The Liar's Chair (21 page)

About eight people stand around one vehicle – mostly men, but a couple of women too. A figure with his back to me walks into the trees. Perhaps he’s had enough for one night. Several
cars have their headlights on, and the group of watchers is cast in a close cloud of light. Outside, the rest of the world disappears. Eyes swing up and down my body. I am goods. They move aside to
clear a pathway to the car where a woman sits on the passenger seat with the door open and her legs sticking out as she adjusts her suspenders. The tops of her stockings are a red nylon lace,
scratchy and fussy – the white sugar of erotica. Good idea, I think, less to take off. She stands up and walks away, scrabbling in her bag for her mobile. A man joins her and they get into
another car and drive off. I wonder if he’s her husband and what they’ll do when they get home. They’ll have put something in the oven on a timer before they left. A ready meal
they got at the supermarket. Then later some sleeping pills.

The group of people stand in silence around the car. In the middle of their huddle, I pull my damp coat close to hide my shaking legs and stare at the ground. I wait. Someone jingles keys in
their pocket.

‘Well . . . d’you want to get in the car then?’ The man who brought me over bends the front passenger seat forward so there’s room for me to climb in. He smiles at me
with the stretched grimace of a boardroom photo. I’m freezing but my face is red hot and I’m glad it’s dark so no one can read my thoughts. I begin to get in but the man grabs my
coat by the scruff of the neck and pulls me back. The jolt is a shock. ‘You won’t need this,’ he says, ‘the heater’s on.’ I breathe deep to stop the tears and
take off my coat, handing it to him. He passes the coat to another man – more elderly – who folds the garment and lays it as a butler would over his arm, the action gentle and
considered. His eyes smile, and I picture him with a Christmas hat on and a grandson on his knee.

I clamber into the back and sit on the blanket spread across the seats. The material is checked and fluffy, man-made, the cheap kind used to protect seats from animal hair and mud. The dull
interior light blends all the colours in the car to various shades of yellow. The engine ticks over, its vibration steady, and the tremor travels through my thighs and up into my chest and head
– the only thing moving through the stone of my body.

The man who brought me over gets in the car and closes the door. ‘That’ll keep it warmer. You can get undressed now,’ he says.

‘I’m soaking wet.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘What should I take off?’

‘Might as well do the lot.’

He folds the passenger seat down as far as it will go and perches on its back. Our feet touch and I snatch my legs into the opposite footwell. There’s just enough room to slide off my
boots and socks, and I roll down my jeans, which are wet from the field. The denim jams at my ankles so I have to shuffle the jeans up a little to get a grip on the tubes of fabric. My jumper and
T-shirt peel away, and my hair dries a little and dances in static. I calm the strands down with my hands. Finally my underwear and then, when there’s nothing left and nowhere to hide, I sit
with my arms crossed at my chest and my feet on tiptoe. I don’t look up at the man, only at his legs. Miniature spears of fabric from the rug jab into my skin. Still sitting on the back of
the seat, the man unzips his trousers, and with his penis in one hand he takes a condom from his pocket and tears the packet with his teeth, pinching the rubber tip to roll it down over himself. At
least he’s using protection. But then I don’t really care. This functional pause makes what we’re about to do belong to someone else. It helps. I inhale. Then I panic.

‘I don’t want to any more,’ I say.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

The man moves towards me, pushing my shoulder with a steady force down on to the seat. I lever myself back by my elbows until my spine is flat. A damp animal smell rises from the itchy material.
Three trees of air freshener dangle from the rear-view mirror and sway with the movement of the car. The man checks out of the windows, wipes off some mist and leans across to the front of the car,
putting the screen heater on full-blast to clear the fog. Then he turns to watch my legs. Hot air blasts the glass and it’s all I can hear above my pulse. Outside the car it’s dark, but
there’s the occasional movement – shapes coming nearer. Faces.

Fucking morons, I think. I don’t look again.

It’s over more quickly than I could have hoped, and as the man pulls away from me I realize he hasn’t looked at my face once since we got in the car. Now
he’s coughing into his hand and zipping himself up, but I can smell him on me; his sweat and breath have penetrated my skin. I am porous. I let all of him in.

