The Other Half Lives

2

Somebody needs to say something, thought Charlie. A speech. Oh, God. It was too late; it had only occurred to her now, this second. She hadn’t prepared anything and she doubted Simon had either. Unless he was planning to surprise her. Of course he isn’t, fool-he’s as clueless as you are about engagement party protocol. Charlie laughed to herself as her mind filled with the image of Simon clinking a fork against his glass, saying, ‘Unaccustomed as I am…’ And what better way for his imaginary speech to begin; the word ‘unaccustomed’ might have been invented for Simon Waterhouse.

I’ll make him do it, thought Charlie, running through a list of possible threats in her head. The party had been his idea. I’ll force him to stand up in front of nearly a hundred people and declare his undying love for me. Charlie turned away from the packed room, the shouting, dancing and mingled laughter. What right did her guests have to be happier than she was?

She filled the last of the champagne glasses, lifted the yellow tablecloth and bent to put the empty bottles out of sight. Crouching by the table leg, she wished she could stay there for ever, or at least until tonight was over. She didn’t want to have to stand up and face everyone with a this-is-my-special-night smile.

Not that they were her guests, or Simon’s-that was part of the problem. Neither of them had been willing to host the party at home, so they, their friends, relatives and colleagues were all-for a price, of course-guests of the Malt Shovel in Hamblesford for the evening, a pub that, as far as Charlie knew, was known and loved by nobody present. It was the first place she’d phoned and been given the answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you have a function room?’ Too busy to research the matter further, Charlie had decided it would have to do. Hamblesford was a pretty village with a green, a memorial cross and a church at its centre. The Malt Shovel had window boxes stuffed full of yellow and red flowers, a white-painted stone exterior and a thatched roof. It was advantageously positioned opposite a stream and a small bridge; it looked the part.

Because tonight was all about faking; Charlie knew that even if Simon didn’t. She couldn’t understand why he’d insisted on having an engagement party; it was so unlike him. Did he really want to make their relationship the centre of everybody’s attention? Apparently so, and he’d clammed up whenever Charlie had asked why. ‘It’s normal, isn’t it?’ was all he was willing to say on the matter.

It couldn’t be a bid to please his mother. Kathleen Waterhouse rarely left the house, apart from to go to church and to the care home for the elderly where she worked part-time. It had taken Simon weeks to persuade her to come tonight, and even when she’d agreed it had been with the proviso that she would only stay for an hour. Would she really leave on the dot of nine? She’d arrived at exactly eight, as Simon had predicted she would, clutching her husband Michael’s arm, white-faced, saying, ‘Oh, dear, we’re not the first, are we?’ Simon and Charlie had enthused about how nice it was to see them, but they hadn’t responded in kind. Nor had they brought a gift. Charlie had waited for them to say, ‘Congratulations’, but all Kathleen had said to her, shrinking against her husband as if she wanted to dissolve into him, was, ‘Do you know we’re only staying for an hour, dear? Did Simon tell you? I don’t like to be where people are drinking and getting rowdy.’ Her eyes had widened in horror as they took in the array of bottles and cans on the table at the entrance to the room. At the moment, Charlie thought, I’m not linked by marriage to a rabidly devout teetotaller, but all that’s about to change.

Something shiny appeared beside her arm as she rummaged under the table. She turned and saw a silver shoe with a heel so high it bent the foot it was supposed to support into a right angle, and, above it, an expanse of spray-tanned ankle. ‘Hiding, are you?’ DC Colin Sellers’ wife Stacey nudged Charlie’s shoulder with her leg, nearly making her lose her balance. ‘Yum!’ she said. ‘Lovely jubbly bubbly. You’re going to love the prezzie me and Colin got you.’

Charlie doubted it. Stacey had a sticker on her car saying ‘Honk if you’re horny’. Her taste in most things was poor. Husbands especially; Colin Sellers had been screwing a singer called Suki Kitson for as long as Charlie had known him. Everyone knew but his thick-as-a-brick wife.

Charlie waited until Stacey had moved away before coming out from under the table. She looked at her watch. Quarter to nine. Only fifteen minutes left of Kathleen’s hour. If Simon’s parents left promptly, as promised, the volume could go up again. As it was, Charlie could barely hear the Limited Sympathy CD that was playing in the background. Kathleen had asked for it to be turned down, claiming loud music gave her a migraine.

Charlie looked round the room, through the gaps in the clusters of sweaty bodies that surrounded her on all sides, trying to catch a glimpse of her future mother-in-law. Ugh, what a thought. Her next one was even worse, and made her eyes prickle with tears: It won’t happen. Simon doesn’t really want to marry me. He’ll pull out, when it’s almost but not quite too late.

Did she want it to be too late? she asked herself, not for the first time. Did she want to see Simon trapped, by his own foolishness and lack of self-knowledge, in a marriage that she wanted and he didn’t? She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to put a stop to the nonsense in her head. It was nonsense; of course it was. The one thing about Simon that was beyond dispute was his intelligence. Clever people didn’t propose marriage over and over again to people they didn’t want to marry. Did they?

Am I as stupid as Stacey? Charlie wondered.

The function room was like a sauna-a split-level, squalid one with mustard-coloured wallpaper in a geometric pattern of diamonds within diamonds, and sash windows with grease-smeared panes that were so original their frames were rotting. All the money that had been spent on the Malt Shovel in recent years had been spent on its exterior. Here’s to deceptive appearances, thought Charlie, raising her glass in a private toast. She looked around for a member of pub staff, someone who could turn off the heating.

Simon was over by the window, talking to DC Chris Gibbs and his wife Debbie. Charlie couldn’t catch his eye. She tried to beam the word ‘speech’ into his brain using telepathy. When that failed, she tried the word ‘parents’. Where were Kathleen and Michael? Charlie was annoyed, convinced she was more worried about them than Simon was. Please let them be having a pleasant chat with someone respectable. Inspector Proust and his wife Lizzie-that might not be a total disaster. On the other hand, Proust, though not a drinker, could be relied upon to open any conversation with a remark that would offend his interlocutor to the core. But then he generally let Lizzie do the talking when they were together, so maybe it would be all right.

