The Lies We Tell

  Though not the best, the sex was sharpened by the looming shadow of parental disapproval. For in a way it seemed that each was the other’s forbidden fruit. When she made it home just in time by her official ten o’clock curfew, dishevelled and not a little sore, Jude was elated – by a heady sense of pride and relief that at last, the initiation was over. Graeme, however, was an arms length kind of boyfriend. Though it was clear when they were alone how much he fancied her, whenever they went anywhere or did anything with his college contemporaries, he seemed offhand. All too often conversation revolved around their shared experiences, frustrations, jokes – almost as if Jude wasn’t there. At times like this she’d cheer herself by thinking of her classmates, still fettered by over-anxious parents to evenings at home eating TV dinners in front of Cagney & Lacey.

  Yet Jude felt torn and grew restless and frustrated with Graeme, with Siobhan, with Kat. During her early weeks at St Mary’s she’d been drawn to the pale-faced loner and intrigued, too, by how different from their classmates her new friend appeared to be. Like many of the girls, Kat had been to St Mary’s since she was seven yet while she had friends, she’d been one of the few not to participate in the obligatory pairing off that seemed so naturally to occur as the girls prepared to move up from junior to senior school. Alienated from the general flow of things, Kat seemed reluctant to compromise in order to fit in. And Jude respected her for that. She was grateful, too, for the licence her friendship with Kat had granted her to be accepted by her new classmates and, eventually, elevated to the status of someone other girls wanted to be ‘in’ with. But it did not take long before their shortcomings and limitations tipped the balance to make an increasingly cocksure, sharp-tongued and frustrated Jude someone the other girls went out of their way ‘not to cross’.

  It was an evolution in herself that Jude could see Kat enjoyed being part of, and she got pleasure from that. Until Kat’s inability to evolve at the same pace left her straggling behind like a dawdling child and the more Kat dawdled, the more Jude’s resentment grew. It wasn’t Kat’s fault Diane and Charles were stricter than Siobhan, of course, but that wasn’t the point. The more time they spent together, the more something in Kat’s make up began to grate. For as long as Jude could remember she had kicked against the machine, resentful of situations others created for her. Her mum’s poor taste in men. Her dad’s premature death. In contrast, Kat appeared to believe that in the increasingly fractious breakdown of her own parents’ marriage she was somehow complicit. It was a fundamental weakness Jude came to despise as their flowering friendship flatlined towards little more than a marriage of convenience.

  ‘Shit!’ someone behind her exclaimed as beer spilled down her left arm. Crossly spinning around, more than ready for a confrontation, Jude found herself caught off guard. ‘Hey, I’m really sorry,’ the voice continued as she turned to face him and then, as their eyes meet, they both laughed. ‘Wow, Jude, I didn’t recognise you!’ Andrew said, dropping his eyes to skim the cleavage exposed by her low-cut top before he could stop himself. ‘Um … you look great.’

  ‘As do you,’ Jude retorted, making a show of shaking her beer-soaked sleeve.

  ‘Let me get you something,’ Andrew offered, taking a gulp from his glass. ‘I think I owe you that much, at least. What will it be?’

  ‘A pint of Merrydown would be good.’ The others could sing for their drinks for all she cared; they probably hadn’t even noticed she’d been delayed.

  Leaning back against the pin ball machine, Jude watched Kat’s brother re-trace his steps towards the bar, lean forwards and shout the order at the barman. The jeans he was wearing, faded and frayed, were tight across his crotch leaving little to the imagination. The silver studded black leather belt he wore matched his battered biker’s jacket.

  Jude grinned. She had always liked the look of Andrew although until that evening had only met him briefly a couple times. Since starting at college the autumn she began at St Mary’s, he seemed to have spent as much time as he could playing on various sports teams or studying after hours in the college library. Well, that’s what he had told Kat’s parents and, judging by how frequently they commented on his busy academic schedule being the reason for his absence from the dinner table when Jude went to Kat’s house after school for tea, they believed him, too. Now, up close for the first time, Jude noted with approval the pouch of tobacco tucked into his back pocket. His scuffed DMs. The ease with which he handled himself.

