Everything Is Lies

by Helen Callaghan

  It gave me a sinking feeling, almost of déjà vu.

  If you just walked out now, they’re so distracted you could be halfway to Tonbridge before they noticed you were missing.

  For a long second I thought hard about it, before realizing I would never dare. It was too late in the day.

  And Aaron had promised I wouldn’t have to do anything I didn’t want, I reminded myself firmly. It was just Wolf stirring, because it was all he knew how to do.

  I loped down the stairs, pausing in the hallway, and that’s when the front door swung open. Aaron was there, with someone else.

  ‘Hello, Knockout Tits. Long time no see. Got a kiss for your Uncle Peter?’

  * * *

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  I could barely speak for my rage, my shaking.

  We were stood in the dining room.

  ‘Why are you freaking out?’ Aaron laced his fingers against his scalp. Behind him, I glimpsed Wolf rolling cable into a coil. ‘Obviously we need him. What do you think goes into the Sacred Draught? You’re like a nagging wife, Nina. It’s not hot.’

  Aaron was twitchy, and though I might be imagining it in my nervousness and paranoia, his scaling anger and anxious rubbing at his nose made me think he was high again.

  ‘I thought the Sacred Draught was made of natural ingredients – herbs and stuff …’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Aaron shrugged, and it was a jerky, hitched movement, and something in my heart sank. ‘Where would we get that in winter?’ He snarled at me. ‘You know what? Do this or don’t, but if you let me down now after all this preparation, you and I are through. Do you understand?’

  I swallowed and met his eyes. Even after everything that had happened, the prospect seemed unimaginable. ‘I never said that.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But I can’t be out of control if I know Peter’s in the room. I don’t trust him.’

  ‘He’s not going to be in the room – don’t be ridiculous,’ said Aaron. ‘Do you think I’d let anything happen to you?’

  I didn’t know the answer to this. The only thing I knew was that if I’d kissed him, he would taste of coke.

  So I didn’t kiss him.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yes. I promise.’

  I was torn then. Even at that moment, things could have gone either way. There was still a chance, vanishingly small, yes, but still a chance I could have walked out.

  They wouldn’t have been happy, true.

  But not as unhappy as they were going to be.

  ‘OK?’ he asked. ‘So, are you ready?’

  Choose, Nina.

  So I chose. I managed a wan smile for him. ‘OK. I’m ready.’

  Behind him, Wolf’s knuckles tightened on the coils of cable so much I could see it.

  ‘Great,’ said Aaron, clapping his hands. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

  I realized, with a little shock, that he was holding one of the order’s amulets, only this one was silver.

  He looped it over my head, and it lay, heavy and chill, upon my breast, as he kissed me. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

  * * *

  After that it becomes difficult to remember clearly. It happens in flashes.

  I remember that we held hands, surrounding Aaron. We started the first chant. The words felt sticky, too big for my dry mouth. Behind me was the incongruous sound of metal and plastic as the camera clicked and whirred. Wolf was there, but I couldn’t see him.

  Nervous sweat soaked me, despite the coldness of the room. I wore a corona of flowers on my head, and it was slipping down over my left ear, the sharp ends of the pins scraping across my damp scalp. With my hands tightly held – Tristan on one side, Lucy on the other – I couldn’t find a way to right it.

  Lucy’s nails cut into my hand, little sharp half-moons, as though she sensed my reluctance, my sudden fear.

  I didn’t want to do this, I realized. And now it was too late, far too late to stop. I’d chosen wrongly.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next thing I knew, Sophia, I was running for my life.

  Above me the stars and the thin moon wavered and blurred, the stars breathing in and out, the moon swinging back and forth, lolling like a drunk. The trees on the horizon with their stark bare branches loomed ominously on all sides, like an angry mob.

  My thin gown stank of burning wood and incense. Beneath my bare feet, dried twigs and stones embedded in the ice cut me, but I felt these wounds at a strange, dreamy remove, and they had no power to stop my flight.