Charlie liked the inspector’s wife a lot. Lizzie was petite with cropped white hair and a surprisingly youthful face for a woman in her late fifties. She was down-to-earth, socially adaptable, a pacifier rather than an agitator. Charlie felt guilty for calling her Mrs Snowman behind her back; it wasn’t fair to extend Proust’s nickname to his wife, whose warmth was one of the few things that could thaw her husband’s freezer-compartment demeanour.

Charlie spotted Giles and Lizzie Proust talking to Colin Sellers by the buffet table. Sellers was visibly drunk already, red in the face and dripping sweat. Proust looked unimpressed, but then that wasn’t unusual for the Snowman. He looked that way most of the time, even when not faced with a moist inebriate. Something jarred in Charlie’s mind: a twitch of discomfort beneath the surface of her thoughts. What was it? Something to do with Sellers… The woman yesterday, the one who’d called herself Ruth Bussey. Charlie had asked her if Sellers had put her up to telling that preposterous story about her boyfriend killing someone who wasn’t dead, as a prank to be revealed here at the party. If only.

Charlie didn’t want to think about her, whatever her real name was. She’d got the innocent waif look down to a T: waist-length golden wavy hair, flared faded jeans, cheesecloth shirt embroidered with flowers round the neck, irritatingly feminine shoes with ribbons wound round her ankles. No socks or tights-no wonder she couldn’t stop shivering. Unless that was all part of the act. Her pleading eyes, her helpless shrugs… Charlie had almost been convinced she was genuine. Then she’d found an article about herself in the pocket of the coat the woman had left behind. She’d needed to sit down and close her eyes for a few seconds until her panic subsided. She’d hardly slept last night, wondering, worrying. One more reason why she was in no mood for a party.

She heard her mother’s laugh and turned. Oh, no. Simon’s parents were talking to her own. Listening to them, rather. Kathleen and Michael Waterhouse cowered against a wall the colour of bile; they appeared to be huddling together against the onslaught. Charlie’s father, Howard Zailer, was telling one of his stories. Linda, her mother, emitted loud, theatrical chuckles in all the right places. Neither of Simon’s parents cracked a smile.

Charlie couldn’t bear to watch. Clutching her glass of champagne, she pushed through the mass of people towards the door that led to the stairs. The escape route. Before leaving the room, she turned and caught Simon watching her. He looked away quickly, nodding at whatever Debbie Gibbs was saying. Debbie was looking elegant in a long, high-necked black dress that was clingy without being at all revealing. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon. ‘Thanks a lot, thanks ever so fucking much,’ Charlie hissed as she stomped downstairs, splashing champagne on her clothes. She knew that she and Simon were the hosts-sort of; insofar as the landlord of the Malt Shovel wasn’t. She knew they had to mingle, pay more attention to their friends than to each other, but would it have killed him to smile at her?

She went outside into the cold night, found a wall to sit on, started to feel pleasantly cool, though she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was freezing. She’d lit a cigarette when she heard footsteps approaching. Kate Kombothekra. Kate’s husband Sam-dubbed ‘Stepford’ by Sellers and Gibbs because of his pleasant, polite manner and his desire to please everybody-was Charlie’s replacement in CID, Simon’s new skipper. Like Debbie Gibbs and Stacey Sellers, Kate was dressed for the special occasion to end all special occasions. Her shimmery green off-the-shoulder number was the exact colour of the Mediterranean sea under a warm summer sun, and swished around Kate’s full figure as she walked. A gold shawl and gold pumps provided the perfect top and tail to the outfit.

Had the CID wives got together and resolved to take the piss out of Charlie’s pathetic engagement party by overdressing, show it up for the farce that it was? Charlie wished she’d worn her only dress instead of a cerise V-necked top, black trousers and black pumps. The thin strip of velour around the V was her outfit’s only fancy touch, one tiny concession to the celebration tonight was supposed to be; without it, she would have looked as if she was off to a committee meeting.

‘If you can’t stand the heat…’ said Kate, wiping her forehead. ‘I’d have had to pour one of your ice buckets over my head if I’d stayed in there.’

‘Not my ice buckets. The pub’s.’

Kate gave Charlie an odd look, then smiled knowingly. ‘I met your in-laws-to-be. No wonder you’re looking deathly.’

‘Thanks a lot.’ Charlie took a long, deep drag of her cigarette, sucking hard, trying to give herself proper pulled-in skull-cheeks.

‘You know what I mean. Deathly of mood, not deathly of appearance.’ Kate’s blonde hair and glowing skin always looked as if experts had finished buffing them only seconds earlier.

‘It’s funny how meeting someone’s close family can bring into focus everything that’s wrong with them,’ said Charlie. Kate had insulted her; being made privy to one of Charlie’s more obnoxious thoughts was her punishment. ‘You suspect there’s something deeply amiss about a person, and then you meet their parents and think, “Now I understand.” I wonder if Simon, having met mine, can see clearly everything that’s wrong with me. And bound to get steadily wronger as I get older.’

Kate chuckled. ‘Sometimes it’s possible to defy both nature and nurture,’ she said. ‘Look at Sam-he’s the kindest, most considerate man alive, and his parents are lazy, selfish tossers. His brothers and sister too-the whole Kombothekra clan. When we have them round they sit immobile in armchairs like the human equivalent of a druid stone circle while Sam and I wait on them hand and foot. They do nothing for themselves. They’re worse than my boys have ever been, even as toddlers.’

Charlie couldn’t help smiling. It was reassuring to know that even women with silky blonde hair had problems.

‘They’re going to get what’s coming to them,’ said Kate, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’m not inviting them for Christmas dinner this year. They don’t know it yet. I do, and I’ve got nine months to gloat in secret.’

