I watched him once, playing with the rocks as you were sitting there near the shore. He built five different piles that led you across the beach, under the pier. Remember? It was June, I think. Maybe early July. You never told me what he led you to, of course, but after you left the beach I wandered down to the shore, found a starfish. I like to think that’s what he showed you, on that bright sunny day when you looked so sad. What had happened to make you blue? Why didn’t you let me make things right?
That hurt, you know, seeing you like that and not being able to do anything about it. I felt useless, as if I had no power. So I kept that starfish, tucked it in a drawer at home where it shrivelled up and dried out. When I look at it now, I’m reminded of my failings, times you’ve been sad when I wasn’t there to make it right. I’ll never let that happen again. Once we are together again, I promise I’ll never let you go.
EIGHTEEN
About fifteen minutes after Peter leaves, Mum returns to the living room clutching a silver tray topped with a pot of steaming tea. She pours, hands me a cup. Outside, a light wind disturbs the surface of the swimming pool. The fog swells against it like rolling mist.
‘How’s your head feeling? Any better?’
My head is still sore, but I’m not thinking about that. All I can think about is what I saw. But I don’t know how to broach what just happened. What am I supposed to say? I have so many things to ask, so many answers to demand. I look up, see her nibbling at her lip, fiddling with a button on her skirt.
‘Well?’ she asks.
‘I’m fine, Mum.’ In that moment it’s the only answer I can find.
‘Are you sure, because if you are in pain I can always ask Peter to—’
‘No,’ I snap. I look to the mess on the floor and know that we don’t need him to come here again. I think I am starting to remember the feeling of being a child in this house. My father’s dominance, the way he ruled the roost. My parents arguing late at night when they thought we couldn’t hear. I can’t remember anything specific, but rather am aware of a desire to get out. I recall the dream I was having before my mother arrived home: the memory of Joshua, the effect Andrew’s absences were having on him. How the dysfunctional nature of our families has left its ugly mark. Blocks of my past are starting to fit together, the picture coming into focus. I realise I don’t like the things I am seeing.
‘Mum, I’m tired. I need to go and have a lie-down.’ She nods, smiles, watches me as I leave the room.
I’m halfway up the stairs when I hear her. ‘I’m not sure what you think you saw, but it’s not what it looked like.’ Her eyes are kitten-wide when I turn to look, desperate for understanding. ‘I knew as soon as I walked back in that you’d seen us. But it’s not what you think.’
‘Then what is it?’ She looks at the floor. ‘I saw the way he touched you. I know what that touch…’ I stop myself. Do I really know what that touch means?
She moves forward, sits on the bottom step. ‘When I saw you on the floor, I panicked. He was the first person I thought of. But it was all over a long time ago.’
‘Whatever it was, it didn’t look very over to me.’
‘It barely even began,’ she says quickly. ‘It was so brief. You were still at school.’ She takes a moment, straightens her collar. ‘But feelings never die, Chloe. They are always there, even when it ends badly.’
I descend a few steps, sit alongside her. ‘Did it end—’
‘There’s nothing between us,’ she interrupts. ‘But I have to ask you whether you are going to tell your father.’
‘Maybe he already knows,’ I suggest, thinking back to the argument between my father and Peter in the past.
‘I don’t mean about the affair. I mean about Peter being here. Your father wouldn’t want to think that he had been in his house.’ Is that confirmation that he knows? ‘I’m sorry to ask, Chloe, but perhaps if you could remember how things have been between your father and me over the years, you’d understand.’
I edge forward, close the gap between us. Part of me wants to comfort her, but there is also a part of me that holds back. She has been telling me lies since I arrived in this house, keeping the truth from me. I allow myself to wonder now if she has done so willingly, or whether her hand was forced.
‘I can’t remember anything specific,’ I say, ‘but I think I understand what you mean. I remember that I couldn’t wait to leave. I was always running away, looking for an escape.’
