The Lie, page 20
‘Have you been rehearsing that?’ she asked, the laugh beginning to take on a mind of its own and burgeoning into a hysterical giggle. It didn’t feel so different from the crying that had overtaken her at the weekend.
Michael also began to chuckle. ‘You malign me, my dear,’ he said, with a dramatic eye roll, then added, ‘I’ve been rehearsing that, too.’ The pair of them were well away now, Michael’s drawn face losing years in a second as he let himself go and laughed with her – about nothing, really – until both were gulping and wiping tears from their eyes.
Their son looked on, nonplussed.
‘Sorry, Leo,’ Romy managed to gasp before dissolving into giggles again.
But the exertion was too much for Michael, and Romy watched him slowly slide down the wall, then keel gently left, until his head was resting on the cream carpet.
‘Dad!’ Leo jumped to rescue his father, his face a picture of concern as he began to heave Michael upright. But Michael was unfazed. As he settled back on his crutch, he gave Romy such a wide grin that, for a second, she forgot Grace. It was just her and Michael, the two of them, making each other laugh.
Later that evening, after Leo had gone, she helped Michael get ready for bed. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress in his T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, clean and sweet-smelling from his wash, when he took her hand as she mechanically plumped his pillows, staring up into her face with a yearning that made her stomach flip.
‘It was fun, laughing like that.’
Romy nodded, not wanting to snatch it away, but feeling uneasy, standing there, her hand in Michael’s.
‘Will you kiss me goodnight?’ Michael asked. Then, perhaps seeing her face, he added, with a quick smile, ‘No agenda.’
Romy hesitated. She would give him a friendly kiss – had done so on a number of occasions since the stroke. But she knew, from what Leo had told her earlier – and the softening of their mood since the laughter – that Michael might be angling for more than just ‘friendly’, despite his assertion to the contrary. She balked at the thought of anything that could presage a sexual invitation. Bending quickly, she dropped a brief peck on his cheek, at the same time withdrawing her hand from his grasp.
Michael’s expression stilled, but he continued to gaze at her as she turned away.
‘Not as bad as last time,’ he said quietly, as he pulled his weak leg onto the mattress and lay back on the pillows. ‘At least you didn’t flinch.’
Romy was shocked, not so much by his words but by the obvious bitterness behind them. ‘Michael …’
He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Don’t pity me, Romy.’
There was silence in the room. Romy busied herself picking up the clothes he had discarded and folding them, placing them on the chair. ‘I’m not,’ she replied briskly, although, to her own ears, her protestation rang weak and dishonest. Michael believes I’m pitying him for his disability, she thought. But her disinclination had nothing whatever to do with his current physical condition.
She took a deep breath. This was it. Leo’s declaration had made her realize she couldn’t continue in this no-man’s-land with Michael for a second longer. Moving the clothes aside, she sat down on the orange armchair facing the bed. This was the moment she’d been avoiding for what seemed like two lifetimes.
‘I’ve told you about my friend, Robert,’ she began, ‘and that we’ve broken up.’ Michael nodded. ‘Well, his wife died a few years ago, but he has a stepdaughter, who he’s extremely fond of.’ Romy swallowed hard. ‘She’s thirty-two now, apparently. And her name is Grace. Grace …’ She realized she didn’t know Grace’s surname – Nell’s before she’d married Finch.
Michael was watching her, impassively.
‘She’s called Grace Twiston now.’ Romy stared back, searching his face for the tiniest twitch. ‘I don’t know what her surname was when she was sixteen.’ Michael still didn’t speak, but she saw a flicker of something in his eyes.
Her husband pulled himself up on the pillows, his expression hard to read. Romy waited. He knows what I’m talking about, she thought. He knows.
‘Her name was Fleetwood,’ Michael said. ‘Grace Fleetwood.’
41
At the sound of Grace’s name on Michael’s lips, Romy felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. The bedroom air was stagnant and suffocating, as she waited for him to go on. He was very still, propped against the headboard as if he were carved in stone, no muscle moving except the rapid blinking of his eyelids. But he didn’t say a word for what seemed like an eternity, and neither did she – shaken, after all this time, that her husband had finally admitted knowing the girl.
