Читать книгу Beautiful Liars - Isabel Ashdown - Страница 11

3

Casey

This dressing table came from my old bedroom, a gold-leaf and cream piece from the ’70s, part of a matching bedroom set my mother and dad had bought when they were newlyweds, before passing it on to me when they updated their room. It has a swing mirror, with curling, swirling patterns up and around the glass, and even now I’m drawn to run my fingertip along it, traveling the meandering curves from one side to the other. It was one of the few pieces of furniture that I brought with me when I moved, along with Granny’s heavy crystal ashtray. As a child, I loved to watch its rainbow of colors on a bright day, when the sun would thread beams of light through the cut glass to dance upon the bedroom wall. The dressing table seemed to be the most important item of furniture to have, knowing how much it had meant to Mum, how many hours she had spent in front of it, rolling her hair, carefully applying her mascara and painting her lips. I would perch on the corner of my parents’ bed, watching each action with the greatest attention in case I might one day be asked to repeat the art, although now as I peer into it at my own reflection, the idea seems laughable. Once, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I borrowed Mum’s crimson lipstick and applied it, just as I’d seen her do so many times, on my way out for a wander in the park to spy on a lad I’d seen there a few times before. As I passed through the living room, my mother did a double-take and laughed, a hard, flat “Ha!” before calling my dad in to take a look. “She looks like she’s been eating jam doughnuts!” she told him, her hand covering her mouth, and although Dad didn’t reply, I could see in his eyes that he was furious with her. She was heading into one of her low moods, but that was no excuse for such cruelty. Dad saw my tears getting ready to spill over, and he put his arm around me and took me to the bathroom, where he helped me to blot the color down until it was merely a hint. “You look beautiful,” he whispered, and he indicated for me to go out through the back to avoid another confrontation. But I don’t want to think about that; I prefer the memory of sitting on the corner of their bed, the furrows of the pink candlewick bedspread soft beneath my fingers. I enjoyed the silence of those moments, but at the same time I think I yearned for her to speak, for us to talk and laugh together like all those mothers and daughters I’d seen on TV. I’d watch and wait for minutes on end, but so often she simply continued with her beautifying rituals and afforded me only the briefest of glances, an invitation in her immaculate raised eyebrow. “You look pretty,” I would tell her, and then the room would brighten with the radiance of her smile.

Now, I lean in and pull down my lower lids, fascinated by the map of veins I can magnify if I blink hard and bulge my eyes wide. My face is round and pale—I’m nothing if not honest with myself—entirely absent of makeup or artifice. Lately I’ve been noticing the ever-increasing ratio of gray to black in my hair—I must have at least 50 percent gray hairs—but how strange that they have now started showing up in my eyebrows too. I wonder about down below. I wonder if later, when I’m undressed, I’ll be able to bend far enough forward to check there for any changes. It’s quite possible that my fat belly will prevent me from getting a good view—that or my bad back, which seems to creak and shriek more and more often these days.

I pick up my bristle hairbrush and run it through my hair, one long stroke from forehead to tip, its length reaching as low as my thigh. “One . . . two . . . three . . .” I count, automatically falling into the hundred-strokes habit Mum taught me in my early years, and as I gaze at my reflection my mind is once again on Martha and Liv, and the e-mail I started writing this afternoon.

Of course, it was easy enough to set up a fake e-mail address for Olivia Heathcote, but knowing what to say in my reply to Martha was a much harder task. I had spent a good couple of hours Googling Olivia—or Liv, as Martha calls her—but there was surprisingly little to be found, only the briefest of mentions about her work as a bereavement counselor for a local clinic. What I already knew about her was gleaned from the two encounters we’d had during the sale of the house more than a year ago, the first when I visited for an initial viewing with the estate agent and the second a follow-up visit I had requested on the pretext of planning my furniture requirements. In reality, it was not the house but Olivia I wanted to see. It wasn’t a crush by any means; but Liv had something about her, such a striking aura. Liv was the type of person who at school would have been popular with the other girls, would have been part of a tight group. She would have belonged. I had just wanted another look before I took over the house and Liv and everything in her life disappeared from mine.

