most people seemed to like it, sir.’ Charlie smiled resolutely. She wouldn’t let him ruin her mood, so recently improved. Her speech
had
been good. But now where was Simon? He couldn’t really be angry, could he?
The music came back on, louder than before, and a different CD: Wyclef Jean’s
Carnival II
. Charlie noticed Proust’s instant displeasure, and wondered fleetingly if he’d ever been open-minded even in his youth. She felt a hand close around her arm: Debbie Gibbs. ‘I wish I could laugh at myself the way you laugh at yourself,’ she said. Her eyes looked wet.
‘I can laugh at you if you want,’ said Charlie. Debbie shook her head, not getting the joke. You’re a cop, not a comedian, Charlie reminded herself.
Once Debbie had moved away, Olivia pulled Charlie to one side. ‘Mum and Dad were never hippies.’
‘Well, whatever they were, then—champagne socialists. People with wooden floors who go on CND marches and eat pasta a lot—but that would have taken too long to say. Much easier to summarise now Dad’s a golf bore.’
‘Don’t start, Char.’
‘Interested in his golfing stories, are you?’
During Olivia’s treatment for cancer, Howard Zailer had been fully involved. As much as Linda and Charlie were. It was when he’d retired that his horizons had started to narrow. By 2006, when Charlie’s name had been splashed all over the papers, he had been willing to talk to her only briefly about what she was going through; it wasn’t life-threatening, after all. Howard couldn’t be late for his day’s play, or, if it was evening when Charlie happened to ring, for a drinking session with his friends from the club. ‘I’ll hand you over to Mum,’ he said whenever she phoned. ‘She can fill me in later.’
‘You’ll have to forgive me if I’m determined to like my family in spite of their faults,’ Liv said huffily, looking Charlie up and down. ‘It’s not exactly an abundance of riches scenario, is it? I don’t have any relatives who
aren’t
a pain in the arse in some major way. I suppose you’d like me to cut all ties, take myself off to the pound to sit in a mesh-fronted cage until some perfect new family comes to claim me.’
Charlie decided it would be unwise to pursue the point.
Olivia had no such reservations. ‘Do we all get to say exactly what we think, or is it just you? I wasn’t going to say a word about how ridiculous this whole charade is, your loony engagement . . .’
‘That policy has subsequently been revised, I take it?’ Charlie snapped.
Liv didn’t get the chance to answer. Shouting was coming from the bottom of the stairs near the presents table.
Simon’s voice.
Everyone who could hear it was shifting in that direction, not wanting to miss out.
Stacey Sellers was crying. Simon was holding a large vibrator, wielding it like a truncheon. ‘This is what you thought we’d want, is it?’ he yelled, throwing it on the floor. It landed amid strips of wrapping paper, next to what was left of its cardboard and plastic box.
‘There’s nothing wrong with sex toys. They’re not dirty,’ Stacey screamed back at him. ‘Haven’t you ever watched
Sex and the City
? Don’t you know
anything
?’
‘She’s got a point,’ Olivia whispered in Charlie’s ear. ‘A libido might not be essential but a sense of humour is.’
‘Liv says she’ll have it if we don’t want it,’ Charlie shouted down the stairs.
Simon looked up at her. ‘Get your stuff,’ he said. ‘We’re going. ’
‘Going? Simon, it’s only ten past nine. We can’t leave—it’s our party.’
‘I can do whatever the fuck I like. Give me your keys. I’ll see you later.’
Keys? Did he mean he planned to spend the night at her house?
He had to mean that—it was unambiguous.
Charlie looked around to see if anyone was smirking. Most people seemed more interested in Stacey’s weeping. There was no way anyone could know that Charlie and Simon had never spent the night together at either of their houses or anywhere else, that she’d feared it might never happen, even after they were married. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she told him, grabbing her coat and bag from the stand at the top of the stairs.
Olivia was waiting to pounce. ‘I’ve only just got here. Can’t Simon wait?’
He certainly can, thought Charlie. Let no one say of Simon Waterhouse that he couldn’t wait. He could wait so long that Charlie’s heart was in danger of fossilising. She was the one who couldn’t stand it any longer.
‘So. Are you going to tell me?’ Simon sat on Charlie’s lounge floor, knees pulled up to his chin, an unopened can of lager in his hand. His skin looked grey and grainy. Charlie could see specs of grit in the parting in his hair. Hadn’t he showered before coming out?
She stood in the middle of the undecorated, unfurnished room, trying not to howl. They were missing their engagement party for this, to be mired in this grim atmosphere, this stilted conversation. ‘It doesn’t matter, Simon. For Christ’s sake!’
‘So you’re not going to tell me.’
Charlie groaned. ‘It’s a TV programme. About four women who live in New York, all right? They’re friends, they screw lots of men—that’s about it.’
‘Everyone’s seen it. Everyone except me.’
‘No! Probably there are loads of people who have never even heard of it.’
‘Repressed weirdos. To quote your brilliant speech.’
‘It
was
brilliant.’ Charlie tried to harden her misery, turn it into anger. ‘I’ve explained why I did it. Kate Kombothekra told me everyone was taking the piss out of us. I thought I’d steal their thunder by doing it myself.’
Simon sprang to his feet. ‘I’m going home.’
Charlie put her body between him and the door. ‘You came back here so that you could ask about
Sex and the City
and then leave? Why are you here, Simon? Did you overhear someone at the party talking about our sex life, or lack of? Kate says they were all at it. Maybe you wanted everybody to see us leaving together and draw the wrong conclusion.’
‘It’s what I heard
you
saying that’s the problem!’ Simon shouted in her face. ‘Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous, bent on self-destruction. Lucky for me my parents had left by then.’
