Here We Lie

by Sophie McKenzie

  I have no idea what to say now. Thankfully Martin chooses this minute to appear, hurrying through the saloon doors which shut behind him with a whoosh. He nods, distracted, at Simon, who stands up, mumbles something that sounds roughly like ‘tell her I said hello’ and melts speedily away.

  Martin rushes over to me, his face etched with concern. In an instant everything Simon just said goes out of my head. I’m back on the tube platform, reliving the shove and the grab. I shiver.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lie.

  ‘Not buying it.’ The kindness of his expression threatens to make me cry, so I press my lips together and attempt to smile at him. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the receptionist looking up. I flush, feeling self-conscious.

  ‘Can we talk later?’

  ‘Course, I’ll be home as soon as I can.’ Martin hands me his house key and asks the receptionist to call me a cab.

  It’s almost one thirty when I arrive at his and Cameron’s elegant designer townhouse – whose most stunning feature is that it’s located on the banks of the river near Twickenham. Their home is neat and stylish, full of angular furniture and several of the striking stone sculptures that Cameron collects. I wander around looking at the new pieces. The bottom level of the house is mostly a large open-plan kitchen/diner that leads onto the garden and the Maggie May’s mooring in the river beyond, but up the spiral staircase there are two large bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. The spare room is nominally Martin’s den, but apart from some gym equipment and pictures of me and Rose and our parents, it’s as bare – and styled – as the rest of the place. Martin and Cameron moved in here a couple of years ago. I have never stayed over – after all, both my old home with Rose and my home with Jed are less than a sixty-minute cab journey away – but now I test out the spare room’s large double bed. It’s firm and made up with crisp cotton sheets and an eiderdown. There are aluminium blinds at the window, a metal-tipped chest of drawers and a wooden dressing table that doesn’t really fit with everything else. It used to belong to Mum, I think, though I don’t remember it myself. Rose for some reason hated it and happily let Martin take it when he moved out years ago. Martin has lugged it around with him ever since.

  Now I’ve stopped running I’m aware of how sore my arm is. I’m also extremely cold, in fact I can’t stop shivering. Trying to warm up, I go into the spare room’s en suite bathroom and run a bath. I soak and wash my hair, then dry myself with the soft white towel on the rail. There’s a beautiful silk dressing gown on the back of the door, but I want something warmer and cosier, so I search the chest of drawers until I find a sweater. It’s too big for me, of course, but I put it on anyway.

  I think about going back down to make a cup of tea or find some painkillers to ease the dull ache in my shoulder, but I’m overwhelmed with tiredness so, instead, I crawl under the eiderdown and fall fast asleep.

  The sound of a door opening makes me wake with a start. My eyes spring open. Martin is walking into the room. He sits on the end of the bed.

  ‘So what’s up, Flaky?’ he asks, his concerned expression morphing into a sympathetic smile. ‘Boy trouble, eh?’ Flaky is his occasional pet name for me, a hangover from when he was a cool sixth former and I was his dizzy little sister.

  I sit up, feeling disoriented. It takes a moment for everything to come back to me. Then I shudder, remembering the sensation of falling towards the track. I launch into my story, trying to tell everything as simply and clearly as I can.

  When I get to this morning and my narrow escape from Lish’s attack on the tube platform I roll up the sleeve of his jumper and show him the dark bruise. ‘This is from where a passer-by grabbed me and saved me.’

  Martin lets out a low whistle. ‘Whoa.’ He frowns. ‘That looks sore. Are you sure you’re okay?’

  I nod, though inside I am far from okay.

  ‘I’m going to get some ice for that bruise. D’you want a paracetamol too?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ I still feel really cold. ‘Would you mind putting on the heating too?’

  ‘Sure.’ Martin is already out of the door. He comes back a couple of minutes later with a tray containing water, pills and an icepack. I apply the pack to my sore skin and lie back on the pillows.

  ‘Now go through what has happened again,’ Martin says very seriously. ‘Rose told me that Dan Thackeray turned up out of the blue peddling some line about Jed’s son dealing drugs. She seems to think he’s trying to get between you and Jed in order to get you back. Is that true?’

