Let Me Lie(69)

‘I’d love to meet him.’

I’m about to say how wonderful that would be if only she could, when I see her face. She’s deadly serious. ‘You can’t be … It isn’t possible.’

‘Isn’t it? We could tell him I’m a distant cousin. That we lost touch, or fell out, or …’ She trails off, giving up on the idea.

In the choppy water below the pier I see a flash of movement. An arm. A head. Someone’s in the water. I’m half standing when I realise they’re swimming, not drowning. I shiver on their behalf; sink back down onto the bench.

My self-imposed deadline gives me four days left with Mum before I either tell the police, or let Mum disappear to somewhere she won’t be recognised. Either way, I have four days before I have to say goodbye to my mother for the second time.

Four days to have what I’ve longed for since Ella was born. Family. Mark and Ella and Mum and me.

I wonder.

She looks nothing like the few photos Mark has seen. She’s thinner, older, her hair is jet black and cut in a way that changes the shape of her face.

Could we?

‘And you’re sure you’ve never met him?’

She raises her eyebrows at my abrupt questioning. ‘You know I haven’t.’

‘The police found one of Mark’s leaflets in your diary.’ I try to keep my tone neutral, but it still sounds like an accusation. ‘You made an appointment with him.’

I take in her furrowed brow, the movement of her jaw as she worries at the inside of her lower lip. She stares at the wooden planks beneath our feet, at the swimmer, who cuts cleanly through the waves.

‘Oh!’ She turns back to me, relief showing on her face now that she has solved the mystery. ‘Counselling services. Brighton.’

‘Yes. You made an appointment with him.’

‘That was Mark? Your Mark? God, how extraordinary.’ She picks at a loose piece of skin around a fingernail. ‘It came through the door after your dad left. You know what I was like – I was in pieces. I couldn’t sleep; I was jumping at the slightest thing. I had no one to turn to, not really. I needed to tell someone – get it off my chest – so I booked the appointment.’

‘But you didn’t keep it.’

She shakes her head. ‘I thought whatever I said would be in confidence. Like confession, I suppose. But when I looked through the small print it said that discretion couldn’t be guaranteed if the client’s life was at risk, or if they disclosed a crime.’

‘Right.’ I wonder if Mark has ever betrayed a client’s confidence by going to the police, and if he’d ever tell me if he had.

‘So, I didn’t go.’

‘He doesn’t remember.’

‘He must deal with a lot of people.’ She takes my hands, rubs them with her thumbs. ‘Let me be part of a family again, Anna. Please.’

A beat.

‘He’ll know it’s you.’

‘He won’t. People believe what they want to believe,’ Mum says. ‘They believe what you tell them. Trust me.’

I do.





THIRTY-NINE


True story: more people die over Christmas than at any other time.

The cold weather gets them. Hospital resources fail them. Loneliness sends them reaching for the pills, a knife, a rope.

Or they fall into a fist.

I threw my first punch on 25 December 1996.

Merry Christmas.

Anna was five. Sitting by the tree in a sea of wrapping paper, clutching a Buzz Lightyear with undisguised delight.

‘They’ve sold out everywhere, you know,’ Bill said, with more than a touch of smugness. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get hold of that one.’

Next to Anna, discarded on the floor, was a Barbie. It had hair that grew, eyeshadow that changed colour. Articulated bloody ankles. A Barbie I’d worked for, chosen, paid for. She’d looked at it once – saw how the hair could grow longer with the little wheel at the back – then she’d dropped it on the floor. I don’t think she picked it up again all Christmas.

I poured my first drink then. Felt judgemental eyes on me as I knocked it back, so I poured another, just because. I sat. And I seethed.

You messed up Christmas lunch. Overcooked the turkey, undercooked the sprouts. You’d had a drink yourself. You thought it was funny. I didn’t.

You tried to make Bill stay. Didn’t want to be on your own with me. When he insisted, you walked him to the door and pulled him into the sort of embrace you never gave me any more. I drank more. Seethed more.

‘Shall we ask Alicia to join us next Christmas?’ you said. ‘Awful to think of her and Laura in that horrible flat.’

I said yes, but I wasn’t so sure. If I was honest I couldn’t imagine Alicia here, in our house. She was different to us. She spoke differently; dressed differently. She belonged in her world, not in ours.

We’d kept our own presents till last. Anna was in bed, and the turkey wrapped in foil (although it couldn’t have got any drier), and you made us sit on the floor like we were five ourselves.

‘You first.’ I handed you a present. I’d paid for it to be wrapped, but you pulled off the ribbon without looking at it and I thought next time I wouldn’t bother.