‘And you found it in Andrew. That’s why you married him, built a life away from us. I found my escape in Peter, brief as it was.’
I feel woozy, but it has nothing to do with my head wound. Instead it’s that feeling I first got when my father told me my husband and son had died. It’s the knowledge that everything has changed, that things can never be the same as they were before those last words were spoken. I have lost my escape. Had given it up before the crash by leaving. And it’s a terrifying thought, because it’s easy to leave when you know you can go back; less easy to see the severity of the problems once a person is dead. Could we ever have found a way to make things work if Andrew hadn’t died?
‘Nothing changes by running away, Mum.’
She nods. ‘I know,’ she says as she looks away, ashamed. ‘But sometimes it’s easier to just forget than it is to try and face up to things.’ She starts to cry then, her flushed cheeks sunken and lined. It’s like looking at the mess of my own marriage. ‘Your father was a tyrant when you were younger, Chloe. He blamed me for everything.’ She shakes her head. ‘There were times when I felt like I didn’t even know myself.’
‘But with Peter you did?’ I ask. She sobs even harder at that, and I know the answer is yes.
After several minutes she stands up, brushing tears from a puffy red face. ‘I need some air, Chloe. I’m going to take one of the horses out for a ride.’ She looks over to the window at the fizz of rain as it beats against the glass. ‘You used to enjoy riding. Maybe you could put a hat on and come and walk one of the others, just a stroll around the yard. I’d be happy to help you, like I used to help Joshua. He did love it when you came to stay here, Chloe.’
I look up at her eager face. I think of her lies, the way she withheld the truth. But in this moment, with the knowledge of just how much she has suffered at my father’s hands, I can’t summon the strength to remain angry.
‘Mum,’ I say as I rush to reach her. ‘I won’t say anything.’ It isn’t relief I see on her face, but rather a sadness that it has come to this. ‘I need to ask you something, though. So that I can understand.’
‘OK,’ she says, her head bowed.
‘Did you love him?’
For a moment she doesn’t say anything. I see her swallow hard before she looks up and stares me right in the eyes. ‘Yes,’ she says, brushing her hair away from her face. ‘I do love him.’ And I realise that I’m not sure if either of us really know who she means.
* * *
That afternoon I walk one of the small horses out in the paddock. While I’m in the stables tacking up I try to remember the kiss Jess tells me I shared with Ben, but nothing returns to me. We venture outside and my mother trots alongside me on a horse called Prince, her green wax jacket dark with rain. It chills my skin as it falls. We don’t talk much, and based on the tracks left in the soft ground, I’m sure she keeps a purposeful distance.
We eat alone that night, just me, Mum and Jess. Dad is late home from work. And I’m glad; I don’t know how to face him, knowing that I am now lying to him. I wonder if it’s his guilt that is keeping him away, anxiety about his outburst, fear about the lies he has told me. Fear of where to go from here. All evening long I think about what Guy told me, the experiments my father has written papers about. Memories removed, memories created. I need to organise the facts in my head, so I write down what I know. At least that way when tomorrow comes, what I know today is solid, fixed in a moment of time. But although dinner is quiet and I have things on my mind, the fact that it’s
just the three of us seems to ease the tensions in the house. And despite my lingering anger at the pair of them for all the lies they’ve told me, I listen as Jess talks about her new books, and I tell her how I scared Mum half to death by fainting in the hall. They both seem to find the retelling of events hilarious.
But that night as I lie in bed listening to the sound of the rain falling outside, the occasional call of a roaming gull, it isn’t my mother, or Andrew, or Joshua on my mind. It’s not even Ben and the possibility of what we might have shared. It’s Damien Treadstone and his family. I think of it as my parents’ fault, the way their problems have left their mark on me. The way I needed to escape, and did so by marrying an alcoholic. The way Joshua was already being affected by the problems in my marriage. And it was Joshua who paid the ultimate price, problems and weaknesses passed down from generation to generation. I think of what the journalist said, how she implied that I was lying about the crash, how I was going to let an innocent man pay for my mistake. Can I allow the same level of destruction to tear through Damien Treadstone’s family as it has through mine, when I don’t know if he is really to blame? When I don’t even know if he was there?