‘It’s only the first of March. Please don’t put Christmas in my head.’ What would Charlie and Simon do? Would he want to spend Christmas Day with her? Would it be a merging of the Zailer and Waterhouse families? Charlie felt her blood temperature drop by several degrees.

The situation with Sam’s folks had to be dire, she thought, if Kate was planning to withdraw her hospitality. She was the sort of person who seemed to want nothing more than to drag strangers in off the street and cook for them, then insist they stay the night. Charlie had been a virtual stranger when Kate had first started to demand her presence at Kombothekra family meals; now, after countless such occasions, Charlie supposed she had to regard Kate as a friend. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend who made staggeringly good apple and cranberry crumbles, could it? Kate always said that whisky was the crucial ingredient, but in Charlie’s view it was even more crucial to start off as the sort of person whose notions of pudding extended beyond unwrapping a Cadbury’s mini roll.

‘Did you and Sam have an engagement party? Of course you did,’ Charlie answered her own question. ‘I bet it was at one of your houses.’

Kate dragged herself out of whatever revenge fantasy had temporarily consumed her. ‘My mum and dad’s. Huh! Sam’s parents wouldn’t…’ She stopped. ‘But you didn’t want the party at yours, you said. Simon didn’t want it at his.’

‘Exactly,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘What’s wrong with us?’

Kate shrugged. ‘Simon wouldn’t have been able to relax with people all over his house, would he? And you’re in the middle of decorating.’ She grinned. ‘Though I’m not sure something that never ends can be said to have a middle.’

‘Don’t start.’

‘I did try to tell you that an undecorated house was the ideal party venue-no expensive wallpaper for people to puke on.’

‘And you were right,’ said Charlie. ‘But I still went ahead and booked a dingy room in a pub, because I’m not like you and Sam. Neither is Simon. We’re incapable of making anybody feel welcome. If we have to pretend to like the people we know, we’d rather do it on neutral territory.’ For some reason, Charlie enjoyed being vicious about herself; she felt it compensated for those occasions on which she was vicious about other people. ‘Did anyone give a speech?’ she asked.

‘At our engagement party? Sam did. It was earnest and endless. Why, are you going to? Is Simon going to?’

‘Of course not. We don’t do anything properly.’

Kate looked puzzled. ‘You can give a speech if you want to. It doesn’t matter if it’s off the cuff. Often a spontaneous-’

‘I’d rather dip my face in a tray of acid,’ Charlie cut her off. ‘Simon would feel the same.’

Kate sighed, gathering her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. ‘I bet he wouldn’t if he was certain of being able to give a really good speech. Confidence, that’s all he’s lacking. This is unfamiliar territory for him.’

‘Sounds like you know more about him than I do.’

‘I know he adores you. And before you say “Why doesn’t he show it, then?”-he does. If you don’t see the signs, it’s because you’re looking wrong.’

‘I thought I was looking deathly,’ said Charlie through clenched teeth.

‘Simon does things his own way. He needs time, that’s all-time to get used to being a couple. Once you’re married you’ll have plenty of time. Won’t you?’ Kate sounded as if she was proposing something unutterably wholesome: a brisk walk in the fresh air. ‘Stop worrying about what you ought to be doing and stop comparing yourself to other people. When are you going to set a date?’

Charlie laughed. ‘I hope you know what a lone voice you are,’ she said. ‘You’re the one person who doesn’t think me and Simon getting married would be the biggest mistake since the dawn of time. Including me and Simon, that is.’

Kate pulled Charlie’s cigarette out of her mouth, threw it on the ground and stamped on it with a gold pump. ‘You should give up,’ she said. ‘Think of your future children, how they’d feel having to watch their mother die.’

‘I’ve no intention of having any.’

‘Of course you’ll have children,’ Kate said with authority. ‘Look, if you want to feel sorry for yourself, let me make it worth your while. Do you know what everyone’s saying in there?’ She pointed at the pub. ‘Almost every conversation I’ve been party to has centred around whether you and Simon have done it yet. I’ve heard two people predict that you’ll be divorced within a year and a good five or six say they doubt there’ll be a wedding at all. Do you know what Stacey Sellers has bought you as an engagement present?’

Charlie had a nasty feeling she was about to find out.

‘A vibrator. I heard her laughing about it, telling Robbie Meakin and Jack Zlosnik that Simon probably wouldn’t know what it was. “He’ll run a mile when he finds out,” she said.’

‘Don’t tell me any more.’ Charlie jumped down from the wall and started to walk towards the bridge. She lit a fresh cigarette. Dying wasn’t an altogether unappealing prospect, unobserved as she would be by her own non-existent children.

Kate followed her. ‘Then she said, “Oh, well-at least Charlie’ll be able to get her rocks off after Simon’s scarpered in terror.” ’

‘She’s a cockroach.’

‘More of a slug, I’d say,’ Kate amended. ‘She’s all squish and no crunch. And she’s going to have a field day if you walk out of your own engagement party and don’t come back. Do you want her to think you’re ashamed of your relationship with Simon?’

‘I’m not.’ Charlie stopped. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks.’ Kate grabbed her arms, wrinkling her nose as cigarette smoke wafted in her face. ‘You love him more than most people love the people they’re married to. You’d die for him without a second thought.’

‘Would I?’

‘Take it from me.’

Charlie nodded, in spite of feeling as if she ought to argue. Why should she take it from Kate? Was it possible to measure the levels of love present in one’s guests while serving up baked Alaska?

Kate released her grip. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘unless all the gossip I keep hearing is completely off the mark-and gossip rarely is, in my experience-then you and Simon have got some kind of problem with your sex life.’ Before Charlie could tell her to mind her own business, she went on, ‘I don’t know what it is and I’m not asking to be told. But I do know one thing: there’s more to love, and to life, than sex. Now, the only way to put a stop to what people are saying in there is to go back and interrupt every conversation. Address your guests. Don’t leave them to speak to each other-they can’t be trusted. Stand on a chair-you’ve got flat heels on-and give a speech.’

