Read Online The Liar's Chair by Rebecca Whitney - Free Book Online

now the dogs have it as their bedding. I click my mobile on to Will’s number. He’s listed as the out-of-hours
doctor; that way David can’t find him. I start the call but press the end button after it rings once. As soon as I hang up I delete the call from my phone history. Will knows not to call me
back.
    Again I slip into a half-sleep and see the dead man sitting on the steps of a caravan, drinking from a can. He wears the scruffy blue coat he died in and oversized trainers with the laces
undone. Dressed as I remember him. I’m at the caravan too, we laugh together like old friends. My mother is inside. She collects his things into a pile and pours ink over them. I ask the man
if I should let anyone know he’s dead or if, like me, he wants to disappear. He doesn’t answer but carries on drinking, watching me over the top of the can.
    Next time when I wake, I sit up and turn the light on, and rifle through my bedside drawer for some more codeine which I press out of their foil pouches. I wash the pills down with wine from the
now half-full bottle. This bed is where I came the day of the accident, to this same cocoon of warmth where the universe shrinks to the clutter of my mind, like the small dark spaces I would seek
out as a child when I fantasized I was a cat finding somewhere safe and secret, pretending to go through a hole the size of my whiskers. The hiding place would help to block out the noise in my
head, and make the memories go away. But I’ve forgotten the old ways of fooling myself that nothing can touch me. Instead I’ve cultivated a blank space.
    I remember the smells and sounds in the bedroom the night after the accident: the smoke seeping into the room even though the windows were shut, footsteps outside on gravel, the sound of the
engine firing up filtering into my dream as my car was driven away. What surprised me – apart from David involving someone else in the equation – was that he knew who to call to make
something as big as a car disappear. He knew the routine in an instant: to clean everything, and burn what couldn’t be restored. No mean feat for a mere businessman. Knowing David as I do, I
imagine this new avenue for his talents has yet to be exhausted.
    At the time it had been something of a relief to know that David was dealing with the aftermath of the accident, and that he approved of my hiding the body; no dysfunctional marriage exposed by
an unhappy businesswoman, no messy drink-driving manslaughter case. We don’t do scandals in this house. Nothing to interfere with business.
    We have a crime number from the police after we reported the vehicle stolen. They found the car near London and informed us it had been torched. David likes certainty, he takes pride in being
able to plot my mood and actions, and in the past that’s always worked; he’s set upon my emotional blips with a keen, clinical force, and I relied on his ability to give me boundaries
and shut me down. It made me safe. Now something new has passed between us, a mistrust. What’s occurred is bigger than anything we’ve encountered before: a death, plus tonight’s
public humiliation in front of the kind of people David cares about impressing the most. These are errors I’ve seemingly courted. He’ll be wary of me now, unable to compute the future
he’s so painstakingly nurtured over the years. I’m a malfunctioning satellite spiralling away from the mother ship. If he can’t turn me around, he’ll switch off and cut me
loose. I sense the looming threat of David’s distrust. If he can’t bring me into line there is nowhere I can disappear to that will be far enough away. Before, the penalties were only
ever emotional, but it feels like something in me has broken and the old ways of settling things will no longer work.
    I light another cigarette and roll the burning tip up and down my arm, seeing how long I can hold it in place before it singes my skin.

PART TWO

6
TEN WRAPS
    David’s