  I had no idea what I was running from, no memory of it, but I knew it was vital that I escape. There had been a terrible noise – male voices screaming, shouting, fighting, and then a rolling boom, like thunder …

  But however much fear could give me wings, it could not prevent my silky gown from catching in my flying steps, tripping me, and I was thrown forward, rolling on the cold wet slush, winded and gasping for air.

  Above me, the stars were falling, falling down on top of me. The wind howled, and faraway, voices were raised, men and women, but they were not near enough to hurt me.

  I raised my hands to my eyes and rubbed.

  My hands were sticky, hot, and they smelled of iron and tasted of salt.

  In the moonlight, as I held them up to inspect them, they looked blacker than the inky sky.

  Far away, possibly from the direction of the house, or from the other side of the universe, there came a wailing, rising and falling. Someone was screaming and it sounded like Tess, and as I drifted, it threaded in and out of my nightmare.

  ‘He’s dead, he’s dead! Someone’s killed him!’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘My name’s Sophia Mackenzie. I’m here to see Max Clarke.’

  I was standing in a quirky little reception area in a large converted semi-detached house just off Clerkenwell Green. Out of the big front windows I could see the green, a pretty church and a tea shop advertising artisan coffees.

  Inside, it all was vintage colours and asymmetric bookshelves. The guy sitting at the low-slung desk before me looked as though he was an escapee from the 1950s with his striped shirt and neatly buttoned cardigan.

  He blinked at me, a little nervously, as though I were a bomb that might go off. ‘Max? I see … Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘Yes, he said to drop in …’

  There was a sudden clatter above of doors swinging back and creaking stairs.

  ‘It’s all right, Toby, I’ve got this.’ A man had bounded down the threadbare steps and appeared on the landing. All I could make out was his smile, full of white teeth, and a mop of reddish-brown hair.

  ‘You must be Sophia.’

  I shrugged and let out a little laugh. ‘Well guessed.’

  His smile dropped a couple of notches. ‘I must say, now you’re here in person, how terribly sorry I am about your mother. I didn’t know her that well, but she seemed a lovely, lovely woman.’ He reached out, took my hand and squeezed it earnestly. It was a forward gesture but not without charm. I tried to concentrate on it, and not the swell of feeling on hearing my mum described so.

  She had been a lovely, lovely woman.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m just about to head out for a spot of very late lunch. Can I persuade you to join me?’

  I smiled. ‘That would be great.’

  * * *

  He walked me back across the green, which was full of trendy office workers hurrying past the shops, and yummy mummies in designer sunglasses pushing their children along the narrow pavements.

  Despite the glorious day, I couldn’t quite stop myself from looking over my shoulder every so often, and at one point I thought Max noticed. We made small talk about my journey on the way to a large Victorian pub, and I ducked in before him.

  ‘So, what time do you have to get back?’ he asked as we approached the bar.

  ‘I
don’t. Not today, at any rate.’

  I deliberately made myself not think of my morning so far. My night had been sleepless and miserable, thinking about what that bastard had done to my mum, about what disaster had seemed to befall them all – someone was dead.

  My call to Amity to tell them I had to stay in Suffolk to meet the doctor that morning had gone down like a lead balloon, and the memory of it made my insides clench in anxiety. I wondered if their sullenness meant they’d heard back from Scottish Heritage.

  Well, if Amity were unhappy with me, I might as well seize the day and make it count. Max could tell me what had happened next in my mum’s story. I’d rung Paracelsus and set up an appointment with him, then decided to check in on Monica in the café.

  Rowan wasn’t about as I crossed the yard. After our fight last night I didn’t particularly want to speak to him, but I also didn’t want our row to drag on. I needed Rowan. I needed someone I could talk to about all the bizarre revelations in the notebooks, someone who had known my mum and would be less likely to judge, and however angry I was that he hadn’t believed me about the strangers following me on the train, I was just going to have to get past it.

