ILLUMINATION BOOK CHAPTERS (UPDATED LIST OF CHAPTERS HERE) … ROMANTIC COMEDY — QUIRKY ROMP — CO-STARS MOOCHER THE DOG

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ — Chapter Twenty-Four

A revelation

She got up late the next morning. It had been an exhausting few days. As soon as she made it into the breakfast room the phone rang and she was delighted to hear Lydia telling her the fridge door wasn’t closed properly.

Lydia then asked Liz to call in and see her in half an hour or so, and to bring Moocher. She must have heard he’d been washed. Liz checked out the fridge for unwelcome inhabitants, fed Moocher and telephoned a few kitchen people to come round and give her a quote later in the week.

As she came out of her house, Clive came out of his. “Good Morning,” she said, aiming for a pleasant, but nondescript tone. It took all her courage to stay where she was and not run, screaming, back into her house. But she knew she must have looked like someone who had dropped lots of clangers at the feet of an idol and now knew it. Not that the idol himself knew it, thankfully.

The idol looked at her suspiciously. “Good morning,” he managed and then followed her down the pavement and up Lydia’s path.

“Have you been summoned in, too?” she asked.

“Yes. No idea what for. Hope you haven’t been telling her any of your daft ideas.”

“What! I haven’t been telling anyone any of my daft ideas about you. Not only that, but you should thank me because I’ve certainly had provocation enough to tell people.”

The door opened and they both turned and gave Lydia polite smiles. Moocher sniffed her shoes. Lydia stood back and they entered her house.

She bustled about and got them settled with tea and biscuits and a bowl of water for Moocher. Idly Liz watched her, wondering why they’d been asked in at the same time. She hadn’t even known that Lydia was on asking-in-for-tea terms with Clive. She wondered where Tony and Julie were and what they were up to now. Something vaguely unpleasant she supposed.

And, she didn’t know what made it suddenly so clear to her, but some little thing, some little intuition, some little patchy makeup and she had it. The sudden revelation made her feel as though someone had hit her squarely between the eyes and dislodged that shrivelled pea. It ran around and around in her skull for a few nanoseconds and then fell out of her head and got stuck in her throat. She started to cough, spraying custard cream crumbs all around her as she catapulted out of her chair, grabbing at her throat with a feverish hand and feeling herself turning a lovely deep maroon to match the curtains. Clive was there, thumping her on the back. She had to use her other arm to keep him off her.

Why do people do that? As soon as you cough they start thumping you on the back. It’s enough to make you choke. Why can’t they wait for you to point, imploringly back-wards? Why do they have to just thump you on the back and look so awfully virtuous while they’re doing it as though they’re administering on-the-spot brain surgery and were sooo clever?

So there she was, dancing around trying to avoid Clive, coughing half her intestines up and absolutely staggered at her realisation. She had no idea what to do about it. It didn’t make sense. In the meantime, thankfully, the dried pea dislodged itself from her throat and jumped back into her skull. Oh, good, brain in place again. She sat down. Clive sat down. Lydia was where she had been all along. She poured out another cup of tea and handed it to Liz.

“Thank you, Lydia,” she said gratefully, and avoiding her look she took a long noisy slurp of the hot brown liquid. Anything to give her time. Time to think. “Sorry about that,” she said, trying to laugh lightly and failing miserably. “Crumb went down the wrong way, I guess.”

“Perhaps you should try chewing the biscuit before swallowing,” Clive said.

She shot him a look of intense dislike until she remembered that Belvedere McGuigan was her literary hero. She changed her glare to an admiring glance and a titter. What a wit that man was! And, besides, given what she’d just realised, she might need him on her side.

“Oh, for heavens sake, Liz!” he said. “What’s with this act you’re putting on? I preferred it when you were simply insulting.”

“I, uh, I… nothing.”

“Oh, no! I know what it is. You’ve found out who I am, haven’t you?”

“She knows who you are?” Lydia asked, apparently jolted from her calm.

“Yes, I do,” Liz said, and then realised what Lydia had said. She turned to her and asked, “What do you mean? Who do you think he is?” Because, as far as she was aware, Lydia didn’t know who he was. If she had known she’d have told Liz in one of their marathon chats. She wouldn’t have been able to help herself.

Lydia engaged herself in brushing crumbs from the arm of the chair she was leaning on, as if there were any there. “Oh, I just heard it on the grapevine,” she muttered as though she was going to burst into song. “You know, the whole thing with Julie…”

“Come on, Lydia, who do you think he is?” Liz pressed for an answer, moving closer to her in an attempt to watch her face, which she was keeping well averted.

“Julie’s uncle,” Lydia snapped. “Who else?”

“Julie’s uncle?” Liz repeated in a silly I-know-nothing-really tone of voice. “Julie’s uncle?” She sagged back into her chair again. That didn’t make any sense at all.

