The Lies We Hide: An absolutely gripping and darkly compelling novel

by S. E. Lynes

  Tommy’s bottom lip pushes out. ‘No. Why would you?’

  ‘Well, they asked if I knew anyone who’d want to, you know, duff Ted up or whatever, whether he had any enemies and that.’

  ‘Jim wasn’t Ted’s enemy, Carol. He never met the man. Booze was Ted’s enemy. Honest to God, he had a black eye more often than not the last six months or so.’

  ‘I know, but …’ She glances out of the windscreen, up to the house that was hers, then not, now hers again, and for a moment wonders if she’ll even be able to get through the front door. She should have sold it, started again. But money doesn’t grow on trees.

  ‘What?’ Tommy says.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just, Jim said he was coming to yours the night I … the night he left. And I just wanted to ask if you definitely saw him. Only the night after would’ve been the night Ted died.’ She meets Tommy’s eyes, holds them. ‘And Jim would’ve still been at yours.’

  Tommy’s face breaks open. ‘Oh for God’s sake, woman. Jim’d never do owt like that. Gentle giant, isn’t he, Jim? Softest bloody bugger I’ve met, and I’ve met some bloody soft buggers.’ He shakes his head. ‘Nah. No way. Not Jim. He did come here, we went out for a few pints, he slept on the couch. He was heartbroken more than anything. He’s bloody mad on you; you know that, don’t you?’

  Over Tommy’s shoulder, Carol glimpses Pauline running down the driveway wafting a tea towel in front of her and crying.

  ‘I told him not to give up too quick, like,’ says Tommy. ‘You need time, that’s all. And that’s what you’ve got now, isn’t it? Me and P are here. We’ll see you right.’

  She nods. ‘Thanks, Tommy.’

  ‘Oi!’ Pauline’s flushed face appears in the frame of the car door. ‘Are you two going to sit here all day or what? Kettle’s boiled three times since you’ve parked this car, and I’m bloody parched.’

  Carol laughs. She opens the passenger-side door, aware of Pauline running round the front of the car. By the time she has stood up, Pauline has folded her into her bosom and is crying again into her hair.

  ‘Oh love,’ she says. ‘You’re back.’ On the doorstep, she hugs the kids, squeezes Nicola’s hand and keeps hold of it. Looking at their bags, she adds, ‘Is this all you’ve got?’

  ‘Left the rest for the Oxfam,’ Carol replies. ‘Someone else can have it now. Didn’t want anything from that place, to be honest.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Pauline holds Carol’s hand now too as they step over the threshold. The house smells of lemon Flash and Mr Sheen polish.

  ‘Have you been cleaning?’ Carol asks as Nicola breaks away to claim back her home.

  Pauline shakes her head, her eyes half closing. ‘No heroics. Just popped a cloth round.’

  The hall carpet is striped where a Hoover has just this minute passed. The skirting boards have not one speck of dust on them. Pauline is fooling no one. The kitchen is spotless too, in a way Carol could never get that last one. Her kitchen. It’s lovely. She runs her fingers along the table, the vinyl-covered bench seats. The floor is wet. The whole place is immaculate.

  ‘Sorry, P,’ she says. ‘I’ve made footprints.’

  Pauline has bustled ahead. ‘Cuppa?’ she says, opening the cupboards, which are full of tins. ‘I’ve got some Garibaldi in somewhere. I’m allowed three with my points.’

  Points. Carol’s not heard of the points diet. Hopefully it’s kinder than the cabbage one, which almost sent Pauline psychotic. She has her head in the fridge now, pulls out a full pint of milk. Carol sees cheese, some tomatoes, a cauliflower, all fresh.

  ‘Have you been shopping an’ all?’

  ‘Few bits.’

  Carol sits at the kitchen table. Above her, she can hear Nicola’s voice, high to Graham’s low, but can’t make out the sense. They sound excited. She hopes it’s less complicated for them, being back.

  ‘It was a mess, wasn’t it?’ she says. ‘The house. Was it filthy? Eh, was it?’

  Pauline puts a mug of tea in front of her. ‘I tell you what – it’s good to have you back, love. No fun smoking on my own. I had no one to tell when Tommy was doing my head in.’