When Michael began to speak, his voice was calm, his words measured. Romy was sure he had carefully rehearsed them – as meticulously, even, as he might his summing up to a jury. He did not meet her eye, just stared straight ahead towards the blank television screen on the far wall.
‘I’m going to tell you exactly what happened. Please let me finish before you say anything. I know this is a she said/he said situation, and I want you to hear it as I remember it.’
Romy nodded, although he still did not turn his head to look at her. She clutched her hands in her lap, a shiver passing through her body.
Michael took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. ‘Grace was a very beautiful girl,’ he began, ‘not just beautiful, but also lively and charismatic, someone who laughed a lot. All those fraught clients and impossible caseloads … the atmosphere was heavy with tension most days.’ He sighed. ‘And Grace breezed in, like a breath of fresh air, cheering us all up.’
Romy waited for him to continue. His manner of speaking made it sound like the beginning of a fairytale. Not real life; not his life.
‘She was keen as mustard to help, and she’d got this idea I was special in some way, I don’t know why. James and her mother were having a thing at the time, so maybe James was boasting about our chambers and her mother passed it on …’ He took a long breath. ‘Anyway, as a result, when she was with me, she seemed overawed, almost tongue-tied. She used to gaze at me with these huge grey eyes as if I were a pop idol or something.’ Michael glanced briefly at Romy, raising his eyebrows in a grim smile. ‘It was very flattering.’
Romy did not respond. She heard the throwaway detail about James and Nell, but it barely registered, she was so intent on listening to what Michael had to say.
‘I was in the middle of the Brigham case. I was stressed out of my mind, working every hour God sent. The man was such a devious bastard.’ He stopped, as if he’d lost his thread. Then he shook his head, almost impatiently. ‘Grace volunteered to help me sort out this mountain of papers for the following day. I was swamped. It was baking hot that week and the windows don’t open properly in my rooms because of security, so the place was really stifling. I knew I’d be at it all night …’ He took another deep breath.
Romy was listening in a haze of disappointment, realizing that some small part of her had still clung to the faint possibility that none of this had ever happened, that it was just some crazy fabrication on Grace’s part. But he was speaking with too much gravitas.
‘At some point I told her she should go home, it was late. But she refused. So I offered her a glass of wine and poured one for myself. She sat on the sofa and patted the seat next to her.’ He paused, perhaps remembering. ‘“ Stop that for a second,” she said, “ and come and sit over here.”’ He raised his head and looked across at Romy. She saw what she thought was almost defiance in his eyes. ‘And, yes, I kissed her. I honestly thought she wanted me to … I’m so sorry, Romy.’
Romy heard a faint sigh and watched her husband press his good hand across his eyes. ‘I thought … I don’t know what I thought, I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just …’ He lifted his hand, palm up, as if, all these years later, he was still bewildered by what had happened that night. ‘I know it was terribly wrong. She was a child. And, obviously, there was you …’ He stopped again.
Romy frowned. That’s it? He’s telling me it was just one kiss? she asked herself, disgusted nevertheless as she pictured him pawing the teenager. ‘She said you attacked her, Michael. Not just in the letter. She told the whole story to Finch.’ She gulped, falling over the words in her head as she tried to make her point. ‘When I got the letter, you denied even knowing her. You made me feel cruel and disloyal simply for asking you about it.’ She heard the coldness in her voice, felt the quivering in her body. ‘Why should I believe you now?’
Her husband’s look was resolute. ‘I absolutely was not violent, Romy. I wasn’t. She responded to my kiss – I know I’m not mistaken about that. And then the phone was ringing and she was pushing me off. She ran out before I had a chance to say anything.’
Michael spoke firmly, certainly with the appearance of honesty. But she knew her husband well and something wasn’t ringing true. Could Grace really have embellished a single kiss into a drama of vicious assault?
‘She was very clear, Michael. You tore her dress. Her breasts and her thighs were bruised, she said.’
