‘Hang on, what is it?’ asks Claire. She likes us to take turns, for everyone to watch what everyone else gets.
‘It’s a diary,’ I say.
‘A diary? Who are you, Anne Frank?’ laughs David. I can see that Paul looks embarrassed.
‘I thought she might like it because—’
‘I love it, thank you,’ I say, interrupting him before he can finish his sentence, and kiss him on the cheek.
‘I used to write a diary,’ says Claire. ‘Always found it very therapeutic. I’ve read that it’s good for anxiety, to write it all down. You should try it, Amber.’
When we’ve all had our maximum fill of playing happy families I help David put the twins to bed. I read them a story that I’ve read them before and marvel at how easily they fall asleep. As I leave their bedroom, I notice the robin-shaped lump of cast iron propping open the door. It was Claire’s nana’s. She still keeps it even now, the only old thing in a house that has been made new. I come downstairs to find Paul and Claire talking quietly in the kitchen but, as soon as they see me, they stop and it’s a second too long before Paul smiles in my direction.
Then
Christmas Day, 2016 – Early Evening
Paul and I walk home in silence. He walks quickly, so that I have to hurry to keep up with him. A fine mist of drizzle permeates the cold air but I don’t mind, I’m just pleased to be outside, to have left Claire’s home. That’s all that house is now, hers. There is nothing left of mine within its walls, not even the memories are my own. It’s a life I should have left behind by now, but something has always stopped me from moving on. Fear of the unknown is always greater than fear of the familiar.
The streets are empty. I like the quiet stillness of it all. Peace on suburban earth. Everyone is locked inside with relatives they don’t have to see for the rest of the year. Stuffing turkey down their throats, watching nonsense on the television, unwrapping gifts they neither want nor need. Drinking too much. Saying too much. Thinking too little.
The drizzle evolves into rain as we pass the petrol station. It’s closed now, everything is closed. I’ve only ever been inside the place twice. The first time was a few weeks ago, to ask a question. No harm in that, people ask questions all the time. The cashier studied my face a little harder when I had finished speaking, but he soon concluded that I wasn’t about to rob the place; I didn’t look the type. He told me that the CCTV was kept for a week and then automatically deleted. I thanked him, then waited a moment in case he had wondered why I wanted to know. He didn’t, so I left. He forgot about me before I even walked out the door.
The second time was a little more recent.
Madeline wasn’t terribly grateful after I drove her home from work when she was sick the other day. After I helped her inside, she thrust her credit card at me and told me to fill her car up at the petrol station round the corner. She wasn’t happy about the tank being almost empty and informed me that she wouldn’t have time before work the following day. She assumed I’d be upset about her demands, so I arranged my face to fit her expectations but secretly I was rather pleased with myself. It meant that the mouthful of petrol I’d endured in the staff car park when I syphoned her tank earlier that morning had not been in vain. The taste of diesel lasted for hours, despite spitting it out straight away. I’d learned that trick at school, helping to clean out the class fish tank.
‘You might have the others fooled with your Florence Nightingale act but not me,’ she muttered before hauling herself up the stairs, one step at a time. She stopped halfway and turned her head to look down at me. A triumphant smile spreading itself across her clammy, round face. Madeline always had a real way with words, but I heard the ones she chose that afternoon long after they were spoken.
‘I see straight through you, Amber. Never forget it. Work-shy and clueless, just like the rest of your generation. It’s why you’ll never amount to anything.’ With that, she turned to continue her ascent up the stairs I had once known and sat on. The house looked completely different since the fire twenty-five years ago, of course it did, but the new stairs were still in the same place and, if I turned my head to the right, I could almost still picture Claire turning on the gas. She should have inherited this house after her birth parents died, she was sure it was what her nana would have wanted, but her godmother, Madeline Frost, saw to it that she never got a penny.
I thought about what Madeline had said to me as I filled up the car and again as I bought the petrol cans and filled them up too, before putting them inside the boot. I thought about what Madeline had said as I paid using her credit card and I heard her words repeat themselves inside my head as I cleaned the steering wheel and everything else I had touched with a cotton cloth.
As Paul and I walk together but alone past the road where Madeline lives, I turn to get a quick glimpse of her house. I realise for the first time that it looks just like any other. There could be a family inside, pulling crackers, playing games, creating memories with and of one another. There could be children, grandchildren, pets, noise and laughter. There could be, but I know that there isn’t. There is only one person inside, I’m sure of it. One sad, lonely, miserable mess of a person. A person who is only loved by strangers who believe in the version of her they hear on the radio. A person who will not be missed.
Before
Thursday, 7th January 1993
Dear Diary,
It was the funeral today. It was strange because there weren’t many people there, not like the funerals you see on TV. My Aunt Madeline was invited, but she didn’t come. She’s the only family I have left but I don’t even know what she looks like. Doesn’t matter. I have a new family now. I cried when I saw the coffins because I know that’s what you’re supposed to do, but I don’t miss Mum and Dad. I’m glad they’re not here any more, things are much better without them. I’ve been living with Taylor’s family since the fire and it’s great. It’s as though my life before was all a big mistake, like I should have been born into this family. The only thing that makes me cry real tears is that I can’t ever go back to Nana’s house. I can’t sit in her favourite chair or sleep in her bed. All I had left of her was there. They said Aunt Madeline owns it now, what’s left of it.