In the seat well is a packet of baby wipes, and several have been used and discarded on the floor. I don’t bother. My clothes are still wet and it takes longer than usual to put them on,
but I use the time to absorb the climate of the car: the vegetable smell of damp, the smooth area on the back seat where someone smaller than me usually sits. Some of the figures outside have moved
away, some still watch. A man’s face looms closer to the glass for a second but I keep my eyes down.

My socks are too much hassle in this small space so I scrunch them into a ball and put them in my bag, at the same time wondering if the dead man knew this went on so close to his caravan. I
slide my boots up bare legs inside my jeans and the leather is cold against my skin. Seamus’s skin had once been brand new, a mother would have bathed and powdered him. Pieces of him still
exist close by. He was being processed by the woods before the police took him away.

As I get out of the car, the man who has my coat holds it open and guides in my arms. I thank him and he smiles. ‘No, no, thank you,’ he says. He leans closer to my ear and whispers,
‘Nice cunt.’ I swivel round to him, teeth bared as I jam my fingers into fists. He’s small so I’d have a good chance of punching him to the ground. When he was down, I could
kick him and use my keys to stab him in the eyes. The impulse transfixes me, but instead of acting on it, I allow the acid of his comment to infuse, then turn and walk towards my car, passing a man
in the shadows who sits with his head out of view. All I can see is the bottom of his scruffy coat and old, too-big trainers. He holds a can of beer in his hand. A briefcase is at his side.

The street light recedes, darkness folds around me and I disappear. Across the empty night travel the edges of a conversation. I recognize the voice of the man with whom I’ve just
been.

‘Nah, we don’t get all the same channels as you. We’re on cable. It’s cheaper and we get our calls thrown in for the same price.’

As I get in my car my hands have lost their strength and I can’t start the engine even though I’m desperate to leave. Snippets of events turn over in my mind. They come at me in
jolts, like concussion, with no thread or timing: my unpainted toenails, the rhythm of the swinging air fresheners, the man’s phlegmy cough into his hand. The strand of platinum hair stuck to
the blanket: long and straight, not mine.

A car sweeps away from the group and pulls up at my side. The window opens and a face looms forward into the light. I see the flash of his smile. Then recognition.

Alex.

Dear God, it’s Alex.

The man who, since joining our ranks, has initiated and fed the current of illegal dealings now filling David with such vitality. He saw me only a few hours ago in the woods – how stupid
of me not to have thought he could still be here. My concern that he may tell David where he’s seen me has now become a terror.

We sat together at my dinner table only weeks ago. He ate the food I cooked. His wife tried to be kind but I wouldn’t let her.

Again he has witnessed the worst of me.

‘What difference does it make?’ David said when I told him the police had found Seamus’s caravan. I was hoping to pre-empt David finding out from Alex that
I’d been at the woods – the rest I planned to deny – but so far Alex has said nothing. ‘Nobody knows who he really was,’ David continued. ‘And they’ve got
nothing on you. If you’re going to cover up something as big as this, you need to carry it through. God, you’re so paranoid. Get a hold of yourself.’

David was on his way out of the house, our conversations these days shunted in between appointments or tacked on to exits, strategies that mean we need only scratch the surface. In front of the
mirror, David’s lips stretched wide around his lock-jawed teeth as he picked a piece of food from between his molars. He flashed his eyes back at me. ‘What the hell were you doing up
there anyway? Do I need to keep tighter reins on you?’ He turned to go, collecting the pile of unopened Christmas cards on his way out. At the office he would have given the correspondence to
Kelly. She’d have opened the cards, sent replies, and our house will continue to be free from the clutter of friendship.

Since my first time in the car park nearly two weeks ago, I’ve been online and discovered other locations – supermarket car parks, picnic areas in the woods – and I’ve
been hot-wired back to my prolific student days, to before I met David. Away from my husband, I’ve not lost my ability to oscillate between my fractured selves. In the old days I’d
believed that pleasure was the endgame of these encounters, but perhaps even then I was deluding myself, and this sport has always been a joyless addiction, a futile attempt to fill the void.

