Everything Is Lies

by Helen Callaghan

  ‘Dad?’

  The shed was as I remembered it. I hadn’t been inside it since I’d found the notebooks in there.

  He was sitting in his chair, at his desk, breathing hard, as though he’d been exerting himself.

  ‘Dad! Are you all right?’

  He didn’t acknowledge me, but he didn’t object when I came in and picked up the filthy coffee cup that had been left by the police.

  ‘I was shouting for you all over the house and you didn’t answer. You worried me,’ I said, coming up to him and kissing him. He was very tense, his skin cool, and I sensed he would have liked to pull away. He was probably cross I hadn’t picked him up from the hospital.

  At that moment I didn’t care how crotchety he was. I was just so glad to be here with him, faraway from Aaron Kessler and his horrifying assertions. ‘So Rowan dropped you back, did he?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, as though everything was ordinary, and we hadn’t been through this all-involving experience of near-death, grief and terror together. But his voice was rough and faint.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be here, but I had to meet someone about Mum.’ I stood, stretching my back after my long drive, and then I noticed something strange.

  The stepladder was out, and the sight of it gave me a jolt. I looked up – above my head a little panel in the wood was open – it had been designed, clearly, to look like natural planks, and through the gap I could see the corner of a black plastic suitcase.

  ‘What’s that? I didn’t know there was a false ceiling there.’

  He grunted.

  ‘How clever is that? You always were good with wood.’ I frowned at the case. ‘What’s that up there?’

  ‘Insurance.’

  ‘Insurance against what?’

  He grunted again.

  ‘You know, Dad,’ I said, ‘I could go off on this big rant about how you’ve been very sick and shouldn’t be climbing stepladders and engaging with clandestine joinery, but I’d be wasting my time, wouldn’t I?’

  He didn’t answer for a few moments. I sensed that he’d exhausted himself, and was furious at how long it was taking him to recover.

  He was going to be a terrible patient, as always. That much was plain.

  I looked at him, with his shaking hand and pale face, and felt a sudden surge of affection for him. Whatever Aaron had said, it was this man here who had been the stable presence in my life, the one who fixed things, provided and made things safe.

  And now I was going to do the same for him.

  ‘I was thinking of making curry for dinner. I’ve got some wine in, and that beer you like. Will that do?’

  He nodded.

  ‘D’you want a cup of tea?’

  He nodded again. ‘Before you go, I need you to fetch that down,’ he said. ‘It’s too heavy for me.’ He coughed. ‘I’m too weak.’

  ‘That case?’ I peered up at the disarticulated wood, and then eyed the stepladder with distaste. ‘All right.’

  Steeling myself, I mounted the stepladder, sticking my head through the hole. The dust had been disturbed – other things had been up here recently; he must have taken them down.

  Why was he doing this now?

  ‘I saw that sign on the door,’ I called down. ‘Don’t you think “until further notice” is a bit much? People might think we’re shutting permanently. It’ll scare custom away.’

  ‘They can think what they like,’ he said unhelpfully, his voice was little more than a whisper.

  This is a problem, I thought with dull dread. My dad wasn’t sociable. My mum had handled the whole ‘dealing with people’ side of things here, and it wasn’t clear how he’d manage without her.

  We needed to replace Monica straight away.

  The case was heavy – there was something substantial in it that gave off a plasticky rattle when I moved it.

  ‘Bloody hell, Dad, have you got a body in here?’

  His answer was a kind of wheezy snort that might have been laughter. ‘Almost, but not quite. Set it on the desk.’

  I bore it down the stepladder carefully and put it on his desk. It wasn’t that big, but it was full of some kind of equipment, something roughly the size of a sewing machine.

  The case was moulded black plastic, and specially made to contain whatever was inside, shadowing its weird bumps and being slightly asymmetrical. It was covered in dust and crusted insect droppings, and I slapped my dirty hands against my trousers in disgust after gently lowering it on to the desk.

