Under Lying

by Janelle Harris

  I nod.

  ‘But with the move and everything, we didn’t get a chance. We were trying so hard to settle in . . .’ Paul trails off and a silence falls over us all. ‘We never should have moved here, Susan. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t have come here.’

  Langton’s expression softens. ‘The lake leads out to sea, as you know,’ she says.

  ‘And what the hell does that mean?’ Paul says.

  ‘Bodies float, Paul,’ Connelly says, in a voice deeper and more serious than I’m used to hearing from him. ‘Given enough time, they do. And little Amelia, well . . .’ Connelly coughs. ‘Well, we thought we’d have seen her by now.’

  ‘We’ve spoken to everyone who was here that day,’ Langton says, and I can see heartbreak written in her eyes. But she’s not upset for me. Or for Paul. Her heart is breaking for Amelia. A little girl, lost and alone. ‘Everyone seems to agree that the last place they saw her was playing in the garden, and—’

  ‘Not everyone,’ Paul says, cutting across Langton. ‘You haven’t spoken to everyone.’ I swallow roughly. ‘You haven’t spoken to Deacon.’

  ‘Deacon?’ Langton echoes.

  Connelly pulls a pen and notepad from his inside jacket pocket. He uses his teeth to pull the lid off the pen and spits it into his hand. He rests the paper on his knee, ready to take notes.

  ‘Deacon O’Reilly,’ I offer, before Paul has a chance to say another word. ‘He’s a client of mine.’

  ‘A client?’ Connelly’s eyes narrow, and for the first time I see something in him that unsettles me: judgement. He must be wondering why I haven’t mentioned Deacon sooner.

  ‘He wasn’t at the barbecue,’ I explain. ‘He’s not from Ballyown. The barbecue was just a neighbourhood thing. We wanted to get to know people around here. Make friends, really.’

  ‘But Deacon was here,’ Paul says, standing up. ‘I saw him. I spoke to him.’ He paces in front of the unlit open fire. ‘Not for long, just a couple of minutes at the start. I wondered what the hell he was doing here.’ Paul comes to a standstill and turns to face me. ‘I just assumed you’d invited him, Susan.’

  ‘I didn’t see him. I didn’t know he was here,’ I say.

  ‘Oh c’mon,’ Paul snorts. ‘You must have known he’d come.’

  I shake my head. ‘I didn’t invite him.’

  ‘Why was he here, then? Why was that man in my fucking house?’

  ‘You don’t like this man?’ Langton asks.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ Paul admits. ‘But he certainly spends a lot of time with my wife. Sometimes I think Susan spends more time with Deacon than she does with me.’

  I shift on the couch. I want to get up and pace too, feeling as if I’m being interrogated. Langton, Connelly and Paul’s eyes are all on me.

  ‘I told Deacon about the barbecue,’ I say. ‘I mentioned it at one of our sessions. I told him we were trying to settle in. We are, aren’t we, Paul?’

  ‘So Mr O’Reilly has become a friend?’ Langton asks.

  ‘Deacon is a client. Just a client,’ I say. ‘I keep it professional. Always.’

  ‘A client who followed you from Dublin,’ Paul says.

  ‘Mr O’Reilly travels from Dublin to Ballyown for your sessions?’ Connelly asks. ‘How often do you see him? Weekly? That’s a lot of travelling.’

  ‘Deacon lives in Cork now,’ I explain. ‘He has for a few months.’

  ‘He moved here,’ Paul says through gritted teeth. ‘Not long after us. Susan was his counsellor when we lived in Dublin. She’d see him three times a week. Far more than she saw most of her clients. Then we moved. And suddenly Deacon has moved here too. And he’s seeing Susan again. Three times a week. Like always.’

  ‘Do you have an address for Mr O’Reilly?’ Connelly asks.

  I shake my head.

  ‘But he is living locally,’ Langton adds.

  ‘He’s from Cork. Originally,’ I say, staring my husband down. What is he trying to suggest? ‘It’s just coincidence. We moved. And a few weeks later Deacon decided to go home.’

