Lies That Bind Us(68)

The ground underfoot changes. There is suddenly more debris, more fragments of stone, and twice I kick against loose metal objects. I stoop to one and test it with my fingers. It is a long metal bolt, its thread rough with rust. I stand up, take two more steps, and bark my shin against a hard barrier that runs across the track. Another meets my waist. I feel along it and find a pair of bulbous metal buffers directly above the rails that stop me going any further.

End of the line.





Chapter Twenty-Six

Gretchen’s second phone call was to a taxi company. Simon offered to drive her, but she said that everyone had done enough and that she just needed to go. She thanked them. She took her suitcase, packed for her and brought downstairs by Marcus, and collected her brand-new leather purse from Melissa, and sat silently on the front step till the cab’s headlights lit the driveway.

It was all weirdly fast. No one talked to me, and Gretchen pointedly left me out of the series of hugs she gave before running down to the taxi, but as she stooped to her case, she shot a look back to me. She held my eyes just long enough to show intent, to remind me what she had said, despite her apparent play acting to the others. Then she was climbing into the back of the car and roaring off into the night.

Simon closed the front door and it boomed through the foyer. He threw the bolts and turned the key, and then there was, after the flurry of activity that had filled the last couple of hours, a strained and empty silence. I wanted to tell them what Gretchen had said to me, if only the part about her not believing I was the one who had torn up her underwear, but I knew that would just sound like another lie, and anger flickered through my head, adding to all the other questions that centered on Gretchen. Why hadn’t she told them? Why had she so deliberately misled them if she hadn’t thought me guilty? It was OK for her, jetting back to the States, while I toughed out another three days as the pariah, the deranged obsessive out of a fucking Bront? novel. Maybe I should have gone with her.

For a second I considered the possibility, but paying change fees on three separate flights, assuming I could get them, wouldn’t just stretch my budget to the breaking point, it would do a number on my finances for the next couple of months. It would also—and I couldn’t believe I actually felt this—feel rude, walking out on the others, on Simon and Melissa, who had spent so much time and energy hosting the reunion. And then there was Marcus.

No. You can’t leave yet. Not with things as they are. Get through this, and everything will get better.

But even with this half-assed resolve in place, I had caught something of Gretchen’s fear and felt sure that someone in the house knew much more than they were letting on.

We’re in danger. Not just me. All of us. You, I think, most of all.

I didn’t know what to do with that. Maybe Gretchen was the deranged obsessive. Maybe she had felt thwarted in her attempt to bag Marcus and had staged the whole absurd pantomime for dramatic effect.

Maybe. But I didn’t think so. The fear that had been writhing in my belly like a basket of snakes since Gretchen’s strange confession on the stairs now hardened and chilled till it felt like a stone in my gut, weighing me down, a constant, pulling dread.

“I don’t want to go upstairs,” said Kristen. “Can we sleep down here? All of us?”

“What about Brad?” said Marcus.

“What about him?” Kristen replied. “Apparently, he’s fine where he is. I’m not. Not there, I mean. I want to stay here.”

“OK,” said Simon, carefully, like he was setting down a fragile vase or pitcher. “We can do that. Everyone?”

Melissa nodded. Marcus shrugged and said, “OK.” Simon turned to me, and everyone turned with him.

“Jan?” he said.

“If I’m welcome,” I said.

If I had expected a chorus of encouragement, I was disappointed. No one spoke. Kristen frowned, uncertain. Marcus tipped his chin up, his face blank. Melissa looked hawkish.

“Of course you’re welcome,” said Simon.

I didn’t feel it, but I also didn’t think there was anything I could do about it. There was certainly nothing I could say. So I went up with Kristen and Simon to get my bedding, all three of us going into each bedroom, not talking, and then rolled out my duvet and pillows in front of the hearth in the living room. Brad came down with Kristen, but he didn’t speak, merely throwing himself onto the couch away from her and covering himself with a blanket they had found in a hall closet, rolling to bury his face in the cushions. Kristen watched him, her lips so thin they seemed to vanish, then made herself a bed on the other side of the room. Marcus curled up in an armchair. He had always been able to sleep in almost any position. He did not look at me. I considered marching over to him, yelling at him, slapping him, but I didn’t.

When you lie all the time, you get used to people losing faith in you, even the ones you want most desperately to believe you, and you know in your heart that it’s your own fault. Not in the present, but in the past, where all those little evasions and misdirections burrowed into the bedrock of your relationship and left it prone to tremor, sinkhole, and collapse. I couldn’t really blame him.

Except, of course, that I could and I did. I told him I never lied to him anymore, and I meant it. He knew me well enough. He should have trusted me.

I looked at him now, and he seemed more than sad and confused. He looked distraught. Bereft. Suddenly I wondered if I hadn’t been the only one hoping to rebuild our friendship, our love, and a new impulse to speak to him, to make it all right, ran through me like fire. I was trying to think what I would say when he shifted in his chair, nestling, his face turned away from me, and I knew that the moment had passed.