Everything Is Lies

by Helen Callaghan

  Now, on the camera, I could see him as he emerged from behind it, and I recognized him immediately, though he had more hair then, his bald spot no bigger than a fifty-pence coin at this point. His fast, sturdy gait was as familiar to me as my own face, as he appeared in shot, stepping over Tess, vanishing out of the door and running towards the sound of my mum’s voice.

  The camera never showed his face. But I can imagine his expression.

  There was more shouting – the terrible sound warping and shredding it into incomprehensibility. In the foreground, all remained still, the camera pointed forwards and Tess lying there, like a dead woman.

  Then there were shouting voices, a resounding boom: the muzzle flash flickering against the wall in the hallway, as though lightning had struck indoors.

  At that, Tess jerked awake.

  * * *

  They caught Karen Ince living rough somewhere in Glasgow in the end. I’d been girding my loins for that – yet another trial – but it never happened as she was judged unfit to plead. I couldn’t have been more relieved. If she was genuinely ill, I pitied her, too.

  I never found out who the couple following me on the train were, and Aaron professes to know nothing about it. Me, I have my doubts. I remember that sharp little face, gazing down from one of the windows at Morningstar. Perhaps he sent them, just to keep an eye on me; perhaps they were pilgrims on their own account. I’ll never know.

  I think sometimes of those endless phone calls my mum used to make, urging me to come home. Why had it never occurred to me that she was crying out for help, and that the solution was not that I retreated back into Eden Gardens, but that she leave it and Jared and join me in the world?

  It was a conclusion she came to herself in the end. It was what the book was meant to do.

  It was this conclusion that killed her.

  As for Jared – it feels strange to stop calling him Dad. I do think he loved me, especially when I was younger. I remember him making me wooden toys, and showing and explaining the plants to me in the garden, tending to me as he did them. It was as I grew older, I think, that he started to pull away from me. Perhaps he saw Aaron in my face.

  He was happy enough, though. He had what he wanted – he had Nina, and his own business, and for someone who came from nothing, he must have felt like a king in his own little domain.

  Except that it wasn’t his domain, he’d merely borrowed these privileges, in the same way he borrowed the privileges of Morningstar, with its constant supply of drugs and girls. He was for ever helping himself to other people’s things, and then getting furious when the original owners wanted them back.

  Things like Aaron’s camera, or Eden Gardens, or my mother’s autonomy.

  I haven’t decided what to do with the notebooks yet. I haven’t shown them to anyone except Rosie and Piers. I tracked them both down soon after Jared was arrested, and was astonished at how quickly I warmed to them both. I see them on average once a fortnight now, for dinner in their shabby-chic semi in Stoke Newington or to look after their cats while they travel.

  They are a font of information – perhaps the only one I have – on what my mum was like before this tragedy overtook her.

  I will never have any love for Penelope, whom I have spoken to again recently, but I was moved, despite myself, by Lucy, who flew over from Paris to meet me in the end. She looked haunted, and drank a great deal in the restaurant where we had dinner.

  I found out that Aaron had bitten her very hard in the last few years – he’d received a massive bill for back taxes on Morningstar, despite his prospering ‘seminar’ business, and all the old members, including herself and Penelope, had been made to bear the strain.

  Lucy was a mess – a well-coiffed, designer-clad mess, with enormous childlike eyes in her taut, Botoxed face, and I was acutely aware that she was only talking to me now because she had to. She wept over dessert, and I was mortified even as I pitied her cosmic self-absorption. After her initial hastily delivered platitudes on my mum’s death (she failed to mention Jared) she didn’t refer to anybody’s tragedy besides her own for the rest of the evening.

  I had power over these people now, each of whom had had a hand in ruining my mother’s life.

  What to do with them all?

  I am conscious that Tess could have exposed them whenever she’d wanted, but out of mercy chose not to. Maybe I should be guided by her and her hard-won equilibrium.

  They’re their secrets to keep, after all.

  * * *

  That evening, after dawdling through the ruins of Pompeii with Marco, sharing a hand-held parasol as we amble through the columns and snatches of fresco, we catch a bus back to Rome. It’s forty degrees in the Bay of Naples, which is by the sea, so Rome itself is a staggering bastion of heat and humidity.

  We go back to our hotel, dug into the ruins of Trajan’s market, and share a cool whirlpool bath and some bottles of Peroni. We are both too exhausted for sex, instead tenderly washing the sharp, gritty volcanic dust from each other’s bodies and hair while the air conditioner burrs quietly in the background.

  I love this hotel, with its Imperial cellars and Renaissance terrace, where we sit and eat breakfast. I love that it has its feet in the ancient world, its head in the clouds.

  Already it’s inspiring my next project, a small luxury hotel that Marco will be interior designing. We joke amongst ourselves that one day, if we save hard and are very lucky, we might be able to afford to stay in it for a night after it’s built.

  While Marco goes downstairs to check a few things with reception – we are going to dine out under the stars overlooking the Roman Forum, eating good pasta and, if I have any say in the matter, drinking lots of good wine – I sit naked at the dressing table and open my laptop.

