Little Liar: A nail-biting, gripping psychological thriller

by Clare Boyd

  ‘She trained in criminal law.’

  ‘You’ll need a really good one, you do realise that, don’t you darling.’

  I rolled my eyes to the heavens. ‘Yes, I do realise.’

  ‘You know what can happen if those social worker types start nosing around don’t you?’

  Instantly, my womb seized up around my baby and I felt like groaning as the nausea rolled through me. ‘Of course I bloody well know.’

  ‘And it won’t be just Rosie, it will be all three.’

  I wanted to shout at her SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP! Don’t say it, Mum. Don’t even think it. I felt feint, almost giddy with fear.

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that.’

  ‘Rosie will take it back, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But, still, I really think you need the best lawyer you can find, why don’t I put you in touch with my guy?’

  ‘Philippa is an outstanding solicitor.’

  ‘But this isn’t something you can get wrong.’

  ‘Mum, leave it okay? It’s my choice not yours,’ I snapped.

  She sniffed and rustled something, ‘Okay, if you think she’s good, but if you change your mind, just say the word.’ She sounded hurt, as though my rejection of her advice was a stab in the eye.

  I lost the will to follow through with it. I doubted there was any point.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.’

  ‘That’s okay. You’re under a lot of strain,’ she said quietly. I imagined her dabbing her eye like an actress in a silent film.

  ‘Look, I’ll call you later, okay?’

  ‘I wanted to help, that’s all,’ she added.

  Having been poised to bottle it and hang up, I knew I could not now. ‘Actually, that’s why I was calling,’ I said, going through the motions of the request pointlessly. ‘If Rosie does stick to her statement, we’ll need someone to live-in here to help with childcare and everything. Just until the fourth. Well, you know, if the fourth even becomes a thing...’

  At least I could tell Peter I tried, but there was no way my mother was going to say yes. We couldn’t even get through a telephone conversation without sniping at each other.

  ‘And you thought of me?’ Her voice quivered.

  ‘Well, yes, of course we did,’ I said irritably, knowing her ego would enjoy the flattery.

  ‘David wouldn’t like it,’ she said, sounding gleeful. Ever since my mother had joined the university as a lecturer, she had talked endlessly about David, the dean of the university. Peter was convinced she was in love with David. Whether this was true or not, one thing was certain, she absolutely loved aggravating him.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And Ming Ho and Anya really are at crucial turning points right now.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ I looked out to the trees, which had bounced back to upright. I zoned out of my mother’s predictable excuses. I didn’t blame her, I just didn’t like listening to it.

  ‘And I’d have to get John to look after Minxy.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It was too much to ask,’ I sighed, waiting to hear more reasons why it was impossible. I felt a flash of regret and then anger towards Peter for putting me in this position. I should never have asked her.

  ‘What hours would you need someone?’

  ‘To cover Peter from seven in the morning until drop-off time – the kids are out of the door at 8.15 – then someone needs to be home, here, when they come in at four – unless they have after school clubs when its later. And then I get in at six-ish, mostly, and Peter at nine-ish. We also need cover at the weekends. Peter’s got three conferences coming up.’

  ‘What about Harriet?’

  ‘Peter and I thought it would be best to give her paid leave until it’s all over.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Mum, are you still there?’

  ‘You know, I would feel quite terrible about letting my postgrads down, but it isn’t beyond the wit of man to find a substitute to take over my course for a few weeks. In fact, I have a retired lecturer friend who’d love the work.’

  ‘Really?’

  I was fully aware of what a serious abdication of responsibility it would be for her to abandon a course midway through the term.

  ‘Yes, darling. Until you know what’s happening,’ she said.

  I sucked my breath in, inhaling deeply, a rush of gratefulness making me unsteady on my feet.

  ‘Are you sure? We’ll probably argue all the time...’ I flapped my fingers at my eyes, to stop the tears.

  ‘This is a family emergency,’ she choked, and cleared her throat. ‘The bigger problem will be getting rid of me.’

  ‘We’ll throw you out, don’t worry,’ I smiled, imagining I might want to live with her forever I was so grateful. ‘Thank you, Mum. Thank you so much, you are a total life saver. I can’t even describe how relieved I am.’