  ‘No, well, yes . . . a bit,’ I explain. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘Go on.’

  I take two paracetamol and tell him everything. I hesitate when I come to the recent part about kissing Dan, but then plunge ahead. Martin, like Rose, may not approve of Dan but unlike her he won’t judge me for the kiss.

  ‘Holy cow.’ Martin’s only interjection is heartfelt. I finish my tale, describing first the row between Dan and Jed, then Zoe’s visit. Martin gives me a brief, fierce hug, then shakes his head. ‘I thought I was bad, but you’re a bloody disaster magnet.’

  We both laugh.

  ‘I know,’ I say with a rueful smile. Martin sighs and it strikes me that he looks tired and his suit is crumpled. There’s a sprinkling of grey in his carefully gelled dark hair too. I’m sure that wasn’t there in the summer. I wonder if he worries about getting older. Cameron is several years younger and arguably even better-looking than Martin.

  I deepen my smile. ‘At least I don’t put too much wax in my hair.’

  ‘You’re not too old, young lady,’ Martin jokes, echoing one of the lines our father used to say to Rose. The three of us often say the words to each other, part of the family tradition we have constructed in the absence of our parents. Of course I have no memory of the words ever actually being spoken, but Rose and Martin do and it helps all of us keep our awareness of Mum and Dad alive.

  ‘What time is it?’ I ask.

  Martin checks his Rolex. I’m surprised when he says that it’s only just gone three p.m.; it feels much later.

  ‘You got away from work okay?’ I say.

  ‘Course. I was worried,’ Martin says. ‘Look, are you really sure you were deliberately pushed onto the tube track earlier?’

  I close my eyes, recalling the blur of a memory that this morning has become. ‘No,’ I admit. ‘I mean, I was definitely shoved but I couldn’t say for sure that whoever did it meant me actually to fall off the platform. Anyway, there’s no way of proving who it was. The guy at the ticket office said you couldn’t see a face on the CCTV of him, just that whoever it was, was about five foot eleven and skinny. Which Lish is.’

  Martin shrugs. ‘So are lots of people. I mean it could just be a random mugger.’

  I shiver, though the heating is on now and my limbs are warming up. I look down at the eiderdown between us and twist my still-damp hair around my fingers. I feel about fourteen years old again, on those occasions when Rose would get fed up with my behaviour and call on Martin to reason with me: Please, Mart, Emily listens to you. Tell her that getting a navel piercing is a really bad idea. It strikes me suddenly that poor Dee Dee never made it to fourteen.

  ‘Jed was horrible earlier,’ I say. ‘He refused to listen to what Dan and I were saying. And he’s been talking to Zoe about it too.’

  ‘Well, it’s got to be hard for him to hear,’ Martin says softly. ‘Not to mention to see you with Dan Thackeray. Word to the wise, don’t tell him Dan kissed you. A guy like Jed doesn’t take that sort of thing well.’ He pauses. ‘You know, when you first met him I thought he was a bit pompous and way, way too old for you, but the more times I’ve met him the more I think he’s just what you need.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning that he’s steady and he loves you as you are and he likes looking after you.’

  ‘Mmmn,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Relationships aren’t easy,’ Martin sa
ys. ‘I’m just saying I wouldn’t want you to split with Jed just because Dan’s turned up and you’re all overwhelmed because he’s so hot . . .’ He tilts his head to one side and gives me a camp smile. ‘He is still hot, I assume?’

  ‘Hotter.’ I grimace, realizing the truth of this as I say it. ‘Unfortunately.’

  Martin makes a face back at me. ‘Well, hot or not, I don’t want to see you acting like Rose, sabotaging relationships because they’re not exciting enough.’

  ‘You think Rose does that?’ What is he talking about? I suddenly remember my earlier conversation with Simon. I suck in my breath. ‘She dumped Simon, didn’t she? It wasn’t the other way around at all, even though she said it was.’

  ‘Never mind Rose, I shouldn’t have brought her into this.’

  ‘But you did,’ I persist. ‘What did you mean by her “sabotaging” relationships?’