  Andrew passed her cider then took another sip of his beer. ‘Here on your own?’

  ‘No.’ Jude waved casually over her shoulder towards where Graeme and the other two were sitting. ‘Just hanging out with a few friends.’

  Shooting a glance towards the distant table, Andrew chuckled. ‘Graeme Willis.’ He nodded. ‘Someone told me he’d been seeing a girl in Kat’s class. So, is that you?’

  ‘Was,’ Jude declared, impetuously. ‘I just dumped him, actually.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Andrew smiled, raising his glass in toast to her wisdom. ‘He’s a prick!’

  Jude sniffed. ‘I know.’

  As a couple sitting to their left rose to leave Andrew darted towards the empty table before anyone else could sit down. Turning back towards Jude, he patted the seat next to him. ‘Join me,’ he called, and there was something about the way he said it that Jude found impossible to resist.

  ‘So –’ she began with mock solemnity as she shifted position in her seat. ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘Actually it’s my first time,’ he smiled. ‘We’ve got a gig in the room upstairs tomorrow night. I only stopped by to bring some equipment over. I wasn’t planning to stay.’

  Jude took a gulp from her glass. ‘We?’

  ‘My band. I play bass.’

  ‘What sort of music?’

  ‘Indie rock. We all listen to loads of weird west coast American stuff. Although I like loads of different music. Stuff that’s different, you know – retro. Bolan. Morrison. Velvet Underground. Not chart crap.’

  ‘Sounds great.’

  He shot Jude a glance as if unsure whether she is being serious.

  ‘Seriously,’ she added, relishing the thought that she’d back footed him, albeit briefly. ‘It does. I love all that kind of stuff.’

  Andrew drained his glass. ‘Well I’ve a demo tape upstairs you could borrow … if you’re really interested.’

  Finishing her drink, too, Jude rose to her feet. ‘Well let’s go and get it.’

  While Andrew got the key to the upstairs room from the barman, Jude slipped up the stairs to wait for him on first floor landing. A moment later they were standing in the open doorway, peering into the room’s darkened interior, willing their eyes to adjust to the gloom. In the far corner she could just make out an assortment of dark boxes and what looked like a collapsible keyboard beside a half-decorated Christmas tree.

  Andrew strode towards the box and crouched down. ‘Turn on the light, will you?’ he called without turning round. ‘Only I can’t see what I’m looking for.’

  Softly she shut the door behind them, firmly pushing it to. Slipping off her shoes, she padded across the room and crouched down beside him. ‘I can’t seem to find the switch,’ she shrugged. ‘Here, I’m good in the dark, let me …’ Side by side in the grainy darkness Jude felt the warmth radiating from his body. The denim jacket he wore had a burnt, earthy smell. The sound of his breathing was measured, slow.

  ‘It’ll turn up,’ Andrew murmured.

  Pausing his search, he turned towards her. Despite the pounding she now felt in her chest, Jude’s body felt chill. Like something stunned by an electric charge. Then, a moment later, his arm was around her. Tugging her towards him. One hand cupping her face while the other slipped around her waist, gently feeling its way between the fabric upwards towards the lacy edging of her front opening bra.

  ‘I’m good in the dark, too,’ he murmured as their mouths met.

  Chapter 15

  Rich
mond – July 2013

  Joyce Patterson, a stout woman in her late fifties as wide as she is tall with close-cropped silver hair, is standing in the open doorway of her flat, waiting, as Katy steps from the lift on Parkview’s fourth floor. On his knees to her side, in the open doorway of Diane’s flat, a locksmith dressed in a navy jumpsuit is packing away his tools.

  ‘At last!’ the woman exclaims, though it’s barely turned nine. ‘We’ve got to get this sorted before your mum gets home.’

  ‘Good as new,’ the locksmith declares, rising to his feet to hand Joyce the new set of keys. ‘All done. And as requested I’ve fitted a Banham, too.’

