The Liar's Sister (ARC)

by Sarah A. Denzil

  ‘How did he get in without breaking in?’ Her fixation on Ian Dixon is beginning to annoy me. I want to be free to think, to explore other possibilities.

  ‘Oh, that’s my fault, sorry,’ she says. ‘I was the last one out and I forgot to lock the door.’ When my expression drops, she adds. ‘Don’t go off on one. We used to leave the house unlocked all the time.’

  It’s true, and I didn’t notice her not lock the door, so I have to shoulder some of the blame. Buckthorpe always felt a million miles away from the dangers of cities. Most people left their houses unlocked. It was only after Rosie’s accusation that Mum started locking the doors all the time. That was when our idyllic childhood was interrupted by danger for the first time. Someone threw a brick through the window and painted our house with abuse. There would be whispers in the school corridors. I remember finding a note in my school bag that said Rosie was a liar and I should disown ‘the bitch’.

  I always suspected Peter of that, but now, with hindsight, I think it’s probably unlikely.

  There were horrible incidents aimed at Rosie, but the truth was that most people believed her. A lot of the hostility came from the fact that she had rocked the status quo. It made people uncomfortable, unsettled the village. No one wanted it to be true, but at the same time people thought Samuel was a weird loner and exactly the kind of boy to attack the most beautiful and popular girl in Buckthorpe.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I say, pulling my thoughts from the past to the present. I move a pile of clothes from Mum’s little chair in the corner of the room, and sit down, exhausted by the eventful day.

  She shrugs. ‘Sell up and get out? Honestly, I just don’t know whether I can see another solution.’

  I rest my hands on my knees and allow my tired shoulders to slump. ‘But this is our home.’

  Rosie gets up and paces the room, fingers drumming against her thighs. ‘Is it? We’re not welcome here. I’m not welcome here. I’m still being punished for what happened all those years ago.’

  I swallow, trying to force some moisture into my throat. What I’m about to say makes every inch of my mouth dry. ‘Rosie, maybe we should talk about the past.’

  She stops pacing and her body grows rigid. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The things that are happening to us are all connected with what happened with Samuel. Don’t you think we should talk about it?’

  ‘What is there to say?’ she says quietly. Her fingers still drum against her legs, but the rest of her is still. She stands like a soldier; tense from head to toe. ‘You know everything.’

  I shake my head slowly. ‘That’s not true.’

  Her chin lifts and her eyes widen as though warning me to stop talking. She doesn’t say it, though. She doesn’t ask me to stop. It’s just her eyes that say the words she can’t.

  I open my mouth to speak, then lose my nerve and decide to try a different approach. ‘What about the other girls? Rhona and Emily. Didn’t they start that blog about Samuel?’

  Rosie rolls her eyes. ‘I didn’t ask them to do that, and if you want to know whether I think they were telling the truth, I just don’t know.’

  ‘They accused him of some pretty weird things. Satanic stuff.’

  She shrugs. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, you never …’ I feel as though part of my insides have shrivelled up and died. Why can’t I say it? I close my eyes and finish the sentence. ‘You never accused Samuel of any of that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is that because he didn’t do those things with you?’

  ‘What does any of this have to do with someone breaking into the house?’ There’s that warning glance again, telling me to stop probing.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know. If Rhona and Emily made up their accusations, maybe someone thinks you made yours up too. And they want to scare us away to punish us.’

  ‘You mean like you think I made it up?’ Rosie begins pacing again, her hands now clenching and releasing with each step.

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ I say.

  ‘Are you sure, Heather? Because you knew Samuel better than anyone. You had a reason to hope I was lying. The two of you were best friends, after all.’

  ‘You know I was always on your side. You’re my sister. I’m always on your side.’

  She shakes her head slowly. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

  ‘It is,’ I say. ‘You know it is. You know that I never said a word about you leaving the house that night.’

