I start to cry. I can’t help it.
‘Darling, I’m so sorry,’ he says, then he holds me and I let him. ‘I know things haven’t been great for a while, but I love you. Only you. I know I’ve been inside the book for the last few months and I’m sorry if I’ve been distant. We’ve been through so much and of course I’m gutted about the baby stuff, but you are the only person I want to spend my life with and that’s never going to change. Do you understand?’
I could tell him right now that I might be pregnant. I shake the thought from my mind almost as soon as I think it. I haven’t done the test yet, I can’t tell him until I’m sure. Really sure. Can’t get his hopes up. I’ve been such a fool.
He kisses me. Really kisses me, like he hasn’t for so long. I don’t want it to stop, but when it does I open my eyes and he’s smiling at me again. I’m smiling back. The happiness I’m feeling is real.
‘There’s just one catch,’ he says.
The mirrored smiles fade fast. ‘What?’
‘I’ll need to go to America for a bit. Part of the deal includes doing some promotion and, if the film happens, I might need to spend some time in LA. I know it’s something we should have talked through first, but . . . I said . . . yes.’
‘That’s it? That’s what you were worried about telling me?’
‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone for, it could be a couple of months, and I know things haven’t been great recently. I have to do this. I know you’ve always said you can’t be too far from your family and I know you can’t just give up your job, but you could come out to visit and I’ll fly back when I can. I just know we can make it work if we both want it to.’
I nod quietly and take a moment to let it all sink in.
‘And I know you get scared when I’m away.’ I give him a look. ‘OK, not scared, just anxious, like when you thought there was someone in the back garden in the middle of the night last week. I’ve been thinking about that too and I want you to feel safe while I’m away. I’ve seen these mini security cameras you can get now, activated by movement, no wires, no fuss. I’m going to order them and put them up at the back of the house. You’ll be able to stream the footage to your phone if you want and see for yourself that there’s nobody there.’
‘I quit today.’
‘What?’
‘I handed in my notice. I told Matthew before I left the Christmas party.’
‘Why?’
‘I had the most awful week at work. It’s a long story. It was time to go. So if you really do want me to come with you, then I will.’
‘Of course I do, I love you!’ He means the words, they’re real and the tears they inflict on me are real too. We’re not acting, we’re just us and it feels so much lighter. A smile so wide I think it might swallow him takes over his face. I want to smile back but a thought pushes its way in and spoils things. I think about where I woke up. The dull pain between my legs, the still unopened pregnancy test kit in my handbag. I think about Claire. So much of my own news that I cannot and will not share. I need to shower. I need to wash whatever happened away. He sees my face change.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘We can’t tell anyone about this, not yet.’
‘We’ll have to tell some people.’
‘Not yet, please. Not even family.’
‘Why?’
‘Just promise me?’
‘OK, I promise.’
Before
Friday, 18th December 1992
Dear Diary,
It’s been a whole week since I’ve seen Taylor and I’ve got so much to tell her. I wrote a lot of it inside her Christmas card, but I couldn’t fit it all in, even though I did really small writing. I know she’s got it, I hand-delivered it myself because Dad forgot to get stamps. I knocked on her front door but nobody answered so I pushed it through the letterbox. I’m hoping she’ll call later because I really do need to talk to her.
Strangers have been coming to our house and I don’t like it. A tall, thin man, with no hair at all on his head, came to talk to Mum and Dad. He said his name was Roger and he had a white smile that wasn’t real. Roger is an estate agent and he wears suits that are shiny. He said he thought it would be best if none of us were home when he showed people the house. He didn’t say why, but I expect it’s because of Mum being such a mess now, he probably thought she’d scare people away.
Dad told me he didn’t think anyone would want to buy Nana’s house so close to Christmas, but he was wrong. People came first thing this morning, before I was even dressed, for a viewing, that’s what Roger calls it. Sometimes he knocks on the door, but sometimes he just lets himself in because he has his own key. He talks about Nana’s home as though he lives here, but he’s never lived here and he keeps getting it all wrong.
I didn’t mean to lose my temper. Dad had a job interview this afternoon, he’s decided to get a new one. Mum had popped to the corner shop to get a can of baked beans, so I was here on my own when Roger let himself in. I crept out of my room and could see the top of his shiny head through the banisters. He was talking very loudly, like an actor on stage in one of the plays Nana used to take me to see. Actors do that so that the people in the cheapest seats right at the back of the theatre can still hear. Roger was shouting at a fat couple even though they were standing right next to him. I wondered if they were hard of hearing like Grandad was. They waddled around the hall like ducks who’ve been fed too much stale bread and I didn’t like the look of them.
Roger was talking so loudly that I picked up the robin doorstop and quietly closed my bedroom door, but I could still hear them. I tried to read my book, but I couldn’t concentrate knowing they were poking around down there where they shouldn’t. They came up the stairs, which creaked even more than usual, and then spent ages looking at the bathroom. It’s not a particularly big bathroom, has all the normal things in it, so I’m not sure what took so long. It was like listening to burglars walking around our home, the only difference was that Mum and Dad had invited them in.
