The Lying Game Read online

  ‘You’re not Wilde any more?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Still Wilde. I’m not married.’

  ‘Well, she’s a pretty one.’ Mary straightens. ‘She’ll be driving the boys wild herself in a few years, I’ll be bound.’

  My lip curls in spite of myself, and my fingers tighten on the spongy handle of the pram. But I force myself to take a breath, swallow down the biting remark I’m longing to make. Mary Wren is a powerful figure in the village – even seventeen years ago, you didn’t cross her, and I can’t imagine much has changed since, not now that her son is the local policeman.

  I’d thought I’d shaken all this off when I left Salten House, this complicated web of local allegiances, the uneasy relationship between the village and the school, which Ambrose negotiated effortlessly, compared to the rest of us. I would like to pull Freya’s pram away from Mary, tell her to mind her own business. But I can’t afford to antagonise her. It’s not just for the sake of Kate, living down here, it’s for all of us. The school washed its hands of us long ago – and Salten, if you are rejected by both town and gown, can be a very hostile place indeed.

  I shiver, in spite of the heat of the day, and Mary looks up.

  ‘Goose on your grave?’

  I shake my head, and try to smile, and she laughs, showing stained, yellow teeth.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you back,’ she says easily, patting the hood of Freya’s pram. ‘Seems like only yesterday you were in here, all of you, buying sweets and whatnot. Do you remember those tall tales your friend used to spin? What was her name … Cleo?’

  ‘Thea,’ I say, my voice low. Yes, I remember.

  ‘Told me her father was wanted for murdering her mother, and nearly had me believing her.’ Mary laughs again, her whole body shaking, making Freya’s pram tremble in sympathy. ‘Course, that was before I knew what terrible little liars you was, all of you.’

  Liars. One word, tossed so casually into the stream of her conversation … is it my imagination, or is there suddenly something hostile in Mary’s voice?

  ‘Well …’ I tug gently on the pram, loosing the folds of the hood from her fingers, ‘I’d better be going … Freya will be wanting her lunch …’

  ‘Don’t let me keep you,’ Mary says lightly. I duck my head, in a kind of submissive apology and she steps back as I begin manoeuv-ring the pram around to leave the shop.

  I’m halfway through a laborious three-point turn in the narrow aisle between the shelves, realising too late that I should have backed out, the way I came in, when the bell at the entrance clangs.

  I turn to look over my shoulder. For a moment I don’t recognise the figure in the doorway, but when I do, my heart leaps suddenly inside my chest like a bird beating hopelessly against a cage.

  His clothes are stained and crumpled, as if he’s slept in them, and there is a bruise on his cheekbone, cuts on his knuckles. But what strikes me, like a blow to the centre of my chest, is how much he has changed – and yet how little. He was always tall, but the lanky slenderness has gone, and the man standing there now fills the narrow entrance with his shoulders, exuding, without even trying, a sense of lean, contained strength.

  But his face, the broad cheekbones, the narrow lips, and oh, God, his eyes …

  I stand, stupid with the shock, trying to catch my breath, and he doesn’t see me at first, just nods a greeting to Mary and stands back, waiting politely for me to exit the shop. It’s only when I say his name, my voice husky and faltering, that his head jerks up, and he looks, really looks, for the first time, and his face changes.

  ‘Isa?’ Something falls to the floor, the keys he was holding in one hand. His voice is just as I remember it, deep and slow, with that strange little offbeat twist, the only trace of his mother tongue. ‘Isa, is it – is it really you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I try to swallow, try to smile, but the shock seems to have frozen the muscles in my face. ‘I – I thought you were – didn’t you go back to France?’

  His expression is rigid, impassive, his golden eyes unreadable, and there is something a little stiff in his voice, as if he’s holding something in check.

  ‘I came back.’

  ‘But why – I don’t understand, why didn’t Kate say …?’

  ‘You’d have to ask her that.’

  This time, I’m sure I’m not imagining it, there is definite coldness in his tone.