He shook his head wearily. ‘She said. But that’s utterly impossible. You know me, Romy, better than anyone. I am not a violent man.’ When she didn’t respond, he went on, ‘I’ve been a selfish sod in all sorts of ways over the years, I’ll admit, and I’ve got plenty of things wrong – not least that kiss and the lies I told subsequently. But can you honestly imagine me doing something so vile?’ He shook his head in apparent bewilderment. ‘I don’t know why she’s saying what she’s saying. I can only suppose it was a moment she’s remembered wrongly, something she feels she should be ashamed of for some reason.’
An edgy, breathless silence ensued.
‘I really thought she was coming on to me, Romy. Not that that makes it OK, but …’ His voice had risen plaintively. ‘A pretty girl, late on a hot summer night when we were both slightly crazy with heat and exhaustion, accepts a glass of wine, then smiles at you with her huge grey eyes and pats the seat next to her. It certainly didn’t feel as if I was forcing myself on her.’
Romy was thrown. She didn’t know whether to believe a word of what Michael was saying. Yes, he’d had a stroke, but this was one very clever man. A man who was capable – brilliantly so, by all accounts – of manipulating the truth until the opposing barrister didn’t know which way was up. Was this all just a crafty choreographing of events, worked out and nuanced over decades? Or was it true, and Grace – as Michael suggested – was suffering from misplaced shame?
‘But why would she be suddenly motivated all these years later to write such an accusatory letter, if all you did was kiss her? And why be so traumatized?’
‘I don’t know, Romy,’ Michael screeched. ‘It doesn’t make sense to me, either. I’ve thought about it non-stop since the day you showed me the bloody thing, but I can’t square her account of what happened with my own recollection. I just can’t. It’s devastating, what she said.’
‘Even now, she’s still incredibly upset, according to Finch. Even after all this time.’
He let out an exasperated sigh. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but so am I. How do you think it feels to be accused like that? To see the doubt in your eyes, the contempt? It breaks my heart. And it destroyed our marriage.’
There was silence for a moment, before Romy answered. ‘I didn’t doubt you when I first read the letter, Michael. It was your reaction – refusing to engage with me about it, on any level – that helped destroy our marriage.’ She took a breath. ‘I never thought you capable of violence against anyone, let alone a young girl.’
‘I would hope not. After a lifetime together, I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt,’ Michael said, sounding hurt and slightly pompous.
Romy was too angry to reply.
Her husband slumped back against the pillows and closed his eyes as if he were defeated. She held on tightly to her fury as she straightened the clothes she’d scrunched up when she’d sat on the chair and turned towards the door. The whole sordid mess was like a cesspit opened to the air, the miasma choking everyone who stood too close.
Michael’s confession, so long awaited, had left a bad taste in her mouth. True, he’d finally admitted his guilt about kissing Grace. Even said he was sorry. But he’d implied the teenager should also accept some responsibility. And he’d totally denied the violence that Grace had written and apparently spoken about in such graphic detail. This cannot be the whole story, she thought grimly, as she climbed into bed, her brain thumping restlessly with what she’d just heard.
42
Finch woke every morning exhilarated, with a feeling of purpose. Luis and Jocelyn’s estancia was huge and wild and astonishing in its beauty. He rode the hills on the beautiful Peruvian Paso horses with such a sense of freedom, refusing to contemplate the people he’d left, the problems he faced, back in England. He knew it couldn’t last, and he made a conscious decision just to live in the moment.
But his backside was agony, despite the padded bombachas and the famously smooth gait of the Pasos. Paz had not been wrong. The first week he was sore, but he’d expected that. He’d assumed it would get better, though, as his body became acclimatized to long hours in the saddle. But as he approached the middle of his third week in Argentina, riding for up to five or six hours a day sometimes, his bum had gone on strike. It was Marty – Jocelyn’s nephew – who suggesting padded biking shorts under the gaucho trousers.
‘Go get a bunch of them in town. It’ll change your life,’ Marty had told him. ‘I always wear them if I haven’t been in the saddle for a while.’ Finch had done so a couple of days ago, and was relieved at the difference it made – although the raw patches of skin still chafed miserably.