They went into what used to be Mum and Dad’s room. They were right on the other side of my bedroom wall and I listened as the fat man talked about our house being a ‘fixer-upper’, wondering what that meant. Only Mum sleeps in that room now and I hate her, but I still didn’t like the idea of them being in there and touching her things. The fat woman started to speak, she hadn’t said much before that and it was her, not Roger or the other man, that made me really angry.
The three things she said that made me lose my temper were:
1. ‘Nobody in their right mind would want to live here.’
2. ‘It needs knocking down really.’
3. ‘It’s such an ugly little house.’
I felt my breathing get faster and things inside my head got really loud, the way they do when I’m very upset. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so rude and stupid. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I didn’t plan it, but I had to do something. I didn’t want the horrid fat couple to buy Nana’s house. I didn’t mean to do something bad, I think I just wanted them to get out.
It all happened very quickly. I heard them leave Mum’s room and walk along the landing, then Roger opened my bedroom door and I just screamed as loud as I could for a really long time. The fat woman looked terrified and Roger looked a bit scared too, the fat man was already bright red in the face from walking up the stairs and I thought he might have a heart attack.
‘Calm down, little girl,’ said Roger. That made me even more cross, I’m not a little girl. Then he said that they hadn’t meant to scare me, which was stupid. They hadn’t scared me, I’d scared them. I wanted them to leave then, so I said what Mum said to Taylor’s mum when she wanted her to get out. I shouted, ‘Get out of my house, you fucking bitch!’ really loudly over and over again. Even when they got to the bottom of the stairs, I stood on the landing still screaming at them. Then I threw the iron doorstop at Roger’s head but it missed, hit the wall instea
d and landed on the carpet. I was glad when they were gone. I was scared I had broken the robin, but it was exactly the same, not even a scratch, unlike the wall which had a beak-shaped dent. Funny how something so small can do so much damage and still look exactly the same.
When Mum came home with the baked beans I didn’t tell her what had happened. The phone rang and she answered it in the kitchen, so I couldn’t hear very much or tell who she was talking to. She called me downstairs a little bit later and said that Roger had called. She told me to sit down on the sofa and I thought I was in trouble. But then she sat down next to me and when I looked at her I saw that she was wearing her sad face, not her angry one. She told me that someone who came to look at the house first thing this morning had bought it and we’d have to move out very soon. I cried, I couldn’t help it, then she cried a bit too. She went to hug me, but I pushed her away and ran up to my room.
A little later she came upstairs. She knocked on my door, but I ignored her. I knew she wouldn’t come in without me saying it was OK, not after what happened last time. She stayed there for ages before eventually just whispering ‘Good night’ like a ghost and walking away. I replied too late, I don’t think she heard me, it was a rhyme she taught me herself:
Night-night.
Sleep tight.
Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
And if they do, squash them.
I rolled over and put my pillow over my head. I held my breath for as long as I could but eventually it pushed its way out of my mouth and I didn’t die.
Now
New Year’s Eve, 2016
‘How you doing?’
I open my eyes to see Jo sitting at the end of my hospital bed and I’m so happy to see her, even if she hasn’t come alone.
‘If you didn’t want to come back to work after Christmas, you could have just said so, you didn’t need to crash a car into a tree and put yourself in a coma you know.’ She smiles and holds my hand. She looks so young. I wish time had been as kind to me as it has been to her. I can see my room and it’s so much nicer than I imagined, so bright and colourful. The window is wide open, framing a clear blue sky as birds provide us with a little background music.
‘Do you remember what happened yet?’ she asks. I shake my head. ‘You do know it wasn’t Paul, don’t you? He’d never hurt you. Not like this.’ I nod because I know now that she’s right. The truth has got a little tangled and twisted while I’ve been lying here, but the strands are starting to unravel and straighten out.
‘It wasn’t an accident, was it?’ I ask. It feels strange to hear the sound of my own voice out loud again.
‘No.’
I nod again. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to show themselves, but still don’t fit together.
‘Why did you do it?’ asks Jo. She’s no longer talking about the crash.
It’s so good to see her, she’s the only one I can be completely honest with, no secrets, no lies. I try to sieve the truth from my memories.
‘You know why,’ I reply.
‘I don’t know why you resigned, you didn’t need to.’
‘I only took the job to get to Madeline, you know that.’
‘I also know having that job was good for you, something of your own.’
‘It was a shit job.’
‘Being a presenter on a top radio programme, listened to by millions, is not a shit job.’
‘No, but I wasn’t really the presenter, was I? We just made that up for fun,’ I say.
Jo frowns. ‘Did we?’
‘Yes. I was just Madeline’s PA.’
‘Were you?’
‘Yes, Jo, you know this.’
‘Maybe I do. I think I forgot. Things get muddled in my head sometimes.’
‘No, that’s me – things get muddled in my head,’ I say and she lets go of my hand.
The air rapidly darkens and it starts to rain outside. The sound of birds has been replaced by an impatient wind, blowing the curtains and bed sheets about the place. The room seems to have faded, like I’m watching a remastered colour version of an old black and white film, I can tell something is not quite right. The scene no longer seems authentic and it reminds me that I’m lost. I sit up and reach for Jo.
