Your Guilty Lies (ARC)

by Ruth Heald

  ‘She says she wishes she’d been brave enough to divorce Dad. Before he got so bad,’ Melissa continues.

  ‘I had no idea what he was like.’ I’m still struggling to get my head round it.

  ‘He was always heading for trouble, Katie. She’d have been better off out of it. So would you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I stare at her, eyes wide.

  ‘Mum and I have been keeping secrets from you for so long. It’s time you knew the truth.’

  I swallow. ‘The truth about what?’ What she told me before about my father was bad enough. There can’t be more.

  ‘About how Dad died. About how you got that scar on your arm.’

  I recoil, feeling sick. Whatever she’s about to say, I don’t think I want to hear it.

  ‘I thought he died in a car accident on his way to work,’ I say, my voice worried, praying she’ll just confirm what I remember. I scan my memory, but I can’t recall any more than that.

  ‘That’s not true. He died in a fight. At a pub. He was knocked out cold. Hit his head on a glass table and smashed through it, severed an artery in his neck. He bled to death before the ambulance arrived.’

  ‘Oh, god. Really?’ I imagine him bleeding out in the pub, no one able to save him. ‘Why did the guy pick on him?’ Why my father? Why not someone else in the pub?

  ‘He didn’t pick on him. Dad started the fight.’

  ‘But why?’ I’m holding my breath.

  ‘It was because of you.’

  ‘Me?’ My heart beats faster. I feel guilty, but I don’t know what for.

  ‘Yes, you and Mum. Dad wanted revenge.’

  ‘For what?’ I whisper.

  ‘The week before, he’d fought the same guy. You were there.’

  ‘I was there? But I don’t remember…’

  ‘Dad was supposed to be looking after you, but he’d taken you to the pub and got drunk. You got caught up in one of his brawls. You were only little. Someone threw a glass and it smashed over your arm. That’s how you got that scar.’

  I scratch at it. ‘I thought I fell off my bike.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Mum was there when it happened. She’d realised that you were at the pub with him and had come to collect you. She jumped in the way of the glass. She managed to block your face, to stop the damage being any worse. The glass smashed on her hand, cut a tendon in her wrist.’

  ‘That’s why she stopped playing the piano professionally?’

  ‘Yes. She was never able to play as well as she had before the fight. Instead she put all her hopes into you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Suddenly Mum’s behaviour, pushing me with my music, makes more sense. ‘What happened to the man who killed him?’

  ‘He went to prison for a bit, but he was out years ago. I’ve no idea where he is now.’

  I can hardly believe what Melissa’s just told me. Dad died in a violent fight that he’d started himself. Trying to get revenge on my behalf. And Mum’s career ended because she was protecting me. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I can’t help feeling guilty. This changes everything.

  ‘I don’t understand. Why did you both lie to me?’ I ask. ‘Why did you let me believe that Dad was a good guy?’ I scratch at my arm anxiously.

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was Mum. I was a child too, remember.’

  ‘But you’re not a child now. You’ve lied to me for years.’ No wonder I always felt left out. I was the only one who didn’t know the truth.

  ‘After he died you were so fragile that Mum just wanted to protect you. She started to rewrite history with you. She’d take us both through the memories, telling us about the happy times we’d had together. At the swings in the park. Dancing in the living room. And after a while you just forgot the unhappy times. You forgot the times he’d lost his temper. Mum had taken you through the happy photos enough times for you to think that was what our childhood had been like.’

  ‘But why would you go along with it?’

  ‘Mum made me pretend. I hated Dad. He’d always been drunk. But after he died I was never allowed to say anything against him. For a while I liked it – I felt like Mum and I were in league together, looking after you. I felt like an adult. But when I got older I questioned it. Why should I know the truth and not you? And I hated listening to you talk about our father. How great he was. How kind and caring. You even named your daughter after him. Everything you knew about him was a lie. But you believed it all. And I knew it would destroy you to be told otherwise.’

  Thirty-Six

  The next day, my mind is still spinning after everything my sister told me. Ian is looking after the twins, and Paula went out this morning saying she was going to search for somewhere to live. I’m relieved to have some time to myself to think. I’ve decided not to go on holiday with Mum and Melissa. I can’t face pretending that I’m not angry with them both for lying to me about my father’s death. I need some time away from them.

  The ‘For Sale’ sign has gone up outside my house, but no one’s called me to arrange any viewings yet. Ian has said I’m welcome to stay until it’s sold and it’s looking like that could be months away, but I’m desperate to get out of here and start afresh.

  I want to get away from Paula as soon as I can. She told me that she got the day wrong for my viewing of Caroline’s flat and now Caroline’s found another tenant. I’m not even sure the flat was ever on the market. But why on earth would she send me there? Maybe she’s been so angry with me about moving out that she made up the flat to rent to distract me and buy more time in the house. Even though she’s been great looking after the babies, I just can’t trust her.

  I search through the top drawer of the dresser in the dining room for the documents I’ll need if I finally find a flat to rent. Proof of income, my bank statements, proof of address and my passport. I think my passport must have fallen down the back, so I look in the drawer below, pulling out the sheets of paper on the top. I pause for a moment when I see what they are. They’re an architect’s drawings showing detailed plans for the house. Ian must have got them done when he was doing up the house while I was in the hotel. For a moment I feel sorry for him. He had such big plans for this place.

