The Paying Guests(127)

She took a lamp with her, and the room was left lighted only by a single shaded candle. Lilian was in the bed: she pushed herself up when she saw Frances, and they went into each other’s arms, clinging breathily together until the steps had faded from the stairs.

‘Oh, Frances, it’s been so dreadful!’

Frances drew free, to look at her properly, to take her white face in her hands. ‘Are you all right? I’ve been out of my mind! You aren’t still bleeding?’

‘Only a bit. It isn’t that. It’s just, they won’t leave me, not for a minute. I just want you! They keep on at me to go to the shop. You don’t want me to go, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘They said you’d rather it.’

‘How could you think that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. They gave me something to make me sleep, but it – it’s left me muddled.’

They had given her Chlorodyne, Frances remembered. She turned her face to the candlelight and saw the glassiness of her gaze. The fear in her eyes, though, was as sharp as ever. She caught at Frances’s hands and spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘What do you think is happening, Frances? What they said – the police, I mean – They know, don’t they? That Len didn’t fall? That somebody hit him?’

Frances squeezed her fingers. ‘They don’t know that for certain. And they don’t know who hit him.’

‘But they’re bound to work it out! They must be talking to other people. They must have spoken to Charlie by now. They’ll know that Len wasn’t with him last night. They’ll start to put it all together. That Inspector – he’ll figure it out, I know he will.’

‘No. Why would he? They’re just – just trying out ideas. We know what happened. We’re the only people who do. Remember that. It makes us strong. But you’ve got to be careful, when you talk to them again. You’ve got to take care. We both have. Lilian? Do you understand me?’

Lilian’s gaze had loosened. She was like Frances’s mother now, looking not at Frances but into the depths of her own misery. But she blinked, and nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll be careful.’

‘At least you got the doctor on your side.’

She started. ‘The doctor? No, there mustn’t be a doctor!’

‘At the police station, Lily.’

Her gaze refocused properly. ‘Oh, it feels like a lifetime ago! The matron saw that I was bleeding, so I had to say something about it. I pretended it had all come out in a rush, right there. I thought for a while they wouldn’t believe me. The doctor kept saying how pale I was. But he must have believed me, mustn’t he? Or they wouldn’t have let me come home?’

‘Yes, he must have believed you,’ said Frances. ‘Yes, I’m sure he did.’

She wasn’t sure. How could she be? And the uncertainty had crept into her voice. Lilian’s grip on her hands grew tighter, and for a moment that electric panic was back – or, anyhow, the possibility of it – Frances could feel it like a threat, ready to race between them.

But they were too worn out to sustain it. Lilian closed her swollen eyes, and her shoulders slumped. When she spoke again, her voice was small.

‘It was so awful seeing Len’s parents. They wanted to talk about the baby. They wanted to know why Len hadn’t said anything. I had to pretend we were keeping it quiet, because of what happened last time. The way his mother looked at me, though. She hates me worse than ever now. She blames me for this. I knew she would. Oh, I wish I could sleep for a hundred years!’

She looked so ill that Frances almost feared to take hold of her again. But they couldn’t be apart: they moved back into an embrace, their arms tight around each other – as if, she thought, by love, by passion, they could make everything all right.

‘You won’t leave me?’ Lilian whispered.

‘No! How could I?’

‘I’ve been so afraid. If I could just have you with me, none of it would be so bad. If I could just —’ But clear across her words there came the sound of the closing back door, and, ‘There’s Len!’ she said, in alarm and excitement, twitching free in the old way.

For a second, Frances, aghast, could see that she believed it. Then she looked into Frances’s face, realised what she had said, and her own face pulled tight. She covered her eyes. By the time Vera returned, she was crying.

Once Frances was in her own room, she didn’t believe that she would sleep. There was so much to think about still. She was reluctant even to undress. Suppose Lilian should give something away? And then, there were the stains on the carpet, the ashtray tucked behind the sofa: oughtn’t she to have another look at it all? Finally, wincing with pain and stiffness, she put on her nightgown, climbed into bed, and rolled herself a cigarette. She’d give it half an hour, she thought, and then go creeping into the sitting-room, just to be sure that everything was all right.

But even before she’d got the cigarette lit, she closed her eyes, leaned back into her pillow – and suddenly she found herself in an unfamiliar house with crumbling walls. How had she got there? She had no idea. She knew only that she had to keep the place from collapsing. But the task was like torture. The moment she got one wall upright, the next would start to tilt; soon she was rushing from room to room, propping up sagging ceilings, hauling back the slithering treads of tumbling staircases. On and on she went, through all the hours of the night; on and on, without pause, staving off one impossible catastrophe after another.