Читать книгу House of Lies: A gripping thriller with a shocking twist - E. Seymour V. - Страница 11

I pause and catch the wary expression on my face in the hall mirror. Little Miss Horizontal is no more. Little Miss Vertical took her place.

No welcoming smell of spice, or meat cooking, or sweet aroma from onions caramelising in butter, the air feels dead. Inert. There is no sound, not even from the spare room inhabited by Reg. I glance at my watch. It’s past six-thirty. He can’t still be asleep. Everything is silent. Then it dawns on me. Tom is at work. Emergency cover for a chef calling in sick, possibly, or perhaps the crisis that morning was not averted.

I briefly consider driving to the hotel restaurant and pleading for his return. The thought shakes me. I’m not needy and yet events of the day and Tom’s atypical behaviour make me so.

Numb with disappointment, I wander through to the kitchen, expecting a note scrawled on the shopping pad we keep by the fridge-freezer. It’s blank. This is how our home feels. Vacant. Gone. Something missing. A bubble of panic floats up from my tummy, pings off my heart and pops the moment I hear movement from upstairs. Tom, I think, yet the tread is not his. Tom’s is soft, like a panther stalking prey. This is clunky and shouty and ‘I’ve got enormous gonads.’ Has to be Reg. Dim of me, but it doesn’t occur that it might be a burglar.

Reg bursts in. I don’t fancy my brother but, with his slim, snake-hipped physique and his angular looks and dangerous eyes framed by jet-black hair, I admit that he is breathlessly good-looking. The facial ironmongery – nose and tongue stud – and cross hanging from one ear and tattoos on his arms – do nothing to detract from his film-star features. Even his tangled teeth look sexy.

“Hiya,” I say. “Vick says you can eat at hers tonight, not that it looks as if I need you out of the way.” My eyes drift around the empty-looking kitchen.

Reg doesn’t speak, but draws up a chair, twists it around and sits on it astride. Poser, I think. Then I catch his troubled expression.

“You may need to sit down, Roz.”

I follow his eye-line to the comfy chair squashed in the corner, and spike with alarm. “It’s not mum or dad, is it?”

He snatches a smile and his thick eyelashes flicker. “No worries. They’re fine.”

“Well, what then?”

“It’s Tom.”

“Has something happened? Has there been an accident?” Tom travels everywhere by bicycle. I permanently worry that a reckless lorry-driver or motorist will knock him off and splatter him across the road.

Reg clears his throat. His musician hands, with their impossibly lithe and dexterous fingers, grasp the top bar of the chair and the knuckles show white. Christ. “He’s gone,” Reg says bluntly, which is Reg all over.

“Gone where?”

He shakes his head. “Cleared out. Scrammed. Vamoosed.”

“What?” I don’t gasp. I pull a face and smile at the sheer preposterousness of Reg’s words. “No,” I say, “that can’t be right. We only had a minor disagreement, nothing serious. Nothing …” I run out of negatives.

Reg awkwardly pushes a box of tissues in my direction, as if he thinks it’s the done thing to do. Too shocked for tears, I shake my head. Stubborn. Resistant.

“I don’t believe it.” Searching his face for a positive sign, I find none.

“It’s true, Roz.”

“You’ve misunderstood. You’ve got it all wrong.” My voice is hoarse and shaky and vulnerable, something that Reg detests almost as much as I do.

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

Reg issues a sharp, uncompromising look.

“All right, where did he say he was going?”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, what the fuck did he say?”

My brother’s jaw flexes. Like Tom, he hates argument and why, I guess, Tom fled without a goodbye instead of manning up and telling me to my face. “Don’t take it out on me, Roz.”

“The fucking coward,” I burst out. To which, Reg frowns and raises his palms.

“It’s not nice, but it happens. Circle of life,” he drawls, settling back into his default ‘no shit’ speaking pattern, louche meets stoned.

“For God’s sake, spare me the meditational crap. You sound like Mum.”

“Only saying. It might actually help.”