  I pushed open the café door and the scent of fresh baking – the alchemical magic of flour, butter, eggs and sugar – filled the air.

  I paused on the step and breathed it in. ‘Oh God, Monica, it smells fantastic in here.’

  She was dressed in a neat floral apron, putting our plastic menus into the little wooden stands on our mismatched tables. She looked up, her face breaking into a grin. ‘Sophia, I didn’t expect you! I thought you’d be at work.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m just on my way to the hospital. How are you getting on in here? Is Rowan treating you all right? Have you found everything?’

  I was surprised as she came up and, without ceremony, put her arms around me, a fleeting, gentle pressure. I had a sudden flashback to my mum’s notebooks, of her puzzlement at Lucy’s over-affectionate embrace when she’d first arrived at Morningstar, and I nearly froze.

  ‘Things will get better,’ she murmured. Again that soft accent, perhaps Scottish in the dim and distant past. She offered me a sad smile. ‘It must be so hard for you right now.’

  I realized that it was nothing sinister. I was bereaved. I must have just looked like I needed a hug.

  She was probably right on that score.

  I sighed, surprised into candour. ‘There are good days and bad days, I guess. More bad than good at the moment, but still …’

  I couldn’t finish the sentence. I only had so much bravado to go round. I was glad of my sunglasses.

  ‘Did you have any breakfast?’ she asked, stepping away towards the counter.

  ‘Me? No, no. I’m just rushing out.’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh no, no, no. You can’t skip breakfast. Best meal of the day. Look, I baked this just now – it’s Hungarian sour cherry cake. You mix the whites and the yolks of the eggs separately then blend them together.’

  She was taking up my mum’s big bone-handled knife, moving to cut a slab of scarlet-studded cake that was lying on the counter.

  ‘Oh, Monica, thank you so much, but I really can’t, I’ve got to get to the hospital now.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, concentrating on her work. ‘I won’t stand over you while you eat it.’ She was swiftly wrapping a very generous rectangle of the cake in one of our takeaway greaseproof paper bags, twisting the corners to seal it. ‘Take a slice with you.’

  The package, warm and fragrant, was being placed in my hands with a paper napkin and a wry smile.

  ‘Enjoy.’

  * * *

  The hospital had been busy, everything had run late. The doctor, a tiny, exquisitely spoken woman in huge glasses, had been much more cautious than the staff nurse the night before. She shooed me into a side office, closing the door on us. There had been an ‘improvement in responsiveness’, but my dad, apparently, was still very, very ill.

  I mustn’t get my hopes up, I was told.

  Of course, this immediately got my hopes up, and I felt several tons lighter as I called into his room and changed his dying flowers for a bunch of violets from Eden Gardens. I murmured an upbeat progress report into his ear, letting him know that Rowan was taking care of everything at the gardens, and when he didn’t respond I tried not to let my disappointment show.

  As I left I wondered if he’d known about his wife’s past. The notebooks had been hidden in his shed, after all. I wouldn’t wish the experience of reading those notebooks, of seeing my mum in that position, on anyone who wasn’t primed for them, so I hoped with all my heart that he had already known.

  Checking my phone after buckling myself into my car in the hospital car park, I noticed that someone had been trying to ring me – an unknown caller. I felt too fragile to call back and deal with any fresh drama. They hadn’t left a message, at any rate.

  I stared at the number – it looked like a landline but I didn’t recognize the area code. I wanted to ignore it in the worst way – I was in no mood to talk to strangers.

  Instead I braced myself and tapped the number, listened to it ring as a man with his arm in a sling crossed the car park in front of me.

  ‘Hello?’ The voice was female, older and strangely familiar.

  ‘Hi there,’ I said. ‘This is Sophia Mackenzie. You tried to get in touch with me?’ Outside, clouds passed briefly over the sun.

  ‘Sophia! Yes, I did. It’s Estella, your grandmother. I wanted to know how Jared was getting on.’

