The Hoax

by Paul Clayton

  Jonny,

  Shannon,

  Henry.

  She stared at the names on the page and then, pressing the spacebar, she started to type.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The day trip to the seaside changed everything. Although nobody spoke about it afterwards, it brought them all closer, and Frankie and the kids started to treat Cora as a member of the family.

  Cora and Frankie never spoke about the day at Brighton. Their chats at Deli Do over a cappuccino covered all manner of things: Frankie’s work; how she was finding the new car; whether the police had been back in touch about Sue Steadman’s unsolved death, but never Brighton.

  Frankie remembered how useless she’d felt standing on the beach, unable to run into the water. Once, she leant across the table and placed a hand on Cora’s. ‘Thank you.’ Cora didn’t reply. Frankie thought she had the look of a naughty child who found praise as uncomfortable as remonstration.

  As the weeks progressed, Cora joined them for family meals at the weekend and tried to help out in the kitchen. Her culinary skills were primitive in the extreme, so Frankie would sit her at the kitchen table with Henry to chop vegetables or some other basic act of preparation. Henry and Cora never said much to each other yet they looked to have a bond of some kind. It was Henry who had brought Cora into their lives. Now he owed his life to her.

  Henry knew Cora had pulled him out of the water. He knew he would probably have drowned without her help, yet he couldn’t help thinking about the moments when he felt himself being pushed under the water. It troubled him. Perhaps she’d been getting her hands into the correct position to drag him to the shore – but his doubt lingered, just as the thought prevailed that the accident on the night they’d met had been her fault.

  Perhaps it hadn’t been him running across the road that had been the problem. He recalled how she’d staggered as she got out of the car, how she had smiled at him in the dim glow of the streetlamps. She had a strange smile, as though her skin were too tight for her face and the smile hurt her. Then he remembered all the good she had brought into their lives, the treats, the outings, and the way she’d become such a wonderful friend to them all. He pushed his darker thoughts to the farthest corner of the dustiest unused cupboard in his mind and closed the door.

  Cora liked the time she spent with the family. She was like a familiar sort of mad auntie dropping in with treats, who made things better and who required no explanation. It made her feel good. It made her feel loved and needed. But Cora wanted more.

  One day, Cora offered to do some child-sitting after school in the summer term. ‘You can pick up a few more hours at work. I can collect them after school and bring them home. And if you’re worried about my cooking skills not being up to it, I can always order in fish and chips or a Deliveroo.’

  Cora knew Frankie didn’t have the cash for treats. Frankie shopped well but simply on the trip that Cora often helped her make in the car on Saturdays. She came back with a few bags of shopping that had to provide meals for the week for all of them.

  ‘And another thing …’ Cora went on. ‘It would save you some money. You wouldn’t need that manny boy, would you?’

  It made perfect sense. Frankie’s last two hours at work just about covered three hours payment for Luke to look after the kids. If she didn’t have to pay that, she could either work less or have more money in her pocket. Both options would help. ‘I’m not sure. To be fair, I think Luke needs the work, and he’s done me so many favours. It seems unfair to dump him.’

  Luke Buchanan was eighteen months out of drama school. A Lancashire boy by birth, he’d come down to the Smoke from the outskirts of Manchester to follow his dreams. A place at a top drama school had kept him busy for three years and given him every degree of hope. The next eighteen months had proved tougher than he could have ever imagined. Not that he wasn’t equipped for theatre or film. Six-foot, handsome, great cheekbones and an earthy Northern loutish quality that Jonny admired, Shannon was a tiny bit in love with and Henry found funny.

  On two evenings each week, Luke, having worked his way through a day of unemployment, collected Henry from school. He was capable in the kitchen and could rustle up anything with chips and ice cream without help. Frankie saw his meals as an occasional diversion from her efforts to give her kids a healthy cuisine.