  I don’t understand. What has happened? I feel like I’m groping blindly in a room filled with fragile, precious objects, tilting and rocking with every false step I make. Why didn’t Kate tell us Luc was back? And why is he so … But here I stop, unable to put a name to the emotion that’s radiating from Luc’s silent presence. What is it? It’s not shock – or not completely, not now the surprise of my presence has worn off. It’s a coiled, contained sort of emotion that I can tell he is trying to hold back. An emotion closer to …

  The word comes to me as he takes a step forward, blocking my exit from the shop.

  Hate.

  I swallow.

  ‘Are you … are you well, Luc?’

  ‘Well?’ There is a laugh in his voice, but there’s no trace of mirth. ‘Well?’

  ‘I just –’

  ‘How the fuck can you ask that?’ he says, his voice rising.

  ‘What?’ I try to step back, but there is nowhere to go – Mary Wren is close behind me. Luc is blocking the doorway, with the pram between us, and all I can think of is that if he lashes out, it will be Freya who gets hurt. What has happened to change him so much?

  ‘Calm down, Luc,’ Mary says warningly from behind me.

  ‘Kate knew.’ Luc’s voice is shaking. ‘You knew what she was sending me back to.’

  ‘Luc, I didn’t – I couldn’t –’ My fingers are gripping the handle of Freya’s pram, the knuckles white. I want so badly to get out of this shop. There is a buzzing in my head, a bluebottle battering senselessly at the window, and I am reminded suddenly and horribly of the mutilated sheep, the flies around its spilled guts …

  He says something in French that I don’t understand, but it sounds crude, and full of disgust.

  ‘Luc,’ Mary says more loudly, ‘step out of the way, and get a hold of yourself, unless you want me to call Mark?’

  There is a silence, filled with waiting and the noise of the fly, and I feel my fingers tightening on the handle of the pram. And then Luc takes a slow, exaggerated step back, and waves a hand towards the doorway.

  ‘Je vous en prie,’ he says sarcastically.

  I push the pram roughly, bashing the front against the door frame with a jolt that makes Freya wake with a startled cry, but I don’t stop. I shove us both through, the door closing behind us with a jangling in my ears. And I storm up the street, putting as much distance as I can between us and that shop, until village buildings are just distant shapes, far off through the heat-hazed summer air, before I pick up my crying baby and hold her to my chest.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I hear myself muttering shakily in her ear, holding her to my shoulder with one hand, as I steer the pram jerkily along the dusty road back to the Mill. ‘It’s OK, the nasty man didn’t hurt us, did he? What do they say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? There, there, sweetheart. Oh, there, there, Freya. Don’t cry, honey. Please don’t cry.’

  But she won’t be comforted. She cries and cries, the wailing siren of an inconsolable child, woken with a shock from contented sleep. And it’s only when the drops fall onto the top of Freya’s head that I notice I am crying myself, and I don’t even know why. Is it shock? Or anger? Or just relief that we are out of there?

  ‘There, there,’ I repeat, senselessly, in time with my feet on the pavement, and I no longer know if I’m talking to Freya or myself. ‘It’s going to be OK. I promise. It’s all going to be OK.’

  But even as I’m saying the words, and breathing in the scent of her soft, sweaty hair, the smell of warm, cared-for baby, Mary’s words come bac
k to me, ringing in my ears like an accusation.

  Little liar.

  Rule Three

  Don’t Get Caught

  LITTLE LIAR.

  Little liar.

  The words sound in time with my footsteps on the pavement as I half walk, half jog out of Salten, their pitch rising with Freya’s siren cries.

  At last, maybe half a mile outside the village, I can’t take it any more – my back is on fire with carrying her, and her cries drill into my head like nails. Little liar. Little liar.

  I stop by the dusty side of the road, put the brake on the pram and sit on a log, where I unclip my nursing bra and put Freya to my breast. She gives a glad little shriek and throws up her chubby hands, but before she latches on, she pauses for a moment, looking up at me with her bright blue eyes, and she smiles, and her expression is so very clearly Honestly! I knew you’d get the hint eventually that I can’t help but smile back, though my back is sore, and my throat hurts from swallowing down my rage and fear at Luc.

  Little liar.