  ‘Did he talk to you about this potential move?’ Langton asks. ‘Previously, at your sessions. Did he express his desire to move home at any time?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I sit straight. ‘I can’t discuss what my clients talk about. I could lose my licence to practise. And I think you know that.’

  ‘Sure,’ Langton says, staring at me as if she’s desperate to know what I’m thinking.

  ‘Deacon has nothing to do with any of this,’ I say. ‘He’s never even met Amelia. She’s always napping when he comes to the house for his sessions. And he’s gone before she wakes up.’

  ‘Oh Susan, stop. Just stop. Your obsession with this guy is driving me crazy,’ Paul snaps, clasping his hands and pressing them down hard on the top of his head. ‘I told him to leave the barbecue. He had no business being there. He wanted to talk to you. He said it was soooo urgent,’ he mimics, ‘but you were busy with the food. I didn’t see him pass through the house. He must have gone out the back gate. Deacon was the one who left the gate open. It was him, I’m sure it was. Deacon O’Reilly is the reason Amelia drowned.’

  I glare at my husband. Langton and Connelly are watching me. I’m not looking at them, but I can feel their eyes studying me. Searching for something in the lines of my face, the tears in my eyes, the crack in my voice. But all they must see is my frustration and desperation as my fiery stare burns into the man I married and the father of my child. ‘Why don’t you say what you really mean, Paul?’

  He tilts his head to one side. And equal distaste smoulders in his eyes.

  ‘Deacon was here because of me,’ I gasp. ‘Me! ’ I tap my index finger against my chest. ‘You’re blaming me. You think this is all my fault. You think our baby is dead and you think I’m responsible.’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul barks, stomping his foot as saliva sprays past his lips. ‘It’s all your fault, Susan. This is all your fucking fault.’

  Chapter Seven

  THEN

  I stand outside the gates of my old primary school and take a deep breath. I haven’t been back here since I was twelve and my senior class made the transition to secondary school. My last memory of this place is laughing as a couple of the more boisterous kids from my year spray-painted Mrs Smyth smells across the back of the principal’s car. They got in terrible trouble, but I smile, thinking of those days when Adam and I were inseparable.

  The slap of tarmac under my runners is painfully familiar as I cross the schoolyard. So familiar I almost feel my brother walking beside me the way we did every day for eight years when we were pupils here. It hurts to feel him so close and at the same time know that his presence is nothing more than a figment of my imagination now.

  Tears prick my eyes as I read the sheet of A4 paper stuck to the main doors. Someone has written Bereavement Group in large black letters across the paper and stuck it against the glass with a blob of Blu-Tack. I know tomorrow there will be another equally haphazard sign in the same place. It’ll spell out something different. Pilates, maybe. Or Aerobics. The school has hired out the hall for evening classes for as long as I can remember. Adam and I used to joke about the sad, lonely people with no lives who spent their evenings here. Oh how the irony stings as I take a deep breath and pull the doors open. No turning back now.

  My shoes squeak as I cross the shiny, rubbery floor in the hall, but heads don’t turn, not like how you see in films. In real life everyone is too preoccupied with their own loss and emotion to care about some newbie wearing all white runners with overly shiny soles. I make my way towards the circle of ten or so plastic chairs in the centre of the floor. My arms dangle by my sides as if they’re not part of my body. I’m not entirely sure what to do with them. Fold them, clasp my hands, leave them by my side.

  In an effort to create a near perfect circle, the plastic chairs that they’ve borrowed from a nearby classroom are slotted painfully close together. I shuffle between the two
seats with the biggest gap between them. Heads finally lift and suddenly there are a lot of eyes on me. I really wish my brother was here with me.

  There’s only one vacant seat, between a dapper, elderly man and a girl my age – a girl too young to be here. A girl just like me. It feels as if they’ve been waiting for me. And for a moment a numbing sense of relief washes over the hall when I sit down, completing the circle of miserable people with long faces and heavy hearts.

  The regimental plastic chair attacks my spine just as I remember from school and forces me to sit unnaturally straight. I cross my legs, trying to appear relaxed, but my eyes are on the exit. It’s hard to believe I ever spent any time in this hall before. It’s hard to believe I ever belonged here. And that Adam did too.

