Silent Truths (68 page)

Laurie looked around. The narrow, winding road that snaked along the crest of the mountains was overhung with drooping eucalyptus trees and fringed by high, impenetrable hedges. Beyond, hidden from view, were vast private estates whose gardens descended into the canyons below. There were smaller houses too, like this one, set back from the road, yet seeming just as uninhabited, equally as remote. It was all so quiet and still – merely the occasional whisper of air that stirred the trees, the ubiquitous insect life, and the distant hum of a strimmer.

Going back down the drive she took a wet-wipe from her bag to cool her neck. She’d put sun block on before coming out, but the heat was so intense she could feel it blazing into her skin like flames. How did anyone survive in this climate? But, of course, it was why no one was about.

When she reached the door she tried the bell again, waited a moment, then walked along to peer into the closest window. Reflections of the sky and treetops made it hard to see, but she could tell it was a bedroom, with an unmade bed and an open
wardrobe door. The next window was frosted, so presumably a bathroom; the one after was too high for her to reach, though from the cupboards that were visible she deduced it was the kitchen.

The sun was merciless. She had to get out of it soon. ‘Beth!’ she called. ‘Beth, are you in there?’

The only answer was the monotonous buzz of cicadas.

She went back to the front door, rang the bell then rapped on the highly polished cedar wood. ‘Beth. It’s Laurie Forbes. We’re supposed to meet today.’ She listened with an ear to the doorjamb. ‘Beth, I know you’re there,’ she cried, actually starting to wonder if she was. ‘Please, I just want to make sure you’re all right. Georgie’s worried about you. We all are.’

‘Go away!’

Laurie started. The voice had come from the other side of the door – a mere two feet away. She pictured Beth standing there, eye pressed to the optic watching the contorted image of the woman outside. ‘Beth, please let me in,’ she implored. ‘I just want –’

‘I said, go away.’

‘I won’t keep you a moment. Georgie asked –’

‘Tell Georgie I’m fine. She shouldn’t worry, everything’s working out.’

Laurie wondered what that meant, but this wasn’t the time to ask. ‘OK, I’ll tell her. But if you could just open the door –’

‘I can’t.’

‘Just for a moment.’

‘I told you, I
can’t
.’

‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ Laurie assured her.
‘You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to. I just promised Georgie that I’d see for myself that you’re all right.’

Beth was silent.

Laurie waited, almost daring to hope. She heard no movement inside, but sensed she was still there, the other side of the door. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll leave, but I let my taxi go, so I don’t have a way of getting back. My mobile doesn’t work up here. If I could use your phone for a moment …’

Long seconds ticked by. Nothing stirred; the only sound was the continuing drone of cicadas. Then it stopped, leaving an eerie silence, as though life everywhere had abruptly ceased.

‘Beth, it’s very hot out here,’ she said, ‘and you know how far it is to a phone. Please, it won’t take a minute.’

There was another interminable silence. Praying that Beth hadn’t gone to ring a taxi for her, she was about to call out again when, to her amazement, the sound of a bolt sliding back was followed by the clank of a security chain. The large brass handle dipped and the door began to open.

With the sun’s glare still in her eyes Laurie couldn’t make out the interior, just a dark, indefinable mass beyond the first few feet of light. ‘Thank you,’ she said, experiencing a pulse of unease as she stepped up to the threshold.

‘The phone’s through there,’ Beth said, coming out from behind the door and pointing down the hall.

Laurie turned to look at her and had to fight not to gasp, for the sight of her was not at all what she’d expected. Her hair was lank, uncombed and
showing an inch of dark roots, her face was smeared with dirt, her eyes were puffy and red, and she seemed so fragile and thin that the collagen in her lips and implants in her breasts made her seem almost cartoonish.

‘Thank you,’ she said again, and turned in the direction Beth had pointed.

Behind her Beth closed and locked the door, then followed. ‘Georgie should have told you, I don’t want to be interviewed,’ she said as they reached the kitchen. ‘I asked her to give you the message.’ Her voice sounded raspy and dry, as though she hadn’t drunk anything in days.

‘She did, but she was worried, and as I was in LA anyway –’

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Beth said. ‘Everything’s OK.’ She shrugged self-consciously. ‘It might not look it, but it is.’ For a moment her eyes met Laurie’s, then they darted away. ‘I look terrible. I know,’ she said going to the fridge. ‘But I wasn’t expecting you. I’d have had a shower, washed my hair. It wasn’t worth doing until I’d finished the garden. Would you like some water?’