  The words come floating back through the years to me, and as Freya feeds, I shut my eyes, remembering. Remembering how it started.

  It was January, bleak and cold, and I was just back from a miserable holiday with my father and brother – unspoken words over hard, dry turkey, and presents that my mother hadn’t chosen, with her name written in my father’s handwriting.

  Thea and I came down together from London, but we missed the train we were supposed to catch, and consequently the connection with the school minibus at the station. I stood under the waiting-room canopy, sheltering from the cold wind, smoking a cigarette while Thea rang the school office to find out what we should do.

  ‘They’ll be here at five thirty,’ Thea reported back, as she hung up, and we both looked up at the big clock hanging over the platform. ‘It’s barely even four. Bollocks.’

  ‘We could walk?’ I said doubtfully. Thea shook her head, shivering as the wind cut across the platform.

  ‘Not with cases.’

  As we were waiting, trying to decide what to do, another train came in, this one the local stopping train from Hampton’s Lee, carrying all the schoolkids who went to Hampton Grammar. I looked, automatically, for Luc, but he wasn’t there. He was either staying late for some extracurricular thing, or skiving. Both were more than possible.

  Mark Wren was though, shambling down the platform in his habitual hunch, his bowed head displaying the painful-looking acne on the back of his neck.

  ‘Hey,’ Thea said, as he went past. ‘Hey, you, Mark, isn’t it? How are you getting into Salten? Do you get a lift?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Bus. Drops the Salten kids off at pub and carries on to Riding.’

  Thea and I looked at each other.

  ‘Does it stop at the bridge?’ Thea asked. Mark shook his head.

  ‘Not normal, like. But the driver might do it if you asked.’

  Thea raised an eyebrow and I nodded. It would save us a couple of miles, at least, and we could walk the rest of the way.

  We piled onto the bus. I stayed by the cases in the luggage rack, but Thea followed Mark Wren down the aisle to where he sat, his bag clutched across his lap like a shield, his Adam’s apple nervously bobbing in his throat. She winked at me as she passed.

  ‘Kate’s next weekend?’ Thea said, as she passed my chair in the common room that evening, on her way to prep. I nodded, and she winked, reminding me of the encounter on the bus. Lola Ronaldo switched channels with the remote, and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Kate’s again? Why on earth do you lot spend so much time over there? Me and Jess Hamilton are going into Hampton’s Lee to watch a film. We’re going to have supper at the Fat Fryer, but Fatima said she couldn’t come cos she was going to Kate’s with you. Why are you mouldering away in boring old Salten every weekend? Got your eye on someone?’

  My cheeks flushed, thinking of Kate’s brother, remembering the last time we had swum at the Mill. It had been an unseasonably hot autumn day, the evening sun like flames upon the water, reflecting from the windows of the Mill until the whole place seemed ablaze. We had lolled about all afternoon, soaking up the last sunshine of the year, until at last Kate had stripped off on a dare from Thea, and swum naked in the Reach. I don’t know where Luc was when Kate jumped in, but he appeared as she was swimming back from the centre of the channel.

  ‘Forgotten something?’ He held up her bikini, a mocking smile on his lips. Kate let out a screech that sent gulls wheeling and flapping up from the waves, making the red-gold waters dance.

  ‘You bastard! Give that back!’

  But Luc only shook his head, and as she swam towards him, he began pelting her with pieces of seaweed from the flotsam washed up against the Mill. Kate retaliated with splashes of water, and then, as she drew close enough, she grabbed for his ankle, hooking his leg out from underneath him, wrestling him into the water so that they both plunged deep, deep into the bay, arms and legs locked, only the rising bubbles showing their path.

  A moment later, Kate shot to the surface and struck out for the jetty, and when she scrambled out I saw that she was holding Luc’s swimming shorts, crowing with triumph while he trod water further out, swearing and laughing and threatening every kind of revenge.

  I had tried not to look, tried to read my book, listen to Fatima gossiping with Thea, concentrate on anything else but Luc’s naked body shimmering through the water, but somehow my gaze had kept straying back to him, gold and brown and lithe in the fractured blaze of autumn sun, and the picture rose up in front of me now, making me feel a strange emotion, something between shame and longing.

