Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

Why do women have legs?

He was no longer behind me.

Now it was my turn to look over Sophie's shoulder. Tit for tat, she would have called it. He was hovering behind her, little more than a shadow emerging from the background, but this time I didn't need a mirror to see him.

Sophie glanced up from her skirt, and she must have noticed something in my face because she said, 'What?'

He looked straight at me, cocking an eyebrow, and I nodded as violently as I could. It hurt for me to have to say it, but I didn't have a lot of choice.

'It's her you want,' I said. 'Not me.'

And he must have agreed, because he smiled and went for Sophie instead, and she was too startled to resist. He enfolded her in his arms and lifted her bodily off the ground — just as he would have lifted me, had I not been a stone and a half heavier. Then, like a spoilt brat smashing an unwanted birthday present, he hurled her back against the rickety iron balustrade. The railings uprooted from their concrete base as easily as palings being pulled out of soft earth. Sophie felt them give way, and scrabbled with both hands for a grip on the window frame, and for a moment or two it looked as though she'd checked her fall, but all she'd managed to get hold of was a fatigued scrap of velvet which crumbled to dust in her fingers, and she didn't get another grab at it because by then she'd lost all contact with the material world.

She was there.

And then she was gone.

Maybe I should have tried to help, but it all happened so fast. All I could do was stand and stare, and say the first thing which came into my head. Which was, 'Oops.'

Robert Jamieson turned round and smiled and gave a sort of mocking salute. I stared back at him, unable to move a muscle until he suddenly lunged for me with his hands hooked into vulture claws. I shrieked and covered my face, and when I looked up again there was no one in the room but me.

I forced myself to look out of the windows, being careful not to lean out too far. Down below it was like a stage set for the last act of a play. Sophie was sprawled in a circle of unnaturally bright light. She might have been leaning against the railings, maybe waiting for someone to come out of the basement, except that her head was twisted at an unnatural angle, and protruding from where her left eye should have been was the tip of an iron spear. Only her fingers moved; they were flexing, opening and closing on the night air.

Something dark and wet was pooling on the pavement.

Against my back, the music pounded.

Ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk

But at least my headache was gone.

As I slowly backed away from the window, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye a pinprick of red light that blinked on and off. I floated instinctively towards it, like a plant seeking the sun.

I wasn't alone after all. Walter Cheeseman, in his skeleton suit, was standing a few feet away, camcorder up against his face. After a decent interval, when he was sure he'd got everything there was to get, he lowered the camera and gave me a barefaced grin.

'Gotcha!' he said.

There was a silence which felt as though it might last for ever, and then Daisy said, 'Well, thank you, Clare, for sharing that with us.'

'I've never heard anything like it in my life,' said Luke. 'What a morbid imagination.'

'And not what you'd call a feelgood ending,' said Daisy.

'I warned you,' said Clare. She seemed on the verge of leaping up and storming out, but Miles placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.

'I shouldn't have let you do it,' he said. 'I thought it would be therapeutic, but now you're all upset.'

'I'm not upset!' snapped Clare. This time, he didn't try to stop her as she jumped up and stomped off towards the bathroom. Susie followed to make sure she was all right, and reported back that she'd heard muffled sobbing behind the locked door.

Suddenly everyone was talking all at once.

'So was Sophie pushed, or wasn't she?'

'What was on Walter Cheeseman's videotape?'

Miles had the grace to be embarrassed. 'The official verdict was accidental death.'

'But you don't think it was accidental,' I said.

Very quietly, almost inaudibly, Miles said no.

'So it was murder ,' said Daisy. 'Clare pushed her.'

'I didn't say that,' said Miles. 'Look, she went through a really bad patch afterwards. Well, we all did, but Clare seemed to feel responsible. She spent some time in a… I guess you could call it a hospital, this Sunnyfields place, but even then she insisted he was writing to her.'

'By he , you mean…'

'Robert Jamieson,' said Miles.

'You're kidding,' said Daisy.

'But I bet Walter Cheeseman had some explaining to do,' said Susie.

Miles shrugged. 'Walter Cheeseman turned out to be a very on-the-level kind of guy. He just happened to be filming the party. I mean, he's a film director, so that was his job. And it just so happened he was pointing his camera at the right place at the right time. It was the video that let Clare off the hook, but for God's sake don't remind her of it. The only time we managed to watch it all the way through, she ended up having to be sedated.'

'But what was on it?'

'Incontrovertible proof that Sophie didn't fall — she was pushed.'

'But who did the pushing?' asked Daisy.

'You couldn't see his face,' said Miles. 'The guy was in fancy dress, for Heaven's sake. All in black, like an undertaker.'

Clare came back into the room, her face all pink and blotchy. Miles took her gently by the arm.

'Come on, pussycat,' he said. 'Time to go home.'

It was something of a relief when they'd gone.

'What a strange girl,' said Daisy, and we all knew exactly what she meant. 'Not unpleasant,' she went on, 'just a little peculiar. Not really comfortable in this type of social situation, is she? And the way she dresses is rather odd, too. Beige isn't exactly her colour, is it? Makes her look as though she's suffering from some form of liver malfunction.'

I recognized the reference to liver malfunction as one that Clare herself had made. Everyone except Susie giggled. 'You're not being fair,' she said.

'But you could tell there was something weird about her the moment she walked in,' said Luke. 'When Miles told us about the hospital, it all made sense.'

'I wouldn't underestimate Clare,' I said. 'She knew what she wanted, and she went ahead and got it.'

'What do you mean?' asked Susie.

Everyone was looking at me expectantly. I spun out the pause for as long as I dared.

'She got what she wanted,' I said again. 'She got the guy .'

Daisy nodded thoughtfully. 'Miles is quite a catch,' she acknowledged. 'Or at least he used to be.'

'But she didn't look terribly happy,' said Susie. 'I bet you anything you like that he's cheating on her.'

'Maybe so,' I said, helping myself to the last of the wine. 'But it looks like a happy ending to me.'

THE END

Anne Billson is a film critic, novelist and photographer whose work has been widely published.

Her books include horror novels Suckers, Stiff Lips and The Ex , as well as monographs on the films John Carpenter's The Thing and Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In .

In 1993 she was named one of Granta's 'Best Young British Novelists'.

She has lived in London, Tokyo, Cambridge, Paris and Croydon, and currently lives in Brussels.

She has three blogs:

multiglom.com (the Billson blog)

catsonfilm.net (a blog about films that have cats in them)

lempiredeslumieres.com (a blog about Belgium)