“It doesn’t.” Shamefully, I have an urge to rearrange my brother’s good looks.

Springing to my feet, I scope the kitchen. Tom’s cookery books remain, squat and scowling on the designated shelf near the cooker, as if pissed off that he abandoned them in the same way he abandoned me. I have a sudden urgent desire to destroy them, page by bloody page.

I rush into the sitting room. Tom’s a keen gamer yet his DVD’s are exactly in the same place. ‘Muse’ CD’s remain too. Might it mean that he’ll come back, if only to reclaim the lot?

Upstairs, my shoes pound the treads. Tearing open the wardrobe. Most of his clothes are there, but not all.

Pulling out drawers in the bedroom. Similar.

Raking though stuff in the bathroom. Gone.

I don’t bother to check whether or not Tom’s go-to bag is missing. Instinctively, I know that it would be the first thing he laid his hands on.

Stumbling back to the kitchen, I collapse into the squashy chair before my legs give way. “Sorry, Reg,” I mumble, “Shouldn’t have a go at you.”

“No worries.” He means it. Very little affects Reg. I only see him get antsy if he runs out of tobacco and booze.

Unspeakably cold, I hunch my shoulders, trying to generate warmth into my bones. I’m upset but I’m damned angry too. “I need to know exactly what happened. Was he agitated, distressed?”

Reg gives it to me straight up. “There was a phone call. “

“When?”

“About half-three.”

Another after I left. “How did he seem?”

Reg slow-blinks, glances away. I push for an answer.

“Scared,” he says with a level look.

Tension grabs my shoulders, gives them a nasty twist. “Of what?”

“I’d say if I knew.”

Anything for an easy life, he wouldn’t, but I don’t pursue it. “Any idea who was on the other end?”

Reg shakes his head.

“Did you hear what was said?”

“Not really. Something about a licence, I think.”

I puzzle over this. “For what?”

“Search me. Anyways, it didn’t last long.”

“Then what happened?”

“You know Tom, Mr Controlled. Packed up his kit and asked me to break the news to you that it’s over.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

His impossibly long lashes flutter. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I’m outraged.

“Never cross a man whose mind is made up.” His gaze darts around the kitchen and homes in on the cupboard where we keep alcohol. “Drink?” he says.

I grunt ‘yes’ to mask my irritation at my brother’s cowardice and failure to fight my corner.

“Whisky or wine?”

“Wine,” I say. “The whisky belongs to Tom.”

“Belonged.” Reg corrects me in a ‘shame to waste it’ tone. He gets up, pours himself a large measure after fixing me a glass of Picpoul from the fridge. Chinking his glass with mine, he takes a swallow and looks at me as if I’m on the run from prison. Will I lash out, or come quietly?

“Whatever happened this morning,” he says, “it’s not about that. The row is only a symptom of impending breakdown.”

My brother sounds so uncharacte‌ristically pompous that I almost burst out laughing. “Who made you an expert on relationships?”

“I’ve only been here a few weeks and even I could pick up tensions.”

“Damn right, emanating from you, and can you stop nicking my razors, please?”

“Jeez, it was only once.”

“Well, once is too much.” I glower. Silence, slithering and snake-like, encircles the pair of us. My brother would not be my first choice of confidante. We are poles apart in values and opinions. Mr Treat them Mean, Keep them Keen lives by a different code of ethics. Horribly similar to those adopted by my erstwhile lover, it seems.

Reg is still giving me the look, like he is older and, by default, wiser. “You know very well that Tom can be sparky.”

“So what? He’d be dull as hell if he were quiet all the time. It’s what fuels our relationship.”

“Fuelled,” he points out, not in a mean-spirited way but because he really wants me to understand that Tom’s departure is final.

“All right,” I say, taking a big breath. “Explain these tensions you noticed.”

He meets my gaze with candour. “Tom’s exterior doesn’t meet match the interior.”

At this, I laugh. “You mean that underneath he’s cool, calm and collected?”

“Nope. What I mean is that the silent shit is a cover for something else. Underneath, he’s a fiery, agitated and miserable mess.”

