The Lies We Tell

by The Lies We Tell (retail) (epub)

  ‘Jude,’ she roars. ‘Wait!’

  But the distant figure turns off the central path then disappears from view down one of its tributaries.

  Anxiously, Katy scans the point at which she last saw Jude for any memorable landmark. On the side of the avenue opposite where she’d just been standing looms a tall statue of an angel, its broad wings bone-white against a bleached sky. At its feet she can just make out from this distance a seated figure dressed in red. She hurries on, stopping only when she reaches the junction to pause, briefly, bending double to pinch away the stitch which is now tearing into her side.

  On the bench before her sits a whale of a woman with waist-length hair wearing an expansive green T-shirt bearing the unseasonal plea: Unwrap Me for Christmas. Gazing blankly into the middle distance, her only movement comes from dough-like hands as she strips from a loaf on her lap hunks of bread to toss at a ragged scattering of pigeons on the ground at her feet.

  ‘Sorry, but … did you see …’ Katy pants, forcing a smile as the woman re-focuses her gaze in her direction. ‘ … a tall, slim woman … with dark hair … come along here … a few minutes ago?’ Without a word, the woman raises her free hand and points. Straightening up, Katy spots the side path to her left Jude must have taken and hurries on.

  Unlike the main avenue the path she now finds herself on is rocky and uneven. Its surface is cracked by the sun’s heat and clumped by the subterranean Spaghetti Junction of ancient roots beneath. Her ankles jar with every pace. Just one misplaced foot will launch her, tumbling, towards the ground.

  Yet on she runs, no longer fuelled just by the need to reach Jude but a preternatural urge triggered by memory of that dreadful day. A memory that’s no longer an immovable fact buried away from view deep inside. Because it has become a sudden flare, fast-rising upwards like a rocket, that promises to light the pathway she must take to confront then overcome the horror of the past.

  At last, Katy arrives at a sun-bleached bench marked by pale patches of lichen. It sits in the centre of a gravel clearing bordered on three sides by rhododendron bushes. To its right is an imposing slab of marble streaked with green: a memorial to an earlier battle. On the shingle at its foot lies the remnants of a dusty wreath of last year’s Remembrance poppies.

  ‘Hey,’ calls Jude, suddenly appearing a short distance behind. Hot and dishevelled, her face is flushed. As she draws level she lets her shoulder bag slip to the ground with a dull thud. Bending double, she rubs her side vigorously before turning her head towards the bench. ‘Didn’t … you hear me? I’ve … been trying … to catch you up … since the … gate.’

  ‘Better late than never,’ Katy declares, coolly. Though as she rises to her feet she finds she is genuinely relieved to see her, and alone. ‘I was beginning to think this was some kind of a wild goose chase.’

  ‘What … do you mean?’

  ‘Your messages – changing where to meet?’

  Jude frowns. ‘Your message, you mean. What was wrong with the cuff – coffee there not up to your standards?’

  ‘The man behind the counter gave me your message, remember?’ Katy retorts.

  But Jude, bored by the exchange, waves her hand dismissively. ‘So what’s so urgent?’ she demands. ‘As if I didn’t know. Because you want to know if I’ve said anything, don’t you? To Michael and to Diane. And, if not, whether I will. Because I’m the only one apart from you who knows what you did. And before you ask, whether I will say something, some time, comes down to you.’

  ‘To me?’ Katy echoes, determined to stand her ground; battling to resist the age-old urge to run.

  ‘I said, it’s your choice.’ Jude seems taller, somehow, as she takes a step forward. ‘Or to put it in the words of your dearly departed father: you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. Convince you mum and Andrew to do their duty by us and I can make sure all of it goes away like you want it to. What all of you did to me and my mum – no-one will ever know. But it will cost you. Oh, and I’d like to hear you say sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Not good enough,’ Jude snaps. ‘Try harder.’

  ‘I mean, I don’t understand,’ Katy answers, coolly. Her voice, though low, is calm and measured which elicits a barely perceptible change in Jude’s expression; a flicker of doubt. ‘Of course I remember what happened out on the heath that day. And you will never know how sorry I am for what I did. But he was … you were … it was awful. And a very long time ago. And trust me, every day since I’ve had to deal with the memory of it. To try not to think of what happened. To hope that after everything, you were OK. Which was all I wanted, Jude – to help you – ’

  ‘Crap,’ Jude interjects. ‘Because you were jealous of me – hated me, too. It was easy to read, just like it was easy to see you fancied me. Which probably explains why you were so moody the whole time, because you couldn’t have me. Believe me, Kat, you always were the world’s worst actress.’