  ‘Forget it, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘Said what? What are you saying? Did Rose sabotage things with Simon?’ I screw up my forehead, trying to think what this might mean in practice. ‘He gave me the impression she dumped him, which is the opposite of what Rose said when it happened.’

  Martin sighs. ‘I can’t, Emily. Rose spoke to me in confidence.’

  ‘Please, Mart, I know she doesn’t talk to me about stuff like that, but I half-know it now anyway. You might as well tell me the truth. Did she end it? Or did he? Because I thought she was gutted that he dumped her; she was always saying how nice he was.’

  ‘Yeah, too nice for Rose.’ Martin sighs again. ‘It wasn’t that simple. Look, for God’s sake don’t tell her I’ve told you, but the truth is that Rose had a fling with someone else while she was going out with Simon. He found out and, well, to be honest, I think he would have taken her back but Rose had fallen for this other guy quite hard, so she kind of did an “I’m confused about how I feel . . . I need time to think” number on him.’

  My mouth gapes. ‘Who was the guy she had the fling with?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Martin admits. ‘She wouldn’t say, but I think he was married.’

  ‘Rose had an affair with a married man?’

  ‘Rose isn’t so perfect.’ Martin shifts uncomfortably on the edge of the bed. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything, I just don’t want you to go the same way, throwing away someone steady and reliable for a guy like Dan Thackeray.’ He glances over at the dressing table in the corner. ‘It was bad like that for Mum with Dad, you know. I remember her sitting there, in front of the mirror, telling me when I was thirteen or so.’

  ‘Telling you what?’

  ‘Dad having . . . I think she called them “ladies” . . . and being a bit unreliable, you know . . . affairs . . . well, maybe not full-on affairs but definitely flings . . .’

  I stare at him, open-mouthed, at this second bombshell. ‘You’re kidding, I thought Mum and Dad were happy together?’

  ‘They were, in their way,’ Martin insists. ‘But I remember Mum being miserable that she’d chosen a bad boy. Not that she put it in those terms of course.’

  ‘What terms did she put it in?’ I lean forward, intent on Martin’s reply. I have never heard our parents talked about like this before.

  ‘I don’t know, but that time I mentioned . . . Rose was with her friends downstairs and you must have already been asleep. I was sitting on Mum and Dad’s bed, watching Mum in front of that.’ He points across the room to the elegant wooden dressing table. ‘She was getting ready to go out, putting on make-up. She looked at me in the mirror and she said: “It’s sad that I’m not enough for your dad, thank goodness I have you”.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’ This is so at odds with the perfect picture I’ve always had of our parents’ marriage that I feel completely stunned.

  Martin shrugs. ‘Look, that’s all ancient history. The important thing is what we do now after everything that’s happened to you. With Lish. I’ll come with you to the police if that’s what you want, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to make any more sense of it than I have. I mean it all rests on the fact that you think Lish tried to kill you back in Corsica because he and his mum were angry about you and Jed. Which doesn’t tie up with Lish supposedly trying to kill you today because you had the fake drugs he supposedly supplied to Dan Thackeray. On top of which, neither attempt to kill you has worked. So you can’t even point to an actual crime.’

  ‘But poor Dee Dee died.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It all goes back to her and Lish.’ I sit back. ‘And Zoe. Except I believed her today, about not seriously wanting to hurt me.’

  ‘Well, maybe she’s got nothing to do with it,’ Martin says with a sigh. ‘Maybe it’s just Lish. Except if he wasn’t trying to kill you for his mother, what was his motive? It doesn’t make sense. And why draw attention to his drug dealing anyway?’

  I sit up. ‘Maybe it’s not just his drug dealing.’ I blow out my breath, working it through. ‘If Lish is dealing drugs at uni – and despite what Jed and Zoe think I don’t believe Dan was lying about that – he can’t be doing it in isolation. He’ll have suppliers and clients, be part of a bigger operation.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Martin agrees. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why he wanted to kill you.’

