Lie to Me: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Jess Ryder

  Thank God for John Lewis. It welcomes us like a kind grandparent, bright and shiny, full of useful things. I slip through the door under Isobel’s arm and we weave around the girls on the make-up counters, shaking our heads as a camp guy tries to squirt perfume on our wrists. Smooth, quiet escalators take us to the coffee shop on the fourth floor. Isobel buys me an enormous mug of hot chocolate and we find a table by the window, away from the chatty mums and tired shoppers.

  I scatter brown sugar over the frothy top and watch the granules dissolve and sink, wishing I was small enough to jump into the warm, velvety bath. I clutch the mug with both hands, the heat seeping into my numb fingertips. God, I must have been so deeply under…

  A very weird thing, hypnosis. You’re awake and yet not awake, in control and yet not in control, a kind of waking dream, like watching a film in your head, only you’re the one holding the camera. I can remember every single image I saw and every word I said. How true it felt, how emotional it was. At the time, I really thought I was Cara, living her final moments on the earth. But now? Sitting in this café with Isobel, surrounded by people fiddling with their phones or chatting to each other, the ease of the experience starts to worry me. Did I genuinely recall an actual past life, or was this all cleverly engineered by Emily Backhouse? She wanted me to be Cara, and hey presto, I was her; went straight there, no messing about with other past lives, no Egyptian princesses trying to butt in, no victims of the French Revolution about to face the guillotine, nobody else gagging to tell their story or claim their rights to my soul. Neat work. Worth every penny.

  ‘How are you now?’ says Isobel, looking at me with a disconcerting fondness. ‘Warming up?’

  I nod, still gripping the mug. ‘She said my body temperature would drop, but I didn’t know I was going to end up cryogenic.’

  ‘So…’ Isobel begins after a few moments of silence. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was terrifying,’ I reply, slurping at the hot chocolate. ‘Like the worst nightmare I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. Are you furious with me?’

  ‘No, don’t be silly.’

  ‘So it worked, then? You regressed to when you were Cara?’

  Hmm… That’s a very good question, one that I’m not sure I can answer. ‘I don’t know. I’ve a horrible feeling I just made it all up. Not consciously,’ I add. ‘Not on purpose.’

  ‘No, of course not, you’d never do that.’

  ‘I could hear myself saying all these things, as if I was Cara, and yet I also knew I was still me. It was… incredibly intense. And so frightening. It really felt like someone wanted to kill me.’

  ‘You’re so brave.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not. Because it wasn’t real. It was like acting out a story.’ She frowns at me, but I persist. ‘I know too much about Cara, particularly how she died. I’ve even visited the scene of the crime. And Emily Backhouse knew too, because you’d sent her the footage.’ I give her a gently reprimanding look and she holds her hands up.

  ‘Sorry, I thought it would help.’

  I shrug. ‘I guess it depends what you’re trying to prove.’

  Isobel looks upwards, as if she can see my words hanging in the air.

  ‘I just have to ask one thing,’ she says finally, ‘then I’ll shut up about it and let you rest in—’

  ‘I didn’t see the killer, if that’s what you were going to say.’

  ‘Oh… well, I thought you probably wouldn’t. Too traumatic,’ she says, trying to sound relieved rather than disappointed. ‘But even if you had, it wouldn’t make any difference. It’s inadmissible evidence.’

  I look away, catching my reflection in the window, a head-and-shoulders portrait layered against the cityscape. We’re a long way up and I suddenly feel dislocated from the rest of my body, as if I’m floating in the air. I start to impose Cara’s features on my face. My eyes become a little rounder, my nose a little less snub. My hair shines blonder and falls straighter. She stares back at me through the glass, her expression tired and bewildered. I shudder and turn away. Don’t want to play this stupid game. I want to be myself again.

  ‘I don’t feel great,’ I tell Isobel. ‘I need to go home.’