  I stood back. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Never you mind. Were you going to make some tea?’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ I wasn’t in the mood to quarrel with him, especially not tonight. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  * * *

  I set the dirty cup in the sink and filled the kettle, looking around at the freshly cleaned kitchen. I would cook, that’s what I’d do. It would calm me. And all of these huge things, these revelations, could wait until tomorrow. They would change nothing tonight.

  I went over to the cupboard by the old Aga, looking for my dad’s favourite mug, which wasn’t on the draining board.

  Lying on the counter was an opened letter with some kind of dark threatening letterhead. Official letters had become a constant thing since my mum’s death, and I had learned to pay them no mind. They would all be got to in good time. But it was strange that this one was lying opened in here. Perhaps it was from the hospital.

  I read it, then read it again, three times in all, while my blood froze.

  Re: Notice to Vacate

  Dear Mr Boothroyd,

  This letter is to notify you that you are hereby given thirty days to remove yourself and your belongings from the property formerly known as The Old Mill, Pulverton, Suffolk.

  The owners are within their rights to demand you leave immediately. In consideration of your recent ill health, however, a total of thirty days from the date of this letter will be granted to you to find alternative accommodation.

  Please leave the property in good condition, having had it thoroughly cleaned, and deposit the keys at Newmarket Estates, Undley Road, Beccles.

  Note that if you do not comply with these terms we will be forced to commence eviction proceedings through the courts.

  Thank you for your swift attention in this matter,

  Yours sincerely,

  Daniel Babcock

  This missive has been sent by a firm called Daniel Babcock and Associates, on behalf of Thomas and Estella Mackenzie.

  Estella.

  That was why she’d wanted me to tell her how Dad was doing.

  It was so she could start the process of chucking him out on the streets. At the funeral, I remembered she’d said she wanted to ‘talk about the house’.

  I was breathless, stunned at their ruthlessness. It had never once occurred to me that my parents didn’t own this house outright.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with these people?’ I muttered to myself as the kettle boiled.

  I made him some tea, just how he liked it, strong and with two sugars, and I put one of the little Bakewell tarts he enjoyed on a plate.

  I need to stay calm, confident and strong. Dad needed care, not anxiety.

  The garden was cooling down, the sun getting lower as I went out, carrying my little burdens to the shed. High summer had passed and soon Eden Gardens would grow red and gold, the air earthy and damp with falling leaves.

  Except we won’t be here to see it.

  And what are we going to tell Rowan?

  The thought made me dizzy and sick. Rowan depended on Eden Gardens to feed his wife and children.

  As I stepped past the squashes we grew near the fence, I heard a creaking noise behind me, as though the garden gate had swung open, just a fraction.

  I froze.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was no answer.

  I turned, my heels sinking into the mulch, but nobody seemed to be there.

  I was about to go up and che
ck the lock – in my disordered, distraught state I might have forgotten to shut it behind me, and that was it, swinging in the breeze …

  ‘Sophia!’ called out my dad from the shed. ‘Sophia, come here, quickly!’

  His voice was urgent, alarmed.

  I looked towards the garden gate, and then carefully carried the tea and cake over to the shed, looking back over my shoulder constantly.

  ‘Dad, I think there’s someone …’

  It took me a minute or two to make sense of what I was looking at.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, in the quietest, most even voice I could manage, ‘what are you doing?’

  He was standing up and facing me, the black case open on the desk. Within it I could see something bulky, with a lens and a handle – some kind of camera. Stuffed in with it were dozens of old video cassettes, plainly labelled with dates and the occasional name: ‘29/10/88 – SARAH’, ‘3/2/85 23:47’, ‘Tristan – 4/6/87’.

  But this wasn’t what was holding my attention.

  Instead it was the shotgun he was pointing at my face.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘I’m not your dad, as you well know. You were at Morningstar today, right? Didn’t you meet your real daddy there?’

