The Liars

by Naomi Joy

  THE LIARS

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Naomi Joy, 2019

  The moral right of Naomi Joy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781789543759

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  The Liars

  Naomi Joy

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  For my mum, Jackie, and my sister, Charlotte.

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Welcome Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  7 Days Later

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  One Week Later

  Chapter 66

  One Year Later

  Chapter 67

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  TRAGEDY STRIKES TWICE FOR DAVID STEIN

  MULTI-MILLIONAIRE PR GURU DAVID STEIN OUT OF HIDING FOR DAUGHTER’S INQUEST

  Olivia Stein, David Stein’s only daughter, died of a cardiac arrest following a ‘massive’ cocaine overdose, a coroner ruled today. Discovered ‘slumped over’ at home by her father, it was also revealed Olivia’s blood alcohol level was a significant factor in her death.

  The coroner told the inquest, ‘It is well known that cocaine mixed with alcohol is far more dangerous than taking either drug in isolation. The large quantities found in Olivia’s blood, in addition to her underlying heart condition, ultimately caused her sudden and untimely death.’

  Her father, David Stein, who tragically lost his wife and business partner Kate Watson to an overdose almost twenty years ago to the day, said Olivia ‘had tried hard to manage her addictions in recent months.’ He went on to say she ‘dreamed of taking over his Public Relations firm one day’ and that he had ‘no reason’ to believe Olivia’s overdose was intentional.

  Her death is not being treated as suspicious.

  1

  Ava

  When I think about Olivia, the first memory that hits is the way she smelt the morning after she died. It hadn’t been rank or overly pungent, she hadn’t been dead long, but the early scent of death – cold, lingering and sickeningly sweet – is always what I think of first. Next, I think of the jaunty angles of her stiffening limbs, the way her head had lolled off the sofa, hanging heavy towards the floor, her neck bent double, her black eyes rolling deep into her skull. She’d looked uncomfortable, like she’d been dropped by a puppet-master who’d suddenly snipped her ties. I find myself wondering about her thoughts, too: what had she considered as she’d taken her final breaths? Had she known she was going to die? Sometimes I try to imagine myself in her place that night, heart beating out of my chest, palms sweating, blood pooling in my lungs, travelling up my windpipe, seeking out the light. I’ve often wondered if her final position – lying stretched out across the sofa – had indicated she’d been reaching for her phone. It had only sat a few centimetres from her fingertips. Olivia was a kind, beautiful and fiercely intelligent young woman; she hadn’t deserved to die in such an undignified way.

  I clamped my hands over my face, desperate to halt my mind’s furious slideshow, and pressed my fingertips into my forehead, leaving prints behind. I took a sharp breath in, then felt the warmth of my exhalation against my palms. I was sitting alone in the dead quiet of the office, the open-plan space beyond my own glass-walled room completely still. By day, this floor was a hive of activity, by night it was a graveyard. ‘Everything OK?’ David’s voice made me jump, his question accompanied by a firm rap on my open door. David is my ultimate boss, the CEO of Watson & Stein Partners – W&SP, for short – and Olivia’s father. I was surprised he was still in the office and I glanced at the clock as it ticked past ten o’clock. I should have left hours ago. His cat-like eyes narrowed; I was taking too long to respond. He spoke again. ‘You shouldn’t be working this late.’

  ‘I know, I’m just—’

  ‘Reading about the inquest?’

  I looked at him apologetically. He knew. ‘Yes,’ I replied, avoiding eye contact. David moved into the room and sat silently across from me. The darkness outside had transformed the glass walls surrounding us into black mirrors and David’s face flashed and reflected in every pane. I studied his angular features for a moment, running my stare along his razor-sharp jaw, his carved and cavernous cheekbones, his prominent brow bone and deep-set eyes. No wonder I often felt on edge round him, his face wasn’t exactly ‘friendly’. But his looks weren’t the only thing that made me nervous. He had a terrifying majesty about him. An aura. He was the kind of man you’re warned about: dangerous, controlling, more money than sense. I suppose I’ve always found David a little unnerving but, sat before me now, I noticed the vulnerability in him for the first time too, the fragility. His grief was palpable.

  I looked at him cautiously, unsure what to say next. I must have uttered the phrase, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, a million times since Olivia died. He was probably sick of it. Instead, I let silence fill the space between us, the only sound in the room the monotonous whirr of my computer fan. He didn’t seem to mind the quiet. In fact, he looked deep in thought, his focus on the middle distance. He smoothed a hand down the neat crease of his left suit trouser, ironing it out.

