The Liar's Room

by Simon Lelic

  He stepped forward, forcing Ms. Birch to back up against the bin, which no doubt would have been warm from the fire. And if Scott looked down on Jake, he positively towered over the young teacher.

  “You shouldn’t say things like that,” Scott said. “You shouldn’t call us stupid.”

  “No, I . . .” Ms. Birch was afraid; Jake could see it. But she attempted to exert her authority, standing as tall as she could in the space Scott allowed her. “You boys need to come with me. We’re going to see the headmaster.”

  Scott sniffed and edged closer, so that Ms. Birch was bent backward over the bin. “The bald old coot’s gone home for the day,” he said. “Everyone’s gone home. Look.” He tipped his head toward the teachers’ parking area and there were indeed only two or three cars left, one of them being Ms. Birch’s own battered Beetle.

  Scott smiled then. See? that smile said. You’re on your own.

  “You started a fire,” Ms. Birch persisted. “On school property. That’s not something I can allow to go unpunished.”

  Jake exchanged glances with Pete and Charlie. He couldn’t tell what Charlie was thinking but Pete’s thoughts couldn’t have been clearer had they been written in a bubble over his head. Shut up. Just shut up, you silly cow.

  “We told you what happened, miss. We didn’t deliberately start anything.” This from Charlie, who somehow always managed to look like he was sneering.

  “Do you really expect me to believe—,” Ms. Birch started to say, and that was when Jake saw his opportunity.

  “It’s true,” he said, and all heads turned toward him. “I saw it happen.”

  Ms. Birch looked at him for a moment, then back at Scott. Some light seemed to come on behind Scott’s eyes and he ceded the young teacher half a step of ground.

  “They were just walking by,” Jake went on. “Scott here threw something in the bin and then there was a bang. When I saw them they were trying to put the fire out. They didn’t deliberately start anything.”

  Ms. Birch considered for a moment. “Do you know these boys?” she asked Jake narrowly.

  “Not really.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jake.”

  “Well, Jake . . .” She looked at Scott, Pete and Charlie in turn, then back at Susanna’s son. “I suppose that clarifies things. Thank you. Perhaps we should draw a line under the matter there.” She was trying to sound assertive but when she caught Jake’s eye, the relief—the gratitude—was written in her smile.

  And not just hers. Pete let out the breath that he’d clearly been holding for longer than he realized. Charlie, his sneer deepening, nodded. And Scott, as he brushed past the diminutive teacher and led his cohort off toward the gates, tipped Jake a conspiratorial wink.

  “See you around,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Adam has been listening intently. Not once has he moved to interrupt.

  “So he covered for them. That’s how it started. That’s what led them to becoming friends.”

  “I told you—”

  “Right, right, they were never ‘friends.’” Adam draws the quote marks in the air. “But let’s keep things simple, shall we?”

  Susanna opens her mouth to argue. It’s not simple, she wants to say. That’s the whole entire point. Instead, “Fine,” she answers.

  “And after that? What happened after that?”

  “They started hanging around. And Scott and the others, they were into things that Jake had never come across before. Had never really considered before, for all I know.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  Susanna looks at Adam blankly.

  “What kind of stuff were Scott and the others into? You said before that . . .”

  Susanna doesn’t need him to finish the sentence. Her nod turns into a head shake and then back again. “Violence, basically. Rap music, horror films, computer games, the bloodier, the more graphic, the better. And fire, obviously. They liked to set things on fire. They set a park bench alight once. Also . . . other things. Living things.”

  Adam smiles at this. Susanna, disgusted, turns away.

  “What else?”

  Susanna contemplates refusing to answer. But they have been down this route already and she knows where it will end.

  “Pornography. Scott had mountains of pornography.”

  “What kind of pornography?”

  “What do you mean, what kind?”

  “There’re all types of pornography, Susanna. Soft core, hard core, ethnic, fetish. There’s anal porn and oral porn and kiddie—”

  “Just pornography! OK? I don’t know exactly what kind.”

