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

by O. C. S. Francis

  58

  Amber

  Kay’s words lie like shattered glass between the two women. Amber finds her voice.

  ‘Don’t threaten me, Kay. Don’t ever threaten me. I meant what I said, I’m not frightened anymore.’

  Kay is scratching a hand through her short hair. She brings it down across her face, as if trying to wipe away the emotions roiling inside.

  ‘Oh, Amber, sweetie, I’m not threatening you. I’m only trying to make you see sense. I wish you’d listened to me before. I tried to tell you not to come back here, to stop digging. I knew it couldn’t do either of us any good. Don’t you see now? You’ll be throwing so much away. Think about Johnny. About the wee one. Just think for a moment. Nobody needs to know. Benny isn’t worth it. You know that’s true. And he’s dead. Is that worth the rest of your life?’

  ‘It’s too late. Yvey knows someone killed Benny, and so does Genevieve.’

  Kay looks unnerved for a moment. ‘You trust that woman now, do you?’ Then she hardens. ‘I’ve seen what Yvey knows — at least what she can prove. And Genevieve doesn’t have any more proof than you do.’

  ‘They know about Finn. They’ve seen what’s on that film. Genevieve will go to the police if I don’t.’

  ‘Are you quite so sure about that? Are you sure Genevieve wants everything dragged out in the open, the truth about Benny to come out? Just think of the damage to the brand.’ She drips the words, as if taunting the absent woman who she still despises.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But Amber doesn’t feel confident Kay isn’t right. She glances down at the photo in her hand and looks over at the scanner where the negatives are all laid out next to her phone. Scant evidence, and out of her reach. And Kay has Yvey’s phone, that much is clear. Amber hopes that somewhere there are other copies.

  Kay sees Amber’s gaze, and her posture changes. Her legs are apart, and she is springy on her feet, like a boxer coming into the ring. She strides towards the scanner. Amber holds back, unwilling to try to fight her for the negatives. She just needs to keep her talking till Genevieve comes back. Kay swings the bag off her back, scoops up all the negatives and stuffs them roughly in. She picks up Amber’s phone and turns it in her hand before depositing it in the bag.

  ‘It’s all a bit circumstantial, don’t you think?’ says Kay. She advances towards Amber, her hand still sheathed by the bag. ‘You know we can destroy what little evidence there is, and you can walk away. I can walk away too.’ She is closer now, and the bag drops away. There is something in her hand — the chromium shine of one of those expensive single-piece Japanese kitchen knives. ‘That photo — give it to me.’

  Amber nods slowly. She lets the photo go out of her hand, and it wafts down at her feet. She kicks at it, and it slides a little way towards Kay, who inches forward and picks it up. She looks at it and gives a small, melancholy smile.

  ‘Why are we friends, Kay? All these years, if you knew who I was?’

  The melancholy look is lingering on Kay’s face.

  ‘I didn’t know. Not for certain. I’ve suspected, sure. You were always cagey about your time with Benny. It made me think, and it didn’t take me long to find out when you were likely with him. At first I didn’t like the idea. It made me feel all sorts of things I’d rather I didn’t. But the more I thought about it… If it was you, then all it meant was that we’d both been Benny’s victims. And we were both carrying part of the same secret, in our different ways. But I didn’t have proof.’

  She waves the knife. ‘You want to know when I first really started to worry about it? It was that day we met in town after you’d spent the weekend here. You were being mighty weird, and I had this feeling, an intuition, call it what you like. So I kept an eye on you and on Yvey too. When did I have proof? Not till I saw those pictures on Yvey’s phone of you at the cottage, that picture of Finn. And I don’t want it to be you. I want it to be someone I don’t know, someone I don’t care about. It hurts, Amber. Don’t you see this hurts me too? Don’t you see I’m not angry with you? We’re the same, Amber. He fucked us and threw us both away. And I’ve not done anything you haven’t. Both of us have only killed in self-defence.’

