A Few Little Lies Read online

  ‘Do you live locally?’ she asked, trying to fill the choking silence.

  Lillian smiled. ‘I do now. I’ve just got a new flat.’

  From the corner of her eye Dora noticed Calvin wince slightly, and played the advantage.

  ‘Really,’ she said, handing the girl a cup of tea. ‘That’s nice. Whereabouts?’

  Lillian simpered in the general direction of Calvin Roberts. ‘Calvin’s found me a really nice place down by the river. One of those new warehouse conversions?’ She wrinkled up her nose. ‘It’s funny, me getting a nice place like that and you living here …’ She stopped, and glanced round the room, blushing furiously. ‘Well, it is small, isn’t it? Not like I imagined at all, really. Not that it’s not nice, I mean, I’m not saying …’ She stopped dead, tripping over her own embarrassment, then took a deep breath and started again. ‘I saw a film about this famous American writer once, she’d got this big house on the beach. And a little fluffy white dog. Calvin said …’

  Calvin coughed theatrically before Lillian got a chance to share what it was he’d said. He tugged at his waistcoat.

  ‘Er, right, I think we ought to be going now. Maybe Dora could just show you her office and then we can get on our way.’

  Dora suppressed a smile and picked at the cat’s hairs on the arm of the chair.

  Lillian pouted. ‘I haven’t finished my tea yet. Bunny,’ she protested in a little-girl-lost voice.

  Calvin waved her to her feet. ‘Don’t worry about the tea,’ he said briskly. ‘Let’s look at the office. We’ll get some lunch on the way home.’

  Lillian beamed. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said enthusiastically and turned her piranha smile on Dora. ‘I wanted to know where I write all that stuff. That’s why I wanted to come.’ She stopped and buffed her smile up. ‘And to meet you, of course.’

  Dora lifted an eyebrow and stared pointedly at Calvin, who coughed again.

  ‘Come on then,’ he blustered. ‘We’ll take a look at the office and then we’ll be off.’

  There was barely room for two in the office. Dora hung back while Lillian looked around, running a painted fingernail over the books and shelves. Calvin stood in the doorway.

  Dora grinned at him. ‘Bunny, eh?’ she whispered in an undertone.

  ‘She’s just naturally affectionate,’ hissed her agent.

  Dora suppressed a smile. ‘You surprise me.’

  Satisfied, Lillian looked up. ‘Okay, all done,’ she said cheerfully. She glanced at Dora. ‘Calvin said you were going out to lunch, would you like to come with us?’

  Dora felt Calvin bristle. She smiled and shook her head. ‘That’s really very kind, Lillian, but no thanks, actually I’ve been invited to my sister’s.’

  ‘We could drop you off on the way,’ continued Lillian. ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble, would it. Bunny?’

  In spite of herself, Dora felt a rush of affection for her alter ego. She shook her head again, Calvin shuffling uncomfortably beside her.

  ‘That’s very nice of you, Lillian, but it’s not far and I enjoy the walk.’

  At the top of the stairs, Lillian thanked her for tea, buttoned up her jacket and was gone. Calvin adjusted his crombie.

  ‘Nice girl,’ he said, teeth closing on his cigar.

  Dora grinned. ‘I hope you’ve got a licence.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Dangerous animals act, you’re supposed to apply for a licence.’

  Calvin snorted. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to be dropped off anywhere?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘No thanks, Calvin, just make sure, between the pair of you, you don’t drop me in it.’

  Calvin squared his shoulders. ‘Have I ever let you down?’ he murmured and lifted a hand in farewell.

  Dora didn’t feel he deserved an answer.

  On a corner plot in the newly, dismally developed Harvest Meadows, Sheila was already busy in the kitchen, slipping a tray of gold-tinted roast potatoes back into the oven.

  Dora hung her coat in the hall cupboard. ‘Everyone out?’

  Sheila wiped the steam from her glasses.

  ‘Uh huh. You’re late. Have you taken your shoes off? That Axminster’s new. Lunch will be ready in half an hour.’ She peered at Dora. ‘I don’t know how you stay so slim, all the rubbish you eat. Doesn’t seem right. I only have to look at a cream cake and I put on half a stone.’ Sheila tugged her apron down over her ample hips. ‘Is that the dress we got from Marks?’