  There’s an email from Rowan. Rowan lost his job when Eden Gardens closed, and it was one of the darkest times in our friendship. He was devastated and frightened, with two young children to support and, had I but known it, another on the way. He’d had no idea that my parents had no legal rights to the house or gardens.

  I didn’t expect my grandparents to relent – not after what Jared did to their daughter – but I’d hoped they’d sell the gardens to Rowan and me as a partnership. However, the instant they learned that Rowan had an emotional identification with the place and with Jared, and had worked there all his adult life, we suddenly found there were mysterious ‘new offers’ all over the show, keen to drive up the price.

  Their greed and mean-spiritedness were a revelation at the time, though in retrospect, I’m not sure why. They wanted nothing of Jared’s to survive, including his business, no matter who they took out on the way.

  In the depths of my bemused grief, I had a brainwave.

  I took Rowan out, got him drunk and pitched the idea to him. I owned the supplies, the machinery, the kit – my grandparents owned only the land, after all; the business was a different thing entirely.

  We could start over.

  It wouldn’t be easy. We’d need to borrow money, get a mortgage for a new site and have agreements drawn up. Rowan was a labourer – he didn’t even own the cottage he lived in. If we were to raise capital, it would have to be done by me.

  But he and Kayleigh would be partners, not employees, and we had a customer base we could take with us. I would be the silent partner, leaving the running of the business up to them until they could afford to buy me out. I knew they were a safe pair of hands.

  It had been touch and go. We found a site, then it fell through, then another, which also fell through. Then we found the perfect place, a little garden centre off the main road to Southwold.

  After that everything was go, go, go. And it hasn’t stopped since.

  I’m sufficiently mean-spirited myself to drive by the old house occasionally and inspect the rusting gates, the ever-changing litany of estate agents’ signs, while the grounds grow wild within. Despite, or possibly because of, their greedy attempts to fleece Rowan and me, my grandpar
ents have never found a buyer.

  I have no interest in buying it or living there myself now that the business is secure elsewhere. In the end, it’s a place I escaped from and my mum didn’t.

  I no longer have anything to do with the house or its owners.

  * * *

  The second email of note was from Aaron Kessler.

  I sat there, considering it for a long moment, wondering if I was going to delete it unread.

  In the end, I opened another bottle of beer and clicked on it.

  Sophia,

  I hope this finds you well.

  I know you said you didn’t want to hear from me again, and I guess I’m OK with that if that’s what you really want.

  I guess, I thought to myself, that you’re not OK with it, since I’m hearing from you.

  I raise the bottle to my lips.

  But anyway.

  It was pretty crazy by the end, I know, but I still feel we have a lot we can teach one another. We’re blood and that’s a very deep and sacred thing.

  I was thinking about this last night and I remembered that I never told you how I met Wolf, so maybe you’d like to know.

  We were in Thailand, and it was September, monsoon season, and you couldn’t go anywhere or do anything because it was so hot and humid you thought you’d die, so you just had to stay in air-conditioned bars and drink and watch the girls go by. It was something else.

  I had gone out there to find myself, back in the days when you could tell people that and they wouldn’t laugh in your face. The Boarhounds were just breaking out, so nobody knew who I was. I was just exploring, trying to be free.

  That’s where I met Wolf. He told me he was a landscape gardener, but he’d been fired from his job over some misunderstanding about petty cash. So he’s out here, working bars, taking pictures. He might publish them in a book. They’re good pictures, he’s got a visual eye.

  So I said, come with me, and take pictures of my journey before that happens, and that’s what we did.

  It was great at first, it was full of love and adventure and amazing spiritual insights. On the last night I was lying out on the beach at Tapao under the stars and I had a vision that I had to go home, I had to stop fucking around and start my mission. I told Wolf this, and we were on the next plane.

  When we came home I thought it would be the same, but it wasn’t. It erodes you when you aren’t doing things for yourself, when you’re being kept. All things must strive or die. I know you feel this, from meeting you, from what people tell me about you, you’re a striver. I like to think you get that from me.

  Anyway, Wolf’s going to be in prison for a long, long time. Even though he stole from me, part of me will always love him, remembering those times we were happy and free in Thailand. I hope part of you will feel the same one day. It’s not good to hold on to old resentments, Sophia. They’re what kill us in the end. Take it from me.

  Transcend this, if you can. I know it’s a big ask, but try.

  It’s not what I expected, but he’s actually said something almost sensible.

  I don’t know how I feel about Jared, but hating him won’t bring my mother back.

  He’s asked, a couple of times, through his lawyer, to write to me. I have always refused.

  But maybe my biological father is right. Maybe I should allow it. Maybe.

  I do think he loved your mother – there was a lot to love about Nina, though I guess you already know that – but even at Morningstar he wanted to possess her exclusively, to own her, and that’s not the way.

  If we never speak again, promise me one thing – you’ll never allow yourself to be owned.

  Maybe, one day, you’ll be ready to take your place amongst us. Maybe not. But I hope so. It will always be here for you. The Ascendants are told to remember you in their prayers and offerings every day.

  You’ll never be forgotten.

  I had become litany. Who would have thought?

