The Lies We Told

by Camilla Way

  And then, three months ago, they’d come home late from a party to find the door to their flat forced open. Clara would never forget the creepy chill she’d felt as they silently walked around their home, knowing some stranger had recently been there—going through their things, touching their belongings. But the odd thing was, everything had been left in perfect order: nothing had been stolen; nothing, as far as she could tell, had been moved. Only a handwritten message on a page torn from Clara’s notepad had been sitting on the kitchen table: I’ll be seeing you, Luke.

  At least Luke had been sufficiently rattled to let Clara report that to the police. Who didn’t even turn up until the next day and discovered precisely nothing—the neighbors hadn’t seen anything; no fingerprints had been found—and as nothing had been taken or damaged, within days the so-called “investigation” had quietly fizzled out.

  Stranger still, after that, it was as if whoever it was had lost interest. For weeks now there’d been no new incidents, and Luke had been triumphant. “See?” he’d said. “Told you they’d get bored eventually!” But although Clara had tried hard to put it out of her mind, she hadn’t quite been able to forget the menace of that note—or the idea that the culprit was still out there somewhere, just biding his time.

  And now Luke had disappeared. What if “Barry” had something to do with it? Even as she allowed the thought to form, she could hear Luke’s laugh, see his eyes roll. “Jesus, Clara, will you stop being so dramatic?” But as the morning progressed, her sense of foreboding grew and when lunchtime came, instead of going to her usual café, she found herself walking back toward the tube.

  She reached Hoxton Square half an hour later, and when she caught sight of her squat yellow-bricked building on its farthest corner, she was struck suddenly by the overwhelming certainty that Luke would be there waiting for her, and she ran the final few hundred yards—past the restaurants and bars, the black railings and shadowy lawn of the central garden—and out of breath by the time she reached the front door, she impatiently unlocked it before sprinting up the communal stairs to her flat. But when she got there, it was empty.

  She sank into a chair, the flat too silent and still around her. On the coffee table in front of her was a photo she’d had framed when they’d first moved in together, and she picked it up now. It was of the two of them on Hampstead Heath three summers before, heads squashed together as they grinned into the camera, a scorching day in June. That first summer, the days seemed to roll out before them hot and limitless, London theirs for the taking. She had fallen in love almost instantly, as effortlessly as breathing, certain she had never met anyone like him before, this handsome, exuberant man so full of energy and sweetness and easy charm, who (inexplicably, it seemed to her) appeared to find her just as irresistible. As she gazed down at the photo now, their happiness trapped and unreachable behind glass, she traced his face with her finger. “Where are you?” she whispered. “Where the bloody hell are you, Luke?”

  At that moment she heard the front door slam two floors below and her heart lurched. She listened, her breath held, as the footsteps on the stairs grew louder. When they paused outside her door, she sprang to her feet and rushed to open it, but with a jolt of surprise found it was her upstairs neighbor, and not Luke, staring back at her.

  She didn’t know the name of the woman who’d lived above them for the past six months. She could, Clara thought, be anything between mid-twenties and mid-thirties; it was impossible to tell. She was very thin with long, lank brown hair, behind which could occasionally be glimpsed a small, finely featured face covered in a thick, masklike layer of makeup. In all the time Clara and Luke had lived there, she’d never once replied to their greetings, merely shuffling past with downcast eyes whenever they met on the stairs. Every time either of them had gone up to ask her to turn her music down, which she played loudly night and day, she refused to answer the door, merely turning the volume up higher until they went away.

  “Can I help y—,” Clara began, but the woman had already begun heading toward the stairs. Clara watched her go for a moment before her worry and stress got the better of her. “Excuse me!” she said loudly, and her neighbor froze, one foot poised on the first step, eyes averted. “It’s about the music. Could you give it a rest, do you think? It’s all night long, and sometimes most of the day too—can’t you turn it down once in a while?”

  The woman didn’t reply at first, then finally, slowly turned her face toward Clara. Her eyes, rimmed thickly in black kohl, landed on her own for a moment before flitting away again, as she asked softly and with the faintest ghost of a smile, “Where’s Luke, Clara?”

  Clara could only stare back at her, too surprised to respond. “I’m sorry?”

  “Where’s Luke?”

  She’d had no idea the woman even knew their names. Perhaps she’d seen them written on their post, but it was the way she said it—so familiar, so knowing, and with such a strange smile on her lips. “What do you mean?” Clara asked, but the woman only turned and carried on up the stairs. “Excuse me! Why are you asking about Luke?” But there was still no reply. Clara stood staring after her. It was as if the world were conspiring in some surreal joke against her. The door to the upstairs flat opened and then closed again and at last Clara went back to her own flat. She stood in her narrow hallway, listening, until a few seconds later the familiar thud of bass began to thump against her ceiling once more.

  * * *

  —

  It was past two. She should go back to work; her colleagues would be worried by now. But Clara didn’t move. Should she start phoning around hospitals? Perhaps she should Google their numbers—at least that way she would be doing something. She went to the small box room they used as an office and at a touch of the track pad, Luke’s laptop flickered to life, the browser opening immediately to Google Mail—and Luke’s personal e-mail account.