  Katy fixes her mother’s friend with a questioning stare, but Joyce won’t yet meet her gaze. ‘It’s so kind of you to come out at such short notice,’ the older woman says briskly. ‘I’m sure we all really appreciate it. Now Katherine, you go straight in while I accompany our gallant knight to the lift.’

  As the locksmith chuckles, Katy steps inside to see an unexpected figure standing in the open kitchen doorway.

  ‘Andrew! Why didn’t you tell me – ’

  Katy exclaims hurrying towards him then halting, abruptly, as she registers her brother’s frown.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demands.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ she falters, processing the dishevelled state of him. His dull eyes. Five o’clock shadow. Crumpled business suit and skew-iff tie. Andrew looks like someone who’s just stumbled off an overnight flight. Which of course he has, he tells her curtly, having cancelled the direct Dubai to Washington red-eye ticket his work had booked him to break the journey in London to see Diane.

  How close they used to be in the years before that round the world trip during his gap year, she thinks, miserably. A journey during which he drifted between continents before arriving in New York and hiring a car to drive from east coast to west. It was the highlight of his trip, he would later declare in his newly-honed mid-Atlantic twang. Because in the latter stages of this epic drive when he pitched up in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay area, he met Dee. The thought of her sister-in-law makes Katy’s expression tighten, as it always does. For she was the reason he’d not come back.

  Though he’d returned to take up his place at university in Durham, as soon as he graduated he secured a lowly job not far from her family home at a small but ambitious US computing firm which, by the end of the decade, was flying high. He rose rapidly through the ranks, they married, and by the mid-Nineties his business card proudly boasted Vice President status. And in embossed print. Andrew now visits the UK infrequently but remains close to Diane. Which is typical. Because he’s always been his mother’s favourite. Even Jude once remarked upon it. When did it all go wrong between us, Katy wonders? During those long years she’d wasted; all that time spent running away.

  ‘I only rang last night on the off chance, from the airport while I was waiting for my flight. Which is when Joyce told me mum was in hospital. For God’s sake, Katy. Couldn’t you have let me know yourself?’

  Her cheeks burn. He has a point. Though there was hardly time even to call Michael. And even if she had thought of it she only had Andrew and Dee’s home number on her mobile which would have been of little use as everyone would surely have been out at school or work. How was she to know he was travelling in Europe and the Middle East on business?

  ‘Sorry,’ she stutters. ‘I didn’t have your cell number on my mobile – ’

  ‘Is she OK?’ he interrupts, dismissing her excuse with a wave of his hand.

  Katy’s stomach tightens. Why does he make her feel like this, she wonders, miserably. Ever the guilty schoolgirl. Even though she’s now almost forty. A soon-to-be mother, too. How was it that as children they’d got on so much better? Had been friends, almost. Or maybe that was just a rose-tinted re-versioning of the truth of it; a deceit she’d nurtured to obscure darker shadows.

  ‘Mum’s doing OK,’ she replies, determined not to rise to it. He may think of her as his silly little sister; a passive victim of fate who’s let herself drift, aimlessly, for half a life-time. But she knows better.

  True, instead of matching his academic qualifications and glittering career she lost her footing and ran away. But she is stronger than he thinks. And has to be, too – especially now. For the tiny life now unfurling inside her. For Michael. And for Diane. Katy tears a sheet from the notepad by the phone, writes out the name and directions to Maynard Ward then hands the slip of paper to her brother who tucks it into his inside jacket pocket with a nod. She offers up a tentative smile.

  ‘She’ll be thrilled to see you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks, turning away to retrieve the executive business case left propped against the side of the fridge. It is obvious she has just caught him as he is about to leave. ‘You’re looking a bit tired. Everything OK with that photographer, Martin – ’

  ‘Michael,’ she interrupts, with little inclination to correct her brother any further. ‘And yes, thanks for asking, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Good. Well, I suppose, I’d better get going,’ he says with a weary smile, his right arm twitching for a moment as if he might be about to shake her hand. ‘I’ll be in London with Dee and the kids in mid-October so let’s all get together then.’ A sudden pulse from his smart phone announces the arrival of the taxi he has ordered as it pulls into the car park four floors below. ‘Look after yourself.’