  ‘Hey,’ the girl beside me says, ‘you’re new. Welcome. It’s been ages since we had anyone new join us.’

  I acknowledge her with a nod but I don’t reply. I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know why I’m here. Why I chose today to come.

  ‘I’m Jenny,’ she says, smiling brightly. Her bubbly personality surprises me and I wonder why she’s so happy – considering the group we’re all attending.

  ‘Well, Jennifer, actually,’ she continues. ‘But I don’t like that name, so everyone just calls me Jenny. Jen sometimes, I suppose. What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m . . .’ I swallow and pause for a moment, as if I’ve forgotten my own name. ‘I’m Susan.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Sue.’

  ‘No, erm, just Susan. Really.’

  ‘Okay, Susan. Not one for abbreviations. That’s cool. This is Wayne.’ Jenny points to the man next to me. ‘His wife died from cancer two years ago. They had three kids. Two boys and a girl. His kids are grown up and they all live abroad now. I think they have kids of their own. But I’m not sure. Do you have any grandchildren, Wayne?’ Jenny leans across me and raises her voice as if Wayne isn’t sitting right next to me.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘No. He doesn’t have any grandchildren,’ Jenny says.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, wishing the empty chair had been situated beside someone else, any of the other silent people here.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about your wife, Wayne,’ I say, catching his eye.

  He doesn’t reply. I don’t say anything more. I just smile, unsure.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Jenny asks.

  It takes me longer than it should to realise Jenny means who. Who brings me here? Who has died and left me as washed out and heartbroken as the rest of the people in this circle?

  ‘My brother,’ I say, holding back his name defensively.

  I can feel Jenny’s eyes on me, but mine stare straight ahead. I don’t want to see her feel sorry for me. That’s the only way people look at me now. They don’t see their friend, their classmate, their student. They only see what I’ve become. A shell.

  I stare ahead and focus on the stage at the top of the hall. Children’s artwork hangs across the white wall behind the stage. There are small handprints in various colours splattered on to one large sheet of stiff card and some near-illegible writing says something about growing up. The side wall is covered in more artwork. Definitely by older children. I can easily make out that the cotton wool stuck on crepe paper creates a delightful bunch of sheep. The sheep are complete with googly eyes, and painted-on legs. They’re really rather impressive. Except for the one-eyed sheep whose other googly eye has fallen on to the floor. That sheep is creepy, and reminds me of similar artwork Adam and I brought home when we were little. For years my mother proudly displayed our art on the fridge, only taking one down when there was another, even more colourful offering brought home from school to replace it. Neither of us was the next Rembrandt but at least our mother could guess what Adam had created. My masterpieces were little more than glitter splashes on paper. I was often jealous of my brother’s art and every now and then I would accidentally on purpose spill black paint on his work or get too enthusiastic with the scissors. Adam would cry, of course, but I won his forgiveness with Jelly Tots and He-Man stickers.

  ‘You’re not a talker,’ Jenny says, bright faced and giddy once again.

  I shake my head.

  ‘That’s okay,’ she smiles. ‘I talk enough for everyone.’

  Jenny seems hyperactive and I wonder if she has some sort of condition that makes it difficult for her to sit still. My eyes fall to her knees bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, I think. Maybe she twitches and bounces to shake off her grief. I hope for her sake it works.

  I wish I could find something that worked for me. I spoke with the college counsellor last week. He said that everyone grieves in different ways, as if that wasn’t obvious. He said my mother’s sudden decision to move to the South of France was her way of coping. I think it’s running away, personally. And it’s definitely abandoning me. The counsellor said it’s okay to be angry and it’s okay to direct my anger at my mother. He also said that when I find my own outlet I’d feel much better. I left after that bullshit advice, but nonetheless I find myself slap bang in the middle of a bereavement group. And while I don’t believe that it will make me feel any better, I really want it to.

