9
I should explain about Mum’s thirty-seven grand and also about why she chose Avril for the role of village-based helper—an ill-advised and apparently irrational choice, though it makes sense once you understand. First, though, I need to work out if avoiding an encounter with the Gaveys, as Mum successfully did on the village green that day, is something readers of this account will also wish to do. In other words—and although I can’t imagine why any self-respecting, sentient person would feel this way—perhaps you would like to meet Alastair (dad), Lesley (mum), and Tess (rancid, monstrous daughter) Gavey? Hear what they sound like, in their own words? Maybe it’s not fair for only the Lamberts to have a voice in this…whatever I’m writing.
*Shudders forever*
No. Bad Idea. I know this because I’ve made myself feel sick simply by contemplating it. To include any kind of Gavey contribution would be as intolerable as it is impossible. This ismybook, I’ma Lambert, and I wouldn’t pollute my own creation with even one short Gavey-written sentence. Anyone who wants to experience the Gaveys via their own voices can look online and find heaps: Alastair’s self-promoting sermons on LinkedIn about how he optimized this, revolutionized that, and revitalized the other; Lesley’s fraudulent “doting mother with perfect daughter” Facebook posts (yeah, you’re never going to fool your immediate neighbors, who are sick of being woken in the middle of the night by the sound of the two of you screaming that you wish each other would “die in a fire”); Tess’s horrifying Instagram grid—endless close-ups of her face, the face of an amoral, heartless monster.
But… And…
There is something I can do to balance things out a bit, and I will. I think it’s a good compromise, because we do need some objectivity; that’s only fair. Anyone who reads this deserves to hear at least a little about the Gaveys from someone who doesn’t loathe them with a seething, pulsating hatred. So I’m going to include—now, before we go any further—the words and accounts of three people who aren’t Lamberts. What follows are those witnesses’ own, unaltered words and come from the interviews they gave to detectives during the wrapping up of things later on. (If Cambridgeshire Police knew I had access to any of this stuff, their brains would probably explode out of their skulls and land in Suffolk. Oh, wait, I forgot: Not all of them have brains. Maybe, like five between all of them, and Detective Connor Chantree was only allocated half a cell, and even that probably got confiscated long before he turned up on our doorstep.)
It’s fine: You don’t need to know what’s coming in order to“meet” the Gaveys in these three people’s descriptions of them. All the statement-givers you’re about to hear from are people who live in Swaffham Tilney. I’ve deliberately chosen three of the very loveliest residents, also for the sake of balance. Since I’m determined to devote extra page space to some of the worst people ever to walk the earth, let’s bring in as much goodness as possible at the same time to cancel out the otherwise potentially noxious effects.
Statement 1: This is from Judith Whiteley, landlady of the Rebel of the Reeds. She arranges an Easter egg hunt for the children of Swaffham Tilney every year and dresses up as the Easter Bunny for it! You’d want her to be your grandma if possible.
It was just the one conversation I overheard, between Lesley and Tess, and I found it more disturbing than anything else I’ve ever seen or heard in this village, and I’ve lived here for thirty-seven years. I honestly had to stop myself from going over and… It sounds silly to talk about intervening, because it genuinely wasn’t a fight or anything like that. It didn’t sound like one, anyway. They were speaking in such a normal tone of voice to each other. It was like they thought they were having an ordinary, everyday chat over dinner. And at various points, they both laughed. Never at the same time, though. I mean, they took turns to laugh.
It was a Monday night, early evening, and they were practically the only people in the pub. There was no music on for some reason—there’s almost always something playing—and I was able to hear every word they said while they ate their meal. And they must’ve known I could hear them,which made it even odder that they didn’t stop. On the contrary, they went on and on. Eventually I decided they obviously wanted me to hear or didn’t care enough to stop me from hearing.
When they first came in, they were talking about something that had happened at Tess’s college, I think. She’d been in some kind of trouble and she was grandstanding about how she hadn’t backed down. Properly full of herself, she was; she’d really showed that teacher. And at first Lesley seemed to approve of her swagger. There were about ten minutes, maybe a bit longer, where they were ripping into the poor teacher together. Not my idea of fun, but they were obviously enjoying themselves and in agreement about the rights and wrongs of it all. Then I was in the kitchen for a bit.
When I brought their meals out, I could tell that the subject had moved on. Lesley was saying to Tess, “But you’re not kind like her, and you hate animals, and they mostly seem to feel that way about you too.” I thought, “What’s this, now? She can’t be telling Tess that animals hate her.” But she was! She said, “Remember when we went to Nanna’s and her cat wouldn’t stay in the room with you? Every time you walked into a room, she walked out.” And then she laughed. As if she found it amusing that she was saying it to her own daughter. She said, “And you’ve never been popular, not in any of your schools, so I doubt you will be, ever. It would have happened by now if it was going to happen. You’ve never really had friends, have you, Tess.”
