The Lies We Tell

by The Lies We Tell (retail) (epub)

  ‘Sorry?’

  Jude hesitates, savouring the moment. ‘My boy!’ she exclaims.

  Katy wonders what she can mean. An affectionate name for her lover, perhaps. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, not so little now. Never doubt it when anyone tells you to savour every moment. How nowadays they grow up so fast. He’s in his mid-twenties!’

  ‘Oh.’ Words seem hard to find as Katy’s sluggish brain fumbles with the logistics.

  ‘So,’ Jude continues breezily. ‘Not yet married, but soon to be?’ She points at the third finger on Katy’s left hand.

  ‘No. You?’ Katy quickly bats back, preoccupied by the maths of it as desperate thoughts career around her head. Mid-twenties. Which meant … no, it couldn’t be. Because that would mean she’d had a baby some time during the months following the last time they’d seen each other. But she’d have known Jude was expecting a baby, wouldn‘t she?

  ‘Briefly. But things didn’t work out. He was jealous of James. When Steve and I met James was ten, you see. They never took to each other and Steve grew jealous. Kept telling me lies about things James had done, or said. Like having two kids, really. That said, I suppose it always was going to be tough.’ Jude locks gazes with Katy then narrows her eyes. ‘What with James’s dad never being on the scene.’

  ‘He wasn‘t?’ Katy responds on automatic pilot, her voice a whisper. No Jude, no. It wasn’t … You weren’t … Because it would have come out if you had been. There would have been newspaper reports. Police. Christ, how her head now aches.

  ‘No.’ Jude’s expression taunts Katy, accusingly.

  ‘So, um. Where was your boy born?’

  Jude shoots Katy an arch smile. ‘You mean when, right?’

  Katy’s stomach lurches at the unspoken question that now hangs above her head like a sword she dares not grasp. She tried to help, honestly she did. Tried to stop it. But she was only a child. What else could she do?

  ‘I got pregnant – ’ Jude continues, slowly. ‘Around the last time I saw you. Just before we … moved away.’

  Katy looks away for a moment and across the river without taking in the view, blinking her eyes wildly against the piercing light that skitters off the river’s surface. Then she stares down at her lap, noticing for the first time how carefully each of them seem to have positioned themselves. As if to minimise the chance of direct physical contact, or even the unwitting exchange of a stray fibre.

  Like two islands, she thinks, scrutinising a whisker of cotton that’s begun to unravel from the hem of her shirt. That’s what we are. Though both of us are inextricably joined beneath the surface. Because of what happened.

  Was that why Jude hadn’t wanted to speak to her after the incident? Why she and her mum had moved away? It was hideous. Overwhelming. And, in a curious way, reassuring. For she feared the worst during those long and lonely months that followed and now she knows she’d been right. It was true. But what to say? Sorry couldn’t start to cover it. Katy’s head spins for a moment. ‘I think I need something drink. No … water, I mean,’ she rasps as, with a laugh, Jude’s gaze darts towards the nearest pub. Standing up, she sways slightly, cursing her decision to skip breakfast. When am I going to stop feeling like this, the voice inside her wails. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well. It’s the … heat.’

  Jude slips on her sandals and rises to her feet. ‘I ought to be getting on, too,’ she declares, checking her watch. ‘Things to do. People to see. But listen, there’s still so much to catch up on, don’t you think? We really must do this again.’ Reaching out she grasps Katy’s arm, her painted nails digging firmly into the skin. Then, a beat later, she is swooping towards Katy to kiss her.

  They embrace, and the mechanical convention of it is momentarily distracting as Katy finds herself craving for an instant a long-forgotten cocktail of high street cosmetics and cheap shampoo. But, instead, a heady blast of Chanel No 5 assaults her as cheek brushes cheek and Jude lets slip her parting words. Imparted in barely a whisper as the woman’s lips skim Katy’s ear.

  ‘Because we’ve unfinished business, you and I,’ she murmurs in barely a whisper as her lips brush Katy’s ear. ‘Because I know what you did. Because you owe me.’ With that Jude turns to leave. Shrugs her bag higher onto her shoulder. Starts walking away – down the Thames path, Chiswick-bound. The opposite direction from which Katy has come.

