The Lying Game

by Ruth Ware

  I HAVE A long time to think on the cold, windswept walk to Salten village, my feet eating up the distance mile by slow, chilly mile. My mind see-saws between dwelling resentfully on Owen’s failings as a partner, and the guilty consciousness that I haven’t behaved perfectly to him. I tick off his faults in my head – his short-fused temper, his possessiveness, the way he ploughs ahead with plans without asking me what I think.

  But other memories intrude. The curve of his spine as he bends over the bath, pouring warm water over our daughter’s head. His kindness, his resourcefulness. His love for me. And Freya.

  And beneath it all, like a bass counterpoint, is my own complicity in this. I have lied. I have lied and concealed and withheld from him. I’ve been keeping secrets since the day I met him, but these last few weeks have been on a different scale, and he knows something is wrong. Owen has always been possessive, but he was never jealous before – not like this. And that is down to me. I have made him like this. We have. Me, Fatima, Thea and Kate.

  I hardly notice the distance, so wrapped am I in my thoughts, but I am no nearer making any decisions by the time the far-off smudges in the mist resolve into houses and buildings.

  As I round the corner towards the Salten Arms, flexing my cold fingers on the pram handle and brushing away the puddle of rainwater that has gathered in the hood, I can hear music. Not piped music, but the old kind – wheezing accordions, the twang of banjos, the cheerful squawk of fiddles.

  I push open the door to the saloon bar and the sound hits me like a wall, together with the smell of woodsmoke from the fire, beer, and packed, cheerful bodies. The average age is well over sixty, and almost all of them are men.

  Heads turn, but the music doesn’t cease, and as I push my way into the overheated room, I see Mary Wren perched on the edge of a stool at the bar, watching the players and tapping her foot in time to the jig. She notices me as I stand uncertainly at the threshold, and nods and winks. I smile back, listen for a moment, and then head for the back bar, noticing, as if for the first time, the wooden panels that line the walls. My stomach shifts, thinking of Kate’s note, thinking how easy it would be for anyone here to casually pull up a stool near the loose panel, or slip a hand in as they walked to the loos … even easier if you owned the place.

  I remember Mary’s casual comment about the brewery wanting to sell the place to make flats for second-home owners, and as I look around the walls, noticing the peeling paint and the fraying carpets and chairs, I think about what that would mean to Jerry. He’s worked here all his life – this pub is his livelihood, his social life, and his retirement plan. What else could he do? I’m not sure whether it’s the eyes upon me, the heat and noise, or the realisation that Kate’s blackmailer could be standing just the other side of the bar, but I feel a sudden wave of claustrophobia and paranoia. All these locals, the grinning old men with their knowing looks, and the tight-mouthed bar maid with her arms folded, they know who I am, I’m sure of it.

  I shove through the crowds towards the toilets and drag Freya’s pram inside, and I let the door swing shut, my back against it, feeling the cool and silence wash over me. I shut my eyes and I tell myself you can do this. Don’t let them get to you.

  It’s only when I open my eyes that I see the words written in faint, blurred Sharpie on the door, reflected in the dirty mirror.

  Mark Wren is a sex offender!!!!

  I feel the blood rush to my cheeks, a scalding wash of shame. The letters are old and hard to make out, but not illegible. And someone else, more recently, has scratched out the Mark and written over the top in biro the word Sergeant.

  Why didn’t I realise? Why didn’t I realise that a lie can outlast any truth, and that in this place people remember. It is not like London, where the past is written over again and again until nothing is left. Here, nothing is forgotten, and the ghost of my mistake will haunt Mark Wren forever. And it will haunt me.

  I go to the sink and splash water on my face, while Freya watches me curiously, and then I straighten, looking at myself in the mirror, facing up to my reflection. Yes, this is my fault. I know that. But it’s not only my fault. And if I can face up to myself, I can face them.

  I open the door to the pub, and push Freya’s pram determinedly towards the bar.

  ‘Isa Wilde!’ comes a voice as I pass the taps, slightly slurred. ‘Well, I thought as you’d left Salten for another ten years. What’ll it be?’