Charlie was surprised to hear herself laugh. You’ve got flat heels on-had Kate really said that?

‘Char, wait for me!’ The voice came from the knot of trees by the side of the bridge.

Charlie closed her eyes. How much had Olivia overheard? ‘My sister,’ she said, in answer to Kate’s raised eyebrows.

‘I’ll see you inside in no more than three minutes,’ said Kate.

‘Who was that?’ Olivia asked.

‘Sam Kombothekra’s wife. You’re late.’

‘It’s not a concert,’ said Olivia. It was a saying she’d picked up from her and Charlie’s father. Howard Zailer said it about all the things he didn’t care if he was late for. He never said it about golf, which he played at least five days a week. Howard’s passion for golf had been forced on his wife, though they both pretended Linda’s sudden enthusiasm for the game had been arrived at independently, by a huge stroke of luck.

‘So, are you giving a speech?’ asked Olivia.

‘Apparently.’

Olivia was wearing an ill-advised tight skirt that bound her legs together, and could only take tiny steps towards the pub. Charlie had to restrain herself from screaming, ‘Get a move on!’ She would march back into that room and beat the shit out of anyone who looked as if they might have been predicting the demise of her and Simon’s engagement. How dare they? How dare they drink champagne we’ve paid for and slag us off behind our backs? Her speech-forming in her mind as she walked with feigned patience beside her shuffling sister-would be a verbal thrashing for all those who deserved it. Not exactly party spirit in the traditional sense, thought Charlie, but at least she was fired up.

Once inside and upstairs, she stood on a chair. She didn’t need to bang anything or call out to get attention. All eyes were on her, and people quickly shushed one another. ‘Can someone turn the music down?’ she said. A man in a white shirt and a black bow-tie nodded and left the room. She didn’t know his name. She wondered if he knew hers, if word of her unsatisfactory sex life had spread as far as the Malt Shovel staff who were helping out for the evening.

A quick scan of the room confirmed that Kathleen and Michael Waterhouse had left. Simon, in a corner at the back, was looking worried, no doubt wishing Charlie had conferred with him before opting to make a tit of herself in front of everyone they knew.

The music stopped mid-song. Charlie opened her mouth. Two seconds ago she had known what she was going to say-it would have left no conscience unflayed-but she kept looking at the wrong people. Lizzie Proust was beaming up at her, Kate Kombothekra was mouthing, ‘Go on,’ from the back of the room and Simon chose that precise moment to smile.

I can’t do it, thought Charlie. I can’t denounce them all. They don’t all deserve it. Possibly less than half of them deserve it. Kate might have been exaggerating. It struck Charlie that denouncing was probably the sort of thing that ought to be handled with a bit more precision.

You’re standing on a chair in the middle of the room. You’ve got to say something.

‘Here’s a story I’ve never told anyone before,’ she said, thinking, What the fuck am I doing? She hadn’t told the story for a very good reason: it made her look like a world-class moron. She saw Olivia frown. Liv thought she knew everything about her older sister. It was almost true. There were only a couple of stories she’d missed out on, and this was one of them. ‘When I was a new PC, I went into a primary school to give a talk about road safety.’

‘The headmaster had never seen you drive, then!’ Colin Sellers called out. Everyone laughed. Charlie could have kissed him. He was the perfect undemanding audience.

‘In the classroom, apart from me and the thirty or so kids, there was the teacher and a classroom assistant-a young girl-’

‘Woman!’ a female voice yelled.

‘Sorry, a young woman, who was working as hard as the teacher was-wiping noses, helping to draw pictures of highway code symbols, ferrying kids to the loo. The teacher had introduced herself to me at the beginning of the lesson, and she’d made all the children tell me their names, but she never introduced the assistant, which I thought was a bit rude. Anyway, when I’d finished doing my bit and the bell was about to go, the teacher stood up and said, “Can we all please give PC Zailer a huge round of applause for coming to visit us and giving us such a fascinating talk?” Everyone clapped. And then she said, “And now, let’s put our hands together for Grace.” ’

Charlie cringed at the memory, even at a distance of several years. She saw Sam Kombothekra laughing next to Kate, the only person who seemed to have anticipated what was coming next.

‘Thank goodness, I thought to myself: finally the poor classroom assistant-Grace-is getting some acknowledgement for all her hard work. I started clapping vigorously, but nobody else did. All the little kids were staring at me as if I was a nutter. And then I realised that they all had their palms pressed together, praying style…’

A tide of giggles rose in the hot room. Charlie heard her father’s throaty guffaws. Her mum and Olivia were on either side of him, watching him to assess how much he was enjoying himself and infer from that how much enjoyment they were entitled to.

Think nice thoughts.

Kate Kombothekra was giving Charlie a thumbs-up sign from across the room. Stacey Sellers had a smear of guacamole in the corner of her mouth.

‘That’s right,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s when I remembered that I was in a Catholic school, and that Grace, as well as being a girl’s name, was also the name of a prayer. The fact is, I knew nothing about Catholicism, having been raised by atheist hippies whose idea of a deity was Bob Dylan.’ Linda and Olivia Zailer looked worried momentarily; when Howard laughed, they smiled, but turned warning eyes in Charlie’s direction. ‘If I had any ideas at all about Catholics, I probably imagined they were all repressed weirdos who think they’re right about everything all the time.’ Charlie gave it a few seconds before saying, ‘And then I met Simon.’

Laughter broke out. Stacey Sellers’ tittering was audible above the general noise. Too late to back out now, thought Charlie. ‘Simon, a good Catholic boy, is bound to have had preconceived ideas about the children of atheist hippies: foulmouthed, loose-living, promiscuous, bent on annihilating themselves and everyone around them.’ One, two, three, four. ‘And then he met me.’ This time the laughter was deafening. Charlie tried not to feel hurt. ‘And, in fact, he’s now looking at me as if I’ve sprouted horns, so maybe the engagement’s off. I hope not-if it is, all prezzies will be returned.’ As an afterthought, Charlie added, ‘Which means, Stacey, that you’ll get your vibrator back, though I doubt you’ll manage to get much purchase on it, having had two children the natural way. Anyway, moving swiftly on… Thanks so much for coming, everyone. There’s plenty of booze left-have a great evening!’