“How the hell do you know that?” Clive demanded, leaping from his chair and slopping tea unnoticed onto the lacy tray cloth. He strode over the Persian medallion rug and towered above Lydia as she, keeping her head even further down, managed to look like she was going to disappear under a Mughal tapestry cushion. “Nobody knows that,” he continued. “It’s impossible for you to know that.”

Liz just stayed where she was. Her mouth must have been so far open that if she’d got up to walk she would have tripped over her chin. “Julie’s uncle?” she said again. If he really was, then it made everything else different too.

“Will you stop repeating yourself?” Clive thundered. “Who the hell did you think I was then?”

“I thought you were Belvedere McGuigan,” Liz said. She couldn’t think what else to say.

“The two things aren’t mutually exclusive, you know,” he retorted.

“You mean you’re both Belvedere McGuigan and Julie’s uncle?” Liz asked. She needed to be sure of her facts.

“You’re The Belvedere wotsit? The thriller writer who’s unbelievably rich and a recluse?” asked Lydia. Her voice seemed to have deepened alarmingly as though with jealousy or, perhaps, with fanatical obsession.

Clive turned from Liz and looking at Lydia he flushed ever so slightly. “Well, yes, I am as it happens,” he said. Liz felt that he might have bowed if this had been happening a hundred years ago. Actually, she was afraid he would do it now, anyway. How naff. But, thankfully, he resisted.

“Bloody hell!” she roared in a most un-Lydia-like manner. Liz heard the pigeons from the shed roof outside take off in panicked, clattering flight.

Personally, she thought this was a bit over the top, however much of a fan she might have been. Although she couldn’t be that much of a fan or she’d had known his surname correctly, in which case this was definitely over the top.

“Okay, Lydia. Calm down. He was your neighbour. That’s more than most people can say. That’s presumably why he wants it kept quiet. It must be very wearing if one just wants a quiet life and do nothing but write best sellers. Very wearing indeed to be constantly pestered by fans and the media and…”

“You’ve always got to go one better, haven’t you,” Lydia yelled. She banged her fist down onto her knee with such force Liz just knew her neighbour would have one wowzer of a bruise the following day. “I’ve never been able to keep up with you and you succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams without even trying! It always was Clive this and Clive that, never Vincent this and Vincent that — not until Vincent pulled off one of the biggest robberies of the century that was, but by that time it was too late and being in jail forever didn’t do much for my self-confidence and for the last few years I’ve lived next but one to you and been happy to think that your life just consisted of fussing with your net curtains and getting your car parked in front of your house and such petty little concerns. I’ve gossiped and bitched with Liz about you.”

Liz squirmed and looked around as though there would be another her that did that with Lydia, not the her that was present at this embarrassing scene.

Lydia continued with this astounding tirade. “I’ve felt quite superior to you. For. Once. In. My. Life! And now it turns out that you’re some internationally famous best-selling bloody author!”

The silence that fell after this impassioned speech seemed to accentuate the smell of stewing tea. Liz could hear tiny whispers from outside of leaves rubbing against each other in a late spring waltz. The metallic taste of surprise startled her tongue. The clanking of cogs in the brain and the shrivelled pea, respectively, of her audience was almost audible. “You are Julie’s uncle, then, Clive. Definitely Julie’s uncle?” Liz said. “Ohmigod. That means that you’re also Lydia’s brother. And I’m beginning to believe that you didn’t know that.”

“What the hell are you two talking about,” Clive shouted. “Everyone’s gone stark staring mad. Why are you talking about my brother in that way, Lydia? Did you know him well? It sounds like you did. How? Where was he? I have looked for him long and often, but it’s as though he never existed.”

Lydia jumped out of her seat and strode up and down, back and forth, rubbing her hands, her large hands, over her face in a way highly reminiscent of someone in deep distress or uncertainty.

Liz looked up and clearly saw the scar, but then, she was looking for it by this time. It was big and looked as though the means of achieving it had been exquisitely painful. But Lydia persisted in her charade. “Did you really try to find Vincent? He always told me that you would be pleased if he rotted in jail. That you were always the clever one, the one everyone wanted to know, the one everyone was interested in, the one who’d go far. Well, you have, haven’t you? Why would you be interested in Vincent?”

Liz decided she’d do best by keeping quiet for the time being.

Clive said, “Vincent was my big brother. I always looked up to Vincent. He seemed so far above me and he never wanted to know me because I was too young and then, of course, he left home so many years before I did. Do you know where he is?”

And Liz couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Clive, how many brothers do you have?”

“Just the one,” he said. “Vincent, and even then I hardly knew him before he was gone.” He looked so sad she felt a moment of deep pleasure for him until she remembered all the complications that were about to be unfurled over their unsuspecting heads. She sighed instead.

