Let Me Lie(110)

‘Wherever I feel like going.’





SEVENTY-TWO


ANNA


The smell of freshly mown grass fills the air. It’s still cold, but the promise of good weather is just around the corner. I’ve swapped Ella’s pram for a pushchair, and she babbles happily as I strap her in. I call Rita and put on her lead.

‘I’m going to get out of your way. I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.’

‘No worries, love. Anything in the kitchen you want us to leave out?’

Oak View is a hive of activity. There are five removal men, each in a different room, and a mountain of boxes already packed.

‘Just the kettle, please.’ In my car is a box of essentials – tea, loo roll, a few plates and mugs – to save unpacking when we get to the new house.

I chat to Ella as we walk, pointing out a cat, a dog, a balloon caught in a tree. We pass the forecourt of Johnson’s Cars, but pause only to catch Billy’s eye. He waves and I lean forward to take Ella’s hand to wave back. He’s busy speaking to a new rep, and I don’t want to disturb him.

The forecourt looks good. The Boxster sold with the first hint of spring. It’s been replaced by another two sports cars, their tops optimistically down, and their bonnets gleaming. Uncle Billy finally let me bail out the business, so I put in a cash injection that will keep the wolf from the door for a while, at least. Mark thought I was mad.

‘It’s a business, not a charity,’ he said.

Only it isn’t just a business. It’s my past. Our present. Ella’s future. Granddad Johnson took over from his father, and Billy and Dad took over from him. Now it’s down to me and Billy to keep things afloat till business picks up. Who knows if Ella will want to continue the tradition – that’s up to her – but Johnson’s Cars isn’t going under on my watch.

We walk along the seafront. I look at the pier and think about walking here with my parents, and instead of the anger that has filled the last three months, I simply feel overwhelmingly sad. I wonder if that’s progress, and make a mental note to mention it in my next counselling session. I’m ‘seeing someone’ again. Not someone from Mark’s practice – that would have felt too weird – but a thoughtful, gentle woman in Bexhill who listens more than she talks, and leaves me feeling a little stronger each time we meet.

Down a side street, leading away from the seafront, is a row of small terraced houses. The pushchair bumps on the uneven pavement, and Ella’s babbling increases. She’s making noises that sound almost like speech, now, and I remind myself to write down each milestone, before I forget it.

We stop at number five, and I ring the bell. I have a key, just in case, but I’d never use it. I’m already bending down to take Ella from the buggy when Mark opens the door.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Organised chaos. I know we’re early, but we were getting under their feet, so …’ I give Ella a kiss, holding on to her for as long as I can, before handing her to Mark. I’m still not used to it, but every time feels a little easier. There’s nothing official, no every-other-weekend-and-a-day-in-the-week arrangement. Just the two of us, still parenting jointly, despite our separate lives.

‘It’s no problem. Do you want to hang out here for a bit?’

‘I’d better get back.’

‘I’ll drop her off at the new place tomorrow.’

‘You can have the grand tour!’

We lock eyes for a second, acknowledging everything that’s happened, how new and strange this feels, then I kiss Ella again, and leave her with her dad.

It was easy, in the end.

‘Will you marry me?’

I didn’t speak. He waited, expectantly. Hopefully.

I imagined standing at the altar with him, Ella a toddling flower girl. I imagined turning and looking at the congregation, and I felt fresh loss at the absence of my father. Billy would give me away, I supposed. Not my dad, but the nearest thing I had to one. I was lucky to have him.

There would be friends, neighbours filling up the pews.

No Laura.

I felt no grief about that. Her trial date had been set, and although the thought of testifying against her was already giving me nightmares, Victim Support had talked me through the process. I’d be alone on the stand, but I knew there was a team of people behind me. She’d be convicted, I was sure of it.

She’d written a couple of times, begging forgiveness. Remand prisoners were forbidden from making contact with trial witnesses, and the letters had come via a mutual acquaintance, too blinded by friendship to believe Laura had truly done the things of which she’d been accused.

The letters were long. Effusive. They played on our shared history, on the fact that we only had each other. That we’d both lost our mothers. I kept them as insurance, not out of sentiment, although I knew I’d never show them to the police. Laura was taking a risk, writing to me, but it was a small one. She knew me too well.

I felt no grief, either, that my mother wouldn’t be at my wedding. Thinking of her forms a hard ball of hatred in my heart that no amount of counselling will lessen. But it isn’t Dad’s murder I hate her for – although that is where it starts. It isn’t even for the lies she told in faking her death, in abandoning me in my grief. It’s for the ones she told afterwards; the story she spun from the half-truths of her marriage to my father. It’s for making me believe that he was the alcoholic; that it was he who hit her, not the other way around. It’s for making me trust her again.