The Truth-Teller's Lie

by Sophie Hannah

  I prepare myself to say something more substantial. It takes a few seconds, and energy I don’t feel I can spare. ‘Look, I’m really glad you came and I’m glad we’re friends again, but . . . you might as well go.’

  ‘I’m staying.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I tell her. ‘If you’re hoping for progress, forget it. There’s not going to be any. I’m not going to start to feel better, or put it to one side and chat about something else. You can’t take my mind off it. All I’m going to do is sit here and stare at the wall.’ Somebody ought to paint a big black cross on my door, like they did during the Plague.

  ‘Maybe we should talk about Robert. If you talk about it—’

  ‘I won’t feel better. Look, I know you’re only trying to help, but you can’t.’ I long to let my grief pull me under. Fighting it, making an effort to appear civilised and in control, is too hard. I do not say this, in case it sounds melodramatic. You’re only supposed to talk about grief when someone has died.

  ‘You don’t have to put on any kind of act for me,’ says Yvon. ‘Lie on the floor and howl if you want. I don’t care. But I’m not leaving.’ She curls up at the other end of the sofa. ‘Have you thought about tomorrow?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘What time’s Sergeant Zailer coming to get you?’

  ‘First thing.’

  Yvon swears under her breath. ‘You can’t speak or eat, you can barely summon the energy to move. How the hell are you going to get through another interview with Juliet Haworth?’

  I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll get through it because I have to.

  ‘You should ring Sergeant Zailer and tell her you’ve changed your mind. I’ll do it for you, if you want.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Naomi . . .’

  ‘I have to speak to Juliet if I want to find out what she knows.’

  ‘What about what you know?’ Yvon’s voice is loaded with frustration. ‘I’ve never been Robert’s greatest supporter, but . . . he loves you, Naomi. And he’s not a rapist.’

  ‘Tell that to the DNA experts,’ I say bitterly.

  ‘They’ve got it wrong. So-called experts make mistakes all the time.’

  ‘Stop, please.’ Her false consolations are making me feel even more wretched. ‘The only way I can handle this is to face up to the worst possibility. I’m not going to let myself latch on to some unlikely theory, and be disappointed again.’

  ‘Okay.’ Yvon humours me. ‘So what is the worst possibility?’

  ‘Robert’s involved in the rapes,’ I say, in a dull, dead voice. ‘He does some, the other man does some. Juliet’s involved, maybe even in charge. They’re a team of three. Robert knew all along that I was one of the other man’s victims. Same with Sandy Freeguard. He went out of his way to meet us for that reason.’

  ‘Why? That’s crazy.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe to check we weren’t going to go to the police. That’s what spies do, isn’t it? They infiltrate enemy territory, report back.’

  ‘But you said Sandy Freeguard had already been to the police, before she started seeing Robert.’

  I nod. ‘The boyfriend of a rape victim would know how the investigation was progressing, wouldn’t he? The police would keep the victim informed and the victim’d confide in her boyfriend. Maybe Juliet—or the other man, or Robert, or all three of them—wanted to be able to keep tabs on what the police were up to, in Sandy Freeguard’s case. Haven’t we always said Robert’s a control freak?’ I cannot stop the tears from escaping as I say this.

  Do you know what the worst thing is? All the kind, loving, sweet things you’ve said and done have been so much more concrete and tangible in my mind since you rejected me in the hospital. It would help if I could make the bad times stand out, step forward into the spotlight. Then I might find a pattern I’ve overlooked until now and prove to my heart how wrong it has been about you. But all I can think of are your passionate words. You have no idea how precious you are to me. You said that at the end of every phone call, instead of goodbye.

  My memory has turned against me, is trying to overwhelm me with the contrast between how you were this morning and how you have been in the past.

  ‘Why did Juliet smash Robert’s head in with a stone?’ asks Yvon, picking up half of my sandwich and taking a bite. ‘Why does she want to provoke you and taunt you?’

  I can’t answer either question.

  ‘Because Robert is in love with you. It’s the only possible explanation. He finally got round to telling her that he was leaving her for you. She’s jealous—that’s why she hates you.’

