I’m coming, it says. Driving down tonight when the kids are in bed. Will be with you 9/10ish.
So it’s begun. Nothing from Thea yet, but I know it will come. The spell has broken – the illusion that it’s just me and Freya, off on a seaside holiday for two. I remember why I am really here. I remember what we did.
I’m on the 12.05 from Victoria, I text back to the others. Pick me up from Salten, Kate?
No reply, but I know she won’t let me down.
I shut my eyes. I put my hand on Freya’s chest so I know she is there. And then I try to sleep.
I wake with a shock and a belting heart to the sound of crashing and shunting, and my first instinct is to reach out for Freya. For a minute I am not sure what has woken me but then I realise: the train is dividing, we are at Hampton’s Lee. Freya is squirming grumpily in her cot, she looks like she may settle if I’m lucky – but then there’s another shunt, more violent than the first set, and her eyes fly open in offended shock, her face crumpling in a sudden wail of annoyance and hunger.
‘Shh …’ I croon, scooping her up, warm and struggling from the cocoon of blankets and toys. ‘Shh … it’s OK, sweetie pie, it’s all right, my poppet. Nothing to worry about.’
She is dark-eyed and angry, bashing her cross little face against my chest as I get the buttons of my shirt undone and feel the by-now routine, yet always alien, rush of the milk letting down.
As she feeds, there is another bang and a crunch, and then a whistle blows, and we begin to move slowly out of the station, the platforms giving way to sidings, and then to houses, and then at last to fields and telegraph poles.
It is heart-stoppingly familiar. London, in all the years I’ve lived there, has been constantly changing. It’s like Freya, never the same from one day to the next. A shop opens here, a pub closes there. Buildings spring up – the Gherkin, the Shard – a supermarket sprawls across a piece of wasteland and apartment blocks seem to seed themselves like mushrooms, thrusting up from damp earth and broken concrete overnight.
But this line, this journey – it hasn’t changed at all.
There’s the burnt-out elm.
There’s the crumbling World War II pillbox.
There’s the rickety bridge, the train’s wheels sounding hollow above the void.
I shut my eyes, and I am back there in the compartment with Kate and Thea, laughing as they pull school skirts on over their jeans, button up shirts and ties over their summery vest tops. Thea was wearing stockings, I remember her rolling them up her impossibly long slender legs, and then reaching up beneath the regulation school skirt to fasten her suspenders. I remember the hot flush that stained my cheeks at the flash of her thigh, and looking away, out across the fields of autumn wheat, with my heart pounding as she laughed at my prudery.
‘You’d better hurry,’ Kate said lazily to Thea. She was dressed, and had packed her jeans and boots away in the case resting on the luggage rack. ‘We’ll be at Westridge soon, there’s always piles of beach-goers there, you don’t want to give a tourist a heart attack.’
Thea only stuck out her tongue, but she finished hooking her suspenders and smoothed down her skirt just as we pulled into Westridge station.
Sure enough, just as Kate had predicted, there was a scattering of tourists on the platform, and Thea let out a groan as the train drew to a halt. Our compartment door was level with a family of three beach-trippers, a mother, father and a little boy of about six with his bucket and spade in one hand, and a dripping choc ice in the other.
‘Room for three more?’ the father said jovially as he opened the door and they clambered in, slamming the door behind them. The little compartment felt suddenly very crowded.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Thea said, and she did sound sorry. ‘We’d love to have you, but my friend here,’ she indicated me, ‘she’s out on day release, and part of the terms of her probation is no contact with minors. The court judgement was very specific about that.’
The man blinked and his wife gave a nervous giggle. The boy wasn’t listening, he was busy picking bits of chocolate off his T-shirt.
‘It’s your child I’m thinking of,’ Thea said seriously. ‘Plus of course Ariadne really doesn’t want to go back to the young offenders’ institute.’
‘There’s an empty compartment next door,’ Kate said, and I could see she was trying to keep her face straight. She stood and slid open the door to the corridor. ‘I’m so sorry. We don’t want to inconvenience you, but I think it’s for the best, for everyone’s safety.’
The man shot us all a suspicious look, and then ushered his wife and little boy out into the corridor.
Thea burst into snorts of laughter as they left, barely waiting even until the compartment door had slid shut, but Kate was shaking her head.
‘You do not get a point for that,’ she said. Her face was twisted with suppressed laughter. ‘They didn’t believe you.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Thea took a cigarette out of a packet in her blazer pocket and lit it, taking a deep drag in defiance of the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the window. ‘They left, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, but only because they thought you were a fucking weirdo. That doesn’t count!’
‘Is … is this a game?’ I said uncertainly.
There was a long pause.
Thea and Kate looked at each other, and I saw that wordless communication pass between them again, like an electric charge flowing from one to another, as if they were deciding how to answer. And then Kate smiled, a small, almost secretive smile, and leaned forward across the gap between the bench seats, so close that I could see the dark streaks in her grey-blue eyes.
‘It’s not a game,’ she said. ‘It’s the game. It’s the Lying Game.’
The Lying Game.
It comes back to me now as sharp and vivid as the smell of the sea, and the scream of gulls over the Reach, and I can’t believe that I had almost forgotten it – forgotten the tally sheet Kate kept above her bed, covered with cryptic marks for her complex scoring system. This much for a new victim. That much for complete belief. The extras awarded for elaborate detail, or managing to rehook someone who had almost called your bluff. I haven’t thought of it for so many years, but in a way, I’ve been playing it all this time.
I sigh, and look down at Freya’s peaceful face as she suckles, her complete absorption in the moment of it all. And I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can go back.
What has happened, to make Kate call us so suddenly and so urgently in the middle of the night?
I can only think of one thing … and I can’t bear to believe it.
It is just as the train is drawing into Salten that my phone beeps for the last time, and I draw it out, thinking it will be Kate confirming my lift. But it’s not. It’s Thea.
I’m coming.