‘Scared of Mummy and Daddy finding out, are you? What I’m really like?’
‘You’d still have done it, wouldn’t you? Even if they’d been there.’
‘They
weren’t
there! You’re being ridiculous. This is all about your vanity.’
‘It’s about your distortions, your . . . exhibitionism! That story about the primary school—was it true? Since the rest of what you said was a load of shit, I have to wonder.’
‘You think it was just an excuse, a convenient way into slagging off Catholics?’
‘Oh, you don’t discriminate—you’ll slate anything that moves. The more defenceless the better!’
Charlie stepped back, away from his anger. Stacey Sellers got off lightly, she thought. ‘Who’s defenceless, Simon?’
‘So it really happened? The teacher said, “Put your hands together for Grace,” and you didn’t know what she meant? Sorry, but . . .’ His words tailed off. He turned away, rubbed his face with his hands.
‘Sorry but
what
?’
‘Do we have anything in common? Do we even inhabit the same world?’
This can’t be happening. It can’t be.
‘Do what you have to do,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not going to talk you out of it.’ She left the room and went upstairs.
In her bedroom, she decided not to slam the door. Instead, she closed it carefully. She wasn’t a child; she wouldn’t be treated like one and she wouldn’t behave like one. Lizzie Proust had liked her speech. Debbie Gibbs had liked it. Her awful speech. What had possessed her?
Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous
. . . Simon had misremembered the last bit:
bent on annihilating themselves and everyone around them.
‘Oops,’ said Charlie out loud. The sound fell heavy in the silent air. She wondered what Kate Kombothekra had thought of what she’d said; would it be a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the person who’d put her up to making a laughing-stock of herself in the first place?
The door opened. ‘Talk me out of what?’ said Simon. He didn’t look happy. He never looked happy.
‘Dumping me. Here’s your ring.’ Charlie dragged it off her finger. ‘I’m not going to haggle over the world’s smallest diamond. ’
‘I’m not . . . that’s not what I’m trying to do. Look, I’m sorry. I got angry.’
‘Really? I must have missed that part.’ Charlie would sooner have died than let him see how relieved she was. She was furious with herself for being relieved at all. How many men might she be engaged to at this very moment who would have found her Grace story hilarious? Billions. Dozens, at least. Most of whom would probably want to have sex with her.
‘I had a bad day at work,’ Simon told her. ‘I had to tell a man—’
‘Oh, diddums! Did the canteen run out of steak and kidney pie before you got to the front of the queue?’
‘Shut the fuck up and put your ring back on,’ said Simon.
‘I had an evil day yesterday, as it happens,’ Charlie snapped. ‘It totally fucked up my day off today, in fact, but in spite of that, I seem to be able to behave like a civilised human being. Or rather, I
seemed
to be able to, until you started on me!’ She blinked away tears as she slipped her ring back on.
The world’s smallest diamond.
She shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t true and it was an unforgivable thing to say. ‘I’m sorry. I love this ring. You know that.’ If our marriage is going to happen, she thought, if it’s going to work, he’ll ask me about my rotten day before telling me about his.
‘I spent all afternoon with a man who’s confessed to a murder, ’ said Simon. ‘Trouble is, the woman he reckons he murdered isn’t dead.’
Charlie’s mind flattened out; all other thoughts fell away. ‘What?’
‘I know. Strange. Actually, it gave me the creeps—he wasn’t someone I enjoyed being in a small room with.’ Simon opened his can of lager. ‘Do you want a drink, or is this the last beer?’
‘Tell me,’ Charlie heard herself say. It was as if the party and their row had never happened; she was back in the reception room at the nick, trying not to stare at the ribbons Ruth Bussey had wound round her thin ankles. Ruth Bussey with her limp and her frail, reedy voice, who was frightened something was going to happen, but didn’t know what . . .’
No, no, no. I can’t have got it all wrong, not again.
‘I wasn’t there for the beginning,’ said Simon. ‘I only got dragged into it today. When he came in yesterday, Gibbs talked to him.’
‘Yesterday? What time? What’s his name, this man?’
‘Aidan Seed.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Not exactly. What time did he come in yesterday?’
Simon screwed up his face, thinking. ‘Must have been some time between one and two.’
Charlie let out the breath she’d been holding. ‘At ten to twelve, his girlfriend was waiting for me when I turned up for my shift.’
‘His girlfriend?’
‘Ruth Bussey, she said her name was.’
Simon nodded. ‘He mentioned her. Not her surname, just as Ruth. What did she want?’
‘Same as him, by the sound of it. Told me her boyfriend was adamant he’d killed a woman called Mary Trelease . . .’
‘Right.’ Simon nodded.
‘. . . but that he couldn’t have, because Trelease is still alive. I thought she was deranged at first, so I asked a few background questions. The more she talked—’
‘The more you thought she seemed sane?’ Simon cut in. ‘Preoccupied, upset, but sane?’
‘Preoccupied’s an understatement. I’ve met human wreckage before, but this woman was in a worse state than anyone I’ve seen for a long time. Shaking with fear, crying one minute, then staring into the distance as if she’d seen a ghost, telling pointless lies that made no sense. She had something wrong with her foot, and claimed at first that she’d sprained her ankle. When I said it didn’t look swollen, she changed her story and said she had a blister.’
Simon paced the room, chewing his thumbnail as he often did when he was concentrating. ‘Seed was the opposite—not changeable at all. He was very controlled. At first I thought he had to be asylum material, but . . . he didn’t seem it, even though he was insisting on the impossible and wouldn’t listen to anything I said. Twenty-eight times, he told me something I knew couldn’t be true; tried to use logic, even, to make me believe it.’