Although I’m not sure of the exact events that night, there is a seed of doubt in my mind that is beginning to grow. I have such vivid memories of moving around in the woods that I am sure I must have been awake at some point. I remember being out of my car. I was awake enough to see Joshua lying lifeless on the forest floor. That wasn’t just a dream, or a nightmare. I can’t explain how I ended up back in the driver’s seat, but I know this: I was conscious at some point, and I don’t remember Damien Treadstone being anywhere near me. I can’t ignore these memories, pretend I know nothing like my father wants me to. I’m sick of the lies and half-truths, even if in their absence the blame ends up with me. I can’t let this go as far as a trial. If I’m to blame for the accident, I have to take responsibility, not run away like I always used to. I can’t allow another family to end up being destroyed.
I get up and retrieve DS Gray’s card from the pocket of my robe. I stare at the number, brush my fingers over the flat blue lettering. Tomorrow, I decide, I will go to the police and tell them what I know.
NINETEEN
I’m running, slipping on leaves, the branches of trees smacking me in the face. I fall down an embankment, the freshly broken bark of a tree gouging into my right leg, cutting it all the way from my ankle to just above my knee. Joshua is ahead, lying in the dirt, barely moving, rain falling across his body. I hear him call me.
Mummy.
I wake shaking, my fingers reaching down to my leg, my skin slick with sweat. I run my fingers down the length of the thick red scar. The wound I was dreaming about is the same as the one I see before me now. These dreams are pieces of that night. I have to start putting my old life back together, and maybe DS Gray is the one to help me do that.
I sneak out through the back door, head up the driveway. I’m entering the code at the gate when I hear a man’s voice.
‘Chloe,’ I hear, and as I turn around I see Ben. He is wearing a heavy green overall with mud smudged into the knees. Today his mop of wet blond hair is tucked under a beanie, tufts of it poking out from the edges. ‘Where are you going?’
All the possibilities run through my mind, most of which I don’t want to face. ‘It’s none of your business,’ I say. ‘Please leave me alone.’
‘Chloe, wait.’ He hurries towards me. ‘I’m sorry if I scared you off the other day. I know things are hard for you at the moment. Your father said—’
‘Said what?’ I turn to look at Ben, take a step further away.
He looks down at his hands, one fiddling with the other. ‘That you can’t remember the past. That you don’t know the things you used to know. That it’s risky to push you too soon after your injuries.’
‘What do you know about my injuries? You’re the gardener.’
He looks up, his eyes meeting mine. ‘Just the gardener?’ And he seems disappointed then. ‘I know you can’t remember me.’ He takes a long swallow. ‘But I know how much I wish you could.’
I turn away and hurry through the gate, rushing towards the phone box by the village shop. I call a taxi, still out of breath. Is it really possible that there was something between Ben and me? The implication was that there was more to us than perhaps what even Jess suggested, but I can’t remember anything. Another whole chunk of my life wiped out.
I close my eyes as we drive through the countryside. It’s overwhelming seeing the world before me, so large in comparison to what I’ve been used to over the last few months. I feel lost. I pull DS Gray’s card from my pocket and study it: his name, the number. Anything rather than look outside. I wonder where Ditchling Road is, the place I lost my son. I don’t know, but I know I’m not ready to see it.
The roads are quiet until we arrive in Brighton, our only companion the constant downpour of rain. The driver pulls up outside the police station and I hand over the twenty-pound note I took from my mother’s purse on the way out.
I gaze up at the building as the taxi pulls away: all angles and harsh edges, big, white, and aggressive. It seems brutal, designed to intimidate. Water streams down my face as I look up at the clouds swelling above. Rain forces pedestrians to fight with umbrellas, shelter under porches and porticos. I hurry towards the entrance of the police station and step inside.
