The Telling Error (23 page)

And then, without warning, it was all over. His skin was no longer touching mine. At all – not anywhere on my body. I heard the rustle of clothing, the metallic jingle of a belt buckle. I opened my mouth to speak and he clapped his hand over it, enforcing his no-talking rule. And then he left, slamming the door behind him.

Within fifteen minutes I was emailing him: ‘What the hell happened then? Why did you run off?’

No reply.

I emailed over and over again, all evening, all night. Nothing.

The next morning, I wrote several more times. My emails became progressively more hysterical. In the
Daily Herald
that day, Damon Blundy pulverised supporters of abortion rights for women who were against the death penalty, and supporters of the death penalty who were anti-abortion – ‘It’s either acceptable to end a life for a truly excellent reason or it isn’t’ – but King Edward remained silent. In desperation, I nearly posted a comment in response to Damon’s abortion/death-penalty rant, saying, ‘Why the fuck are you ignoring me?’ Thank God I didn’t, since he wouldn’t have had a clue who I was or what I was talking about.

I stayed in the Chancery Hotel for the full week, checking my Hushmail inbox every three seconds. King Edward didn’t get in touch. I wept a lot. Then, when my time alone ran out, I went home and tried to pretend I was OK, though I was far from it. So many times I nearly collapsed in a sobbing heap on the floor. I told Adam I was feeling sick and that I was probably coming down with a bug. He believed me and was sympathetic. I felt like a repulsive zombie who had somehow infiltrated a lovely, respectable middle-class family.

Three days after I returned home, I got an email from King Edward – Damon, as I still believed he was, since by now he had been signing his emails ‘Damon’ for more than six months. He apologised for his silence. It was unforgiveable, he knew. The reason for it was guilt. I wrote him back a long email explaining why he mustn’t feel guilty – true love was true love and should never be denied, all that kind of rubbish.

His response came straight away. ‘You don’t understand,’ he’d written. ‘The man you were with at the Chancery Hotel, the one who drove you wild for hours and then disappeared without warning – it wasn’t me, or anyone you know. He was a stranger.’

‘Nicki, it’s Mum. Who’s King Edward?’

Involuntarily, my hands clench. Did I really pick up the phone and whisper his name out loud?
Get a fucking grip, Nicki.
‘Oh, I’m just looking at Ethan’s history homework,’ I say, glancing down at the failed test on the table in front of me. I must make time to read it, take it in, take it seriously. Soon. ‘Mum, I’ll have to ring you later,’ I say. ‘I’m bursting for the loo.’

‘Ring me straight back, please,’ she says. ‘It’s important.’

‘Is something wrong? You sound …’ She sounds the way Kate Zilber sounded when I first told her I was being followed, the way I don’t want anyone ever to sound when they speak to me. Nothing horrifies me more than that
Please sit down because I have some very bad news
tone.
Please follow me to that room over there in which something deeply unpleasant will happen.
It’s never as bad once you find out what the thing is. I’d far rather someone screamed, ‘A nuclear war’s just started!’ in my face, without warning. Why add a layer of pre-suffering suffering?

‘Do you want to have the discussion now, or do you want to ring me back?’ asks my mother.

‘I’ll call you in five minutes,’ I say. As soon as I’m off the phone, I run to Adam’s and my bedroom and get my three tiny glass angels out of my bedroom drawer. It’s an embarrassing superstition that I have, one I can’t seem to shake off: if I’m going to be speaking to or seeing either or both of my parents, I need to have the angels with me – in a pocket, in my sock, somewhere. They’re my lucky charm. No one knows about them, not even Adam or Melissa.

Once they’re safely in my trouser pocket, I go back to the box room and ring Mum, feeling adequately armed. That doesn’t mean she won’t wound me, but it will prevent the wound from being fatal.

‘What’s so urgent?’ I ask her.

‘Did you kill this Damon Blundy man?’ she asks without preamble. ‘Were you having an affair with him?’

I feel like a fisherman who, after an agonisingly long wait, has caught a large, rare fish. There’s something satisfying about getting proof – yet more proof – that I’m right not to trust my mother, right to believe she doesn’t and never has had my best interests at heart. Ideally, she would indicate that she thinks I’m bound to have murdered someone every time I spoke to her; that would save me the hassle of wondering, periodically, if she might not be quite as monstrous as my father.

‘I definitely didn’t kill Damon Blundy, but thanks for thinking of me,’ I say. ‘As for an affair, that’s none of your business.’

‘It’s the police’s business, since he’s been killed,’ Mum says. ‘And … Dad and Lee say, and they’re right, that it needs to be Adam’s business too. You’re the mother of his children, with them every day, their main carer. Adam needs to know the truth about you. We’re not happy about any of this, but you’ve left us with no choice. You’ve gone too far this time, Nicki.’

She thinks I did it. She really thinks I killed him. I didn’t, but I feel a cold, hard pride all the same.

‘No, you’ve gone too far,’ I correct her unemotionally. It’s not an act. In the presence of my parents and Lee, my feelings do a runner. I couldn’t cry or get angry now if I tried. I’m an android, specialising in sarcastic put-downs. ‘By the way, the gone-too-far-this-time line would have had more impact if you hadn’t been saying it to me since I was a toddler.’

‘Put Adam on the phone. Or do you want me to drive round there?’

I manage to force out a laugh. ‘So, wait, let’s see if I’ve got this right: Dad and Lee have decided to bring me to justice, appointed you as the messenger, and the message is that you’ve all snitched on me to the police? And you’re going to share your inventive theory with Adam too?’

‘There’s no point lying any longer, Nicki. Melissa’s told us everything.’