  That was where I recognized her voice from. I felt a hot flush of shame. I had completely forgotten about calling her in the grind from hospital to bed to office to train station.

  My life was spiralling out of control.

  ‘Oh, yes! I’m so sorry! I should have rung, but it’s been a madhouse here. I’ve just been in talking to the surgeon about my dad – they say he’s getting better; he may wake up soon.’

  Silence was the only reply.

  ‘We just have to keep hoping, eh?’ I said, trying to fill it with a nervous laugh.

  ‘I see,’ she said coolly, after what may well have been the longest pause of my life. ‘Well, thank you for letting me know.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner,’ I said, thinking perhaps I’d offended her. ‘I had to go back to work, and …’

  ‘That’s fine, Sophia, please don’t trouble yourself about it.’ She didn’t sound offended. If anything, she sounded disappointed. ‘I’m sure you’re extremely busy. I’ll call again in a few days to see how things are going. Take care—’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Sorry, there was something I wanted to ask you about. I found some notebooks of my mum’s. From her teenage years …’

  I let that hang for a second, wondering if she would volunteer anything. When she didn’t I continued: ‘From her time at university, and—’

  ‘She didn’t go to university,’ said Estella, with a contempt that seemed so ingrained it had become impersonal, second nature.

  My throat was closing, my cheeks heating up. It was as though she’d struck me. ‘I’m pretty sure she did …’ But as I said it, I felt a flash of doubt. Had my mum been to university? After all, outside of the notebooks, she’d never mentioned it.

  There was a bark of laughter. ‘She couldn’t hack it, I’m afraid. Nina was … she had no grit.’

  I realized, with a little flutter of confusion and anger, that being able to make this assessment pleased my grandmother. Ancient chords of envy and dominance were still being played in the background, even after my mum was dead.

  You know, I thought, with that at home, it’s amazing my mum turned out as well as she did. Aaron Kessler notwithstanding.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ I said, as politely as I could manage.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Estella, with a finality that implied I was as big a fool as my mother. And you know, maybe that’s true, but I’m nothing like as easy to bul
ly, so I forged ahead regardless.

  ‘In the notebooks, I found references to people she knew back then. I was hoping to get in touch with them. I wondered if—’

  ‘Oh no. We never stayed in touch with any of her friends. I doubt Nina did. I meant to ask, Sophia – Nina had a little emerald art deco ring from Thomas’s mother. Did you happen to see it around the house?’

  ‘No,’ I immediately lied. I knew exactly the ring she meant. It had been returned to me in a brown paper bag from the coroner’s office, together with the dishevelled clothes my mum had died in. There had been something so pathetic about her worn bra and overwashed jeans that I had wept for an hour afterwards. ‘But I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it.’

  ‘If you would. Your mother’s cousin Martina might like it, you know, as a keepsake.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I said evenly. I had never seen or heard from this person in my life, and I’d be damned if I was sending her my mum’s only decent piece of jewellery.

  The way to remember my mum was to have been involved in her life.

  ‘Jolly good. Well, do keep me posted on how Jared is doing. Must dash.’

  I was being dismissed. ‘Oh, right. Bye.’

  There was an audible click as she hung up.

  * * *

  ‘I found two of the notebooks,’ I said without preamble while I waited at the bar with Max Clarke. ‘I don’t know where the third one is.’

  ‘Oh … you did?’

  He had grey eyes under dark, almost bushy brows, and they watched me intently while I shifted my bag off my shoulder and opened it. ‘Have you read them? Wait, let’s get some drinks and sit down first.’

  I ordered white wine and a fish finger sandwich on the Clerkenwell staple of ‘artisan bread’ before he guided me to a table in the beer garden at the back.

  The sun was out, of course, but the atmosphere was dense, muggy, and a storm was coming. I vanished back behind my sunglasses, glad of the orange parasol shading the table.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You read them.’