  ‘Robert’s not in love with me.’ I am crushed by the weight of these words. ‘He told me to go away and leave him alone.’

  ‘He wasn’t thinking straight. Naomi, she tried to kill him. If your brain had been bleeding and swelling, if you’d been unconscious for days, you wouldn’t know what you were saying either.’ Yvon brushes crumbs off the sofa on to the floor. It’s her idea of cleaning. ‘Robert loves you,’ she insists. ‘And he’s going to get better, all right?’

  ‘Great. I get to live happily ever after with a rapist.’ I stare at the bread on the floor. For some reason it makes me think of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. Food is essential to any rescue mission. Magret de Canard aux Poires from the Bay Tree. There was food on the table in the little theatre where I was attacked, course after course.

  ‘Put that sandwich down,’ I tell Yvon. ‘Are you hungry?’

  She looks caught out, ashamed to be thinking of food at a time like this. I’m also thinking about it, though I don’t think I could eat even a mouthful. ‘What time is it? Will the Bay Tree still be taking orders?’

  ‘The Bay Tree? You mean the most expensive restaurant in the county?’ Yvon’s expression changes; the agony aunt has been replaced by the strict headmistress. ‘That’s where Robert got that food from, wasn’t it, the day you met him?’

  ‘It’s not what you think. I don’t want to go there because I’m nostalgic for the good old days,’ I say bitterly, mortified to think of what I used to believe in: the past, the future. The present. What you’ve done to me is worse than what the rapist did. He made me a victim for a night; thanks to you, I’ve been mocked, debased and humiliated for over a year without even knowing about it.

  Yvon could see there was something wrong with our relationship from the start. Why didn’t I see it? Why can I still not see it? I am determined to think the unthinkable about you, believe the unbelievable, because I have to kill the part of me that loves you in spite of everything I’ve been told. It should be small and ailing by now, but it isn’t. It’s huge. Rampant. It has spread inside me like a cancer, conquered too much territory. I don’t know what’ll be left of me if I succeed in wiping it out. Just scars, emptiness, a gaping hole. But I have to try. I must be as ruthless as a hired assassin.

  Yvon doesn’t understand why I suddenly want to go out, and I’m not ready to explain it to her. One horror at a time. ‘If it’s not nostalgia, then why the Bay Tree?’ she says. ‘Let’s go somewhere else and not bankrupt ourselves.’

  ‘I’m going to the Bay Tree,’ I tell her, standing up. ‘Are you coming or not?’

  The building that houses the Bay Tree bistro is one of the oldest in Spilling. It’s been standing since 1504. It has low ceilings, thick uneven walls and two real fires—one in the bar area and one in the restaurant itself. It resembles a well-turned-out grotto, though it’s entirely above ground level. There are only eight tables, and normally you have to book at least a month in advance. Yvon and I were lucky; it’s late, so we got a table somebody had booked weeks ago for seven-thirty. By the time we arrived, they were long gone—sated and not insignificantly poorer.

  The restaurant has an outer door, which is always locked, and an inner door, to ensure that no cold air from the High Street dilutes the warmth inside. You have to ring a bell, and the waiter who comes to let you in always makes sure to close the
first door before opening the second. Most of the staff are French.

  I’ve been here once before, with my parents. We were celebrating my dad’s sixtieth birthday. He banged his head on the way in. The Bay Tree’s ceilings are a hazard, if you’re tall. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I, Robert? You know the place better than I do.

  On that night, with my parents, we had a waiter who wasn’t French, but my mother persisted in speaking to him in very slow simple English and in a quasi-continental accent: ‘Can we av zee bill, pleez?’ I restrained myself from pointing out that he was probably born and brought up in Rawndesley. It was a celebration, so no carping was allowed.

  You’ve never met my parents. They don’t even know about you. I thought I was protecting myself from their criticism and disapproval, but it turns out that they are the protected ones. It’s an odd thought: that the large majority of people in the world—Mum and Dad, my customers, shoppers I pass on the street—have not had their lives devastated by you. They don’t know you and never will.

