The Lies We Tell

  Stepping back onto the landing, Jude closed the door. Turning quickly to her right, she twisted the other door handle and briskly stepped inside to stare, in awe, and for the first time, at Mr Parker’s study.

  An entire wall was hung with shelves on which were crammed a closely-packed line of books with crimson spines embossed with gold. An entire level below had been dedicated to neatly boxed collections of financial and business journals while the bottom shelf bulged with dusty photo albums, bulging A4 lever arch files and metal boxes of slides.

  She turned towards the desk, an antique construction with a faded green leather top on which a large blotter, a carved wooden letter rack, and Newton’s cradle seemed to have been meticulously positioned as if awaiting closer inspection by investigators shortly to arrive at a crime scene. Her gaze fixed on the central drawer which, a moment later, she had opened and was peering into. But it only contained a selection of stationery. Next, she tried the top drawer to her left but it was crammed with photographs. On her third attempt, however, she found what she was looking for: a stack of plastic folders containing a variety of personal correspondence.

  Carefully, Jude pulled free the uppermost folder, opened it and peered at its contents. The top sheet was a letter, typed and signed with Charles’s signature. Pulling out the note from her pocket, her heart starts to thresh like a hooked fish as she compared the two bits of paper. But his name on the printed letter was signed with such a flourish it was hard to be sure.

  Hadn’t she always known the very idea of it was simply ludicrous? Even so, she knew she must be certain. So she quickly rifled the folder scanning more sheets until she found another letter, this time written entirely in Mr Parker’s hand. Once more she compared the sheet against the note to her mum.

  Sinking down onto Charles’ office chair, Jude stared again at the pieces of paper. For this time there was no doubt. Even the ink he’d used, a distinctive winter sea blue, looked the same.

  You keep your side of the bargain, I’ll keep mine.

  So his side was paying her mum money, and her mum’s? To keep quiet, about her. Jude. Charles’s illegitimate daughter. It was the only explanation, she knew as anger churned her insides, poking fingers of something molten through her veins.

  Conscious of an overwhelming desire to dash the contents of the drawer, the desk, the entire room, even, onto the floor, Jude resisted the urge to break, to smash and to destroy something – anything, it didn’t matter what, so long as it was his. Or Diane’s. Or Kat’s. Though her entire being felt ablaze with hatred and resentment.

  How dare he pay her mum to keep quiet so he and his family can enjoy all of this? How dare her mum lie to her; play such a sick joke! For what else could explain her mother’s reason for moving back to Surrey then sending her to the very school where Charles sent his legitimate daughter? Kat. Katy. Katherine Parker. Sister. The word stuck in the back of Jude’s throat like a stubborn lump of sick.

  A brass carriage clock standing sentry on the window sill struck five with a plummy chime. Registering the papers roughly spread across the desktop, Jude hastily pushed them back into folder then returned it to its drawer. Stuffing the note back into her pocket, she sleepwalked back towards the door. In the bathroom once more, she flushed the toilet then washed her hands; splashed her face with cold water; checked herself in the mirror. How could she look the same when her world had just been wrenched inside out? Well, she could play their game, too, she decided, grimly.

  The shock had gone now, replaced by a curious scooped out feeling. She felt numb. But beneath this, deep down within her very core, it was as if some sort of chemical reaction had started to take place. Gazing into the mirror, she road-tested a smile. It almost looked genuine. An unexpected feeling of satisfaction washed over her as she realises she feels invulnerable, somehow. Empowered. It was almost as if she could feel the thick, protective skin that had started to grow around her heart as Jude slipped back into Kat’s bedroom.

  Briefly, she hovered in the doorway looking down at her friend. The girl was facing away from her, lying on her front on the floor reading a copy of Over 21. With ankles crossed, her left foot was gently tapping in time to the Madonna track that was playing, Like A Prayer. Frizzy hair, still damp from the afternoon rain, veiled Kat’s insipid little face leaving the pale skin at the nape of her neck exposed. How would it feel to enclose that puny neck with her bare hands, Jude wondered. To squeeze with all her might until …

  ‘You took your time,’ she said, without glancing round.

