All Your Lies: A gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end

by O. C. S. Francis

  ‘But you do believe it was an accident?’

  Yvey looks away now. She says nothing. Amber wants to ask her more. She wants to ask her what she thinks really happened, what she knows but isn’t letting on. She wants to know all the things unsaid, all the things unsayable about her mother. But she bites her tongue, telling herself there is just a scared teenager in front of her. She is looking for shapes in the clouds, faces in the shadows.

  Amber changes the subject, asking her about school, but draws little out. Trying for a bit of a girly chat, she asks if Yvey has a boyfriend.

  Yvey shakes her head. ‘Why d’you assume boyfriend?’

  ‘Sorry, I… You’re right, I shouldn’t presume.’ Amber flushes, feeling foolish.

  ‘Nah, s’alright. It’s chill. I kinda go with the flow. There was someone at my old school, before I…’ She tails off. ‘Didn’t really work out, if you have to know. We weren’t right together.’ She puts big air quotes round those last words and gives a sneer. Then she adds, in half a whisper: ‘Better off without the gaslighting bitch.’

  A graceless silence sits between them. Ambers stands up, patting her legs. ‘Has your mum replied?’

  Yvey fishes out her phone, looking at it for no more than a couple of seconds. She shakes her head and makes an action with her free hand like someone downing a bottle.

  ‘I tell you what, why don’t I run you home? We can explain to your mum together.’

  Yvey gives a big sigh, halfway between relief and resignation. ‘Okay.’

  The drizzle cuts into the house the moment Amber opens the door. She hates how dark their lane is. She pulls her coat tight around her and leads Yvey out along the lane.

  No one has seen to the loose sheeting on the next-door house, and it has worked its way further free. It’s now flowing away from the section of roof and attic window it had covered. There is no glass in the window, just a black hole filled only with the dark recesses of imagination.

  They make their way down the lane towards the layby where Amber’s car is parked. Even in the dark, within a few feet Amber can see something is wrong. The car is lopsided, sloping towards its rear right wheel. She finds herself running towards it. The tyre is flat, half airless and distorted, the rubber squeezing out from under the weight of the unsupported wheel rim.

  Amber hears Yvey’s voice from behind her: ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Flat tyre.’ The anxiety breaks back over Amber, and she lets out a curse into the night. She looks back at Yvey, who is hugging herself against the rain, glancing around her.

  ‘Can we go back inside, please?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ says Amber, but she doesn’t feel fine. She crouches down and fishes her phone out of her pocket, shining the torch at the tyre. There’s nothing to see, just bulging rubber. When she looks up, Yvey is backing away towards the house, still looking about twitchily.

  Amber stands quickly and almost has to crouch right back down again. A shooting pain runs up from the nook of her right hip across her belly. Then, just as quickly, it is gone. She feels dizzy and a little sick. She reaches out a hand and leans on the car.

  ‘Amber, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing… just… just a cramp… ’ She takes a breath, then two. Then a few more, counting between them, letting the sense of panic flow away. There is no more pain, just a satisfying ripple across her innards that feels like movement.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says, ‘let’s go back inside.’

  Yvey is off at a clip back to the house, but Amber goes a bit slower, allowing herself to feel her movements, her muscles, her baby inside her, who is now moving as energetically as she’s ever felt.

  Yvey is waiting impatiently at the door, and Amber lets her in. Before she follows on inside, she looks back down the lane towards her car. It’s silent apart from the flap-flap-flap of that loose sheeting and the hiss of the rain on the road. In the other direction, it’s just fields and the dark, dirty grey of clouds. But opposite her house, on the far side of the lane, is a small knot of trees in front of a line of a dense bank of foliage. The space between the trunks of the trees is almost total darkness. Then the darkness moves.

  32

  I see you, Amber, but do you see me? You’re looking right towards me, but I’ve shifted back into the gloom of the undergrowth.

  I’ve been watching you. I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t leave it alone. I should be more direct with you, just have it out. But it’s not that simple. I can’t take the risk. So I’ll just keep on watching for a while, see what you do next.

  But what is Yvey doing here? What’s brought her to your house at this time of night? The look on your face when you opened the door — you weren’t expecting her, were you? What were you talking about in there? What is it she wants?

  She’s always been a bit of a loose end, has Yvey. Another loose end. That’s the trouble with loose ends. When you think you’re tying one up, it always seems to create another somewhere else. I didn’t really think I had much to worry about from her, but sometimes a nasty little thought nags at me.

  That night, that last night of Benny’s. Could she have walked down the drive and seen me parked in the lane? Could she have seen me follow Benny off on his bike? Could she identify the car? No, not in the dark. I can’t start to think like that. I just need to watch and wait a little longer.

  It feels like a long time that you stand there, framed in the glow of your doorway, looking right at me, but not seeing.

  Finally, you go inside. I breathe again, and the wind in the foliage replies around me. I am alone again in the darkness.

  33

  Benny

  Sunday, 11 November 2001

  I held Amber’s hand. It was cold. She was sitting very still, canting her head to listen. Her fear seemed to have subsided and been replaced by a state of hyper-readiness, as if her flight was turning to fight.

