The Darkest Lies: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  ‘Yeah, but Ursula only lied so that her affair wouldn’t be discovered, didn’t she?’ he asked. ‘There’s nothing more sinister to it than that, is there?’

  ‘No, listen. Davy was adamant I talk to Ursula, and I think I know why. If Ursula was busy with her fancy man, then where was Chloe? They’ve given statements saying she was at home with Ursula, but what if she was with Beth? What if she witnessed who attacked her?’

  Glenn frowned. Bent down and picked a blade of rough grass, then pulled it apart slowly, letting the pieces flutter away in the wind. I watched them, achingly sad. Bits of me were being blown away on the breeze too. I was disappearing; the person I had been a month earlier was gone, replaced with someone I wasn’t certain of.

  ‘Come on, then.’ He gave me the softest punch on my arm. ‘Let’s go and interrogate Ursula. I mean, pose a few friendly questions.’

  ‘Right now? You’ll come with me?’ I asked hopefully.

  He winked his reply, and we walked back to the van arm in arm.

  Five minutes later, we pulled up at the Seagull’s Outlook.

  ‘Hey, what about her threat to get an injunction if you go near her or Chloe?’ Glenn said suddenly, pulling me back.

  ‘Come on, she’s not going to turn custom away from her café, is she? I’m just a paying customer who has come in for a nice hot cuppa on a cold day. Brrrrr.’

  On cue, the rain went from being on the wind to a drizzle. Glenn rolled his eyes and grinned, then opened the door.

  With a cheery ting, the bell announced our arrival.

  Seagull’s Outlook Café was virtually deserted at this time of year, apart from the odd dedicated birder and twitcher, and the occasional local. A couple, retired I’d guess, had taken the table at the centre of the small tea room. Sensible walking shoes, outfits in neutral colours. The man, tall and thin, with hair so white it almost didn’t look natural, sitting on top of an angular face with friendly eyes. His wife the opposite, all soft curves and nervous glances. Judging by the impressive binoculars that sat on a chair beside them, they were birdwatchers.

  The café was done up like a posh beach hut. Limewashed wood ran across the bottom half of the walls, to match the tables and chairs and the counter. A faded blue was used here and there on the striped curtains, the cushions and the floor. The cups, saucers and dishes were white with a blue stripe. Decorative rope knots on the walls continued the nautical theme, and the toilets had rope signs above them which spelled out ‘Buoys’ and ‘Gulls’. The home-baked cakes were displayed on pretty, tiered, glass cake stands from yesteryear. Everything was sparkling, clean and bright – perfect, just the way Ursula wanted them to be.

  I ruined the room’s perfection. Muddy walking boots. Jeans that needed washing, a sensible but shapeless jumper that, now I came to think of it, I’d been putting on for over a week. It probably smelled a bit. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail that may or may not have been messy – I had no idea, as I hadn’t been looking in the mirror when doing it.

  Ursula was busy serving someone. As she leaned over the counter to chat, the V-neck of the duck-egg blue cashmere jumper she wore sagged down to show off her cleavage. Her bottom half was hidden behind the counter, but I had no doubt she was wearing something glamorous.

  ‘What can I do you for?’ she asked, as always. Cue titter. ‘See anything you fancy?’

  ‘Only you, duck,’ came the inevitable seaside postcard reply. ‘Eh, if I were ten years younger.’ Mr Langton was ninety-one. He leaned on his walking stick as he lurched forward to smile.

  ‘Ooh, cheeky! Good job I’m a happily married woman, or I’d take you up on your offer!’

  She had always been good at banter, had Ursula. But the comment about being happily married was by far the funniest thing she had said, Beth.

  As she handed Mr Langton his cup of tea, she glanced up at her next customer. Me. There was the slightest stutter in her movement. Her sparkling smile was suddenly accessorised with wet spaniel eyes, which darted away from my gaze. On the plus side, she had clearly forgiven our last argument.

