The Liar's Chair (12 page)

This morning I creep from under the covers, and my husband’s sleeping body rolls into the warm space I’ve left behind. The bed looks full, as if there was never enough room. In the
bathroom I wash the crust from my eyes, dress, then take the watch I found at the roadside from my tampon box – its overnight hiding place – and wind the piece before putting it in my
bag. The tick is old-fashioned and loud, and in the morning quiet I think I can hear it through the leather of my bag, so I muffle it with tissues, holding the pulse for a moment before it goes
silent. Downstairs I grab a coffee then leave, driving through unlit streets and past hibernating houses, willing the new morning to arrive and with it the offer of a day. Any day will do, only
better than the last. Instead I feel like a trespasser.

My plan is to get to the office early to prepare for my public persona of work Rachel, the authoritative and decisive manager who oversees the rivers of finance flowing in and out of our current
productions. It’s becoming harder these days to summon up this character, and as soon as I return home she scuttles away and hides for the rest of the night. Today, on my way to work, I
decide to make a detour down the road where the accident took place, to witness the size of the police operation, and calculate the impact of one man’s death.

I drive to where the lane bends sharply at the tree. My car slows to a standstill in the centre of the road. Tarmac sucks at the tyres.

This is the place.

All that’s left of the investigation are car tread marks on the muddy verge and a flapping strand of blue and white police tape. There’s nothing else here; the evidence transferred
to the lab now and the body in deep freeze. I’m sorry they took the man away. There was some comfort in knowing he lay close to where he’d lived, his body returning to the woods atom by
atom. I wonder what else the police found, if anything of mine was discovered. A small part of me wishes they’d come and get me so I could be done with all of this.

My car engine murmurs in the background of my thoughts. I press the accelerator and the vehicle jolts forward, carrying me further down the lane, and again I pass the horse-box house I saw on
the day of the accident. It’s joined now by two other vehicles, both in the same ramshackle state. One looks like an ex-post-office truck, the writing on the side painted over with a darker
shade of red, and the other vehicle was probably once a police van, the type that would have ferried officers with riot shields to a demonstration. In its previous incarnation, the van could have
been used against these activists whose camp of tepees and tree houses has spilled into the woods. Smoke drifts across the road from a camp fire.

About half a mile further along the lane I catch a glimpse of something through the bare trees: a flash of colour in the distance, a structure on a small incline. A roof and a window, the glass
filling up with the grey dawn. It must be the caravan Alex spoke of. The home of the man I killed. Cold fear creeps up my spine and I speed up towards Brighton.

Teller Productions is situated on the main route into town, about a twenty-minute drive from the woods. When I arrive, I park in the forecourt and turn off the engine.
Reflected in the gloss of the windows, a pale sun bleeds into the dark sky, the image broken by a polka-dot of rain on the glass. I run to the entrance and fumble with the keys in the lock, and
once inside a single tone counts down the thirty seconds before the alarm proper goes off. I input the code twice before getting it right. Then silence. The hush expands through the still air.

The heating hasn’t come on, but even when it does the office will still be cold. David goes to the gym every morning and comes to work pink and sweaty, ordering Kelly the receptionist to
open windows. She brings extra layers of clothes which she keeps in a bag under her desk. ‘Good temperature for mental agility,’ David says. He’ll shower again in his office en
suite even though he’s already washed at the gym; if David had a choice, he’d deny his body the filth of natural secretions.

Here in this early dark the chill is almost solid, and the room is paused, waiting for the labour that will lift it from sleep. I pace between the desks and mute phones, gathering my jacket and
scarf round me. My breath dusts the air for seconds before melting away. In the middle of the room a chair is slung out from its desk; a witness to a rushed exit last night. The standby light on
the copier flashes in the corner like a distant satellite. I’m careful not to disturb anything, as if I’m a time-traveller passing through, and only the persistent rain ticking on the
windows lets me know the world is still turning.

