Chapter 22 #2
Aw come on, you’re getting a deep discount, Chloe says on the film. They’re hardly going to be turning cartwheels for you. I mean, how much of a mark down would you say this is?
All this house in this location? I can’t miss the sneer in my voice. Nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds. More likely well over a million. But I love it.
What Lindsay loves, Lindsay gets, Chloe on the film says.
Right, you’ve had your fun is the last thing my voice says before the film ends.
I close the laptop, unsettled in a way I can’t quite account for.
“If that’s a joke, I don’t get it,” I say.
“Are you . . . trolling me? I’m an audio artist, Chloe, and the way you’ve plopped in those additions is absolute dog shit.
It was like you watching someone wash their kitchen floor with a dishcloth under their shoe. ”
“I told you I wasn’t finished,” she says. “I was going to work on it today, so it’s still a bit clumsy. I’m the only one besides you—”
“Only one who?”
“—besides you who cares about the quality anyway—I’m a perfectionist; shoot me—and really, what matters is making sure you don’t muck this up.
So, when you started twatting on about the cops, you know?
And to be perfectly honest, like 100 percent open about all my motives”—her voice is rising—“when you phoned me up to tell me what you did, I thought, fuck it. This has gone on long enough.”
“But . . . what did I do?” I say. “Whatever it is, we can sort it out, but right now we need to talk about—”
“What did you do?” Chloe looks me straight in the eye, with a cheerful little smile curling into the corners of her lips. “You slept with Dave.”
It takes me a minute and then I repeat it. “Dave.”
“You always made out you were so pure and then you go and shag my fella.”
Then she watches me as if I’m a trained monkey, that small smile spreading to become a grin as she sees the truth hit me, wash over me, and begin to sink in.
The details aren’t there, not yet. But the shape of it is clearer and clearer, like a black, bulging thundercloud.
Heavier and darker than anything I ever saw coming at Hilo, over the ocean.
“You and David?” I ask her.
“You nearly caught us once,” she says. “On the phone. In here. And the night he asked you round to his house? I didn’t agree to that.”
“I don’t und—”
“Fucking you certainly wasn’t part of the deal.”
I can’t help flinching.
“Miss Priss,” says Chloe.
I can’t bear to look at her, so I put my head in my hands. Maybe it’ll help me see what the hell’s going on here. “So you knew he was part of this,” I say.
“At least you’re admitting you know there’s a ‘this.’”
“You knew this is his mum’s house you were determined to show me? And you knew she more than likely didn’t want to move to the Elms? I’m sure she didn’t want all her stuff to go to Lord’s Yard.”
“And now . . . ta-da! You know too. But to get back to the subject under discussion.” She leans right over the table and hisses into my face. “You had sex with my boyfriend.”
“But I didn’t know that! He tricked me. You tricked me.
The pair of you set me up and I don’t even know why.
” My thoughts are racing but I still manage to catch one.
“Chloe, this didn’t start the day I met David in the garde—” Then everything slips out of my grasp again as a new realisation hits me.
“My God, it’s been driving me mad how—but Aileen Murdoch probably wasn’t even at school with us, was she? ”
“Probably!” Chloe says, sitting back again and cackling.
“Christ, Lindsay, you’re not safe to be out on your own.
You shouldn’t be allowed to cross the road.
There is no Aileen Murdoch, you plank. That’s Sarah McAllan, Eric’s wife.
They run the Elms together. You nearly made her shit a brick when you met her in the car park. ”
Another black cloud rolls towards me.
“You told him I like the ballet,” I say. I don’t seem to be in control of what bits hurt most. That shouldn’t register, set against him winkling his poor old mother out of her house, but knowing that the night in Glasgow was a con feels as if it’s going to shatter me.
“He was bored shitless,” Chloe says. “He texted me from the toilet, practically crying.”
I’m cracking.
“You told him what I was going to wear and he had on a shirt the same colour.”
“And you believed that the universe was smiling on you, because you’re soooo special.”
And I break.
Now it feels like watching a firework show.
Every few seconds, with no warning, a different bit of the darkness splits and blooms, as I remember all the things that haven’t made sense.
How nothing felt real. How everywhere I went looked like cardboard cutouts, everyone I saw looked like paper dolls.
I thought I was cracking up purely because I’d come back to where everything happened to that kid I was.
Now I know I was cracking up because of what’s happening now to the kid I still am. It’s exactly the same.
With one important difference.
The kid I still am isn’t alone. It’s true that John is nowhere. But she’s got me.
“Why did those guys break into the house?” I say, at last, so proud to hear how strong my voice sounds. “In the night, I mean.”
“Yeah, that was my fault,” Chloe says. “Breakdown of communication. I cleaned it too well after it was emptied, so they both needed to make sure and put their fingerprints back, here and there. Put their fingerprints on all of your stuff, in case you tried to claim you weren’t in on it.”
“In on what, for God’s sake? I’m not in on anything!
Chloe, I get that you’ve lost your way. Had your head turned.
Look.” I sit forward and reach out for her hands.
She recoils from me. “Sweetheart, you’re obviously not well.