  ‘Oh you know how it is.’ Jude delivered her words with a strangled laugh. ‘How time flies when you’re having fun.’

  Chapter 19

  West Sussex – July 2013

  Katy and Michael leave London before breakfast on Saturday morning. They drive in his car south down the A3 towards Portsmouth, first along abandoned city streets and then down empty country roads. Neither has slept well and both woke early, alert and restless. But a shrouded sky makes the world feel drowsy and the hazy sun makes the landscape pulse with a sickly glow.

  Spike’s place is an old rectory he bought the year before in a village near Fareham which he and his long term on-off partner, Crystal, have since been renovating. The last time Katy saw the place it had no roof. As the pair enter the final stages of decoration, however, the house party is as much a celebration of their project’s impending completion as it is a marker of Spike’s half century.

  Michael’s revised plan is that they just go for lunch. Katy will head back in his car at around four to rendezvous with Joyce. Meanwhile he will get a lift back later with Peter and Jen – mutual friends from Shepherds Bush who, thanks to fractious five year-old twins, have also decided not to stay over. Michael has been pretty good about it all, really, given that Spike is his oldest friend. Yet as they drive in silence, the radio’s easy banter cannot quite mask the awkwardness between them.

  They stop for breakfast in a village just outside Petersfield at a small boulangerie on a tiny high street with a single table in the window. Katy orders a latte which is served not in a cup but in a bowl. To make it easier for dipping in pastries, the owner, an Englishwoman recently returned home after a decade in Paris, helpfully advises. The way she stumbles over the occasional English word as if her head’s just too crowded with French vernacular to recall her mother tongue unites the two of them, briefly, with an eye roll and a conspiratorial grin.

  ‘You know it’s good to see you smile again,’ Michael murmurs, once the woman has resumed her position behind the till. ‘Perhaps we should have a weekend away, just the two of us,’ he offers, tentatively. ‘Once everything has settled down?’

  Though his intentions are clearly sound, the tone of his delivery suggests he feels like someone tiptoeing barefooted around broken glass, Katie thinks. Which makes her tetchy and defensive. What’s he driving at, she wonders, grimly. Is he suggesting she’s not been paying him enough attention or, worse, that she’s grown aloof? But that’s simply not true and so unfair. For what else can he expect considering everything she currently has on her plate?

  ‘When mum’s got the all clear. And all’s right with the scan,’ she shrugs. ‘Once things start to feel back on track again. Yes, it would be nice. Sure.’

  Michael nods. He does not need to speak for Katy to gauge his disappointment in her apparent lack of enthusiasm. And for a moment she feels an aching pulse of regret at the realisation that not only can he never understand how she is feeling, she can never tell him the real reasons why. In part because she can’t articulate it because its true cause is rooted so deep-down inside her she can no longer tell. Will she lose him, she wonders. For good, this time?

  A tell-tale vibration from Katy’s pocket signals an in-coming text. Worried it’s to do with her mum, she quickly tugs free her phone to find a new message from Sally-Anne.

  ‘Miriam’s just given 3 months notice,’ it reads. ‘Bad news for me but good for you. Be in by eight Monday AM to discuss
implications.’

  So her boss’s number two has decided not to return after her maternity leave. It’s what Katy had secretly hoped for until falling pregnant herself. Just a few weeks ahead of when she is due to break her own news to Sally-Anne, the timing could not be worse.

  ‘Look forward to it!’ she texts back, unsure how else to respond.

  Undecided, too, how best to proceed. To tell now, or not to tell until later once her promotion is secured? Being honest up front is the only option if she wants to come out of whatever happens next with a shred of professional credibility. But what if something comes to light as a result of the scan? Speak too soon and, at worst, she might lose everything.

  Shooting a quick glance at Michael, Katy wonders if she should tell him. But he seems distracted and, besides, she knows what his preference would be.