  ‘Sometimes I wish I could shut up but it’s a nervous habit, I guess,’ Jenny rambles on, and I realise she’s been talking all the time, oblivious that I’d zoned out. ‘This group always brings out the chatterbox in me. I don’t usually talk this much. Well, actually, I do, but I’m not usually this annoying—’

  ‘Have you been coming here long?’ I cut her off.

  ‘Five years next month. I lost my mother when I was seventeen.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say genuinely.

  I do the maths in my head and work out that I guessed correctly – Jenny and I are the same age.

  ‘It must be hard to have lost your mother when you were so young,’ I say. ‘I’m twenty-one and I still struggle to cope without mine.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your mam’s passing.’ Jenny’s knees stop bouncing and she suddenly seems very serious. ‘Was it at the same time you lost your brother?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ I say.

  I don’t want to talk about my mother, but Jenny’s eyes are burning into me and she’s waiting for me to say more.

  ‘You only get one mother in this life, and it feels so unfair when she’s not around you any more,’ I sigh.

  And for the first time since I sat down Jenny is calm. She nods and drags the sleeve of her coat over her hand. I know that move: I create makeshift handkerchiefs with the edges of my clothing all the time lately. I look away. I’m sure Jenny would like to dab her teary eyes without an audience.

  I curse myself for upsetting her. And I almost wish she’d go back to being loud and chatty. I don’t really know why I came out with something so profound about mothers. It’s not me at all. Adam was the one who was good with words, not me. But there’s something about the atmosphere in this group. It makes me want to talk. Certainly not as much as Jenny. But for the first time since Adam died I want to be around other people.

  I decide I like Jenny after all, but I don’t tell her that my mother is still very much alive – it’s our relationship that’s dead. Mam can’t bear to look at me since Adam died. My brother and I were nothing alike in appearance or personality, but we were two halves of a whole. Like sugar and spice, sweet and sour. My mother can’t be around me; she can’t talk to me or hold me. She can’t cope with having one twin without the other. Everything about me is a constant reminder that one half – her favourite half – is gone. My mother didn’t die in a freak accident along with my brother, but she might as well have, because I lost her the day I lost Adam.

  ‘Time helps,’ Wayne says, finally lifting his head. ‘I know you’ve probably heard it from a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. But take it from someone who knows – it doesn’t get easier. I won’t lie and rattle off that kind of nonsense, but i
t does get bearable. You never stop missing them, you just learn to live with that feeling every day.’

  ‘But I don’t want to live with this feeling,’ I say.

  ‘Tough,’ someone says. ‘Tough shit.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I say, whipping my head round, trying to find the owner of the voice.

  ‘That’s Deacon.’ Jenny offers an introduction as she points to a guy three seats down from me. ‘Deacon O’Reilly.’

  Deacon glares at me with an anger I don’t deserve. Instinctively, I look away. Other heads have turned my way.

  I seek out the exit behind Deacon’s shoulder. But my eyes are drawn back to his face. He’s still watching me. What the hell is this guy’s problem? Something about his clenched jaw tells me he’s not happy about my presence in his group. My heart is beating furiously but I glare back and silently argue with him to back down. I win and Deacon’s eyes find their way to the floor.

  ‘Deacon’s not a talker either,’ Wayne explains, loud enough for Deacon to overhear.

  ‘We don’t even know why he comes,’ Jenny whispers. ‘He must have lost someone. But he’s never said who. He never even told us his name.’

  ‘How do you know who he is, then?’ I ask, wishing I could pull my eyes away from Deacon, but I just can’t. He’s so sombre. Everyone here is gloomy, of course, but Deacon is a whole other level. He looks tortured.

  ‘We used to wear name tags,’ Wayne says. ‘Back a couple of years ago. But it made people uncomfortable, so we voted to stop. Now we let people introduce themselves in their own time. Well, most of us do. Jenny likes to drag their names out of them before they’ve even sat down. Don’t you, Jenny?’ Wayne smiles affectionately, and I can tell he has a soft spot for her.

  She shrugs. ‘It’s true. I do. I’m a people person. I can’t help it.’

  I guess there’s a lot of things Jenny can’t help. Her nervous twitch, her noisy nature and her eyes that seem to see me better than I want them to.