  I study them. The first drawing shows an open-plan kitchen diner and living area. On the first floor, en suite bathrooms have been added to the double bedrooms and the box room has become a walk-in wardrobe for the master bedroom. And then there’s an attic office. I flick through the sheets. There’s another page. A basement flat is marked out. I blink, staring at the plans. This can’t be right. The house doesn’t have a basement.

  But it must do. It’s marked out neatly in the plans.

  A shiver runs down my spine. There’s a whole room in my house that I didn’t even know was there.

  I go into the hallway and walk all the way along it, feeling the walls. There’s no shadow of a door to a basement, no sign of anything bricked over. There’s a bookcase at one end of the hallway, filled with old books and paperwork that doesn’t belong to me. It must be Ian’s father’s. Painstakingly, I take everything off the shelves. The bookcase is heavier than it looks. It scrapes across the dusty floorboards and wobbles precariously as I slowly push it aside. I expect there to be a doorway behind it, but there’s nothing. Nothing at all.

  I remember the understairs cupboard. I peer in using my phone torch to light it up. When the roof leaked and I had to turn the power back on at the mains, the cupboard was filled with stacks of newspapers and magazines. I remember squeezing past them. But now there’s just one remaining box of newspapers and a hoover. Ian must have cleared out the rest before he left. With all the clutter gone, I can see a door at the back of the cupboard. It looks like it could just be another cupboard, but I wonder if it leads to the basement.

  I take a deep breath and go over to it. I pull the rusty bolt across and turn the stiff handle tentatively. The door sticks a little as I pull it towards me. On the other side there’s pure darkness. I’m filled w
ith fear as I shine my phone torch onto the stone steps leading downwards, a sheer drop on either side of them. I scratch at my arm violently.

  My heart pounds as I go through the door and start down the steps, shining my torch onto each step in turn to check for obstacles. I force myself to keep going, breathing in the dusty air. I hate to think what might be down here. I remember the rats that ran from the house on the first day I looked around. Had they come from the basement?

  There is no handrail, nothing at all to hold onto. Blood rushes to my head and I feel off balance for a second. I steady myself and shine the torch down further into the dark space. I can make out a large grey shape in the corner on the floor, but otherwise there seems to be nothing there.

  I wonder what this room was used for. A laundry room, maybe. Or storage. I hear a scuttle and something scurries beneath me, making me jump. But I press on.

  At the bottom of the steps, I see there is space on both sides of me. I turn left and right, shining my torch up at the walls and ceiling. I can see water running down the wall at the back; more damp. There’s a puddle in the corner, stagnant and brown. No wonder I can’t get the festering smell out of the house.

  I take a tentative step and feel my shoe tread into something mulchy. I nearly slip over and I scream, shining my torch down to see a small furry form. A squished, decaying rat.

  Then something soft brushes against me and I jump, dropping my phone. I hear it clatter on the floor. It must have knocked against something because the torch goes out and the basement goes completely black and the only sound is my breathing, fast and frantic.

  I need to find my phone. I don’t want to feel around on the floor with my bare hands. But what else can I do? Without the phone I’m not sure if I can even locate the stairs to get back up into the house. There’s no light at all, not even from the doorway, which only leads into the dark cupboard under the stairs.

  I try to find the phone with my feet. I’m sure I dropped it to my right, so I inch along the floor. Eventually I bump into something solid. The stairs. I sigh with relief. If I could just manoeuvre myself back up them. But I remember the sheer drop on both sides. I’d have to crawl up.

  Reaching out my hand, I run it along the stair until I feel it go down onto the next step. In the darkness, I start moving slowly towards the bottom of the staircase. I step on something hard.

  My phone?

  I reach down, shaking with nerves.

  Touching the reassuring plastic, I lift the phone up and press the home button. It casts a feeble glow and I turn the torch back on.

  As I shine it back around the room, I’m sure that something is crouched, ready to jump from the shadows and attack me.

  But there’s nothing.

  I run the torch round the room a few more times to reassure myself and calm my racing heart.

  In the corner at the far end of the basement the blurry shape has turned into an old, single mattress, patches of mould turning it from white to grey. On top of it there’s a hairbrush, tangled with thick black hair.

  Has someone been living down here?

  I think of the noises I sometimes hear at night. My worries about squatters when I first moved in. The creaks and clunks of the house. The distant cries of the babies. They can’t have been coming from here, can they?

  I want to get out of here. Right now. I start towards the stairs when I hear a loud bang.

  When I shine my torch up the stairs, heart thudding, I see the door has slammed shut, trapping me.

  18

  The long school summer holiday seems endless, trapped in the house with my father’s temper. The man who works in the garden doesn’t come round for ages, and then suddenly he’s here again, working outside in the heat of the summer. We find ourselves back in the basement, lying beside each other on the mattress, waiting for the time to pass. I’ve tried to make it nicer down here, putting a pile of our books in the corner, sticking photos of us on the walls.

