Between the Lies

by Michelle Adams

Out of the three of them, Jess has been the most relaxed with me since I came home. On the first day as I stood in the hallway, unsure how to act in surroundings I didn’t recognise, I slipped off my jacket with Jess’s help and then with some discomfort managed to wriggle out of my trainers. I reached down, held them up. ‘Where should I put these?’ I asked.

  For a second she appeared puzzled, as if my question didn’t make sense. Then she took them from me, tossed them underneath the round table that stood in the middle of the large hallway. ‘Don’t act like a guest,’ she said, a sad smile crossing her lips. I didn’t know how to tell her that a guest was exactly what I felt like. I was here in a house and a life that didn’t feel like mine. What else was I supposed to do?

  ‘Of course it’s confusing,’ she says. ‘You can’t expect to wake up from a coma and just slip straight back into your old life.’ Even the word shakes me. Coma. It’s just four short letters but seems infinitely huge. ‘You’ll get there. You just have to give it time.’ She looks away, almost embarrassed. ‘That’s what Dad says, anyway.’

  ‘It all just feels so alien. I wish I could get outside, go for a walk at least. That way maybe I would recognise something. I can’t stand being cooped up in this house.’

  She stands up, sets down her cup of tea. ‘Well nobody is here to stop you. Why don’t we go out together?’

  ‘Dad said I shouldn’t, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but Dad’s not here.’ She flashes me a wink. ‘Anyway, I’ll be with you. I’ll make sure you’re all right.’

  We slip on our coats and leave the house. The day is crisp and chilly, moisture clinging to my limp curls and woolly hat. We walk side by side up the driveway, able only to see a short distance ahead, not even as far as the treeline. And just up ahead I see Ben pushing a wheelbarrow. He has never seen me out of the house before.

  ‘Don’t tell him anything about this, OK?’ Jess tells him as we pass. I sense him stop just behind us, the crunch of the gravel as he sets the wheelbarrow down on the ground. He is at least six feet tall and broad shouldered. His blond hair is damp with fog.

  ‘She’s not supposed to go out,’ he says to my sister. ‘Dr Daniels says she’s not well.’

  Jess turns with her hands on her hips. ‘So are you going to try to stop us? You’re the groundsman, not the guardsman.’

  Ben looks nervous, fiddles his hands into his pockets. ‘It’s for her own good, Jess. That’s what he says.’

  ‘You can always tell him what we’ve done. After all, he’s very interested in the truth, isn’t he?’ Ben takes a step back at that. Briefly his gaze flickers to me, but his eyes soon settle on his feet. Jess moves in close to me, links her arms through mine. ‘Come on, Chloe. Let’s go.’

  And as we walk away I glance back over my shoulder to see him watching us as we leave. When he sees me staring he picks up the wheelbarrow and turns away. ‘What was all that about?’ I ask Jess as we arrive at the gate.

  ‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it,’ she tells me. But it feels as if there is more to that exchange than Jess wants me to understand.

  When we arrive at the gate, I watch as she taps in the code, try to memorise the numbers. I say them over and over in my head. Then with a quiet beep the gate opens, we move through and she locks it behind her. That is all it took. Four numbers. We are out of the house, walking along the road towards Rusperford village.

  As we walk, she tells me about her chemistry degree, about explosive lab experiments and how she wants to become a forensic toxicologist. A boy she is seeing and planning on dumping when she returns to university after Christmas. But I’m not really listening; instead I am looking around at the trees, the road, waiting for something to come into view. I’m enlivened by this liberation, my pain lessened and my spirits raised. I notice the church and the graveyard on my right, a cenotaph in the grounds just peeping through the mist. My world is growing. Across the road there is a hotel, the only visible part the sign at the start of the driveway. Have I been there in the past? I think maybe I have. I point to it.