  ‘Pauline.’ Carol waits until her friend looks at her. ‘Tell me. Was it a state?’

  Pauline looks out of the back window. ‘Tommy gave the lawn a quick mow.’

  ‘Pauline.’ Carol lays her hand over her friend’s. ‘Come on.’

  But Pauline only shakes her head. ‘It just needed a cloth running over, that’s all. Windows opening. And we couldn’t expect you to come home to an empty fridge. Besides which, you’re at ours tonight for tea, all right? No arguments. I’ve made chilli con carne. It’s Mexican, apparently, get me, caramba. Got a recipe from this woman at work; she says it’s smashing with baked spuds, and she puts fresh cream with it, but I have to say, I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘Thanks, love.’ But Carol is imagining the house. Stinking. Foul. Her best friend having to face that. It’s too much – she closes her eyes against the thought of it.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asks. ‘For the groceries.’

  ‘Now you’re being pathetic, Carol Watson. It’s only bread and milk and a few tins. Come on, let’s have a ciggie in the garden. Tell you what, you can give me one of yours for a change, you tight bastard.’

  * * *

  Carol waves Pauline off from the lounge window, even though she only lives next door and they’ll be seeing each other again in a few hours. Pauline seems to be doing some sort of dance down the drive, fake maracas, swinging hips. Carol can hear her singing ‘La Cucaracha’ and supposes this has something to do with tonight’s tea. It’s a funny sight. Hilarious, really. Which is why she can’t understand why she’s not able to laugh, nor leave the window for fear of falling into the empty room behind her.

  She makes herself turn but rests her back against the ledge. Her ornaments have that same strangeness as the kitchen did: like looking at an old photo of a place you knew but never thought you’d see again. Her house is a memory, one she’s blocked for the painful longing it threw up in her. How she’s wanted to come back, to feel safe. But not like this. Not like this. Her breath shudders in her chest. Ted is gone, Carol. Try not to think about how he went. Imagine him somewhere far away but alive and well. On a beach, that’s it. Sand in his toes, warm sea. Peace. The house is yours now, that’s all there is to it. The kids are safe. You are safe.

  You’ll still get your benefits, the social worker said. And there’s a cheque coming for Ted’s life insurance. There’s food in and Pauline can tide them over if needs be. Think about the practicalities, Carol; that’s all you need to do.

  Slowly she pulls herself from the ledge and walks into the room. She dare not sit on the couch. Wonders how and when she’ll go into the bathroom. Decides. Now.

  Pauline’s done the stair carpet and dusted down the sides. She must have been here all morning. Maybe yesterday as well. A job, that’s what comes next. Tommy mentioned something about the Spar on the estate looking for a cashier. She’ll go tomorrow, ask around if not. She reaches the top of the stairs. There’s music coming from Nicky’s room – Duran Duran, she thinks. Every so often either Nicola or Graham speaks, and she remembers the lazy way they used to have, only talking when one of them had something to say, comfortable together in silence.

  Her bedroom is as she expected: the smell of polish, fresh sheets, vacuumed carpet, a posy of freesias on her bedside table. She covers her mouth and sighs.

  ‘Oh, Pauline. Love.’

  Backs out of the room. Finds herself once again on the dark landing.

  The bathroom door is upon her now. She turns on the landing light to help her. She wishes the door was open; that way she could see it by degrees instead of all at once in a big rush. She stands for a moment outside the door, fingers over the handle. Her breathing has gone shallow again; she catches it, hot, in the palm of her hand. Her forehead prickles. The roar of the bathwater, his hand on her face, the back of her head against
the base of the bath. Her children, walking away along the white sand – a bad dream wrapped inside a memory she must try to forget.

  She pushes open the door and steps inside. The room rushes at her. The bath, the shower curtain. Pauline has left it lovely. She’s even folded the loo roll into a point. Carol sits on the loo, and this time when the tears come, she feels the draining down of all of it, down into her feet. Her shoulders loosen; she is able to stretch out her neck. It’s not too bad. She’s all right. It might be months before she can take a bath, but that’s all right. It’s all all right. Like Tommy said, she has time. She has not known how to feel, or even what she feels half the time, but there’s something now in the mix she identifies at last: relief.