  ‘Let me know what the social worker says and if it all goes ahead as that solicitor woman predicts, I’ll pack a few things and get down to you on Monday. I’ll collect the rest of my stuff when I pop back in the week.’

  I thought of Rosie’s return home later, the dread of it brewed in the pit of my stomach. But with my mum arriving soon, I knew I could cope. Until Mum had said yes, I hadn’t realised quite how much I had needed her.

  * * *

  Now that the call to Mum was out of the way, I had a whole Saturday to myself, with nothing to do. The quiet in the house was eerie. Many other weekends, I had longed for time away from ferrying the children around to clubs and parties. Weirdly, I craved the mad rush to football club with Noah, the damp pitch-side conversations, the hectic drive to Rosie’s tap class, and then the arguments over homework.

  I decided on a long bath. My body felt lighter in the water and I marvelled at my popped-out stomach. My baby was cradled safely in there for now. I talked to it of all the plans we would make once this nightmare was over, and I talked about how much it would love its big brother and sister. I promised I would make everything right. I promised with all of my heart. Then I closed my eyes and rested my hands there, using the powers of touch and thought to send a message of my true love and devotion.

  Soothed after my bath, I read the newspapers over breakfast, but I missed the hugs from Noah and the chats in the car about books with Rosie. When Peter and I decided to go for a roast at the local pub, I missed the spilt apple juice and the fidgeting and the interrupting that would infuriate me so much. I missed them. I missed them even more given the circumstances of our separation.

  I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like to see Rosie. I was nervous about how she would react to me. A whole lifetime had been lived since I had seen her last. My concerns about her were bad on a good day, but now they were on a whole new scale. The worry had grown exponentially with every twist and turn of the last twenty-four hours.

  In the hour before they arrived, Peter had taken a nap, but I felt too jittery to catch up on the sleep I’d missed. I ended up watching bad television as a distraction, which, thankfully, seemed to host a world of troubled, disaffected people with much bigger problems than mine.

  Noah had banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox, ‘MUMMY! It’s us! LET US IN. LET US IN!’

  I raced upstairs to wake Peter and then raced down again to open the door.

  Noah’s head bulldozed into my middle, sending a cramp right through my womb that made my eyes water. Over his head I saw Rosie. I smiled at her, probably with an edge of sadness, and she looked away and bolted past us, up the stairs and slammed the door of her bedroom.

  ‘That went well,’ Vics said, stepping forward and hugging me while Noah was still clutching my legs.

  ‘Hi Vics.’ I squeezed her tightly, holding my chin on her shoulder, smelling the familiar scent of orange-blossom in her hair and hearing her bracelets jangle.

  ‘I rode on HENRY, Mummy!’ Noah cried, breaking us apart. His mud-splattered glowing face was a picture of hea
lth and fresh air.

  ‘And who’s Henry, my darling?’ I asked, bending down to his level, feeling torn by how gripped I was by his beauty and excitement and how my mind wandered up the stairs to Rosie shut away in her room.

  ‘He’s the Shire,’ Vics explained.

  ‘He’s massive, Mummy, seriously he’s so massive and I was so high up from the ground.’

  ‘Goodness me, were you scared?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Good boy,’ I said, and then wondered why this should be praised. Fear was a normal reaction to sitting on top of a seventeen-hand beast like Henry at six years old.

  ‘I’ll get the kettle on, go on up to Rosie,’ Vics said. ‘Come on Mischief, let’s get you a biscuit.’

  Vics took Noah’s hand and I was free to go to Rosie, reluctantly.

  I knocked on her door first.

  There was no response.

  I opened it. ‘Rosie?’

  ‘Go away,’ she mumbled from under her stripy pink pillow. Her red wellington boots had left a patch of mud and straw on the end of her duvet. However difficult it was for me to leave the mess, I did.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, sitting down on the bed next to her. ‘Come here for a cuddle.’

  ‘No.’

  I was willing to sit there all day and all night if that is what it took.

