Her Perfect Lies

by Lana Newton

‘Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.’

  ‘I think it’s my meds. They make me crazy. I’m hallucinating. Hearing voices. I need to stop taking them.’ Her words made no sense even to herself.

  ‘You are hearing voices?’

  ‘I’m getting phone calls from someone I can’t possibly be getting phone calls from. I had a breakdown. Paul calls it a psychotic episode.’

  ‘Paul is not a psychiatrist, or is he?’

  ‘No, he’s not. But he controls my meds. He’s the one who gave me my new prescription. Is he doing this to me?’

  ‘Why don’t you start from the beginning?’

  Incoherently at first, getting lost in words and emotions, breaking into sobs, Claire did her best to tell her therapist everything. Matilda listened patiently. She sat very still, as if Claire was a bird that could be frightened by a sudden movement. Her eyes were kind and compassionate.

  ‘My mother was killed on the same day as the accident. The police told us.’ Was it a coincidence? Or were the two seemingly unrelated events connected somehow? ‘We are both dead in a way, my mum and I,’ Claire concluded. ‘I am still here but I wouldn’t call this living. I feel so empty inside. Hollow. I can’t function. I feel overwhelmed and lost.’

  ‘But you do feel something. That makes you alive. Feeling is living.’

  ‘I don’t sleep. I’m scared that the minute I close my eyes, the nightmare will come back. And it usually does. I’m scared that the minute I open my eyes, my phone will ring and my mother will speak to me, as if everything that happened wasn’t real but a figment of my imagination. Am I imagining the phone calls? If it’s a hallucination, then why does it feel so real? Or is it normal, for the person hallucinating to think what they are seeing or hearing is real?’

  ‘I don’t believe you can hallucinate a phone call. That’s not how hallucinations work.’

  ‘I don’t trust myself anymore. How do I know you are real? How do I know I’m here and not locked in an institution somewhere?’

  ‘Believe me, I’m real.’

  ‘I feel like I’m living someone else’s life. I don’t even know what my life should be. Any moment I expect to wake up, like this, too, is a nightmare. I don’t know who I am.’

  ‘Not many people do, not really. The hardest thing in life is to know yourself. To see yourself for what you are. Not who you are. What you are. Can you see the difference?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You might know who you are. You are Paul’s wife. Tony and Angela’s daughter. A successful ballerina. But what makes you you? That’s what you need to find out.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Answer one question for me. What do you believe in?’

  For a moment Claire thought about it. ‘I believe in my father. He’s always been there for me. I believe I had a life before the accident. I believe I was happy once. I’d like to be happy again.’

  ‘That’s a good start.’

  ‘I feel like I’m a vase that’s been dropped on the floor and shattered into a thousand little pieces. Can a broken vase ever be put together?’

  ‘You need to rebuild your life, Claire. With time, bit by bit, you need to rebuild yourself.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Only you can answer this question.’

  ‘What is happening to me? Am I losing my mind?’

  Matilda sat up straight, her eyes boring into Claire. ‘I don’t think you are losing your mind. I don’t think you are hallucinating or hearing voices. But it seems someone is deliberately trying to make you believe that you are.’

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Claire spent her days in bed, not sleeping but not quite awake either. On the rare occasions she managed to get up, she felt like she was wading through water, her brain hazy and unresponsive, even though she had stopped taking her medication. Every evening she would place the little pills in her mouth while Paul was watching, as ever the zealous jailer, but as soon as his back was turned, she would rush to the bathroom and spit the pills out into the sink. And yet, she wasn’t feeling any better. What if Paul knew what she was doing and had found a different way to drug her? It would be so easy. All he had to do was ask Nina to add something to Claire’s food.

  Or was she being paranoid? Was it just her grief and lack of sleep that made her unable to concentrate on anything other than the dark thoughts swirling around her head? Day after miserable day, she would hover around her bedroom like a ghost, not knowing where to turn. If only she could talk to someone. She craved her mother’s voice over the phone. Logically she understood it couldn’t have been Angela calling her all this time. But in her heart she wanted to believe differently, and did. She desperately needed something to remind her of her mother, to paint a picture of who she was and what she was like. More than anything she wanted to feel close to her, so she spent her sleepless nights turning the house upside down, looking for something that had once belonged to Angela.

  And then she found it. Her mother’s Bible was sitting on the bookshelf next to Gone With the Wind and War and Peace, hiding in plain sight. For the first time that she could remember, she felt a glimmer of joy. Her fingertips trembling, she opened the holy book as if it contained a piece of her mother’s soul.

  The Bible was old and heavy, all brown leather and golden writing. Claire wanted to press her face to the cover, to feel its smooth surface with her lips, to kiss it like she would kiss her mother’s forehead. Something undecipherable was scribbled on the cover page. She had never seen her mother’s handwriting before. It took her a good ten minutes to make sense of the note, letter by letter, word by word.

  You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

  Claire wondered what her mother was trying to tell her by choosing these particular words from Matthew for the cover page of her Bible.

  Claire closed her eyes and repeated the words, like a prayer, except she wasn’t praying for her soul or guidance. She was praying to forget.

