The Paying Guests(156)

‘But these tickets. When did you find them? You said there was a row. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Again, Lilian didn’t answer. Frances waited – then, somehow, understood.

‘It was when you were on holiday. That’s what made you write me that letter.’

Lilian shook her head, and spoke quickly. ‘It wasn’t like that, Frances.’

‘The letter wasn’t about me at all. It was simply about hating him.’

‘No.’

But Frances had stepped back from the bed. She was painfully piecing things together. ‘When the police told us about Charlie, when we knew that Charlie was lying – you must have known what it meant. Why didn’t you say something then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lilian answered. ‘I couldn’t bear to think of it, not on top of everything else. When Len and I got married – You don’t know what it was like for me, Frances. We had to do it in such a hurry. People laughed at me. They said it served me right, for having been grand. I couldn’t bear the thought of them knowing, of them laughing at me again.’

‘You were ashamed?’ said Frances. ‘Of that?’

Lilian bowed her head, put a hand across her eyes. ‘Please, Frances. Don’t be like this.’

But Frances’s sense of dismay was giving way to anger. The anger was so pure, so complete, it amazed her. It was as if the feeling had been inside her, waiting for the signal to come out. She thought of all she had done in the past ten days, all those crumbling walls she had been frantically propping up. She thought of the breach with Christina, the suspicion in her mother’s eyes.

She heard her own voice hardening. ‘You knew you were pregnant when you were on that holiday. You knew you were pregnant when you found those tickets. Didn’t you?’

‘Don’t, Frances —’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Please —’

‘No wonder you didn’t want the baby.’

Lilian lifted her head. ‘What? No, that was all for you and me.’

‘No wonder you swung that ashtray so hard.’

‘But – But I didn’t mean to swing it at all. You know I didn’t. It was an accident.’

Frances held her gaze. ‘Was it?’

Again, she hadn’t planned to ask the question, but the moment the words were out of her mouth she realised that they had been somewhere inside her, agitating to be said. They had been there since – since when? Since Inspector Kemp had told her about that life insurance? Or, since before that? Since the very beginning of it all? Since she had first placed her ear against Leonard’s overcoated back and failed to find a beat behind it?

From across the gloomy room Lilian was looking at her as if she could follow the movement of her thoughts. She stood still for a moment; then her whole frame seemed to soften. Like a lighted candle folding in on itself, she sank down at the side of the bed, putting her arms on the eiderdown, letting her head droop forward on to her wrists.

‘I knew it would make you hate me,’ she said.

Frances began to straighten the cuffs of her gloves. The gesture felt jerky, not quite real. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she heard herself say – and the words were jerky and unreal, too; the words of a prim-faced spinster. ‘We can’t think of ourselves now. We have to think of this boy.’

‘I’d give anything to undo it, Frances.’

‘We have to find Inspector Kemp.’

‘I’d give anything to undo it – not for Len’s sake, but for ours. I don’t know what I was thinking when I hit him. I know I was hating him. Does that make it murder? But, then, what does loving make? I love you more than I ever hated him. Please, Frances —’

‘Stop saying that!’ said Frances sharply. ‘It’s all you’ve ever said to me! Right from the start! When we went to the park – you remember? We barely knew each other. But we went to the park. And we left, and were walking up the hill – and you took the wall. You took the wall, Lilian. I thought it charming, at the time. But you’ve been taking the wall ever since. You can’t take it for ever. You can’t take it now.’

Her tone must have carried: she was conscious of the women in the room below, grown still and attentive. Lilian, perhaps conscious of them too, remained in her crouch, but looked up, white-faced.

But then, as Frances watched, her expression changed, smoothed itself out. She got to her feet and, without another word, she moved around the bed and, slowly, pointedly, began to make herself ready. She found a fresh handkerchief to exchange for the damp one in her sleeve. She took money from a tin in a drawer, hesitating for a moment about how much to take, finally folding the coins into the notes and tucking them all into her handbag. She stood at the dressing-table mirror and powdered her face and swollen eyelids. She dabbed rouge on to her cheeks and lips. She took up a hairbrush and carefully brushed her hair.

Frances saw all this and didn’t believe in any of it. She kept expecting Lilian to slow, to falter, to start to cry. But Lilian did none of those things. In the same deliberate way she drew back a curtain from across an alcove and unhooked her coat from the rail beyond. She returned with it to the mirror and shrugged it on, straightening its collar. The coat had a long line of buttons to it. She began, calmly, to fasten them.