  That said, there is something in being forgotten that I would quickly learn to appreciate. I remember those people on the train; Monica’s mad stare; her shaking, white-knuckled grip on my mum’s knife.

  And suddenly I feel cold here in Rome, for the first time since I arrived.

  So that’s all I’ve got for now, apart from one more thing. I just wanted to say that you’re a magical creation, unique in all the universe. You are the order’s greatest single success.

  Never change.

  Better go,

  A.

  I sat there for a long time, thinking. That’s how Marco found me.

  He gestured at my nakedness and bent down to kiss my shoulder. ‘You’re wearing this to the restaurant? It looks very good, but I’m not sure it fits the dress code.’

  ‘Sorry, Marco. Sorry. I got distracted. There was an email from Aaron Kessler.’

  ‘How does he know your email address?’

  ‘How does he know anything?’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘He has people to find out these things.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He says that I am a “magical creation, unique in all the universe”.’

  ‘I see,’ he raised an eyebrow at me. ‘That is quite a boast. And what do you think about that?’

  I sighed and smiled at him.

  ‘I think you could say that about anybody.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Jared asks Nina.

  It’s been building in him all day.

  It is a beautiful, blessed July evening, and Eden Gardens smells of blossom and rings with the ratcheting calls of magpies. He’s been out planting and his clothes are still dirty.

  She is working at the kitchen table, putting together a late supper for them to have at the bottom of the garden, under the fairy lights. She slices the small, sweet tomatoes they grow here, before dousing them in balsamic vinegar and herbs.

  She glances up, knife in hand, and with a sick, sinking feeling she sees that he is holding her notebooks. He must have found her hiding place at the back of the wardrobe, which implies he’s been searching the house.

  His face is hectic with red and white patches, as though he has been dealt a mortal blow.

  ‘Did you write this?’

  The question is absurd. Who else could have written it?

  It occurs to her then that maybe this is a good thing. She is going to have to tell him sometime. This doesn’t change her plans, the ones she made after she realized that Sophia was gone and never coming back.

  It merely accelerates them.

  ‘You shouldn’t be looking at them.’ She straightens and faces him. ‘They’re private.’

  He backhands her across the face, and she is thrown down on to the floor in the kitchen, catching her head on the edge of the sink unit.

  He has started to hit her more and more often now. Once Sophia left, it’s as though some secret obstacle of shame has vanished.

  Her birdlike hands flutter to her dark scalp. Blood flows freely, wetting the webs between her fingers in scarlet.

  ‘I have fucking worked and slaved for you. For twenty-seven years, I’ve been the breadwinner, I’ve been putting fucking clothes on your back and paying for you – and paying for Aaron Kessler’s little bastard …’

  This she cannot stand. She will not tolerate him speaking about Sophia that way.

  ‘Jared, you’ve always known the score there. I don’t know which one of you is her father …’ She tries to rise to her feet, but she is dizzy and feels sick.

  But what she doesn’t feel is afraid, as foolish as this is. They are on this course together now, she and he, and it must be pursued to the end.

  ‘Come off it, Nina, she even looks like him. She has for years. Aaron, who threw you all out once he was bored with you. I, meanwhile, have been busting my arse for you, and’ – his face contorts – ‘and you’re still obsessed with that fucker!’ He shakes the notebooks at her. ‘Even now!’

  ‘I’m not obsessed with him. I’ve jus
t never worked through it before.’ She is tired of sitting on the floor, of cowering, so she lifts herself up. ‘I want people to know what happened to me. I’m sick of hiding from it.’

  ‘Were you ever going to discuss this with me, since I’m in it?’ He throws his hands wide.

  ‘Eventually.’ She rubs her bruised cheek.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘I’m leaving you,’ she says. She lifts her hand away and inspects the blood.

  ‘You’re what?’ He lets out a snort of bitter laughter, but there’s an alarmed question in his voice. ‘And where would you go?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Oh you always say this when you get a mood on—’

  ‘No,’ she says, and she feels very calm. ‘I almost never say it. I just think it. But now I’m saying it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t last two days without me,’ he sneers.

  ‘I think I would.’ Her hand closes on the kitchen roll and she pulls a piece off. She looks around. ‘I’ve had enough. I want a fresh start. I’ve been living here, hiding here, for twenty-five years and it’s suffocating me. I want to go back to college. I want to go back to the world.’

  The silence broadens between them. He realizes she is serious.

  ‘How long has this been brewing?’ he asks, crossing his mud-stained arms.

  She dabs the towel to her scalp. ‘Since Sophia left.’

  ‘Sophia,’ he hisses. Sophia, Aaron’s bastard, the root of all evil. For a moment, his jealousy is like a chemical burn. ‘Of course. Because fuck knows I’m not enough for you.’

  Nina thinks, contemplates, and while she doesn’t realize that these are the words that will kill her, she knows that once said they can never be taken back.

  ‘You found me in a very vulnerable place, and despite everything I said to you, you spun that into a relationship. You’ve had over a quarter of a century out of me, and that’s more than enough.’ She adjusts her dishevelled yellow blouse. ‘My life went on hold when I arrived at Morningstar. This is where it starts again.’ She crushes the towel to her head to stop the bleeding. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you—’