Let Me Lie(55)

Murray felt bad leaving the man slumped at his desk, visibly distressed by the memories Murray had forced him to confront. But his priority was Sarah.

She was walking towards him as he got to the forecourt. Ginger was standing by the Defender, hands thrust miserably in his pockets.

‘Are you okay?’ Murray said, when Sarah reached him. She seemed perfectly content, and he breathed a sigh of relief that Ginger hadn’t upset her.

‘Right as rain.’ She had a wicked grin on her face and Murray glanced again at Ginger, who looked as though someone had just told him Christmas had been cancelled.

‘What happened to him?’

‘I told him I was interested in the latest model.’

‘Right …’

‘That I wanted something very high-spec, with lots of extras, and that I was looking to take something away today.’

‘Okay …’

Sarah grinned again. ‘And then I said maybe I’d stick to my bike.’





TWENTY-NINE


ANNA


My mother rings the bell instantly, then again without dropping her hand, and again and again and again. Rita runs into the hall, skids on the tiles, then jumps at the door. She looks back at me, then up at the silhouette of my mother, framed inside the stained-glass panel. She whines, confused.

My chest feels tight, my face numb. I can’t do this. My hands shake uncontrollably, and as the doorbell rings again panic builds inside me.

‘Anna!’

I turn around. Make my feet move. I walk slowly towards the foot of the stairs.

‘We have to talk about this. I need you to understand. Anna!’

Her voice is quiet, but she is pleading, desperate. I stand, one hand on the bannister, one foot on the step. My parents are alive. Isn’t this everything I’ve wanted for the last year? Grandparents for Ella, in-laws for Mark. My mum and dad. Family.

‘Anna, I won’t leave until you understand. I had no choice!’

And all at once I’m decided. I take the stairs two at a time, running from the hall, from the begging. From the excuses my mother is trying to give for the inexcusable.

No choice?

I had no choice. No choice but to grieve for my parents. No choice but to see the police pore over our lives; to sit in a coroner’s court while their deaths were dissected; to organise a memorial service and phone their friends to hear the same platitudes over and over. I had no choice but to go through pregnancy, labour, the early weeks of anxious motherhood, without my mother’s guidance.

I had no choice.

They did.

My parents chose to deceive me, not only when they disappeared, but on every single day since.

The doorbell rings again, again, again. My mother keeps her finger pressed, and the bell rings, shrill and insistent, through the spine of the house.

I clamp my hands over my ears and curl into a tight ball on my bed, but still I hear it. I sit up. Stand. Pace the length of the bedroom.

I go into the ensuite and turn on the shower, sitting on the edge of the bath while the room fills with steam and the mirror mists over. Then I strip off my running clothes and step in, pulling the door shut and cranking the temperature till it’s so hot it hurts. Beneath the shower I can’t hear the bell. I tip up my head, letting the water fill my ears, my nose, my mouth, until it feels as though I’m drowning. I give in to the tears that started when I saw my mother, and froze the second I understood she’d chosen to stay away. I cry with a physicality I have never before experienced, doubled over with the sobs that force their way from the pit of my stomach.

When I have sobbed so hard I feel too weak to stand, I sit and wrap my arms around my knees, the water running off my bent head and pooling in my lap. I cry until I am exhausted. Until the water runs to ice and my flesh is goosebumped.

When I switch off the shower, my limbs stiff and cold, I listen.

Silence.

She’s gone.

The sharp stab of grief takes me by surprise. I chastise myself for the chink of weakness it suggests. I have lived without my parents for over a year. I have survived. I will survive. There is nothing they could say now that would win my forgiveness. It is too late.

I find comfort in the softness of an old pair of jogging bottoms and a faded sweatshirt I steal from Mark’s side of the wardrobe. Thick cashmere socks. I rough-dry my hair with a towel and twist it into a loose bun.

Just as I am beginning to feel, if not better, then more together, the doorbell rings.

I freeze. Wait a full minute.

It rings again.

The single-mindedness I used to admire – envy, almost – in my mother now taunts me. She’s not going to give up. I could stay here all day, and she will wait and ring and shout. White-hot rage cracks through the veneer of calmness I had convinced myself was real, and I storm from my bedroom and down the stairs. How dare she?

A whole year.

It rattles around my head like a ball bearing in a pinball machine, firing shots indiscriminately. For a whole year she has lied to me. To everyone.

I arrive in the hall so fast, and with so little control, that my socks slip from under me and I crash onto my back; the breath knocked from me with such velocity that when I pick myself up I feel as sore as if I’d fallen from the top of the stairs.

The doorbell rings again. Rita’s nowhere to be seen. Even the dog has stopped hoping I’ll answer the door, but when my mother sets her mind to something, she doesn’t rest.