  Sniffing, she looks up. Next to the towel rail there is a bald patch on the wallpaper. She stands, bends over to inspect it. The wall has been scrubbed, the woodchip completely gone. Her stomach flips. What was here? What stain? It’s opposite the loo. She sees Ted, eyes half closed and bloodshot, staggering, trying to pee. She sees him miss, as he often did, sees him spray all over the floor. The times she had to put the bath mat through the wash. He sways, loses his footing, falls backwards, crashes against the wall, hits his head. Blood, then. Blood.

  Thirty-Five

  Richard

  1993

  ‘Remember that boy I told you about, the one who wouldn’t speak?’

  Viv is at her desk, writing a report. She nods. ‘Graham.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t stop talking these days. I can’t tell you what he says, obviously, but he’s pretty much stopped stammering too. I’m becoming quite hopeful. It’s since I found my copy of that book.’

  ‘The one you were going to look for in the loft that time? That was months ago, wasn’t it? Didn’t you have something else you were looking for?’

  ‘I can’t believe you remembered. Thank you. It was my parents’ wedding film. I found the reel, along with a load of others, so I finally got round to converting it to VHS.’

  And there they’d been, on the television screen: his parents, in their heyday, moving about as if alive. Old Fords, black suits, heavy-framed glasses. Just to see them had brought an ache to his throat.

  ‘Aw,’ says Viv. ‘Did she love it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mum.’

  ‘Ah, no.’ Richard falters, momentarily stunned by this crossing of wires. ‘My mum … my mum … well, she passed on. Recently, in fact. Well, a few months before I started here.’

  Viv’s face falls. ‘Sorry to hear that, love. You must have been a bit sad then, watching that film.’

  ‘I wasn’t, actually.’ He had expected to be. But he was not. He had felt … happy. Curled up in his mother’s chair, he’d watched, quite dry-eyed, while his parents and relatives made their jerky black-and-white way into St Joseph’s. His mother’s veil blowing up and back from her face, her smile, her laughter then as she couldn’t control the crazy cloud of white netting. His maternal grandfather, walking towards the camera, pointing at someone out of shot, grinning. A big day. His only daughter getting married. A happy day. Richard’s parents had been happy. Quiet people. No fuss. No sentimentality. No need to say every last thing out loud like everyone seems to want to do these days. Richard was their late blessing, his mother always said. Just when they had given up hope, along he had come. The well-worn story of his existence, told to him over and over by his mother when he was little. The miracle of him, the late-falling fruit in the autumn of their lives.

  The wedding film had finished to a scratchy roll of white bands on black. Richard had just been about to press stop when another image bloomed: himself, aged one or so, toddling towards the camera. Hand-knitted jacket and hat, chubby knees, all of three teeth in his head. His mother’s voice: ‘That’s it. Walking nicely, that’s it, my love. Clever boy.’

  Richard had felt a smile spread across his face, watching himself, no older than two. Stumbling, falling. A kerfuffle then. Grass. Himself, wailing from somewhere off screen. His mother had obviously put the camera down so she could pick him up and comfort him.

  ‘Oopsy daisy,’ came her voice. ‘Don’t cry, my love. Don’t cry. Mummy’s here.’

  And Richard had found himself sitting in his mother’s chair, tears falling thick down his cheeks. He’d let them come. Glad of them at last.

  ‘So yes,’ he finishes telling Viv, aware that he’s been talking to her for a fair while. ‘I hadn’t cried since she died, you see. I was beginning to think I was made of stone. And there I was, weeping like a baby – at her telling me not to cry. Ironically.’

  ‘You’ve set me off now.’ Viv is blinking furiously and Richard realises that his own face is wet. ‘That’s made me go all funny. Do you think … do you think that’s a message? You know, from the other side? You know, do you think she might be telling you not to be upset, that she’s OK?’

  Richard brushes his cheeks with his hands. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. All depends how you look at these things, I suppose. But I suppose you could be right. It’s a nice thought.’

  Thirty-Six

  Carol

  1986

  Carol carries her new trowel and gardening gloves over to the raised bed she’s built at the top right-hand corner of the garden. To be back in her old garden, in her old home, is like a dream, so much so that sometimes she has to remind herself that this is her life now – something like the life she had before, but without Ted. Kneeling on the lawn, she begins to jab at the soil. The surface is hard and doesn’t seem up to much. She’ll give it an hour, she decides, then have a Mellow Bird’s and a ciggie on the sunlounger, if it hasn’t started raining again by then.