  Stopping work altogether just isn’t an option for her, though – not given how long it’s taken her to come this far. Nor would she like to move out of the city, either, as he has also suggested. Because it’s impossible for her to contemplate leaving it all behind her. Turning her back on the cauterising effect of the hustle and bustle of it all. The bright lights that so neatly obscure the shadow of the past.

  Katy gazes out of the window. Biting her lip, she wills herself not to show the resentment she now feels at Sally-Anne inadvertently forcing her hand. Or the upset she still feels that Michael has still said nothing about entertaining Jude. Can she trust him, really? she wonders. Because if he has nothing to hide then why keep this secret? What has Jude told him; could she be somehow trying to steal him away?

  Of course she has no proof of this, though. And she is fearful of challenging him without grounds after what happened before.

  A while back, around the time things first started getting serious and she had her wobble about commitment and confidences, he accused her of being unfaithful. Could she risk doing this back to him with no evidence now she was expecting his child? She is desperate to ask him about his meeting Jude. But if she is mistaken she’ll lose him for sure this time and she’s not sure how well she’d cope. Alone, except for her mum. She must just hope, pray if needs be, that he will stick by her until Jude moves on.

  Katy’s thoughts return to the hospital. The doctors have recommended Mum stay in until Monday or Tuesday, just in case. Which means she is safe – for now, at least. Because not only was she attacked, the mugger ‘broke into’ her flat with her stolen key. Defaced a picture of Katy, too. Which makes it personal. And Jude is somehow involved, she is sure of it – even if she wonders, now, if maybe the woman she saw leaving their house the afternoon before was someone else. Without proof, who would believe her; how can she know?

  Why Jude is doing this and what she can possibly hope to achieve is baffling. Yet despite this Katy senses that if she is to protect the people she cares for she must find the answers to both. But how? Confronting Jude now, armed only with gut feel and looming dread, is unthinkable, for she will twist things around to her advantage just like she has always done.

  No, Katy decides, she must outsmart Jude and to do that she needs to find out more. About what happened to her – since that summer day and before. If only she could speak to someone who was around back them. Like Jude’s mum, Siobhan. Though the woman played only a background role in her recollections of the months leading up to that long, hot summer she always struck Katy as approachable. And considering some of the things Jude used to say about her, Siobhan had few delusions about her own daughter’s behaviour.

  At last they are pulling off the B road onto the single-track Bullfinch Lane which leads to their final destination. A few minutes later, a collection of classic motorbikes including Spike’s prized Norton Commando, come into view by ancient garden wall, Michael’s mood lifts. As the engine stills, the murmur of their friends’ voices drifts from the garden close by. But they have arrived empty-handed. So Katy suggests he goes straight in and make her excuses while she drives to nearby shops to buy the wine and flowers they didn’t have time to arrange the day before.

  ‘Go on,’ she says, leaning across him to open the front passenger door. ‘I won’t be long. There’s a Sainsbury’s a few miles further along the way we’ve just come – I remember it from last time.’

  Michael waits only long enough to blow her a kiss as she starts to reverse. By the time she’s turned around the car, he’s disappeared through the garden gate beside the kitchen extension. She listens for a moment as the voices swell into a crescendo of excitement, laughter and back-slapping. Not to worry, she thinks, glancing at the dashboard clock. The round trip to the shop should take, at most, half an hour.

  The cracked clay earth on either side of the road is thick with hornbeam as she begins the five mile drive to the junction she recalls from her first visit. Then, as the road starts to rise, woodland gives way to elevated down land to her left and to her right, irregular fields of maize bounded by roughly clotted tracks.

  Sun has all but burned through the early morning haze, now. The sky gleams a metallic blue. And, for the first time in what feels like weeks, Katy realises she is hungry. Not like she has felt recently, when her body was weak and her blood sugar levels in need of boosting. This is different. What she feels now is more fundamental. A sensation that’s not needy but elemental and muscular. Like something’s sharpened her appetite; not just for food, but for life.