The way she said her name like that… It was horrible—butshe just said it in this matter-of-fact, almost lighthearted way. I fully expected Tess to burst into tears and run out of the pub. That’s what I’d have done if my mum had said anything like that to me when I was seventeen, or at any age, to be honest with you.
Anyway, it soon became clear what it was all about: Lesley had found out that Tess had been talking to a boy online in some kind of chat place that she’d used the name “Elphie” to join—and you know who Elphie is, don’t you? No? Oh, well, she’s the heroine fromWickedthe musical. From what Lesley said, it was clear she thought Tess idolized Elphie, and that’s why she’d chosen to call herself that. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I do know Lesley spent about twenty minutes telling Tess all the ways she was a more worthless and less appealing human than Elphie fromWicked. She said, “Elphie’s got a strong sense of honor and moral integrity, and there’s nothing honorable or ethical about you, Tess.” Then she listed a few unethical things Tess had done, one of which was trying to nick another girl’s boyfriend, another was spray-painting the Gledhills’ gate.
And then it was Tess’s turn. Cool as a cucumber, she said, “Like mother, like daughter, I guess. Where was your integrity and honor the other day, when you were telling Kellie all about how you’d have loved to have another baby after me? That whole sob story about how you tried for years and it never worked, and poor you, all those babies you lost…” I swear to you, Detective Inspector, Tess was sniggering as she said all this…and I couldn’t believe my eyes, but Lesleywas smiling as she listened to it. That was when I thought to myself, “Maybe I should go over there and try to step in somehow.” I probably should’ve done, but I didn’t, coward that I am, so on it went.
“You didn’t lose the last one, though, did you?” Tess said. “You got rid of that one by choice. Why not be honest about it, hey, Mother? Why didn’t you tell Kellie that you got rid of it because it was making you fat and bloated and you thought Dad didn’t fancy you anymore and was going to leave you if you got even bigger. The dumbest thing of all was that you actually believed he might fancy you again if you ended the pregnancy, but he didn’t, did he? He still shagged around after you had the abortion, so it was all for nothing. And it wasn’t fair to me—not that you cared about what I wanted. I’d have a brother or sister now, if you hadn’t killed it.”
“Yes, and I’d have a more lovable child than you, wouldn’t I?” Lesley smirked like she’d made some kind of cheeky joke. “And I’d have loved it more—making you even less popular than you already are.” On and on it went, as if it was just cheerful chitchat, with each of them taking turns to giggle after they landed a blow. I debated if it would be reasonable to ask them to leave and decided it wouldn’t be. They were the only ones in, and if they didn’t mind it… But I did. I really minded. But then it stopped as suddenly as it had started. One moment Tess was calling Lesley a liar for passing off a termination as a tragic baby-loss she couldn’t have prevented, of which she was the victim, and the next it was all plans forthe following weekend, and please could Lesley buy Tess the bracelet she’d seen on Etsy that she really loved, the one with the moonstone and the leather bit?
I couldn’t wait for them to leave and actually started hyperventilating as soon as they did. It was like being trapped in hell, then suddenly set free. Look, I’m not saying any of this means Lesley’s capable of… Well, you know. I don’t actually think she could’ve done this. Could she? I mean, I suppose she could have? Someone did, didn’t they? One thing I do know: If I had to choose between Lesley and Alastair as the guilty party, I’d say her. Definitely.
***
Statement 2: This is Ed Debden, one of the church wardens and also a religious-icon painter and teacher of how to paint religious icons. He’s the sweetest man, and everyone’s loved him ever since he painted an icon of the Farmer and gave it to him as a seventieth birthday present. The Farmer asked if it wasn’t blasphemous, to which Ed replied, “You’d be surprised. Our Lord is nowhere near as petty and unreasonable as so many people seem to think he is.” I love him for saying that.
Yeah, I used to play squash with Alastair Gavey when he first moved to Swaffham Tilney. I’ll admit: I liked him. He was good fun, always up for a chat and a few pints. One thing I didn’t enjoy, though, was the way he talked to waiters and bar staff. He couldn’t seem to help himself, and he did it everysingle time without fail. I’d order my pint quickly and then close my eyes and pray that he’d just for once say something reasonable like, “A pint of Kingfisher, please,” but it never happened. Every time, he would lob these cheesy questions at the waiter, different ones each time. It was like he had an endless supply of the damn things. So the waiter would say, “Right, sir, what can I get you?” and Alastair would put on this frankly embarrassing wise-looking expression, as if he was imitating an elderly owl in a tree, and say, “Tell me this: What do you think might be possible for you, in your life, that you haven’t contemplated yet?” To which the confused and bewildered reply would always be something like “Er, dunno.” But Alastair would keep on: “How do you think you’d be able to tell if you were moving closer to your authentic self or further away from it?”