  ‘How is Beth?’ she asked. ‘If only she’d knocked on my door that night…’

  ‘But if she’d knocked on your door she’d have seen something she shouldn’t, wouldn’t she, Ursula?’ There was no question in Glenn’s voice, merely a statement. I was glad he’d spoken up – I hadn’t a clue what to say to broach the subject.

  She bit her frosted-pink lip, then picked up a cloth and started scrubbing industriously at some invisible dirt on the counter. Glenn elbowed me.

  ‘Beth would have seen you with Davy, wouldn’t she, Ursula, if she had knocked on your door that night. Caught you at it.’

  My voice was louder than Glenn’s had been. The birdwatching couple looked up. Ursula threw the dishcloth down and looked at me, horror-struck.

  ‘For God’s sake, Melanie, I’ve got customers in here. I don’t want everyone knowing.’

  ‘Knowing you were having an affair with Davy Young? Is that why you and Steve split, because he found out?’

  ‘None of your damn business.’

  ‘What other secrets have you kept? I need to speak with Chloe again. I need to see if she’s remembered anything else about who Beth might have been meeting. Where was Chloe when Davy was at your place? Was she out with Beth?’

  She paled. Walked around the counter, narrow-lipped, and grabbed my elbow, leading me to a table in the corner. Glenn followed, silent, and we all sat down.

  Ursula leaned forward. Conspiratorial, low-voiced. ‘If you must know, Davy didn’t come round until later. After Chloe had gone to bed. Having an affair while my daughter sleeps upstairs isn’t something I’m particularly proud of. So yes, I have been trying to keep it quiet! But, well, I was lonely, and we were used to snatching what brief chances we had to be together.’

  ‘So Chloe was in the house the whole time?’ I checked.

  ‘We had a girls’ night in, watched crappy films, ate popcorn. Then she went to bed, none the wiser that I’d be staying up for a bit longer.’

  Beth, she didn’t even look ashamed of what she had done. Just worried people might overhear and discover her dirty secret. I’ve known Ursula all my life. She has always worried about what other people thought – caring too much about appearances instead of substance, that was her problem. As long as her life looked perfect, who cared what crap was going on behind the scenes? That was her mindset. But I’d thought she was a nicer person than to cheat on her husband; she had always struck me as fiercely loyal.

  ‘So Steve knows all of this? No wonder you split up,’ I said, disgusted.

  Ursula had been holding my forearm urgently, but she let go and sat back in her chair. Tossed her glamorous hair and held her chin high. Less spaniel, more Dobermann.

  ‘You don’t go anywhere near Steve. He knows everything. Everything. And he doesn’t need it rubbed in his face. The same goes for Chloe; you stay away from her. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family, Melanie. And if that means getting that injunction out against you, then that’s what I’ll do.’

  ‘Handy, having a lawyer for a husband,’ I scoffed. ‘Mind you, if you divorce, you’ll get screwed over, I’d imagine.’

  ‘As an adulterer,’ Glenn added.

  A huff of surprise from Ursula. She soon gathered her thoughts, though.

  ‘Melanie, I meant it about that injunction. Leave my family alone. I’ve put up with today’s visit because of our history and what’s happened to Beth, but this is your final warning. Keep away from me and mine.’

  Fifty-Seven

  I watched Melanie as she stomped from Seagull’s Outlook Café. Oh, dear. It was so funny seeing her running around, accusing people, pointing the finger left, right and centre. The fool. She had no idea what was going on.

  Maybe I should have held a sign up, then she might have got the message about what was really happening under her own nose.

  Even if she did manage to discover the truth, no on
e would believe her. She had become the woman who had cried wolf too many times, accused too many different people. She was a drunken hysteric.

  The police were probably as sick of her as the rest of us. I was sure they loved her calling them every five minutes to tell them her latest theory and advise them on who they should investigate next.

  Still, she may have been unpopular with everyone else, but I was enjoying her crazy, drunken performance. It was so entertaining being able to sit back, put my feet up and watch it all play out.

  It kept the bloodlust at bay. For the time being. It was becoming increasingly hard to ignore, but I was slowly putting things into place for a big kill.

  This one would be so perfect that I’d be able to play it in my mind for all eternity.

