The Liar's Chair (2 page)

With shaking hands I pull on the hand brake, smoothe my hair, then step out into the sour smell of wet grit, praying David won’t see me before I’ve cleaned myself up. My breath is
short and sharp as I make my way to the house. I open the front door, and our two huskies – David’s noisy, needy shitting-machines who’ve been poised and barking on the other side
– pour through the gap, growling. They circle me and sniff the unfamiliar earth which covers my clothes. I shush and stroke them to let them get my smell, then shoo them back to David where
they bound happily as soon as they know I’m not an intruder. I hear David on the phone in the sitting room. ‘No, no,’ he says – his voice pitched soft for such a stocky man,
the tone more in line with his height than his weight – ‘you can call me any time.’ His words carry effortlessly through the polished rooms of the ground floor. ‘It’s
always good to hear from you.’ A client, I think, or maybe someone from the club, someone who requires the treacle of his charm. David won’t leave a business call halfway through, even
to confront his absconding wife. Our dogs yap in the other room, and I suspect they’re bouncing up at him to get his attention, probably licking his fingers as he strokes them with his free
hand.

The hallway smells of mint, David’s signature tea, so he must have a cup on the go. The aroma turns my stomach. An old cardboard box is torn and scattered on the floor – something
for the dogs to chew so they don’t damage our nice things. David must have been caught off guard by the phone call to have left them in the house without supervision.

Behind me the front door closes with a soft clunk and my uneven shoes alternate a tap and a slide. I slip them off and carry them as I make my way towards the downstairs bathroom. Once inside, I
lock the door, and it’s only then I take a proper look at myself: the torn skirt, scratches on my legs and blood up my arms. Fingernails full of mud. I hang my jacket on the back of the door
then turn on the tall sink tap. Water comes out fast, but the temperature won’t adjust quickly enough, and I wash my hands in the scalding liquid. Steam rises in my face as I bend my arm into
the stream and scrub the cuts with soap until they sting. A rose whirlpool is swallowed down the plug. The noise of the gushing water bounces from marbled floor to marbled wall and back again;
there’s room in here for more furniture – towels, rugs or any addition of comfort to help absorb the echo – but we never got round to filling the space.

I slide open the shower cubicle, reach inside and turn on the water. Steam clouds mist the room. Against the wall is a rubbish bin, and I strip off my shirt, skirt and tights, putting everything
inside, including my underwear and shoes, then take the liner from the bin and tie it at the top. My hands are still wet as I try to secure a double knot, and I struggle to keep hold of the
slippery edges. ‘Damn it.’ I leave it to one side for later. The knot gracefully unspools as I step under the hot pins of the shower.

With my hands on the glass wall, I bend my head to let the water stream down my face and into my eyes. ‘Dear God,’ I whisper.

The accident replays in my mind in stop-motion: the man’s face as I rounded the corner, his skull denting the windscreen, the dull thud of his bones against the car. Or was the sound a
snap? I squeeze my eyes tight but the moment keeps coming at me, more gruesome each time, and I watch him flip and split, blood spraying from his open mouth, until I’m not sure what really
happened and what I’m imagining.

I hold my head in my hands.

Tears come, silently at first, then sobs which grow louder above the slash of water until my weeping sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else. I retch a couple of times and, on the
third attempt, vomit a whisky bile into the shower tray. Yellow strings of phlegm swirl down the plug. I hold my mouth into the jet of water, rinse and spit, rinse and spit.

There’s knocking on the bathroom door. I jump. The handle rattles.

‘Rachel?’ David’s voice is muted behind the wood, but I sense his urgency. ‘Rachel, what’s going on in there? Are you OK?’

Shit. I grab the soap and scrub my body, rubbing the tablet over my head and hair, repeating the action at speed several times, forgetting where I’ve washed already, until the muddy water
turns pale. ‘Just coming,’ I call. The bottles of luxury hair products that David buys for me skitter under my feet.

‘Rachel? Open the door.’ The handle shakes. ‘Come on, let me in.’ I freeze in the jet of water, then the clatter outside the door stops. Silence, so I finish washing and
am about to turn off the shower when there’s a scraping of metal. David is opening the lock from the other side. He must have got a screwdriver to turn the latch. I press back against the
cold tiles.

‘Hang on, I’m coming,’ I say, reaching to find the dial to turn off the shower, but the bathroom door is open before I’ve had the chance and David is in the room.