  The soil gives up its weeds. The weeds give up their roots: white and spindly and shedding black crumbs into her hand. Weeds are no different from flowers, she thinks. The soil plays a big part in whether they wither or thrive; the plants themselves wilt almost the moment you pull them from their home.

  Hidden stones clank on the trowel’s edge, making her shudder. She winkles the blade under what she thinks is yet another stone, and out comes a doll’s arm, reaching out of the brown like something from a zombie film. She yelps with shock, sits back. Ted in the ground flashes into her mind – the same image she often sees before falling asleep at night. Except at night she only sees it; now she senses it: how the trowel would hit against his rigid body, how the handle would push back into the palm of her hand, how the blade would scrape the black earth from his marbled corpse.

  She shivers, pushes her hands against her thighs and shakes her head against her thoughts. There is no escaping the fact: Ted being cold in the ground is the only reason she is here digging in the garden they once shared. He never let her grow vegetables when he was alive, as if they threatened his existence or something.

  Drizzle soaks through the back of her shirt. She steels herself and works on, uncovering a pink plaster, a Matchbox car, more pebbles. By three p.m. her back has gone cold and she makes herself stop. A few stones are good for the soil, to ventilate it; her dad told her that so many years ago now.

  ‘You have to know when to accept the way the earth is,’ he said as she knelt beside him, thrilled to be allowed to help, ‘and just go ahead and plant your seeds.’

  She showers and dresses, then sits with a cigarette and a coffee on the armchair by the French windows. Dirt and hard work bring their own pleasures – you get lost in the graft, and then once you’re all clean again, your whole body tingles. Outside, rain still hangs in the spring air. April’s steady showers have given way to May’s constantly shifting spells of summer heat and winter chill. She takes a swig of coffee and rubs at the soles of her feet.

  ‘Mum.’

  It’s Nicola, home from school. ‘Coo-ee,’ Carol calls, staring out at her beloved pansies.

  ‘Don’t be shocked.’

  ‘What d’you mean, don’t be shocked?’ Carol makes to get up, but Nicola is there in the doorway. Before she has time to take in what
her daughter is telling her, she sees that her eyes are ringed with black. They’ve all but disappeared, in fact, into little holes. Her nose, wide and bluish, splays strangely across her face. Carol’s coffee spills all over the newspaper on her lap.

  ‘God in heaven, Nicola love, what’ve you done?’ She flings down the newspaper and the mug. Rushes across the room and holds her daughter by the arms. ‘Oh my God, Nicola. Nicky, love!’

  ‘Mum, it’s all right.’

  Nicola’s beautiful hair, her lovely plaits. They’re too neat for her swollen, blackening face.

  ‘Love? Did you fall?’

  Nicola’s cheery bluster disappears, and she sits down on the settee and bursts into tears. Carol lowers herself next to her, puts her arm around her bony shoulders. It takes all her force of will to leave her daughter the space to cry.

  ‘Oh, my love,’ she says, her knee jiggling like a jackhammer. ‘Let it all out.’

  ‘They were calling me names.’

  ‘Hang on. Somebody … someone did this on purpose?’

  Nicola whines softly.

  ‘Who, love? Who did this?’

  ‘Vonny Brewer.’

  ‘Vonny who? She did this to you on purpose? Are you sure? Who’s this Vonny when she’s at home?’ This causes a wave of noisy sobbing. ‘Sorry, love. I just want to know what happened, that’s all.’

  Nicola leans against her. Carol strokes her cheek, swaying her from side to side. After a moment, she gives her plait a little tug. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They were saying stuff about Dad. Calling him a tramp.’

  ‘How do they know about your dad?’ She sits back, bites at her lip. They do, of course. Nicola’s back at her old school now. And despite Carol and the kids taking her maiden name, everyone knows who they are and the rumours still run beneath: half-truths, inflated stories; God only knows what they say. ‘He’s not a tramp,’ she continues. ‘I mean, he wasn’t. Bloody gossips, they want shooting. What’s it got to do with anyone anyway?’