He’d turn into this kind of, I don’t know, guru harasser every time someone handed him a menu, basically. But since that was the only thing he ever did or said in my presence that was less than ideal, I carried on playing squash with him—and I think he was genuinely motivated by the idea that he could help these people, to be fair, so I’d just kind of look at my phone whenever it happened, or excuse myself to nip to the loo when I sensed he was about to pelt some poor lad or lass with more of his unsolicited personal-growth nuggets.
We remained friends until the day he confided in me that he’d made a pitch to a woman he worked with that the two of them should abandon their respective family and run off together. She turned him down. He was honest enough toadmit she’d been horrified by his suggestion, didn’t fancy him at all, and didn’t know where he’d got the idea from that something amazing was brewing between them. I admired his honesty and decided that, though I disapproved, I also didn’t want to be the sort of friend who ditched a pal for making a mistake. And then he said, “I don’t know what I saw in the stupid C-word anyway, to be honest. It must’ve been some kind of fever dream because when I looked at her in the cold light of day, I could see that she’s actually pig-ugly. I’m not exaggerating: She looks like a pig, as in her face is the face of an especially snouty pig.”
I wish I could tell you that the unpleasantness stopped there, but I’m afraid it didn’t. He went on for the next half hour, saying things that were more obscenely misogynist than you can possibly imagine. I’m not exaggerating. He said many things that I’m unwilling to repeat and wish I’d never heard. I thought to myself later that day, not only did he say those things, but he also thought it was okay to say them to me. It didn’t occur to him that I might not want to play squash with him anymore, having heard all that. Which I definitely didn’t, though it took me a few more weeks to extricate myself from our arrangement. I had to invent a sprained ankle.
Does this mean I think Alastair did it? I don’t know. Yes, I think he could’ve done, but that’s very different from saying that I think he did, if you see what I mean. I sat opposite his wife once, at an ordeal of a quiz night at the Rebel of the Reeds, and I’d say that she also could have done it and seems as likely a candidate as him.
***
Statement 3: This one’s from Kellie Dholakhia, a primary-school teacher and the fiancée of Conrad Kennedy, who lives at the Byre. Kellie’s fun, bubbly, and so sweet. I sometimes see her opening the Byre’s front door and bending over to shake some tissue paper near the doorstep before going back in—that’s her escorting individual insects out of the house and into the outdoors, when most people would probably squish them and flush them down the loo.
Yes, Lesley and I were good friends, I thought—until we weren’t. It was the most bizarre thing. She broke off our friendship, not me. She had a birthday party at the Stables soon after she and her family moved there and invited mainly people from her old life, saying she hadn’t yet made many friends in Swaffham Tilney. I think she must have been paranoid that the party wasn’t going well—I mean, it was a bit quiet, and I felt sorry for her, so I thought I’d try to get a more fun, chatty vibe going by talking to another woman who was there…and before I knew what had hit me, Lesley was swearing at us both, me and this woman, Abigail, and ordering us to “Fuck off out of my house.” I had no idea what I’d done wrong, and Abigail seemed equally clueless.
I left, obviously, but I went round the next day and asked Lesley what on earth I’d done to upset her so much. She was all tight-lipped and avoiding eye contact, but she told me my mistake had been to approach Abigail—“my friend, not yours, Kellie!”—and start chatting with her. Apparently,that was unforgivable and I was a friend poacher. I was so shocked. All I’d done was talk to another guest at a party. Isn’t that what party guests are meant to do? Lesley eventually saw that I really hadn’t meant to upset her, so she invited me in and I thought she was going to apologize and say maybe she overreacted… I mean, there was no maybe about it. She did overreact. Conrad was incandescent with rage when he heard what had happened. But I thought, if she apologized… But she didn’t.
She started to tell me, almost as if she was describing a special gift she had, that she feels envy very strongly. Most people don’t suffer from it as badly as she does, she said, and it’s been something she’s had to try to cope with all her life. She said, “Kellie, if I invite you to my party and I see you walking over and talking to someone you don’t even know, one of my friends, instead of coming and talking to me, when it’s my birthday, that’s always going to hurt me. Always. I probably shouldn’t have let my feelings show in the way that I did, but if we’re going to be friends, I’m going to need you to be more sensitive in the future. And actually, I’m never going to apologize for feeling how I feel, because emotions are never wrong. Envy’s a natural response; we all feel it. I just feel it more deeply.”