‘You don’t need to lock the door, baby,’ he says, and comes close to the steamed-up screen. ‘Where have you been? I was so worried.’

I turn my back and stand in the jet of water, glancing over my shoulder for a second to see his features take on focus in the fog.

‘Are you OK?’ he says.

‘I’m fine. Just finishing up.’

He moves backwards in the room, his body a hazy shape, then returns to me with the glowing expanse of a towel, open and ready in a silent command. I turn off the water and step into the fabric
with my head down. Wet hair slicks my face. David wraps me in the cotton and pushes his fingers through my hair to take it back off my face, forcing my head up in jolts as he does so, and trying to
catch my eyes with his. I keep my gaze downwards.

‘You have no idea how worried I was.’ He holds me tight in his arms and kisses my wet head. ‘I was about to call the police. Why the hell didn’t you return my
calls?’

The bassline of my hangover throbs behind my eyes. I nuzzle into his shirt, hiding my face as my nostrils fill with the odour of dry-cleaning chemicals. Upstairs, David has another five
identical shirts, plus duplicates of the tailored jeans and brogues that make up his casual weekend uniform. He places his hands on my cheeks and turns my head up to him. I keep my eyes shut.

‘Why won’t you look at me?’ he says.

I open my stinging eyes.

‘Have you been crying?’

‘No, I’ve got soap in my eyes.’

He leans forward and kisses both my eyelids then folds his arms round me again. It’s good to be held and I want to give in, release everything and hand over to David as I’ve always
done, but this time there’s too much to tell and I force the sob back down.

A pause.

‘Rachel,’ he says, ‘I need some answers.’

I take a deep breath and speak into the towel. ‘I’m sorry. I met an old school friend, it was last minute, I got carried away. Sometimes, I don’t know, I just get sad about
Mum, and last night I felt I needed some space. I checked into a hotel to sleep off the alcohol.’

‘A school friend? You should have told me, baby, I was really worried, I missed you.’ He slips his hand inside the towel and rubs the curve at the small of my back. My skin fizzles.
‘It’s not how we do things here. Is it? We have an order to things, a duty to each other.’

I look up, though he’s not much taller than me. His thick blond hair melts in the steam.

‘Well?’ he says, holding my chin with his other hand and looking directly into my eyes. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ This close, the detail in his eyes is magnified,
and dark spots pepper the green irises. The whites are bold and bright. ‘We spoke about your episodes, and it’s not how it’s meant to be. It’s not our path. I won’t
put up with any of that rubbish again.’ His hand rubs my back with more pressure. ‘No more locked doors, no more lies. We were doing so well, weren’t we, baby? You need to toe the
line. I can’t keep bailing you out.’

I look down and move away from him, freeing my arms to grab the towel that’s falling from my shoulders. The cuticles of my toenails are darkened by mud, and I remember the man’s
dirty hands and what looked like blue ink stains on his fingers. I take a breath to stop the urge to vomit.

David paces the floor. His shoes make a rhythmic tap and squeak on the tiles. One of the dogs, the older bitch and David’s current favourite, has come in too. She paces with him. He stops.
She sits at his side. He holds one of her ears between his forefinger and thumb and rubs the fur gently as if it were a child’s soft blanket. The dog cocks its head sideways towards him and
sits motionless. David looks down and smiles at the animal. Then he lifts his eyes and scans the ceiling and walls, bringing his gaze to rest on the sink. His fingers stop moving. The dog whines
for him to continue but David lets go and turns to me.

‘What’s this?’ he asks, one hand pointing at the thick scum around the edge of the sink. His gesture is poised in mid-air for dramatic effect, and he holds it there a beat too
long. ‘Why is the sink so dirty?’ He moves towards me, and as he gets close I go limp. I stand in front of him as I’ve learnt to do, not blinking or moving. His breath is hot on
my face and he talks softly, in monotone. ‘Tell me, Rachel. What’s going on? What happened? The truth. Now.’

I take a deep breath. ‘I hit a deer.’

‘A deer? Where?’

‘On Blackthorn Lane. It came out of nowhere. It was injured and frightened and I tried to help but it ran into the woods. I chased it but it got away.’

‘Why would you do that? What would be the point of catching an injured deer? Did you think you could wrestle it into the car and take it to the vet’s?’

‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It was stupid of me.’

David inhales and exhales loudly through his nostrils, and his eyes skitter around the room, this time coming to rest on the bin liner with the remaining heel of a shoe stabbing through the
plastic. ‘So why are you throwing away your clothes?’

