I’m earlier than usual. The main office is empty, but I can see the light is already on in Madeline’s office. I take off my coat, dump my handbag on the desk and try to shake off the fog of tiredness that has enveloped me. I need to stay alert, keep focused on the task ahead. Before I can sit down, I hear her door creak open.
‘Amber, is that you? Can I have a word?’
I roll my eyes, secure in the knowledge that nobody can see me. I don’t need this right now, but I rearrange my face and head over to the little office in the corner, my hands screwed up into defensive fists inside my pockets.
I perform a half-hearted knock on the slightly ajar door, before pushing it fully open. There she is, dressed in black, as always. Hunched over the desk, her face scrunched up and too close to the screen so that she can read what’s on it. The rumour mill is still in full flow on Twitter, churning out further speculation of her impending departure. I wonder if she’s reading the new #MadelineFrost comments, there are plenty of them.
‘Just a moment, I’m right in the middle of a thought.’ She always does this. Hers is the only time she values and she wants me to know it. She types something that I cannot see.
‘I’m glad you’re here early,’ she says. ‘I was hoping we could have a little chat before the others arrive.’
I try not to react, willing every facial muscle I have to stay exactly where it is. She lifts her glasses off her face and lets them dangle from the pink beaded cord that hangs around her sturdy neck. I imagine tightening it and then shake the image from my mind.
‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ says Madeline, indicating the purple, leather pouf she brought back from Morocco a few months ago.
‘I’m OK, thank you,’ I reply.
‘Sit down,’ she says, two neat rows of veneers reinforcing the request. I make my face smile back and do what I’m told. This is what the producers have to do every morning, come into this poky little room and sit on the pouf, waiting for Madeline to grill them about each story on that day’s show. I squat down and try to balance myself – it’s too low and not at all comfortable. As always, it’s all about control and it’s already clear I have none.
‘Did you know about the meeting Matthew was having with the guests yesterday?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, holding her stare. She nods, then looks me up and down as though appraising my choice of outfit. It’s another new dress but she’s clearly not impressed. ‘I want you to do me a favour,’ she says eventually. ‘If you hear anything that you think I might want to know, I want you to tell me.’ I’m starting to think she has forgotten that she’s trying to have me fired, or perhaps she thinks I don’t know.
‘Of course,’ I say. I wouldn’t tell her if there was a poisonous snake wrapped around her neck.
‘We have to stick together, Amber. If they get rid of me, they’ll bring in a whole new cast, they always do. They’ll replace you too, don’t think that they won’t. Remember that, and next time you hear something you’ll come and tell me, won’t you?’ With that, she puts her glasses back up onto her nose and starts tapping away on the keyboard once more, to signal that the meeting is over.
I struggle to stand from the pouf, then leave her office and close the door behind me.
‘Are you OK?’ whispers Jo, who has just arrived.
I sit back down at my desk. ‘Yes, fine,’ I say, knowing Madeline will be watching through the window in her door.
‘You don’t look fine,’ says Jo.
‘I don’t know where Paul is. He didn’t come home last night.’ As soon as I say the words, I regret them.
‘Is it Claire again?’ she asks. The words slap me in the face and my fear turns to anger, but there is a look of genuine concern spread across Jo’s features. It isn’t her fault that she knows so much about my past, I’m the one who told her.
I don’t know the answer, so I give the one I want to be true: ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe we should go get a coffee?’
‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’ I look away, turn on my PC and stare at the screen.
‘Suit yourself,’ she says and leaves without another word.
When she’s gone, I open up my emails. My inbox is overcrowded with obligation and invitations. It’s mostly junk, discounts for things I neither want nor need, but there is one message that catches my eye. My mouse hovers over the familiar name and my eyes fix themselves on the one word in the subject line, as though it is difficult to translate:
Hello.
I start to pick the skin off my lip with my fingernails. I should delete the email, I know that’s what I should do. I casually glance around the office. I’m still alone. I pick another bit of skin off my upper lip and put it on my desk. It’s stained purple from last night’s wine. I remember taking the business card out of my purse when I couldn’t sleep last night, running my thumb over the embossed lettering. I remember typing his name into an email on my phone, dithering over the subject line, composing the casual note, worrying it might look odd to send it so late at night, sending it anyway. My cheeks flush with shame, unable to remember now exactly what I said.
I open the email and read it, then I read it again, more slowly this time, carefully interpreting each individual word.
For old times’ sake.
I try on the words as I’m reading, to see if they fit. I can still picture their author if I close my eyes.
Happy memories.
They weren’t all happy.
A drink to catch up?
I pull another piece of skin off my lip and examine the tiny strip of myself as it dries and hardens on my fingertip. I put it in the small pile with the others.
Catch up. Catch. Caught.
Paul is missing. My marriage is hanging by a thread. What am I doing? The thought is stillborn.
‘Hello, earth to Amber?’ says Jo, waving her hands in front of my face. I close down the email window, brush the tiny pile of skin off my desk and feel my cheeks redden.
‘Have you been playing Space Invaders?’ I blurt out.
‘What? No. Why?’ She smiles.