  Quite a few minutes later, she burst out from under the pillow and collapsed into my lap, clasping her arms around me.

  She smelt of bonfire smoke and horsebox.

  I had a million questions for her and none of them were appropriate for this moment. If I’d had a wish, it would have been, of course, that she would tell me why she had lied, that she would promise to tell DC Miles the truth. She had the power to put an end to this hell as quickly as she had started it, while I could forge the beginning of a new phase of understanding between us. If I could get to the bottom of why she had been so angry with me, then we would have a hope. And in that moment I had a lot of hope, and huge amounts of faith in her, in us. We had four weeks.

  ‘How was Rising Star?’

  My jumper muffled her reply. ‘I cantered.’

  ‘Wow. That’s incredible. Good girl. Well done, darling.’

  She squeezed the breath out of me and I held her tight to me.

  ‘Oh Rosie, you must have had the most horrible day yesterday.’

  There didn’t need to be any pretence between us. In however many ways I might have failed her, she knew I didn’t slap her. She knew I knew. And she now knew that I still loved her, in spite of the lies she had told. That was what unconditional love was like between a mother and a daughter. My mother had once told me that even if I had murdered someone, she would still love me. And I had believed her.

  She wept, and whimpered, heaving great sighs between the sobs, and I held her to me close. ‘Sorry Mummy, I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, exhausted.

  Peter emerged from around the door. ‘You okay?’ his expression said, and I nodded my head at him, and shooed him away.

  As she cried, I knew that none of my recriminations could be worse than the ones she would be telling herself. Her contrition was all-encompassing. It would all be over soon, I thought.

  ‘Do you want to come downstairs for a bit?’

  ‘I’m just going to write in my diary,’ she said, sitting up, looking me in the eye for the first time, hangdog eyes, pitiful sadness.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ I said, cupping her tear-stained face and kissing her on the forehead. ‘And you know, any time you’re ready, you can tell me or another grown-up, like Daddy, or Grandma Helen, or anyone, all about why you said all that to DC Miles, okay?’

  Rosie’s expression turned instantly sour. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she snapped.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, instantly regretting how soon I had broached it. ‘As I say, whenever you’re ready.’

  And I retreated out of her bedroom, feeling uneasy, and slowly made my way down to Vics, who was sitting at the kitchen island staring out of the window, with her heavily ringed fingers encircling a mug of tea.

  She jumped when she saw me. ‘Sorry, in a daze. How is she?’

  ‘All cried out.’

  ‘You took a whole lot of loving for a handful of nothing,’ Vics sang inappropriately, screwing up her eyes, her hands at her heart.

  I laughed, relieved that I still could, having felt wrung out by Rosie’s outpouring.

  ‘Does anyone still listen to Alison Moyer?’

  Her eyes sprang open and sparkled at me, like darts of light on a choppy sea, outshining her garden-tan crinkles. Vics had a high-reaching, freckled forehead that lent her an air of wisdom and somehow belied the less serious bright white-blonde hair and unfashionable blue eyeliner that she wore every day, rain or shine.

  ‘I have her CD in my car,’ she cried defensively, handing me a steaming cup of tea, bangles clanking.

  ‘You would. You’re mega uncool, as Rosie would say.’

  ‘I’m retro-cool, darling,’ Vics grinned, then she tucked her hair behind her ears, getting down to business. ‘How is she?’

  Paranoia singed at the edges of me, like the burning edges of a piece of paper. I felt ashamed of what had happened, and wondered if it had changed how Vics viewed me, if it had left a trace of suspicion in her mind. ‘She’s writing in her diary.’

  ‘I bet you want to read that.’

  ‘I wonder whether I might have to.’

  ‘Did you manage to get anything out of her?’

  I wanted to ask Vics if she believed Rosie, but I was too scared. If there had been even the vaguest of hesitations, I would have been crushed. Vics would be honest and sometimes I didn’t need it.

  ‘I thought I’d wait a bit.’

  ‘Does she know how serious it could get?’

  ‘That’s a good question actually. I wonder if she does.’

