Free Lie With Me by Sabine Durrant Page B

Motors Ltd, Mortlake’s premier car service facility. MOTs and general maintenance.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘No repair too big or too small.’
    She let out a gurgle of laughter; more genuine than anything I had heard for a while. ‘You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.’
    I stood up. ‘Often, while U’ – I drew the letter in the air with my finger – ‘wait.’
    ‘Are U’ – she made the same gesture – ‘offering to mend my truck?’
    I shrugged and reached back to put my hands in my back pockets. ‘Perhaps you’ve got me wrong. Perhaps I’m not so highbrow after all.’
    She stood up. She was standing on the step above me and our eyes were level. She said, ‘I know we’ve all been talking about what fun it’ll be, but it won’t, not really. I’ll be feeling sad at leaving. Plus, as it’s the ten-year anniversary since Jasmine went missing . . . Yvonne and Karl . . . It won’t all be roses. You might not have that good a time.’
    The second bell rang. I put my hand under her elbow and steered her back towards the auditorium. I couldn’t stop smiling.
    When we reached the end of our row, she turned again to look at me. An elderly man and two younger women scrabbled to their feet, pushing their bags and coats out of the way, to make room for us to pass. Alice still had her back to them. She didn’t move.
    ‘I’m in,’ I said.
    She considered me for what felt like a long moment and then she bent forwards. ‘Good,’ she whispered. ‘I’m glad.’
    She kissed me lightly on the lips. And then she turned and edged, with small, dainty steps, along the row ahead of me.
    I followed, shuffling sideways. I tripped over a coat, smiled at one of the women, wobbled, made a face, apologised. I must have looked as if I were too big for the space, like a clumsy oaf. But I felt as if I could soar. I had won .

September 2015
    I didn’t sleep much last night. The itching has become almost unbearable. My whole forearm is red and inflamed, but the area halfway along, the site of the original bite, is pallid and hard, the entry wound long absorbed by the flesh around it. I’ve lost all sensation there – it’s as if a peach stone has grown under the skin. Everywhere else, I’ve scratched so hard I have blood under my nails. The cycle – the stinging pain, then the itchiness, then the stinging pain – is driving me half insane.
    I was allowed to see the prison doctor one morning, a middle-aged man with large hands and heavy lines etched into his face. He didn’t speak much English and my Greek is no better, but there was a tangible sympathy coming off the man that almost made me weep. He gave me a cream for the infection – antibiotic, I suppose – and an ointment for the psoriasis on my face and hands. He showed me what to do, miming a dab with the thick tip of his enormous finger, and a more general window-cleaning-style rub. But where those medications are now, I don’t know.
    Things go missing all the time here. I pulled my bed apart looking for the cream, upended the thin, solitary drawer on to the mattress. As I fruitlessly sifted through its meagre contents, I was remembering packing for the holiday, how carefully I had chosen each item – a white shirt, chinos, a pair of Vans I found on sale. I had planned to take the purple T-shirt with me, the one from Zeus nightclub. Worn at the right time, it would have, I thought, an amusing, ironic effect on the company. But I couldn’t find it.
    I’ve been thinking – not about the bachelor flat in Bloomsbury, nor the family house in Clapham. It’s my mother’s house in East Sheen that keeps coming into my head: the little single room with the window onto the garden, the gloss fireplace, the spider plant in its small caged grate.
    I think about that room empty.

THEN

Chapter Seven
    The heat woke me, the sun burning my eyelids, probing through my clothes, down to the skin. Sweat had collected in the small of my back. My holdall was propped