A slim uniformed officer leads me through the corridors, dark and narrow, claustrophobic and tight. As he walks, I keep my eyes on the back of his head, studying the sharp haircut, the neat outline of his clothes. The sight of his neck stirs a memory of looking at the back of a man’s head, the hair blonde and wavy, hanging around the neckline in slick, greasy clumps. It’s Andrew’s face I see as he turns to me, smiles. It’s a sad smile, laced with disappointment. The flashback is from near the end. Tainted memories. He had probably lost his job by that point. I used to believe that if only he could get another job, then everything would be all right. That if he had to go to work he wouldn’t be able to drink. How I pinned my hopes on ifs.
I can feel my heartbeat beginning to race, as if the walls are closing in on me as we move deeper through the maze of corridors. The echo of it grows louder, stronger with every beat. The officer’s shoes resonate as he walks. I can barely breathe as people pass, dashing by with hurried footsteps. Did I rush about like this when I was working, making demands, following orders? Did I have a life as rich as this?
We arrive outside a blue door, and the officer who is escorting me knocks twice. I hear DS Gray call for us to enter, and any thoughts of my old job evaporate, like water under the glare of a hot summer sun.
The office is small, only just big enough for a desk and one visitor’s chair. It smells of coffee and sweat. A filing cabinet stands on one side of the room, folders piled high on top. Other files are stacked on the floor. Too much work. The young officer closes the door behind me and DS Gray motions for me to sit.
The walls are unbroken, no windows, so everything sounds dull and echoless, like a small Parisian hotel room. Why do I think that? Have I been to Paris? Post-it notes and photographs cover sections of the wall. Somebody has made an effort to string up a garland of tinsel over the top of a poster about a Christmas party. Was it DS Gray who did that? It makes me warm to him if he did; that effort in an unexpected place. The party is to be held at a place called The Fountainhead, which I think sounds vaguely familiar.
‘It’s a nice place,’ I hear him say. I avert my eyes when I realise he is staring at me. ‘Do a nice roast on a Sunday, too.’ He gazes up at the string of green tinsel and shakes his head. ‘I was the mug that suggested it, so I got left with the organisation.’ I smile, unsure what to say. ‘Anyway, email sent,’ he says as he hits the enter key with a show of enthusiasm. ‘I’m all ears.’
He sits back in his chair, folds one awkward leg over the other, squashing his thigh against his ample stomach. He seems uncomfortable, unable to fit int
o the chair properly. He edges back and after a bit of manoeuvring finds the sweet spot, laces his fingers together over his protruding gut. He snaps one thumbnail against the other.
I can hear people in the corridor on the other side of the wall, hurried footsteps, distant laughter. ‘It’s about Damien Treadstone,’ I say. I have so much I want to tell him, so many things that I have learned or remembered. I don’t know where to start, but I’m aware of a need to be cautious. ‘I’ve been called as a witness by his defence.’
He rocks on his chair. ‘I know that.’
The thought of having to stand up in court makes my skin crawl. ‘Considering I can’t remember what happened, what does he expect me to say?’ I feel guilty, aware that I’m not telling DS Gray the entire truth of what I think I know. There are so many possibilities running through my mind, potential explanations of what happened and why I was there. Most significantly, I’m almost certain that at some point I wasn’t in my car that night. But this has to be taken one step at a time. If it was Damien in the churchyard the other night I must first try to understand what he wanted before I give too much away. I only have a little knowledge, and so I hold on to it, protect it with my life.
‘Well for a start you can’t testify to his presence. I’m guessing he is rather hoping that once you see him there on the stand, you’ll admit that you don’t remember seeing him at the scene of the accident. That would be very good for his defence.’
I think about Damien Treadstone’s son, the idea of what lies ahead for his family if he is found guilty. ‘DS Gray, do you believe him when he says that he wasn’t involved?’
Between the Lies Page 11