  She liked the evenings when she arrived home from work two or three hours later than usual and found the four of them in front of the television playing some computer game. She didn’t have to worry about her own supper. For a woman who fought her waistline, any evening when she could forego a meal was a bonus. She paid Luke in cash, an agreement that seemed to serve them both well.

  As spring turned into summer, Luke, Shannon and Henry often turned the walk home into a trip through the park. Jonny would join them when he came out of school and they all helped Luke fulfil his passion of making films. His acting career in the past eighteen months had consisted of an episode of Holby City, a minor part in a fringe play in Kilburn about a serial killer, and providing the voice of a split condom for a radio ad. But Luke was mad about films. He had a digital video camera and had already made several online music promos which had scored thousands of hits on his YouTube channel.

  He loved to make pastiches of his favourite films with the kids. Henry and his bike had featured in a low-budget remake of ET, which had involved Shannon in a leading role under a white sheet with slits for eyes. Jonny had used a sunhat and picnic rugs to create an homage to the spaghetti westerns of Clint Eastwood. He’d no idea what he was doing but was enamoured enough of Luke to do it.

  Once the shoot was over, Luke used his idle hours to edit, add music, filters and the rest. The results were fantastic. The kids had teatime premieres and waited for Frankie to get home from work to show her what they’d been up to.

  One day Luke and all three kids were in the park. Luke had his camera, and they were messing around shooting close-ups of ducks while trying to think what their next project should be. It was Henry who first spotted Cora and her remarkable coat walking along the side of the lake towards them. ‘Look, it’s Cora,’ he shouted.

  Luke swung the camera around and focused on the woman swishing towards him. The weather was warm for the green-and-yellow coat but, with her glossy red hair and outlandish outfit, she cut a splendid figure. Luke panned along the edge of the lake to follow her.

  Cora walked up to the group. ‘Hello, you lot.’ She ruffled Henry’s hair, something that she’d often seen Frankie do and had adopted as a sign of her own affection. ‘How is everyone?’

  ‘We’re doing a film, Cora. Producing a film all of our own.’ Henry bounced up and down with excitement. ‘Luke’s shooting it and directing it, and then he makes it look like a proper Netflix film.’

  Luke smiled slightly. Cora held out her hand. ‘May I see?’ A moment of hesitation from Luke told Cora all she needed to know. ‘Have you been filming me?’

  ‘Only as you were walking along the lake towards us. Nothing special.’

  ‘May I see it?’ Cora’s hand remained outstretched and Luke put the camera into it. He pressed the button to play the footage he’d shot. Cora saw herself walking along the side of the lake, first in the distance and then a sudden vicious zoom brought her features into full-frame focus on the screen. She held out the camera to him but kept hold of it. ‘Delete it.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Delete it. I didn’t give you permission to film me. Delete it.’ She uttered the words in a tone that made Jonny, Shannon and Henry realise it would be wrong to say anything.

  Luke had met her once before when she’d arrived at the flat one evening to take everyone to the cinema. She’d been perfectly pleasant, if a little dismissive of him. Now he saw someone else: a steely-eyed, grim-faced witch of a woman. He reached out and pushed a button on the back of the camera. The frozen shot of Cora’s face disa
ppeared. ‘All gone,’ he said.

  ‘We didn’t mean anything wrong,’ said Henry. ‘And it would have been cool for you to be in our film.’

  Cora released her grip on the camera and rounded on Henry, a smile cracking her face from ear to ear. ‘That would have been nice, but your film will be much better without me. I don’t look good in photographs. I always think it’s better for people to remember things in their minds. We don’t need all these selfies and these TikTok videos. Now would anybody like an ice cream?’ She glanced back at Luke. ‘Perhaps you too, Luke?’