This empire has taken David and myself fifteen years to build, and we moved to these premises about five years ago when our old offices had reached bursting point. David spotted this run-down
warehouse in the right part of town, the building next to a nursing home, and he made enquiries with the owner, convincing them to sell at a knock-down price – ‘Take it off your hands,
smarten the place up. It’ll increase the value of your adjoining business.’ The place was gutted, internal walls were pulled down and a suspended steel mezzanine cut the space in two
– upper and lower. Where once stood a brick wall with a few small windows, huge sheets of tinted glass now front the open-plan layout looking out over the car park and road.

We have desks for about twenty staff, and each of their workstations is cluttered with the minor debris of their outside lives – family photos, kids’ drawings, snow domes from
Florida and the Canaries – set there as small acts of defiance; a retreat to better times. David hates the way these knick-knacks ruin the lines of symmetry made by the desks, but in order to
appear the tolerant, benevolent boss he allows the clutter. Our people are expected to check in to work at least once a day, preferably in person even if they’ve been on location, and their
broad desks and ergonomic chairs are a declaration of the company’s investment in each individual. David is in by 8.00 a.m. and leaves twelve hours later so ‘there are no excuses for
shoddy work, only poor time management’. In our line of business you stay until the job is done – contracts are only given to mothers willing to dose up their kids on Calpol and send
them to school with a fever – and most of our staff and freelancers know that the boss’s expectations are a small price to pay for the chance of almost constant work, plus the golden
ticket of a future reference from David Teller himself.

I walk up the metal stairs to the suspended floor where a glass balcony runs the entire width of the building. Standing at the bar it’s possible to survey most of the office. It’s
David’s favourite spot. The only rooms in the building with a door, apart from the toilets, are on this floor, and they are the meeting room and mine and David’s offices. David insists
I keep my door open so I am present to all incoming traffic; I’m the gatekeeper of his day, a stronghold reinforced by the austerity of my welcome through which nothing and no one can pass.
His door remains shut at all times.

My diary is open on my desk on today’s page, the computer pushed to one side. I sit and shut my eyes as the day rolls out in front of me: meetings and lunches and the constant drill of
phones that signal incoming shuttles of work. A day like most other days at Teller Productions, but it wasn’t always this way. ‘Luck is a residue of hard work,’ David says, even
though this phrase contradicts his modus operandi – ‘Ask and the universe shall supply’ – but all are variations on control, so whatever works best at the time, works for
David.

Our success is, though, very much the result of mine and David’s determination and vision. These last fifteen years have seen us expand from small corporate videos to long-form commissions
for cable channels and several for the BBC and other terrestrials. We specialize in programmes that peek into the dysfunctional worlds of people with either obsessive habits, bizarre jobs or secret
desires; a modern version of freak-pointing at the circus. Publicly we assert that we are impartial, but a good editor can cut a story to make our judgement forefront. Without a viewpoint the
programme would be bland, and even though the viewers would cry out if it were proved we were biased, they are as complicit as us by not tuning to another channel. Secretly they know we only give
them what they want, and the appetite of the masses for voyeurism never ceases to surprise me. It keeps David and me in immense comfort.

Neither David nor I are at the frontline of production or camera any more; from my desk I exec everything that passes through the office – no project gets the sign-off without my say-so
– and David is the deal maker and confidence builder, his days stacked around forging connections with influential people. After months of tennis matches and boardroom breakfasts, we landed a
major series, one we hope will sell internationally and get repeat commissions year on year – we hold out for these golden geese above anything that has BAFTA potential. David told me of the
programming executive, ‘I know all his secrets, all his friends who jumped the interview process, and I even know who he’s fucking behind his wife’s back. I could bring him down
just like that.’ He clicked his fingers and froze the gesture at the side of his head for several seconds too long after he’d finished speaking, the smile on his face in traction.

