He Said/She Said(58)
That trip I ought to have had my first kiss, too, but Mac had other plans.
The rum was gone, but there was a bottle of gin, which we took down to the beach where all the eclipse chasers’ kids lit bonfires and drank at night. They were mostly Americans and our London accents were an aphrodisiac. While Mac told a sexy, punky seventeen-year-old I can tell you’re a very spiritual person, I got quietly chatting to a girl called Ashley who had the kind of slow-burn prettiness it was easy to dismiss at first glance. She was sharp, funny, and when she asked me if I wanted to ‘make out’ I said yes, in a minute, and then immediately disappeared to take a leak at the bottom of the cliff. When I came back to the fire, Ashley was on her back in the dunes, my twin writhing on top of her with his hand in her bra. Even then, his sex life was already a series of overlapping conjugations. His justification for his serial infidelities was that time is a great absolver; the further in the past the deed, the easier it is to live with until it gets to the point where you barely even did it. Knowing that guilt will one day fade, he says, makes it fade all the faster.
He’s always been full of shit.
Later, after Ashley had shaken off the sand and gone home to her parents, Mac didn’t understand why I was so angry; he actually said he was ‘breaking Ashley in’ for me. As though any girl would want me after she’d been with him. It’s a sour memory that makes me wince, and the hairdresser nicks my skin. My eyes are flung open; in the mirror, a red rivulet runs between white crevasses.
‘Ooh, silly boy,’ says the hairdresser. I hold still while she scrapes what’s left of my beard off my face. Christopher Smith is gone and Kit McCall is revealed. Beth will be expecting a bearded man and I hope that if we do come face to face, this will buy me a few seconds to read her cues.
The cut on my cheek bleeds whenever I smile and when I send Laura my apology in the form of a selfie, I show her my good side.
Back on the deck, the sun is setting over Tórshavn. I decide to stay here rather than take my chances in the bars below. The ship is shiny; reflection is everywhere, in glass doors, polished brass and curved chrome. Every time I catch myself in one of these ersatz mirrors I’m in the same position, stroking my chin, a parody of a philosopher, or the professor I never became.
Chapter 30
LAURA
28 May 2000
It was a Friday evening, the first real summer night of the year. On the pavement below, the pubs and cafés set out tables and chairs, as though an afternoon’s sunshine was enough to turn Clapham Common Southside into the Champs-élysées. Pavement smokers took in smog along with their nicotine, but a clean zephyr carried fresh air over the treetops into our stuffy flat. I was on the balcony, trying to give Kit some space; the twins had had a blazing row the previous day when Kit had refused to lend Mac money. Kit was on the futon, moping over his laptop, when the house phone rang. I picked up.
‘It’s all kicked off,’ said Beth by way of hello. ‘I need to see you.’
‘Sure,’ I said, untangling my foot from the mess of wires that pooled around the base of the telephone table; if you weren’t careful, one mistimed tread would pull the plug on the phone, the internet and the TV all at once. ‘I don’t think we’re doing anything at the weekend.’
Her voice shrank. ‘I’m just at the Tube.’
‘Clapham Common Tube?’ The sharpness in my voice made Kit look up from his screen.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I had to get away.’
‘You’d better come up, then.’
Kit sighed and stretched so that the laptop tilted. ‘Mac?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Um, Beth Taylor’s outside.’
Resignation turned to concern. ‘Something to do with the appeal? Why’s she have to come here?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, convinced my time was up. I had read up about the appeal process. It seemed that lodging an appeal was just what you did, a given for any guilty party of significant means. The chances of the case being retried were tiny. The prospect of repeating the ordeal had become a cloud in the sky rather than an event on the horizon. Now she was back, which could only mean it was really happening. I felt sick as I buzzed Beth in. The confessional urge writhed inside me again but desperate now and dark; the imperative no longer one of unburdening but of damage limitation. Tell him you lied in the witness box, I thought, as her footsteps sounded on the stairs. If he’s going to find out, better that it comes from you. Tell him, before she gets here. But I couldn’t get the words out.
Beth was flushed by the time she got to us; sweat had pulled her loose curls tight into corkscrews around her face.
‘What’s happened?’ I said. ‘Is the appeal going ahead?’
‘No,’ she panted. ‘I mean, I don’t know. It’s too soon to know about the formal appeal. But they’re waging fucking war on me.’ There was a glass of half-finished wine on the worktop and she looked at it with undisguised longing.
‘Have it,’ I said. She downed it in one, then looked at Kit’s laptop. ‘Is that online right now?’ Kit nodded, looking as mystified, if not as nervous, as I felt. ‘Can you type jamiebalcombeisinnocent.co.uk?’
Kit minimised the half-dozen screens he’d been flicking between and called up the right page. The Balcombes had clearly been busy.