  Cora, Henry and Shannon headed towards the kiosk, which was doing a roaring trade. Luke stood holding the camera next to Jonny. ‘There you go. She’s quite a madam.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonny. ‘Perhaps she’s a vampire? They don’t show up in photographs.’ And giving a leering cackle, he ran off to join the others.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Once they had shared their stories, Lottie and Little Girl became closer. The staff at the home thought neither of them were brilliant talkers, but they spent a lot of time huddled together whenever they could. They saw no reason to explain what they had done. In their minds, burning the dolls’ tea party and operating on Brandy were both reasonable acts. They didn’t see themselves as bad people; it was others who felt this was a reason to keep them away from the world.

  Neither of them had many visitors. At the beginning, Little Girl’s father came to see her. There was a particular room for visits at the front of the house with an enormous bay window with two armchairs where visitors could sit. In the middle of the room, screwed to the floor, was a metal chair. This was where Little Girl sat. She was unrestrained, but on either side of the metal chair two steel poles rose from the floor around which they could attach a restraining belt if necessary.

  It was sunny on the day Little Girl’s father first came to see her. Rays of light slid through the window showing the dirt and dust on the glass and rendering her father little more than a silhouette as he sat in one of the big armchairs. He asked her if she was all right and she said yes. They didn’t talk about happiness and they didn’t talk about coming home. There was a great deal of silence between them. Then her father left and he never came back.

  Harry came to see Lottie six weeks after she first arrived. He told her how Joan had died after the operation. Lottie didn’t cry. She knew that operations went wrong; her operation on Brandy had gone wrong, too. That’s why she was sitting with Harry in the bay window. She didn’t like it here. ‘When can I come home, Daddy?’ she asked.

  Harry looked at her. The words seemed painful to find. ‘You’re not coming home, Charlotte. I can’t take care of you on my own, not now. Not after everything that has happened. You’ll stay here for a while and they’ll look after you. One day there may be another mummy and daddy who will want you.’

  Lottie’s body shook with sobs. Violent convulsions of sorrow and longing ripped her heart, more than she would ever have dreamed possible. She thought of the room full of cuddly animals. She thought of her many lovely things back in their house. She remembered how Joan had loved her and how, to begin with at any rate, she had been Joan’s little princess. Was that never to be again?

  Harry used the crying as an excuse to leave the room. A care worker came in, unfastened the restraining belt from around Lottie and led her back to her room.

  ‘Do you think they will ever allow us out of here?’ asked Little Girl as they sat in the garden under an old bent ash tree that had become their talking place.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ answered Lottie. ‘They will give me a new mummy married to a new daddy.’

  Little Girl knew that Lottie meant it, and somewhere inside she died a little.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Luke Buchanan lived in a shared house made up of bedsits that wouldn’t have disgraced a seventies’ student sitcom. He might have to spend most of his acting career unemployed but one thing he valued above everything was his independence.

  He loved living alone. The tall Edwardian house, which he presently called home, consisted of nine separate little hovels. Luke’s was first floor at the back, overlooking a junk-filled yard. The lettings agent had described it to him as a period studio apartment, which in reality meant a room with a large single bed in one corner. A dining table sat under the window and a screened-off kitchen comprised an old gas cooker, a tiny refrigerator and a ramshackle gas boiler fastened to the wall to provide boiling water. It all added to the glamour of having his own place.

  Luke had acquired two comfortable chairs, one from a tip and one from IKEA, though it was hard to tell which was which. His pride and joy was a shelving unit he’d built into an alcove corner by the bed. It accommodated all his books and had a pull-down work surface for his computer. It was here he spent most of his time assembling his film pastiches.

  He’d spent the previous day putting together the footage he’d shot in the park, a motley assemblage of ducks, people at leisure, Henry, Jonny and Shannon. Clever editing had turned it into an almost Hitchcockian thriller.