Laurie nodded. ‘Yes, please.’

She took out a bottle of Evian then let the door swing closed on its own. ‘I was thinking, a couple of days ago,’ she said, as she unscrewed the top, ‘about the first time we met, you and I. Do you remember, when you came to my house and told me Colin had been arrested?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Beth shrugged. ‘I was just thinking about it,’ she said. ‘It seems so long ago now, but what was it, four, five months?’

‘More or less,’ Laurie answered.

She took two glasses from a cupboard, pushed them under the ice-shoot, then filled them with water. ‘The phone’s over there,’ she said, nodding towards it. ‘There’s a taxi number on the board next to it.’

Laurie went to pick it up. The number she dialled put her straight through to the voice mail at the hotel. She keyed in her own password then ordered a taxi to come as soon as possible.

When she’d finished she turned round to find Beth staring right at her.

Startled, she felt herself colour as she said, ‘Shouldn’t be long.’

Beth passed her a glass of water.

Laurie swallowed some, watching her over the rim of the glass. Though on one level she seemed quite normal, there was something about her that was making Laurie edgy.

Suddenly the phone rang.

Laurie gasped, then laughed. Then they both stood there listening as Mitzi’s voice announced that there was no one in, so please leave a message. The tone sounded, then the line went dead.

Beth carried her drink over to the sliding French windows and gazed out to where she’d left her watering can and basket, next to the gazebo. After a while she said, ‘I really wasn’t going to let you in, you know. But then I thought, why not? I don’t like being alone.’

‘Georgie wants you to go home.’

‘Home? With her and Bruce?’ She shook her head. ‘My home is with Colin and that’s over now, isn’t it? There’s no home for us any more.’

Not sure whether she meant because he was in prison, or because he was divorcing her, Laurie said softly, ‘You could make another. Start a new life.’

‘What do you think I’ve been doing here?’ She laughed drily. ‘I haven’t made much of a success of it, though, have I? But it’s OK. It’ll all be over soon, and it’s good that you’ll be here when it happens. You can be a witness.’

‘When what happens?’ Laurie said, experiencing another beat of unease.

‘Actually, you could probably make the call,’ Beth continued. ‘If it works out that way. But it might not. We’ll see.’

Laurie frowned. ‘I don’t understand. What call?’ she asked.

Beth turned away from the window and smiled. ‘It won’t work out that way,’ she assured her, ‘so don’t worry. Shall we go and sit down? It’s prettier outside, but cooler in the sitting room.’

Laurie followed her back along the hall, then down the three steps that descended from the square entrance hall into the sitting room. There were several armchairs and two sofas grouped around a large glass coffee table in front of the fireplace. Magazines were scattered about the rugs and limestone floor, some open, some not. A few cigarette ends littered an ashtray, and the TV cabinet had been moved out of its corner, bringing it closer to the nearest chair. Beth turned the chair to face into the room and sat down. Laurie chose one of the sofas, avoiding the thin shafts of sunlight that cut through the closed slats of the shutters.

Beth smiled warmly and raised her glass.

Laurie returned the salute and they both drank. She had no idea what was going to happen now, whether someone was going to arrive as Beth had intimated, whether she’d guess the taxi was a hoax and make her leave, or even if she might suddenly open up and talk. Her expression was so benign, there was simply no knowing what was going on in her mind, though surely, if there was a chance someone might come, and that it might be Kleinstein, or Wingate, she wouldn’t be this calm.

Taking small heart from that, Laurie sipped her water again and was about to speak when Beth suddenly said, ‘You heard about what they did to me, didn’t you? I know, because you told Georgie. I just wondered who told you.’

Surprised by the frankness, Laurie said, ‘Actually, someone told Elliot Russell and he told me.’

Beth nodded. ‘Someone,’ she repeated. ‘Always protecting your sources. Colin was very particular about that too.’ She looked towards the fireplace, tilting her glass back and forth to make the ice clink, then her eyes slanted back to Laurie. ‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’

‘I’m afraid he doesn’t look very good,’ Laurie answered. ‘I think he’s finding it hard in prison.’

The corners of Beth’s mouth went down as she acknowledged that. Then gazing off towards the hearth again she said, ‘He wouldn’t see me. Except once.’ She paused, then attempted a laugh. ‘That hurt a lot,’ she confessed. ‘Almost as much as Heather Dance and her child. But he was always hurting me, one way or another, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he did it again.’

