Everything Is Lies

by Helen Callaghan

  The man next to me was reading a free paper which he kept rattling, as though trying to shake crumbs out of it; and in my exhausted state it was driving me ever so slightly mad. I wanted to get back to my dad and then go home and curl up in my little bed at Rowan’s cottage with the second notebook.

  I’d be up at dawn to do all of this again.

  God knew when, if ever, I’d return to my cosy little flat in Brixton with its scrap of garden and single scrubby deckchair, where mere weeks earlier I would sit and enjoy the sunset with friends and a glass of cold white wine. It seemed a lifetime away now – a golden age where I’d been blessed and happy and dearly loved, yet never once realized it.

  I was on the brink of tears again.

  Hoping to distract myself, my gaze drifted to the other passengers. A woman sitting opposite me was reading a copy of some dog-eared historical romance with a lady in Tudor dress on the cover. There was something odd about her, with her sharp chin and messy, pale brown pixie haircut.

  I tried to let the rhythmic rattle of the train soothe me. Sometimes I think it’s like music, a backbeat to my journey home for when I’m too tired to engage with my headphones. Stupidly I’d forgotten to pack a book when I’d left this morning. I had no interest in reading the second notebook in public, crowded as I was on all sides by strangers. It was hard enough to cope with seeing my mum that way on my own. Maybe I had something to look at on my phone …

  I glanced at the woman opposite and realized what I found odd about her.

  She wasn’t turning the pages.

  Perhaps I just hadn’t noticed her do it. I fell back against the seat and let my lids close, leaving just a slit of vision, and in this facsimile of dozing I watched her.

  A minute or two passed by, possibly less. The pages continued not to turn.

  Then her triangular face turned upwards towards me, giving a glimpse of freckles and a little snub nose. But the remarkable thing, the scary thing, was her eyes – pale blue and utterly focused, her expression cold but intense, filled with some overwhelming but unidentifiable emotion.

  She was rapt, yes, but not in her book; in me.

  The strangeness of it made my mouth go dry.

  Then she stole a glance towards my side, and I felt the man next to me stiffen, stir.

  I understood instantly. They weren’t strangers on a train; they knew one another, but were pretending not to. And for some reason they were bracketing me in the seats.

  But why? Could they be reporters? Police? Was I suspected of something now? I couldn’t quite believe it, but there was just something about the way the woman had fixed me with that strange, ardent, yet cold look.

  Somehow, I was a big, big deal to her.

  I had to get away from these people.

  I made a big show of jerking awake, as if I’d been dozing, and her face dropped to the book. His paper shook annoyingly again, but this time I recognized it for what it was – nerves.

  Do whatever you want, my darling heart. You get to choose. But before you do, first of all, you need to take a deep breath and think.

  We were five minutes from Wickham Market. I needed a plan. I had to get off the train before Darsham, lead them off. In the crush of commuters I could catch a cab, perhaps, and shake them. Call Rowan – hell, call the police – but no, that was ridiculous, I realized, what would I say? That some strange woman on the train gave me a funny look?

  Explaining it all was a problem for another time. I had to get off the train now.

  I began to slowly, almost theatrically, pack my headphones away, carefully winding them into a little coil, then tucking my phone in and removing my sunglasses, as the announcer told us all that the next station was Wickham Market and this was the train to Lowestoft.

  With a sinking heart I felt rather than saw the free paper being folded away, the woman closing her book. I had been hoping, I realized, that I was imagining all this.

  I stood up and joined the small knot gathering at the doors, clinging on to the sweaty handles of a nearby seat as the train slowed, its rattling rhythm changing tempo.

  Within moments I felt him behind me, close enough to hear him breathing. I hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at him – just a sense of a pink nose and cheeks, and a receding hairline. I stole a quick glance in the windows, hoping to catch their reflection and find out where she’d gone, but the sunlight was too high and bright for that.

  ‘This station is Wickham Market.’

