What Lies Between Us(65)

I can’t tell if she’s crying because she’s telling the truth or because I have finally unravelled her lies and she’s getting her comeuppance.

‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘You must believe me, Nina, it’s much more complicated than you understand.’

‘Then tell me. Why did you kill my dad? Did he cheat on you? Did he hit you? Did he gamble your money away? I need to know, I need to understand. Surely you must see that?’

Maggie opens her mouth as if she is ready to reply, then hesitates. ‘It’s not what you think,’ she says quietly and shakes her head, defeated and resigned to her fate.

And now we are crying together. ‘I have seen him, Maggie,’ I say, trying to appeal to her better nature. ‘I have held my dad’s bones in my hands and wiped the dirt from his skull. I have lost him twice now. I have lost everyone I have ever loved and the common denominator in all of this is you.’

‘But I’m still here,’ she says. And for a moment, I believe Maggie thinks she is all I need; that her presence as a constant in my life makes up for all she’s done. ‘Despite everything, I’ve never left you, I have never deserted you, I’ve always been here for you even when you didn’t want me to be.’

‘And you have never been enough,’ I reply, deliberately trying to hurt her. ‘I have had five weeks to try and get my head around a lifetime of your lies. For more than twenty years I have been kept away from my dad and my son and now I’m going to take that same time from you. This is going to be your prison in the same way you have imprisoned me. You won’t see your friends, go outside or speak to anyone other than me, ever again. For all intents and purposes, you are frozen in time like you have frozen me.’

‘Please,’ Maggie weeps, ‘Nina, darling, please don’t do this. You know that it’s wrong.’

I take her by the arm again and frogmarch her back upstairs. Once in her bedroom, I make her turn around and lift her foot while I replace her long chain for the shorter one that won’t stretch beyond the doorway. And then I leave her alone to adjust to her new life. Her cries gradually fade away and by the time I have closed the soundproofed door behind me, the house is silent again.





CHAPTER 56





NINA


That lump. That bloody lump in Maggie’s breast. It’s all I can think about.

All morning I’ve been making silly mistakes while trying to input new titles on to the library’s computer system because I’m worried about what she’s found and its potential to ruin everything. At her age, ill health is always going to be a risk, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. My shifting attitude towards her is also a concern. I was supposed to despise Maggie until the day she died. Instead, I find myself worrying about her.

Despite everything, she and I have built a type of co-dependent relationship, not so much a friendship but an alliance. So now, when I think about her dying before her time, it pulls at me. Maggie has been my only constant in thirty-eight years and I don’t know if I am ready for her to leave me yet.

It’s my lunch break and I’m hunched over a desk in an empty research room. A yellow notepad lies open in front of me. I draw a line down the centre of a page with a red biro and on one side, I write ‘Ways to help’ and on the other, ‘Risks involved’.

I begin with ‘Make Maggie an appointment with her GP’. Straight away, I know this wouldn’t work because her employers and ex-workmates think she has dementia and is living on the coast 300 miles away. If she were to reappear without warning, they wouldn’t need to spend much time with her to know that she’s a long way from losing her marbles.

Next, I write, ‘Take her to a walk-in centre’. On the other side of the column I add why this is pointless. They wouldn’t give her a mammogram or perform a biopsy. They would refer her to a specialist breast clinic.

And the only way for either of those options to work would be if once out of the house, Maggie says nothing about where she has been for the last two years. Can I trust her stay quiet? No, of course I can’t. If it were me, once outside I’d be running up the path and down the road faster than Usain Bolt.

I stare at the page and I lose track of time, trying to come up with another suggestion. Eventually, I write down the only choice left open to me.

‘Do nothing’.





CHAPTER 57





MAGGIE


I haven’t eaten with Nina in days. Instead, she has returned to leaving my three meals alongside vitamins and powders outside the bedroom door when she knows I’ll be asleep. I know why. It’s so she doesn’t have to face me and tell me what she plans to do about my lump. She is torn, and while she is feeling this way, I have a chance of getting through to her. But not from behind a closed bedroom door.

The clock on breakfast television tells me it’s just past 8.30 a.m., but I have yet to see her leave the house and set off for work. She is rarely this late, even if she is working a different shift. She is also never sick. My mind briefly wanders . . . what if she is sick, though? What will happen to me if something happens to Nina? I’ve read stories about single mums who have died suddenly, and their infant children have starved to death because they didn’t know how to raise the alarm. Their situation hardly differs from mine. I too am totally dependent on someone else to keep me alive. If Nina had become incapacitated, how would I know? And even if I did, I couldn’t help either of us while the landing door is locked. It’s another thing to add to my list of worries.