He Said/She Said(68)

While he was out, Beth and I had worked our way through a crate of French beers. She had turned up unannounced, but I’d withheld the usual invitation to eat with us. I’d prioritised her for long enough; it was time to put Kit first again for a while. Although I was never going to turn her away, like he wanted, since the photograph I felt the need to keep her at a distance.

The three of us were dealing with the incident in a mature and responsible way, by pretending it had never happened.

If Kit had let me explain his state to Beth, perhaps she would have understood, and given us the space we so desperately needed. But, fiercely protective of his brother, he begged me not to let her know, and so she kept coming blithely to Clapham and I had neither the heart nor the words to send her away.

It was Tuesday, and in this morning’s letter, Jamie had wondered whether to address next week’s plea directly to Kit. I reached for another beer.

‘You’ve hardly used those candles I bought you,’ said Beth. The three glass lights were still lined up on the shelf, the wax in the middle one pooled a centimetre lower than the others. The truth was that I’d rather gone off the scent.

‘I’m saving them for a special occasion,’ I lied. ‘It’s more of a winter thing, burning candles. The evenings are still light, the window’s always open. Do you want one, for your place? It might take away the smell of damp.’

‘Only thing to take away that smell’d be if someone burned the whole shitpile to the ground,’ she said glumly, her fingernail edging the label off her beer. ‘Anyway, I bought them for you.’

I lit one, but placed it on the balcony, where most of the scent would be carried away.

Four storeys below, the street door slammed.

‘We’re in here!’ I shot a warning down the stairs; the we rather than the here clearly being the key information. By the time Kit came into the sitting room, he’d dug up a grin from somewhere.

‘Been anywhere exciting?’ Beth asked him. He let the smile slip for a moment, just to shoot me a look that said We do not talk about my brother in front of her. I gave a tiny nod.

‘Not particularly,’ he said. He took his Swiss Army knife from the kitchen drawer and levered the top off a bottle, bringing it to his lips as the foam burst over the neck. He drained it in a series of gulps, then opened another – I’d never seen him do that before – before flopping on to the futon and glowering at the wall opposite. I wished Beth wouldn’t stare at him, or would at least try to disguise her fascinated concern. The little flat swelled with its various secrets; it reminded me of the witness room at Truro Crown Court. Kit, who had long dismissed the theory of twin telepathy and phantom pain, had sweat on his upper lip and kept shifting like something was cramping in his belly, for all the world as though he was the one going through cold turkey.

‘Are you all right, Kit?’ asked Beth. ‘You don’t look very well.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said robotically.

‘I’ll put the telly on, shall I?’ I said, aiming the remote. A news channel was showing a story about a proposed bypass tunnel to take traffic away from Stonehenge.

‘It’d be a shame if you couldn’t see it out of the window,’ I said. ‘I love that first glimpse of it on the hill.’

Kit grunted an acknowledgement that I’d spoken.

‘They need to sort that road out, though,’ said Beth. ‘It’s always congested; it adds about two hours on the journey time to Glastonbury. It’s bad enough when there isn’t an accident, but when there’s a crash it’s literally impassable. There was a pile-up there the day I went to the Lizard, about half a mile in front of the car I was in. We were stuck in traffic for about five hours. It was only a little Ford Fiesta, my knees were in agony not being able to stretch out. All the wreckage was still smoking when we went past it.’ I might never have understood the significance of her words if it hadn’t been for Beth’s blush. I’ve still never seen a high colour like it: hot pink patches started to form on her white neck and crept steadily up her face, like someone was pouring the blood into her from a jug. ‘Anyway, so, I just think a tunnel would be best.’ The blush had evaporated and she spoke with an almost aggressive brightness. ‘Stop them concreting over any more fields.’

The next item was a report about flaws in the Inland Revenue’s new online filing system. Beth, rather unexpectedly, had plenty to say about this, too; apparently her solicitor was calling it all the names under the sun, he needed to get with the times . . . I tried to tune her out and pick apart what she’d said about Stonehenge but her prattle was relentless, like a toddler’s. It was almost as though she was deliberately occluding thought. Only when she disappeared to the bathroom did the penny drop. I was on the verge of asking Kit if he’d noticed her go red when it came to me; my admittedly theatrical gasp was loud enough to pull him out of his mood.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Ok, this might be nothing,’ I said, even as momentum gathered inside. ‘Just hear me out, though. The crash Beth was talking about happened the day before I came down.’ I paused to let the weight of it land on Kit, but his face was blank. ‘The verges were still covered in debris,’ I said. ‘The coach driver told us that they couldn’t clear it until all the eclipse traffic had died down. But they said in court, didn’t they, that she only arrived the day before the eclipse?’ Something else occurred to me. ‘And they said she’d travelled by coach, because I remember thinking she must have been on the first one of the day, if she wasn’t on mine. She just said, didn’t she, that she was in a car.’