The Crooked House (16 page)

On the stairs she had heard voices then: Jan, talking to someone. A low female voice answering, sullen, submissive: the woman she’d just seen outside, somehow she was sure of it. She crossed to the door and stood with her back to it; she needed to get back downstairs. ‘Simon Chatwin,’ she said again.

‘We ruled him out,’ said Sarah Rutherford. A pause. ‘He wasn’t their father. We tested him, he gave his permission. I can’t … I can’t talk to you about him, Alison. But you need to believe me, we ruled him out. When we found him out there, the morning after … there’s no way …’ There was noise again in the background, the door banged louder and Alison heard a child’s voice. She brought a hand to her mouth – she had a kid. ‘Can you come over?’ the policewoman said. ‘Come in to the station?’

‘I – I have to go now,’ said Alison. ‘I have to go.’

It
was
still there. Simon Chatwin’s boat.

The look Paul gave it was very different from the one he’d given Stephen Bray’s. The cabin looked like it had been made of chipboard by a child. It looked as though you could open the lopsided doors with a kick.

If the police had ruled Chatwin out, why were they still watching him? In her pocket the phone rang, and Paul’s head
turned, looking for the sound. Reluctantly she took it out.
Gina
, said the screen, and with her heart thumping, Paul’s eyes on her she put it to her ear. Smiled at him.

‘Hi!’ she said brightly.

The
Watts brothers were in their boatyard, planing a boat on blocks.

‘You’re good at this,’ Paul had said, when Alison led them back towards the quay by a different route on instinct, picking her way between jetties, not even knowing how she knew which path to take back, realising only as they got there that they would end up coming alongside the boatbuilders’ shed.

‘Fluke,’ she’d said, watching the men bent over the upturned boat. Martin had always been the quiet one, the peacemaker between Joshua and Joe, Danny more heedless, doing his own thing. But they seemed in unison now, heads down. Maybe it was how you got through stuff. ‘You can have a go next time,’ she said to Paul. ‘You know this place, I don’t.’ He shrugged.

The Watts’s house was a low cottage behind a patch of shorn grass at the back of the boatyard, a splash of green startling in the grey that stretched to the horizon behind it. That was where the milkman had come that morning, to tell their mother, his float abandoned in the yard. Alison no longer knew where she’d been told the story, if she’d overheard it
whispered in the kitchen, between her parents. Had it been Joe who told her? November. Her and Dad and the twins in front of the fire, the night it happened.

Joshua Watts must have been very clearly dead when the milkman found him, because otherwise you’d stay with him, wouldn’t you? You’d wait for an ambulance. Esme hadn’t stayed with her father. She’d stepped over him and gone into the dark.

‘It is an amazing place, isn’t it?’ said Paul, watching the Watts’s rhythmic movements along the curved length of the upturned boat. ‘The land that time forgot.’ He turned to her. ‘So who was it?’

In her pocket Alison’s hand tightened around the mobile. ‘Who?’

His arm came around her and she held very still, small in his embrace. ‘On the phone,’ he said, smiling down, patient.

‘Gina?’ The name came easily. A lie has to contain elements of truth. ‘An old friend.’ Something came to her. ‘Bloody Facebook, can you believe it? There’s no hiding place these days.’ She thrust her hands down in her pockets. ‘Not even in the land that time forgot.’

‘Really,’ said Paul, his lips on her cheek. ‘I didn’t know you did Facebook.’

‘You don’t have to,’ she answered, smooth, ‘if everyone else does. Your so-called friends will dish out your mobile number.’

Paul nodded, raising his head to look back at the boatyard, making no objection. Did he have reason to? She didn’t know how much he’d heard of their conversation.

Gina had launched straight in. ‘They know you’re here,’ she’d said, urgently. Alison had to concentrate so hard, to keep smiling with Paul’s eyes on her. She’d taken a step away from him, then another, holding a hand over the speaker and making an apologetic face before turning. ‘Who?’ she said to Gina. Now her back was to Paul. ‘Who knows?’

‘All
of them,’ said Gina. ‘You know this place. Someone must have seen you. Recognised you.’ Then when Alison said nothing, she went on, hissing, ‘It wasn’t me, you know. I said nothing. Nothing.’

They knew? Alison stood still and cold despite the sunshine, gripping the mobile tight. Who knew? She thought of Rosa in that grim London basement pub and her questions, her inexplicable phone call.
Take care
. Did she know? And all these years she had thought herself invisible, below the radar.

‘Tell me names.’ On the quay she saw Simon Chatwin’s van pull up outside the pub. Identifiable by his overalls, some kind of bandana over his shock of hair, he got out. Ron the landlord was only just opening up, and he had to wait on the doorstep. He didn’t look in their direction.