  The doors seemed to take for ever to open, but after the beeps, the expectant movement in the waiting crush, and the first cool draught of air, I was alighting on to the platform, walking quickly, almost running, alongside the train towards the exit. I had no idea where my followers were, as I didn’t dare look around. I passed the first carriage while commuters were disgorged on to the hot tarmac, nearly pushing and elbowing several in my haste.

  The exit was ahead of me. The handful of people waiting to get on the train were ascending into the second carriage, and through the gate the station’s tiny car park was busy with waiting cars. I glanced at my watch and made a show of moving my head, as though searching for one in particular; for someone waiting for me.

  The doors started to beep in warning.

  I turned on my heel and barrelled along the last few feet before launching myself back up into the train as the doors slid shut behind me, cutting me off from my pursuers.

  I retreated to the other side, scanning the windows. I couldn’t see them. Oh God, had they followed me back on? I peered along the carriage on either side. No sign. No …

  No. Wait. There.

  It was the woman, standing against the painted white fence enclosing the platform. Her face was frantic, her head whipping from side to side, her mouth moving though I could not make out the words.

  Then, as though she had felt my attention on her, she glimpsed me just as the train lurched forwards, nearly knocking me off my feet. Her blue eyes were wide, her mouth thinned.

  Take a picture of her. Take a picture of her with your phone.

  I tore through my bag looking for my iPhone, but by the time I laid hands on it she was long gone and the train was chugging on to Saxmundham. Soon I was babbling to Rowan as the signal wavered in and out, trying to control my tears while the other passengers nudged one another and stared.

  ‘Rowan, listen – some people were following me on the train … No, I don’t know them. But they were definitely following me, the pair of them. I pretended to get off the train and they got off, then I rushed back on as the doors were closing, and I could see them hunting for me on the platform. That’s the … Look, I’ll tell you more when I get to the hospital – you’re there now, right? Can you just hang on until I arrive? No … No … I’m fine. But something is wrong. Something is very wrong. I’ll explain more when I get there. Sorry, Rowan, you’re breaking up, it’s Saxmundham. I gotta go.’

  I dropped my phone into my pocket and sank into one of the few empty seats, ignoring the looks I got.

  Because there was absolutely no shadow of a doubt in my mind.

  Someone was after me, and they meant me harm.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Sophia!’

  Rowan was waiting in the hospital corridor, calling out to me, animated and urgent.

  ‘What? What is it?’ I yelped at him, terrified it would be more bad tidings, and then I noticed he was smiling.

  ‘Soph, Soph, calm down.’ He took my arms in his hands. He wasn’t just smiling, he was beaming. ‘It’s all right. You’re safe now. Listen. They’re saying Jared’s showing signs of waking up.’

  * * *

  It’s not what I would have called ‘waking up’, but he definitely looked different when I entered the little side-room they’d put him in, with its aggressively cheerful checked green curtains alongside the spiky chrome and plastic medical equipment.

  Strangely enough, he also smelled different – often when I’d sat with him with my laptop, I used to catch a hi
nt of a death-like, sickly scent, which would appear and then vanish the minute I tried to properly register it. It lurked over his bed like a ghost, content to make itself known in tiny but terrifying ways, in the yellowish cast of his skin, in the utterly slack yawing muscles of his face.

  And yet … there was no doubt, tonight he was different. His colour was slightly better, still ghastly, but this time faintly tinged with pink rather than green and, perhaps it was desperate wishful thinking, but his breathing sounded easier, so that you could almost believe he was simply asleep.

  I took his pale cold hand with its cannula needle in the vein on top and gently stroked it.

  ‘Dad?’ I asked. ‘Dad, are you there?’

  There was no response.

  ‘Dad?’

  Nothing.

  I turned to Rowan.

  ‘What do you mean, “waking up”?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, scratching at his dreadlocks. ‘Maybe waking up is overstating the case, but the nurse said that you had to talk to the doctor.’ He shrugged. ‘I got the impression the news was good, but they wouldn’t say anything to me, as I’m not family.’

  I nodded. ‘Stay with him for a few more minutes while I try to find them, will you?’