Charlie saw Simon marching towards her while she was still climbing down from the chair.

‘What the fuck…’ he started to say, but his words were drowned out by Lizzie Proust who appeared between him and Charlie, dragging the Snowman behind her. ‘That was absolutely the best speech I’ve ever heard,’ she told Charlie. ‘Wasn’t it, Giles?’

‘No,’ said Proust.

‘It was. You were terrific!’ Lizzie hugged Charlie with one arm, keeping hold of her husband with the other. By the time she’d managed to struggle free, Charlie couldn’t see Simon any more.

‘I don’t think it was the best speech your intended has ever heard either,’ said Proust, giving her a wintry look.

‘Most people seemed to like it, sir.’ Charlie smiled resolutely. She wouldn’t let him ruin her mood, so recently improved. Her speech had been good. But now where was Simon? He couldn’t really be angry, could he?

The music came back on, louder than before, and a different CD: Wyclef Jean’s Carnival II. Charlie noticed Proust’s instant displeasure, and wondered fleetingly if he’d ever been open-minded even in his youth. She felt a hand close around her arm: Debbie Gibbs. ‘I wish I could laugh at myself the way you laugh at yourself,’ she said. Her eyes looked wet.

‘I can laugh at you if you want,’ said Charlie. Debbie shook her head, not getting the joke. You’re a cop, not a comedian, Charlie reminded herself.

Once Debbie had moved away, Olivia pulled Charlie to one side. ‘Mum and Dad were never hippies.’

‘Well, whatever they were, then-champagne socialists. People with wooden floors who go on CND marches and eat pasta a lot-but that would have taken too long to say. Much easier to summarise now Dad’s a golf bore.’

‘Don’t start, Char.’

‘Interested in his golfing stories, are you?’

During Olivia’s treatment for cancer, Howard Zailer had been fully involved. As much as Linda and Charlie were. It was when he’d retired that his horizons had started to narrow. By 2006, when Charlie’s name had been splashed all over the papers, he had been willing to talk to her only briefly about what she was going through; it wasn’t life-threatening, after all. Howard couldn’t be late for his day’s play, or, if it was evening when Charlie happened to ring, for a drinking session with his friends from the club. ‘I’ll hand you over to Mum,’ he said whenever she phoned. ‘She can fill me in later.’

‘You’ll have to forgive me if I’m determined to like my family in spite of their faults,’ Liv said huffily, looking Charlie up and down. ‘It’s not exactly an abundance of riches scenario, is it? I don’t have any relatives who aren’t a pain in the arse in some major way. I suppose you’d like me to cut all ties, take myself off to the pound to sit in a mesh-fronted cage until some perfect new family comes to claim me.’

Charlie decided it would be unwise to pursue the point.

Olivia had no such reservations. ‘Do we all get to say exactly what we think, or is it just you? I wasn’t going to say a word about how ridiculous this whole charade is, your loony engagement…’

‘That policy has subsequently been revised, I take it?’ Charlie snapped.

Liv didn’t get the chance to answer. Shouting was coming from the bottom of the stairs near the presents table. Simon’s voice. Everyone who could hear it was shifting in that direction, not wanting to miss out.

Stacey Sellers was crying. Simon was holding a large vibrator, wielding it like a truncheon. ‘This is what you thought we’d want, is it?’ he yelled, throwing it on the floor. It landed amid strips of wrapping paper, next to what was left of its cardboard and plastic box.

‘There’s nothing wrong with sex toys. They’re not dirty,’ Stacey screamed back at him. ‘Haven’t you ever watched Sex and the City? Don’t you know anything?’

‘She’s got a point,’ Olivia whispered in Charlie’s ear. ‘A libido might not be essential but a sense of humour is.’

‘Liv says she’ll have it if we don’t want it,’ Charlie shouted down the stairs.

Simon looked up at her. ‘Get your stuff,’ he said. ‘We’re going. ’

‘Going? Simon, it’s only ten past nine. We can’t leave-it’s our party.’

‘I can do whatever the fuck I like. Give me your keys. I’ll see you later.’

Keys? Did he mean he planned to spend the night at her house? He had to mean that-it was unambiguous. Charlie looked around to see if anyone was smirking. Most people seemed more interested in Stacey’s weeping. There was no way anyone could know that Charlie and Simon had never spent the night together at either of their houses or anywhere else, that she’d feared it might never happen, even after they were married. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she told him, grabbing her coat and bag from the stand at the top of the stairs.

Olivia was waiting to pounce. ‘I’ve only just got here. Can’t Simon wait?’

He certainly can, thought Charlie. Let no one say of Simon Waterhouse that he couldn’t wait. He could wait so long that Charlie’s heart was in danger of fossilising. She was the one who couldn’t stand it any longer.

‘So. Are you going to tell me?’ Simon sat on Charlie’s lounge floor, knees pulled up to his chin, an unopened can of lager in his hand. His skin looked grey and grainy. Charlie could see specs of grit in the parting in his hair. Hadn’t he showered before coming out?

She stood in the middle of the undecorated, unfurnished room, trying not to howl. They were missing their engagement party for this, to be mired in this grim atmosphere, this stilted conversation. ‘It doesn’t matter, Simon. For Christ’s sake!’

‘So you’re not going to tell me.’

Charlie groaned. ‘It’s a TV programme. About four women who live in New York, all right? They’re friends, they screw lots of men-that’s about it.’

‘Everyone’s seen it. Everyone except me.’

‘No! Probably there are loads of people who have never even heard of it.’

‘Repressed weirdos. To quote your brilliant speech.’