  I turn and see Jerry himself grinning at me from behind the bar, his gold tooth winking in the light from the fire. He is polishing a glass on a cloth that has seen better days.

  ‘Hello, Jerry,’ I say. Freya is kicking and fretting, too warm now that we’re out of the cool bathroom. She manages to unpop the rain cover with one particularly bad-tempered shove, and gives a little squeal of triumph, and I pick her up, shushing her against my shoulder. ‘You don’t mind babies in the bar, do you?’

  ‘Not so long as they drink beer,’ Jerry says, and he grins his whiskery, gap-toothed grin. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Are you serving food?’

  ‘Not until six but it’s …’ He glances up at the clock above the bar. ‘Well, it’s all but now – here’s the menu.’

  He pushes a grubby piece of dog-eared paper across the bar and I study it. Sandwiches … fish pie … dressed crab … burger and chips …

  ‘I’ll have the fish pie,’ I say at last. ‘And … and maybe a glass of white wine.’

  Well, why not? It is almost six.

  ‘Want to start a tab?’

  ‘Sure. Do you want a card?’ I’m feeling in my handbag but he laughs and shakes his head.

  ‘I knows where to find you.’

  I’m not sure how, but he manages to make the well-worn phrase sound faintly threatening, but I smile, and nod towards the back room, which is quieter, with a couple of free tables.

  ‘I’ll sit through there, if that’s OK?’

  ‘You do that, I’ll bring the drink across meself. You won’t want to be carrying it with the little ’un.’

  I nod, and make my way through the back room. One of the free tables is by the door and strewn with greasy pint glasses. Someone has knocked out their pipe on the wood and left the contents there. The other, in the corner, isn’t much better. There is a wasp buzzing in a puddle of spilled beer, trapped beneath an upturned glass, and the blistered faux-leather seat is covered in dog hair, but it has space for Freya’s pram, so I clear the debris to the other table, give the surface a cursory wipe with a beer mat and settle us both down, wedging the pram in the gap. Freya is squirming in my arms and headbutting my chest, and I can see I’m not going to be able to stretch her feed until I get back; she has decided it’s time, and is about to kick off any minute. It’s not where I’d choose to feed her – I’ve fed in pubs before, often, but almost always with Owen present, and to be honest in London no one would care if you breastfed a cat. Here, by myself, it feels very different and I’m not sure how Jerry and his regulars will react, but I don’t really have a choice unless I want Freya exploding. I unbutton my coat and rearrange my layers for maximum modesty, then clamp her on as quickly as I can and let my coat fall to shield us both.

  A few heads turn as she latches on, and one old man with a white beard stares with frank curiosity. I’m just thinking, with a little shift in my stomach, what Kate said about the salacious old men gossiping in the Salten Arms, when Jerry comes up with a glass of white on a tray and a knife and fork wrapped in a paper napkin.

  ‘We ought to charge corkage on that,’ he says with a grin and a nod at my chest, and I feel the colour rise in my cheeks. I manage a slightly thin laugh.

  ‘Sorry, she was hungry. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Not I. And I’m sure the rest of ’em won’t mind an eyeful neither.’ He cackles fruitily, a noise that’s picked up like a wheezing echo by his cronies at the bar, and I feel my face begin to burn. More heads are turning, and the white-haired old man gives me a bleary wink an
d then guffaws, scratching at his crotch as he whispers something to his friend, nodding towards where I sit.

  I am seriously considering telling Jerry to cancel the fish pie and walking out, when he slides the glass across the table and then nods back towards the bar. ‘Drink’s on your friend, by the way.’

  My friend? I look up, and my eyes meet … Luc Rochefort’s.

  He is sitting by the bar, and as I watch, he raises his glass to me, his expression a little … rueful? I’m not sure.

  I think of Owen. Of that email he sent me. Of what he would say if he walked into the bar right now, and I feel again that unsettling shift in my stomach, but before I can think what to say, Jerry has gone, and I realise that Luc is standing up, walking towards me.