  Rowan, I thought. Rowan had seemed cagey on the phone when I’d told him not to tell my dad. He’d probably already told him, and didn’t want to say.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, fighting to stay calm. ‘Stop this immediately. Put the gun down. You’re upset. I know you’re upset—’

  ‘Upset?’ His eyes were bright and wet with tears. ‘You have no idea, Sophia. No idea what that means. You know, when Nina’s monstrous Mummy and Daddy let us stay here, after her grandfather died and they didn’t want to pay fucking tax on the sale, the place was a shambles. It stank of corpses. Literally stank of death, because the old fella had died here and they never visited, heartless twats that they were; he was half rotted away by the time he was found.’

  He took a step nearer, the barrel of the gun shaking. It would have been easy to knock it out of his hands, but I was too far away.

  ‘No water, no heat, no electricity, your mum practically about to drop with you.’

  I was transfixed, speared by his rage and despair.

  ‘I built this place out of fucking nothing, all for her, even though she’d never give me a straight answer. “I don’t know if Sophia is yours.” “I don’t know if I still love Aaron.” She just kept me hanging on and hanging on and hanging on …’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘Stop calling me that!’ he screamed, his anguish apparent, and as much as I was terrified, his pain was awful to behold, an unassuageable agony. ‘You even look like him! Is it you that’s going to inherit this place, is that the plan? Once your grandad and granny throw me to the wolves?’

  Wolves.

  I stared at the tapes, the camera, him, in disbelief and dawning realization.

  My dad is not my dad.

  Suddenly everything snapped into place. Of course. He’s Wolf.

  This was what Tess had been on her way to tell me when she’d died. This explained her urgency – she’d had to do it while Dad was still in hospital and unlikely to see her. And she would have wanted to do it face to face, while I was sitting down, presumably.

  ‘D—’ I took a step backward, my heart pounding. It was as though I was falling, and my legs were trembling, about to give way. ‘Please don’t do this. We can talk about—’

  ‘You can blame Nina for this, Sophy,’ he snarled. ‘She’s leaving me, she says, she’s had enough, she’ll risk it all, them finding out about Peter, everything. She’ll go to you, she says …’ He swiped at his wet face with the back of his hand. ‘The heartless, stone-cold bitch! I would have given my life for that woman!’ His eyes were huge. ‘Did you plan it together?’

  She’s had enough, she’ll risk it all, them finding out about Peter – he’d known about the book Mum intended …

  It could only mean one thing. One horrible, inescapable thing; the only thing that fitted the facts.

  ‘Dad,’ I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. ‘You killed Mum?’

  Even in his extremity, the deed seemed too huge to acknowledge. It was as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘We’ll all go together, like we were meant to, like we should have, if you’d come home that night …’

  ‘Dad, you don’t want to do this.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and a strange calm seemed to come over him. ‘I don’t, but that won’t stop me.’

  His expression grew flat, emotionless, and I knew, in that second, that he was going to kill me, and that no words or pleas would spare me.

  ‘I’m not building all of this out of nothing, building you and her out of nothing, just to lose it all.’ Tears were falling down his face, but it was as though he was no longer connected to them, to any human emotion I could recognize.

  ‘Goodbye, Sophia.’ He raised the gun and steadied it. ‘We’ll both be with your mum soon.’

  I threw the hot cup of tea in his face.

  He let out a yowl of rage, and I turned on my heel and ran, scrambling like a mad thing towards the garden gate, my feet tripping over the lines of squash and courgettes, getting entangled in the netting over the brassicas. I fell forward on to my belly, my cheek grazing the damp soil, and inhaled its earthy scent.

  He was coming after me as I tried to flounder to my feet.

  ‘Hold still …’

  I flopped over on to my back, my foot hopelessly caught.

  Oh, please let it be quick …

  He stopped just before my feet, the gun aimed at my chest. He was breathing hard, very hard, though whether this was with rage, despair, or post-surgery exertion, I couldn’t tell.

  I opened my mouth to plead for my life, though my voice was dry as dust.