  ‘Are you sure there’s someone downstairs?’ I asked her.

  ‘Of course I’m bloody sure. Someone just smashed a window.’

  I looked around the room for anything useful to defend myself with, but there was nothing. I was relieved in a way. Never bring a weapon to a fight unless you intend to use it. Confrontation went with my job, but mainly I was used to defusing it. Even if it meant handing over everything of value you had to hand. I’ve never pretended to be a hero or a hard man.

  ‘Stay here,’ I told Amber and got out of bed. I turned on the lights as I walked down the stairs. I wasn’t creeping or trying to disguise my presence. I wanted the intruder to know I was here and I wasn’t afraid to meet them face to face. I was afraid. Of course I was afraid. But I was also full of a different kind of uncertainty. I tried to quell my earlier thoughts and void my mind of the questions that had been running round it.

  The staircase led straight into the downstairs living room, and I hesitated as I rounded the final corner. But there was no one there. I crossed the living room, pausing at the door that led to the kitchen. I took a breath, pulled down the handle and gave the door a quick kick.

  I could see into the kitchen and on to the extension. That was where the man was standing, in front of the sliding doors. The glass behind him lay shattered into a thousand pieces, and a rock the size of a human head lay behind him on the floor.

  My first thought was that this man must have assumed the cottage to be empty on a freezing November weekend, but as I stepped through into the kitchen, that idea cleared from my head. He didn’t run when he saw me. He barely moved. He just rolled the weight of his body from foot to foot and shifted his wide shoulders around as if limbering up.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked him as calmly as I could, fearing he might answer me. But he didn’t reply.

  I tried to take him in quickly. He wore a big scrappy green canvas coat and baggy black trousers that looked like they came from an army surplus store. He had a poorly kept dirty-blond beard and a beany hat pulled right down to his eyebrows.

  ‘I don’t want
any trouble. I don’t have much cash, but you can have what I’ve got.’

  He still didn’t reply. It felt as if he was waiting for something, or unsure what he was supposed to do next.

  Then I saw his face change, his eyes flicking behind me. The next moments moved very fast. I turned my head for just a moment. Amber was standing behind me in the kitchen. She was holding my camera at hip level. I’m sure I heard the click of the shutter, but there wasn’t any time to consider what the hell she was doing, because immediately in my periphery I could detect the intruder rushing towards me. My head snapped back towards him just a moment before his fist connected with my jaw.

  34

  Amber

  There has always been a slim dark space between perception and paranoia for Amber, a place where her fears lurk. Movements in the corner of her eye, a face in a viewfinder that isn’t the one she sees with her own eyes, flashes of images and double takes that hurtle her back through time. So she doesn’t trust what she sees in the shadow of the trees, but doesn’t want to linger any longer in the darkness to test that feeling.

  She locks the door behind her and takes a moment to breathe.

  The flat tyre is real, though. That isn’t a figment of her imagination. But it could have happened any time. She could have picked up a slow puncture coming back from the farmhouse. She’s not driven the car since then. Not everything has to mean something.

  She tries the breathing again, glad that Yvey has gone on into the house and can’t see her face. She rubs her hand across her stomach. The pain she felt as she stood up by the car has gone, but the memory of it is still running through her. She imagines herself telling Johnny off for worrying at every little cramp.

  She gets out her phone, but there’s nothing on it, and she finds herself opening WhatsApp and tapping on Johnny’s avatar. She waits for it to update his status.

  Last seen today at 19:17.

  She is gripped by a desire to know exactly where he is, what he is doing, who he’s with. A weird dark thought flickers through her mind, her automatic trust for Johnny suddenly infected by the virus of suspicion coursing through her.

  The image of him hurriedly standing and pushing his phone away as she returned to the house two days ago springs into her mind. Has he been honest with her? Is he where he says he is? She knows a couple of the musicians he’s recording with: should she call one of them just to make sure?

  She wants to shout out loud at these thoughts as if she could scare them off.

  She goes into the living room. Yvey is sitting where she was before, curled up in a ball, looking vulnerable and small again. Amber has so many more questions for her: about her mother and father, about why the girl seems so scared. It can’t just be a reaction to a stolen scooter and the flat tyre. That doesn’t seem enough. There is something else, she is convinced of it.

  She tells herself things will seem clearer in the morning, and tries to watch a bit of TV with Yvey just to bring something else into the room other than their fears. But soon she can feel her mind crashing, pulling her towards sleep.

  ‘I think I need to go to bed. Look, you can get a cab home, I’ll pay.’

  Yvey gives her answer to this suggestion with just her expression and her body language. She keeps her feet tucked up under her and pulls her shoulders closer in, as if anchoring herself to the sofa.

  ‘Or that thing pulls out, so you can crash here. We can call your mum in the morning.’