  And it’s the same the other way round. The waiter who is looking after me and Yvon tonight—a little too attentively: he hovers too close to our table, his posture stiff and formal, one arm behind his back, surging forward to replenish our wine glasses each time one of us takes a sip—he has probably had his life shattered, at one time or another, by somebody whose name would mean nothing to me.

  Only in a very minor, trivial sense do we inhabit the same world as others.

  ‘How’s your food?’ asks Yvon.

  I ordered only a starter, the foie gras, but she can see I haven’t touched it. ‘Is that some sort of trick question?’ I say. ‘Like, have you stopped beating your wife yet? Is the present king of France bald?’

  ‘If you aren’t planning to eat anything, what the hell are we doing here? Do you realise how much this meal’s going to cost? The minute we walked in, I felt as if my bank account had turned into an hourglass. All my hard-earned money is sand, trickling away.’

  ‘I’ll pay,’ I tell her, waving the waiter over. Three steps and he’s at our table. ‘Could we have a bottle of champagne, please? The best one you’ve got.’ He scuttles off. ‘Anything to get rid of him,’ I say to Yvon.

  She stares at me, open-mouthed. ‘The best? Are you crazy? It’ll cost a million quid.’

  ‘I don’t care what it costs.’

  ‘I don’t understand you! Half an hour ago . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it.’

  ‘Would you rather I was back on my sofa, staring into space?’

  ‘I’d rather you told me what’s going on.’

  I grin. ‘Guess what?’

  Yvon puts down her cutlery, steels herself for an unwelcome revelation.

  ‘I don’t even like champagne. It makes the inside of my nose itch and gives me really bad wind.’

  ‘Jesus, Naomi!’

  Once you accept that nobody is ever going to understand you, and overcome the enormous feeling of isolation, it’s actually quite comforting. You’re the only expert in your own little world, and you can do what you want. I bet that’s how you feel, Robert. Isn’t it? You picked the wrong woman when you picked me. Because I am capable of understanding how your mind works. Is that why you now want me to leave you alone?

  The waiter returns with a dusty bottle, which he presents to me for inspection. ‘That looks fine,’ I tell him. He nods approvingly and disappears again.

  ‘So why’s he taken it away?’ asks Yvon.

  ‘He’s gone to get one of those posh cooling buckets and special champagne glasses, probably.’

  ‘Naomi, this is freaking me out.’

  ‘Look, if it’ll make you happy we can go to the drive-through Chickadee’s tomorrow and you can buy a bucket full of birds’ wings boiled in fat, okay? If you can’t handle the high life.’ I giggle, feeling as if I’m speaking lines written by someone else. Juliet, perhaps. Yes; I am aping her brittle, glib delivery.

  ‘So, what’s the deal with you and Ben?’ I ask Yvon, remembering that her life has not ended even though mine has.

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Really? That big a nothing? Wow.’ Ben Cotchin is not that bad. Or if he is, he’s bad in a normal way. Which, the way I’m feeling at the moment, seems quite benign—perhaps the best anybody can hope for.

  ‘Stop it,’ says Yvon. ‘I was upset and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, that’s all. And . . . Ben’s given up drinking.’

  The waiter returns with our champagne in a silver bucket full of ice and water, a stand on wheels to support the bucket, and two glasses. ‘Excuse me,’ I say to him. Might as well do what I came here to do. ‘Have you worked here long?’

  ‘No,’ says the waiter. ‘Only three months.’ He is too polite to ask me why, but there is an enquiry in his eyes.

  ‘Who’s been here the longest? What about the chef?’

  ‘I think he has been here for a long time.’ His English is meticulously correct. ‘I could ask him, if you wish.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I say.

  ‘Shall I . . . ?’ He nods at the champagne.

  ‘Afterwards. Speak to the chef now.’ Suddenly I can’t wait.

  ‘Naomi, this is insane,’ Yvon hisses at me as soon as we’re alone again. ‘You’re going to ask the chef if he remembers Robert coming in and ordering that meal for you, aren’t you?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘What if he does? So what? What are you going to say then? Are you going to ask him what exactly Robert said? Did he look like a man who’d just fallen in love? This is not healthy, indulging your obsession like this!’