  There’s no escape. I’m penned in by the pram to my left and a group of people’s chairs to my right, and I’m handicapped by Freya clamped to my bare breast beneath my coat. There’s no way I can get out before he makes it across. I can’t even rise to meet him without something going astray and Freya kicking off.

  I think about the bloodied sheep.

  I think about Freya in his arms, wailing.

  I think about the drawings, about Owen’s suspicions, and my cheeks flame, and I can’t tell whether it’s with anger or … something else.

  ‘Look,’ I say as he comes closer, his pint in his hand. I want to be brave, confrontational, but I’m shrinking back against the padded bench almost in spite of myself. ‘Look, Luc –’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says abruptly, cutting across me. ‘About what happened. With your baby.’ His face is set, his eyes dark in the dim light of the back room. ‘I was trying to help, but it was a stupid thing to do, I realise that now.’

  It is not what I was expecting him to say, and the wind is taken out of my sails, so that my speech about keeping the hell away from me falters and I’m not sure what to say.

  ‘The drink – I know, it’s pointless, but I – it was a peace offering. I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again.’

  He turns to go, something rises up inside me, a kind of desperation, and to my own astonishment I find myself blurting out, ‘Wait.’

  He turns back, his expression guarded. He’s refusing to catch my eye, but there’s something there … a sort of hope?

  ‘You – you shouldn’t have taken Freya,’ I say at last. ‘But I accept your apology.’

  He stands there, mutely, towering over the table and then he ducks his head in awkward acknowledgement and our eyes meet. Perhaps it’s his uncertainty, the way he’s standing with his shoulders hunched, like a child who has outgrown their own height. Or perhaps it’s his eyes, the way they hold mine with a kind of painful vulnerability, but for a minute he looks so like his fifteen-year-old self that my heart seems to catch and skip.

  I swallow against the pain in my throat, the pain that is always there, lately – my old symptom of stress and anxiety.

  I think of Owen and his accusations, of the act he already thinks I’ve committed … and I feel a recklessness take hold.

  ‘Luc, I – do you want to sit down?’

  He doesn’t speak. For a minute I think he’s going to pretend he didn’t hear me, turn away.

  But then he swallows himself, the muscles moving in his throat.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

  I nod, and he pulls back a chair, and sits, holding his pint in one hand, staring down into the deep amber liquid.

  There is a long silence, and the men at the bar turn away, as if Luc’s presence is some sort of shield against their curiosity. I feel Freya’s strong suck, her hands flexing against me. Luc sits, not looking at the two of us, his eyes averted.

  ‘Did you … did you hear the news?’ he asks at last.

  ‘About the –’ I stop. I want to say about the bones, but somehow I can’t make myself say the words. He nods.

  ‘They’ve identified the body. It’s Ambrose.’

  ‘I heard.’ I swallow again. ‘Luc, I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he says. His French accent is stronger, as it often was at moments of stress. He shakes his head, as if trying to push away unwanted thoughts. ‘I was … surprised how much it hurt.’

  My breath catches in my throat, and I realise afresh what we did – the life sentence that we inflicted not just on ourselves, but on Luc.

  ‘Have … have you told your mother?’ I manage.

  ‘No. She wouldn’t care any more. And she doesn’t deserve that name,’ Luc says very quietly.

  I take a gulp of wine, trying to calm my heart, which is hammering, and soothe the pain in my throat.

  ‘She … she was an addict, right?’

  ‘Yes. Heroin. And later méthadone.’

  He pronounces the word the French way, may-tadon, and for a moment I don’t understand, then I realise and I bite my lip, wishing I had never brought up the subject. Luc is silent, staring down at his pint, and I don’t know what to say, how to retrieve this. He came here to try to make things right between us, and all I’ve done is remind him of everything he lost.

  I’m saved from speaking by the arrival of a young girl with a plate of steaming fish pie. She puts it down in front of me without preamble, and says, ‘Sauces?’

  ‘No,’ I say, with difficulty. ‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’

  I put a spoonful of pie to my mouth. It’s rich and creamy and the cheese on top is golden and bubbled, but it tastes of sawdust. The soft flakes in my mouth crumble, and I feel the scratch of a bone at the back of my throat as I force down the mouthful.

