Little Liar Page 10

  I was amused by her roundabout way of auditioning me: summoning me to her house, asking me to tell her a story. I would come to understand that Bel had her own way of doing things, and it wasn’t always straightforward.

  ‘It’s only a few scenes. Two rehearsals at most! And the performance Monday after next. I’ll pay you in wine and candy. I’ll make you a pedestal of finest crystal. Just say you’ll do it. Please?’

  I thought about it. Part of me, of course, wanted to say no at once, out of habit as much as anything else. That was the Norian way. But part of me, inexplicably, did not.

  There was no sign of Anton as we left the house. Bel clattered ahead of me down the path. It was fully dark now, and drizzling. She had picked up the bottle of wine that had been open at dinner, I noticed, though there wasn’t much left.

  Cody was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. What did Bel’s father think of him? I wondered.

  ‘Y’all right,’ he said to us both, in greeting. ‘Where to?’

  I didn’t feel great, I said, and I wanted to go home.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Bel. ‘Come for a drink. Lift your spirits with spirits! Take us to the Battersea Bridge Hotel,’ she said, clambering into the car.

  5

  It was a wedding. That much was instantly clear. Although two elderly women looked askance as we came through the door in our finery, the doorman (a little thrill chimed in me at the sight of an actual doorman) waved us immediately towards the lift, next to which there was an ivy-covered board bearing the legend MR AND MRS EGENHAUSER, in a just-married heart. The Battersea Bridge Hotel was medium-sized, but fancy: the floors were pinkish marble; the walls were mirrored; Art Deco chandeliers hung from the ceiling in the lobby.

  Bel stopped by a circular tray on a small coffee table. She picked up a glass with a semicircle of orange twisted at the rim, and drained it. ‘Screwdriver,’ she said.

  A glowing light announced the arrival of the lift. As the doors parted, Bel leaned over and kissed me on the lips. I don’t know why people always describe the taste of a kiss, although for the record I think she tasted of smoke and the remnants of other people’s drinks. There were other, more prevalent senses at this moment. The smell and feel of her hair as it fell about my face, for example. It was as though a tent were collapsing on top of me. Her lips were softer than Jonah Trace’s, but only a little. After the first jolt of excitement came my usual dislike of having my personal space invaded, and although I suppose I allowed her to kiss me, I made no attempt to kiss her back. I could feel her laughing as she pulled away, doing a kind of pirouette-curtsy, and dived into the lift. Hoping that the two old women had not seen this little tableau, I paused and then followed.

  On the way up to the seventh floor we were silent. I felt that she wanted me to challenge her, to ask her why she had kissed me; I also sensed that to do so would somehow be the wrong move. I needed to accept it for what it was, whatever that might be – a lightning-strike of attraction (unlikely), an act of pure randomness (more likely), a piece of performance art (likelier still). It would not be cool to enquire.

  Then Bel said, ‘Have you ever done any acting?’

  ‘A bit,’ I said.

  ‘Have you won any awards?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Have you?’

  She looked coy. ‘Of course.’

  I had an idea that this was untrue.

  ‘There’s a project coming up that I’m excited about,’ she said. ‘Top secret at the moment. I can’t say too much, but … Oh, Nora. It could be the best thing that ever happened.’

  We arrived, and came out of this lift to the drumming of rain and the babble of guests. It was a sprawling, glass-roofed space; sparkling doors led out onto a terrace from which you could see the night-time astronomy of the Thames. There was a canopy protecting the wedding guests from the rain; heaters emanated an orange glow, but there were few people actually outside. Waiters and waitresses bore trays of canapés on green fronds, while others circulated with bottles of champagne. In good weather, it might have been magical.

  A woman with an auburn bun and a clipboard asked for our names.

  ‘Annabel Ingram plus one.’

  ‘I don’t see you.’

  ‘We’re with the band.’

  ‘Oh. Hang on.’ The woman turned over a page. ‘Here you are.’ She drew a line through Annabel’s name and gave us a glacial smile.