  Livid, Katy lurches forwards. ‘If I hated you it was because of how you treated me,’ she spits. ‘You were a bully – still are, by what I can see. A bitch to me and to everyone else you come into contact with – no wonder Andrew didn’t want you.’

  ‘Don’t you dare – ’ Jude’s hands are clenched, her eyes are slits.

  ‘Not so in control now, are you? Because it’s true, isn’t it: Andrew saw right through you and dumped you, and you never quite got over it.’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ Jude jeers. ‘Never did.’

  ‘Don’t I? Really? I know you screwed your own half brother and Siobhan tried to blackmail my dad – ’

  ‘No more than they deserved,’ Jude snaps. ‘He was a great shag, by the way,’ she spits, though tears now glisten in her eyes. ‘Even if I’d known I wouldn’t have cared.’

  ‘You stalked my mum and had something to do with the mugging,’ Katy presses on. Buoyed by the realisation that her words are hitting home, she steels herself against being deflected. ‘And you’ve been stalking me, too – trying to spoil things for me. I know you met with Michael pretending to be an estate agent. I know enough to really drop you in it when I go to the police – ’

  ‘I stalked you? But you put the wedding announcement in the paper – Siobhan showed it to me. Honestly, Kat, you weren’t that hard to find.’ Then Jude lets slip an unexpected burst of laugher.

  ‘As for the police, well, you won’t do that, will you?’ she presses on. ‘Because you’d have to come clean and you’ve too much to lose. We’re more alike than you think, Kat. The two of us: such accomplished liars! Though hats off to you, girl, I think maybe you have the edge on that count. I mean just think about what you all did – your mum and dad, especially … Because the lies we tell are nothing compared to the lies we tell ourselves.’

  Incensed by the smug expression on her opponent’s face, Katy’s fists clench. ‘Go on, surprise me,’ she challenges. ‘What have my mum and dad got to do within any of this?’

  But then, a beat later, her attention is elsewhere. A barely perceptible shift in the sound and shade of the undergrowth behind them has made Katy aware that they are alone in this distant, far-flung corner of the cemetery. Vulnerable and exposed. As, with a snap of a twig, the undergrowth close by parts like a curtain through which steps a wiry, clench-fisted missile of a man.

  Fearfully, Katy registers the snapback baseball hat worn back to front this time to reveal the embroidered message on the back: No Lie. The toned body beneath the sleeveless Everlast hoodie and low-slung combat trousers. The tattoo like a band of thorns which encircles his upper arm. His pock-marked face, almost handsome, now pinched into a look of eager expectation as he slips his wire-framed sunglasses into his back pocket. The swollen, purple ring around his right eye.

  ‘What are you doing – ’ Jude begins. She seems genuinely surprised, Katy can see. At the look of him, perhaps. For without the lank ponytail, he looks quite different. Like Robert de Niro in that film about an American army vet.

 
; ‘I might just ask the same of you,’ he glares, waving a hand accusingly at Jude. ‘Didn’t I warn you not to try and cut me out? But I’m not as stupid as I look, you know. I mean, why else do you think I brought the two of you here? Like the new hair cut, by the way? Not to worry, I didn’t do it for you.’

  Then he turns to Katy, lunges towards her and laughs at her flinch. ‘Catching up on the good old days, or just being nosey? You should be more careful,’ he sneers. ‘Don’t you know what curiosity did to the cat?’

  Katy tries to swallow but her mouth is dry as she stares at him in horror. It is the youth from the park. The charity fundraiser who came to her front door. The mechanic from the garage at Siobhan’s place. The stranger from the flat downstairs. Though desperate to run, Katy finds herself struggling to remember how.

  ‘Stop it,’ Jude says, firmly. ‘It’s over. Let it go.’

  ‘Too late. And you’ve only got yourself to blame.’ As he turns back towards Katy his lips twitch. ‘By the way – nice to see you again, Auntie Kat.’

