‘We’re in here!’ I shot a warning down the stairs; the we rather than the here clearly being the key information. By the time Kit came into the sitting room, he’d dug up a grin from somewhere.
‘Been anywhere exciting?’ Beth asked him. He let the smile slip for a moment, just to shoot me a look that said We do not talk about my brother in front of her. I gave a tiny nod.
‘Not particularly,’ he said. He took his Swiss Army knife from the kitchen drawer and levered the top off a bottle, bringing it to his lips as the foam burst over the neck. He drained it in a series of gulps, then opened another – I’d never seen him do that before – before flopping on to the futon and glowering at the wall opposite. I wished Beth wouldn’t stare at him, or would at least try to disguise her fascinated concern. The little flat swelled with its various secrets; it reminded me of the witness room at Truro Crown Court. Kit, who had long dismissed the theory of twin telepathy and phantom pain, had sweat on his upper lip and kept shifting like something was cramping in his belly, for all the world as though he was the one going through cold turkey.
‘Are you all right, Kit?’ asked Beth. ‘You don’t look very well.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said robotically.
‘I’ll put the telly on, shall I?’ I said, aiming the remote. A news channel was showing a story about a proposed bypass tunnel to take traffic away from Stonehenge.
‘It’d be a shame if you couldn’t see it out of the window,’ I said. ‘I love that first glimpse of it on the hill.’
Kit grunted an acknowledgement that I’d spoken.
‘They need to sort that road out, though,’ said Beth. ‘It’s always congested; it adds about two hours on the journey time to Glastonbury. It’s bad enough when there isn’t an accident, but when there’s a crash it’s literally impassable. There was a pile-up there the day I went to the Lizard, about half a mile in front of the car I was in. We were stuck in traffic for about five hours. It was only a little Ford Fiesta, my knees were in agony not being able to stretch out. All the wreckage was still smoking when we went past it.’ I might never have understood the significance of her words if it hadn’t been for Beth’s blush. I’ve still never seen a high colour like it: hot pink patches started to form on her white neck and crept steadily up her face, like someone was pouring the blood into her from a jug. ‘Anyway, so, I just think a tunnel would be best.’ The blush had evaporated and she spoke with an almost aggressive brightness. ‘Stop them concreting over any more fields.’
The next item was a report about flaws in the Inland Revenue’s new online filing system. Beth, rather unexpectedly, had plenty to say about this, too; apparently her solicitor was calling it all the names under the sun, he needed to get with the times . . . I tried to tune her out and pick apart what she’d said about Stonehenge but her prattle was relentless, like a toddler’s. It was almost as though she was deliberately occluding thought. Only when she disappeared to the bathroom did the penny drop. I was on the verge of asking Kit if he’d noticed her go red when it came to me; my admittedly theatrical gasp was loud enough to pull him out of his mood.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Ok, this might be nothing,’ I said, even as momentum gathered inside. ‘Just hear me out, though. The crash Beth was talking about happened the day before I came down.’ I paused to let the weight of it land on Kit, but his face was blank. ‘The verges were still covered in debris,’ I said. ‘The coach driver told us that they couldn’t clear it until all the eclipse traffic had died down. But they said in court, didn’t they, that she only arrived the day before the eclipse?’ Something else occurred to me. ‘And they said she’d travelled by coach, because I remember thinking she must have been on the first one of the day, if she wasn’t on mine. She just said, didn’t she, that she was in a car.’
Kit screwed his face up. ‘Yeah . . .’ he said eventually. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re right.’ Of course I was right. I could have sat a test on that trial and aced it. He shrugged. ‘Polglase must have made a mistake.’
I shook my head. ‘Fiona Price would’ve been all over it. So would the judge.’
‘Then Beth’s probably mistaken.’ I couldn’t believe how dismissive he was being. ‘She must have just seen what you saw. All the debris piled up at the side of the road.’
Beth was humming in the toilet; I dropped my voice even further. ‘I don’t think so. Kit, I think she’s lied. Even if she’s wrong about the day, what about the car thing?’ The toilet flushed noisily. ‘I’m going to ask her.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Kit. Finally I had his attention. ‘Don’t set her off. Can we not just have a quiet evening in?’ But I couldn’t let it go. My lie had been built on the conviction that Beth was telling the whole truth. If she hadn’t been, what did that mean for me? I went very cold. She came back, fluffing out her hair. I cleared my throat.
‘Beth, I was just wondering – and it’s probably my mistake, but you know what you just said about seeing that accident?’ She didn’t blush this time but went white; even her lips lost their colour and I realised even before I spoke that I was on to something. That if I set her off, to use Kit’s words, this was going to change things. I had to know, but it took courage to keep talking. ‘It’s, the thing is, it’s just that they said in court that you’d said you came down on the Wednesday, like me, and that you were in a coach, but you just said you were in a car. I just wondered where the mistake was. If it was your mistake or the court’s. Or . . .’ I was in so deep I might as well keep going, ‘If it was a mistake at all.’