  Although she can still picture some of the images in the magazines she later found hidden beneath Jake’s bed. That was something else she ignored, in the sense that she left it for Neil to deal with. Neil said later that he had, though he wasn’t explicit about how. A quiet word, probably, softened by a nudge and a wink. All Susanna cared about at the time was that the magazines were gone from her house. And she managed to convince herself they didn’t belong to Jake, that he must have been holding on to them for a friend.

  Adam holds up his hands. “I was only asking. Like I say, I’m just trying to get a few things straight. The reports, the news stories—they’re pretty messy. Most of the stuff they couldn’t even report on. You know, because of Jake’s age.”

  Susanna, in reply, says nothing.

  “So Jake was into all of that?” Adam goes on. “The violence, the horror films. He got a kick out of that stuff too?”

  Susanna is categorical. “Not the boy I knew.” Which she realizes is as damning as it is defensive. “He was curious. That’s all. It made an impression on him. Clearly it did.”

  “Meaning, what? That you blame the rap music for what happened? The computer games? Scott’s porn collection?”

  It was tempting to, at first. Susanna can’t deny it. But as she wanted to tell Adam before, it wasn’t that simple. What happened, what Jake did, was the result of a confluence of factors. It’s not as straightforward as blaming Grand Theft Auto. “It didn’t help,” she says. “Scott and the others were older. They were showing Jake things he had no business seeing, not at his age. Not at any age. And he’d never been in a gang before. He’d had mates but . . .” Susanna trails off. She remembers Jake’s friends when he was younger. Timothy Thompson. Josh Green. Harry Kirkwood. Nice boys. Sweet boys. About whom, when Jake was playing with them, Susanna’s only worry was whether they were sharing their toys.

  Adam waits until he’s sure she’s finished talking. “So basically, what you’re saying is, they weren’t friends at first, but then they were. Right? And Scott and the other two, they were lying when they claimed they barely even knew Jake.”

  “Of course they were lying. I already said that. Scott Saunders, Peter Murray, Charles Bell: they drew Jake in. And Jake, he was . . . not innocent. But unprepared. In the end he was like . . . like . . .”

  Susanna doesn’t finish the sentence. Her thoughts are drawn to that burning bin, to the image she has of Jake standing there, watching it from across the driveway. There’s a phrase that’s come to mind but she doesn’t say it. In the end Adam utters the words for her.

  “Like a moth to a flame.”

  7.

  A cloud outside occludes the sun and a shadow sweeps across the room. Susanna didn’t think that it was possible for the world to feel any darker.

  “They drew Jake in, you say. But you did nothing. You didn’t even bother to find out what Jake was getting up to, who your son was hanging around with all of a sudden.”

  Susanna looks up. “He was fifteen. And he never told me.”

  “Don’t you think it was your responsibility to find out?”

  Susanna does. In retrospect, she does. But it’s easy to say tha
t now, far harder, as a parent, to balance the need to know your son is safe with respect for a teenager’s right to privacy. And she trusted Jake. Wasn’t that what she told herself? Or did she confuse trust with something else—an excuse to justify her failure to scrutinize his friendships more closely? But he’d never had any trouble with any of the mates he’d chosen before. There was one incident at school that same year, when Jake had been hauled before the headmaster for allegedly headbutting another child, but it was so out of character (Susanna thought) that she believed Jake’s excuse that it had been a scuffle blown up out of all proportion, and that he’d only got involved in the first place to protect a friend—a friend he’d jettisoned soon after. And that was further proof, as far as Susanna was concerned, that she and Neil had raised a young man who was well on the way to becoming fully independent. Jake didn’t need Susanna looking over his shoulder. He would watch out for himself—exactly as he always had.

  “Is that how this works?” Susanna asks. “I tell you what happened, what I did, what I failed to do, and you decide whether or not I’m genuinely sorry? That’s how you choose whether to let Emily go?”