Liv had two children, four-year-old twins called Arno and Jack. They were beautiful too, olive-skinned creatures playing quietly on the faded living room floor, building a world of block towers and animals. Their tawny hair was in stark contrast to Liv’s ebony bob and darker skin, but they shared her vivid blue eyes, and I thought how astonishing it was that a person such as Liv could produce such fair children. She must have noticed me staring, because she laughed and said, “You never know how the genes will come out in the wash!” And that’s how I learned she was adopted as a baby, taken into this very home at just two months of age by Mr. and Mrs. Heathcote and their large, boisterous family. Liv was the middle of five, the only adopted child, and the only one “of color,” as she put it. At one point, she told me, their grandmother was living here too, along with an ever-increasing menagerie of animals and birds. “It was chaos most of the time,” Liv had told me, laughing at the memory. “But happy chaos. We didn’t have a lot, but my mum and dad were the best kind of people, if a bit gullible. They couldn’t say no to anyone, so if someone in the street was threatening to get rid of some old pet or other, we’d take it in here. Hackney Zoo, that’s what my friends used to call this place! Bonkers.”

The house is only a three-up, two-down, and I couldn’t imagine for a moment how they had managed with so many children to care for in such a small space. But what colorful history! So unlike the details of my own small family, whose genealogy, my mother would proudly claim, went right back to the Domesday Book on both sides: English through and through. I loved that Liv’s world was so different from mine, and if I could have stayed there all day long, drinking coffee and asking her questions about her childhood, I would have. Now, in light of my new role as her substitute, I wish I had!

When Liv introduced me to Arno and Jack, they smiled so happily, as though greeting an old friend. How my heart had lifted in that moment! I couldn’t remember the last time a child had smiled at me with such guileless ease. I’m not the sort of person people smile at easily; I don’t have that special thing. On that final visit, I also managed to gather that Liv hadn’t been living in the house for more than a couple of years, having moved back in after her mother had died. There didn’t seem to be a husband or partner anywhere, but I supposed he was out at work or away on business—until Liv mentioned she was moving out of London altogether, “for a fresh start.” I took this to mean alone, just the three of them, and this pleased me no end, though now I struggle to understand why it should. That was the last time I ever saw Liv, and a month later I was moving my belongings in, clutching tightly my very own set of newly cut keys. My solicitor had told me I was paying well over the market price for the place when I offered more to see off another buyer’s bid, but I knew I had to have it. And for heaven’s sake, I’d thought when he advised me not to rush, what else was I to spend my money on? This was the house I wanted.

Today, after hours of staring into my laptop screen (and guiltily ignoring the bleeps of work e-mails dropping into my in-box!), I finally drafted a reply to Martha.

Dear Martha

How nice to hear from you. What a surprise. Of course I have seen you on the television and I have enjoyed watching your success. You must be so pleased. With regard to Juliet, I would be happy to help you in any way I can, but I am out of the country on business and will not return for another week. I am a bereavement counselor and sometimes I have to travel. But if you would like to email me any questions you have, I can very easily email you back. I hope you are well, and that we can meet again some time in the future.

With best wishes, Liv x

I dithered over the kiss at the bottom for an age. Was it too much? I wondered if I should say where exactly it was I’d gone abroad, for authenticity—Italy, perhaps? Maybe Germany? No, better to be vague. Brevity is the key, I concluded, after deleting much of my earlier version—the details about my children, my happy place of work and devoted partner—and now I have this final draft, ready to go. I gave the message a final read through, aloud, in a clear, confident voice, and suddenly I was anxious that it might seem too eager if I sent it straight away. Martha might not believe it’s really Liv! Imagine if it was all to come to an end now, simply because I got carried away with myself. So I will send it early tomorrow morning, and for now I must be content with the anticipation.

As I sit facing myself in the dressing table mirror now, the very thought of this adventure sends a jolt of adrenaline through my veins. This is the most exciting thing to happen to me in a long time, and I’m suddenly terrified it might be taken away. What if the real Liv were to turn up again, confronting my deception? I imagine inviting her in and offering her a cup of tea before bashing her over the head with my crystal ashtray and burying her under the floorboards, just like old John Christie in 10 Rillington Place. I blink at my reflection, and then I laugh, high and loud, clamping my hand to my mouth to hold in the madness of it all.