I breathe out too fast and go a bit dizzy.
“And did you see him?”
“You know I did. He helped me hump some crates for Pete Diamond, remember?”
“Oh, yes, sorry. My head’s all over the place. Okay, so this is nothing to worry about?”
“No,” he says but he hesitates and comes to stand beside me with that look on his face. The confession face.
“What? Tell me!”
“I’m going to tell them I gave Charlie a lift home the night of the festival,” he says.
And I shut my eyes.
“Charlie? What are you talking about?”
“I saw him when I went to the garage, after I dropped you home—I went to fill up the van, didn’t I? He was staggering along the road—I was just trying to help.”
“For Christ’s sake, Liam, why didn’t you say anything at the time?”
“Because it was nothing. I give people lifts all the time—everyone does round here. And then you said he’d gone missing and the police were involved and . . . well, I didn’t want to be dragged into something. I thought he’d show up. Like you said. But he hasn’t, has he? And I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Did something happen in the van, then?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
Liam shakes his head. “No, Dee, nothing happened,” he says, talking to the tabletop. “He was really drunk and wasn’t talking any sense. He was rambling on about seeing someone at the festival.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, I shoved him out of the car door as soon as we got there. I didn’t want Pauline blaming me for the state he was in.”
“Right.”
“But I need to tell the police, don’t I? I’ve heard they’re starting to ask questions about him. It’s been two days. They’ll find out about the people Charlie owes money to—the roofers, the scaffolders. And me.”
“But they’re big companies—their bills must be huge. The police won’t be interested in you. You said ours was only a couple of hundred.”
“Well, it’s a bit more than that.”
“How much?”
“A couple of grand,” he mutters under his breath.
“How much?”
“Just under four thousand. Look, Dee”—he cuts me off before I can explode—“he was so clever about it. I did all that new pipework, but as soon as I gave him the bill, he asked me to do more, kept the job rolling on, slipping me ‘interim payments’ of a couple of hundred here and there for materials. But it kept mounting up. And then he started avoiding me.”
“Four thousand.” I can hardly speak. “How have we been paying the rent? Have you been paying it?”
Liam ignores the question, talking over me.
“The police will start sniffing about, and if I don’t say something first, they might find out about the debt and me giving him a lift and say I’ve got something to hide.”
My mind is sliding all over the place.
“But how will they find out? Did anyone see him get in the van? Have you told anyone else?”
“No. There was no one about when I stopped. That’s why I picked him up.”
The noise in my head is deafening. The frantic buzz of questions and fear. I try to breathe in his silence as I think. I’ll need to hold him close if we’re to get through this. Hold everything close.
“Okay, telling the police would be a mistake. Like you said, they’ll make something of it. Turn it on you. He was only in the van for five minutes and he was all right when you left him. So it’s not important, is it? I think if anyone asks, you should say you didn’t see him at all, okay?”
Liam is breathing through his mouth as he takes it all in. He looks like a little boy.
“But, Dee,” he says finally, “it’s him in the wrong, not me. Not paying. The police can’t make something out of nothing. And I’ve got nothing to hide.”
But we’ve all got something to hide.
I was looking up our landlord’s e-mail to ask for time to pay when my phone goes and Janine Scott-Pennington begs me to come and save her.
“I know you’re not due until tomorrow,” she says, “but the beds need changing and the kitchen can’t wait. We’ve had friends staying and it looks like a bomb’s hit it. I’ll pay double as it’s a Sunday.”
Cal’s gone for a sleepover with his best friend, anyway, so I say yes and meet Janine on the pavement warming up for a run. She bounces on the spot outside Elise’s window and I try to see if Elise is watching—and listening to Janine spitting out her outrage.