‘It was brilliant.’ Charlie tried to harden her misery, turn it into anger. ‘I’ve explained why I did it. Kate Kombothekra told me everyone was taking the piss out of us. I thought I’d steal their thunder by doing it myself.’

Simon sprang to his feet. ‘I’m going home.’

Charlie put her body between him and the door. ‘You came back here so that you could ask about Sex and the City and then leave? Why are you here, Simon? Did you overhear someone at the party talking about our sex life, or lack of? Kate says they were all at it. Maybe you wanted everybody to see us leaving together and draw the wrong conclusion.’

‘It’s what I heard you saying that’s the problem!’ Simon shouted in her face. ‘Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous, bent on self-destruction. Lucky for me my parents had left by then.’

‘Scared of Mummy and Daddy finding out, are you? What I’m really like?’

‘You’d still have done it, wouldn’t you? Even if they’d been there.’

‘They weren’t there! You’re being ridiculous. This is all about your vanity.’

‘It’s about your distortions, your… exhibitionism! That story about the primary school-was it true? Since the rest of what you said was a load of shit, I have to wonder.’

‘You think it was just an excuse, a convenient way into slagging off Catholics?’

‘Oh, you don’t discriminate-you’ll slate anything that moves. The more defenceless the better!’

Charlie stepped back, away from his anger. Stacey Sellers got off lightly, she thought. ‘Who’s defenceless, Simon?’

‘So it really happened? The teacher said, “Put your hands together for Grace,” and you didn’t know what she meant? Sorry, but…’ His words tailed off. He turned away, rubbed his face with his hands.

‘Sorry but what?’

‘Do we have anything in common? Do we even inhabit the same world?’

This can’t be happening. It can’t be. ‘Do what you have to do,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not going to talk you out of it.’ She left the room and went upstairs.

In her bedroom, she decided not to slam the door. Instead, she closed it carefully. She wasn’t a child; she wouldn’t be treated like one and she wouldn’t behave like one. Lizzie Proust had liked her speech. Debbie Gibbs had liked it. Her awful speech. What had possessed her? Foul-mouthed, loose-living, promiscuous… Simon had misremembered the last bit: bent on annihilating themselves and everyone around them. ‘Oops,’ said Charlie out loud. The sound fell heavy in the silent air. She wondered what Kate Kombothekra had thought of what she’d said; would it be a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the person who’d put her up to making a laughing-stock of herself in the first place?

The door opened. ‘Talk me out of what?’ said Simon. He didn’t look happy. He never looked happy.

‘Dumping me. Here’s your ring.’ Charlie dragged it off her finger. ‘I’m not going to haggle over the world’s smallest diamond. ’

‘I’m not… that’s not what I’m trying to do. Look, I’m sorry. I got angry.’

‘Really? I must have missed that part.’ Charlie would sooner have died than let him see how relieved she was. She was furious with herself for being relieved at all. How many men might she be engaged to at this very moment who would have found her Grace story hilarious? Billions. Dozens, at least. Most of whom would probably want to have sex with her.

‘I had a bad day at work,’ Simon told her. ‘I had to tell a man-’

‘Oh, diddums! Did the canteen run out of steak and kidney pie before you got to the front of the queue?’

‘Shut the fuck up and put your ring back on,’ said Simon.

‘I had an evil day yesterday, as it happens,’ Charlie snapped. ‘It totally fucked up my day off today, in fact, but in spite of that, I seem to be able to behave like a civilised human being. Or rather, I seemed to be able to, until you started on me!’ She blinked away tears as she slipped her ring back on. The world’s smallest diamond. She shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t true and it was an unforgivable thing to say. ‘I’m sorry. I love this ring. You know that.’ If our marriage is going to happen, she thought, if it’s going to work, he’ll ask me about my rotten day before telling me about his.

‘I spent all afternoon with a man who’s confessed to a murder, ’ said Simon. ‘Trouble is, the woman he reckons he murdered isn’t dead.’

Charlie’s mind flattened out; all other thoughts fell away. ‘What?’

‘I know. Strange. Actually, it gave me the creeps-he wasn’t someone I enjoyed being in a small room with.’ Simon opened his can of lager. ‘Do you want a drink, or is this the last beer?’

‘Tell me,’ Charlie heard herself say. It was as if the party and their row had never happened; she was back in the reception room at the nick, trying not to stare at the ribbons Ruth Bussey had wound round her thin ankles. Ruth Bussey with her limp and her frail, reedy voice, who was frightened something was going to happen, but didn’t know what…’

No, no, no. I can’t have got it all wrong, not again.

‘I wasn’t there for the beginning,’ said Simon. ‘I only got dragged into it today. When he came in yesterday, Gibbs talked to him.’

‘Yesterday? What time? What’s his name, this man?’

‘Aidan Seed.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Not exactly. What time did he come in yesterday?’

Simon screwed up his face, thinking. ‘Must have been some time between one and two.’

Charlie let out the breath she’d been holding. ‘At ten to twelve, his girlfriend was waiting for me when I turned up for my shift.’

‘His girlfriend?’

‘Ruth Bussey, she said her name was.’

Simon nodded. ‘He mentioned her. Not her surname, just as Ruth. What did she want?’

‘Same as him, by the sound of it. Told me her boyfriend was adamant he’d killed a woman called Mary Trelease…’

‘Right.’ Simon nodded.

‘… but that he couldn’t have, because Trelease is still alive. I thought she was deranged at first, so I asked a few background questions. The more she talked-’

‘The more you thought she seemed sane?’ Simon cut in. ‘Preoccupied, upset, but sane?’

‘Preoccupied’s an understatement. I’ve met human wreckage before, but this woman was in a worse state than anyone I’ve seen for a long time. Shaking with fear, crying one minute, then staring into the distance as if she’d seen a ghost, telling pointless lies that made no sense. She had something wrong with her foot, and claimed at first that she’d sprained her ankle. When I said it didn’t look swollen, she changed her story and said she had a blister.’

