Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [117]
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“I know this is difficult for you, Tim. How could it be otherwise? But your father adored you. We all love you. Your family— all of us— want you to be— ”
“Shut up!” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”
He ended the call with his insides raging. It was her tone, that bloody soothing, motherly tone of hers. It was what she said. It was everything in his life.
He threw his mobile onto his bed. His body felt strung as tight as part of a high-wire act. He needed air. He went to the window of his bedroom and forced it open. It was cold outside but who bloody cared?
Outside across the farmyard, George Cowley and Dan came out of their cottage. They were talking, heads bent as if what they were saying to each other was of deadly importance. Then they approached George’s wreck of a car: a Land Rover thoroughly crusted with mud, not to mention sheep shit, which was thick in its tyre treads.
George opened the driver’s door and hauled himself inside, but Daniel didn’t go round and get in as well. Instead, he squatted next to the door and fixed his attention on the pedals and his father’s feet. George spoke and gestured and worked the pedals. Up, down, in, out, whatever. He climbed out of the wreck and Dan got in, in his place. Dan worked the pedals in a similar fashion while George nodded, gestured, and nodded some more.
Dan started the ignition then, as his father continued to talk to him. George closed the door and Dan rolled down the window. The vehicle was parked in such a way that he didn’t need to reverse it to set it going, and George gestured round the triangular green. Dan set off. First time with the clutch, the accelerator, and the brakes, he went in fits, starts, and lurches. George ran alongside the vehicle like a third-rate carjacker, shouting and waving his arms. The Land Rover got ahead of him, lurched, and stalled.
George dashed over, said a few words into the driver’s window, and reached inside. Watching this, Tim reckoned the farmer was going to give Dan a smack on the head, but what George did was ruffle his hair and laugh and Dan laughed as well. He started the Land Rover again. They went through the process a second time, this time with George remaining behind and shouting encouragement. Dan did a better job and George punched the air.
Tim turned from the window. Stupid gits, he thought. Two lame bastards. Like father like son. Dan’d end up just like his dad, walking in sheep shit somewhere. Loser, he was. Double loser. Triple. He was such a loser that he needed to be wiped from the face of the earth and Tim wanted to do it. Now. At once. Without a pause. Storming from the house with a gun or a knife or a club, only he had none of these and he needed them so badly, the worst, how he wanted…
Tim strode from his room. He heard Gracie’s voice and Kaveh’s answer, and he went in that direction. He found them in the picture room at the top of the stairs, an alcove that Kaveh used for his office. The bugger was sitting at a drafting table working on something and Gracie— dumb old stupid Gracie— was at his feet with that bloody stupid doll in her arms and wasn’t she even rocking it and crooning to it and didn’t she need to be brought to her senses and wasn’t it time she just grew up anyway and what better way to do it—
Gracie screamed like he’d stuck her in the arse with a pole when he grabbed the doll. He said, “Fucking bloody idiot, for God’s sake,” and he slammed the doll against the edge of the drafting table before he pulled off her arms and her legs and threw her down. He snarled, “Grow up and get a life, you freak,” and he spun and made for the stairs.
He stormed down them and out of the door and behind him he heard Gracie’s cries, which should have felt good to him but didn’t. And then there was Kaveh’s voice