 
‘I tried so hard to help her,’ he said quietly, pinching the pleat back in line. ‘The best rehab, the best doctors, the best therapies… but nothing worked against—’

  He stopped speaking abruptly, unwilling to say the name of the substance that killed his daughter. Cocaine. The stuff had been prolific and readily available at the W&SP offices before Olivia died but, once she was gone, David was determined to cleanse the office of the toxin. Too little, too dead. He’d brought a private firm in to search people’s desks one morning, had fired those caught with it in their possession on the spot. The purge had worked and those unable to get through the day without snorting lines in the toilets had left the company. Personally, I’d never understood the appeal. For me, drugs fell firmly in the same category of No thanks as skydiving, fairground rides, helicopter tours and shark cage diving. I would never understand how an activity with an above-average possibility of death could be considered fun.

  David looked to the floor to compose himself and chewed the inside of his cheek. I imagined the mottled look of it, a line of flesh missing due to his obsessive gnawing. It took me back to the morning I’d told him Olivia hadn’t turned up for our nine o’clock catch up. He’d looked at me askance that day – I’d only been working at Watson & Stein Partners for three months – and cocked his head to one side as if to say: Who are you and what are you doing in my office?

  ‘Have you tried her phone?’ he’d asked after he’d assessed me.

  ‘Yes,’ I’d replied patiently. ‘Fifteen times so far…’

  He’d started to chew his cheek, just as he was doing now, as I’d waffled on.

  ‘I just thought maybe someone should check in on her. Do you have a key to her place?’

  A shadow had fallen across the room. He’d asked if I’d wanted to go with him. I’d stuttered. No, my gut instinct had screamed, why would you want me to go with you? But I’d suppressed that urge, reasoning it could only be a good thing to get some face time with David.

  ‘Sure,’ I’d replied. ‘If she’s up to it, we can have our catch-up there. I’ll grab my things.’ I wish I’d listened to my gut.

  Now I can’t think of Olivia without light-red froth splattered all over her face, without urine soaking her bottom half, without chunks of cakey vomit caught in her hair.

  ‘You’d known her for a long time. Do you think she wanted to die?’ David asked, his voice distant. I took a moment before replying. I wondered if part of him wanted me to say yes, but it wouldn’t be the truth.

  ‘No,’ I answered. ‘But I don’t think she was scared of death, fear never held her back.’

  I guess that was the problem.

  My mind traced back to a happier time, to university, where Olivia and I had first crossed paths. I remember being in awe that she would smoke without a second’s thought of lung cancer, enjoy carefree one-night-stands unconcerned about the existence of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea, pontificate on the meaning of life rather than the meaning of essays and deadlines and exams. For me, the experience was quite different: nothing short of a baptism of fire in growing up. It was where I was first kissed, properly, by a heavy-jawed boy on a rugby scholarship, unearthing the taste of vomit as I’d tucked into the crevices of his mouth. The taste of regurgitated food had hit me more than the kiss itself and later I was sick too: all over a row of yellow weeds in someone’s garden on my way back to halls. I’d gone back the next morning. Little pieces of ham and pea had frosted into the soil, and I’d snuck in through the gate to try and clear up my mess. Olivia had laughed, kindly, when I’d told her about it. Puke is biodegradable, silly, you should have left it. It’s why graveyards are so green: the bodies feed the flowers.

  ‘She flew too close to the sun; just like her mother.’ David moved his focus back towards my watery hazel eyes. ‘Neither of them ever listened.’

  A memory gripped me: Olivia holding my hands in hers, pleading with me to keep her relapse quiet. She’d been horrified a rumour might get out at work and back to her father. He’d put thousands towards rehabilitating her. ‘Please,’ she’d begged, tears in her eyes. ‘He’ll kill me if he finds out.’

  At that moment, my phone vibrated into action, the sound not dissimilar to a pneumatic drill as it clanged against the glass-topped table in front of me. I hit the cancel button before it had the chance to ring again, but David had already clocked the panic on my face.

  ‘Let me guess… boyfriend?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Well, you’re here, stupidly late, reading about the inquest. You obviously don’t feel you can talk to him about what happened… if you did, you’d be at home.’

  I was surprised he was passing comment on my private life; he’d never shown any interest in it before. David and I had grown closer in the months following Olivia’s death; I hadn’t imagined us becoming friends exactly, but here we were, tearing down the barriers of our professional relationship with surprising ease. I tried to figure out why: perhaps the inquest into Olivia’s death had reminded David of what we’d shared together that morning not so long ago.

  I hesitated for a moment, then had a thought. I decided to let David in.

  ‘Truthfully, I want to leave him.’ I splayed the fingers of my right hand across the desk, then curled them into a fist. ‘But our rental agreement is too expensive to break out of and I have nowhere else to go.’

