The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist

by Tanya Farrelly

  Oliver nodded, solemnly. ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘She was full of life. That was the thing I loved most about her – her energy.’

  He left the shop feeling strangely bereft. He got into the car and drove slowly away feeling as though he’d left something behind. He thought of Adrienne. Maybe he should’ve told her that Mercedes had left him. It would have aroused her sympathy and maybe they’d have acted on that spark from the past. He hated to go home to an empty house. It was lonely in the evenings and he needed a distraction; someone to keep the ghosts away.

  FOUR

  Joanna stared down at her mother, who refused to meet her eye. ‘So all that stuff you said about not knowing who my father was – that was all lies. Why? Why couldn’t you have told me?’

  Angela looked past her and through the open door to where, minutes before, the woman had stood. ‘I honestly thought it was for the best,’ she said.

  Joanna looked at her hard. ‘How? I mean, all those years you said it was a one-night stand, that you didn’t know what happened to the guy. Did you not think that at some point I’d find out, that we might walk into him in the street or that he’d come looking for me?’

  Her mother shook her head. She was still carefully avoiding her eye. Joanna stopped pacing and stood before her.

  ‘Mother, please – give me something to go on here. I mean, what was his name even? Vince what?’

  Angela stood up and tightened the belt of her robe. ‘Joanna, can we just not do this now? It’s late. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell you everything, but not tonight. Surely, you can understand … it’s … it’s been a terrible shock.’

  ‘That woman, who is she?’ Joanna said, ignoring her mother’s plea.

  Angela put a hand to her head as though it ached. ‘Rachel. Rachel Arnold, Vince’s wife.’

  Arnold. At least she had a name – assuming that the wife had taken his. ‘And did he know – about me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, what was the deal then? If he knew, why could you not tell me? Why did you have to pretend?’

  Her mother looked at her now – eyes tired, face drawn. ‘I didn’t tell you because you’d have wanted to find him. You’d have wanted to know who he was – and I didn’t want that – he didn’t want that.’

  ‘Was he … was he married?’

  ‘Joanna, please.’

  ‘Just tell me – was he? Is that why he didn’t want to know?’

  ‘Yes. Look, keep your voice down. What difference does it make? He’s gone. You heard what she said: he’s dead, Joanna. Can’t you just leave it, please?’ Angela took a few steps towards the door.

  ‘Leave it? Are you serious, Mum? How would you feel if you’d just found out your whole life had been based on a lie? And the person responsible was your own mother!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Joanna. I did it for your sake … would you rather I’d told you, and he didn’t want anything to do with you? Would you rather that? It was bad enough he rejected me, I didn’t want to put you through it as well.’

  ‘Well, I think I’d have deserved the chance to find out, don’t you? So, what … he got you pregnant and then went back to his wife, is that it?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘How did she find out?’

  Angela looked up. ‘I told her.’

  ‘You … what did she say?’

  ‘Not a lot. She listened to what I had to say and then she told me to leave. I have to admit I admired her composure. I didn’t tell her in order to hurt her – I wanted her to know what he’d done. I wanted her to know that I existed.’

  ‘And she stayed with him despite knowing?’

  ‘It’s what people did back then.’

  ‘And that was that? No contact, nothing all those years?’

  Angela lifted the end of her dressing gown and crossed the room to where Joanna’s photographs lay scattered on the floor.

  ‘He wasn’t … he wasn’t a bad person, Joanna. He was young, arrogant, I suppose, yes, but his intent, it wasn’t malicious. He cared for me, I know that – but he couldn’t leave her, it would have meant losing too much.’

  ‘What do you mean? People do it – they do it all the time. They simply decide what’s most important to them – and clearly we weren’t.’

  Angela shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that straightforward. Rachel’s father was the head of the newspaper. He was the one that gave Vince his chance.’ She paused, looked up from the pictures. ‘He was a journalist – covered all the sports events. He took pictures, too. So, you see, you have inherited something from him.’

  ‘But you must have hated him – he chose Rachel … she was his wife, yes, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t have been some part of our lives, of mine. Did he even send you money?’

  ‘Sometimes. Cheques arrived – no note – nothing to ask me how I was doing, how you were. It was one of the conditions, you see.’

  ‘What conditions?’

  ‘Rachel told Vince that he would cut all contact – that it would have to be as though he and I had never met – it was that or she’d tell her father – and Vince could say goodbye to his career.’

  ‘What – and he was okay with that?’

  Angela shrugged. ‘It was the choice he made. And now you know – I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I really am. I just hope you can understand, even a little bit, why I didn’t tell you. Protecting you was all I ever had in mind.’

  Angela had crossed the room. She put her hand on Joanna’s arm, but she pulled away.

  ‘I can’t believe you expect me to accept this,’ she said. ‘Twenty-six years, Mum! And what’s worse, if that woman hadn’t come here tonight, you’d never have said anything, would you?’