  Fifty-Eight

  ‘Blimey, you didn’t need me there at all,’ Glenn laughed, giving a deep belly rumble. ‘You more than held your own.’

  ‘Yeah, but having backup there really helped – besides, you didn’t exactly sit back and do nothing. You got the ball rolling.’

  ‘Pub for a debrief?’

  Tempting, but I fought the urge. We couldn’t stay where we were, though. Despite the wind picking up and the drizzle beating a faster tempo, Jill Young was sweeping the pavement outside the store and café and straightening up as if to say something. Something I almost certainly didn’t want to hear. Davy lurked down the side of the shop, biting the inside of his cheek. Alison Daughtrey-Drew walked by on the opposite side of the road, glancing at my flushed face curiously. And Ursula glared through the window at me, making my hands itch to slap her.

  I made a quick decision. ‘Marsh. It’s easier to talk out there. Call me paranoid, but it feels like the whole village is watching us.’

  We grabbed Wiggins from the house, hurrying out just in time to see Aleksy striding away from James Harvey, who took one look at me and hid inside the shop. Everyone was here in one place, watching me watching them. If I didn’t escape from under the microscope I’d go mad.

  At the marsh, for ten minutes we simply sat watching the rain pelt down and obliterate the view through the windscreen, listening to it roaring on the van’s roof. Finally it eased off and we jumped out. Wiggins gave a joyous bark and bounded ahead, stopping at all his usual places for updates on which other dogs might have passed by this way since his last visit.

  As he ran back and forth, Glenn and I brought up the rear, walking at a more relaxed pace, braced against the wind which tried to push us over in gusts. After dissecting Ursula’s reaction, and the fact that my temper meant I had well and truly burned my bridges with her, we had to accept that there was no prospect of us getting near Chloe ever again.

  ‘Chances are she doesn’t know anything more, anyway,’ consoled Glenn.

  True. And although what Ursula was doing was morally wrong, it was none of my business. Talk gradually turned from our investigations, which had come to a dead end for now, to childhood memories.

  ‘My dad would go fishing for eels in the huge drainage ditches that criss-cross the fens, you know.’

  ‘What? Even that one over there?’ Glenn asked.

  ‘Yeah, all the time. He’d catch loads. And here, on the marsh, he’d roll up his trousers and walk through the shallower creeks with a trident, like this.’ I did a funeral march, head down, making a jabbing motion downward every couple of steps. ‘It’s called butting. There are flatfish that lie hidden on the bottom of the creek because of their camouflaged scales. He’d step slowly along, stabbing blindly down with a trident, and sometimes he got lucky and caught one.’

  I laughed. I’d never done it myself, and neither did your Grandpa Mick any more, after one too many lectures from you about how eels were becoming rarer.

  ‘My dad never did that. But he always had a rifle in the car, to shoot rabbits and pheasants.’

  ‘Poaching, you mean?’

  Glenn shrugged and grinned. ‘Yeah, poaching. Always had a machete, too – for chopping the thick stalks of cauliflowers. He’d often come home with a haul, having raided the farmer’s field at night. Now I’m back, I do it myself. Always have a machete in the van, just in case.’

  ‘Flipping heck, Glenn, you want to watch you don’t get pulled over by the police. They might wonder why you’ve got a lethal weapon squirrelled away.’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve probably got a point.’

  Glenn looked at me directly. There was no pity or sorrow or embarrassment in his expression; he simply looked at me with deep interest. Each word I said fascinated him, and he wanted to be there for me every step of this awful journey. He had even lied about having a daughter to make me feel better. I was both annoyed and touched.

  For a second I found myself harbouring ideas about running away, Beth. A fresh start, somewhere new with someone new, where my history could be rewritten and people wouldn’t know everything about me.

  Where I could escape the guilt I felt looking at you.

  The idea flared faster than a struck match, then disappeared. I would never, ever leave you. I deserved my guilt over not being there for you. And while a wedge had been driven between Jacob and me, your dad was still my one and only.

  I laughed nervously and let my hand drop. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The words popped out before I could think.