Miserable? I badly want to tell Reg that he’s talking garbage, but then I remember Tom’s peculiarities, his phobias, the way he reacted this morning and what Vick said about him. “Hardly surprising, bearing in mind his upbringing.”

“Oh yeah, the man with the tragic past.” There is an ugly note in my brother’s voice that I don’t much care for. He picks up on my disdain as only a sibling can. “Have you noticed that when a writer wants to ramp up a character in a film, their parents are always dead? Death by road accident is almost a cliché.”

“Tom’s parents died in a boating accident.”

“So he says. Funny thing is, I believe him.”

“Funny?” I explode.

“Not funny ha-ha. Nothing fake about that; unlike other aspects of his life.”

“What other aspects?” I sound as incredulous and defensive as I feel.

“Education. Friends. Places he’s been to. He’s flaky, Roz. Secretive.” His voice is sibilant, tongue and teeth chewing on the words before spitting them out.

“Private,” I thrust back.

“Yeah, right.”

“What exactly are you driving at?”

“Okay, okay, a minor indiscretion, granted, but he smokes.”

I snort derision. “He’s a chef. His taste-buds would be ruined.”

“God, Roz, where have you been all your life? All the top chefs smoke.”

Sensing I’m on shaky ground, I don’t know how to reply. I wonder whether this is why Tom’s voice sounds seasoned. Seems irrelevant now. “Anyway, how do you know?”

“He bums cigarettes off me.”

“You’re winding me up.”

Reg’s full lips puff out, like he’s blowing smoke rings. “Why would I?”

“All right,” I concede, trying to remain dignified in defeat, “So what if he does?”

He flashes a grin. First point to Reg. “Extracting information from Tom is like nailing jelly. The thing about secrets, they take a huge amount of energy to conceal. No wonder he’s screwed up.”

A strange sensation fizzes behind my eyes. “You swan in here for five minutes and claim you know more than me about the man I’ve been living with for the past three years.”

“Why are you defending him? The guy just walked out on you?” Reg’s voice rises and I get the weird impression that he wants me to get a whole lot angrier than I appear. ‘Appear’ is the operative word. Inside, I’m hurt beyond belief; in equal measure I’m also bloody furious. Were I in a better frame of mind, and seeing my little brother so exasperated, I’d ask how the ‘circle of life’ fitted now.

As if he hasn’t already said enough, Reg persists, “Remember the weekend I dropped in to see you before I moved here?”

“Yeah, Tom wasn’t around.” A one-off event in London, Tom cooked dinner for a wealthy entrepreneur. I moaned at the time because I thought it would be fun to go with him and spend an afternoon mooching in the West End. Tom talked me out of it.

“Where was he?” Reg demands.

“You know where he was. Hampstead.”

“He wasn’t.”

“He was.” I take a big glug of wine, the liquid equivalent of a mighty full stop.

Reg breathes in tight and lets out a sigh. “He went to Wales.”

I jitter with nervous laughter. “Wales? I don’t believe you.” From his skewering expression, I see that he has the drop on me although, to be fair, he isn’t parading it.

“I wasn’t going to show you but, well, in the circumstances …” Like a magician pulling a bunny from a hat with a flourish, Reg produces a card and pushes it under my nose. It’s for a taxi firm based in Conwy. The date written by hand coincides with the timeframe Tom was allegedly in London. I take and handle it as if it’s an ancient relic.

“Where did you get this?” Planting it face down with deliberation, I just about mask the icy note in my voice.

“Found it on the floor inside your wardrobe.”

“You went into our room to snoop? You went through my stuff?”

“His stuff, and only after Tom split today. Jesus Christ, Roz. Don’t have a go at me. I’m only the fucking messenger.”

“You had no right.” My voice cracks. My chest expands and contracts, and a dry sob catches at the back of my throat. Tears that I’d held in check for all of today erupt and I stagger out of the room, down the hall and into the night. Reg calls after me but I don’t look back.