‘Everything and more, by the sound of it, since me killing Damon Blundy isn’t part of everything. Nor is me having an affair with him. And feel free to tell Adam whatever you want, but there’s nothing about me he doesn’t know, as of yesterday. After my interview with the police … I assume Melissa told you all about that?’

‘She did, yes. She’s worried about you. We all are.’

‘Thanks. I’m touched.’

‘Melissa, as your best friend—’

‘Best friend?’ I laugh. ‘Yes, a best friend containing a Trojan horse containing a worst enemy – that kind of best friend. It was talking to her yesterday that made me decide to tell Adam everything. I had a feeling that some unwarranted suspicion of murder and a huge betrayal might be just round the corner. I didn’t want anyone holding me to ransom, so I told him all my secrets. Which, I’m afraid, means I’ve spoiled your fun. You can always tell him anyway if you want? I can ask him to pretend he doesn’t already know.’

I’m going to have to tell Adam, now that I’ve called Mum’s bluff. Confess all my sins. I will worry about that once I get her off the phone.

Some of my sins
. I don’t have to tell Adam everything.

Thankfully, Melissa knows nothing about King Edward and the Chancery Hotel.

‘I even told Adam whether I did or didn’t kill Damon Blundy,’ I say childishly.

‘You just told me you didn’t kill him,’ says Mum. ‘Are you admitting you did now?’

‘No. I’m saying I told Adam the truth about whether I did or didn’t.’

‘And you told me a lie?’

‘No. I told you the truth too.’

‘This isn’t a game, Nicki.’

But everything must be a game, mustn’t it? Or else it’s all too much to bear. Everything is a game and I have to win.

‘Have you and Dad hired a man with streaked hair to follow me?’ I ask. ‘Or has Lee?’

‘What man with streaked hair?’

‘I’ve no idea. That’s why I’m asking you. A man’s been following me.’

‘You’ll probably end up in bed with him,’ says Mum. It’s the first flare-up of anger I’ve heard in her voice since the beginning of the conversation.

‘No, he runs away when I turn round,’ I say. ‘Perhaps it’s a weird kind of sexual “What’s-the-Time-Mister-Wolf?” role-play game?’

‘What did Adam say when you told him about your various one-night stands and your long-running affair with Damon Blundy?’ Mum asks.

‘He said, “I’ll forgive you all your sins, but only if you take me on a no-expense-spared snowboarding holiday in the French Alps.” No, he didn’t really. I’m kidding. And I had no long-running or indeed short-running affair with Damon Blundy. I thought you believed in honesty – doesn’t it bother you to make up a pack of lies about me and keep putting it forward as the truth?’

‘What did Adam say, Nicki? When you told him about your many infidelities?’

Many? Melissa only knows about two since I got together with Adam. Add to those my fictional affair with Damon Blundy: three. Hardly ‘many’. Mum needs to get out more. Actually, given that she lives with Dad, she needs to get out permanently. If she’d been braver as a young woman and allowed herself to see him for what he is and act on it, there might have been some hope for her.

‘It’s none of your fucking business what Adam said. Generally, I tend not to discuss my private life with people who inform on me to the police when I’m innocent.’

I hang up and sit still in my chair, waiting for my feelings to catch up with what’s just happened. It will take a while. I must make the most of this numb time to get as much done as possible.
Preparations.

Will Adam ask for a divorce? Is this the true beginning of my life falling apart?

I must do whatever it takes to extricate myself from being suspected of murder. If that means telling the police my real reason for making a quick getaway on Elmhirst Road on Monday, so be it. I’m not a coward like my mother. I’ll do what I have to do.

I pick up the phone and ring Adam at work. When he answers, I say, ‘I need you to come home.’

An hour later, Adam and I are in our bedroom with the door closed. Downstairs, the TV reassures our children by producing its usual comforting early evening burble of voices. Sophie and Ethan have no idea that they might soon need more comforting than usual. Hopefully, if I handle this right, they will never find out how close they came to having their world shattered.

‘So … what is this?’ Adam asks. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve dragged me home from work to show me three coloured glass angels?’

I’ve laid them out in a neat row on the bed. The duvet’s plain white and they stand out nicely. ‘I need to tell you something you’re not going to like at all,’ I say to Adam. ‘But first I want to tell you a story about when I was a child, and I want you to tell me what you think about that story.’ Without waiting for his agreement, I start to tell him.

I stole the three angels from my playgroup when I was four years old. One is pink, one green and one yellow.

Aged four, I didn’t realise I’d stolen them. I simply saw them in the toy tin at playgroup, loved the way they looked and decided to take them home with me. When I showed them to Mum, excited about my haul, she didn’t say a word, but she looked at them as if they were capsules containing ricin. She went to get Dad, who bellowed at me until long after it got dark – about serious crimes and punishment and bad people getting their hands chopped off.

The next day, Mum stood over me at playgroup while I recited the apology she and Dad had made me learn by heart and practise in front of them several times over breakfast. It contained none of my own words. Neither of them had smiled at me even once since my semi-accidental confession the day before; both were still as angry as they’d been at the moment of discovery.

I returned the angels to the tin, and did an excellent job of pretending I didn’t care. Inside, I was screaming,
But I need them!
By this point, I’d decided that I preferred the three angels to my parents. The woman who ran the playgroup kept telling my mum that it wasn’t important, and Mum kept contradicting her and saying that it was. After Mum had gone home, the nice playgroup owner said I could have the angels as a present, since I liked them so much. I remember thanking her, and thinking, You’ve no idea, have you? There’s no way I could ever take them home and let my parents see them, no matter what story I tell them – not even if they’re accompanied by a letter from you insisting that you want me to have them and that it was your initiative, not mine.