  Katy stares at him, confused.

  ‘Enough,’ cries Jude, springing to her feet. ‘James? I mean it. Things have gone far enough. No, James, wait – ’

  In less than a second he has hold of her right arm and is twisting it upwards, sharply, at an awkward angle behind her back. ‘I don’t think so,’ he mutters, darkly. ‘Because, mother dearest, this is only the beginning. You may not have the balls to follow through, but I certainly do. And I am not going to let this go. So, come on girls – ’ As James releases Jude abruptly, making her stumble, he shoots Katy a broad smile that marks the widening of his address. ‘Sit down, why don’t you,’ he offers, gesturing toward the bench his mother has just vacated. ‘Get comfortable. Let’s have ourselves a nice little family parlay.’

  Glancing towards Jude, who’s begun to back towards the bench, Katy’s unsure which is worse – the fear, like rising flood water, now pushing against her feeble defences or her friend’s meek compliance. What sort of trick are they trying to pull off? A sudden anger burns in her as she sees an image of her mum from a few days earlier, when she first saw her in hospital. Well she’s not about to play.

  Anxiously, she calculates the quickest route back to the gate: a zigzag dash between overgrown paths. She remembers this part of the cemetery from previous visits with Michael and recognises the war memorial as one they’d returned to a number of times after finding an inscription to commemorate a First World War soldier who had the same name as his. This time, she thinks, it won’t take long to get help.

  ‘You’ve been following me.’ A statement of fact not a question, spoken simply by Jude as if to a child. ‘Last night?’ James grins. ‘And this morning, probably. Then here. You rang the cafe, too, then messaged me.’ He nods. ‘OK, well now we’ve got that straight let’s get this sorted. This ends right here, right now.’

  Distracted by thoughts of her escape, Katy is looking the wrong way when James pounces.

  Yet it is neither surprise nor brute strength that incapacitates her as surely as a bullet to the knee, but the knife in his hand. The sort you find in a tool box, with an easy-grip handle. Though its tip looks small, she can see from its angle that the blade is sharp. So she hesitates, just for a moment, and in that instant he has looped his left arm around her neck and pressed his right hand, and the blade it holds, against her side.

  Still, just keep still, Katy tells herself over and over, trying not to think how close the sliver of metal is to the just perceptible bulge of her belly. So close to him now she hears the rasping of his breath; inhales the pungent smell of his sweat. Unable to turn her head, her eyes dart towards Jude, silently pleading. But as Katy registers the look of fear on her face she knows the situation has quickly spiralled beyond her control.

  It’s hard to breathe now, impossible to talk. Then she hears another voice.

  ‘Enough,’ Jude says calmly. ‘Put the knife down.’

  James lets slip a feral snarl.

  ‘I said, that’s enough.’

  Jude is closer this time, moving towards him like a trainer attempting to pacify a crazed animal. The arm around Katy’s neck re-tightens its grip making the cemetery slip in and out of focus. Dizzy, she tries to focus on something. Anything. The memorial. The gathering breeze which has begun to stir the bushes. The familiar voice now pleading on her behalf. Desperate to save her.

  ‘Talk to me. Tell me what you want.’

  ‘I want what’s mine,’ he snaps. ‘And I’m tired of waiting.’

  ‘And you’ll get it, too,’ Jude soothes. ‘Just as long as you don’t do anything stupid.’

  The hand holding the knife presses harder against Katy’s side making her cry out in fear. What is he talking about, she wonders, wildly. What can she or Diane possibly have that belonged to him?

  ‘James, give me the knife,’ the other woman repeats, taking another step towards them. ‘Stop this now.’

  James looks down at Katy. ‘What’s it to be, Auntie Kat?’ he whispers, softly. ‘Junior? You? Or should I pay another visit to granny?’

  ‘James – ’ Jude warns.

  ‘It’s a bit late to go all soft on me, Mother dearest, don’t you think?’ her son retorts. ‘You made me, after all. You and all you lies. We asked you – begged you – didn’t we, Nan and I? Not to do to me what she did to you. But you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me the simple truth about my dad.’