‘Was he ever physical?’ Laurie dared to ask. ‘I mean in the way he hurt you?’

Unfazed by the presumption, Beth merely shook her head. ‘No, but sometimes I almost wished he would be. At least that kind of pain goes away. The other just stays and stays and …’ She smiled, brightly. ‘But it wasn’t all pain. We loved each other too, and …’

‘And?’ Laurie prompted.

‘Nothing. We just loved each other. As a matter of fact we still do, but he’s got a child by someone else now, so he has to go to her, if they free him.’

‘Do you think they will?’

Beth nodded, then drank some water. The mouthful was too large. ‘Yes, if he can prove he didn’t do it,’ she said, wiping the excess liquid from her chin.

‘Did he do it?’

‘He keeps saying he didn’t, so maybe we should believe him. Georgie says you already do.’

Laurie was watching her closely. ‘I think there’s a chance he’s telling the truth, yes,’ she admitted. ‘Don’t you?’

Beth’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘Does it matter what I think?’ she said.

‘I’m sure it does to him.’

She seemed to find that amusing. Then, after drinking some more, she leant forward to put her glass on the table. ‘Of course, it’s all much more complicated than it appears, you do realize that, don’t you?’ she said.

‘I think so,’ Laurie answered. ‘I’m just not sure how.’

‘You’ve read my book? We sent it to you.’

Laurie nodded.

‘So you’ve been trying to work it all out from that?’

Again Laurie nodded.

‘That’s why you asked if he’d ever hurt me physically, of course. But no, Colin wasn’t like Rodrigo in that respect.’

‘But he was in others?’

Beth nodded. ‘Oh yes. Very much so.’

‘Did he help you write it?’

Her eyes flashed angrily. ‘No! Did he tell you that? He’s a liar if he told you that.’

‘No, no,’ Laurie assured her. ‘He didn’t say that at all. It was just me asking.’

‘Why?’ she spat. ‘Do you think I’m incapable of creating something like that alone? Yes, of course you do. You’re one of them. You all think I’m nothing –’

‘That’s not true,’ Laurie cried. ‘No one thinks that about you, least of all me. The book is brilliant. I honestly didn’t mean any offence. It was stupid and insensitive. I’m sorry.’

Beth eyed her suspiciously, like a mouse watching a cat, or maybe it was the other way round.

‘I’m sorry,’ Laurie said again.

The hostility slowly retreated, then a smile began to play on her lips. ‘So tell me what you liked best about the book,’ she challenged.

Relieved that the small storm was over, Laurie seized the firmer ground, saying, ‘Probably the way you ended it, in modern times. It had such a wonderful pathos. I actually cried and laughed at the same time. I was so afraid it would be tragic, like her previous life.’

Beth almost glowed. ‘Life should be more like fiction, don’t you agree?’ she said, pressing her hands together and pushing them between her knees. ‘Think how happy we’d all be if we could write our own lives. I’ve never seen the point in misery, have you?’

Laurie smiled. ‘Not really,’ she replied.

Beth laughed. ‘Who’d write themselves a life of misery?’ she said. ‘Not me, that’s for sure. I’ve got God to thank for mine. Have you ever known misery? You don’t look as though you have.’

‘My sister died a year ago,’ Laurie answered. ‘That was very hard. She was my twin.’

‘Oh dear, yes, I can imagine that would be hard. How did she die?’

‘She committed suicide.’

Beth’s eyes rounded. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘She … It’s not easy to talk about …’

‘Was it to do with a man?’

‘Partly.’

Beth nodded, her eyes full of knowing. ‘So she understood what misery was. How did she do it?’

‘You mean kill herself? She drove her car into a wall.’

Beth drew back in horror. ‘That’s terrible,’ she exclaimed. ‘Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. Death can be so violent.’

Wanting to get off the subject Laurie said, ‘How long did it take you to write the book?’

Beth rolled her eyes. ‘All my life,’ she smiled. ‘Or that’s how it feels.’ Gazing off at nothing, she said, ‘We are the sum total of our life’s experiences, are we not? No, don’t agree with me, because we’re not. We’re all of us more than life gives us – much,
much more. You are more than just the person sitting there on that sofa, prying into my life. This is only one aspect of you. There are others, so many you probably don’t even know the half, and never will, unless you’re brave enough to explore them.’