  He sighed. ‘I can’t stay long. Kayleigh needs me at home tonight. Her sister’s coming for dinner.’

  ‘Just a few minutes, honest, Ro.’

  He shrugged, as though defeated. ‘Fine.’ I felt a rush of irrational anger – I had sobbed out my fears to him over the phone on the train, and yet I had the impression he didn’t quite believe me.

  ‘Just a few minutes,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  He replied with a tired nod. ‘Yeah sure.’

  * * *

  Tracy the staff nurse was a middle-aged woman with a blonde menopause bob and a deeply lined forehead, as though it had been built out of flesh-coloured bricks and the mortar had worn away over time. I found her in front of her computer screen in the nurses’ station in the centre of the ward.

  ‘Hello, lovey. Did Rowan send you in?’

  ‘He said my dad had woken up …’

  ‘Not quite, he’s a little overexcited. He’s a lovely lad, isn’t he? He dotes on your dad.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my cheeks heating, assuming the seat in front of her desk. Rightly or wrongly, I felt the implied contrast between him and me, the neglectful daughter, who’d left my dad to scurry off to London for the day. ‘So, what did happen?’

  She sighed. ‘Well, you know how we test your father to see how he responds throughout the day?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So, at lunchtime there was a tiny bit of a response when I asked him to squeeze my finger. The doctor ordered some bloods taken, and soon we’ll know if the antibiotics are starting to kick in.’

  ‘Oh … that’s good news, isn’t it?’ I replied. I was slightly shocked and felt lost. There hadn’t been much good news recently.

  ‘Well, yes, but you need to speak to the doctor, lamb. She can tell you more.’ She sighed, thinking. ‘Can you be here tomorrow morning? Around ten?’

  I found myself nodding; of course I could. I would think of something to tell Amity.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, love,’ she said kindly. ‘He’s not out of the woods, but things are moving in the right direction.’ She patted my hand, and I let her. ‘If I were you, I’d get off early tonight and get some sleep. You look all done in.’

  Rowan was stretched out in one of the chairs, his head lolling back. There were dark shadows under his eyes.

  ‘I’m to talk to the doctor tomorrow morning, about ten.’ I pulled up one of the chairs next to my dad’s bed and took his hand. I wanted to ask him to squeeze my fingers, too, but worried about overtiring him. I kissed his forehead instead and sighed.

  ‘Did Monica start OK today at the café?’ I asked.

  ‘She did,’ Rowan snorted out a grunt of approval. ‘She was really good. After the first hour or so she hardly needed me.’ He gave me a sidelong look. ‘How did your presentation go today?’

  ‘It nearly didn’t, but all was well in the end.’

  He raised an eyebrow while he shook out his arms. He must have been here for an hour already and he was also single-handedly running Eden Gardens and supervising Monica. He must be exhausted.

  ‘That sounds good. I think.’

  I shrugged. ‘They deleted my work.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “deleted your work”?’

  ‘Deleted my work for Scottish Heritage. All the files. I had to redo the whole thing.’

  He seemed to think about that for a moment. ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Trying to get rid of me.’ I plopped down on the seat next to him.

  ‘But they hired you.’

  ‘Well, um, something nearly happened with one of the partners the night …’ I swallowed. ‘But it turned out he was married.’ I shrugged. ‘He got quite nasty when I called him on it.’

  ‘Right … but still, to delete your work …’

  He looked doubtful.

  ‘You wouldn’t give me that look if you’d met him.’

  ‘What?’ he bridled. ‘What look?’

  ‘That look. Like I’m mental.’

  Something stiffened in his expression then. ‘I never said you’re mental.’

  I should have stopped myself, but I couldn’t. It was eating me up inside. ‘But you think it. I can tell that you think it.’

  I felt a fleeting moment of respect for him, in that he didn’t attempt to deny it.

  The silence glowered between us. My eyes felt hot and stabbed with little pinprick tears.

  He sighed.