‘Please find me, I want to be found.’
But the little girl in the pink dressing gown stands up and takes Jo’s hand before I can reach it. She pulls her towards the door. The room starts to fall apart, huge jigsaw-shaped pieces of it falling down into the darkness below. I have to hold on. I so badly want to knit the pieces of my life back together, but I don’t know how.
‘Do you have to go?’ I ask.
‘I think so, don’t you?’ Jo says and they leave my room together, closing the door behind them.
Then
Christmas Eve 2016 – Morning
There is never a good time to lose someone you love, but the death of a loved one at Christmas is a truly terrible thing. Both our parents died at Christmas time and it was never the same after that. It’s something we’ll always have in common no matter how far we drift apart. Spending Christmas Eve together was Claire’s idea, not mine, but I couldn’t say no, it has become a morbid tradition of ours. She said we should try to remember what we’ve got, not what we’ve lost. I’m trying. I know she sees them in me. Sometimes it feels like she’s trying to extract any last fragments of our parents from my DNA just by staring at me. I have the same eyes as our mother. I sometimes see her too, looking back at me in the mirror, always disappointed by what she sees.
Kingston High Street was my choice; it’s always busy. The twins are a welcome distraction from the day ahead, a pair of terrible twos. Claire pushes them around in the biggest double buggy I’ve ever seen. They both grip onto their own toys in their tiny fists; they never have to share. A boy and a girl, she has her own perfect little family now, it really should be enough. She loves the twins more than she loves me, more than she loved any of us, which is how it should be. I’m going to tell her today, not all of it, just what she needs to know when the time is right.
‘That’s far too small for them now, silly,’ says Claire.
‘I know, just thought it looked pretty.’ I put the 0–6-months dress back on the rail. I did the pregnancy test this morning while Paul was still sleeping. It was positive. I think I already knew that it would be. I don’t know how I am pregnant now after so long trying. I think it’s a sign, it must be. It’s time for me to move on and start living my life with Paul. Just Paul. A family of our own that nobody can take away from us. I want to tell him first before I share the news with anyone else. I’ve rehearsed the scene in my head, he’s going to be so happy. I’ll tell him tonight.
I buy the twins some clothes that Claire picks out, may as well get them something she likes, they won’t even remember this Christmas let alone what they were wearing. I wonder if they’d remember me if I were to disappear from their lives sometime soon. I looked it up the other day, the term ‘godmother’: ‘A female arranged to be the legal guardian of a child if untimely demise is met by the parents.’ Untimely demise – I can’t get that phrase out of my head. Being their aunt and a godmother hasn’t really meant an awful lot yet, but it will. I plan on doing a lot more for them when they’re older. They won’t remember what happens this Christmas, it won’t count.
The number of last-minute shoppers bustling and hurrying along makes it almost impossible to progress from one shop to the next. I find it strange that the people we pass, saddled with bags and debt, all look so happy. Sometimes I feel like everyone is happier than I am, as though they’re all in on a secret I’m not privy to. The wide smiles on their faces are too loud. I find myself hating them, hating everything. The Christmas lights, songs, fake snow, all the things I used to enjoy, leave me cold. Claire isn’t enjoying the experience either. We’re more alike than I care to admit and I can see her already sinking down into a bad mood or worse. It’s probably better to share my news sooner rather than later if I’m to p
revent her from going somewhere too dark for me to follow.
I steer our little herd towards a small Christmas market, Claire likes this sort of thing. She stops by a stall selling scented candles. She lifts each one in turn, holding them up to her face and breathing them in. Each has a different name. Love. Joy. Hope. I wonder what hope smells like.
‘That friend from university you said you bumped into . . .’ she says, still looking at the candles. I freeze to the spot I am stood on and the busy Christmas market seems to quieten.
‘He’s not a friend, he’s an ex,’ I manage to say.
‘Whatever.’ She picks up a diffuser, its sticks spiking outwards like a stretched hedgehog. ‘I remember him now, it came back to me last night.’
Last night when I woke up in his bed.
The words were definitely in my head but I’m still scared she somehow heard them. She carries on without looking at my face and I’m glad, I don’t trust it not to give me away.
‘He was a medical student, wasn’t he?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Wouldn’t leave you alone when you split up with him, do you remember?’
‘I remember. He was upset. He didn’t understand why I broke it off. I couldn’t explain to him that you made me.’
‘I didn’t make you. He just wasn’t right for you. He was pleasant to look at but something wasn’t quite right up here.’ She taps her temple with her index finger. ‘You do remember him calling you non-stop when you ended it? Waiting outside your flat in the middle of the night?’
‘Like I said, he was upset.’
‘Did you never wonder why he stopped harassing you in the end?’ She turns to face me, her eyes shining with delight, before returning her attention to the items on sale.
My mind whirrs into overdrive. The pieces of a puzzle I didn’t know I needed to solve start to slot into place.
‘What did you do?’ I ask.
‘Not much. I wrote some letters, that’s all. It’s a shame people don’t write to one another any more, don’t you think?’
Sometimes I Lie: The gripping debut psychological thriller you can’t miss in 2017 Page 17