  Once Amber has set up the sofa bed and found a duvet, the wave of exhaustion has passed, but it has left a dull ache behind her eyes. She goes to the hallway and kitchen one more time to check she has locked all the doors and windows, and climbs the stairs. She takes out her phone and texts Johnny. Not really saying anything: just that she is going to bed, just that she loves him.

  He replies as she is collapsing into bed: a badly spelled message full of drunken declarations of love. She tries to picture him with the other musicians, knocking back drinks, laughing and maybe still lazily jamming.

  The protective force field of being loved returns momentarily, and despite the hyper-vigilance state of her mind, she is unconscious within moments of lying down, falling straight into her recurring dream.

  She is woken by a strong need to pee. Then the sensation changes. It is in all the same places she felt as she stood up by the car, but duller, more persistent. She is used to hip pain when she wakes — it’s been there for weeks, since she started sleeping more on her side. But this is something new, a strange grip across her abdomen. She tries to push the worst thoughts away as she limps a little to the bathroom, stretching the discomfort out of her hips. Then that ripple again, followed by what feels like energetic movement.

  She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to focus all of her perception down into the centre of her body, trying to feel the life inside her.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  For a moment, it is as if the noise is coming from inside her own head.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  No, it’s from the house. It’s the front door. Someone is pounding on it.

  Memories hurtle around inside her like jagged bits of metal. She is back in the cottage all those years ago, following Benny down the stairs towards the intruder. She didn’t hesitate. She was scared, but also gripped with that sense of needing to see for herself. Almost a journalistic rush. The urge to pick up Benny’s camera must have come from the same instinct: to make a record of this stranger — a man who wanted something or meant them harm. That couldn’t be stopped now, but she could claim a piece of evidence. Never miss the moment. Never flinch from the shot.

  The things she did after that — she is less clear where they came from. Some primal, limbic space within her, inaccessible before or since. But she knows what she did, and she cannot get away from that.

  The pounding comes again: Bang, bang, bang.

  Then a change to the sound — a deadened rattle. Someone is shaking the door of her house. Someone is trying to get in.

  35

  Benny

  Sunday, 11 November 2001

  I fell sprawling backwards, as much as anything out of surprise and loss of balance. The punch was well landed and hard, but I’d been hit worse. Looking up at the man as I lay on the floor, I thought he could hit a lot harder if he needed to.

  He met my gaze. I thought he was going to pile in on me or start kicking me, but he didn’t. He gave me a very deliberate look.

  I saw Amber now. She was rooted to the spot, staring down at the camera at her hip, as if strangely dissociated from what was going on around her. Like a sleepwalker, still trapped in a nightmare. Then her eyes met mine for a moment, bewildered and frightened.

  My attention was swiftly back on the intruder. He was moving the hand he’d hit me with behind him into his back trouser pocket. When he brought it back out, there was something new in it. He squeezed it, and it clicked, a shining blade flicking out. He pointed it right at me, his eyeline following the point of the knife. It seemed to be telling me to stay where I was, to not try anything.

  He took half a step back, paused, then started moving towards Amber.

  I just moved on instinct now, scrambling to my feet. I shouted as I barrelled into him, and he half twisted towards me. It put him off balance, caught in the twist, and we crashed to the floor together. The hand with the knife reached away from me as he fell, and I grabbed his wrist, pinning it to the ground.

  Amber was down on the floor next to me. I didn’t understand why at first. Then her hand was with mine, pinning the intruder’s wrist, trying to prise the knife out.

  The man gave a jerk with his arm, and the blade slashed across Amber’s palm. She fell back, clasping her hand under her arm, then scrambling to her feet. She was looking around desperately. Of all the things to grab, she reached for the large chrome coffee pot. She held it up and brought it smashing down on the intruder’s hand, again and again until the knife was out, and she kicked it away from him.

 
I felt his other fist connect with my face, but without much power. I was holding tightly onto him, not giving him any space to swing. But he managed to use his body weight to flip us both over, and he was on top of me, pinning me down.

  I’d seen plenty of fights in my life, but been in very few. And they’d just been brief tussles — someone trying to grab my camera, or a cop barging me away from the front line of a protest. I’d never fought like this, with the feeling that my opponent might kill me.

  It’s hard to describe what I saw next because everything was moving so quickly. I glanced towards Amber, but couldn’t see her face because of the man on top of me, just her fast movement. First she was moving away from me, crouching on the floor. Then she was coming back.

  There was hardly any blood as the knife went into the side of the intruder’s neck. Precisely, quickly. Then Amber staggered back.

  The intruder lurched off me, his hands up to his neck. He didn’t cry out in pain. He just looked astonished, as if everything he had ever known and believed had been pulled away from him. Then — it must have been an automatic reaction — he pulled the knife out of his neck.

  The blood flowed almost instantly, chasing the blade away from the wound. Again, nothing more than a look of lost astonishment. Then he crumpled, blood pouring from him onto the stone floor of the kitchen.

  I expected Amber to start shouting or screaming. But she was dumbstruck, muttering something over and over. Her hand was bleeding badly, and she held it against her chest.

  ‘Towels, get towels!’ I shouted. ‘Or sheets.’