The circuit is very interested in single women; I’m an anomaly. So many texts come through that I keep my phone permanently on silent, and I haven’t been able to fulfil even a
fraction of the requests. I always try to get home before David suspects I’ve been out – he works late and has dinner with clients most nights, anything rather than come home to the
wife he can’t bear to be near any more. To keep me in check, my petrol money is kept to a minimum. I leave home when it’s light and find the nearest pub to whichever secluded car park
is hosting the evening’s events, then park and go inside the pub for an orange juice. I top the glass up when the barmaid’s not looking from the half bottle of vodka I carry in my bag.
After I finish the drink, in case I’m being followed, I make my way from a back exit and find a bus, walking some of the journey along country lanes in my dad’s big overcoat. The land
rises up to greet each of my footsteps, and with the wind at my back, my pestering thoughts are calmed by the simplicity and rhythm of the pace. I could live like this always. If only I never had
to arrive. If only I need never go back.

At home, things start slower for me these days now that the efficiency I used to apply to work – the compulsive order which kept me rooted and sane – is gone. There is no more Will
to look forward to, and I do my best to forget the danger I may have put him in. Today is a Saturday, and I stay even longer in bed, sleeping off yesterday’s hangover and topping up a new one
with nips of vodka from my bag. There seems little point in doing anything until the evening’s events. The soup of painkillers and alcohol dulls the pain, but today the concoction has created
a complexity of remorse from which there’s no escape. Hushed up in the airless hollow of the duvet in the guest-suite bedroom, I lie motionless, hoping to convince myself that all the days
that have ever been, never were.

Brisk and energetic from his trip to the gym and walk with the dogs, inspired by the remote possibility of a warmer day, David comes wordless into the bedroom, opens the window then goes
downstairs. I peep from the covers. Outside a tepid blue teases through a wrung-out sky, but there’ll be more rain later. Enough is enough, the window says, so I get up and shower – my
fifth since yesterday. Cold air amplifies my damp skin under the dressing gown, and I slide the window across, leaving a small gap in case David comes back in; I don’t know why it matters to
him what I do with my time, it’s not as if we spend any of it together any more, but I no longer have the energy for a fight.

A text comes through from Alex: ‘I’m losing patience. Do you want me to tell David?’ This is the ninth text I’ve had from him since we saw each other that night in the
car park. He wants to meet me on his own and keeps suggesting times and places, but I haven’t replied, nor have I gone back to the same place where I last saw him. I swing between which would
be worse: to go to Alex, or for David to find out how I spend my time. For now the car parks hold enough shame for my purposes, and I’m not sure I really believe Alex will tell.

Through the gap in the window comes the noise of a car pulling into our driveway. I must have been in the shower when the visitor buzzed at our perimeter gate. Peering outside, I see
Alex’s Aston Martin parking close to the house. He gets out of the vehicle and walks towards the front door holding his key behind him. The car locks with an electronic bleep. Hazard lights
double flash. At the door he taps a friendly rhythm, and the dogs bark. I pull on the nearest skirt and top – flung over a chair last night, no time for tights or trousers – slip on
shoes and run downstairs to fend off Alex, but David’s footsteps are already clicking across the hallway. Circles of muddy paw prints trace his trajectory to the front door where he now
stands with his hand milliseconds from the handle. I freeze on the middle stair. On either side of the front door is sandblasted glass, and through this barrier is the motionless shadow of
Alex.

David opens the door. ‘Alex, how lovely! What a surprise.’ The two men shake hands. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you until next week. Come in, come in.’

With the door open wide, David stands to one side to let Alex through. The dogs are at our guest immediately, barking and leaping. He walks through them as if they are liquid and looks ahead at
me. Behind him, David shuts the door.

‘I have some paperwork I wanted to drop off to you,’ Alex says, tilting his head to David but keeping his gaze on me. ‘Thought it would give you more time to consider your
options before we meet next week.’ He turns to look at David. ‘Sorry to barge in on you like this. I tried calling but my mobile had no juice.’