  Amber wants to argue, say it isn’t the same what she and Kay have done. But she clamps that feeling inside.

  ‘That’s right, Kay, and we both need to face up to what we’ve done.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Amber.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Put the knife down, and we can talk.’

  ‘What is there left to talk about?’ Kay is shaking her head, and the knife lowers a little. ‘I’m sorry, no. This is all —’ she is grasping for the words ‘— all so lopsided now. You know how much worse it’s going to be for me if you confess. How can I trust you’ll keep quiet?’ The knife stiffens in her hand.

  ‘You won’t do it, Kay. I know you won’t do it. You won’t hurt me. You won’t hurt the baby.’

  Kay keeps advancing, and Amber steps back, like a slow-motion dance being worked out. The fearful choreography stops as Amber finds her back to the door leading out of the main studio. She puts a hand behind her, and it touches the old heavy key protruding from the lock.

  ‘Please, Kay, think.’ Amber grips the key and pulls it out, clenching her fist around it behind her back.

  ‘You can make this stop. All you have to do is never say anything, destroy all this.’ She waves the bag, relaxing the knife again.

  ‘If that’s what you want. Okay, I’ll do it.’

  The look on Kay’s face says she doesn’t really believe Amber, but all the same, the knife is now right down by her side.

  Amber takes the moment. She gives Kay as big a shove as she can manage, putting her off balance for just long enough. Amber doesn’t strike her — she’s not stupid enough to start that fight. And she knows there’s no way she can run — she wouldn’t make it out of the studio. Instead, she turns, pushes the door behind her and leaps through the space. She grabs the door as she passes and slams it at Kay, who is careering back toward her. It doesn’t quite close. Kay’s weight is on it. But from somewhere Amber finds her reserve. It is that same furious strength that saved Benny and killed Finn. And the door is shut. The key is in, and the door is locked.

  She is in blackness, and the only sound is Kay hammering madly on the other side of the door.

  59

  Amber

  The hammering stops. Amber calls out to Kay, but there’s no answer. She gropes for the light switch, and as it flickers on, she feels for a moment safe. Kay cannot get in here, not through that old door. And Genevieve will be back: if not soon, then later. All she has to do is wait now. She tries not to think about what has to come after that.

  She calls out Kay’s name, but there is no answer. She assumes she must have run off, but a few seconds later, hears movement. It is the sound of things being dragged across the floor towards the door and of objects picked up and dropped close by. She doesn’t understand what Kay is doing. Is she trying to barricade her in? What is the point of that?

  Then she can see that whatever Kay is doing cannot be fully rational. Underneath her sometimes casual, sometimes needy exterior, it must be that Kay hasn’t been functioning rationally for a very long time. Not when she tried to kill Genevieve, driven by some twisted idea of love; not when she silenced Benny; and not now, panicked by the threat of exposure.

  Amber knows that last feeling. The sick feeling on the water, tipping in a small boat in heavy darkness, the blood from her hand coming through the bandages. The body falling beneath the surface to oblivion.

  ‘Kay, listen to me! You’re not thinking straight.’ There’s still no answer, but the noises stop. Amber presses her ear to the door. She hears a sound she can’t place at first. Then she recognises it: the light splash of liquid. Then a small click, a pause, and a rapid whoosh like air being sucked out of the room. It is only when the sound is joined by a light crackle that Amber realises what Kay has done.

 
Amber turns the key and pulls open the door. A wall of flame greets her. It seems strangely cold at first, like when a fire is first lit in the hearth and the metal of the grate has not warmed. She sees the back of the sofa, apparently piled high with every piece of wood and paper that was in the room, all ablaze. The smell is chemical, with that almost alcoholic tang, and she knows that it has been dowsed in lighter fluid or petrol.

  She tries to kick at the back of the sofa, but it won’t move. She tries again, leveraging her other foot against the base of the staircase that runs up to the archive. It holds firm. It must be jammed in by all the other furniture in the room.