Simon paced the room, chewing his thumbnail as he often did when he was concentrating. ‘Seed was the opposite-not changeable at all. He was very controlled. At first I thought he had to be asylum material, but… he didn’t seem it, even though he was insisting on the impossible and wouldn’t listen to anything I said. Twenty-eight times, he told me something I knew couldn’t be true; tried to use logic, even, to make me believe it.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Charlie.

‘I asked him to describe the woman he killed, which he did in great detail. Point for point, his description matched the woman I saw and spoke to this morning.’

‘You’ve met Mary Trelease?’ The idea made Charlie feel funny; she wasn’t sure why.

‘I have and Gibbs has. We’ve both seen her passport, her driving licence. Today she showed me the deeds of her house with her name on, all the paperwork from her solicitor from when she moved, her bank statements…’

‘Why so much?’ said Charlie. ‘Passport and driving licence should have been enough.’

‘I think she was worried one of us was going to turn up every day and ask her to prove all over again that she’s who she says she is. She gathered together a stack of stuff to show me how absurd the whole thing is. She acted like… like she was afraid I was trying to steal her identity or something.’

‘Afraid, literally?’

Simon considered it. ‘Yeah, underneath her chippiness, I reckon there was some fear there.’

Two frightened women. Charlie didn’t like the feel of this at all. ‘So how did you get dragged in? You said Seed saw Gibbs first?’ She waited to be told that Seed had at some point requested Simon’s involvement, asked for him by name. She wasn’t quite ready to believe this wasn’t all a cruel hoax aimed at her. If Ruth Bussey and Aidan Seed knew she and Simon were engaged…

‘Kombothekra said Gibbs was needed elsewhere,’ Simon told her, ‘Reading between the lines, he didn’t trust him with it.’

‘He doesn’t think Gibbs is capable of checking if someone’s alive or dead?’

‘Mary Trelease wouldn’t let him in,’ said Simon. ‘He didn’t see the house. Most importantly, he didn’t see the master bedroom, the one facing the street. According to what Seed told Gibbs yesterday, that’s where he left Mary Trelease’s dead body, in the bed in that room…’

‘Hold on. When did he say he’d killed her?’

‘He wouldn’t say. Nor why, though he did say how: he strangled her.’

‘Ruth Bussey said Seed had told her he’d killed Mary Trelease years ago.’

Simon blinked a few times. ‘Sure?’

‘Me or her? I’m sure she said it, and she seemed convinced that was what he’d told her. I think she quoted his exact words as, “Years ago, I killed a woman called Mary Trelease.” ’

‘Makes no sense,’ Simon muttered, turning to face the window. Which was why Sam Kombothekra hadn’t wanted Gibbs on it, thought Charlie. Most of what CID were called upon to investigate had some logic behind it. People hurt or killed each other over money, or drugs, usually some combination of the two. They stole from shops, disturbed the peace or terrorised the neighbourhood because they saw it as the only way out of a hopeless life-it was grim, but you could see the reasoning.

Charlie was about to ask Simon what he’d meant about Seed trying to use logic to convince him Mary Trelease was dead, but Simon was already saying, ‘He killed her years ago, left her body in the front bedroom at 15 Megson Crescent, and expects it to be there, undisturbed, for us to find several years later when he decides to confess? No.’ Charlie watched him junk the hypothesis. ‘Trelease didn’t live in that house years ago. She bought it in 2006, from a family called Mills.’

‘That’s two years ago,’ she pointed out, knowing what the response would be. Would she ever be able to hear ‘2006’ without experiencing a small earthquake in the pit of her stomach?

‘The phrase “years ago” implies longer,’ said Simon, on cue. ‘You know it does.’

She couldn’t argue. Ruth Bussey had said Seed had confessed to her last December, at which point 2006 would only have been ‘last year’. ‘What else did he tell you, apart from that Trelease’s body would be on the bed in the master bedroom and that he strangled her?’

‘In the bed, not on. He said she was naked, she’d been naked when he killed her. And her body was in the middle of the bed, not on one side or the other-he made a big point of that. Apart from saying several times that he didn’t rape her, that was all he told me.’

‘Ruth Bussey mentioned none of this.’ Charlie pulled a cigarette out of a packet on the window-sill. She had nothing to light it with. ‘Was he in the bedroom with her when she took her clothes off? Had they gone to bed together?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

‘Did he have his clothes on when he strangled her?’

‘Wouldn’t say.’

Charlie doubted she’d be able to come up with a question Simon wouldn’t have put to Seed. Everything Gibbs would have neglected to ask, Simon would have asked several times over.

‘He answered some questions willingly and in great detail-others, he wouldn’t open his mouth.’

‘His girlfriend was exactly the same,’ said Charlie.

‘I’ve never come across anything like it before.’ Simon shook his head. ‘You know what it’s like normally: people talk or they don’t. Sometimes there’s nothing doing at first, then you twirl them and they spill the lot. Other times they spout crap until you point out to them how they’ve landed themselves in it, at which point they clam up. Aidan Seed: none of the above. It was like he had this… this checklist in his head. Two lists: the questions he was allowed to answer and the ones he wasn’t. When I asked him the questions on the first list, he went out of his way to be informative. Like I said, I got every detail of Mary’s appearance, from the tiny caramel-coloured birthmark beneath her lower lip-he actually said “caramel-coloured”-to her small earlobes, her wiry, curly hair, black with the odd strand of silver.’

‘Is she attractive?’ Charlie asked. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not asking if you fancied her. I just wondered.’

‘She’s not pretty,’ said Simon after some thought.

‘But striking? Sexy?’

He shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

Aidan Seed’s not the only one with a list in his mind of questions it’s not safe to answer, thought Charlie. ‘Did he say if he killed her in the bed or moved her body there later?’ she asked, a question she knew would be on Simon’s acceptable list. Is there anything I wouldn’t do to please him? Would I take early retirement and roam the country with a set of golf clubs, wearing dreadful sweaters?