  Her face flushes red, and she stops, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. ‘I never asked you to do that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I never told anyone about what I saw you do, either,’ she says, eyes fixed on mine.

  The blood drains from my face.

  Seventeen

  Rosie

  Then

  It shouldn’t have happened. I’d been walking around for hours trying to make sense of it all, but I couldn’t. It would never make sense and it would never be okay.

  My skin was dirty from where I’d hit the ground. There were scratches on my skin from the thorns that had caught my flesh. As night fell, I lost sight of the path that wound through the forest. Where was I? All I knew was that underfoot, the terrain had changed from the smoother footpath to the rough and rocky muddier part of the forest. With each step, the trees closed around me until I had to manoeuvre my body sideways to squeeze through.

  What if he finds me while I’m here? I thought. What if he comes searching for me?

  I’d figured that Mum and Dad must know I was missing by that point in the evening and I hoped that they might search for me. Heather would have gone home on Lady after I ran away from the Murrays’. I was worried that Midnight was still in the stable there. Dad would have to go and fetch him, and he’d be mad about that. But at least they’d know that I’d gone.

  There was a rustle of leaves behind me. What was it? A fox? A pheasant? Did pheasants come out at night? Were there any wolves in Yorkshire? Don’t be ridiculous, Rosie, I told myself. Keep going.

  My ankle twisted when I took a misstep down a bank, and it was at that moment I realised I could hurt myself. I still remember the way the thought made my chest tight with fear. My breathing wouldn’t come out properly and I felt light-headed and anxious, like I might keel over at any moment. Later on, I came to identify that feeling as a panic attack. I would come to understand panic again and again throughout my life. I sat down on the mud and the nettles and took a moment to steady myself. What would Heather do? She was always the best of the Sharpes in a crisis. She always had the answers. If Heather was with me there, she’d tell me to take a deep breath and calm down.

  I examined my ankle. Twisted but not broken. Gently I tested my weight on it. I discovered that I could limp along just fine. It was going to slow me down, but at least I would have to go more carefully. That was a good thing, because then I wouldn’t fall down any more banks.

  I wish I could say that I knew the forest like the back of my hand. That was what the tough girls in the fantasy novels I loved would say. In that moment, I was the opposite of those girls. I’d never felt so powerless. Even though I spent so much time riding in the wood, I only knew the paths, and I definitely couldn’t remember them in the dark. Later, I would come to know a path through the woods in the dark, but not that night.

  What I did know – when I was seventeen and terrified – was that Buckbell was vast, stretching out past our village, eventually feeding into a much larger forest that continued through the county. I could end up lost for days if I wasn’t careful.

  There it was again, the rustle of leaves behind me. Was someone following me? Immediately I thought it was him, trying to find me in the dark. Or maybe it was Dad. No, it couldn’t be Dad, he would call my name. Had they reported me missing yet? Were the police searching for me? If only I hadn’t lost my phone I’d be able to call them, and then I’d know the time, too. All I knew was that the sun had set
and I was lost. My limbs shook and my bottom lip trembled as I took each step.

  Deep down inside, I felt shame.

  One foot in front of the other, Rosie. Keep going. I might not have been a fictional warrior girl, but I still knew that I wasn’t a coward. I thought about Mum, and how she always said that my bravery was half wildness, half stupidity. She was probably right. After all, I was stupid enough to get myself into this situation. I bit my lip and tried not to think about the scratches on my legs, the bruises, the dirt on my skin, my torn jodhpurs and my missing riding boot. I kept fighting back the tears. What was I going to say to my dad when I saw him? Would I have to live with this shame and guilt for the rest of my life, even though it wasn’t my fault?

  Every time the wind blew through the trees, my heart skipped a beat and I whipped my head around to check on the darkness behind me. There was nothing there but the hint of moonlight on branches, and nothing ahead but yet more trees. I thought I heard someone sobbing, until I realised it was my own ragged breath wheezing from my chest. Heather would never be this weak. I kept thinking back to four years ago when Lady had taken off down the road and she’d stayed quiet. She didn’t even cry.