I’ve got lots of new clothes and books and I even have my own bedroom at Taylor’s house. I started off sharing her room, but she kept waking me up in the middle of the night. She has dreams about the fire all the time and wakes up screaming. It’s really annoying. Sometimes she just can’t sleep at all. I sing her the song that Nana used to sing me when I couldn’t sleep: The wheels on the bus go round and round. I’m not sure it helps.
Taylor has been acting really strange in lots of ways since that night. I don’t know why, she wasn’t injured and nobody she cared about died. She said she’d tell on me, but she won’t. I told her what would happen if she did. She keeps doing weird stuff though, like just standing in front of the oven and staring at it. And she’s started picking the skin off her lips, sometimes she picks them so hard that they bleed. It’s disgusting. Taylor’s mum said that different people deal with things in different ways and just to give her time. She took her to talk to someone at the hospital about how she is feeling, she thinks that might help. I’m not convinced.
I’ve had to talk to lots of people too since the fire. I had to talk to doctors at the hospital and then the police and twice a week I have to talk to a woman called Beth. Beth is a social worker, which means she tries to help people. She has big, sad eyes that forget to blink and a hairy dog called Gypsy. I’ve never met her dog, but her clothes are always covered in its hair and when we talk she pulls the hairs off and drops them on the floor. She talks very slowly and quietly as though I might not understand and she always wants to know whether I’m OK without actually just asking me if I’m OK.
It was Beth who told me about Aunt Madeline. I think my aunt might be poorly because she couldn’t come to the funeral and she can’t write her own letters. A solicitor writes them for her a
nd then Beth reads bits of them out. Sometimes her big eyes keep reading but her mouth stops speaking and I wonder what words she doesn’t want me to hear. I didn’t really know what it meant when she said that Aunt Madeline was my godmother. Her eyes looked away and explained to the floor that it normally meant someone who would look after you if your parents couldn’t any more. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be looked after by anyone except Taylor’s mum. Then Beth said that Madeline loved me very much, but that she didn’t think she could take care of me. Beth carried on wearing her extra sad face, but I was feeling very relieved, until she said that I might have to live in a home for children until a foster place became available. When Grandad went to live in a home that wasn’t his, he died. I don’t want to die. I didn’t like my Aunt Madeline very much for not wanting to look after me then. She doesn’t care whether I live or die but I don’t know who she is, so my crossness grows inside my tummy instead of finding a way out and it hurts.
Beth left me alone in the room and told me to play with some toys. I didn’t want to, I’m not a child, but she said I should then left. I knew she was watching me through the mirror, I’ve seen the films where they do that, so I got up and walked over to the toy box. There was a doll inside, it looked expensive, not like the plastic stuff. I sat her on my lap and told her how sad I was about my mum and dad and how grateful I was that Taylor’s parents had been so kind to me. Then I said a little prayer; I even said ‘Amen’ at the end because I thought Beth would be the sort of person who would like that. She did. She came back in and said I could go, she even said I could take the doll with me, For being so brave. I decided I’d give it to Taylor. Tell her the doll was watching her, even when I wasn’t. I liked that idea a lot, it made me smile and that made Beth smile because she thought she had made me happy.
I’m not stupid, I knew what I had to do. I started crying in my room that night, just loud enough for Taylor’s mum to hear me. She opened the door without knocking, but I didn’t mind because it’s a different door in a different house and she is a different mum. She tucked me back into bed properly, the way Nana used to and then she sat with me and stroked my hair for a while. She was wearing a white robe and she had taken her make-up off, but she still looked beautiful and smelt of that pink shower gel she uses. When I grow up I want to be just like her. I told her I was scared of going to live with strangers and cried a bit more. She told me I mustn’t worry and kissed me on the forehead before leaving the room and turning out the light. I heard them talking for hours after that, not shouting like my mum and dad used to, just talking quietly in the same bedroom as each other, like a proper married couple. The next day I saw the fostering paperwork on the dining-room table, so things really have worked out for the best.
Now
Monday, 2nd January 2017
I’m still alive.
That’s the first thought to voice itself inside my head. I don’t know how, but I’m alive and I’m back, I’m just not sure where I’ve been. It takes a moment to decide whether or not I’m happy to be here and what this all means. Edward tried to kill me, I’m sure of that, but I’m still alive. I suppose it must be hard to kill something that’s already dead.
Given my strong dislike for hospitals, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in this one. Paul and I came here when we were trying for a baby, it’s where my sister gave birth and where my grandmother died. She didn’t die of cancer, like Claire’s nana, she died of old age disguised as pneumonia when we were thirty. Her death took its time and a toll on our fragmented family. We were temporarily united by over-stretched grief and despair. But it flicked a switch on inside Claire that could not be turned off. The anger she had felt about her own Nana’s death as a child returned. The recalled rage she had suppressed for so long had grown over time. The hate still needed somewhere to go. Claire still needed someone to blame. That’s when she traced Madeline. Imagine our surprise when she discovered who her godmother really was and where she still lived. Destroying Madeline became Claire’s obsession, which in turn became mine. She became volatile again, mistrusting of everyone around her. The change in her mood increased the need for my routines, to be sure that everything was as safe as it could be when Claire was upset about something.