  The heat is stronger now. The smell of burning leather and melting plastic, the crack and pop of metal and glass. As the smoke alarm sounds from the main studio room, Amber slams the door shut. She tries to think how safe she will be in here, and for how long. She looks up to the top of the door and sees that smoke is already seeping in around the old wood, and she remembers that old fact about smoke killing more people than fire.

  She goes quickly to the end of the corridor and into the perfect darkness of the sealed studio. She finds the light and goes to the walls, running her hands along its white surfaces, trying to recall the studio building from outside — where the original windows were, and how it relates to the shape of the space she is in. But it all feels solid. No way out. Sealed like a tomb.

  She runs back into the corridor. The smoke alarm has now sounded in here too. She rounds the bottom of the stairs, placing her hand on the door, already feeling the growing warmth coming through it. It’s old wood. It won’t be long before it catches.

  As she runs up the stairs, she tastes the smoke thickly in her throat. She can’t help but think about the baby now — the toxins in her lungs, in her blood.

  She hurries through the door into the archive and slams it behind her. This door is modern and looks more fireproof. She should be safer in here for a little longer.

  Again, she looks for an exit, but the walls are covered in nothing but the racks and racks of Benny’s photographs and negatives. She tears the boxes off one set of shelves, and wrenches it away from the wall. It comes easily, not fastened to anything, and clatters down on the floor.

  Unlike the clean white plaster of the studio downstairs, these walls are roughly covered. She thumps at the walls again, just as she did downstairs. This time she is lucky: a hollow sound comes back.

  She bashes at the plasterboard and is surprised at how weak it is, or at how strong she has made herself in these moments of survival. Something animal pushing through. Then she has found something. There is an air gap here, around where a window frame creates space in its opening. She pushes her hand through and feels the cold caress of glass on her fingertips. Now the smoke alarm in this room activates — blaring at her like a screaming child.

  She pulls at the plasterboard, great chunks coming off in her hands, until she can see the cross of the window frame. She tries to pull it up, but it’s stuck fast. Then she sees there is some sort of putty round the edges to seal it shut.

  She can taste the smoke in her throat again and looks back at the room. The yellow light is dimmer still, and the air is more granular, like old film. She looks again at the glass. It is double-glazed.

  She remembers the glass in the cottage, smashed with a stone from the beach, in thousands of tiny pellets at the intruder’s feet. If she could break this, perhaps there would not be any jagged shards, perhaps she could squeeze out. She looks down at her body, not the shape it used to be, thinking about the baby inside her.

  She takes off her jumper and wraps it round her fist. A deep breath and a hard punch. Her hand just bounces off it, and a deep pain cracks through her knuckles and up to her wrist. She screams a desperate obscenity and looks round the room, but there is nothing here to help her. She tries to think, but her thoughts are stuck, jammed by the screeching alarms all around her. All that comes through is a feeling that this is the end, that this is where she will die.

  60

  Amber

  The temptation to give in comes over Amber like a drowsiness. There is almost a sense of peace to the idea that this might be the end. To no longer have to struggle, to lie, to keep half of who she is kept hidden away in a secret part of her mind. But the tentacles of the idea aren’t strong enough. She knows it is partly the fire, the fumes, how her mind is not right, how none of this is right. She has to keep on going. For her daughter.

  And it comes to her, her way out of this place.

  She runs to the door and inches it open. The air in front of her is opaque. The smoke lapping in through the top of the old cottage door is thick now, acrid and chemical. She buries her mouth in the crook of her elbow and — eyes half-closed — stumbles down the stairs and into the photo studio. She looks around for anything of weight and sees a metal stool. She lifts it, and its base has a satisfying heft.

  She is light-headed as she carries the stool through the corridor and to the bottom of the stairs. The smoke alarms chorus at her from all the different rooms. She tries not to think again about the fumes she is inhaling, of the carbon monoxide, of the damage it could be doing.

  She has to drag the stool up the stairs, step by step, each movement feeling harder, her balance faltering. Unable to cover her mouth, she tries to breathe through her nose, but as the air comes back out of her lungs, it erupts in choking coughs.