  ‘Joanna, keep your voice down. The neighbours—’

  ‘Who cares about the neighbours? Who cares? This can never be fixed – don’t you understand that? You’ve robbed me of any chance to know my father.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Joanna. I know how this must seem to you now, but—’

  ‘It’s unlikely it’ll seem any other way, so don’t expect it to. I don’t care what kind of person Vince Arnold was – and he doesn’t sound like much of one – I should have had the opportunity to find that out for myself.’

  They stood staring at each other.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Angela said, again. ‘What else can I say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Joanna told her. ‘Nothing you can say will put this right.’

  FIVE

  Oliver leaned forward at his desk and tried to focus on what the woman was saying. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t concentrate on the words that were coming out; instead, he was hearing fragmented bits of speech floating on the air thick between them. The woman sat back and crossed her black-stockinged legs. The action caused him to shift his gaze momentarily from her face. She was not beautiful, but she gave the impression of a woman convinced by her own attributes. Her small face, framed by a thatch of dark hair, was too pointed at the chin, and her narrowed blue eyes gave her the look of a small, but fierce animal. It was her full lips, startlingly red against her pale skin, that captured his attention. And there was something else, too, something that despite their physical dissimilarities reminded him of Mercedes. He couldn’t quite figure what it was, but it bothered him.

  ‘So, what are my entitlements? I’m still his wife, so that must mean I’m entitled to half of this new house despite the separation? I mean, I’m not the one that walked out on the marriage.’

  If he hadn’t been feeling so ill, he may have commented on that. The fact that this woman had had an affair with her husband’s friend – a lover who, from what he had gathered, had long since departed the scene – seemed to escape her memory.

  Oliver pulled at his tie. She was staring at him, waiting for an answer, but the air in the room seemed to have evaporated and a nauseous feeling was rising from the pit of his stomach. Something in the atmosphere, maybe the woman’s perfume, seem
ed to exacerbate it, and when he looked again at her expectant face he found that it was partially obscured by splotches of yellow light.

  ‘I’m sorry, but could you excuse me for a moment?’ he said.

  He felt rather than saw her eyes follow him from the room.

  In the men’s room the nauseous feeling overcame him and he leaned on the sink with both hands and retched acid-tasting bile. Perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he loosened the knot of his tie and tried to breathe, but he couldn’t calm the frantic beating of his heart. The woman who sat in his office was nothing like Mercedes. And yet in every woman that he’d met since that terrible night he had seen something to remind him of her. It would have to stop.

  He examined his face in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent light his skin was opaque and the dark circles beneath his eyes screamed of his sleepless nights. He turned on the cold tap, cupped his hands and doused his face several times in icy water. Eventually his heart resumed its regular beat, but his legs felt weak and he couldn’t still the trembling in his hands. It was the panic that he felt in his dreams, but in daylight it was far more frightening.

  To distract himself, he thought of the woman who sat in his office awaiting his return. It was a divorce case that he’d been working on for the past year. She was the sort of woman that he despised, intent on taking her husband for everything she could get, but he couldn’t afford not to represent her. Business had been slow, and it was an easy case to win.

  He took a deep breath, grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and blotted his face dry. The woman was his last client of the day. He would simply have to get through it.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. Haven’t been feeling very well all day,’ he said. His legs were still shaking as he sat back down in his leather chair. The woman leaned forward at his desk.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘what are my rights here?’

  If it was sympathy he’d been after, he’d miscalculated. The woman, who seemed to have forgotten that it was her infidelity that had instigated her husband’s divorce proceedings, was interested only in money. It pained him that the law, albeit to his advantage, was on this woman’s side. He gave her a long, silent look in which he hoped his distaste was evident and then, putting his personal feelings aside, forced himself to enter legal mode.

  When the woman had left, he closed and locked the door behind her. His partner, who worked in an adjoining office, had gone to the courts and wouldn’t return that evening. Oliver sat down but, not feeling like working, he picked up the newspaper from his desk. He’d read it briefly that morning. The body in the canal had made the front page. The man, named as Vince Arnold, had worked as a sports journalist for one of the national papers. Arnold. It wasn’t such a common name. He’d known an Arnold once – sat his bar exams with him at the King’s Inns. He wondered if there was any connection. Putting the paper down, he typed the man’s name into Google. The obituary came up. Oliver clicked on it, read: ‘Sadly missed by his wife, Rachel, brother, Patrick …’ Patrick Arnold, that was it. The name of the guy he’d studied with. He’d often wondered what had become of him. Rumour had it that he’d been struck off – found guilty of fraud, something to do with a land deal. He couldn’t remember the details. He looked again at the notice – the Removal Mass was to take place the following evening in a church not far from the office. Curious about the dead man, and wondering if it were the same Patrick Arnold he’d known, he decided that he would go along to find out.

  SIX

  ‘Where are you off to?’ her mother asked, as Joanna sat on the stairs pulling on her boots. Joanna had barely spoken to her in the two days that had passed since Rachel Arnold’s visit. Angela had been at pains to restore normality, Joanna knew that, but she wasn’t about to concede. The fact that they’d always been close – more like sisters – made her mother’s lie impossible to accept.