  Suddenly, while her eyes were closed, her fingers felt something hidden between the pages. The edges felt rough to the touch and the paper was thick and glossy. It contrasted sharply with the wafer-thin pages of the Bible and this contrast jolted Claire out of her reverie and into reality. She opened her eyes to find herself holding a folded photograph. Moving closer to the circle of light from her bedside table, she stared at her mother’s face, decades younger, perhaps Claire’s age. Angela’s hair was like straw, yellow and free and hippy-long. Her face was in profile and her arms were around someone, hugging them close. Claire unfolded the photograph, expecting to see her father. But it wasn’t him. Another Angela looked back at her, smiling.

  Claire blinked once, twice. Was she imagining it? No, it was right there, as real as the buses driving past or the dogs barking outside – the image of two women, two identical Angelas. Tegan and Angela 1987, she read on the back of the photograph. Feeling faint, sick to her stomach with a dark foreboding of some kind, Claire hid the photo in the back pocket of her trousers. At dinner, she wanted to ask her father about the mysterious Tegan. But he seemed so sad, his eyes shrouded in tears, so she didn’t say anything. When she kissed him goodnight, she gave him her mother’s Bible and his face lit up with a rare smile.

  The next morning, as she walked in with an omelette and an orange juice, he was sitting up in bed, his reading glasses on. It was a surprising change from the last few weeks when he did nothing but stare into space.

  ‘What are you reading?’ asked Claire, placing the tray on the table next to his bed.

  He nodded in the direction of two books in his lap. ‘Voltaire and the Bible. You might think they contradict each other. But it’s not quite the case,’

  She had no idea what he was talking about but it was nice to see him showing an interest in something. ‘What do you mea
n?’ she asked, getting comfortable in her armchair.

  ‘Many people believe Voltaire was anti-God but that’s not exactly true. Voltaire was a deist. He preached the natural religion and believed God has built the universe and then distanced Himself, giving man free will to do as he pleases. It is up to man to observe the moral laws, and in due course God will reward the good deeds and punish the bad.’

  ‘You are right. That doesn’t sound like someone who didn’t believe in God. Why do people think otherwise?’

  ‘Voltaire didn’t believe in Christianity. He believed God was the Father of all men, not just Christians. Therefore, Christianity was not the true religion. He saw it as full of superstition and blasphemy. Almost everything that goes beyond the adoration of the Supreme Being and of submitting one’s heart to His external orders is superstition according to Voltaire.’

  ‘Like going to church?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She picked up the book and looked through the table of contents. ‘There are other philosophers here too. Didier …’

  Tony wrinkled his nose in disapproval. 'Now, Didier does believe there is no God.’

  ‘How can there be no God? Look at all the beauty around you.’

  Tony shrugged. ‘Some might find Didier’s view convenient. If there is no God, imagine how liberating that would be? No God means no sin, no conscience, no punishment and no judgement. And most importantly, no remorse. But I don’t agree with him,’ he said, his hand on the Bible. ‘As human beings, we always feel remorse. That’s our greatest weakness. Dostoevsky was right. The true punishment is not what society imposes on you. It’s not the prison or community service or even the death sentence. The true punishment is what’s inside us. The remorse we feel. It’s always there. It never goes away. There is no escape from it.’

  ‘If God does exist …’ She hesitated. ‘How can He allow such horrible things to happen?’ Her chest thumped with pain at the thought of her mother, stabbed in her own house, gone before her time. The wounds were still so fresh. Would there be a time when she could go a minute without her heart breaking over Angela?

  ‘God doesn’t make horrible things happen. People make horrible things happen. Free will, remember?’

  He tucked into his omelette and she sat still, while her hand was in her pocket folding and unfolding the photograph she had found inside the Bible.

  ‘Why does it seem like you are a million miles away? What’s on your mind, Teddy Bear?’ asked Tony.

  She might as well go ahead and ask the question that was tormenting her. ‘Did Mum have a sister?’

  ‘No.’ His answer came out brisk and abrupt, like an axe falling on a piece of wood. What was that expression on his face? He didn’t ask why she was bringing it up, nor did he comment any further. His no was like a full-stop at the end of a conversation.

  Claire didn’t say a word as she handed him the photograph and he didn’t say a word as he took it. In silence she studied him, while he studied the women in the picture, his face white as if he was seeing ghosts. Finally, he placed the photograph on the bed and pushed it as far away from him as possible until it fell on the floor and remained there, face down. Only then did he say, ‘Where did you find that?’

  Claire didn’t want his questions. What she needed was answers. ‘Who’s Tegan, Dad?’

  There was a pause that lasted a long time. Finally, he said, ‘Tegan is your mother’s twin sister.’

  ‘But I just asked you if she had a sister. You said no.’ She watched him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Tegan has always been jealous of your mother and me. We haven’t spoken to her in ten years.’

  ‘So you lied to me?’

  ‘For your own good. I don’t want you to go looking for her.’ His eyes filled with loathing. For Tegan? Claire hadn’t seen this side of her father before. She hadn’t seen anything from him but kindness and affection. It took her by surprise, how unnatural it felt. ‘Your mother’s sister betrayed us,’ he added. ‘She tried to break up our family. I don’t want you to mention her again.’