  After the cool sharp air outside, the kitchen seemed uncomfortably hot. Dora glanced round at Sheila’s immaculate work surfaces, and sighed. ‘It was the only thing I’d got left that was clean. I’ve had company this morning –’ And on reflection the company had left her with a disturbing sense of unease.

  Sheila was oblivious, setting out gleaming cups and saucers on a doily-covered tray.

  ‘You ought to take more care of yourself. I’ve told you I’ll come and give you a hand with your housework if you like; two fifty an hour. Cash of course.’

  Dora grinned. ‘Pinkerton’s going rate?’

  Sheila shook her head and wiped up an imaginary sugar spill. ‘Never heard of them. An agency, are they?’

  ‘It was a joke. Can I help you with anything?’

  Sheila sniffed. ‘It’s all done now. You didn’t come through the Milburn Estate again, did you?’ she demanded, arranging bourbons on a small silver plate.

  ‘Never miss.’ Dora leant over and prised a broken biscuit from the crinkly red plastic packaging before Sheila could consign it to the swingbin. ‘It’s a really pretty walk through those new little designer houses round the back. They’ve landscaped the parking bays now. Weeping willows and red hot pokers, very Sunday supplement.’

  ‘It’s sick. You didn’t put flowers down again?’

  ‘A single cream rose.’

  Sheila sighed. ‘People talk, you know.’

  ‘It seems very fitting to mark the place where my husband died.’

  ‘That would be all very well if he was dead.’

  Dora crunched the biscuit, hoovering wayward crumbs into her mouth with her tongue. ‘He might as well be. I like to mark the spot where our marriage finally passed away.’ She lifted her hands to add dramatic emphasis. ‘One final, fatal collision between magnolia and sage-green emulsion that changed two lives irrevocably.’

  Sheila pursed her lips and picked up the tray. ‘Sick.’

  ‘I’m much happier now.’

  ‘People do not get divorced over emulsion.’

  ‘It was the final straw.’

  Sheila sniffed. ‘Twenty years.’

  ‘Do we always have to talk about this? You always bring it up, it’s over, gone, dead.’

  Sheila stood to one side while Dora opened the sitting-room door for her. ‘Talking about dead. Did you see they’re having Jack Rees’ funeral next week? Taken their time to get it organised. I suppose it’s getting all those bigwigs down here. It’s all over the Gazette. They did a special pull-out bit. You’d think he was royalty, the fuss they’re making.’ She took a newspaper out of the magazine rack. ‘I kept it for you.’

  Dora stared down again at the familiar stranger’s face. Jack Rees was a local legend, a heroic tribal warrior woven into the fabric of Fairbeach history. She scanned the article – he’d been in his sixties. The report said it was his heart.

  A small pain formed in her chest which she recognised as grief. It took her by surprise, though she knew the pain wasn’t personal, but an abstract, unexpected sense of loss for the passing of someone of worth.

  The pain, mixed with her earlier unease, made her feel faint. She stood very, very still, aware of Sheila’s voice like a distant echo over the roar of the wind. The sitting room suddenly seemed as if it were a bright patchwork quilt of colours and light, all sewn together by Sheila’s insistent running-stitch voice.

  Sheila rearranged the tray on a coffee table and picked up the newspaper, glancing over the same front page, talking all the t
ime. She stepped closer, into sharp focus, every last stitch of her best Sunday dress and her best Sunday face caught in a spotlight’s glare in Dora’s mind. Sheila, Calvin and Lillian Bliss were just too much for anyone on a quiet Sunday morning. She suddenly felt sick.

  ‘… I used to see him in town sometimes in that big car of his.’ Sheila leant forward to pick up her reading glasses, her tone cruelly derisive. ‘Coronary it says here, too much fancy living, if you ask me, “found dead on Saturday morning in his home in Parkway by his housekeeper.” The rest is all stuff about how much he will be missed …’ Sheila flicked the glasses off the bridge of her nose and dropped the paper back onto the coffee table. ‘Well, I won’t miss him. They’re all the same if you ask me. Out for what they can get, all of them.’ She sniffed again. ‘Housekeeper, I ask you –’

  Dora smiled, trying not to let Sheila infuriate her; it was an uphill struggle.

  Sheila peered at her. ‘What are you looking at?’