  Bel pushed me through the door. I hesitated. The glacial smile had unnerved me; that and the fact that there had been no plus one next to Bel’s name. I was a stranger, an uninvited guest at a wedding, as unwanted as a dark fairy at a christening. I was suddenly aware that it was past nine, or possibly even later, and I’d told Evie I wouldn’t be home too late. I didn’t like the thought of her worrying.

  ‘I should go,’ I said.

  ‘Honey, we only just got here!’ said Bel.

  Under the yellowy lights, her hair looked less white and more golden. I could see people looking at her, the way they might observe an unusual sculpture. She took me by the elbow again. Now she was leading me through the crowd. Every woman, it seemed, was some kind of fairy. Some outfits were more conservative than others; some people wore masks and headdresses; there was a sprinkling of wings. The men, by and large, wore suits, but I spied a handful of donkey-ears. The room was heavily upholstered in greenery and twinkling lights. I looked for the bride; I saw a tall girl upholstered in a fishtailed monstrosity with a garland of azaleas and guessed that this must be the unfairylike Mrs Egenhauser.

  ‘It’s supposed to be A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Bel said. ‘I love costume parties. But I coulda done this so much better.’

  She said this quite loudly; a couple of official-looking fairies took notice of this insult and frowned. Bel found a fuchsia-coloured drink and drained it neatly, professionally. She took no notice of the side-eyeing men in their dark, expensive suits, of the official-looking fairies. These people were presumably not her friends. A quick assessment of the crowd told me that Bel would have no more time for them than she would for most of the girls at Lady Agatha’s.

  I looked around for the band. In the corner was a low platform, flanked by speakers, and on it a quartet of players. A girl sat astride a wooden box that she was pounding with one capable hand. A dark-skinned boy was playing upright bass. I saw Darian, sitting at a Yamaha keyboard, an iPad propped beside him to show the score. He was playing with quiet concentration. I felt that he was one of those people who could abstract himself entirely from any situation in favour of the inner spaces of his mind. A second girl, about my height, in a dark-red dress, was singing about moonlight in Vermont. Her voice was rich and low and rather good, I thought, though I do not have much of a musical ear. People were dancing in a self-conscious way on the small square dance floor, wings clashing, while others staggered about with drinks and cameras, or phones, photographing themselves with the usual tiresome narcissism.

  ‘Penny for them, sugar,’ said a voice, and I looked up to see Bel smiling at me.

  I replied truthfully: ‘I was thinking that I’d rather die than be the kind of person who takes a selfie.’

  She screamed with appreciative laughter. I was relieved that she did not try to kiss me again. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  She elbowed her way through the wedding-goers with not so much as a pardon-me, dragging me along behind her. When we got to the platform, Darian looked up and saw us, and I thought that his face took on a slightly mask-like quality before he acknowledged Bel with a smile. The band were mid-song, and I expected Bel to hang back a little to allow them to finish, but she bounded onto the platform, knocking over a bottle of water next to the singer’s feet and causing her microphone stand to teeter precariously. The singer swayed to the left to allow Bel to squeeze by her, still looking out towards the wedding party as she sang.

  I hung back, watching. Bel flung her arms around Darian’s neck, pushing him along so that she was sharing his seat. It amazed me
that he was undisturbed by this, even beginning what sounded like a complicated piano solo at that moment. Now she was reaching across him to fiddle with his iPad; I watched him shake his head, admonishing her. She leaned down and brought up a hip flask, which she shook experimentally and then drank from. His dark blond and her yellowy-gold were two tones from the same palette. Their pale faces, his so still and hers so mobile, mirrored each other. I watched Bel jostle and nudge and fidget while he played and felt a ripple of envy. I had occasionally wished for a brother. Feeling for my phone, I sent a quick text to Evie, reassuring her that I’d be home later on.