  Luc says nothing, he just sits, in quiet thought. His big hands rest on the table, his fingers curled loosely, and I remember that morning in the post office, his contained fury, the cuts on his knuckles and the sense of fear I had at his presence. I think about the sheep, and about the blood on his hands … and I wonder.

  Luc is angry, I know that. But if I were him, I would be angry too.

  It is much later. Freya is asleep, sprawled against my chest, and Luc and I have fallen silent after hours of talking. Now we are just sitting, side by side, watching her breathe, thinking our own thoughts.

  When the bell goes for last orders I can’t quite believe it, and have to get out my phone to check that yes, it really is ten to eleven.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to Luc, as he stands and stretches, and he looks surprised.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For tonight. I – I needed to get out, to forget everything for a little bit.’ I realise, as I say the words, that I have not thought of Owen for hours, nor Kate. I rub my face, loosen my cramped limbs.

  ‘It was nothing.’ He bends, and then takes Freya from me, very gently, so that I can squeeze out from behind the little table. I watch as he cradles her inexpertly against his chest, and find myself smiling as she gives a little sigh and snuggles into his warmth.

  ‘You’re a natural. Do you want kids?’

  ‘I won’t have children.’ He says it matter-of-factly, and I look up in surprise.

  ‘Really? Why not? Don’t you like them?’

  ‘It’s not that. I didn’t have the best childhood. You get fucked up, you’re liable to pass that on.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ I take Freya from him as he holds her out, and put her tenderly into her pram, resting my hand gently on her chest as her eyelids flutter open and then close again in capitulation. ‘If that were true, none of us would every reproduce. We’ve all got baggage. What about all the good qualities you’ve got to pass on?’

  ‘There’s nothing about me any child should have,’ he says, and for a minute I think he’s joking, but he’s not, his face is serious, and sad. ‘And I won’t risk giving another kid an upbringing like mine.’

  ‘Luc … That – that’s so sad. I’m sure you wouldn’t be anything like your mother.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘No, but no one knows for sure what kind of parent they’ll be. Crap people have babies every day – but the difference is they don’t car
e. You do.’

  He shrugs, puts his arms into his jacket, and then helps me into mine.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not having children. I don’t want to bring a child into a world like this.’

  Out in the car park Luc pushes his hands in his pockets, hunches his shoulders.

  ‘Can I walk you home?’

  ‘It’s miles out of your way.’

  But I realise as soon as I’ve said it, that I have no idea where he lives. Still, the Mill can’t possibly be on the way anywhere, can it?

  ‘Not really out of my way,’ he says. ‘My rooms are on the coast road, out towards the school. The quickest way is across the marsh.’

  Oh. It explains a lot. Not least, why he was passing the Mill the night we went to the alumnae ball. I feel a faint twinge of guilt at disbelieving his story.

  I don’t know what to say.

  Do I trust Luc? No, is the answer. But since my conversation with Kate this morning, the way she ran rather than answer my questions … I’m no longer sure if I trust anyone in this place.

  I didn’t bring a torch, and with the cloud cover the night is very dark. We walk slowly, me pushing the pram, Luc picking our route, both of us talking quietly. A truck passes in the darkness, its headlamps throwing our shadows long and black on the road ahead, and Luc raises a hand in greeting as it passes and disappears into the darkness.

  ‘… night, Luc …’ comes faintly from one of the windows, and it strikes me that, in a way, Luc has succeeded where Kate has not. He has made a life for himself here, become part of the community, while she is still an outsider, just as Mary said.

  We are at the bridge over the Reach when I find I have a stone in my shoe and we pause for me to get it out. While I hop on one leg and then wriggle the shoe back on my bare foot, Luc leans his elbows on the railings, looking out over the estuary towards the sea. The fog has lifted, but with the clouds so low and thick, the Reach is shrouded in darkness and there is nothing to see, not even the faint glimmer of lights from the Mill. His face is unreadable, but I am thinking of the little white tent, hidden in the darkness, and I wonder if he is too.