Initially Marty had seemed quiet and shy. Wiry, with untidy light-brown hair and an almost bruised look in his grey eyes, his passion was horses. His father, Jocelyn’s brother, owned a stud back in Wisconsin. But get him on a horse, and Marty came to life.
They had bonded over the thrilling gallops they’d taken together over the grey-brown winter hills, without the constraint of the more plodding guests to look after. Marty was confident enough to join the gauchos like a pro in the dusty, crazy, yelling-and-shouting mayhem of the round-up of cattle from the pampas. Finch was in awe. The American even rode like them, jamming his whole boot into the stirrup, tilting his heels up instead of just toeing the stirrup, and holding both reins in his left hand so his right was free for a rope or a gun. He’d earned the respect of the gauchos, big-time. Not an easy thing to do.
Finch, on the other hand, although in love with the Pasos, and considering himself, at the start of his visit, to be a pretty competent horseman, found the gauchos intimidating. Dressed at all times in sweaty shirts and dirty jeans, mostly unshaven, the men with their huge brown eyes and floppy boinas, their heavily accented Spanish, treated Finch with offhand suspicion at first. He was just another foreigner playing at doing their incredibly skilful job. But Finch’s dogged perseverance impressed them and now he’d become friendly with one in particular – a young guy named José.
‘You come with us today?’ he said, one morning, to Finch.
‘Sure he will,’ Marty had answered for him, whacking him on the shoulder as they sat on their horses about to go out.
They spent the morning riding hell for leather as they chased hundreds of cattle into the valley where they began to separate off the young bullocks.
‘Why are they doing that?’ Finch asked Marty, as he drew up alongside.
‘No idea,’ replied the American, frowning. ‘Helluva ride, no?’
They watched in awe and a certain amount of squeamishness on Finch’s part as the men brewed up some strange black liquid in a rusty can, then expertly threw the bullocks to the earth and castrated them – lightning quick – then painted the wound with the black gunge. Finch saw the parts casually discarded in a metal bucket and hoped that was the end of the grisly drama.
But the men then proceeded to roast the bullock balls over the fire on a piece of flattened tin. Finch caught José’s eye, noted his wicked grin, and spent the minutes while the things sizzled away wanting to run. But it was too late. José thrust a plate at him, on which a number of browned balls rolled merrily about.
‘They tasted sort of sweet, a bit gristly. If I didn’t know what they were …’ Finch commented that evening to his friend. They had begged off early, immediately after dinner with Jocelyn and Luis’s American guests, pleading exhaustion, and were now pleasantly drunk, lounging, legs spread, in fold-up chairs outside Finch’s cottage, which sat on the edge of the red-roofed, sprawling ranch house, a half-empty bottle of Malbec on the path by their feet. It was a cold night, but neither felt like going inside.
‘Yeah, made me heave.’ Marty laughed.
‘I’ve eaten sheep’s eyes before,’ Finch boasted. ‘Maybe even sheep’s balls. Same difference.’
There was a long, companionable silence between them. Then Marty spoke, his voice low. ‘So tell me, Rob, what is it you’re running away from?’
Taken aback, Finch didn’t answer at once. The trip, so far, had been everything he’d hoped for: extraordinary new landscape, no one who knew him, and day after day in the saddle – which tired him out so he was asleep almost before he’d taken his boots off. He’d been so grateful not to think. But ‘running away’ seemed a vaguely pejorative term.
Marty was staring at him in the feeble light of the single bulb above the cottage door, those bruised grey eyes considering. ‘You don’t have to tell me, course, but I can see it on you.’ He paused. ‘I recognize it.’
‘Recognize it?’
Marty shrugged. He seemed at ease with himself tonight, away from his doting aunt. Finch thought the wine was probably helping. ‘My wife, Beth, she passed six years ago – a long struggle with her heart.’ He looked enquiringly at Finch, as if he expected a matching confidence, but Finch was dumbstruck. Is he psychic, a bloody mind reader?