And I’m not going to deny that what you’re saying right now?
How you’re behaving? I’m not going to say it doesn’t hurt. But I love you. Still. Just.”
“Get to the point!”
“But you must understand, I’m going to the police as soon as you leave. You must know that.”
“Eh, Lindsay, I know you’re not the sharpest pin in the cushion, but did you not see that film I just showed you? It was genius. You put out more solid gold than any of us dreamed—”
“What are you talking about?”
“And you should be thanking me because John was ready to kick you till you bled.”
“Why?”
Chloe is cackling. “You’re as sharp as a spoon, Lindsay. Jesus Christ.”
“I know he probably wasn’t really worried about me like he pretended but—”
“Oh, he was worried all right. We all were. Worried you were going to sod it up for us. Starting by turning up a day early when we were all set to go. And then you reveal that you met Peggy? That was the fucking tin lid. So overall, we’ve been worried sick since you came traipsing back, weeping and wailing.
You were supposed to be useful, Lindsay. ”
I drive the pain away from me, God knows how, and try to focus yet again on making sense of it. “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. “Why did you make that film?”
“So that no one could hear your words and think you’re not in this up to your neck,” she says. “Not that you’d risk it, right? You’re not that stupid.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh really? Well, I stand corrected. So let me make it idiot-proof. You bagged one of the houses, Lindsay, at a bargain price too. If you clype to the cops, you’ll be going down with the rest of us.”
“You make it sound so . . . like a . . .” Then my brain processes what my ears just heard. “One of the houses? How many times have you done this?”
“Saint Helen’s makes seven,” Chloe says.
“Seven?” I can’t believe it’s so many.
“Yeah, we’re only just beginning but already we’re getting more efficient.”
“And so you make the houses cheap so no one questions it?”
“It is truly exhausting,” says Chloe, “talking to someone as dumb as you. Of course not. Usually we’re screwing the highest price we can get out of the buyer. You’re the only one who got a bargain.”
“But why?” I say again. “Why? Why did David agree to that?”
“So he hasn’t made his move, then?” is all Chloe says.
She’s being deliberately mysterious. I stare at her blankly, refusing to play her game, refusing to beg for any more information.
She gives in first. “John,” she says. “He wants this house. He reckons he deserves more than his agreed cut. So, he’s going to get it off you and make you live at Lord’s Yard.
Didn’t bloody Shelley wade in and half tell you at one point? Thinking she was so clever?”
“But why didn’t he just take it for himself?” I shake my head, trying to stay focused. “Why involve me?”
“I can’t say you’re quick, Lindsay, but you’re at least asking the right questions.”
I stare at her, wishing I knew what she meant, knowing she won’t tell me. “And how did John manage to persuade the others?”
“Again,” says Chloe, “so close.”
I can’t stand the way she’s teasing me, smug and mocking, but the truth is she’s right. I am close. And I know how to get closer. “I’m going to Lord’s Yard,” I say.
Chloe gives a mirthless laugh. “Closer still. Maybe you’re not a complete idiot, after all.”
“Because I don’t see how John can be calling the shots and giving his sister a cheap house. Offloading the furniture is the least of the wrongdoing here.”
“Wrongdoing!” Chloe says. “Wrongdoing? Jesus Christ, Lindsay, you really did catch a good dose off of that sanctimonious prick, didn’t you?”
They’re only words and she’s been hurling words at me for ages but this time what she’s saying lands like a punch.
“Kai?” I say. “Do you mean Kai? What the fuck, Chloe? What’s happened? You sound as if you hated him.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Chloe says. “I hate you too.”
I go up the back stairs to lock my dead room first. God knows where I’m getting this calm resolve from but I know that the equipment in there is my biggest asset.
It’s what’s going to help me rebuild my life once all this is over.
The rest of the house doesn’t matter. It’s not mine and it never will be.
I sink into my desk chair, feeling as if someone has removed my bones.
You were supposed to be useful. So . . .
John and Shelley were playing me somehow, using me.
Chloe sounds as if she loathes me. Good dose off of that sanctimonious prick.
Everything I thought I had has gone. Even the thing I thought I’d found—the miracle—was just a sick joke.
We, Lindsay Lord Hale, are trying again.
Everyone pretending to care has been laughing at me.
Kai. Kai. I wail it inside my head, silent and deafening.
There’s no answer. Not in the soft, muffled air, not in my head, not even in my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him, out loud in the warm cocoon of the dead room.
But whatever it is that’s been here with me, unchanged since the last time he closed his eyes, has gone.
I’m speaking to empty space. The worst of it is, I can hardly blame him.
I haul myself to my feet and clump back down.
Chloe is still there, in the kitchen. She doesn’t even turn her head.
“Is there any chance you’re going to explain why you hate me so much, all of a sudden?” I say.
“All of a sudden!” Chloe jeers, still without facing me.
“Or explain what’s going on with John?”
“I thought you were going to see for yourself. Drive recklessly. I wouldn’t want you to arrive safe and sound in all this rain.”
The door banging shut as I leave is the sound of my oldest friendship ending. Finally, truly, we are absolutely alone, that kid I was and me.