They call it OCD. It’s not a big deal, but it’s got worse as I’ve got older. I had to visit this very same hospital once a week when I was a teenager. I used to meet a short man who liked to talk too much and listen too little. He always wore the same shoes, grey leather with purple laces, I spent a lot of hours staring at them. After four months of weekly visits, he told me that I had obsessive thoughts and demonstrated compulsive activities, to process an inexplicable level of anxiety. I told him he had halitosis. I stopped seeing him not long after that. My parents gave up trying to make me better and instead focused all their attention on Claire, the pretty, grade-A replacement daughter they had saved, forgetting all about the faulty original that they couldn’t fix – me.
I try to pull myself from the past back to the present, not really wanting to be in either place. That’s when I hear her crying. It takes me a while to translate the tears and to pinpoint where and when I am.
‘I’m so sorry, Amber, for all of it,’ says Claire’s voice from somewhere in the distance. The words seem to repeat themselves on the surface while I float down below. The sound of her voice pulls me up from where I’ve been and it feels like I’ve woken up from a very deep sleep. Something is different. The light and the shade have shifted. It feels unsettling, like someone has rearranged the furniture in my mind without even asking.
‘You tried to tell me about him, didn’t you? But I didn’t listen. I’m so sorry,’ says Claire. She sounds closer now, as though I could reach out and touch her. It takes me a while to understand what she is saying, but the casting process finally settles on Edward for the role of ‘him’.
I drift away. The words are too much to process in one go.
The mention of Edward’s name seems to make the edges of the space I’m in darken. Something happened, something bad. Something worse than what I can remember. Whatever it was, Claire knows about it, so maybe I’ll be OK now. She’s always stopped people from hurting me in the past.
‘Is there any change?’ I hear Paul’s voice.
‘No, not yet. Have they got him?’ asks Claire.
‘No. They’ve been to his flat but he’s not there.’
I try to focus and sift their words through the reality filter I’ve been building inside my head, but it doesn’t always work. I wish I could wipe some of the sad and bad memories that start to surface, but it’s like I’ve been switched on and I can suddenly remember all of it. Even the parts I wish I couldn’t.
I remember Edward in my room.
I remember what he did to me.
I don’t understand how they know.
Then I remember that Paul said he had set up a camera in my room. He must have watched what happened. The idea of it makes me feel sick.
It still feels like I’m underwater, but the murky liquid is becoming clearer and I’m getting closer to the surface all the time. And then there’s more.
I can remember the night of the accident, I can remember it all.
I know what happened now – it wasn’t me driving on Christmas Day and it wasn’t an accident at all. I’ve been away. I don’t know how long for, but I’m back now and I remember everything.
Then
Christmas Day, 2016 – Early Evening
‘You OK?’ I ask as Paul flops down on the sofa, picking up the TV remote.
‘What? Yes, fine.’
‘Drink?’
‘Whisky, please.’
I pause for a moment. Paul hasn’t drunk whisky for a long time now. At one time it was all he drank, but the amber liquid changed him and his dependence on it changed us. It became a part of him. An ugly part. He thought it helped him to write and would stay up in the shed all night, just him, his laptop and a bottle. A nightly literar
y threesome and a disappointing cliché. We became independent states with liquid borders and I was angry, lonely, scared. He did write, but they were the wrong kind of words; they didn’t belong together. When we couldn’t have a baby, things got worse. It was his drug of choice to heal the hurt and he poured it inside himself in its purest form. Neat. But the result was never tidy. It was like having a front row seat for a slow suicide. When I couldn’t watch any more, I threatened to leave. He said he’d stop, but he didn’t. He just poisoned himself in private. I left for ten days. He stopped then. That was over a year ago and I’m never going back to that.
‘I don’t think we have any, darling . . .’
‘Mum got me some, it’s in the cupboard,’ he replies without looking up. He keeps changing the TV channel, unable to find what he’s looking for.
I walk out to the kitchen and open the fridge. I ignore his request and take out the bottle of champagne I’ve chilled deliberately. I’m going to tell him about the baby, his mood will change once he knows and this will become a Christmas that we’ll never forget. I’ve already had more than I should, but one tiny glass won’t make any difference.
‘Makes you glad we don’t have kids, doesn’t it?’ says Paul from the lounge.
‘What?’
‘The chaos of it all. The whole day taken up with them, can’t have a single conversation without an interruption of some kind or another.’
‘It wasn’t that bad, was it?’ I say coming back into the front room.
A tear escapes my left eye, I can’t stop it.
‘No, the kids are fine. It’s just Claire putting me in a bad mood. I’m sick of her dictating how we should live our lives, she’s always interfering and you never call her on it . . . What’s this for?’ he asks pointing at the champagne.
‘I thought we could celebrate.’
Sometimes I Lie: The gripping debut psychological thriller you can’t miss in 2017 Page 22