But Gina exhaled impatiently. ‘You think I’ve gone door to door asking? We knew it was Cornwall you’d gone to, you know that, don’t you? We left you alone, didn’t we? Safe out there, we thought.’

Across the marsh Chatwin disappeared inside the pub. The place was full of drunks, Paul had said, and it looked like Simon Chatwin was one. Esme had only worked at the place three Sundays, before that midsummer night that ended her childhood, and already she’d hated it, the bleary sozzled sticky afternoons, daytrippers and locals, laughter breaking out at tables. She didn’t think the landlord had given Esme a second glance, not then, nor Alison the night she and Paul had gone into the pub, either.

‘How do you know that was what I wanted?’ Alison said, keeping her voice low. ‘To be left alone?’ She’d thought of Gina so often. She’d wondered. ‘And who’s we? The Wattses?’ She paused. ‘Simon?’ She glanced back over her shoulder. Paul had moved away a little and was watching the horizon, his hands behind his back.

‘Ron knows,’ said Gina. ‘You went to the pub, right? If he
knows, everyone’s going to know, sooner or later. Why did you have to come back?’

‘I told you why,’ said Alison. ‘It’s a wedding.’ And something occurred to her, the knot tightening in her chest. ‘You don’t think they know? The Carters?’ She searched her memory. They’d given no sign. Could Roger Carter be so good an actor?

Gina made a sound of contempt. ‘I don’t mean them,’ she said. ‘They’re not us, are they? See them down the pub ever?’ A quick intake of breath. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ she went on quickly.

Alison heard Paul’s feet shifting on the gravel five, ten feet away and she turned.

‘I think I know,’ she said, raising her hand to shade her eyes, looking at him. Smiling. He stood, hands in pockets. Alison turned back.

‘I can’t talk,’ she said quickly. If he heard her mentioning the Carters’ name … ‘I’ll call you when I can?’ Gina had hung up without waiting a beat, leaving Alison turning back to Paul, all too aware of her heart thudding in her chest.

And now, as they watched, Danny Watts straightened from the boat and Martin with him, and the two men looked straight back at them. They were a hundred yards away, maybe less. Poised beside their boat, each with the heavy implement in his hand, they watched. Alison pulled the scarf close around her ears, hands in her pocket.

‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

It was close to midday but upstairs at The Laurels the curtains were drawn. From the driver’s seat Paul looked up at Alison as she hesitated between the stucco pillars of the Carters’ porch.

His expression was the same one he’d had in the hotel room as she changed: he looked entertained by her discomfort. Alison had gone to put on lipstick in the gleaming bathroom, reflected
back at herself in half a dozen shining surfaces every time she moved.

‘You don’t have to go, you know,’ he said, though his amusement made it impossible to stay. If she stayed it would end in the row about Morgan that had hovered since Alison had first read the invitation parked on Paul’s mantelpiece – or maybe that would just be where it began. ‘Morgan won’t mind.’

‘She’s winding me up,’ said Alison. ‘You know she is.’

‘Then call her bluff,’ said Paul, good-humoured from the desk. He’d said he’d drop her then come back and work till she reappeared. Then with a lifted eyebrow, ‘You look nice.’

She’d put on more lipstick than she intended: her lips were a hard red in the bathroom mirror. He stepped inside the room and taking hold of her elbows he kissed her. Alison tried to pull back, knowing the red would come off on him, but he held her, his mouth pressing hers almost until their teeth met and then he let her go. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Don’t want to go overboard,’ he said, looking at her in the mirror. The lips were softer, blurred. He ran a finger under her mouth where there was a smudge. ‘You don’t need to impress Morgan, you know.’

She saw herself colour in the mirror, and said nothing. ‘And if you give Morgan an inch …’ he added, turning back into the bedroom.

There had been a reminder from Morgan waiting at the front desk when they walked back in.
Longing to see Alison. Sometime this morning?
Hand-delivered – so someone at least in The Laurels had been up early. Alison noticed in passing that the writing was the same as it had been on Paul’s invitation. There’d been no misunderstanding, then, no farming out of the guest list. She felt the murmur of secrets between Paul and Morgan. A wind-up.

From the porch she watched him drive away. She’d told him she’d walk back.

If
she hadn’t got back by two, he said, he’d be out with Christian, doing some stag activity. A round of golf. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be a whole gang for a stag party?’ Alison had said, her turn to stir.

Paul had just laughed. ‘The Carters like their incomers to be unattached,’ he said. ‘It makes them more manageable. It’s why I got on so well with them.’

The door was answered by Lucy Carter in a dressing gown, her face taut with hangover, two sharp lines between her eyebrows. ‘Oh, hello, dear,’ she said without enthusiasm. There was no trace of curiosity in her look or her voice. She couldn’t know who Alison was. Esme. She stayed in the doorway and turned to call up the stairs, ‘Morgan?’ Wincing. ‘Little Alison’s here.’ Only then did she step back, pulling the thick dressing gown tighter around her.