  ‘It’s an irony you’ll never be able to appreciate,’ he said. ‘But this was how I got your mother. I shot that dirty fucker Peter Clay right in front of her, to keep him off her, and she was too out of it even to remember afterwards.’ He was gasping, finding the strength to raise the gun. ‘A shotgun,’ said my dad, breath sawing in and out of his lungs. ‘That’s funny. It’s how it began, and how it’s going to end.’

  ‘Dad, please, no, please don’t … please, I’m begging you, please don’t do this …’

  And then someone stepped out from the hedges lining the fence. He was a shadow behind my dad, with long dark hair, high cheekbones and intense black eyes.

  Aaron Kessler.

  I couldn’t move. For a nightmare moment, I thought I was dreaming him.

  He was carrying something, long and thin, and I realized it was a tyre iron.

  ‘Hello, Wolf,’ Aaron said.

  And then he brought it down hard on top of my dad’s head.

  The gun fell away.

  My dad – Jared – was still for an instant, trembling, before sinking to his knees in the soft mulch of Eden Gardens, then toppling forward, like a felled tree.

  * * *

  ‘Why did you come?’

  The police were clearing everything away. They’d asked their questions and let me go, and my dad, heavily concussed, had departed in the ambulance.

  Part of me felt I should have gone with him, but everyone – the police, the ambulance crew and Rob Howarth – thought this was a very bad idea. Maybe it was.

  After all, it takes a little while for the heart to know what the mind understands – he’d killed my mother.

  He was not my friend.

  Aaron had refused to answer any police questions, very politely but firmly stating that he never spoke to law enforcement without his lawyer present, as a matter of course. Various threats about arrest were made, and dismissed with his contemptuous silence.

  I didn’t think he was going to answer me either, at first, as we leaned against the garden fence. I could see SOC officers moving around inside my dad’s shed.

  Aaron sighed. ‘I never realized, until you said his name today, that the ma
n living here with Nina was Wolf.’ He leaned back on his hands and raised his eyes to the stars. ‘I don’t watch much news. It’s not good for your mind, you know – your spiritual development – and anyway, I have people for that.’

  If he noticed my curious look, he gave no sign.

  ‘Jared Boothroyd. Been a long time since I heard that name.’ He closed his eyes. ‘A long time.’

  I waited, shaking. Aaron was like something I had dreamed, of a piece with the rest of my evening.

  He slouched against the wood. ‘Once I realized it was him, it all made sense. Nina was never interested in Wolf in that way at Morningstar, but he was obsessed with her.’ He smiled, as though at a happy memory. ‘Nina was a beautiful woman – so fragile, so innocent, and yet strangely strong. She could get you that way.’ Aaron stretched out his legs and struck a fist against the place where his heart would be. ‘It makes sense that he followed her. But me, I always wanted to catch up with Wolf one day, because he stole something very valuable to me.’

  ‘The Morningstar tapes,’ I said, hearing the quiver in my voice. ‘You came for them. Alone. Because the others all believe you had them all along. That’s how you lean on them for money. If it came out that they’d been hiding in a garden shed somewhere in Suffolk for the past twenty-odd years—’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘But once I knew it was Wolf out here, I had to confront him. I thought it was time somebody did. Anyway, what makes you think I’m alone?’

  I was such a fool. Of course he wasn’t alone. His driver would be nearby, and anyone else he’d wanted to rustle up.

  I gazed at the trees around me.

  I shrugged. ‘Well, thanks for saving my life.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me for that. Gratitude exists only where there are alternative courses of action, Sophia. You’re worth much more than the tapes.’ He rose to his feet. ‘We should watch them. You’d find them ritually instructive. Your conception is on one of them.’

  ‘I’ll pass, thanks.’

  There was a long, cool pause. Then he said, ‘I’m going to call my lawyer.’

  I felt oddly calm, considering all that had happened. You’d think I would be devastated. But I wasn’t, not really. I felt vindicated, as though a secret subconscious belief I’d harboured had been proved right.