‘Because you’re invading my space.’
Her smile vanishes.
‘Sorry. I heard someone say that once, thought it was funny. I didn’t mean to snap at you, I was in a complete world of my own.’
‘I noticed. Try not to worry, I’m sure he’s fine.’
‘Who?’ I ask, wondering if she saw the email from Edward.
‘Paul? Your husband?’ she says, frowning.
‘Right. Yes, sorry. I’m a bit all over the place today.’
Madeline’s voice booms from her office, silencing us as she summons her PA. She looms over her in the doorway and hands over her credit card and a list of instructions. She wants some dry cleaning picked up, tells her the PIN and everything else she needs to know. The way she speaks to people makes me so angry.
I think about Edward’s email as we talk through the morning briefings. I think about it in the studio, during interviews and throughout the phone-in. I barely hear anything anyone says all morning. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. Paul hasn’t touched me for months and I haven’t done anything wrong. We’re just being friendly, that’s all. It’s just a memory of another time and place. Memories can’t hurt anyone, unless they are shared.
Before
Saturday, 7th December 1991
Dear Diary,
Taylor came to the house yesterday. I was dreading it. Dad had to work late again, so I only had to worry about Mum being embarrassing. She picked us up from school in our battered blue Ford Escort, which is basically a tin can on wheels. Taylor’s family have a Volvo and a Renault 5. Mum made sure we were both wearing seat belts – she doesn’t normally care – and then she gave us a carton of Ribena each to drink on the way home. She doesn’t normally do that either. It only takes five minutes to drive home from school, so it’s not as if we were going to die of thirst. I thought the car wasn’t going to start, but, on the
third attempt, the engine coughed enough times to get going and Mum made a joke of it like she always does. So embarrassing.
We didn’t really talk much in the car. Mum kept looking at me in the rear-view mirror and asking Taylor and I stupid questions like, ‘How was your day?’ in a silly singsong voice. I said what I always say when she asks that question, fine, but Taylor went into way more detail and told her about the portraits we are working on in art. That annoyed me because I’m painting a picture of Nana and I wanted it to be a surprise.
When we got home, I watched Taylor’s face to see her reaction. The first thing you notice about Nana’s house is the paint. Nana really liked the colour blue. There’s a blue front door, windows and garage, and they all peel, like my nose when it’s burnt. Sometimes I give it a helping hand, I like the way the paint feels beneath my nails. There are net curtains that used to be white in every window and a concrete driveway that always has a puddle of oil in the middle. Taylor’s face stayed the same, even when she had to get out of the car on my side because her door was broken and gets stuck sometimes.
When we finally got inside, Mum said I should show Taylor my room, so I did. It didn’t take long, there’s not much to see. I told her that it was Nana’s room and that she died there. I thought that would freak her out, but it didn’t. Her face still stayed the same. We haven’t redecorated, so my room still has Nana’s stripy blue wallpaper with white flowers and there’s a blue carpet that’s completely flat from years of being trodden on. The twin beds match the wardrobe and dressing table, it’s all dark brown wood that smells of Mr Sheen. It’s like living in a museum but I’m allowed to touch the stuff. Taylor said she liked my room, but I think she was just being polite. She’s like that. She told me that her bedroom carpet is pink and we both agreed that might be even worse than blue.
She walked over to my bookshelves and I felt really uncomfortable. I said maybe we should go downstairs to see what microwaved delights Mum was planning on poisoning us with, but she just stood there as though she didn’t hear me. I don’t really like people touching my things but I tried to stay calm. Turns out, Taylor reads loads, just like me. She’s read some of the same books and talked about some others that I haven’t even heard of, but sound cool. When Mum called us down for dinner, I was actually quite annoyed, but then we carried on talking about books all the way down the stairs and while we ate our fish fingers and chips. We were still talking about books when Mum gave us a bowl of ice cream each. It had magic chocolate sauce on top, which comes out of the bottle all runny but then dries hard, like blood.
After dinner, Mum said we could watch the big TV, but we went up to my room and talked instead. When Mum came up to my bedroom and said it was time for Taylor to go, it made me feel sad and I asked if she could stay a little longer. Mum raised her invisible eyebrows in that silly way she does. She doesn’t have eyebrows like me because she plucked them off when she was young, so now she draws them on with a pencil and looks like a clown. She asked if Taylor would like to stay the night and Taylor said she would before I had a chance to say anything. So Mum called Taylor’s mum and she said yes too because it was a Friday.
We only have three bedrooms in our house and none of them are spare. Mum and Dad used to share a bedroom in the old house, but now they each have their own. Mum says it’s because Dad snores, but I know that really it’s because they don’t like each other any more. I’m not stupid. Taylor slept in my room with me, in Grandad’s old bed – I don’t think he would have minded.
Once we were in bed, Mum came in and said we had to turn the lamps off in ten minutes. Then she put two plastic glasses of water on the bedside tables. This is yet another thing that Mum never normally does, she seemed very concerned about my thirst all of a sudden. She stood in the doorway before she left, smiled at us both and said the strangest thing:
‘Look at the two of you, like two peas in a pod.’