‘She was in the bed when he killed her, he said. But… listen to us.’ Simon took a swig of his beer. ‘ “Did he move the body?” If Seed and his girlfriend are mad, we’ve nearly caught them up. What body? Mary Trelease is alive.’

‘You said “the questions he’s allowed to answer”,’ said Charlie. ‘Who’s doing the allowing? Ruth Bussey? She also seemed eager to talk, but only in response to certain prompts. And then I’d ask her something else-in most cases, the obvious next question-and she’d button it. Not a word, not even, “Sorry, I can’t answer that.” ’

‘Could there be a third person involved, someone who’s telling them what they can and can’t say?’

‘Mary Trelease?’ Charlie suggested.

Simon waved the idea away. ‘Why would she tell them both to go to the police and pretend Seed believes he killed her? Why would they go along with it?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, knowing she didn’t have one. ‘Gibbs asked Trelease if she knew an Aidan Seed. She said no, but he thought she was lying. I asked her again today, told her he was a picture-framer, how old he was. She said no. Seemed genuine enough, but then she’d had a day to polish up her act. Seed, though-he wasn’t acting. He feels guilty about something, that’s for sure. Whatever’s in his head, I wouldn’t want it in mine. He kept saying, “I’m a murderer.” Said he’d felt like he was dying himself when his hands were round her neck, the nail of his left thumb pressing into his right thumb…’

‘He said that?’

Simon nodded.

‘But he hasn’t strangled her. Nobody has.’ Charlie shuddered. ‘This is starting to do my head in. I’ve heard plenty of people confess to crimes they haven’t committed, but they’re always crimes someone’s committed. Why would anyone confess to the murder of a woman who isn’t dead? According to Ruth Bussey, Seed didn’t tell her any of that stuff about the bedroom, or strangling Mary-why not?’

‘You wouldn’t want to put that sort of image in your girlfriend’s head,’ Simon suggested.

‘What did Seed say his relationship with Mary Trelease was? How did he know her?’ Seeing Simon’s expression, Charlie guessed the answer. ‘He wouldn’t say.’ She cast around for something else to ask, as if the right formulation of words might shed sudden light. Nothing came to mind. ‘We should be doing the pair of them for wasting police time,’ she said.

‘Not my decision. For once, I’m glad. Seed’s not like any bullshit artist I’ve ever seen. Something was bothering him, something real.’

Charlie had felt the same about Ruth Bussey until she’d found the article.

‘Kombothekra’s got to decide where to go next with it,’ said Simon. ‘If it was my call, I don’t think I’d want to risk not taking statements from everyone involved. From Seed at the very least. Though I’ve no idea what I’d do with his statement once I had it.’ He frowned as a new thought occurred to him. ‘What did you decide to do? After you spoke to Ruth Bussey?’

Charlie felt her face heat up. ‘Err on the side of negligence, that’s my motto,’ she said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t planning to follow it up, even though she told me she was afraid something really bad was going to happen, and even though a fool could have seen she was seriously fucked up. I hadn’t even checked, like you and Gibbs did, that Mary Trelease was alive.’ Charlie put the cigarette she was holding in her mouth: comfort food.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Simon.

She left the room, started to go downstairs.

‘What?’ He followed her. ‘What did I say?’

‘Nothing. I’m getting a lighter.’

There were a few to choose from on the mantelpiece in the lounge, all plastic and disposable. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Simon asked.

‘That’s a question from the wrong list. Sorry.’ Charlie tried to laugh, lighting her cigarette. The wonderful tranquillising power of nicotine started to do its work.

‘You said before that Ruth Bussey was waiting for you when you went into work yesterday.’

‘Did I?’ Too clever for his own good. And everyone else’s.

‘Why you?’

Charlie walked over to her handbag, which she’d left dangling from the door handle, and pulled out the newspaper article. ‘She left her coat behind. This was in the pocket.’ Did he have any idea how hard it was for her to show it to him? Chances were he hadn’t seen it at the time; Simon didn’t read local papers.

She left him alone in the lounge, took her cigarette through the kitchen and out to the backyard, even though it was cold and she had no coat or shoes on. She stared at what Olivia called her ‘installation’: a pile of broken furniture, things Charlie had dismantled and thrown out two years ago. ‘How hard is it to hire a skip?’ Liv said plaintively whenever she visited. Charlie didn’t know, and didn’t have the time or the inclination to find out. My neighbours must pray every night that I’ll move, she thought. Especially the ones who’d replaced their neat, paved yard with a little lawn and flower-beds as soon as they moved in. Now they had colour-coordinated borders: red, white and blue flowers in a pattern that was overbearingly regular. What a waste of time, when your garden’s the size of a fingernail.

Charlie felt something touch her and cried out in alarm before realising it was Simon. He put his arms round her waist.

‘Well? Did you read it?’

‘Slander,’ he said. ‘Like the way you described yourself tonight. ’

‘It wasn’t negligent, to take no action over Ruth Bussey?’ She knew he was talking about the party, but chose to misunderstand.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Simon. ‘As we both keep saying, no crime’s been committed. Bussey told you Trelease was alive and well-turns out she is.’

‘So Sam Kombothekra will tell you to leave it. It’s not a police matter. Just three oddballs behaving oddly, none of our business.’

Simon sighed. ‘Are you happy with that explanation? Seed and Bussey come in on the same day, separately, and tell two versions of almost the same story? You want to let it lie?’

‘Ruth Bussey said she was frightened something was going to happen.’ That was the part Charlie kept coming back to in her mind, now that she knew the whole thing hadn’t been about her.

‘One thing’s going to have to happen if we want to take it any further,’ said Simon.

‘What?’

He’s still touching me. He didn’t have to, but he did, he is.

He started to hum a tune, Aled Jones’ ‘Walking in the Air’.

‘You, not we,’ said Charlie. One of the advantages of leaving CID-the only one-was that she no longer had to negotiate with the Snowman. She tried not to sound as if she was crowing when she said, ‘I don’t work for him any more.’