  She looked up, knowing that her mother wouldn’t like her answer. ‘My father’s funeral,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not … surely, you’re not thinking of going?’ There was a warning tone in Angela’s voice that Joanna was only too familiar with.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s my last chance to see him … to know what he was like.’

  ‘But you won’t see him. The coffin, it’ll be closed.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Joanna stood up, and took her heavy winter coat from the banister. She wrapped a red scarf round her neck.

  ‘It’s not possible in these circumstances. The water, it’ll have bloated the body. Made him … unrecognizable. He’d been in the canal for days.’

  Ignoring her mother, Joanna took her car keys from the hall table. ‘Well, it’s my decision and I’ve decided to go,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t.’

  A low warning that caused Joanna to stop and look closely at her mother.

  ‘Why not? Is there something else you’re worried I’ll find out about?’

  ‘No. It just won’t do you any good, that’s all. Look, can’t we talk? It’s getting us nowhere, you behaving like this …’

  ‘Me behaving like this? What about you? You’re the one who brought about this mess – you and your lies. Did you think I’d just forgive you, Mum? And anyway, I don’t see what’s so strange about going to my own father’s funeral, do you?’

  Angela stood blocking the door. ‘I’m asking you not to do this, Joanna, for my sake. Don’t go bringing that woman into our lives.’

  ‘This isn’t about you.’ Joanna strode past, forcing her mother to step back from the door.

  ‘Well you needn’t expect them to welcome you,’ Angela shouted after her.

  Joanna ignored her. She slammed the car door and reversed dangerously fast out of the driveway.

  Joanna was still seething when she arrived at the churchyard. How dare her mother attempt to stop her from going. She pulled into the car park, which was already filling up, and attempted to calm down before going inside. As Joanna sat there, she watched, from the anonymity of her car, the groups of people gathered near the church doors. Yellow light spilled from inside and illuminated the faces of men in heavy winter coats congregated at the entrance. They moved from foot to foot in an attempt to thwart the icy chill as their wives clutched at each other’s arms. These, she thought, were the people who had shared her father’s life.

  In the street, the cavalcade of rush hour traffic passed the church gates – a procession as slow as that which would bring the dead man to his mourners. She watched them pass and felt strangely detached. Heads turned and the crowd dispersed to make way for the long black hearse as it drove slowly through the gates. It was followed by a single mourning car. The doors opened and a tall man dressed in black got out. The driver opened the door at the other side and Rachel Arnold stepped out, head held erect as she stood by and watched the pallbearers slide her husband’s coffin from the back of the hearse and then wheel it into the church. Several people touched her arm, and she exchanged words with them as she passed.

  Joanna waited until the crowd outside the church had entered. And, with a glance in the rear-view mirror, she stepped from the car and crossed quickly to the entrance. A man reached the door just as she did. He nodded and beckoned for her to enter first.

  There was quite a crowd in the church. Rachel Arnold sat in the first pew and next to her sat the man from the mourning car. The previous night, Joanna had read Vince Arnold’s obituary online. She knew that he had a brother – Patrick – and she figured that must be him. The Arnolds had no children. None, that is, except for her.

  Joanna stared at the coffin and reminded herself that the man inside was her father, but she felt detached. Her feelings amounted to nothing more than a macabre curiosity about the dead man. She scanned the room, eyes moving over the rows of people that filled the church as they had once filled her father’s life. As the priest droned on, she became aware of someone watching her. She turned to find the same man she’d met at the entrance staring at her. Embarrassed, she
looked away, but when she turned again a moment later he was still looking. He smiled slightly and nodded. She returned his gaze, but not his smile. And suddenly the Mass had ended.

  The church organ played as Rachel Arnold made her way slowly down the aisle accompanied by the man in the dark suit. The people in her pew stood, and she joined the procession of mourners who filed out of the church to pay their respects to the widow.

  When she stepped outside, she saw the man who had smiled at her. He was unshaven and wore a long black coat. He was talking to the man by Rachel’s side – the one Joanna imagined was her uncle. She saw him introduce the man to Rachel, who took his hand. They talked while others idled waiting for their opportunity to pay their respects. Joanna wondered who the man was. He’d stared at her so intently in the church that she wondered if he knew her.

  She waited until the crowd had thinned. Then suddenly she found herself standing before Rachel Arnold wondering what to say.

  Rachel took her hand in hers and squeezed it. ‘You came,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you might.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said. The well-used expression sounded meaningless, but she couldn’t think of what else to say.

  ‘Is your mother here?’

  ‘No.’

  Rachel looked relieved. ‘I take it she told you?’

  ‘That he was my father, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry that you had to find out like this. I’d have liked it to be different.’ Rachel looked around. There were still some people waiting to speak to her. She kept her voice low. ‘I’d like to talk to you again, Joanna – when everything calms down. You must have so many questions about Vince.’

  Joanna nodded, unsure of what to say.

  Rachel fumbled in her bag. ‘I’ll give you my number,’ she said. She took out a small notebook, scribbled something, tore the page out and handed it to Joanna. The man in the black coat was standing a few feet away smoking a cigarette and talking to Patrick Arnold. Joanna looked past Rachel to where the man stood.