  She summons a glossy black BMW with cream leather seats – a luxurious cocoon that plays a soundtrack of beautiful classical music as it glides through the dirty, crowded streets. Hot air circulates and my limbs start to thaw at last. By the time we arrive at my grim little terraced house, I’m so comfortable the driver has to drag me out of the car. I stand on the pavement, blinking at my surroundings, and he shakes his head disapprovingly as I drift unsteadily in the general direction of my front door.

  Lizzie and Fay are at work, so I have the place to myself. I call the office and tell my boss I’ve had a bad reaction to the dental anaesthetic. And although it’s a lie, that’s kind of how it feels. Like I’ve been drugged and the chemicals are still swirling around my system. The house is cold – no heating on during the day – and my body temperature starts to drop again, so I fill a hot-water bottle and climb into bed with all my clothes on, my dressing gown laid on top of the duvet as an extra layer.

  I must have fallen asleep – deeply, too – because it’s halfway through the afternoon when my phone rings. It’s Isobel. I was supposed to text her when I got home and forgot. She’s been worrying about me, she says, so much so that she could hardly concentrate on her rehearsal. As if that’s my fault. She tells me that Emily has pinged through the audio recording, copying her in. ‘I haven’t had a chance to play it yet,’ she says, ‘I’m going to do it at home, later. Would you like to come over, then the three of us can listen to it together?’

  I can’t imagine that being Alice’s idea of an evening’s entertainment. ‘Er… I’m not really up to it at the moment,’ I say. ‘I might not even listen to it at all.’

  ‘No? But I thought you’d want—’

  ‘I can remember every single word, every sight and sound. It’s all still going round and round in my head,’ I tell her, nearly adding, it feels like it’s in control of me.

  ‘No problem. I completely understand. In your own time, darling, your own time.’

  I dream I’m Cara. This time I’m with Isobel and we’re walking across campus, arm in arm. We’re students, except I’m young and Isobel’s the age she is now. I’m telling her to let go and walk ahead without me – I don’t want to be seen with an older woman; people will think she’s my mother. But she just grips me more tightly, snuggling her face into my shoulder. It’s my fault, she says, for dying so young. I tell her I’m not dead, but she sighs and says, Sorry, my darling, but it’s true. I start to feel angry. I wrench myself free and run away across the grass, and she runs after me, calling out for me to stop. She wants to explain, she says. To apologise. She didn’t mean to hurt me. Too late, I shout. You’re too late. Please, just go away! When I wake up, my face is wet and I’ve dribbled all over the pillow.

  There’s no choice but to return to work the following day, but it’s impossible to concentrate. I stare at my screen and let all my calls go straight to voicemail. The girls know something’s wrong and that it’s nothing to do with dental treatment. They exchange perturbed looks when they think I’m not looking, then Amy pops out and comes back with a huge frothy caramel latte, plonking it on my desk. It’s a bribe. She gives me one of those come on, you can tell me smiles.

  ‘Is it a man?’ she whispers hopefully. They’ve been nagging me for ages to sign up to online dating. I tell her it’s nothing to do with a man, more of a family matter, and that I can’t talk about it.

  ‘Oh.’ Amy peers into my face, looking for clues as she tries to work out what kind of family matter it might be. I thank her for the latte and turn back to the mass of unread emails. Defeated, she goes back to her desk, quietly sighing and raising her eyebrows at the others, as if to say, I did my best.

  My eyes are red with tiredness and I rub them with my fists. I hardly slept last ni
ght, mainly because I’d slept in the day, but also because every time I felt myself dropping off, I pulled myself back from the edge. I’m scared of my unconscious, of the new tricks it might play on me. I want facts. Facts and rational thought. But I’m still in a trance state, my edges blurred, identity flexible. I haven’t listened to the recording yet, but it’s already playing in my head.

  The only checkable fact is the mention of West Bay. That came out of my head from nowhere. But just because it happens to be the name of a real place – in Dorset, Emily Backhouse said– it doesn’t necessarily prove anything.