  Adam waggles his head from side to side. “Something like that.”

  Meaning Emily’s being held somewhere? Imprisoned somehow? If there’s a chance Susanna could find out where, might there be a possibility as well that she could get a message to someone, to the police or Alina or Ruth or anyone really, without Adam knowing? A telephone call is out of the question, obviously, but a text maybe or an e-mail or . . . WhatsApp? Should she have signed up to WhatsApp after all? Would WhatsApp have helped her?

  Susanna knows she isn’t thinking straight. It makes no difference what medium she employs. The difficulty will be sending a message without Adam seeing her. And, more important, working out what that message should contain. Because she could scream for help right now, dial 999 before Adam could stop her. But until she knows for certain that her daughter would be found, wouldn’t spend the hours, days, weeks that followed starving or suffocating or bleeding to death in some makeshift prison—a basement somewhere? A warehouse? The back of some van?—Susanna can’t risk doing anything. Her only choice is to play Adam’s game. More: she has to win.

  “So what if I said to you now? If I admitted it, that it was my fault entirely. No one else’s. Not Scott’s, not Pete’s, not Charlie’s. Not anyone’s. Just mine.”

  The face Adam pulls makes him look like an official sitting behind some desk somewhere. He wants to help her, his expression says, but his hands are tied.

  “The thing is, Susanna, you’ve had eighteen years to accept responsibility. Why should I believe anything you say now?”

  “But that was different. You know that! Just because I couldn’t say anything publicly doesn’t mean I didn’t think it was all my fault. With the people who were there, the people it affected, I’ve always maintained I was responsible. Always. I meant it then and I mean it now.”

  “Do you?” Adam answers, his head tipping sideways. His fringe falls across one of those chocolate-colored eyes of his and he uses his fingers to draw it aside. “OK, Susanna, let’s try this. Here’s your chance. Your opportunity to save your daughter. Tell me. Explain to me exactly what you accept responsibility for and I promise I’ll take it at face value. I won’t doubt you. Whatever you say, I’ll believe.”

  Adam sits waiting.

  “Just . . . everything,” Susanna says. “OK? I should have been a better mother. I should have known my son better: what Jake was doing, who his friends were, what they were teaching him. I should have found out about his obsessions, about his worries, his heartbreak. I should have read the signs better, been around more, spent less time at work, not been so proud that he never asked me for help. I should have intervened, and . . . and . . . I should have stopped him.” Susanna looks at Adam, her face open, her hands open. “OK? I should have stopped him. It was my responsibility to stop him. No one else’s. I was his mother. So that’s . . . that’s . . .” She flounders. She’s not sure what else she can say. “There,” she finishes, her hands dropping into her lap. “There.”

  The silence is torturous.

  “That’s it?” Adam says. “That’s all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Susanna blurts. “What else is there?”

  All at once the knife is in Adam’s hand. He’s on his feet, the knife raised level with his ear, before in one sharp motion he stabs it down, toward Susanna. She yelps, flinches, scrabbles away, and when she looks the blade is buried to the hilt in the cushion of her chair, just behind her left shoulder.

  Adam, leaning over her, seizes hold of the knife. He pulls, until the blade slides free and he is able to point it at Susanna’s throat.

  She swallows and feels her neck bulge against cold metal.

  “One last chance, Susanna,” Adam hisses. “I’m going to give you one last chance.”

  Susanna shuts her eyes. She can feel the warmth of Adam’s breath as he exhales, hears it waver as it carries with it his anger. This could all end, right now. The game goes on or everybody loses.

  There is a knock.

  Susanna opens her eyes. She sees Adam’s eyes flick up, and he glares across her shoulder.

  It comes again, a gentle knuckle-tap against Susanna’s door.

  Adam moves fractionally away and withdraws the knife from its position at Susanna’s throat.