  ‘It’s Thea,’ I said abruptly, feeling my face hot beneath Lola’s gaze. ‘She’s pining with love for someone in the village. Keeps hoping we’ll bump into him if we spend enough time there.’

  It was a lie. But it was a self-serving one, a lie against one of us. Even as I said it, I knew I’d crossed a line. But I couldn’t take it back now.

  Lola looked towards Thea’s retreating back, and then at me, her face uncertain. We had developed a reputation, by this time, for piss-taking and insincerity, and I could tell she wasn’t sure whether this was true or not, but with Thea, who knew?

  ‘Oh yeah?’ she said at last. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said, relieved now that she was off the scent. And then, some stupid impulse compelled me to add a fatal detail. ‘Look, don’t tell her I told you but … it’s Mark Wren. They sat together on the bus back from the station.’ I lowered my voice, leaned towards her over the top of my book. ‘He put his hand on her thigh … you can imagine the rest.’

  ‘Mark Wren? That kid with the spots who lives above the post office?’

  ‘What can I say?’ I shrugged. ‘Thea doesn’t care about looks.’

  Lola snorted and moved away.

  I didn’t think of the scene again until the following week. I didn’t even remember to tell Kate, so she could mark my points in the book. By this time the game had become less of a competition, than an end in itself. The point was not to beat Fatima, Thea and Kate but to outwit everyone else – ‘us’ against ‘them’.

  We spent Saturday night at the Mill, and then on Sunday afternoon the four of us walked into Salten village to buy snacks from the shop, and a hot chocolate at the pub, which doubled up as the town cafe out of season, if you were prepared to put up with Jerry’s suggestive cracks.

  Fatima and Kate were sitting in the window seat while Thea and I were at the bar. She was ordering our drinks, and I was waiting to help carry them back to the table.

  ‘Excuse me, I said no cream on the last one,’ I heard her say sharply as the bartender pushed the last foaming cup over the counter. He sighed and began to scrape off the topping, but Thea broke in. ‘No, thank you. I’ll have a fresh cup.’

  I winced at her autocratic tone, at the way those cut-glass vowels turned a perfectly ordinary remark into a haughty command.
r />   The bartender swore under his breath as he turned to pour away the carefully prepared drink, and I saw one of the women waiting at the bar roll her eyes and mouth something at her friend. I didn’t catch the words, but her gaze flicked back towards me and Thea, and her look was contemptuous. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to make myself smaller and more invisible, wishing I had not worn my button-up shirt dress. The button at the top had broken off, making it lower-cut than normal, and I was painfully conscious of the flash of bra lace that kept creeping out from the neckline, and of the way the women were looking at us both – at my neckline, and at Thea’s ripped jeans, which showed scarlet silk knickers through the tears.

  As I stood, waiting for Thea to pass the mugs over her shoulder, Jerry came up behind me with a tray of dirty glasses. He held it up at shoulder height as he squeezed through the throng, and I felt a shock of recognition at the pressure of his crotch against me as he passed. The bar was full, but not crowded enough to explain that deliberate grind against my buttocks.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said with a wheezy chuckle. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  I felt my face flush, and I said to Thea, ‘I’m going to the loo. Can you manage the drinks?’

  ‘Sure.’ She barely looked up from counting out change, and I bolted for the door of the ladies, feeling my breath coming fast.

  It was only when I went into the cubicle to get some tissue to blow my nose, that I noticed the writing on the toilet door. It was scrawled in eyeliner, smudged and blurred already.

  Mark Wren is a dirty perv, it said. I blinked. It seemed like such an incongruous accusation. Mark Wren? Shy, mild-mannered Mark Wren?

  There was another one by the sink, this time in a different colour.

  Mark Wren fingers Salten House girls on the bus.

  And then finally, on the door out to the pub, in Sharpie, Mark Wren is a sex offender!!!!

  When I got out of the loo, my cheeks were burning.

  ‘Can we go?’ I said abruptly to Kate, Fatima and Thea. Thea looked up, confused.