  ‘Suppose he didn’t?’ I think back to the day Dee Dee died, to that moment she told me she had a secret on the steps of the citadel at Calvi. ‘Suppose Dee Dee saw her brother drug dealing while we were in France? She said there was something she wanted to tell me, something she’d seen. Maybe I wasn’t the target after all. Not originally. Maybe Dee Dee was killed to stop her from talking.’

  Martin frowns. ‘You’re saying Lish murdered his own sister on purpose?’

  ‘Not necessarily Lish. Whoever he is working for. If they found out Dee Dee had witnessed them dealing, maybe they did it.’ I get up and pace across the room. ‘God, Martin, it’s the only explanation that makes sense.’

  ‘I still don’t see how.’

  ‘Okay, we know from the notebook that Lish was dealing in KCN - potassium cyanide. Well, suppose someone else in his gang or whatever had access to it too? They could have easily snuck into the villa, forced the cyanide down Dee Dee then put a few dregs in the ExAche powders, to make it look like it was a freak manufacturing accident. They murdered Dee Dee so she couldn’t tell anyone what she’d seen.’

  Martin’s eyes widen. ‘Leaving Lish too scared to speak out himself?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘The whole thing isn’t some violent step-family melodrama, it’s organized crime. Dee Dee just got in the way so they shut her up.’

  ‘And now you and Dan Thackeray are getting in the way,’ Martin adds. ‘Which explains the attack on the tube. That probably wasn’t Lish either but whoever he’s working for.’

  ‘You’re right.’ I reach for my clothes. ‘Come on, we have to tell the police.’

  ‘Are you sure, Emily? I mean, you don’t have proof of any of this.’ Martin points to the fingermarks on my arms. ‘In fact the only physical evidence of you being hurt is from the guy who saved you.’

  ‘Dan will back me up. At the very least, the police will have to investigate Lish’s drug dealing properly, not just ask a few students like Jed did.’

  ‘Jed will go ballistic.’ Martin pauses. ‘You could lose him forever.’

  ‘I know, but the alternative is doing nothing. And I couldn’t live with myself if I don’t at least try to get justice.’

  ‘Justice?’

  ‘For Dee Dee,’ I say. ‘If her parents won’t do it then it’s up to me.’

  PART FOUR

  November 1997

  Rose peered down at the UCAS application form. It made her feel old. The last time she’d applied to university the system had been different . . . even the acronym had changed from the old UCCA. More significantly, Rose herself was not the same person. She sighed and picked up her pen. So far, all she’d managed to enter onto her form were the facts: her name an
d address, her date of birth and her GCSE and A-level qualifications. Now, somehow, she had to explain why she wanted to apply to do a Business Studies degree.

  It shouldn’t, surely, be this difficult. After all, she’d been planning to go to uni for years. Of course, when Mum and Dad died during her gap year she had turned down her original place to study History at Warwick. There was no way she could have left Martin and Emily then. But five years had passed – the fifth and, to Rose, highly significant, anniversary of their parents’ death had been last week – and a lot had changed. Martin, who, against all predictions, had sailed through his A-levels, was studying International Relations at Durham while Emily had just started in the sixth form at school. There was no reason why Rose shouldn’t find somewhere in London to study part-time and still be at home for her sister. The longer she’d worked in the shop the more ridiculous the idea of her original degree in History seemed. Interesting, but irrelevant, was how she felt about it now. So she’d changed her mind and her sights were now set on studying Business. Though really, when she thought about it, Rose couldn’t believe an academic course – even a good one – could prepare her for setting up and building her own business better than her job where she actually managed the store. Day in, day out. Ordering stock, dealing with staff, responding to customers. It wasn’t easy. But Rose was good at it, at least she thought she was.

  Her phone went. Martin. With a sigh, Rose picked up the mobile. Martin hardly ever called her, usually only to ask about something practical like when the next rent payment on his student house was due – Rose helped with all the financial arrangements – or how to get a wine stain out of a white shirt. Since he had come out two years ago, there had been less distance between them but Rose wouldn’t describe their relationship as close. However, Martin definitely put a lot of effort into staying in touch with Emily – and for that, above everything, Rose forgave him all his self-absorbed ways.