  I google for images of West Bay and a load of little photos come up – seaside scenes, expanses of blue sea and tiny figures dotted on the beach. One picture stands out, and I click on it until it fills my screen. My heart jolts and I clasp my hands over my mouth. I know this place. Sandstone cliffs, huge and incongruous in an otherwise gentle landscape, looking as if they’ve been dropped from the sky rather than pushed up from the earth; golden yellow and pitted like a monstrous honeycomb. The turmeric colour of the sand is so familiar it brings tears to my eyes. I can feel my brain doing millions of calculations, trying to match the image on the screen with an identical one stored deep within me. But if this is a memory, who does it belong to – me or Cara? Surely it’s got to belong to me.

  I try to construct the scenario. West Bay, Dorset. When? I must have been little, because Becca was with us – so three or four at the most. A seaside holiday on the Jurassic Coast. Perhaps Dad went fishing or fossil-hunting while she took me for a walk on the clifftop. Or perhaps Becca took me away on her own. Whatever, it was just the two of us. We went for a walk, I ran on ahead, and the next thing she knew my toes were poking over the edge. Maybe she dragged me back and saved my life. That could easily be a traumatic childhood experience that I buried deep in my subconscious. Let a hypnotherapist dig around in awkward places and that kind of thing is bound to resurface.

  Unfortunately, the only way to check out this theory is to ask Dad. He may not know about the incident, but he’ll remember West Bay. I pick up my phone and start to key in the number, then stop. Our relationship is recovering, but very slowly. If I ask him anything about Becca, he’ll get angry and we’ll be back to where we were. I can’t risk that, not at the moment.

  There’s an alternative option. I could ask Isobel if West Bay was a place Cara went to as a child. If she doesn’t know herself, maybe she could ask Cara’s parents, if she’s still in touch with them, that is. But what if the family did go there? What if Cara’s mother can remember the incident, right down to the red shorts and pink plastic sandals? What then? I can’t risk that either.

  The internal phone line buzzes. ‘I’ve got a Detective Sergeant Myles here,’ says Nikki from reception, her voice quivering like a fruit jelly. ‘Says he wants to talk to you.’ This is all I need. What’s Eliot doing here? He’s supposed to be in Birmingham. I stare into my desk.

  Nikki sighs. ‘Hello-o? Do I send him up or are you going to come down?’

  ‘Er… tell him I’ll be down in five minutes.’

  Why didn’t he call me on my mobile? Why come in person? It must be something important. Maybe there’s news about Becca and he wants to tell me face to face. Shit. I don’t feel ready for this.

  ‘Will you cover for me?’ I ask Amy. ‘Got to pop out for a bit.’

  She looks at me suspiciously. ‘What’s going on, Meri?’

  ‘Eliot’s here, wants to see me.’

  She shakes her head as if to say, So it is man trouble. I leave her to draw her own mistaken conclusions, picking up my blue linen jacket and stopping off at the loos. I refresh my lipstick and add extra concealer to the grey shadows beneath my eyes, frowning at my reflection in the long mirror on the back of the door. This cream shirt isn’t my favourite; it’s too long and baggy – makes my legs look like a pair of matchsticks. But there’s nothing I can do about that. And so what? We’re not going on a date. He hasn’t come to apologise, he’s come to give me bad news – I know it. I step into the lift, feeling my gut rise to my throat as we hit the ground floor.

  Eliot extracts himself from a lime-green tub chair and stands up. I move towards him and we hesitate, not sure whether to embrace or kiss on the cheeks.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he says.

  ‘Fine.’ I scan his face for clues, but his expression is neutral. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah, good.’

  Pause. ‘So, where do you want to go?’

  He chooses a nearby noodle bar where we used to meet sometimes after work to share a large carton of something spicy before he dragged me off to the theatre. It’s lunchtime-noisy – orders shouted over the clatter of woks, clanging tills, chatter in the queues, chrome chairs scraping on shiny floor tiles; a contemporary soundscape that could be entitled ‘Bouncing off Hard Surfaces’. We squeeze into a gap at the long counter by the window and climb onto a pair of high stools.

  ‘Sorry about last time,’ he says. ‘I was feeling stressed and you took me by surprise.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have said those things, El.’

  ‘And you shouldn’t have looked at those photos.’

  ‘I was angry.’

