24

I don’t know why it was, but I couldn’t quite credit the story about the hen party. I got a feeling that I didn’t like at all that Lucy was lying to me. When we first met I wouldn’t have given a single solitary fart about that, but now it seemed that I cared very much, perhaps too much, as it turned out, for my own good, or certainly the good of Lucy.

Why didn’t I believe her? I suppose I’d seen so many of my friends and people I’d worked with telling lies in court. Made up stories about what they were doing on the night in question, faked alibis, any sort of ‘pork pies’, as Chippy used to call them in the days before he became Leonard. Anyway, they always told these lies with a sort of wide-eyed look of sincerity - the look Lucy gave me when she talked about the hen party in Aldershot. I mean, she’d never mentioned this lot of girl friends before. Yes, she’d mentioned her friend Deirdre, who she met for drinks at the Close-Up from time to time, but that was all.

Then I noticed that nearer the date she got, well, sort of excited. A lot of the time she seemed to be thinking of something else entirely and then she’d keep coming back to the subject, saying, ‘You don’t mind really, do you?’ or ‘I’m sure it’s better for our relationship that I do things on my own from time to time.’ What sort of things was she thinking of doing on her own? That was what I couldn’t help wondering. I suppose you’ll say I was unreasonably jealous, but just look at her previous. When we first met she had this boyfriend, Tom, who fizzled out but was no doubt somewhere still alive on the face of the earth. Then there was that Robin, who had his tongue halfway down her throat when I caught them kissing in the Intimate Bistro. I know he had tried his luck when she went for a dinner party in his big country house, and he had plenty of money. So was it another date with Robin that Lucy was getting so excited about?

I know what you’re going to say. That I was well in love with Lucy by this time and that was perfectly true. It all seemed to be going well. I was sure I’d put her off the habit of stealing little things which didn’t suit her at all. And life had never been better than it was in All Saints Road. I got used to cooking in the way I’d seen it done when I worked at the bistro. Lucy kept saying there was something needed to make us feel really close, but to be honest I felt close enough already. I’d have been quite happy to keep things going as they were. Which is why I got more than a little upset when she spun me what I suspected was a false alibi.

Then there was the business of the suitcase. It was the evening before the alleged hen night. I was cooking in the kitchen and I looked out of the window and saw her put her small suitcase in the boot of the Polo. There was something about the way she did it, looking to see there was no one watching, as though she had blagged her own suitcase or something. When I asked her about it she got quite angry. ‘I told you I might have to stay the night with one of the girls,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter? Do you want to search my luggage? What are you, some sort of customs officer?’

I tried to calm her down by telling her that of course I didn’t mind her going to meet her girl friends and we sort of made things up, though I was still not entirely convinced. Then the time came when she put on her new wrap-around dress and set off in the Polo and I was left alone in the flat, still not quite sure she’d told me everything.

I went to bed quite early but I couldn’t sleep. Eventually it got to past two in the morning. I’d had a very restless few hours, thinking things over in my mind, imagining all kinds of stuff. I was still not sure of her, so I decided to ring her on her mobile. Perhaps, I thought, she’d still be up and partying with the girls.

Well, she must have pressed the green button to answer my call and I heard her voice and a man’s voice calling something I couldn’t quite hear. Then she cut me off and the line went dead. After that there was no point in trying to go to sleep.