Then Mum turned off the main light and started to close the door, until I panicked and asked her not to. She propped it back open with Nana’s robin doorstop. Once she was back downstairs, I said sorry to Taylor for her being a bit strange and that I didn’t know what she meant by the ‘peas in a pod’ comment. Taylor laughed and said that she had heard that expression before. She said it just meant that we looked the same. I’ve never seen peas in anything but a plastic bag in the freezer.
We did turn the lamps off after ten minutes, like Mum said, but we talked for way longer than that. Taylor was talking with her eyes closed and then just fell asleep. I don’t think it was because I’m boring. Even though everything was switched off, there was enough light from the moon peeking through the cracks in the curtain to see her face as she slept. I wasn’t sure what Mum was on about at first, I’m a bit shorter than Taylor and she’s very skinny, but she does look a little bit like me I suppose. We both have long brown hair.
There are three things that I have learned that I like about Taylor:
1. She’s actually quite funny.
2. She likes books as much as I do.
3. She has exactly the same birthday as me.
We were born at the same hospital, on the same day, just a few hours apart. If I had been born into Taylor’s family instead, my life would be so much better. I’d be picked up from school in a Volvo for starters and Taylor’s grandparents are still alive. But then my nana wouldn’t have been my nana and that would be sad. I watched Taylor sleep for almost an hour. It was like watching another version of me. I have made a friend. I tried not to, but maybe it will be OK because we’re like two peas in a pod.
Now
Thursday, 29th December 2016
Someone was in my room. He listened to the messages on my phone, deleted them and then told me it was my fault that I’m here in the hospital. It wasn’t a dream. I can’t sleep now, I’m too afraid. Scared of what I know, scared of what I don’t. I’m not sure how long it has been since his visit, but at least he hasn’t come back. Time has stretched into something I can no longer tell. I wish someone would fill in the gaps, there are so many, as though I’m trapped inside the body of someone who lived a life I don’t remember.
‘Here’s an interesting end to our morning rounds. Who can tell me about this case?’ I hear them gather at the end of the bed. The chorus of doctors all sound the same to me. I want to tell them to get out.
Just fix me or go away.
I’m forced to listen while they talk about me as though I’m not here. They take it in turns to share how little they know of what is wrong with me and when I’ll wake up. I have to tell myself when, the thought of it being if isn’t an option I’m willing to consider. As soon as they run out of wrong answers, they evacuate my room.
I must have slept because my parents are here again now. They sit either side of the bed, barely making a sound, as though there is nobody there at all. I wish that they would say something, anything, but instead they seem to be taking extra care to be as quiet as possible, as though they don’t want to wake me. My Mum sits so close to the bed that I can smell her body lotion and the scent triggers a memory of us on a spa break in the Lake District.
Claire had booked it as a girly treat for the three of us, but by the time we went she was quite pregnant with the twins. Her body had changed so much from my own, she was enormous and exhausted and spent most of the weekend in her room, which meant Mum and I had to muddle on without her. On the last day of the trip, when the rain had finally stopped and the sun we never saw had set, Mum and I went down to the restaurant for dinner.
We were seated at a small table, overlooking the vast Lake Windermere. I remember looking out to see the first stars appearing in the night sky above the rippled water and thinking how beautiful it was. I told Mum to take a look, the light was just perfect. She turned to glance briefly over her shoulder, then returned her attention to the wine list without a word. Claire had become the glue that held us together over the years, without her, we had no choice but to fall apart. Mum said she d
idn’t care what we drank so long as it was alcoholic and passed the menu to me. I ordered the first bottle of red my eyes found on the list, I felt like I needed a drink myself.
We were halfway through the bottle before our starters arrived. Mum drank quickly and I matched her pace, there didn’t seem to be much else to do. Our conversation had all but dried up the night we arrived, so by now the well of words was empty. The wine changed that.
‘How are you feeling, about Claire I mean? And the babies. Are you all right?’ Mum’s words stumbled and landed awkwardly. If she was trying to show that she cared, it still felt like a punch in the stomach. She wanted grandchildren. It wasn’t a secret. I was a disappointment. Again.
When Paul and I first got together, Claire and David were already having IVF. It’s really quite staggering what those three letters can do to a marriage. What they can do to a person is even worse. It changed Claire, not being able to have something she so badly wanted.
Paul was desperate for children too, everyone knew that, but I wouldn’t come off the Pill until Claire had her family. I couldn’t do that to her. My sister is younger than me but has always been one step ahead: first to get a boyfriend, first to get married, first to get pregnant, always winning an unspoken race. It’s just who we are, who we’ve always been.
The third round of IVF worked for them. Claire was pregnant and I came off the Pill, thinking it was safe for us to try without upsetting anyone. It never occurred to me that we’d have problems conceiving too. We’ve had tests, lots of tests, but they can’t find anything wrong with either of us. One of the doctors thought it might be genetic, but I know it isn’t that. Something inside me is broken, I’m quite sure of it – my punishment for something that happened a long time ago.
Sometimes I Lie: The gripping debut psychological thriller you can’t miss in 2017 Page 8