  Winding down the window, the wind musses Katy’s hair as she shakes the tension from her head and shoulders. And as it does she knows it will be alright: settling down with Michael, having their baby, moving forward together, as a family. She can do it. They are strong enough, together. She will be the mother she never had. The best bits of Diane and something else. Someone to talk to and confide in, who will really listen. Unafraid to admit her weaknesses. Comfortable to recount lessons from the past.

  Until this point she’s worried that Michael wants this baby more than she does. For sure he’s seemed less tentative than she. But maybe he just covers it up better. She lets slip a private grin. Either way, she knows the time has come to show her commitment. Telling Diane, together, as soon as she’s had the scan in two weeks time, is when the new beginning she’s been so wary of can truly start.

  Two miles more and Katy arrives in a sprawling village where, on a crossroads in the middle, stands a petrol station and a Sainsbury’s Local. Pulling into the rough lot by the mini-market’s side, she parks in an empty spot facing the road. Turning off the engine, she notices someone has tried to call her while she was driving. But her spirits dip when she sees the caller was Andrew. He’s left her a message, too. Complaining she’s not yet called him this morning, she guesses. Though his time it must be, what, 7am? He must only have just touched down. Annoyed, she slips the phone back into her bag. She will listen to it later.

  As she releases the seat belt, Katy notices a road sign opposite to Cow Vale. The place, just five miles away, sounds familiar though for a moment or so she can’t think why. And then she hears it. That voice, again. Jude. How she’d mentioned the name the day they first met. Cow Vale was where she and Siobhan used to live. The village to which their neighbour said they’d returned. Where Siobhan would surely still be. Infuriated by the lingering thought of Andrew’s criticism, Katy glances her watch. It’s only just gone ten, she thinks. There’s plenty of time.

  Time for what? a voice inside her challenges. Just go inside, pick up the stuff you need and head back to Spike’s. Remember why you’ve come and make the most of it. Lunch with friends. In a lovely garden. Out of the city, away from the events of the past few days, before mum’s discharge from hospital. Calm before the storm. But instead, Katy reaches for her phone. Scrutinises the flickering bars in the top left-hand corner, wondering if there’s enough coverage. Presses on the screen to activate the web browser.

  Will Jude’s mum remember her? Probably not, but Katy still has a clear mental picture of her. A tall, slim woman with blonde hair which, judging by the colour
of her eyebrows, was dyed and a penchant for dark red lipstick. A look Diane called brassy. Yet Siobhan was a striking woman – still is, probably – what with those high cheek bones. Lips that though lacking in the definition Jude so craved were, nevertheless, wide and full. Grey-blue eyes which spelled anger as surely as a gathering sky.

  It was a week or two into Jude’s first term at St Mary’s that Katy first became aware of her, leaning against the school fence a little way away from the gate. There had been something about the woman that made her hard to ignore and in her white T-shirt, leather skirt and flat gold pumps she looked more like someone’s big sister than a fourth former’s mum. And Katy had always rather envied Jude that.

  Now she stares at the screen, determined to prove them all wrong. For she is anything but the passive victim. No, she will not take this lying down. Siobhan will prove what Jude said about her own parents’ marriage is a lie. And knowing what her daughter is like, the woman might even be persuaded to help Katy by persuading her to drop it once she has confided in her what Jude has done.

  Without Siobhan’s present home address she must think laterally, she decides, tapping into the search box the few fragments that she knows. Wondering if it will be enough as the search engine does its work. Sifting. Filtering. Making connections. But reference after reference to Siobhan Davieses provide no clues. There is Siobhan Davies the dancer. The post-graduate student in Loughborough. The deputy chair of Whitney Women’s Institute. She thinks about what Jude said about her mum being ill and adds the word hospital. Again, nothing. Then hospices. There are two nearby – one is twenty miles away on the other side of Portsmouth, the other is just two miles from Cow Vale. And something about this feels right.

  A wave of hunger makes Katy’s stomach lurch. She needs to eat with an unexpected sense of urgency. The realisation distracts her for a moment. She is intrigued if unsettled, too, by the thought that the tiny life unfurling inside her is demanding of her already. No longer nauseous, though, she notes triumphantly. Perhaps, at last, that phase of her pregnancy has passed.