  Only then, as Katy struggles to digest the meaning of it all, does she glimpse the implication of what’s just happened. What can she mean by unfinished business, she wonders, still reeling from the intensity of their encounter. Still torn by the mix of emotions she feels observing Jude’s retreat. Registering the care with which Jude holds herself; the meticulous swing of her hips. As, with a hammer blow, her face starts to burn with shame. For what happened that day was down to her. She is the one to blame. Always the weaker of the two. The follower. The one who ran away.

  With a start, Katy tugs free the mobile phone now ringing in her pocket and presses it to her ear.

  ‘Katy?’ The sound of Michael’s voice feels like salvation. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Fine,’ she lies, quickening her pace as she hurries back towards the line of pubs, the bridge and the main road beyond that will lead her back home. ‘I’m down by the river. Just popped out for some fresh air. But my headache’s coming back, so I’m on my way back to have a lie down.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ he soothes. ‘Go back to bed if you need to, or chill in the bath. I’ll see you in a bit, OK? Won’t be late, I promise.’

  The afternoon drinkers who throng the river walkway in even greater numbers, now, are faceless obstacles to be side-stepped, over-taken, and pushed by as she retraces her steps. Desperate to be back indoors she strides on, oblivious to irritation or complaint; her head churning. Because at least she knows now, for sure, that something bad happened to Jude. That if she hadn’t done it, it would have been her. And she feels vindicated. It was rotten luck she’d not got help in time, that’s all. Fate made her take the wrong path.

  Then Katy frowns, struggling as she always does to recall the precise sequence of events. Angry at the ragged holes in her memory. Guilty, as always, at the fleeting thought that what happened was some kind of payback for how mean Jude had been. The not knowing, she decides, turning into her street: it’s the not knowing what happened that’s been the real burden.

  It takes a moment or two to open the front door of the flat some fifteen minutes later, as someone has pushed the post and a copy of a West London free sheet beneath it. Bending down to pick up both, Katy catches sight of the paper’s front page. School Girl Raped, the headline blares. A coincidence, that’s all, she reasons, grimly. Nevertheless, it fells her like a punch to the solar plexus. As she slips downwards onto the bottom stair beside the open doorway, her head slumps against the wall. Burying her head in her arms, Katy rocks her body to and fro, hugging her knees tight as the child inside her starts to howl and tears come hot and thick and fast. Until she is stilled by a familiar voice.

  ‘I’m sorry … is this a bad time? Only I realised we didn’t swap numbers, did we? So I thought that seeing as you’d already decided to have a duvet day and it turns out they don’t need me in work this afternoon, well, perhaps we could reminisce some more. Only maybe this isn’t a good time -’

  Words that spill from a mouth pressed against the front door’s letterbox which is wedged open by a taloned hand. Then Jude’s face peers in. ‘Oh dear, Kat, is everything OK?’

  Chapter 9

  The perfect life – that’s what I saw when I first saw you again. Because you’ve done alright for yourself, haven’t you? What with your job that’s going somewhere. Your house in a fashionable part of town. Your boyfriend who loves you. A baby on the way – I could tell, even on that first meeting. Did I mention how much I would have loved a little girl? A right to right a wrong, isn’t that what they say? But I wasn’t so lucky. Never have been. So can’t you really blame me for wanting to ma
ke you unlucky, too? I saw the cracks in your facade, you see. How convincingly you’d lied, not just to the world but to yourself. And I saw the truth: that however much you’d been punishing yourself for all those years, it wasn’t enough.

  Chapter 10

  London – July 2013

  The letterbox closes and for a moment Katy’s spirits stir with the sudden hope that her unexpected visitor will take the hint and leave.

  Yet when she looks up Jude’s outline is clearly visible through the whorled glass of the front door, stubborn and expectant. Unsure what else to do, Katy raises her hand towards the intercom on the wall above her head. Because Jude’s seen her, crying, and it’s pointless to hide or pretend everything is OK. So she presses the button that releases the catch on the front door.

