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

by S. E. Lynes

  Fifty-Seven

  Graham

  2019

  Graham can still remember the day Nicky qualified, how he answered the door to his mother, whose eyes were wet with joy.

  ‘She’s done it,’ she’d said. ‘Our Nicky’s going to be a lawyer down in London.’ She’d held his eye. In hers he’d seen everything they’d fought for, everything they’d agreed in panic and terror that night long ago.

  ‘She’d never have done it without you,’ he’d said, holding her tiny frame in his arms.

  ‘You’re the one who went to prison.’

  ‘I’m the one who messed everything up.’

  She’d taken a step back and gave him a soft punch on the shoulder. ‘How about we say we both helped get her there, eh? That do? We did it, kid. We bloody did it.’

  At the end, when she could no longer speak, he thought about that conversation. She’d given him something that day – acknowledgement, perhaps. Redemption. Whatever, he had felt something in him shift. He had felt better.

  He hopes he’s done the right thing, telling his sister. It’s selfish, he knows, but part of him needs for her to think well of him. Now their mother has gone, he wants to keep her close. She lives in a world so different from his own. She has never consciously made him feel that difference, but her way of speaking, the clothes she wears, her offhand references to theatres and bars and friends who come for dinner make him feel it nonetheless. She is part of another class now, that’s the bottom line. He doesn’t resent this or her. It just is what it is. Education is a journey. That you end up in a different place is and always was the whole point. Hasn’t he done the same?

  But there is one truth Nicola cannot ever know. It would risk the deep bond they have fought so hard for and won despite everything.

  He drives past the town hall, grand and white in its green gardens. He and Tracy were married here; it was the day he truly felt his new life begin. He passes under the expressway, turns right after the corner shop into Latham Avenue, left again into Picton Avenue. Tracy will probably have left by the time he gets back, for her early shift in the maternity unit. But the house won’t be empty. Jade and Connor are staying the night, and he is grateful.

  Because his mind is filling with an old, old weight.

  I killed a man, he said to Richard all those years ago, in a makeshift chapel in a castle that was once a prison.

  Sometimes words are enough to tie a weight around your soul and drown it. Graham has come to believe in souls. Not that he’d ever tell anyone that.

  And nor will he ever speak about the night Nicky told him about his father’s sick perversion. There are some things that must remain unsaid. That his father had violated his sister before she was even ten years old is one of those things. That night, Graham had stroked Nicky’s hair until she fell asleep, forced himself to lie still though his blood was high and fast with a fury that threatened to send him raging into the street. But he’d waited, made himself wait. The next day, he went to see his boys, to talk business.

  ‘Lads,’ he had said. ‘I’ve got a job for us.’

  The timing is hazier than the facts. But it was a day, maybe a couple of days after, that Jim left. That night, Graham watched television with his mother, tried hard to be normal, went to bed early. She would be glad, he knew, to have her boy home for a change. She was filled with sadness; he could see it hanging on her face. But he couldn’t reach her, not then. He had other things on his mind.

  By ten, exhausted, she was asleep. And out he slipped, into the murderous night. It was easy, nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes rolled under his bedding, shimmy down the drainpipe.

  His friends were at the bus stop, where he’d told them to be. His crew: the meatheads, the dead-eyed boys, bristling with disappointment and the deep desire for damage. And as he walked towards them that night, from the sleeve of his jacket Graham pulled the rounders bat he’d stolen from school months before.

  ‘B-boys,’ he said as the street light caught in their shining eyes. ‘Let’s do this.’

  His knuckles whiten now on the steering wheel. It is a different Graham, that boy, a person he can’t believe he ever was. He parks the car outside his house and rests his forehead in his hands. Richard wanted him to talk about it, so he told him another tale. To speak about this was never on the table, even to a man as good and true as Richard. Speak about it? Graham can’t even think about it without the palpitations starting, the sickening churning of his guts and an old, old desire for narcotic oblivion. But he makes himself think about it now, as punishment. That night. That dark night, like all dark nights, when a car is easy enough to steal if your crew have been joyriding since they were twelve. When a town you were supposed to have left for ever is easy enough to find your way back to if you can read the road signs. Your father’s drinking hole? Well, that’s elementary, my dear Watson, if you’ll pardon the pun.

  You just follow your nose to the stench.

  At midnight Graham and his friends were waiting for Ted. Five of them in all. Half past, quarter to one, ten to … his father finally, staggering out of the lock-in, the shine of spit on his lips, piss dark on the crotch of his trousers. Ted Watson, under the painted sign: a flaking, discoloured bunch of grapes on a damp brick wall.