The result of all this work is that the money keeps piling in. We have all we need but we keep on making more, as hobbyists or collectors do, storing the excess and watching the numbers on the
page grow bigger month by month, like sediment at the mouth of a river. But money’s not the only currency that David deals in: power and charm are in abundance too, and he uses all these
assets like a tool to be switched on and off dependent on the job in hand. Recent talk of expansion, of joining forces with another company overseas and making our brand international, was quashed
without debate; he’d rather keep it local. David wouldn’t trust another office without himself at the helm, infecting every deal with his purpose and insight. Plus another element would
be missing, and that would be me: my ability to pick a winning pitch above any Arts Council frippery, but more importantly my knowledge of David and the ways in which we conduct our trade –
all the above-board and the number of shady dealings to which I’ve recently been introduced. With David there’s no definition of what he’s chasing; he will never arrive as there
will always be somewhere else to go. Men like him don’t retire, they fall dead on a squash court, racket in hand, doing a deal, and we share and tolerate these and other unspoken secrets
between us out of habit and shame, not only because we know each other so well, but because it’s too late for either of us to change. There’s too much history and too much to lose.
These things make us unique and desirable. We are a team. I keep David’s secrets and he keeps mine, although since the accident a dangerous imbalance has tipped in David’s favour.

Yesterday’s half-finished glass of water is on my desk. A membrane of dust lies between the air and water, reminding me of a chemistry experiment at school when the teacher pulled a thread
of nylon from between two liquids and curled the strand round a pen. I swig from the glass of old water to wash down two pills, the period between painkillers getting less and less, then sit back
in my chair and press my stomach. The pain has no one rhythm or position, but when I think of the homeless man and the caravan I saw this morning, the sensation peaks. Instinctively I know that
until what I’ve done has been made good, this discomfort won’t go away. Nothing and no one can alter the fact that a man has died, but where there are clues to how he lived, there could
perhaps be some resolution.

The front door opens and shuts with a double clang. I jump in my seat. As I stand and peer from my office door, I see the cleaner pause by the silent alarm pad, scratching his head. He switches
on the bank of lights and my eyes blink at the clock. 7.00 a.m. Opening the store cupboard, the man takes out the vacuum and untangles its lead from the trolley of dusters and cleaning fluids, all
the while mumbling to himself, though I can’t make out what he’s saying. He turns on the machine as I walk silently to the glass banister and watch him push the nozzle over the wooden
floor in slow sweeps. Intermittently he stops to stare out of the window and chat a bit more, as if the cleaning is interrupting an important conversation, then leaves the vacuum to one side and
begins to dust the desks.

The phone rings. On impulse I pick up the nearest extension. The cleaner’s head spins round. He sees me. His expression is vacant, and he stands with his paunch out and shoulders down.
I’m on his time; normally I wouldn’t care, but today I blush.

‘Hello?’ I say into the receiver.

The cleaner continues his dusting.

‘What are you doing?’ It’s David.

‘I thought I’d catch up on some things before the office got busy.’

‘Have you seen my Hunters?’

I stare through the window. Grey light has bleached away the dawn.

‘They’re in the boot room,’ I say. ‘I put them there last night to dry out after you took the dogs for a walk.’

There’s a pause, then down the phone line comes the squeak of David’s leather slippers on the marble floor. An aside of skittering claws accompanies him, our two dogs probably
curling in and out of his legs and jumping up. I visualize his route from the quality of sound down the receiver: across our tiled hallway and dining room, then through the kitchen to the back
utility room we call the boot room. ‘Naughty lady didn’t take you out, did she?’ His voice is muffled and I know he’ll be holding one of the dog’s heads, rubbing her
soft ears and putting his mouth against her forehead as he speaks, imagining they share a telepathic connection.

David comes back on the line. ‘If I’d known you were leaving so early I would’ve got up too. I won’t have time to go to the gym now. I’ll have to take the girls out
instead.’

‘David,’ I say, ‘let them out in the garden. The dog walker will be there at ten.’