  For a second she stared at the screen, her finger hovering, knowing that she shouldn’t pry. But then her gaze fell upon his list of folders. Below the usual “Inbox,” “Drafts,” and “Trash” was one labeled, simply, “Bitch.” She stared at it in shock before clicking on it. And then her jaw dropped—there were at least five hundred messages, sent from several different accounts over the past year, sometimes as often as five times a day. She opened and read them one by one.

  Did you see me today Luke? I saw you. Keep your eyes peeled.

  And

  I know you Luke, I know what you are, what you’ve done. You might have most people fooled, but you don’t fool me. Men like you never fool me.

  How are your parents, Luke? How are Oliver and Rose? Do they know the truth about you—your family, your friends, your colleagues? How about that little girlfriend of yours, or is she too stupid to see? She looks really fucking stupid, but she’ll find out soon enough.

  And

  Women are nothing to you, are we Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use, or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable, you think you’ve got away with it. Think again, Luke.

  Then,

  What will they say about you at your funeral, Luke? Say your goodbyes, it’s going to be soon.

  The very last one had been sent only a few days before.

  I’m coming for you Luke, I’ll be seeing you.

  It had been a woman, all this time? And he’d known about it for months, had known but hadn’t told her—had never even mentioned the e-mails. Did he know who it was? It was clearly someone who knew him very well—knew his parents’ names, where Luke worked; knew his movements intimately. Was it the same person who had broken into their flat, sent the photographs, the letters? Perhaps it was a joke, she thought wildly. An elaborate prank dreamed up by one of his friends. But then, where was he? Where was Luke? I’m coming for you Luke, I’ll be seeing you.

  She was deep in thought when the sound of her intercom sliced throu
gh the silence, making her jump violently, her heart shooting to her mouth.

  THREE

  CAMBRIDGESHIRE, 1989

  We waited such a long time for a baby. Years and years, actually. They couldn’t tell us why, the specialists. Couldn’t find a single reason why it didn’t happen for Doug and me. “Unexplained infertility” was the best they could come up with. You think it’s going to be so simple, starting a family, and then when it’s taken from you, the future you’d imagined snatched away, it feels like a death. All I ever wanted was to be a mum. When school friends went off to university or found themselves jobs down in London, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to be a career woman, didn’t need a big house and lots of money. I was content with our little cottage in the village I’d grown up in, Doug’s building business; I just wanted children, and Doug felt exactly the same way.

  I used to see them when they came back to our village for holidays, those old classmates of mine. And I’d see how they looked at me, with my clothes from the market and my lack of ambition, see the flash of superiority or bewilderment in their eyes when they realized I didn’t want to be exactly like them. But I didn’t care. I knew that what I wanted would bring me all the happiness I’d need.

  And then, year by year, woman by woman, things began to change. They began to change. As we all neared our thirties, baby after baby began to make its appearance on those weekend visits. Of course, I’d been trying for a good few years by then, had already had many, many months of disappointment to swallow, but nothing hit me quite as hard as seeing that endless parade of children of the girls I used to go to school with.

  Because I could see it in their faces, how it changed them. How overnight the nice clothes and interesting careers and successful husbands that had once defined them became suddenly second place to what they now had. It wasn’t the change in them physically, the milk-stained clothes or the tired faces; it wasn’t the harassed air of responsibility or the membership in a new club or even the obvious devotion they felt. It was something I saw in their eyes—a new awareness, I suppose—that hurt me most. It seemed to me as though they’d crossed into another dimension where life was fulfilling and meaningful on a level I could never understand. And the jealousy and despair I felt was devastating. Plenty of women, I knew, were happily child free, led perfectly satisfying lives without kids in them, but I wasn’t one of them. From as long as I could remember, having a family of my own was all I’d dreamed of.

  So when finally, finally, our miracle happened, it was the most amazing, most joyful thing imaginable. That moment when I held Hannah in my arms for the first time was one of pure elation. We loved her so much, Doug and I, right from the beginning. We had sacrificed so much, and waited such a long time for her, such a horribly long time.

  I don’t remember exactly when the first niggling doubts began to stir. I couldn’t admit it to myself at first. I put it down to my tiredness, the shock and stress of new motherhood, or a hundred other different things rather than admit the truth. I didn’t let on to anyone how worried I was. How frightened. I told myself that she was healthy and she was beautiful and she was ours, and that was all that mattered.

  And yet, I knew. Somehow I knew even then that there was something not quite right about my daughter. An instinct, of the purest, truest kind, in the way animals sense trouble in their midst. Secretly I would compare her with other babies—at the clinic, or at Mother and Baby clubs, or at the supermarket. I would watch their expressions, their reactions, the ever-changing emotions in their little faces, and then I’d look into Hannah’s beautiful big brown eyes and I’d see nothing there. Intelligence, yes—I never feared for her intellect—but rarely emotion. I never felt anything from her. Though I lavished love upon her, it was as though it couldn’t reach her, slipping and sliding across the surface of her like water over oilskin.