  It was all Lady’s fault. No, that wasn’t true. It was all my fault. I was the one who went too fast that day and fired Lady up into such a fervour that she panicked. Lady was a good pony; she never misbehaved, apart from when I insisted on racing her with Midnight. If Mr Murray hadn’t found us that day, we would never have ended up spending our summers at the farm. We wouldn’t have made friends with Samuel Murray, and none of this would’ve happened. I wouldn’t have been limping through the woods in the dark with all that shame inside me like a coiled-up ball of steel wire in my stomach. I felt, and still feel, like it might unspool at any moment and rip out my guts in the process.

  The rustling came back, and this time I was convinced that it was footsteps behind me. A shooting pain worked through my ankle as I tried to speed up. I ignored it – thinking about my warrior heroines – because if I was being followed, I needed to get out of here fast. What if it’s him? I thought.

  There was no time to be cautious now that I’d heard the rustling of leaves behind me. I beat my way through the close-knit bushes and thorns, feeling thin twigs striking my face and torso. Weeds stuck to my feet and ankles. Up above, a sliver of moonlight helped me see my way through the woods, preventing me from running into a tree trunk or falling down a steep slope. I’d finally reached a point where there were fewer trees, which meant that I might not be as far into the woods as I’d thought. The path had to be around here somewhere.

  Still ignoring the twinge in my ankle, I broke into a tentative jog, almost losing my sock in the process. Behind me, the rustling noise also sped up. There had to be someone there. It couldn’t be a coincidence. And yet when I glanced behind me, still I saw nothing. Was there a ghost following my every step? Or was it him watching me from behind a tree? Following at such a distance that I couldn’t see him. There were many shadows to hide in. Many dark places for a hunter to watch his prey.

  The tears dried on my cheeks as I half jogged, half stumbled my way through Buckbell. There was only one aim in my mind: to get out of the woods alive. To get home and fold myself into my mum’s arms. To get away from whoever was behind me. When the ground underfoot began to even out, I didn’t even glance over my shoulder. Instead, I hurried on as fast as I could, letting adrenaline take over, ignoring the sharp stones beneath my unshod foot.

  The moonlight allowed me to identify the path and make out the shapes of familiar trees and the place where the woods opened out towards the road. All I needed to do was follow that narrow road to Ivy Cottage.

  But afterwards I had to face my family.

  What was I going to tell them?

  I started to slow down, tired, wary of what waited for me at home. There was no more rustling behind me, but even the slightest change in the wind frightened me. When my boot hit the tarmac of the road, I sped up again. I knew I was less than five minutes away from home. In the distance I saw the light from our neighbours’ cottage. I dared to peek behind me one last time. The road was clear. Whoever had been in the woods was gone. But still I pressed on, just a few minutes away from home.

  There were voices in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. My body hurt all over, but the sound spurred me on. A moment later, I heard the familiar sound of Dad’s voice.

  ‘You stay here. I’m going to drive around the village. Dad, do you want to come or stay?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Grandad replied.

  ‘Wait,’ I called out. I waved my arms around in the darkness until they saw me coming up the road. A car door slammed shut and Dad’s shape hurried towards me.

  Mum came sprinting down the drive, her long cardigan trailing behind her, Heather and Grandad following. But Dad was the first person to greet me at the gate, more panicked than I’d ever seen him. The whites of his eyeballs were all I focused on.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  Only then did I remember that my clothes were torn, that I was covered in mud and that thorns had scratched my skin. I started to cry. I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Rosie?’ Mum swung the gate open and pulled me into her arms. ‘Wait, give her some space,’ she said to the others. She manoeuvred me forward. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

  Grandad peeled away his jacket and placed it over my shoulders. I saw Heather, standing back, her face almost translucent in the glow of our security light. Even her lips were pale. She seemed completely frozen by the sight of me. It was while looking at her that I began to cry.