  I glanced down at the new message that flashed across the screen. It joined a cluster of other unopened snippets of vile abuse.

  Don’t bother coming back tonight, I don’t want to smell him on you aga—

  I know you’re with him, I know exactly what you’re doing, I always—

  This can’t go on. You have to stop work. It’s him or—

  I barely recognised the man I once knew in these messages. If I went home now, he’d be sat alone at our sad two-person dining table, his spine curved into a dramatic C as he hunched over his mobile phone, typing furiously. I’d walk in and, at first, he’d choose not to notice. Then he’d tell me he hadn’t eaten: You should have been back in time to cook. He’d pour himself a protest bowl of brown cereal, a child’s brand he’d never dared to progress from, and I’d watch him fill it to the brim with milk. He’d wait until the chunks of puffed rice were white and water-logged, the milk the colour of a filthy puddle, then dig in. I’d sit quietly on the sofa, waiting. Then it would begin, the angry ping-pong of accusations.

  Were you with him tonight?

  I was working. There is no ‘him’.

  Give me your laptop, your phone. I want to go through them.

  That’s really not necessary.

  And your underwear. I want to check it.

  I’d do as he said, just to make him stop, and hand over my personal effects like a refugee at the Mexican border. He’d try to hide his fury as I brought him what he’d asked for, to keep control, but his wobbling spoon would give him away. Spilt milk would dribble down past his chin, the hair on his jaw soaking it up, the rest running down to the table, a cloudy pool forming below which I’d have to clean up in the morning.

  ‘Look,’ I said, rising to hand David my phone.

  ‘Ava, this is…’ I watched as his eyes scanned across the screen, his paternal instinct kicking in. ‘Unacceptable. You can’t stay with this man.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice,’ I replied.

  ‘You have to let me help.’

  I looked at him nervously, part of me worried I’d taken a step too far. I hadn’t let anyone know had bad things were before now.

  ‘I should go,’ I said, gathering my coat from the stand in the corner.

  ‘To him?’ David looked agitated.

  I shrugged past him. ‘Like I said…’ Then turned to him before I left. ‘Thank you for checking in on me, it feels good to have someone to talk to about Olivia. I miss her so much.’

  He stood, cheeks sunken, grasping for a line of appropriate words.

  ‘Do you mind if I pop back in the morning? We need
to talk about your situation. I want to help.’

  I smiled, reluctant to believe him, scared of getting my hopes up. Charlie, my boyfriend, had cut me off from everyone when we moved to London and, though I’m sure any one of my friends would have offered to help in much the same way as David was now, none of them actually had the means. My mother would only have encouraged me to give things another go. So I hadn’t bothered asking. David Stein was the opposite: he had the means all right, I just had to give him the motivation.

  *

  I arrived back at the one-level-for-every-room rabbit hutch of a flat I shared with Charlie and fit my key silently into the lock. I’d been in and out of hotels this week, trying to keep my distance from him, but my funds were running low and I had no option but to come back here tonight. I winced as the front door creaked when I opened it and took a moment to check it hadn’t woken him. When I was happy the coast was clear, I went inside.

  I tiptoed quietly into the hallway and my eyes immediately picked up a trail of destruction that snaked its way through to the kitchen. It was clear that Charlie’s dinner had felt his wrath tonight, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t me plastered all over our kitchen walls. Working late certainly had its advantages. A bowl of tomato pasta had redecorated our notice board and, if I wiped away the red stains, I’d uncover a semi-complete shopping list, a few coupons, a wedding invitation and a joint calendar beneath the mess. A fitting metaphor for our relationship, I mused.

  I craned my neck round the door and observed that Charlie’s dinner had, after the moment of impact, run sloppily down the length of our kitchen’s formerly white side wall. It was currently settled in a relatively neat pile over the skirting board, a pool of it stuck to the tiles below.

  As I lingered in the hallway I smelt cleaning products, strong and bleachy, emanating from the lounge. The hospital scent curled up in the back of my throat, so chemical it made me reluctant to investigate further, but I pressed on. Charlie was passed out, small mercy, the TV on mute, still flickering. He was clutching a half-swigged bottle of vodka in his clammy hand, the sterile liquid slow-leaking across the cheap wooden floor below. My first thought wasn’t of pity, or sorrow, or sadness, but relief. For a moment I thought he might be dead, he didn’t sound like he was breathing, but then I watched, disappointed, as he grunted in his slumber and came back to life, his chest undulating in shallow peaks and troughs. I looked him up and down: yellow sweat-stains covered his T-shirt and clumps of white saliva pooled in the corners of his pale lips. He disgusted me, but at least I wouldn’t have to face him until morning.