  The song came to an end. The singer murmured something about taking a break and undulated away in her dark-red dress. Darian got up. He was holding Bel’s arm in a slightly controlling way and I got the impression that he was trying to encourage her to leave the stage. Bel was shaking her head and gabbling into his ear. Then she turned to the bassist, as though for support. The drummer tilted her head back and laughed. Bel blew her a kiss; Darian shrugged. The bassist played a rolling cascade of notes; the drummer joined in with a wicked grin. Darian looked undecided for a moment, then mouthed something to the other musicians and something else to Bel.

  ‘Just one,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘No more.’

  Under the shifting tones of the spotlights, Bel’s face changed also, becoming watchful, knowing, open and closed at the same time. It’s hard to put into words, exactly. I’d come to know it well as her ‘performance’ face. Adjusting the folds of her kimono, smoothing her hair at her temples, Bel sashayed towards the mic stand, caught hold of it with both hands and began to sing. It was a song I didn’t know, about loving someone who loved you and taking a vow. It seemed appropriate enough for a wedding, and Bel sang it well. She didn’t sound like a professional singer, the way the red-dress girl did, but there was something so arresting about the way she stood on that small stage, as the musicians built a wall of harmony behind her, that quite a few people on the dance floor stopped dancing and watched her. Some even clapped and whistled. I noticed that Darian too kept his eyes on Bel the whole time. Bel raised her arms like a priestess. She singled out a man in a bow tie – I realised that he was Mr Just-Married Egenhauser himself, with his bride twirling beside him – and twinkled a verse in his direction. She hummed and chortled and whispered into the microphone as though she were telling it intimate secrets. I watched her, mesmerised.

  Then Bel sang:

  ‘Love the one who loves you

  Though she looks like a cow;

  You married her for her mo-ney

  But who cares ’bout that now?’

  What happened next was very quick and I imagined that Darian had done it plenty of times in the past. Before the bride and groom could realise that Bel was making up new words (she was drunk enough to be slurring her consonants quite a bit), Darian caught the other musicians’ eyes and they brought the song to a close with a roll of percussion and an up-and-down rattle of piano keys. The lights changed again and a booming playlist took over as Darian steered Bel down from the stage. She looked gleeful and lit-up. I recognised the feeling exactly, I realised. It was the upness I always felt when I’d done something with a measure of success, the heady rush of pride and joy that sometimes was swiftly followed by a desperate need to find something to match it.

  ‘You are literally unbelievable,’ Darian was saying.

  Bel did a little shuffle with her feet. ‘Rubbish. They loved me.’

  ‘You’re bloody lucky no one heard what you were singing. I’m going out for a cigarette. I don’t want to see you here when I return.’ He looked over at me. ‘Nora, please take my sister away.’

  ‘I wanna stay and sing more,’ said Bel.

  The rotating disco ball on the ceiling flecked her face with iridescence.

  ‘I’m not going to ask you again,’ said Darian. ‘Don’t make a scene. Not here. Not while I’m working.’

  She pirouetted twice and came to an uneasy rest against the speaker, which wobbled. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll go.’

  Our progress to the exit was slow. Bel collected several more drinks on the way. We had barely been there an hour, I thought, although it was hard to judge. It had been entertaining, in that the episode – corset, song and all – had taken me out of myself, and I realised that this was what I sorely needed. Now, though, my head-cold was spreading like a cloud. I wanted a book and my bed, and pyjamas that didn’t dig into my sides.

  ‘Now for more drinkies,’ said Bel in the lift. ‘I know just the place.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve no money, and I have to get home. My mum …’

  She took from her kimono pocket a neat bundle of twenties. ‘Darian has provided,’ she said. ‘He always makes sure they get paid at the beginning of the night. Now, where is Cody and the godforsaken car?’

  She’d taken the band’s wages. She must have got it out of her brother’s pocket while she was onstage.

  ‘Have you taken all their money?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, sugar, of course not,’ said Bel. ‘Just the barest fraction. Now, Nora, you are going to do the play. Aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘Oh, go on. I … I implore-ya, Nora!’

  I could see that she was pleased with the half-rhyme, because she swung me around and around in the Art Deco lift, chanting it like a refrain.