  Teetering on the edge of consciousness, Katy’s eyes dart between Jude and James as she struggles to keep pace with this switchback of a conversation. She fears she has started to hallucinate; convinces herself she is about to die. He’s clearly mad, and as she has no idea what he’s talking about anything she does risks provoking him further. And yet despite this – against all rational thought – she finds herself struggling to speak.

  It’s as if she is fuelled by a gathering momentum as, somewhere at the back of her mind, the shadow once more starts to stir. ‘But I’m not your aunt,’ she rasps. ‘My mum’s not your nan. Because there’s no way that my brother is or could ever have been your dad. Because he can’t have kids.’

  James glares at Katy with burning eyes but says nothing, as if preoccupied with an internal battle to extract order from his chaos of conflicting thoughts. Shooting a desperate look towards Jude, Katy sees the leaching colour in the other woman’s face as she opens her mouth, hesitates, tries to speak, fails, then tries again in a faltering voice.

  ‘What do you mean?’ cries Jude.

  ‘Can’t … He and Dee tried … every doctor.’

  ‘But he had twins.’

  ‘Dee had twins – ’ Katy corrects, gaining in confidence now at a perceptible loosening of James’s grip around her neck though it’s still not enough for her to wriggle free. ‘– using donor sperm.’

  ‘No, no, that can’t be right, I know, alright? It was him, because … ’ Unable to identify a reason, Jude falters.

  ‘An immaculate conception?’ James challenges. Statue-like Jude stands in silence, her eyes fixed to the ground. Passive now, it’s as if she’s resigned herself to something inevitable. ‘Because there was no-one else, right?’ he goads, angered by her silence.

  ‘No,’ Jude whispers. Her face is ashen. She swallows hard then pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear with a trembling hand.

  As son stares at mother his face twists into a knot of hatred and resentment. ‘Who?’ he demands, abruptly dragging Katy forwards with such unexpected force she stumbles.

  ‘Oh Mum,’ Jude murmurs, shaking her head. ‘I never meant to … didn’t know.’

  Regaining her balance Katy stares, waiting for her to elaborate.

  ‘Who?’ James demands impatiently.

  ‘A long time ago … he lived with us for a while … ’

  ‘What, your mum’s boyfriend?’ Katy blurts.

  As soon as it’s out she knows from Jude’s expression it must be true. How often he came early to collect Jude from hockey practice
, she recalls. How he’d lean nonchalantly against the bonnet of his car, arms crossed, as he waited for the girls to finish their game. How Jude had grinned as she described the casual confidence of him as he stalked the house shower-fresh dressed only in a knotted towel. How he’d rarely been there on any of the times she’d stopped at Jude’s house. Had all of that been coincidence?

  Like playing with a loaded gun, Jude once confided, was how her mum described him. An analogy lost on Katy at the time, but not now.

  It was him, she thinks, as the air starts to thin and the world around her dance like beaten metal. The man in black. The man who … It was her. She hurt him, to save Jude. Because he was … just to make him stop. So she’d hit him, hard. With a blunt branch across the back of his head. Stopped him, too. Left him lying there. Still and unmoving.

  Katy lets slip a single sob.

  ‘Un-fucking-believable,’ James snorts. ‘Because it’s lie after lie after lie with you, isn’t it, you slut. So go on, thrill me. Where is he now?’

  Dead, Katy knows as, desperate to hold the word back, she covers her mouth with her hand.

  The same hand she used all those years ago to grab the branch and swing it high, feeling the weight of it gather momentum as she crashed it downwards with all her force. How heavily he fell onto Jude, crushing her momentarily until she scrambled free. The look on her face. The venom with which she spoke. The shame of the uncontrollable passions that had driven her.

  Anger and fear and something else. Jealousy.

  But as hard as she tries, Katy cannot stop the truth from tumbling out even as her mouth dries, her throat tightens and tears start to come. ‘I – ’ she begins, then falters. Fumbling for the right words, she dominates the heavy silence as the spotlight of their attention turns to her. ‘Dave – he’s dead.’

  It takes time for the word to be absorbed, slowly, like water on parched ground. But then, in a beat, James has released his grip and Katy’s foot is slipping. Her legs buckle and she is crashing to the ground, howling in fear and pain as she twists her body in a desperate attempt not to fall on her bump. Then she is down on the path sprawled on her front, scraping her knees across shards of stone as she slides onto her side into a foetal position.