  And yeah, why not? I could do with a drink right now. Maybe I’d even find the courage to tackle Glenn about his heartache at not having children. Maybe not.

  Okay, so I drank a little more than I thought I would. I’d only wanted one, but it hadn’t taken much arm-twisting on Glenn’s part for me to get a second round in. Dale had bought in a new red, a Malbec, and it was really moreish. Two large glasses later, my cheeks were flaming and I felt the tiniest touch giddy.

  Well, I needed something to cheer me up. I’d be seeing you that night and had no good news to share with you, Beth. I’d have to face long hours with only beeping machinery to talk to. Hoping and praying you would wake, when in reality my well of hope had run dry.

  I missed you so much it hurt. It hurt to be away from you. It hurt even more to be with you and see the shell of you, without the spirit. No laughter. No stupid jokes. No jumping out at me and yelling ‘surprise’, even though it never was. No lectures on how you would only eat free range eggs, or why you were considering going vegetarian. Discussing the latest book you had read, or listening to you singing Justin Bieber at the top of your voice, or watching you dance around to the latest music videos, or, or, or…

  The doctors were starting to make noises about test results not being as good as they had hoped. About you not responding to treatment. About running more tests, and then ‘thinking about our options’.

  I took a slug of wine, finishing the glass. Felt the alcohol’s warmth slide down my body, but it never hit my soul.

  ‘I better get home,’ I said, reluctantly. Wiggins’s ears flickered and he stood, stretching. Glenn raised a hand in farewell as I walked out, Wiggins at my heel.

  It was 4.30 p.m., and Jacob should be home any minute. It was lighter than expected; already the days were getting demonstrably longer as winter loosened its grip and spring approached. Everything changing, my old life with a happy family being left behind, frozen in winter’s grip forever.

  As I headed over the crossroads, Jill was locking up a few doors down. Fridays and Mondays were her early-closing days. She always seemed to be around, every time I looked up. Yet the woman who generally knew everything that happened in this village apparently knew nothing about what had happened to you. It infuriated me.

  ‘Pretty pathetic to lie to the police and give false alibis,’ I catcalled.

  It was the alcohol. If I were sober, I’d have said nothing. But frustration and booze were a terrible mixture, making me take my mood out on someone else.

  Jill put down the A3 sign with the latest newspaper headline on it which she had been carrying inside.


  ‘If you have something to say, say it.’

  ‘Just what I said.’ I smiled sweetly. ‘It’s pretty pathetic to lie to the police and give false alibis.’

  Yeah, yeah, I had done the same myself for Jacob, Beth, but that wasn’t the point.

  Jill said nothing. Simply looked at me. Folded arms, straight mouth, frown. Her characteristic lack of response irritated me further.

  ‘Davy told me the truth. Him having it away with Ursula. Only getting to yours after the time Beth was attacked. And you covering for him, Jill.’

  ‘He had nothing to do with what happened to Beth.’

  Her low voice gave a warning I chose to ignore. Nothing scared me in those days. Nothing could, when pretty much the worst thing imaginable had already happened.

  ‘Yeah? Well, if you and he can lie to the police about that, what else are you covering up? We both know the answer to that,’ I teased, just for a reaction. Just because I felt bolshie. But Jill’s eyes widened, her postbox mouth sagging open, perpetually folded arms hanging loosely at her sides.

  ‘Davy told you about the lookout?’ she gasped.

  ‘Lookout for what?’ The words were out of my mouth before my drink-addled brain could tell it to shut up. Stupid, stupid, stupid mistake.

  At my words, Jill’s self-control returned.

  ‘Mel, I’ll tell you one thing, and that in’t two – you better leave before you hurt people with your accusations. We all feel for you… but enough is enough. Get control over yourself.’

  I reeled. ‘“Enough is enough”? I’m supposed to pull myself together when my daughter lies in hospital?’

  ‘That’s enough, lady. Go home and pull yourself together. You can’t keep acting like this. You’re running around playing at detective so you can avoid being at the hospital. Don’t blame others for your shortcomings as a mother.’