  ‘I have an essay to write …’ I protested.

  ‘But think of the poor ill children!’

  ‘I really …’

  The two old women were still in the lobby when we came out of the lift. With a pot of tea on a silver tray between them, they were huddled over a game of Gin Rummy. I longed for a moment to be able to stop and join them, but – singing Moonlight in Vermont loudly and tunelessly – Bel swept me out into the night.

  6

  My mother makes an excellent breakfast, and the morning after the afternoon with Bel that turned into evening that turned into night, I was very, very glad of it. She took one look at me as I emerged from my bedroom, and then went to our local Tesco. On her return, she served me eggs over easy on toasted muffins, with bacon and mushrooms on the side, and a pint glass of Tropicana, loaded with ice, and a mug of coffee.

  I’m not a drinker, for so many reasons. But Annabel Ingram ground me down, turning my noes into maybes and my maybes into yeses. From the red wine to the Screwdrivers and then the Bellinis and then whatever we drank at the place after that, and the one after that one … at some point I’d even downed three shots of pepper vodka. Tequila, straight out of the bottle.

  Whisky.

  I was, frankly, disgusted with myself.

  ‘I’m going to wait until later,’ said Evie, ‘to ask whether I need to be worried about anything.’

  She sat down next to me with her cup of tea and Seamstress Quarterly or whatever it was that she was reading. She isn’t much of a reader, in general. Indeed, she seemed to be more interested in staring into my face, like a forensic pathologist, while I ate.

  ‘Evie,’ I said. I took a mouthful of bacon, exquisitely eggy. ‘Could you stop staring at me like that?’

  ‘When I said you needed a distraction, I didn’t mean one whose chemical compound is C2NO5H,’ said my mother inaccurately.

  ‘Trust me,’ I replied. ‘This is not going to be a habit. I went out with a girl from school. There were cocktails. She kept buying them … I didn’t want to be rude.’

  ‘Easily done.’ Evie dunked a ginger biscuit in her tea. She may not be the most imaginative person in the world or, dare I say, the deepest thinker, but one good thing about her is that she isn’t easily alarmed. She doesn’t set curfews or check pockets for contraband items. She’s not an eavesdropper or a phone-tapper. Just because she has had a major problem with alcohol doesn’t mean that she thinks that I, by nature or nurture, am bound to endure the same struggle. Frankly, I worry far more than she does that I am fated to be like her. Or like my father.

  ‘J
ust as long as you weren’t … you know. There’s having a good time and then there’s using booze to deal with stuff. I should know. All that shit that happened with your art teacher. If you need to talk about it …’

  I understood what she was trying to say.

  ‘Really. I’m OK.’

  I completed the cryptic crossword – including one very tricky anagram – on the back page of the newspaper, just to prove it.

  Evie invited me to go for another manicure, but I declined. She threw on her velvet cloak and disappeared, saying she was going to look for some fabric in Berwick Street. Did I want to go with her? No. I didn’t want to go to Soho; I had grainy memories of having been there the night before, in a bar with a beaten-up piano. I remembered Bel standing on top of the piano with a lampshade on her head, performing a number from an old musical. Then there had been a Polish restaurant with a live band. It was there, I was pretty sure, that the pepper vodka appeared. There had been other vodkas too. Plum and honey and others that I didn’t recall. We had eaten thick stew and plates of buckwheat. Bel had called for more of this, more of that, even though we had both eaten already, at her house. Two men had sent champagne from a nearby table, and before I knew it we’d been joined by several people with strange names and stranger mannerisms, and I couldn’t be at all sure whether Bel knew them, even vaguely, or whether they were entirely random additions to the night. But beyond that I had little memory. What had I been doing? What had I said? The shame of not knowing was hot and viscous.

  Getting home. That was something I couldn’t remember at all. A night bus, I thought. I hadn’t been driven home, I was sure. Had Bel got bored of me, and sent me away? That was a possibility. More likely I had decided to leave.