  ‘We used to come here sometimes at Christmas,’ Jess tells me. ‘Back when things between Mum and Dad were easier than they are now.’ I gaze at the hotel peeping at me through the mist. It is still only a sense of knowledge I have, an idea without proof. An illusion almost, like fog, there one minute and gone the next. I can’t tell her anything about the hotel, like the decoration inside, or some funny anecdote about how Dad nearly choked on a sprout. I don’t know anything specific, or even understand what she means about things with Mum and Dad. But I can feel my past in ways I couldn’t before. We continue the walk in silence, my eyes hungry for more.

  As we near the centre of the village, I realise that we drove this way from the hospital, but still it feels like the first time I am seeing it in years. There’s a used-car garage and a hairdressing salon ahead. A small village green with a duck pond, a layer of mist clinging to the surface. We follow the road as it runs along the edge of the woods, and although I have been walking for less than ten minutes, with Jess’s arm for support, the reality of my injuries begins to supersede my enthusiasm; I can feel my leg beginning to hurt, the headache growing underneath my woolly hat. I didn’t bring the walking stick: a test for myself that I appear to have failed.

  I stop for breath, hold on to a gate that leads to a small park. It feels as if my lungs might explode as I gaze across the wet grass towards the swings. Clouds form as I gasp for breath, drawing damp air into my lungs. Moisture clings to tree branches like jewels encrusted on spindly boughs. I notice some kind of wooden hut alongside the playground, a slide and a bench too.

  And for a moment as I stand there, a clear thought comes to me, a vision of myself sitting on a park bench similar to the one in front of me. I am waiting for something, somebody perhaps. My nervous hands are so fidgety I have to trap them under my legs. It is summer, the scent of roses drifting by on a warm breeze. But Jess loops her arm through mine again, and just as fast as it came, the vision is gone.

  ‘We used to come here as kids,’ she tells me. I ignore her at first, searching the space before me for something that resembles the vision in my mind. Is it actually a memory? If so, from when? From where? ‘Don’t you remember?’ she urges.

  ‘Not properly. I have all these thoughts going round in my head, things I can’t explain. I just wish I could remember something that would help me. Something solid.’

  ‘Maybe I can help,’ she says, shrugging her shoulders. ‘That is, if you feel you can talk to me. You used to be able to. We used to be close.’

  I think of the pictures from the family albums, the sight of us together in sibling unity, juxtaposed against the alien feel of her touch when she brushes against my skin. If we used to be close, that was in a different life. I was a different person then.

  ‘I don’t think I can, Jess. It’s hard to open up to people I…’ I stop myself, not wanting to offend her when she has been so good as to go against my father’s instructions and bring me out.

  ‘That you don’t know?’ Embarrassed, I nod, relieved that she appears to understand and that she isn’t angry or upset. ‘The thing is, Chloe, although you can’t remember me, I remember you. Maybe some of the things you want to talk about are things we have already discussed. Maybe there is a history we share that could help shed some light on who you were…’ She pauses, her turn to feel awkward about what she’s just said. I notice her cheeks flush bright pink. ‘I mean are. Who you are, Chloe.’

  She fiddles at the handle of the gate, scratching at the paint with the edge of her nail. Even she knows the old me has gone. I used to think that there was a clear distinction between life and death: either you were here or you weren’t. Now I know that you can be alive and still feel completely detached from the world.

  ‘Anyway, I could help, I’m sure of it. You just have to be prepared to give me a chance.’

  I look up. Could she be right? ‘Really? So we were close?’ It’s hard to imagine all
that shared history is lost to me. But maybe if I can find the courage to speak to Jess, open up to her now that we are alone, she might be able to help me discover something of the woman I used to be. The woman I still am?

  ‘We used to trust each other, Chloe, talk about the stuff we wouldn’t talk to anybody else about. At least before you left home.’ She smiles, hops up onto the gate. It rattles under her weight. It’s the only thing that breaks the silence. ‘The sort of things we would have kept from Dad.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, glancing over at the play equipment. ‘I feel like he’s keeping something from me. Like something happened before the crash and he is trying to stop me from remembering it. Do you have any idea why I feel that way?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of telling you that you used to waste hours watching Friends repeats, or that you used to eat a whole tub of ice cream in one go. Or even the fact that Ben once tried to kiss you. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Once tried to what?’