  ‘I wish we could enjoy the summer like other kids,’ I say, imagining myself outside in the open air, playing in our huge garden. I rub at the purple bruise on my leg. For any other child it would be a result of an exciting summer, from tumbling out of a tree, or falling off a bike. But not me. For me it’s because I put my elbows on the table at dinner.

  My sister sighs. ‘If you were better behaved, perhaps we wouldn’t be down here in the basement, perhaps we’d be outside playing.’

  I stare at her. ‘I don’t do anything wrong, he just hates me.’

  ‘You do. You answer back. You don’t smile when he comes in. You’re ungrateful for everything he does for us.’

  ‘I’m not any worse behaved than you.’ She just can’t see it. She can’t see that if it’s both of us messing about it’s me he picks on. If we both haven’t tidied our room, it’s me he punishes.

  ‘You’re just not nice to him. If you were nice to him, then maybe he’d be nice to you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, I’m nice to him and look what he got me.’ She pulls a silver chain out from under the neckline of her dress, triumphantly. A tiny silver bird dangles from the end and she holds it out to show me.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I whisper. I don’t have any jewellery. Dad’s always bringing back gifts for my sister but never for me.

  ‘He might give you one too, if you’re good.’

  I shake my head.

  She frowns. ‘I’m trying to help you here. To help you change. To be a better person. To stop you dragging me down. Dad says you hold me back. That without you bringing me down I could go on to great things. Maybe even be an actress.’

  Tears prick my eyes. I don’t understand her anymore. I used to know what my sister was thinking before she even knew it herself. I used to be able to sense her emotions. But our bond has been severed. It doesn’t even feel like we’re twins anymore.

  She’s started to think she’s actually better than me, to believe my father when he says that she’s the good twin, and that I am rotten to the core.

  Thirty-Seven

  I climb the basement stairs shakily. Has the door blown shut? Or has someone slammed it? What if I’m locked down here? No one will ever find me.

  I look at the signal bars on my phone. No reception.

  I keep going up the stairs, careful to maintain my balance. I remember the water running down the wall and worry that the stone steps could be wet too. I imagine slipping over, hitting my head and slowly sliding down the stairs, never to be found, my children left without a mother.

  When I get to the top of the stairs, I push at the wooden door. It doesn’t open.

  ‘Paula?’ I call out. ‘Paula?’ But then I remember she’s gone out for the day. She won’t be back until late this evening. And it’s hours before Ian’s due back with the twins.

  I push the door harder still, but nothing happens. Gritting my teeth, I shoulder-barge the door, crying out in pain as my arm hits the solid wood. At last the catch gives way and the door shoots open. I fall through it, still clutching my phone.

  I hit my head on the wooden floorboards of the cupboard, but I’m OK. I quickly crawl completely out of the basement and shut the door behind me, my breathing ragged. How could the door have blown shut in the still air of the cupboard? Was someone trying to shut me in?

  My thoughts are all over the place. I tell myself it’s just because I hit my head, that there must be a rational explanation for the mattress, for the hairbrush. But I can’t stop shaking. Because the more I try and rationalise everything that’s been happening, the more I think there really is something to be afraid of.

  I crawl out of the cupboard and stand leaning against the wall, adrenaline pumping.

  I shout into the house. ‘Hello? Paula? Ian?’ Nothing. ‘Is anyone there?’ I wonder if an estate agent might have come over to show round a viewer. They could have shut the basement door, not realising I was in there.

  But the house is silent. There doesn’t seem to be any
one here. I check each room just in case. No one.

  Picking up my phone again, I catch my breath. I ring my friend Mick, the maintenance guy who used to work with me in the coffee shop. After I’ve updated him on the twins, I ask him if he can come round and fix a lock to the basement. The kind with a key, so that no one except me can get in. He agrees to come straight after work.

  I’m waiting for him to arrive, and I’ve just put the twins down for a nap, when my phone rings. I’m shocked to see it’s my mother calling. She’s supposed to be in France with Melissa. I pick up the phone in a panic, worried that she’s had an accident on holiday. I didn’t even speak to her before she went away. I was too shocked by what Melissa had told me.

  ‘Katie,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Mum – what is it?’ My mind spins with worry, images of tragic accidents flashing through it like a slide show.

  ‘Melissa told me why you haven’t come on holiday with us. She said she told you about your father.’ Her words come out in a rush, as if she doesn’t have time to pause for breath.

  ‘Mum, I—’ I’m relieved she hasn’t had an accident, but a mix of anger and sadness bubbles up inside me. I need to talk to her about my childhood, but I don’t even know how I feel about it myself.

  ‘You have every right to be angry, Katie. I should have told you what your father was like years ago. But the more time I left it, the more the lies seemed real to me. I wanted to believe them myself. Wanted to believe I’d had a happy marriage before he died. I wanted to forget all the horrible memories.’

  ‘You let me believe he was a kind man, that he looked after me.’

  ‘He did care about you. He just wasn’t around a lot of the time. He was always at the pub.’

  ‘Why did you let me believe it? Do you know how it feels to realise all your childhood memories are false?’ I feel like the ground beneath me has shifted, the very foundations of my identity rocked.