  Dora forced another smile. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ she said quickly, suddenly dizzy. ‘Would you mind if I gave lunch a miss today?’

  Sheila grimaced. ‘You might have rung and said something. Do you want me to call a taxi? You’ve gone really white.’

  Dora shook her head. ‘No, no. I think the fresh air might do me good.’

  Sheila fetched her coat and shoes, lips pressed tight together with a mixture of concern and pique. From the kitchen came the hot, greasy smells of lunch cooking. It was all Dora could do to stop herself from retching. Slipping on her coat, she smiled unsteadily.

  ‘I’ll ring you later when I get home.’

  Sheila nodded, shaking Dora into her coat as if she were a child. ‘Hormones,’ she observed sagely, ‘that’s what I put it down to, it’s your age. I should go home and have a nice rest if I were you, put your feet up. Are you sure you don’t want me to ring you a cab?’

  Dora shook her head and let herself out.

  Outside spring had painted everything with great daubs of sunlight and impressionist daffodils. Dora smiled and pulled her coat tighter. Whatever it was, the pain had gone. She cut through the garages, back towards the town centre.

  ‘Would-you-like-to-tell-us-a-little-bit-about-your background?’ Safely back at her flat, Dora read aloud, typing in the words as she recited them. Relieved to be excused the ritual of Sheila’s Sunday lunch, she took a bite out of a sandwich, and scanned the rest of the questions scheduled for Catiana’s interview. Sunday afternoon, away from Sheila’s pink paper napkins, and everywhere was blessedly quiet. Dora stretched, lifted her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose, and then reread Calvin’s fax.

  The Fenland Arts production team certainly hadn’t stretched themselves, but then again maybe Calvin had warned them off. Dora stared up at the ceiling, screwing up her nose as she tried to get a fix on Catiana Moran’s fictitious origins.

  ‘I did think about being a nun,’ she typed slowly, searching for a punchline. ‘But …’

  ‘… But I look awful in black. And those house rules –’ Catiana Moran rolled her eyes heavenwards. On the TV screen, she ran her tongue around her beautifully painted mouth.

  Dora shifted Oscar off her lap and lit another cigarette before turning up the volume on her ageing TV. Lillian Bliss was good – just give her the words and she delivered them with faultless comic timing. Dora glanced down at the draft copy of the script, following the lines she had written with her finger.

  On screen, Rodney Grey from ‘Fenland Arts Tonight’, reclining in his black leather chair, laughed. His amused expression couldn’t quite hide his disdain. It was obvious he thought the interview was beneath him.

  ‘So when did you start writing seriously? Most people would like to know whether you’re writing from personal experience. In your latest book …’

  On the set, Lillian was waiting for her next cue. The interviewer, still talking, touched the microphone in his ear and smiled wolfishly. For some reason the gesture and his expression made Dora shiver. She sensed something was happening but wasn’t sure what it was.

  Rodney Grey leaned forward onto his elbows, turning a pen slowly between his long fingers.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us the truth. Miss Moran? I mean, this stuff you churn out is hardly great literature, is it? It’s upmarket porn. Cheap titillation for the masses –’

  Dora tensed; that wasn’t in the script. Lillian pouted and stared at him blankly. He hadn’t fed her the cue line. She was completely lost.

  The interviewer’s smile hardened. ‘Well?’ He slapped the front of the novel on the little table between them. ‘How can you justify this kind of cheap smut?’

  Dora leapt off the sofa. ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed impotently at the TV. Oscar took the hint and scrambled for cover.

  Lillian Bliss gnawed at her lip – there seemed to be an agonising, bottomless silence. After a few seconds, Lillian leant forward, eyes glittering, and very, very slowly the camera followed.

  ‘You horrible stuck-up little bastard. I knew you didn’t like me the minute I laid eyes on you,’ she snapped with suprising venom. ‘I wasn’t taken in by all that smarming round me in the dressing room – if I spoke with a plum in my mouth it would be different, wouldn’t it? Have you ever read one of the Catiana Moran books? Just because they’re dirty you think they can’t be any good. The latest one’s brilliant –’

  Dora stared open-mouthed at the TV. She was stunned. She couldn’t have said it better herself.