  ‘So was I. Look… can we just forget it?’

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ I reply, poking around my bowl as if searching for something more interesting. ‘So, how’s the investigation going? Or aren’t you allowed to tell me?’

  ‘Incredibly slowly,’ he says, not rising to the bait. ‘The team’s full of second-rate pen-pushers, nine-to-fivers. There’s no sense of urgency. I sent everything off to the labs and now I’m just waiting and waiting. Obviously a thirty-year-old case isn’t going to take priority over active investigations, but honestly, it’s a joke.’

  ‘Well, Durley did say he wanted to give the team a kick up the bum.’

  ‘I should never have taken the secondment,’ he goes on. ‘I don’t fit in – they think I’m only on the High Potential Development Scheme because I’m mixed race. And – get this – the latest goss is that I’m Durley’s gay lover.’ I almost spit out my lunch. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he agrees.

  So this is why he’s come to see me, to make me feel bad for asking him to help in the first place, for sending him into boring, homophobic exile where nobody appreciates his talents.

  ‘Oh, well… at least it’s only for six months.’ He stirs his noodles gloomily.

  ‘So, what about…’ I hesitate, trying to find the right phrase, ‘the other lines of investigation?’

  ‘Hopeless. Christopher Jay – did I tell you, he’s a lecturer at Archway FE College? – I went to see him. He gave me the creeps… refused to give me a voluntary DNA sample. Bastard…’

  ‘Can’t you force him?’

  ‘Only if I arrest him, and I can’t do that without reasonable grounds.’

  ‘But everyone knows he did it.’

  ‘Yeah, but he was acquitted, so for a retrial I need “compelling new evidence”. Unidentified DNA on the body, blood traces…I just need something.’ He pauses to eat a couple of mouthfuls. ‘If your mother was prepared to admit her mistake, that would help.’

  The sick feeling floods back. Now we’ve come to the nub of it. ‘Have you found her, then?’

  He shakes his head, chewing. ‘I spoke to your dad on the phone. It was an incredibly awkward conversation, like getting blood out of a stone. But basically he said he had no idea where Becca had gone.’

  ‘He thinks she killed herself. I already told you that.’

  I play with my chopsticks, tracing swirls through the leftover chilli sauce, wondering whether to tell him I’ve made friends with Isobel. He’ll go apeshit. And if he finds out I’ve had a past life regression, he’ll never speak to me again. It seems a shame to start another argument when we’ve only just got over the last one.

  ‘My DC’s been following up with relatives,’ says Eliot, breaking the loaded silence. ‘Your aunt said there was a big family falling-out when Becca was a teenage
r. They completely lost touch with her. Unfortunately, both your grandparents are now dead – did you know that?’

  I feel as if I’ve suddenly been dropped from a great height. ‘No, I didn’t even know I had an aunt!’

  ‘But you must…’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. What’s her name?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know, I’ll have to ask my DC. I’m really sorry, I didn’t realise, I thought you would have…’ He looks at me with those huge, tender brown eyes. ‘Are you okay? You’ve gone all pale.’

  I wipe my hands and add the napkin to our pile of debris. ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Bit surprised about Auntie Whatsername, but I guess that’s par for the course. I never had anything to do with my maternal grandparents, so it’s a bit pointless to feel upset about them being dead. No other relatives I should know about? Uncles? Cousins?’ I attempt an ironic laugh.

  ‘It’s okay, Meri, you’re allowed to be upset. This kind of thing is tough.’ He looks away from me briefly and I imagine him thinking about his own family – mother, father, brother, sister, aunts and uncles, first and second cousins, all four grandparents still alive. Everyone successful in their chosen field, partnered up, well off, no major health problems, comfortable with their liberal multiculturalism. Not smug either, just genuinely lovely people. I was part of it for four years, wrapped in their genial embrace: big Christmas parties, summer barbecues, three generations happily holidaying together every year on the Pembroke coast. I missed it when we split up and I had to go back to just me and Dad. But now there are all these other people out there that I’m connected to. Blood relations. Strangers…

  ‘Do you think Becca’s dead?’