  ‘Come on up,’ she calls out, turning her face away as the door opens so Jude will not see at close range her tear-streaked face. Quickly, she risks a surreptitious face wipe on her sleeve. How has she found out where she lives? Was it the same way she tracked her down at work and found out her personal email address, or did she simply follow her? ‘Go on in,’ she adds, hesitating on the first floor landing as Jude draws level then waving towards sitting room door. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  Locked inside the bathroom Katy quickly scrubs her face. She is as eager to wash away the tears, recrimination and self-doubt as to leave Jude the least amount of time to scrutinise her surroundings. To unpick the fabric of her and Michael’s domestic life. Pry into private things. Yet she is desperate, too, to regain control of herself and that means putting on fresh clothes and a light dusting of make-up; combing her hair.

  Cornered, that’s how Katy feels. Vulnerable and exposed. For there is no alternative, she knows. No place to hide, she thinks, angrily. Because whatever Jude wants she’ll get.

  The intruder sits in Michael’s leather armchair, idly flicking through an edition of Professional Photographer when Katy steps back into the sitting room a few minutes later. The seat is low-slung and her dress has ridden up to reveal a tanned expanse of thigh. A scene that’s anything but threatening, Katy reassures herself. In fact indoors the outfit Jude is wearing makes her look businesslike – elegant, almost – and enviably slim. Her relaxed demeanour, meanwhile, almost makes her presence here, in their home, seem like the most natural thing in the world.

  Though, of course, it is anything but. Jude being here, uninvited and unannounced, is a deliberate act of violation.

  ‘An eclectic mix,’ Jude declares, approvingly, with a wave towards the collection of CDs that fill the shelves of the alcove to her side. ‘He’s got good taste, that man of yours.’

  ‘How do you know they’re all Michael’s?’ The sound of her voice – more defensive than she intends – makes Katy wince. Snap out of it, she tells herself, digging a finger nail into the dry cuticle of her thumb. Doesn’t she have the upper hand? She is in her own home, after all. Well, Michael’s. But Jude is right: just one shelf belongs to her, a mixture of compilations, mainly, as she pretty much lost interest in music after secretarial college.

  Jude looks up. ‘Just a feeling. And judging by the look on your face I’m right.’ She takes Now That’s What I Call Music compilation off the bottom shelf and turns it over to scan the track list. ‘God, we used to love this stuff, didn’t we?’ she exclaims. ‘Go on, put this one on. I’ve not heard it in years.’

  Without a word, Katy presses a button on the laptop open on the coffee table by the fireplace, finds the appropriate album on the screen and presses play. As the music begins to play from four free-standing speakers carefully positioned in each corner of the room, she sees her hands are shaking. ‘Fancy a drink?’

  Pressing together her palms, Jude’s lips curl into a beatific smile as Madonna starts to sing the first line of Like A Prayer. A song that instantly transports Katy back to rainy afternoons in her old bedroom at home when she and Jude would lie on the floor, playing tapes and reading magazines. ‘Sure. Why not? And while you get it I’ll make use of the facilities, if I may,’ Jude replies, rising to her feet and heading towards the bathroom Katy has just vacated before her host can reply let alone direct her to the guest toilet downstairs.

  Katy makes a spritzer for Jude and a fizzy water and lime for herself, both in matching wine glasses, then takes a seat on the sofa opposite where the other woman has been sitting to await her return. ‘Love the view from upstairs – a real selling point,’ Jude gushes as a few minutes later she sinks back down into the armchair, crosses her legs and begins to tap her foot in time to the music. ‘As and when Michael and you decide to sell.’

  Katy tightens her grip on the glass. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well you’re going to need more room soon enough, surely – what with a little one on the way?’

  ‘How the – ’

  ‘Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,’ Jude interrupts, her expression now one of furrowed concern. ‘I saw the Pregnacare vitamins on the windowsill upstairs and just assumed … well … I’m so sorry. Of course the first trimester is always tricky.’

  ‘As it happens you are right, I am expecting,’ Katy answers, softly. Words that seem strange to hear coming from her own mouth, but not unpleasant. ‘It’s just we’ve not yet told many people. Yet.’