  He’d used the shots of Cora. He still hadn’t figured out the woman’s reaction to being filmed; the look in her eyes as she’d ordered him to delete the footage made it clear that she had some sort of problem. But whatever it was, Luke didn’t take it as sufficient reason to lose good shots of her sashaying along the side of the lake in that stupid coat. Now, with all the footage transposed into black and white and a stock track of some Rachmaninov, it was a classy piece about a serial duck killer. He’d been proud of holding out the camera and pressing the save button on the footage before he had showed her a black screen. She wasn’t as clever as she thought.

  He finished editing the film late in the evening. As invariably happened when he’d created a masterpiece, he found himself on a high, one that was impossible to contain within four poorly decorated walls.

  The good thing about the cashless society, thought Luke, was that you never checked your wallet because it was always empty. But cards could buy you an evening of pleasure and that was what he needed.

  A quick splash and change of T-shirt and, as most other people were thinking of heading to bed, he hopped onto a night bus into the centre of town. He was intent on finding some female company though he expected he’d end up settling for a few drinks.

  It was one of those rare nights when he was lucky and found both. He knew a club in the centre of town which guaranteed he’d bump into other out-of-work actors. Halfway through his second pint, he found himself sitting next to Polly. Vivacious, blonde and with a cut-glass accent that Luke found highly arousing, she too had found herself thrown into the world of unemployment after drama school.

  Polly made it obvious from the start that he was ‘her sort of thing’. The night pulsed on and the two of them found themselves back at Polly’s flat in the centre of the city overlooking the river. Luke gaped in amazement that anyone five months out of drama school could be living here.

  ‘It’s my parents’ gaff. They’re away, ya? So, it’s all mine at the mo. I’m just so lucky I don’t have to live in some dump in the suburbs, ya?’ Luke knew he wouldn’t be taking her home.

  He woke just before midday. The other side of the bed was empty but he could hear sounds from the kitchen where last night they had enjoyed an extra couple of glasses of wine before indulging in their horizontal couplings. He found his pants and pulled them on.

  ‘Morning,’ Polly greeted him.

  ‘Morning.’ He walked over to grab her around the waist.

  She turned, pecked him on the cheek and moved away. ‘No time for that. I’ve got an audition. My agent rang this morning. I was leaving you a cup of coffee and a note.’

  ‘Right.’

  As an out-of-work actor, Luke found it impossible not to feel jealous when anyone else got a sniff of a role. It made no difference to him that Polly was female, blonde and five
foot six; he knew he could have played the role she was going up for this afternoon better than her.

  She headed out and he took his time wandering round the flat with its river views. He finished his coffee and found the rest of his clothes. He thought he’d wait until getting home before showering, but one look at the power-shower monster lurking in the bathroom and he changed his mind. Hot-water heaven, and he luxuriated in it for quite a while.

  His cards were maxed out after his night on the town, so walking home was his only option. Five-and-a-half miles would up his step count for the day, and he wouldn’t feel guilty spending most of the evening lying on the bed. He hadn’t had a lot of sleep; it had been a magical night for which he was now suffering.

  He put his key in the door of the house and pushed open the front door. The guy who lived in the studio apartment at the front and acted as liaison with their landlord was in the hall picking up some post. ‘Hi, man. You look rough. Good night?’

  Luke smiled. ‘Yeah. Wonderful night. Nothing for me, then?’

  The guy shook his head. ‘No. Circulars and a couple of things for Maanuv upstairs. Nothing for us.’

  Luke squeezed past him and made his way upstairs. He let himself into his room and flopped on the bed. There was a knock on the door. The guy from downstairs stood there.

  ‘Sorry, meant to tell you. The landlord sent somebody round this morning to deal with your faulty boiler. It needed checking. He let himself in, so I just wanted to let you know.’

  Luke looked puzzled. ‘Not sure I have a faulty boiler.’ He walked into the kitchen cubbyhole and turned on the tap. The flame lit on the boiler and hot water gushed into the sink. ‘Seems to be working fine.’

  ‘He’s obviously done the job, then.’

  Luke didn’t think any more about it; domestic management wasn’t something he’d ever been interested in.