  At first, when I finally voiced my concerns to Doug, he’d cheerfully brush them aside. “She’s just chilled out, that’s all,” he’d say. “Let her be, love.” And I’d allow myself to be reassured, telling myself he was right, that Hannah was fine and my fears were all in my head. But when she was almost three years old, something happened that even Doug couldn’t ignore.

  I was preparing breakfast in the kitchen while she sat on the floor, playing with a makeshift drum kit of pots and pans and spoons I’d got out to entertain her with. She was hitting one pan repeatedly over and over, the sound ricocheting inside my skull, but just as I was mentally kicking myself for giving them to her, the noise suddenly stopped. “Hannah want biscuit,” she announced.

  “No, darling, not yet,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m making porridge. Lovely porridge! Be ready in a tick!”

  She got up, said louder, “Hannah want biscuit now!”

  “No, sweetheart,” I said more firmly. “Breakfast first. Just wait.”

  I crouched down to rummage in a low drawer for a bowl, and didn’t hear her come up behind me. When I turned, I felt a sudden searing pain in my eye and reeled backward in shock. It took a few moments to realize what had happened, to understand that she’d smashed the end of her metal spoon into my eye with a strength I’d never dreamed she had. And through my reeling horror I saw, just for a second, her reaction: the flash of satisfaction on her face before she turned away.

  I had to take her with me to the hospital, Doug not being due back for several hours yet. I have no idea whether the nurse in A and E believed my story, or whether she saw through my flimsy excuses and assumed me perhaps to be a battered wife, just another victim of a drunken domestic row. If she did guess at my shame and fear, she never commented. And all the while, Hannah watched her dress my wounds, listened to the lies I told about walking into a door, with a silent lack of interest.

  Later that evening when she was in bed, Doug and I stared at each other across the kitchen table. “She’s not even three yet,” he said, his face ashen. “She’s just a little girl. She didn’t know what she was doing. . . .”

  “She knew,” I told him. “She knew exactly what she was doing. And afterward she barely raised an eyebrow, just went back to hitting those damn pots like nothing had happened.”

  * * *

  —

  And after that, Hannah only got worse. Most children hurt other kids; it happens all the time. In every playgroup across the country, you’ll find them hitting or biting or thumping one another. But they do it out of temper, or because the other child hurt them, or to get the toy they want. They don’t do it the way Hannah did—for the sheer, premeditated pleasure of it. I used to watch her like a hawk and I’d see her do it, see the expression in her eyes as she looked quickly around herself before inflicting a pinch or a slap. The reaction of pain was what motivated her. I knew it. I saw it.

  We took her to the doctor’s, insisting on a referral to a child psychologist—the three of us trooping over to Peterborough to meet a man with an earnest smile and a gentle voice, in a red jumper, named Neil. But though he did his best with Hannah, inviting her to draw him pictures of her feelings, use dolls to act out stories, she refused point-blank. “No!” she said, pushing crayons and toys away. “Don’t want to.”

  “Look,” Neil said, once the receptionist had taken Hannah out of the room. “She’s very young. Children act out sometimes. It’s entirely possible she didn’t realize how badly she would hurt you.” He paused, fixing me in his sympathetic gaze. “You also mentioned a lack of affection from her, a lack of . . . emotional response. Sometimes children model what they see from their parents. And sometimes it helps if the parent remembers that they are the adult, and the child is not there to fulfill their own emotional needs.”

  He said all this very kindly, very sensitively, but my fury was instantaneous. “I cuddle that child all day long,” I hissed, ignoring Doug’s restraining hand on my arm. “I talk to her, play with her, kiss her, and love her, and I tell her how special she is every single minute. A
nd I don’t expect my three-year-old to ‘fulfill my emotional needs.’ What kind of idiot do you think I am?” But the seed was set; the implication was clear. By hook or by crook it was my fault. And deep down, of course, I worried that Neil was right. That I was deficient somehow, that I had caused this, whatever “this” was. We left that psychologist’s office and we didn’t go back.

  * * *

  —

  That day, the day she killed Lucy, I stood looking in at my five-year-old daughter from her bedroom door, and any last remaining hope I’d had—that I’d been wrong about her, that she’d grow out of it, that somewhere inside her was a normal, healthy little girl—vanished. I marched across the room and took her by the hand. “Come with me,” I said, and led her to my bedroom. Her expression, biddable, mildly interested, only made my fury stronger. I dragged her to the bed and she stood beside me, looking down at Lucy’s head on my pillow, and I saw—I know I saw—the flicker of enjoyment in her eyes. By the time she’d turned them back to me, they were entirely innocent once more. “Mummy?” she said.

  “It was you,” I said, my voice tight with anger. “I know it was you.” I loved that bird. I had inherited her from an elderly neighbor I’d once been close to, and during those years of childlessness, Lucy had become the focus of all my attention, a pretty, defenseless little creature to take care of, who needed me. Hannah knew how much I loved her. She knew.