  She sniggers at my shock. ‘Why do you think he stares at you all the time? He’s always had a thing about you. He used to help you tack up your horse, and one time when you were alone in the stables he got the wrong impression.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ I think of all the times I have caught him staring, and I realise those desires must still exist. All those times I have tried to make polite conversation; does he think I’m still interested? Was I ever interested?

  ‘I know; he’s like a gypsy or something. As if you’d have been interested. Anyway, you never said anything to Dad about it because you felt bad that he might lose his job, so don’t worry about Ben. He won’t drop us in it with Dad. If he did, we could tell him what happened.’

  ‘Still that doesn’t explain why I feel this way about Dad, though.’ I’m anxious to say the next part aloud. I take a deep breath. ‘He scares me a bit, Jess. I keep having these dreams, always the same thing. I sure they have something to do with the crash, but when I tell Dad about them, he just brushes it off. I keep dreaming about a boy. At first I was chasing him in a car, then he was lost out at sea. Another time I dreamed he was being buried alive.’ That was before I left the hospital. ‘I feel like something awful happened that I can’t explain.’

  ‘It did, Chloe. You lost your memory. That’s the awful thing.’ She hops down from the gate, loops her arm through mine again.

  ‘I think it’s something more than that.’ I lick at my cold, chapped lips. ‘Jess, please tell me. I didn’t hurt anybody in the accident, did I? I didn’t run somebody over?’

  She is silent for a moment, and I’m sure I see a dampening of her eyes. She reaches out, strokes my face. She might be over a decade younger than me, but in that moment it feels as if she is much older. ‘Don’t you think we would have told you if something like that had happened?’

  ‘Not if Dad told you not to. Please be honest with me. If you know something, tell me the truth.’

  ‘Chloe, it was just a terrible accident, that’s all. It was raining, and the place you crashed is notoriously dangerous.’

  I feel so stupid in this moment, so helpless and naive. It seems that when you can’t trust yourself, you can’t trust anybody. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Dad’s difficult, yes, but he would have told you if something like that had happened, don’t you think? Now come on, I don’t want to tire you out. Let’s get you home. Ben’s probably missing you.’ I nudge her in the arm and she laughs again. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and we can curl up and watch some of those Friends repeats you love so much.’

  We move off, Jess’s arm through mine, her grip tight enough that it helps take the weight from my damaged leg. If I come out again, I must bring my stick, I think.

  Halfway back to the house, I see a young woman walking towards us, moving fast, pushing a buggy. I look down to see a small blonde-haired boy kicking about inside it, like the boy from my dream. And as she passes us, I can’t help but stare, as if that little boy is everything I’ve ever wanted in the world.

  FIVE

  When we arrive back at the house I go straight upstairs, eager to avoid Ben. I don’t remember anything about him once trying to kiss me, and I don’t want to run into him now that I know. I arrive in my bedroom and open the drawer in the bedside table and pull out a pen and an old bible. I open the book, see that just inside the front cover I have at some point in the past written my name: Chloe Daniels. As I flick through the pages, I recall standing in church, singing a hymn, holding a book just like this, the cry of a baby in the background. A memory, or my mind playing tricks? I’m not sure. I grip the pen tightly and press the tip against the first page. I write down the code from the gate, then scrawl my name over and over. The letters are shaky, almost childlike. But it is my name. That is what’s important. Chloe. Me. Still here. It doesn’t take long before I fall asleep.

  I wake hours later to the sound of a car engine. I get up, move across to the window and open it a little to have a look at who has come home. I see my mother’s white Range Rover on the driveway, now back from the garage, her feet quick across the frosty ground. The breeze bothers at the edge of the heavy floral curtain so I close the window quickly, slip back into the room. I am only wearing a light cotton blouse, and I am cold. I need to find something else to put on.

  I open the cupboards but the clothes are not mine, most of them either my mother’s or cast-offs from Jess. Hand-me-downs travelling in the wrong direction. Everything in the cupboards feels wrong, because nothing really belongs to me.