  He looked like a different man, bitter and angry. This man was a stranger. She didn’t know him. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘That’s between your mother and Tegan. It’s nothing to do with us.’

  ‘You mean, with me? You mean, it’s nothing to do with me?’ When he didn’t reply, his face impassive and cold, she asked, ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her. I didn’t know I had family other than you and Mum.’ She fell quiet as she remembered that her mum was gone and all she had now was him.

  ‘Didn’t I just tell you to stay away from her?’

  ‘I’m not ten, Dad. I can make my own decisions.’

  ‘I don’t want her poisoning you with her lies. Besides, I don’t know where she lives. She’s moved. We’ve lost touch. It’s probably for the best.’

  There were so many questions she wanted to ask. But she knew he wouldn’t tell her anything, by the way he turned his head away, by the way his eyes wouldn’t meet hers. Suddenly he seemed closed off like a book long read and forgotten about.

  Chapter 13

  Night after sleepless night, Claire lay in her bed and longed for Angela and wondered about Tegan. One thought above others tormented her. Her mother didn’t die of natural causes. What happened was not an accident. It was an act of evil that deprived Claire of her mother. Because of it, she would never know her and would never be able to rebuild the relationship they had once had.

  There was only one person in her life who was capable of evil.

  Nina had told Claire she had often seen Paul and Angela arguing. What if one day he’d had enough? What if Angela had threatened him and paid with her life? Paul couldn’t control his temper. Had he lost it with Angela, with fatal consequences?

  One night, when everyone was in bed, Claire locked herself in the bathroom and searched through her text messages. Thank God her phone had been salvaged after its fall through the window and into the flower bed. Scrolling to the date of the murder, which according to the police also happened to be the date of the accident, she read her frantic messages to Paul.

  Where are you? Why aren’t you picking up?

  And even more desperate:

  Please answer your phone. Something happened. I need help.

  And one more:

  Please call me back before it’s too late.

  ‘Before it’s too late’. What did that mean? Bewildered, Claire checked her call history. There were ten unanswered calls to Paul that day.

  According to Gaby, Paul and Claire’s relationship had been cold and distant. Before the accident, they were barely talking. The divorce papers Claire had found in her room confirmed that. And yet, here she was, calling her husband not once but ten times and bombarding him with panicked messages. Claire looked at other dates in her phone and there were hardly any calls or messages to Paul. What had happened on the day of the accident to make her turn to her soon-to-be-ex-husband for help? It had to be something big to make her forget their differences. Something bigger than an imminent divorce and their growing animosity.

  And even more importantly, where was Paul on the day her mother had been murdered? Why wasn’t he picking up his phone?

  As soon as Paul left for work, Claire shared her suspicions with her father.

  ‘You have to tell the police,’ Tony said. Although his face looked grim, his eyes burned with a passion she had never seen before.

  As she sat on the terrace, watching the rain pounding the trees outside, she followed the progress of a lone passer-by whose umbrella had been wrestled from him by the wind, barely noticing that she, too, was soaked through and shaking from the cold. She tried to summon the courage to call the police. What if she was wrong? Paul was controlling, with a history of abuse, but it didn’t mean he was capable of murder. What if he got arrested for a crime he didn’t commit? If Paul was punished for something he didn’t
do, Claire would have to live with it for the rest of her life, while the real murderer walked free.

  Finally, she decided the police had to have all the facts. It was their job to make sense of them and draw their own conclusions. If she didn’t tell them the truth, how would they catch the killer? In her handbag she found the card PC Kamenski had given her at the hospital. As she was about to call, the doorbell rang.

  Through a narrow gap in the door she could see the sombre faces of PC Kamenski and PC Stanley. They looked like they had come to deliver more terrible news. Claire blinked, stunned. She glanced at the card in her hand, wondering if she had summoned the officers by merely thinking about them. After a few seconds of silence she opened the door wider and invited them inside.

  When they were seated on the couch, PC Stanley said, ‘We have a few questions to ask you if you don’t mind.’

  Claire fidgeted with the card in her hand. ‘I was just about to call you. I have something to tell you.’

  ‘You go first.’ PC Kamenski took out her notepad. Claire wondered how many of those she went through every month. She glanced at the clock, hoping Paul wouldn’t come home from work and surprise her as she was about to give him up to the police. But it was barely four o’clock. She had plenty of time.

  She told them about her suspicions and showed them the messages. As she was talking, she expected their eyes to light up with a sudden realisation. Instead, they listened to Claire mutely.

  When she finished, PC Stanley said, ‘Thank you for sharing this with us. It couldn’t have been easy. But I assure you, your husband didn’t kill your mother.’

  That was not the reaction Claire had been expecting. ‘How do you know? He wasn’t answering his phone. And they hated each other. My housekeeper told me they were always arguing.’ Her voice quivered as she tried to make them understand. But judging by their faces, they were not taking her seriously.

  ‘Do you want your husband to be the killer?’ asked PC Kamenski and her eyes narrowed with curiosity. Suddenly Claire felt like she was under a microscope.