Liar Liar - [18]

During visiting hours today, he had been besieged – inundated with teary visitors who lavished him with affection or urged him to ‘stay strong’. They left flowers, chocolates, books, DVDs – already his room was a riot of colour. It was like an Aladdin’s cave and, though he was grateful for their kindness and concern, he hated it all. Some people he was glad to see of course, but his misfortune now seemed to be a magnet for anyone who’d ever known him. So in addition to family and close friends, he’d been visited by football mates and their parents, ex-girlfriends, godparents, guys from school, cousins several times removed. Some of them barely knew him, some of them he thought actively disliked him, but suddenly they all wanted a piece of him. Wanted to tell him how brave he was. Wanted to offer their sympathy to him and, worse than that, their praise.

It was all so inappropriate. What had he actually done? He had jumped from a building and broken his legs. In a stroke his home, his life, his future had been shattered – so what exactly was there to be happy or hopeful about? He was always polite, but when they geed him up by telling him how quick-thinking he’d been, how courageous, he wanted to tell them all to go Hell. He hadn’t jumped because he was brave. He had jumped because he was scared.

Had he been a proper son and brother, he would have braved the flames. He would have charged through them to find his mother and sister. He could have got them out of the house ten, twenty minutes earlier perhaps, but he didn’t. Because he was scared by the awful chorus of smoke alarms and the flames devouring the stairs, he had turned and fled, climbing out of his window and jumping to safety.

Because of that his mother had died. His mother who had given up work to raise him. Who had taken him to football practice three times a week. Who had always called him her ‘special one’. He’d abandoned her – as he had abandoned his little sister – to her fate. And for that he would never forgive himself.

Which is why all the bouquets and cards with messages of good will and praise seemed completely obscene. If he had his way, they would all have been thrown straight in the bin.

25

Sanderson punched the button and the wheels spun in front of her. She wasn’t a gambler – didn’t play fruit machines and wasn’t sure what tactics you were supposed to employ – but it passed the time and gave her something to do. Were some of the regulars laughing at her amateur efforts, wasting pound after pound on ill-judged spins? She thought so, but as long as they put her lack of prowess down to her stupidity or her sex, then that was ok. She was happy to live with their casual sexism if it meant they didn’t question her presence here.

Another two hours had passed. She had drained a couple of pints, faked a few phone calls, even smoked a couple of cigarettes in the freezing yard out back. She hated cigarettes and had only managed to get halfway through both of them, taking very intermittent puffs. But she needed to do something and there were no freesheets left to read and no more phone calls she could legitimately fake. Which is why she now found herself at the fruit machine, cherries and bananas spinning in front of her in some strange, surreal dance.

‘All right, Gary, what can I get you?’

Sanderson froze, her finger hovering over the Play button. A voice answered the barman’s jovial welcome – the accent was local and rough – and the conversation carried on in a pleasant enough vein. But there was something in the barman’s tone that intrigued Sanderson. It sounded very much like fear.

She continued playing the machine, trying to get a sight of ‘Gary’ in the reflection on the machine’s glass front. But there was a post in the way and she couldn’t make out the face. Whoever it was, he was now talking in low tones to his fellow drinkers, wry, humourless chuckles occasionally punctuating the conversation. Why had he dropped his voice? Was this normal or had he already clocked the tall woman by the fruit machine whom no one could vouch for?

Perhaps he was watching her right now. If she turned, would she find him staring right at her? Sanderson knew from experience that a quick, darted look over the shoulder was the most suspicious move you could make and that in situations like this it paid to be up front and bold. So abandoning the fruit machine, she picked up her half-drunk pint and marched over to the bar.

‘This lager tastes like cat’s piss. Got anything better?’

The barman broke off his conversation, eyeballing her unpleasantly.

‘We don’t hand out freebies in this pub. That’ll be three pounds.’

‘Daylight robbery,’ she replied, casting an eye towards the other drinkers in search of support. But they weren’t interested in her, still deeply involved in their murmured conversations. Sanderson however was very interested in them and caught a good side view of Gary Spence. She had memorized his mugshot and there was no doubt about it. It was him. He was unshaven and shabbily dressed in old, stained clothes.