  ‘Yvon,’ I say quietly. ‘Think about it. Look around you, look at this place.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Eat your expensive food, it’s going cold,’ I remind her. ‘Does this look like the sort of restaurant that’d let someone dash in off the street and order a takeaway? Can you see a takeaway menu anywhere? The sort of place that’d let a complete stranger walk out with not only food but also a tray and cutlery and an expensive cloth napkin? And just trust him to bring it back, when he was finished with it?’

  Yvon considers this, chewing a mouthful of lamb. ‘No. But . . . why would Robert lie?’

  ‘I don’t think he lied. I think he withheld certain crucial facts.’

  Our waiter returns. ‘I introduce you to our chef, Martin Gilligan,’ he says. Behind him is a short, thin man with untidy ginger hair.

  ‘How’s your food?’ Gilligan asks, in what sounds like a northern accent. I had a friend at university who was from Hull; this chef’s voice reminds me of his.

  ‘It’s fantastic, thanks. Amazing.’ Yvon smiles warmly. She says nothing about thinking it’s overpriced.

  ‘Etienne said you wanted to know how long I’ve worked here?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m fixtures and fittings.’ He looks apologetic, as if he fears we might accuse him of being unadventurous for staying. ‘I’ve been here since it opened in 1997.’

  ‘Do you know Robert Haworth?’ I ask him.

  He nods, looks pleasantly surprised. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

  I won’t say yes to this, even if doing so would help the flow of the conversation. ‘How do you know him?’

  Yvon watches us as she might a tennis match, her head turning back and forth.

  ‘He used to work here,’ says Gilligan.

  ‘When? For how long?’

  ‘Oh . . . let’s see, it must have been 2002, 2003, something like that. It was a good few years ago. He’d just got married when he started, I remember that. Told me he’d just got back off his honeymoon. And he left . . . ooh, about a year later. Went on to be a lorry driver. He said he preferred open roads to hot kitchens. We’re still in touch, still have the odd bevvy now and then, at the Star. Though I’ve not seen him for a while.’

  ‘Robert worked in the kitchen, then? He wasn’t a waiter.’

  ‘No, h
e was a chef. My second-in-command.’

  I nod. That’s how you were able to get your hands on your little surprise for me. They knew you at the Bay Tree—you’d worked here—so of course they trusted you. Naturally, they let you take a tray and cutlery and a napkin, and Martin Gilligan was only too happy to cook Magret de Canard aux Poires for you when you told him it was urgently needed to help a woman in distress.

  I don’t need to ask any more questions. I thank Gilligan, and he returns to the kitchen. Like Etienne, our waiter, he is too discreet to demand to know why I felt the need to interrogate him.

  The same doesn’t apply to Yvon. As soon as we’re alone again, she orders me to explain. The temptation to be facetious and evasive is strong. Games are safer than reality. But I can’t do it to Yvon; she’s my best friend, and I’m not Juliet.

  ‘Robert once said to me that being a lorry driver was better than being a commis,’ I tell her. ‘I didn’t understand. I thought he meant Commie, Communist, which didn’t seem to make much sense, but he didn’t. He meant a commis chef—c, o, m, m, i, s. Because that’s what he used to be.’

  Yvon shrugs. ‘So?’

  ‘The man who raped me served a three-course meal to the men who watched,’ I say. ‘Every now and then he disappeared into a room at the back of the theatre and came out with more food. That room had to be a kitchen.’

  Yvon is shaking her head. She can see where I’m going, and she doesn’t want it to be true.

  ‘I’ve never really thought about who cooked the food.’

  ‘Oh, God, Naomi.’

  ‘My rapist had his hands full. He had to entertain the men, clear each course, bring the next course. He was front of house.’ I laugh bitterly. ‘And we know he didn’t operate alone, from what Charlie Zailer’s said. At least two of the rapes took place in Robert’s lorry, and it was Robert who raped Prue Kelvey.’ I am making the agony worse, deliberately taking as long as I can to arrive at my conclusion. Like when you’ve got an elastic band round your wrist and you pull it back as far as it’ll go, stretching it until it’s taut and skinny, then letting it snap back against your skin. The further away it is, the more you know it will hurt you in the end. Hurting distance. Isn’t that what you called it?