Lydia stopped her pacing and stared at Clive with what could only be described as luminous hope on her face. It was a heart-stoppingly wondrous expression. How lovely. Clive stared back at her, puzzlement making him look endearingly comical, which changed to a look of utter horror as Lydia slowly reached up her hand and taking a firm grasp on her blonde and immaculately curled hair, pulled it off.

Revealed to them now was a full head of greying hair cut close to the scalp. The evil-looking scar seemed to take this as permission to make itself more obvious. Lydia wore a delicate rose quartz necklace that nestled in the soft, high, neckline of a fine weave linen dress in a rich moss green. The dress fell in almost straight lines to just below her knees. Her shapely legs sported the opaque support stockings she habitually wore and now Liz couldn’t help wondering if she truly did have varicose vein problems. On her feet was a pair of very classy, well-worn but highly polished, court shoes. She wore a bracelet which peeked through from under the cuff of her long sleeves, and dangly, clip earrings, both of which items of carefully selected jewellery, matched the necklace. Despite all this wonderfully co-ordinated and brilliantly modelled feminity, she now looked every inch a man.

A man, moreover who had successfully pulled off a highly complicated robbery, survived years in gaol and had hoodwinked not only all his ex-colleagues, but all his neighbours in Malvern Road and his own brother for the last however many years it was into believing he was a woman. A woman of means but lonely. Poor Lydia. Poor Thing.

Liz tried very hard not to think of the times she had taken that Poor Thing in her arms to comfort her when she was especially down. She tried not to think of the times that, in her scrappy underwear, she had happily waved to her from her breakfast room window or leaned out of her back door to wish her a good morning. She tried not to think, too, of the conversations in which they had spent so much time discussing such things as men and, well, and women, and other things like that… her teeth broke out into a sweat. Her skin tried to turn itself inside out so no one would recognise her and she realised there was only one thing she could possibly do to make herself feel better.

Yes, she walked across to Lydia who had no idea whatsoever that she was there, so engrossed was she/he with Clive and the dawning recognition and joy on his face as he realised that here was his adored and much missed older brother, and Liz kicked him as hard as she could on the shin. He immediately yelled and doubled over in a very satisfying manner. Clive caught him in his arms and the two stood there, arms around each other, glaring at her.

“What did ya do that for?”

“For the deception, that’s what. For all that time when I thought you were a woman when in fact you were just another man. For all the things about which I shall think in the future that we spoke of in the past, that will make me burn with embarrassment.”

“Oh, come on, Liz. We can still be friends. What’s a few white lies between friends?”

Liz thought she might eventually come round, but it would take some time. “It might or it might not dawn on you, Lydia,” she said. “But if you don’t know I can’t be bothered explaining. You’re welcome to each other. Couple of right devious bastidgits if you ask me.” She really wanted to walk out, but there were a few loose ends she wanted to tie up so she made herself some coffee and found some more biscuits while those two did a lot of noisy catching up. It was sweet. In a way. Her head still buzzed with shock. Her initial realisation had simply been that Lydia was a man. That was all. She hadn’t even begun to guess the rest of it, hadn’t even suspected there was any ‘rest of it’.

Nevertheless, she was eager for Lydia to have a very sore shin for many days to come. She also worried that all this excitement in her usually humdrum existence was making her relish violence more than she should.

It was all a matter of perception. If you look for what you expect to see then you’ll usually see it. If you look with no expectation, or a different expectation, then you’re more likely to see what’s actually there. Liz had been puzzled that Lydia’s brother wasn’t present when they called in and Lydia hadn’t even mentioned him, which she thought odd. Also, Liz thought Lydia had been too hasty to find out what was going on, and had maybe been prepared to reveal herself in her true glory before they found her/him out anyway. Her makeup, which was always thick and applied with painstaking care, this time was hurried and patchy enough for Liz to mistake her for Clive when she had turned expecting to see Clive and, although it was Lydia she was looking at, it was still Clive she was seeing.

They were so similar it was breath-taking. She was amazed she’d never seen it before. But then, she didn’t think she’d ever seen them together before.

Now, as she looked at her poor, lonely neighbour, she couldn’t begin to imagine him as anything other than a man. She felt a nostalgic sadness for when he’d been a woman.

Moocher was completely unfazed by it all and merely continued his morning toilette. But that was him all over. He was such a laid-back dog, that dog.

Chapter Twenty-Three of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

Chapter Twenty-Five of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ will be here next week!

All ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ chapters to read are here.

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‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is on Amazon as a Kindle book, and a paperback book. It’s also in Large Print. Susan’s newsletter sign-up

‘White Lies and Stakeouts’ follows on from ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’, although, it too, can stand alone.

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