  Finally making it into the archive, she pushes the door behind her. It feels as if she has trapped as much smoke inside the room as outside. Without even thinking about her weight, momentum or the strength of the window, she lifts the stool and smashes it like a battering ram towards the glass and frame. A large crack appears across one pane. Another smash of the stool and the glass from two panes has splintered, flying out into the night. Her strength is going. She pulls the stool up again, but she fumbles, and it goes forward wildly, careering off the broken plaster and exposed window frame.

  Just one more, maybe two, she tells herself. The stool in her arms, bracing it against her shoulder, rushing forward, leaning into it with her upper body to protect her belly.

  Then she is through, the glass and wooden cross of the frame falling away. She drops the stool, sticks her head out and gasps at the cold night air. She looks down. It isn’t so far. It’s an old cottage, after all. Low ceilings, small stories. The ground underneath looks soft — a carpet of leaves over grass and mud.

  You can do this, you can do this, she repeats to herself over and over.

  She does her best to clear the bottom of the window of debris, picking sharp pieces of glass and wood away. Then she pulls her hands inside her jumper and grabs onto the top of the window frame. One foot is up on the bottom of the frame, then another. She pushes her feet through and is on her backside on the sill. The pain through the bottom of her jeans — glass and splinters digging into her — stops her hesitating. Arms off the top, then pushing at the sides of the frame.

  There is barely any sense of falling, just the momentum of her push. Then her feet hit the ground, and she rolls instinctively. She has felt the impact on the soles of her feet and through her shins, but not in her body — less violence even than the fall outside her house.

  Even so, she wraps her hands around her middle, as if she might be able to touch her baby, tell her she’s all right. But there is only her own heaving breath making her body pulse.

  She sits up and looks back at the cottage. Smoke is blowing from the window where she jumped, disappearing like breath into the sky above.

  61

  Amber

  The woods are silent save for the hissing now coming from the studio like a pressure cooker on the edge of overloading. Amber is surprised to see it is almost in darkness. The lights in the glass structure are all off or burnt out, and the sliding door is closed. There is a glow coming from the glass end of the structure, but it doesn’t look like a raging inferno. The main sign of the fire is the smoke coming from the broken window Amber has just es
caped through. Perhaps it has burned itself out in the main room, with nothing else to catch in that bare space.

  She doesn’t have time to consider the fire for long. A high, sharp sound comes flying out of the darkness towards her — like the bark of a fox. Then it comes again, and Amber recognises its humanity. Then a third time — half scream, half call — and she knows the voice.

  ‘Yvey!’ Amber shouts into the darkness.

  ‘Amber! Here!’

  She has a direction on it now, and she makes towards it. She can hear more noises — they sound animal again, but this time like something moving in the undergrowth, grunting.

  Then she sees. Kay is on the ground, trying to crawl forwards. Yvey is on the floor too, her arms wrapped around Kay’s legs, her head twisting out of the way of kicking feet. The sleeve of Yvey’s jacket has a slash across it, stained dark with blood. Amber runs round to Kay’s head. Kay twists her face up. Her lip is split and swollen.

  ‘Please, stop,’ Amber shouts at her. Kay glances back along her body towards Yvey, then up at Amber again. Finally, her legs stop kicking. Yvey lets go and rolls back. Kay lies still for a few moments, then pulls herself up to a seated position.

  Yvey gets to her feet, standing over Kay. When Yvey speaks, the phrases come out in gulps and spasms, her arms waving wildly.

  ‘Went for a walk… saw the studio… she came at me with a knife… I managed to… Who even is she?’

  ‘This is the person who killed your father.’

  Yvey staggers backwards. For a moment, Amber thinks she is going to set upon Kay again. Yvey’s foot stamps and swings as if she might deliver a sharp kick to her head. But then she blinks, as if someone has shone a bright light in her eyes, and turns away. She gives a shout at the forest — that animal sound again.