  Lillian Bliss took a deep breath. ‘I got into writing because I wanted to, and they say write about what you know – so I did.’ Lillian reached across the carefully arranged coffee table and plucked the novel out of Grey’s hands. ‘I’ve got this horrible poky little flat in Fairbeach, above the shoe shop in Gunners Terrace …’

  Dora felt her colour draining. ‘No,’ she said to the girl on camera, as it moved in for a close-up. Lillian’s face filled the screen, her bottle-blue eyes locked fast on Rodney Grey.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to do to make ends meet. You’re all the same, you lot. There was this bloke, just like you, he was. Got a degree, talked all la-di-da. I’ll think of his name in a minute. He liked me to –’

  ‘No,’ Dora repeated more forcefully, barely able to watch.

  Rodney Grey’s face was a picture. He glanced at the clipboard on his lap and, with remarkable presence of mind, began to speak.

  ‘So, Catiana, why don’t you tell us all about this new promotion tour of yours?’ he asked quickly, reverting to the script, stretching the words in front of Lillian like a trip wire.

  Lillian looked up at him, blinked, gathered herself together, and cheerfully recited Dora’s answer as if nothing had happened.

  Dora, who suddenly realised she hadn’t taken a breath for a very long time, let out a long, throaty sob.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured and slumped back onto the sofa.

  Dora hurried into the office and banged in Calvin’s home number. In the sitting room, the credits for ‘Fenland Arts Tonight’ were rolling slowly up the screen. Behind them, Rodney Grey and Lillian Bliss were reduced to razor-sharp silhouettes.

  Calvin picked up the phone on the second ring. Dora stared blankly at the TV, and realised she didn’t know what she wanted to say, or at least, didn’t know what she wanted to say first. There were so many things, the words clumped together in her throat in a log jam.

  Calvin was ahead of her. ‘Hello, Dora, I was just going to ring you. Don’t worry–’

  ‘Don’t worry?’ Her voice sounded like fingernails on glass.

  ‘I know exactly what you’re going to say.’

  ‘You do? Well, in that case I don’t need to tell you I’ve just torn up our contract, do I? Or that thanks to you and your little friend, every pervert in East Anglia – including my sister – now knows where I live, or that …’

  ‘Whoa, whoa,’ soothed Calvin. ‘Your sister doesn’t watch the arts programmes, she told me
…’

  ‘Calvin! Your protegée has just announced my address to the nation.’

  Calvin coughed uncomfortably. ‘Not the nation, Dora, just East Anglia.’ He puffed thoughtfully. ‘Late Tuesday night? Good film on BBC2? God, hardly anybody’s watching. Look, I’m sorry. What else can I say? That bastard Grey set her up. He tricked her.’

  ‘What’s to trick?’ Dora hissed. ‘That girl is dangerous. She called Rodney Grey a horrible little bastard, on TV, to his face –’ As she said it she giggled, which surprised both of them. Hysteria, it had to be.

  Whatever it was, Calvin suddenly choked and then drew in a long snorting breath.

  ‘I know,’ he chuckled. ‘Brilliant, wasn’t it? I mean, the guy’s such a complete and utter prick. Did you see his face when she started to tell him about the man with the degree?’ He was wheezing now, almost unable to breathe for laughing.

  ‘Stop it, Calvin, this isn’t funny. This really won’t do, you’ve got to talk to her,’ Dora snapped. ‘I live here. Muzzle her.’

  ‘I will, I will,’ Calvin giggled, and hung up.

  The phone rang before Dora had a chance to turn around. She bit her lip and picked it up on the third ring.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sheila. ‘That writer woman you like is on the telly. I just caught the end bit – were you watching it?’

  Dora groaned, wondering how much of Lillian’s interview Sheila had seen. Taking a deep breath, she jerked the phone plug out of the wall.

  3

  The flat above the shoe shop in Gunners Terrace looked small and shabby – an easy target. The man watched a small, plump woman ring the bell, waited for a few minutes more in his car, watching to see if she got an answer until he was certain there was no-one at home.

  As she walked away, rounding the corner, he climbed out of the car and flicked up his collar. They did that in all the films, and on the telly. He crossed the road, slipping his hand into his jacket pocket. The lining was split so he could carry a jemmy tucked up under his armpit. It felt good, familiar, like part of him. It was warm from his body heat. Under his parka he stroked the grooves and the small rough patch where someone had scratched their initials.