  “Alina,” Susanna croaks. “I told her I’d come out. My next client . . . They’ll be waiting.” According to the clock on the wall, it’s already almost half past the hour.

  “You don’t have a next client.”

  “I do, I—”

  “You don’t have a next client,” Adam repeats, more emphatically, and Susanna grasps what he is telling her. The second slot, the second new client Susanna was expecting, even though she knew how unusual two new clients in one afternoon would be: there’s no one coming. Adam has arranged it that way: used a bogus name (another one), booked a bogus appointment (another one), to ensure he and Susanna wouldn’t be interrupted.

  The knock comes again, louder this time.

  “Send her away,” Adam instructs. He takes his seat and tucks the knife out of sight beside his thigh. “Now.”

  Susanna gets up. She is unsteady on her feet but uses the furniture to support herself as she crosses the room.

  “Alina, I . . .” she is saying as she opens the door but it is not Alina who stands waiting on the other side. It is Ruth.

  “Hey, honey,” Ruth says. Her voice is low, apologetic. “Listen, I’m sorry to interrupt but I wanted to make sure you were OK?” Her eyes flick to scan Susanna’s office but her view is restricted by the half-open door.

  “OK?” Susanna echoes. “What do you . . .”

  She hears Adam behind her, clearing his throat.

  “Listen, Ruth—I’m kind of in the middle of a session at the moment.”

  “No, I know, but Alina said . . .” Ruth lowers her voice further. “Alina said you’d been in with the same guy for an hour and a half.” She tests a smile. “Who have you got in there, Leonardo DiCaprio?”

  Susanna, much as it pains her, smiles back.

  “Seriously, though, is everything OK? You don’t need an emergency dentist?”

  It’s an old joke this time. When Susanna and Ruth had first agreed to set up shop together, it was one of the benefits that appealed to Susanna the most. She wanted her own private practice but at the same time she was afraid of the isolation, of being in an office on her own with a parade of strangers. Disturbed strangers, some of them. And Ruth, when Susanna admitted this, assured her that if they were going to rent together, that was one thing Susanna wouldn’t need to worry about. If anyone caused her any trouble, Ruth would come at them with her dentist’s drill and—even more terrifying, she maintained—a sharply honed lecture on flossing.

  “No,
it’s fine. Really. I had a free hour, that’s all, and Adam, he . . .” Susanna hesitates, worrying for an instant that Adam will be angry that she’s used his name—though of course it’s not his name, and anyway he already gave it to Alina when he booked the appointment. “We’re doubling up, that’s all,” Susanna recovers. “Adam is away next week, and we were making progress, so we thought—that is, I did—that, rather than stopping we’d . . .” Adam coughs again. Susanna tenses. “We’d double up,” she concludes.

  Ruth is trying to peer through the gap between the door and its frame. She looks at Susanna, who does her best to convey the impression that everything is normal. She has told Ruth before about the importance of keeping time in counseling, of starting and finishing precisely on the hour, but she hopes and expects her friend was paying about as much attention as Susanna typically does when Ruth talks to her about teeth.

  “Well, OK,” Ruth says. “But remember it’s Friday.” She smiles and taps her watch face. On Friday afternoons, by long-standing if unstated agreement, Ruth, Susanna and sometimes Alina head down to the Nanny State, the pub on the corner of the mews. It’s the one time of the week Susanna permits herself to behave the way she always used to: with her workmates in her old company, with Neil before they’d begun to lead separate lives, with her friends from university—from the first year at least, before she’d dropped out after getting pregnant. Ordinarily she and Ruth will have at least a couple of drinks each before heading home to their respective families. In Susanna’s case this means Emily and their two cats. In Ruth’s, a three-legged lurcher named Betty and two slightly mangy parakeets. The usual time for them to leave for the day is five o’clock, which is when Ruth officially shuts up shop. Sometimes, though, if she’s already finished with her patients and Susanna has wrapped up her paperwork, they’ll sneak out half an hour early and use the time to guzzle an extra drink.