  Jude smiles. ‘Which is totally understandable, of course,’ she declares. ‘Considering the challenges of being an older first time mum. Waiting to go public until after the secondary scan rules out any potential problems – Downs and the like – am I right?’

  Anger ignites in Katy’s veins yet somehow she manages to keep her face set in a rictus grin. For this is textbook Jude, isn’t it? Still determined, as she always was, to say the unspeakable. Provoke. She is fishing for information, that’s all. Ammunition to use against her, somehow. But no, she thinks, I will not rise.

  ‘What are you hoping for – a girl, I expect. I’d have loved more after James, of course. Girls especially, given the handful he turned out to be. And I deserved a break, didn’t I? But it was not to be. Though I got pregnant again both were ectopic. Unexplained infertility, they called it. As a mum already I was luckier than most, my GP told me, the insensitive prick.’

  ‘And your baby’s dad?’ Katy enquires politely, knowing as soon as the words are spoken that this is an inappropriate thing to say. But she is determined not to let Jude walk all over her as she once used to. Intimate, playful and conspiratorial one day; distant, spiteful and manipulative the next. Bullying by any other name, though Katy can now see how willing a participant she’d been in the delusion that she was stronger, more confident and resilient in the warmth of Jude’s reflected glow. ‘Wasn’t he able to –’

  ‘Even if I’d known who he was I’d never have asked him – for anything,’ Jude snaps, riled for an instant before the tension in her subsides.

  But there’s something about her response, her evasiveness or maybe the speed of her denial, that leaves Katy unconvinced. This is a lie, she notes, and not the first. Clearing her throat, she re-crosses her legs. ‘Right then,’ she says, eager to change the conversation’s direction. ‘So. What exactly is it that you want?’

  Jude laughs – a brittle sound. ‘Well that’s not very friendly, is it?’

  ‘How did you know my address?’ Katy snaps. That hurt tone is simply infuriating – she must work hard not to show it; to convince Jude she’s not got to her, not really. That this is simply another attempt to intimidate. But this time she knows for sure from the shard of amusement in Jude’s expression that her failure at small talk is making her anxiety and discomfort all the more obvious. Nevertheless, she can’t give up now. ‘Did you follow me?’

  ‘Why not intentionally!’ Jude exclaims. The lightness in her voice is like a playground promise. ‘I parked in this road, you see. I suppose you could call it … a lucky coincidence.’ Katy shoots Jude a wary glance but says nothing, fearful of loosening the precarious grip she has on her emotions. Besides, if she says less maybe Jude will reveal more.
‘Oh alright then, haven’t you heard of Google? I was intrigued, that’s all.’ Jude reaches across to pick up a framed photograph Andrew had taken of the twins aged around three, each dressed in matching sun suits and hats with faces smothered in ice cream. Her face tightens. ‘What a handsome pair!’

  Katy’s hands clench. How dare this uninvited guest, this intruder, pick through the minutiae of her life like this? It is too much. Enough. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go,’ she declares, carefully, putting down her glass then rising to her feet. Though her voice is calm her mind is skittish so struggles to back up this instruction with any credible reason. ‘My boyfriend will be coming from work soon. We’ve got people coming round – ’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Jude, taking a slow sip from her glass before continuing. ‘Because Michael doesn’t usually get back until half six or seven, does he?’ She makes a show of checking her watch. ‘And that won’t be for, well, another four or five hours.’

  So Jude really has been watching her. It’s the only way she can know about her and Michael’s movements, Katy thinks, almost sobbing in despair. Why can’t she just leave, now. For good. Just leave me alone. Yet maybe the only way to make this happen is let her come to say what she’s come to say.

  ‘So it looks like it’s just you and me. Home alone,’ Jude smiles, draining the rest of her drink then raising her glass. ‘Oh, and I’d kill for another one of these, if there’s one going.’

  Leaving her own drink unfinished, Katy goes into the kitchen to prepare two more. By the time she returns Jude, who is still holding the picture of the twins, is smoking a cigarette.