  It hadn’t occurred to me that Rosie would, of course, not fully understand the consequences of her lie, and the processes involved following my arrest, and what it could lead to.

  ‘I think it might be wise to tell her.’

  ‘I don’t want to scare her.’

  ‘It’s a tough one.’

  ‘Does Beth have a diary?’

  ‘Beth? Have you ever met your godchild?’

  ‘I wish Madam up there was as chilled out as her.’ I pointed up in the direction of Rosie’s bedroom and rolled my eyes. Childishly, I was trying to garner some solidarity from Vics, some acknowledgement that Rosie was a nightmare and that I was the victim.

  ‘If she takes it back, will the case be immediately dropped?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Probably best to be gentle with her rather than force it out of her.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Sorry, I know you wouldn’t force her.’

  I smiled knowingly. ‘No, you don’t know. You think I’m too hard on her, everyone does, admit it.’ I light-heartedly raised my eyebrows over my cup of tea, pretending that I could take whatever she might throw at me, but I was braced, expecting it might cut right through me.

  ‘I’d say you’re strict, about manners and things like that. They’re always so well turned-out.’

  I looked right into her bright eyes, inspecting her for signs of shiftiness, wondering if she thought I was so strict I might actually hit Rosie.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t care so much.’

  ‘It’s good to care. Look at Beth! Poor thing goes to school with birds’ nests in her hair and toothpaste down her cardigan.’

  I imagined a typical morning before school. If Rosie looked messy, I worried the teachers and other parents would judge me for being a bad mother, slovenly or neglectful. While Noah could bowl about making mistakes all over the shop, with filthy hands, knotty hair and unfinished homework, and I would be endeared, not enraged.

  ‘Peter accused me of being a control freak like Mum last night.’

  ‘You? Who rearranges my herbal teabags in a
lphabetical order? Can’t be talking about the same woman,’ Gemma laughed.

  ‘God, I’m a nightmare,’ I said, and dropped my head in my hands. ‘No wonder Rosie goes mental on me sometimes.’

  ‘Come on Gemma, I’m just kidding.’

  ‘But you’re not, though, are you?’

  My impossible standards, my impossible need to control every aspect of her life, down to every last granule of sugar she consumed, every hair out of place, every toy she played with, every thread of her clothes and every second of the routine I had imposed on her (however remotely). ‘Eat with your mouth closed!’. ‘Sit up straight!’. ‘Stop picking your scab!’. ‘Brush your teeth!’. ‘Do your homework!’. ‘No! Do it better!’. ‘No, you can’t have another biscuit!’. ‘No, you can’t have any biscuits at all!’. ‘Stop running in the kitchen!’. ‘Finish your broccoli!’. ‘Stop playing with those beads!’. ‘Stop breathing!’. ‘Stop living!’. I watched her like a hawk when I was there, and grilled Harriet or Peter for a minute-by-minute download of the moments when I wasn’t.

  When she was around me, I wondered if she felt that she was trapped in a cell, utterly powerless. It was no wonder she wanted to pound me with her fists, just as I had pounded at the walls.

  ‘Of course I’m joking,’ Vics insisted, looking hurt and surprised by my forcefulness.

  ‘I realise everyone thinks I’m too strict with her but I’d never hurt her,’ I said, my voice breaking a little. I dug my nails into my palm.

  Vics put her hand on arm. ‘I’ve never doubted that for a second.’

  I let out a little gasp, and pressed at my lips to hold it back. ‘Thanks, Vics. Sorry.’

  The paranoia ebbed away, replaced by the truer knowledge that Vics was on my side.

  ‘I’ll give them breakfast or tea any time you need me too. You have to try to look after yourself.’ She glanced anxiously at my stomach.

  I shrank away inside, desperately self-conscious of my new neediness and vulnerability, degraded by the forthcoming restrictions on my parenting. Everything had to change rapidly, literally overnight, and instinctively I baulked at the reordering, while knowing I had no choice.

  ‘It’s okay, Peter’s going to go in late this week if necessary, although Mum should be here by Monday. We’re not really sure when the social worker is coming round though. I think it’s more likely to be in the afternoon on Monday or Tuesday.’