  ‘Soph, I don’t think you’re mental, not in the way you mean anyway. I really don’t. But I might as well be honest. I think, like, that you’re under phenomenal strain. Something has happened here that nobody could have expected in a million years, and it is … there is no doubt, it’s something none of us knows how to cope with.’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘It’s huge. You need to, like, process it. It takes time, and space. But, you know, you aren’t giving yourself any time or space. I’m sure the world seems very scary and hostile right now.’

  ‘Rowan …’

  ‘You need to talk to somebody about this.’ The words came out in a rush, as though this were a prepared speech, and he had gone bright pink. ‘I mean, properly talk to someone. Not just your friends. A grief counsellor.’

  It was as if he’d slapped me.

  ‘So I’m paranoid, then? My mum supposedly killed herself and stabbed my dad, and now I’ve lost my mind?’ I snapped.

  ‘Soph …’ His brow was damp. He was not enjoying this conversation. ‘I don’t know what happened to your parents. Neither do you.’

  ‘You said you believed me!’ I shouted, not caring that the nurses were exchanging glances and hurrying over, or that the visitors on the main ward had stilled, craned their heads to watch. That even my dad might be able to hear this. My sense of betrayal was racing away; it felt like I was falling through space. ‘You said you believed me when I told you my mum didn’t kill herself!’

  ‘I believe that you believe it!’ he snapped back, and then mastered himself. ‘You are so upset, Soph. And it’s … it’s hard to see things clearly.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said one of the staff nurses, a woman I didn’t know with a neat black ponytail who appeared at the door, ‘This is a hospital. There are sick people in here. If you can’t keep your voices down you’ll be asked to leave.’

  She turned on her flat brown heels and was gone.

  I was about to blurt out some rejoinder when there was a noise, a kind of choking cough from the bed, more of a sub-audible rumble, then stillness. Both of our heads whipped round.

  ‘Dad?’ I bent by his head. ‘Dad? Are you all right?’

  But it was gone, and though we cajoled him and stroked his arms, there was nothing more but slow breathing.

  We regarded each
other across the bed, the heat gone out of our argument, but the atmosphere tense with all the words that neither of us could take back.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘you’d better be getting back to Kayleigh. It’s getting late. I’ll stay at the house tonight.’

  ‘Sophia, don’t be like this.’

  ‘Be like what?’

  He opened his mouth, about to speak, but something about my expression changed his mind. His jaw shut tight, and then he was out the door and tramping from the ward, his shoulders sagging.

  I should have run after him, but I didn’t. Instead I let myself slump down in the chair next to my dad. My eyes were prickling again.

  No. I’m not going to cry. I’m going to carry on.

  I picked up my bag and set it on my lap. The notebooks were within, and with a mixed sense of sinking dread and determination, I pulled the next one out and started to read.

  THE SECOND NOTEBOOK

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  I know it must sound ridiculous to you, Sophia, but I had more or less forgotten that the order had a religious nature, and that what they were doing was ‘spiritual practice’, even if they were very scanty when it came to details. Meditation would be involved, and chanting, they said, but I never saw much of this.

  At any rate, there was no spiritual practice at Morningstar in those first ten days, or not that I saw. In retrospect, of course, they were softening me up, and they were very good at it.

  They’d done it before.

  While the sun shone, we all amused ourselves on the estate during that Indian summer – driving the jeeps through narrow farm lanes while rabbits and tiny muntjac deer scampered out of our way, their tails flashing white in their panic; losing ourselves in the Yew Maze in a haze of giggles; or shooting pigeons, clay or real, in the grounds with Aaron’s handsome shotguns, and coming home redolent of gunpowder and bruised grass.

  At night, we drank and smoked weed, talked philosophy and read poetry out loud by the fireside to one another (or rather, most of us did, as Wolf had no truck with poetry). Even now, in my memory, if I hear that line from Byron: ‘She walks in beauty, like the night …’ nearly thirty years and hundreds of miles fall away from me. I am back at Morningstar, and my anger and hatred and the doughy burden of my middle age have vanished. I am that Nina again.