  ‘You too,’ Katy calls, stepping back to let him by. She sinks back against the wall as soon as he has gone. And as she listens to his brief farewell to Joyce, she is aware for the first time how much her body aches. Her back is knotted. Her feet and ankles feel swollen. But she must keep going for mum.

  ‘So what’s all this about, Joyce?’ Katy demands as soon as the other woman steps back inside.

  Taking care to first secure the front door catch, Joyce holds up her hand for Katy to wait for the dull clank from the lift that marks the locksmith’s descent. Only when the sound fades does her hand fall to her side, but her expression remains strained. ‘Sorry,’ she replies. ‘You can never be too careful.‘

  ‘Why all the cloak and dagger stuff, Joyce? What’s going on?’

  ‘Walls have ears,’ the woman replies in a low voice. A retired chemistry teacher, Joyce is a voracious reader of crime fiction with a keen interest in amateur dramatics. ‘Not literally, of course. But when someone’s stolen your keys then used them to poke around your home . . . Well, you just never know. Come on, I’ll show you what I mean.’ She leads the way towards Diane’s bedroom then, as Katy steps inside, hovers just outside the door. ‘I mean, look.’

  Katy surveys the state of the room.

  Every drawer in her mother’s antique cabinet yawns wide open with assorted contents poking out like scolding tongues. The bed, which would have been neatly made the previous morning by her mother’s cleaner, Luda, is stripped back exposing the mattress. The shelves lining one side of the room stand empty, each book having been pulled out then stacked on its side on the floor beneath the window. Overall the effect is methodical, not random.

  ‘Almost as if whoever it was wanted to make some kind of point,’ she murmurs. ‘I mean, it’s not what you expect a burglary to look like, is it?’

  ‘Quite,’ says Joyce. ‘Which is just what the police said. Look, I didn’t want to worry you any more than necessary but I thought you needed to know. And besides, what with Monty – well, I thought it best for you to come and see for yourself when we knew what’s happening with your mum. You know, to decide what to tell her.’

  ‘Monty?’

  A sudden shiver makes Katy think of what her mum used to say when she was small. Something about a feeling she got sometimes, like someone just walked over your grave. She runs a hand through her hair. It’s damp and clumpy. What must she look like? Turning away, she walks past Joyce into the kitchen where every cabinet door has been left wide open. Beneath the sink where her mum keeps Monty’s food, travel box a
nd other cat-related paraphernalia, the main shelf is bare.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  Katy spins round to stare at Joyce, who’s now standing with her back to the kitchen window with legs apart and arms crossed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whoever did this took him with them. In his travelling box. I spent quite a while going over everything last night when the police were here. I thought maybe he’d just got let out by mistake. But it seems to be the only thing that was taken.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Baffling, isn’t it?’ Joyce says, distractedly fiddling with the silver hoop in her left ear. ‘Unless this is the mark of the true cat burglar.’ She lets out a humourless chuckle that stops as instantly as it began. ‘Come on, there’s something else you need to see.’

  Too tired to make sense of what’s unfolding, Katy shuffles into the front room where Joyce stands on the hearthside rug gesturing towards the mantelpiece. For a moment, she struggles to see what point the woman is trying to make. Then her frayed nerves finally begin to make connections.

  The narrow ledge running the entire length of the chimney breast is crammed, as usual, with its snapshots and mementoes. But wait, Katy thinks, something is different.

  Carefully, she scans the shelf from left to right registering with growing unease how meticulously someone has gone through the arrangement turning each picture round to face the wall. Then, as her gaze reaches the centre where a framed photo of herself taken at Andrew and Dee’s wedding usually sits, she stops and stares. The picture is flat on its face and as she slowly reaches forwards to stand it upright she sees the picture slipped out leaving the frame is empty.