  That’s him.

  Sometimes words are enough to tie a weight around your soul and drown it. Sometimes they are enough to kill a man. That’s him were the only words Graham needed to send his boys into action. A raining-down of blows, one for each one the bastard had given his mother over the years, let out in a single fatal battering. There was so much blood. In shock and fascination, he watched it spread through the pale fabric of his father’s shirt. Stood at a distance, unable to look away. Who is the victim now? Who will step in to protect you tonight?

  The blood had a strange, familiar metallic smell. He can remember how thick it was, how dark. A last grunt, and the body was still. He can remember the others telling him to go, to run back to the car, but he couldn’t move his feet, couldn’t break his own rapt disgust, couldn’t tear his eyes from the sight of that black lake.

  A body left in an empty car park, found in the early hours of the morning in a pool of dried blood. Old Teddy Watson, got himself into another fight. Handy with his fists, that one. Trouble. A piss’ead. Used to beat his missus, you know. But still, what a shame. A motiveless crime. Thugs these days, what is the world coming to? Bring back National Service. Bring back hanging.

  Graham never raised a finger. Stood back and watched, arms folded, mouth tight. He did not lay a hand on his father. The next day, his mother vouched for him.

  ‘He was here. With me.’

  ‘I was here all night.’

  There was not a mark on him. They took his fingerprints, found nothing. Asked him questions; some he answered with lies, some with the truth. The facts of it were that he did not lay a hand on his father, but the bones and blood and flesh of him know the deeper truth. The deeper truth he carries with him every day of his life. Sucks it in with nicotine and pummels it out at the gym, speaks it in silent prayers in the night and atones for it in each daily act of kindness, with the kids in the community centre he helped set up to keep them off the streets. His whole life is kindness these days. He clings to it. People say he’s the nicest guy they know. Friends of his mother’s would shake their heads and smile. Your Graham, they’d say. He’s a bloody saint. And he has to be. Because he knows more than anyone that just as you don’t have to hit a woman to make her afraid, so you don’t have to lay a hand on a man to take his life. You can serve time for a crime you didn’t commit and still know that justice has been done. You can put yourself in prison for killing your father long after you watched him fall, broken, to the ground. You can find a way to reframe what you did and learn to live with it so that you can finally stop the suffering of those who need you most. And you can watch your father’s blood pool on the tarmac and know that it is yours, that no matter what you do, no matter how many
prayers you say, that same blood will flow through your veins for all time, until the very last beat of your troubled, broken heart.

  He gets out of the car. Fumbles with his keys. But the front door opens; Tracy is there and she is smiling.

  ‘I was just off,’ she half laughs, her face rearranging itself then into concern. ‘Are you all right, love? You look sad.’

  ‘I am sad,’ he says. ‘But better for seeing you.’ He leans in, kisses her on the lips. ‘See you later, yeah. What d’you want for tea?’

  ‘Oh, anything,’ She is halfway down the drive. A click on the key fob and her little Nissan flashes and beeps.

  ‘Have a good shift.’

  ‘Ta. See you later.’

  This is normality. This is the candle in the car.

  His chest swells. He goes into the house, is greeted by the sight of Jade and Connor sitting close together on the living-room floor. Jade is reading her son a story from the iPad.

  ‘Looks who’s here,’ she says, looking up. ‘It’s Grandad!’

  But Connor is already on his feet, is already toddling towards him. He throws his arms around Graham’s knees, plants his face in his legs.

  ‘Dan-da,’ he says.

  ‘All right, little one.’ Graham tousles the boy’s fine hair and is filled with something new, something light, something clean. His blood runs here too. Into the future it runs, into his family – in peace, in hope, in love.

  Want to read another dark and gripping story from S.E. Lynes? Get Mother here now.

  Mother

  Get it here!

  * * *

  Christopher would never hurt anyone. Not intentionally. Even after everything that’s happened I still believe that…

  * * *

  Christopher Harris is a lonely boy. A boy who has never fitted in to his family. Who has always felt something was missing from his life.

  * * *

  Until one day, when he discovers a suitcase in his family’s attic. Inside the suitcase is a letter. Inside the letter is a secret about his mother that changes everything.

  * * *

  What price would you pay for the perfect family?

  * * *

  Christopher finally has a chance at happiness. A happiness that he will do anything to protect…

  * * *

  An unputdownable thriller about the lies we tell and the secrets we keep, Mother will hold you breathless until the very last page and leave you reeling. Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train, The Sister and Apple Tree Yard.