‘Because they’re dirty.’

‘So wash them.’

‘They’re beyond cleaning.’

David comes up close again and opens the towel. He holds my arm as he scans the scratches on my forearm, raising the limb higher than is comfortable. Old acne scars pock his cheeks, the silent
reminder of the imperfections of his youth. His grip is firm on my upper arm and his pupils jog between each of my eyes. ‘Rachel, what’s going on? You’re a mess. Why didn’t
you tell me about the deer in the first place?’ He leans forward, I lean back, and he sniffs the whisky-filled air in front of my mouth. I turn but it’s too late. His jaw drops open.
‘Good God, Rachel, you must have drunk the whole bar! Did you have doubles for breakfast?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how late it was when I finished drinking, and then I knew I had to get back to you, I knew you’d be worried, and I thought I’d be OK to
drive.’

‘You’re not making any sense, Rachel. Where were you drinking until the early hours and who is this mystery school friend of yours?’

His face is composed, though my arm stings as David intensifies the pressure and squeezes my skin into white lumps between his fingers.

‘Tell me her name. Give me your phone, I want to call her.’

My brain tries to focus on another excuse, but the juggernaut of the accident sidewipes every thought. All I know for certain is that David’s reaction to discovering my affair with Will
would be more extreme than his response to finding out I’ve killed a man.

‘He was on the road,’ I say, my tears spilling out again. ‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. It was raining hard and the car, it . . .’

David moves away to get a tissue. ‘Stop crying,’ he says, handing me the paper. ‘I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’

I wipe my face. ‘I’m sorry . . . there was a man. Oh God, there was a man on the road.’ I sob into the tissue then look up to see David’s face turn red. I pull my words
together. ‘The car, I was going too fast. I couldn’t stop in time.’

‘My God!’ He clasps his hair, then seizes me by my shoulders and shakes me. ‘What have you done?’

‘I didn’t mean to. I knew I was over the limit and I panicked.’

He stops still and stares with round, unwavering eyes. ‘Rachel, you need to tell me everything.’

‘He shouldn’t have been there. I mean, not in this weather, not on that road.’ I put my arm up to David’s shoulder, but he pulls away. ‘Hardly anyone walks there,
even in good weather.’

‘I can’t believe this.’ He paces up and down, then smashes the flat of his hand against the tiled wall. ‘Where is he now?’

‘He’s gone,’ I whisper.

‘What did you say?’

I shout, ‘He’s dead!’ The noise makes me wince.

‘Jesus!’ Again he paces. ‘Who was he?’

‘I don’t know.’ I’m gabbling now. ‘But I’ve seen him before. He’s a homeless man, the one who walks everywhere. No one will miss him.’

‘How do you know?’ With the heel of his hand, David rubs the frown at the bridge of his nose. ‘Did you call an ambulance?’

‘No.’

‘Where is he now? Is he still on the road?’

‘No.’ I laugh weakly but David flicks his eyes at me and I stop. ‘Why do you think I’m in this state?’

‘What have you done with him?’

‘I dragged him into the woods, far in, away from the road. You can’t even see the cars from where I left him.’

‘Good girl. Did anyone see you?’

‘No.’

‘What about on the way home?’

‘A couple of cars. Only a few. No one I recognized.’

‘And did you drop anything? Did you have all your things with you when you got back in the car?’

‘Yes, I did. I do.’

‘And the car itself?’

‘It’s a mess. The windscreen, the front bonnet’s crushed, one of the lights—’

‘Enough.’ David holds up his hand. ‘I need to think.’

The room’s growing cold and my skin is speckled with goosebumps, like a plucked chicken. I hold the towel tight round me. David walks up and down, running his hands through his hair, his
fingers leaving tramlines.

He stops and stands with his back to me. His shoulders heave up and down with his breath. He’s mumbling but I can just make out his words: ‘This is not how it’s supposed to
be.’ Then he spins round to face me, his eyes alight. ‘I will deal with the essentials, the car, these clothes,’ he points at me, ‘but you need to keep quiet.’ He ties
a tight double knot in the bin liner. ‘We will carry on as if nothing has happened. This,’ he waves his hand around the room like a conductor, lending me a granule of eye contact in the
process, ‘all that we’ve built – our marriage, this house, our business – it all stays the same. We cannot let this spoil how far we’ve come.’