three times before pulling out. A churn of mud frills out from his fender and splatters the white paint job of the smaller car. The Range Rover’s taillights illuminate a figure in the driver’s seat of the Micra; man or woman, it’s impossible to tell. Dave tears noisily down the lane and the smaller car, perhaps afraid of being seen by me, quickly follows in his slipstream. I draw the curtains and am glad that nobody witnessed this ridiculous exhibition of paranoia. I turn the light back on—a side lamp, this time—and bring my attention to the telephone.
They must know he is free. There has been a phone call once every two years or so. Sometimes they are print journalists, sometimes they are TV researchers. They are always female, young and well spoken in a confident, blond sort of way. There was a spate of calls at the five-year anniversary and then another when Roger Capel received his OBE. I can’t stop them rerunning old stories about Rex, but so far I have succeeded in keeping Alice and myself out of the news.
Usually, the journalists are easy to fob off with a lie: I tell them that I have the same name as a girl who knew the Capels, that I get these calls every year or so, but I can’t help them. I got the idea when I was translating an interview with a Spanish actress who said that when her fans accosted her, she claimed that she was often mistaken for herself, or that she was a professional look-alike. I even wish them luck chasing their stories. Only one of them, a TV researcher named Alison Larch, was persistent enough to visit me at the house. I knew that she was bad news from the way she knocked on the door: five loud and rapid bangs that made me spill the tea I was carrying. I’d been right about the blond thing, but naive about my deflective techniques. She was working, she said, on a film about “rich kids who went off the rails.”
“I know you knew them,” she said, although she didn’t say how. “I’m going to make this film with or without you: you might as well be onboard.” I called her bluff, and her investigations must have come to nothing, because when the documentary aired six months later, there was no mention of the Queenswood murders. It was after that that I persuaded Rex to change his last name to mine: it is Alice’s last name, after all. I didn’t tell him about Alison Larch. I wonder if she is the one who keeps calling and then hanging up. The journalists who have called in the past have been businesslike and overintimate, wheedling and threatening, but they have never been silent. Perhaps this is a new technique, designed to break me. It is very nearly working. If the police had been half as industrious as Alison Larch, our story could have had a very different ending.
The phone trills, breaking into my thoughts, and even though it is under my hand I fumble to pick it up, fingers groping blindly for the answer button before Alice or Rex can reach the handset in the bedroom. It’s my mother, wanting to know how today went and when will be a good time to visit. I can hear her loading the dishwasher as she speaks and then the whir of the machine fades as she marches her new digital telephone into the living room and sinks into the sofa next to my father. By the time we have finished arranging dates, it is dark.
“She’s asleep,” says Rex, sliding onto the sofa beside me, long legs doubling up to avoid the coffee table. It’s only seven o’clock, which means she’ll be up again at ten and then awake until midnight, which means that getting her up tomorrow will be a battle of wills I’m not sure I have the strength for.
“Ah,” I say. “It’s way before her bedtime. We should have talked about her routine before you came home. It’s really important not to disrupt it. We should go and wake her up.”
“She’s had a long day.” Rex sighs. “She’ll sleep.” Frustration balls in my throat and I want to shout at him not to be so stupid. He doesn’t know
They must know he is free. There has been a phone call once every two years or so. Sometimes they are print journalists, sometimes they are TV researchers. They are always female, young and well spoken in a confident, blond sort of way. There was a spate of calls at the five-year anniversary and then another when Roger Capel received his OBE. I can’t stop them rerunning old stories about Rex, but so far I have succeeded in keeping Alice and myself out of the news.
Usually, the journalists are easy to fob off with a lie: I tell them that I have the same name as a girl who knew the Capels, that I get these calls every year or so, but I can’t help them. I got the idea when I was translating an interview with a Spanish actress who said that when her fans accosted her, she claimed that she was often mistaken for herself, or that she was a professional look-alike. I even wish them luck chasing their stories. Only one of them, a TV researcher named Alison Larch, was persistent enough to visit me at the house. I knew that she was bad news from the way she knocked on the door: five loud and rapid bangs that made me spill the tea I was carrying. I’d been right about the blond thing, but naive about my deflective techniques. She was working, she said, on a film about “rich kids who went off the rails.”
“I know you knew them,” she said, although she didn’t say how. “I’m going to make this film with or without you: you might as well be onboard.” I called her bluff, and her investigations must have come to nothing, because when the documentary aired six months later, there was no mention of the Queenswood murders. It was after that that I persuaded Rex to change his last name to mine: it is Alice’s last name, after all. I didn’t tell him about Alison Larch. I wonder if she is the one who keeps calling and then hanging up. The journalists who have called in the past have been businesslike and overintimate, wheedling and threatening, but they have never been silent. Perhaps this is a new technique, designed to break me. It is very nearly working. If the police had been half as industrious as Alison Larch, our story could have had a very different ending.
The phone trills, breaking into my thoughts, and even though it is under my hand I fumble to pick it up, fingers groping blindly for the answer button before Alice or Rex can reach the handset in the bedroom. It’s my mother, wanting to know how today went and when will be a good time to visit. I can hear her loading the dishwasher as she speaks and then the whir of the machine fades as she marches her new digital telephone into the living room and sinks into the sofa next to my father. By the time we have finished arranging dates, it is dark.
“She’s asleep,” says Rex, sliding onto the sofa beside me, long legs doubling up to avoid the coffee table. It’s only seven o’clock, which means she’ll be up again at ten and then awake until midnight, which means that getting her up tomorrow will be a battle of wills I’m not sure I have the strength for.
“Ah,” I say. “It’s way before her bedtime. We should have talked about her routine before you came home. It’s really important not to disrupt it. We should go and wake her up.”
“She’s had a long day.” Rex sighs. “She’ll sleep.” Frustration balls in my throat and I want to shout at him not to be so stupid. He doesn’t know
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