  I look down at the bag under the bed, the handle sticking out from where my mother disturbed it the night before. I drag it towards me, setting it on the edge of the bed. I pull on the zipper, peer inside.

  Jeans, T-shirts and a couple of simple grey jumpers. Nothing immediately familiar. I find the set of pyjamas I was wearing in the hospital, a drip of blood on the inside of the left sleeve from where they changed one of my lines. I try to think back to the hospital, picture myself wearing these pyjamas. Even those days seem blurry to me now.

  I rummage deeper in the bag and pull out one of the photo albums that my parents created for me in an attempt to make me feel like part of this family. I crawl onto the bed, setting the album down on my legs, and turn the pages one by one, taking in the images. In some of the pictures I am a child in the garden, fishing in the river, wearing a daisy chain I must have made. In others I am on holiday, part of a scene at the beach, a green and blue swimsuit with a badge sewn on the front for my achievements in the fifty metres.

  As I turn the pages I grow, time fast-forwarded to my teenage years in which I evidently became shy of the camera. In nearly all of the pictures from that time there is a silly grin on my face, an awareness of the photographer, an awareness of myself. In those pictures I have lighter hair, bleached either by the sun or by my hand. I look a bit like Jess does now. There is a picture from my graduation ceremony after I finished at university, my parents flanking me on either side. Jess is small in front of my mother, perhaps nine years old. I wonder who took that picture. A well-intentioned stranger, or somebody else from my past whom I have forgotten?

  I notice that the final picture of my graduation has slipped out of position. Underneath there is another photo, which has been hidden, the edge now exposed. I peel the plastic cover away, take the picture out. I am sitting in the kitchen, eating a slice of cake. There is a balloon attached to the back of my chair, and Jess is standing beside me pulling a stupid face. A knife in her hand, a cake set before her on the table. I count the candles. Fifteen. Five years ago. Mum is in the kitchen too, busy at the worktop, a glass of wine at her side. But there are two more details to which my eye keeps returning. Things that don’t make any sense.

  The first is the ring on my finger, a simple gold band on my left hand, glistening in the flash from the camera. It looks like a wedding ring. The second is a little boy sitting on my lap. I have my arms wrapped tightly around him, my chin nuzzled into his neck, hold
ing him close.

  I look down at the ring finger of my left hand as a rumble of thunder creeps across the heavy grey sky. The skin is dry, the finger itself perhaps slightly thinner than its counterpart on the right. Has a ring been sitting there? Was I married? Am I married? If so, where the hell is my husband? And who is that little boy? Is it the boy from my dreams?

  The rain is really picking up by the time I get downstairs, coursing down the kitchen window in waves, creating turbulent shadows that shift across the walls. My leg is sore from the effort of walking, my head throbbing. I call for Mum, then Jess, and when nobody replies I sit down at the table and wait. The light is fading further, dark descending despite the early hour, leaving in its place the cool lustre of an approaching storm. And then I see her, my mother, rushing along the winding path of the back garden with her coat pulled up over her head, caught in the sudden downpour.

  She races through the back door, head down and shoulders curled over, shrieking as cold rivulets of water drip from her hair and run down her back. She is laughing to herself as she pulls the door closed behind her. Then as she turns and sees me, she almost jumps out of her skin.

  ‘Chloe!’ she shrieks. She catches her breath, laughs as she shakes the water from her coat. ‘You frightened the life out of me. Jess told me you were sleeping.’

  ‘I woke up. I was looking at the pictures you brought to the hospital. One of the albums you made.’

  ‘Oh?’ she says as she locks the back door. She sets her riding jacket on a black wrought-iron hook. I can hear horses neighing in the garden stables. ‘Anything new coming back to you?’ She sits down on a small bench, pulls off her muddy boots. She puts the kettle on to boil before sitting down at the table.

  ‘You tell me,’ I say as I hold up the picture that I have taken from the album. She takes it from my hand. I don’t know if it is just my imagination, but in that moment it looks as if she is worried. I see her swallow, an uncomfortable lump in her throat, her hands shaking with fear. She appears on the verge of being sick. ‘Who is that little boy?’ I ask.