‘Thanks so much for last night, Mrs Carter,’ said Alison, and then she did catch a sharp look from under the drawn brows but Lucy Carter didn’t reply. Morgan was on the wide staircase, soft-footed, a light silk thing flying out behind her that she tugged at as she stopped, halfway down.

‘You came!’ she said, delighted by some prospect Alison couldn’t determine. She leaned down over the banister. Alison saw cleavage carelessly revealed, two pale curves soft under the silk. ‘Up here.’ And was already halfway round the galleried landing when Alison started up the stairs behind her.

The room was huge, cream and pink, with a big bay window, a deep carpet and a four-poster bed that dominated the space. A doll’s house stood on a table by the wall, the front open, the tiny furniture laid out, not a single chair overturned, not a trace of dust. For a second Alison imagined Lucy Carter up here on her knees, cleaning the minuscule kitchen implements. It was a princess’s bedroom, the room of a child who always got what she asked for, and more.

On the deep window sill there was a tray with an ice bucket
and glasses, and Morgan was standing beside it fiddling with the foil on a champagne bottle. Expensive champagne. Morgan would always have money, one way or the other, that seemed obvious. Alison realised she didn’t know if Paul was rich or poor – he owned his flat, she knew that much. He was comfortable. Would that have been enough for Morgan? She’d have made something different out of him, maybe, or would have tried. Not for the first time, she wondered why they’d broken up.

The cork popped, the bottle foamed and Morgan handed her a glass. It was so full Alison had to put her lips straight to the brim to stop it spilling, and looking over it she saw Morgan’s smile. She straightened, the champagne dry and good on her tongue: it was not even midday. Swallowing, she thought of her father, slipping to the pub from his workshop at lunchtime; Simon Chatwin, on Ron’s doorstep; and she felt the warm hit of alcohol softening the outlines of things, like mist.

Morgan lifted her own glass, no more than half full. ‘Cheers,’ she said, bringing it away before it touched Alison’s. ‘
So
sweet of you to come.’ Alison looked around for a level surface and set her glass down carefully on Morgan’s bedside table.

‘What a room,’ she said, putting a hand to the curtains around the four-poster, some kind of stiff heavy silk. The bed was king-sized, where Esme’s had been a narrow single under the window, posters stuck over it. A girl’s bedroom, the place she ran to, burying her face in the pillows to cry over some boy, her parents oblivious downstairs.

The image of the room at the top of the crooked house hovered at the back of Alison’s mind, but she didn’t step into it, she didn’t allow it into focus. The shapes sat in soft darkness, the letters of her name on the shelf, the alarm clock, the door, ajar. The line of light from the stairs, and voices.

You drink too much.

You’ve got a problem.

You’re a fine one to talk.

Had
Morgan ever done that? Lain up here, and listened, lain and sobbed. It was hard to imagine. Had Paul slept in this bed with her? In her stomach the sip of alcohol warmed, burned, provoked her. Next thing, they’d be scrapping, she and Morgan in a catfight and Morgan just holding her at arm’s length. Perhaps that was the plan. She smiled, instead.

‘How does it feel?’ she said, feeling nothing herself but a kind of dread. ‘Tomorrow you’ll be a married woman.’ Paul had said
Marry me
, it came back to her with a jolt. She looked over at the glass she’d set down, wanting just another sip.

‘How did Christian propose?’ she said on impulse and Morgan made a small, distinct sound in her throat, quickly suppressed. She didn’t like the question: it was why Alison had asked it. Because it raised the possibility that Paul might ask Alison, might already have asked? And because from what Alison already knew it was quite possible that Christian hadn’t actually proposed at all, that all this was some kind of an arranged marriage, contracts signed between professionals.

But like the lawyer she was, after that first intake of breath Morgan just blindsided her opponent, standing there looking without answering, champagne glass in hand, the dressing gown pulled tighter. Everything about this set-up seemed designed to remind Alison that she was the lesser woman, the upstart, the child with no breasts and a single bed. I’m not the one playing princess, she said, in her head.

‘Lovely bed,’ Alison tried again, thinking, Horrible. ‘Most girls would dream of one of these.’

Morgan wrinkled her nose. ‘I must have loved it once,’ she said, wafting an indifferent hand. ‘Cost a fortune.’ She set down her glass, untouched; her dressing gown slipped from her shoulders, a collarbone gleamed, the velvet hollow of an armpit was exposed before she pulled the material together again. In her head Alison saw Paul’s hands on her and she had to blink to clear the image.

‘D’you
want to see the dress?’ said Morgan, picking up the glass Alison had left beside the bed and handing it back to her. ‘I don’t believe in bad luck.’