  When we reached the kitchen, I was positioned on a chair and a blanket was laid over my legs. I didn’t deserve any of this. Mum’s eyes were questioning as she fussed over the scratches on my face.

  ‘Rosie, what happened?’ Dad asked.

  He didn’t want to know what happened. Why would any dad want this for their children?

  ‘He hurt me,’ I muttered.

  ‘Who?’ Dad asked.

  My lips trembled as I answered. ‘Samuel Murray.’

  Eighteen

  Heather

  Now

  ‘What did you see?’

  Rosie pulls her legs onto the bed and crosses them. ‘I saw you kissing Samuel in the woods after … after the incident.’ She lets out a long sigh. ‘No matter what you say now, Hev, it doesn’t matter. You still kissed him after I told you what had happened. That means you didn’t believe me when I said that Samuel attacked me.’

  I rub my palms along my knees and close my eyes, not sure which emotion to feel first. A few days after she’d limped home and told us what had happened, I’d met Samuel in the woods. Rosie must have followed me. I hadn’t intended to kiss him. I just needed to know the truth. Since then, I’d always felt ashamed that I’d met him and the kiss had happened.

  What I hadn’t told my sister – what I hadn’t told anyone – was that Samuel had been my boyfriend for several months before Rosie accused him of sexual assault. We’d kept it a secret between us.

  ‘Why were you there that day?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Why were you there? You were supposed to be at school!’

  ‘I needed to talk to him. He was my boyfriend,’ I whisper.

  Rosie smiles as though this revelation is important to her. It’s true that I’ve never said it aloud, though I assumed that Rosie had figured it out.

  ‘Secret boyfriend,’ Rosie corrects. ‘Sneaking around behind everyone’s backs.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I insist. ‘I was, well, we were a bit shy about telling people. Samuel thought there’d be teasing at school, and I didn’t want Dad to know. He hated us talking about boys.’

  Rosie lets out a laugh. ‘Forbidden dating. Yeah, I remember. I guess I didn’t tell anyone when I went on dates in Ingledown. Not even Mum.’

  ‘We didn’t talk to them, did we?’ I admit.

  ‘Nope.’ She sighs
. ‘But you could have told me. You should have told me. I’m your big sister.’

  ‘I wanted to. It was Samuel who didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  But I don’t want to tell her.

  ‘Hev,’ she insists. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he thought you’d be jealous.’

  Rosie lets out another laugh, but this one sounds almost manic. ‘And now Peter. The adopted brother.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I say, flinching.

  ‘Why not? It’s obvious he still has a thing for you.’

  The harshness of her tone riles me up again and I can’t help snapping back, ‘Yeah, well for most of our childhood it was obvious Samuel had a thing for you, and look how that ended up.’

  ‘Jesus, we should just not talk about any of this.’ Rosie gets up from the chair. ‘Ten years later and you can’t accept any of the shit that went down.’

  ‘Explain it to me then,’ I say. ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t tell you because you don’t want to know. Trust me.’

  ‘I have to know, Rosie,’ I say. And I mean every word.

  * * *

  The atmosphere between us is icy for the rest of the day. I’m surprised the windows don’t frost over. Rosie might have come back after almost leaving, but she still won’t talk to me about the past, except to argue with me about whether I believe her or not. I’m now more convinced than ever that she knows what I’ve always suspected, but she won’t do anything to assuage those fears. Why? Is it because she can’t? Or won’t?

  I spend most of the afternoon in my room researching Emily and Rhona on Facebook. The argument with Rosie has made me even more determined to find out the truth. I don’t think for even a second that she has ever believed either of those girls. In fact, aside from gossip, it was clear that most people didn’t believe them. A lot believed Rosie, but they were more sceptical about strange blog posts rambling on about satanic rituals. After sending both girls a message, I root through my old belongings until I find the notebook where I wrote down everything I knew about Samuel and the accusations against him.