  * * *

  Get it here!

  Hear More from S.E. Lynes

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  Books by S.E. Lynes

  Mother

  The Pact

  The Proposal

  Valentina

  The Women

  The Lies We Hide

  Available in audio

  Mother (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Pact (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Proposal (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Women (Available in the UK and the US)

  A letter from S.E. Lynes

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for reading The Lies We Hide. If you enjoyed it, and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  Sign up here!

  This book began back in the late eighties when I was a reporter for the BBC. The programme I was working on was covering the topic of domestic violence, and I was sent to a refuge to interview two women who had been abused by their husbands. One of them had been held under the bathwater. She truly believed she was going to die, leaving her two sons motherless, and she vowed that if she lived through the experience, she would leave that same night and take her boys with her. As you will now realise, that became the inspiration for Carol’s story.

  Interviewing those women had a profound impact on me. I was in my twenties and reasonably naïve; I was happily married and my childhood had been warm and safe. What struck me most was that although these women’s narratives could be said to be over – they’d done it, they’d got away – what I saw was another terrifying beginning. They were badly scarred, physically and emotionally; they were destitute, jobless, homeless, with children to feed, clothe, bring up alone. They were refugees from war-torn homes. I could not get my head around how any woman could even begin to make a new life for herself under these circumstances. So what perhaps should have been the end of a story became for me the start: Carol leaves her husband in the opening section of the novel; it then focuses on how such a violent past might consistently hamper a present, how it might make a successful future almost impossible. As Nicola says, ‘The thing about second chances is that they drag with them the scars of the first fucked-up attempt, scars that infiltrate and derail our best attempts at redemption.’

  It is said that reading makes people more empathic. In this story, I have tried to explore with empathy how easily a family can fall apart but how, with enough love, it can eventually heal. I am above all delighted that Bookouture have published Carol’s story. For me this book is about so many things: family, fear, the legacy of abuse, violence, politics, compassion, friendship, grief, redemption, kindness and, mainly, love. It is not the first time I have felt the responsibility for the subject matter very keenly. Whilst this is not a true story, it is based on a truth all too common. I hope with Carol that I have managed to represent at least some women who have been through something similar and to have told her story and that of her family authentically and compassionately.

  The day spent at Lancaster Castle, back when it was a prison, marked me too. The visit, along with many conversations with a close and much-loved relative who worked as a prison chaplain, made me aware of how very difficult it is for offenders to stay out of prison. The psychological and emotional conditions as well as the often-challenging external factors make it almost impossible for some not to reoffend. One inmate I spoke to told me he preferred it inside; the responsibilities that came with life outside were too much for him to cope with. Graham’s story too has to do with second chances and why they are sometimes foiled by the past. I wanted to explore how someone so haunted might conceivably arrive at a point where he could come to terms with the huge existentialist crisis inherent in having taken a life, and begin to build a positive life of his own.

  I could go on and on as this book means a great deal to me, but if you wish to get in touch, I am always happy to chat via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Writing can be a lonely business, so when a reader reaches out and tells me that my work has moved them, stayed with them or that they simply loved it, I am beyond delighted. I have enjoyed making new friends online through my psychological thrillers Valentina, Mother, The Pact, The Proposal and The Women, and hope to make more with this somewhat different offering.

  Thanks again for reading The Lies We Hide. If you enjoyed it, I would be very grateful if you could spare a couple of minutes to write a review. It only needs to be a line or two and I would really appreciate it.

  Best wishes,

  Susie

  The Pact

  Get it here!

  * * *

  You made a promise to your sister. It could destroy your daughter.

  * * *

  The Daughter

  * * *

  15-year-old Rosie lies in hospital fighting for her life. She’s trying to tell her mother what happened to her, and how she got there, but she can’t speak the words out loud.

  * * *

  The Mother

  * * *

  Rosie’s mother Toni has a secret. She had a traumatic childhood, and she and her sister Bridget made each
other a promise thirty years ago: that they could never speak the truth about what happened to them as children, and that they would protect each other without asking for help from others, no matter what…

  * * *

  Rosie was Toni’s second chance to get things right: a happy, talented girl with her whole life ahead of her. Having lost her husband in a tragic accident, Toni has dedicated her life to keeping Rosie safe from harm.

  * * *

  But Rosie has plans that her mother doesn’t know about. She has dreams and ambitions – of love, of a career, of a life beyond the sheltered existence that her mother has created for her. But the secrets Rosie has been keeping have now put her life in danger.

  * * *

  The Pact

  * * *