The Lying Game Read online

  Owen is sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and staring out of the window, but he looks up as I come in.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, straight off, and his face crumples with something between relief and unhappiness.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ he says. ‘I was a complete dick. What I said –’

  ‘Look, you’re entitled to feel that way. And you’re right – I mean not about the breastfeeding, that was horseshit, but I will try and involve you more. It’s going to happen anyway. Freya’s getting older, she won’t need me as much, and besides, I’ll be going back to work soon.’

  He stands up and hugs me, and I feel his chin resting on the top of my head, and the warm muscles of his chest beneath my cheek, and I draw a deep, tremulous breath, and let it out.

  ‘This is nice,’ I manage at last, and he nods.

  We stand like that for a long time, I don’t know how long. But at last there’s a noise from above, a kind of chirrup, and I straighten.

  ‘Crap, I left Freya in the bed. She’ll roll off.’

  I’m about to pull away, but Owen pats my shoulder.

  ‘Hey, new resolution, remember? I’ll go.’

  I smile, and nod, and he sprints up the stairs. As I put the kettle on for my morning cup of tea, I can hear him, cooing at Freya as he picks her up, her squeaking giggles as he plays peekaboo with her comforter.

  While I drink my tea, I listen to Owen padding about in the room upstairs. I can hear him pulling out wipes and nappies to change Freya, and then the sound of our chest of drawers as he gets out a fresh vest for her.

  They take a long time, longer than I would over a nappy change, but I resist the urge to go up, and at last there are footsteps on the stairs and they appear together in the doorway, Freya in Owen’s arms, their expressions heart-meltingly similar. Freya has a comical case of bed-head almost as good as Owen’s, and they are both grinning at me, pleased with themselves, with each other, with the sunny morning. She reaches out a hand towards me, wanting me to take her, but, mindful of Owen’s words, I just smile at her and stay where I am.

  ‘Hello, Mummy,’ Owen says solemnly, looking at Freya and then back at me. ‘Me and Freya have been discussing, and we’ve decided that you should have a day off today.’

  ‘A day off?’ I feel a little spurt of alarm. ‘What kind of day off?’

  ‘A day of complete pampering. You’ve been looking absolutely knackered, you deserve a day not worrying about us.’

  It is not Freya I’m worrying about. In fact, in many ways, she’s the only thing keeping me sane right now. But I can’t say that.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any protests,’ Owen says. ‘I’ve booked you an appointment at a day spa already, and I’ve paid in full, so unless you want me to lose my money, you’ve got to be down in town by 11 a.m. Me and Freya are going to manage all by ourselves from –’ he glances at the kitchen clock – ‘from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., and we don’t want to see you.’

  ‘What about her feed?’

  ‘I’ll give her one of those cartons of follow-on milk. And maybe –’ he chucks her under the chin – ‘maybe we’ll go wild and have some mashed broccoli, won’t we, funny face? What do you say?’

  I don’t want to. The idea of spending the day at a spa with all this in my head – it’s, it’s obscene somehow. I need to be moving, doing, pushing away the what-ifs and the fears.

  I open my mouth … but I can’t find anything to say. Except …

  ‘OK.’

  As I wave goodbye, there is a sickness in my stomach at the prospect of being left with nothing to think about but Salten and what happened there. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t work out like that. For the Tube journey I am tense, gritting my teeth, feeling the tension headache building at the base of my skull and in my temples. But when I arrive at the salon, I give myself over to the practised hands of the spa therapist, and somehow all the obsessive thoughts are pummelled out of me, and for the next two hours I think of nothing but the ache in my muscles, the tightness at the back of my neck and between my shoulders that she is pressing away.

  ‘You’re very tense,’ she murmurs in a low voice. ‘There’s a lot of knots at the top of your spine. Are you carrying a lot of stress at work?’

  I shake my head blearily, but I don’t speak. My mouth is open. I feel the cool slack wetness of drool against the spa towel, but I am so tired, I can’t find it in myself to care.

  Part of me never wants to leave here. But I must go back. To Kate, Fatima and Thea. To Owen. To Freya.

  I emerge from the spa blinking and dazed some four or five hours later with my hair light around my neck where it has been cut, and my muscles loose and warm, and I feel a little drunk – drunk with possession of my own body again. I am me. Nothing is weighing me down. Even my handbag feels light, for I left at home the Marni tote I’ve used since having Freya – a big capable thing with space for nappies and wipes and a change of top – and decanted my purse and keys into the bag I used before she was born. It’s a tiny thing, not much bigger than a large envelope, and covered with impractical decorative zips that would be a magnet to an inquisitive baby. It feels like the old me, even though it’s only big enough for my purse, phone, keys and lip balm.

  As I walk home from the Tube, I feel overwhelmed with a rush of love for Owen and Freya. I feel like I’ve been away for a hundred years, over an impossible distance.

  It will be OK. I am suddenly sure of that. It will be OK. What we did was stupid and irresponsible, but it wasn’t murder or anything close to it, and the police will realise that, if it ever gets that far.

  As I climb the stairs to the flat I cock my head, listening for Freya’s cry … but everything is silent. Are they out?

  I slip my keys into the door, quietly, in case Freya is asleep – and call out their names, softly. No answer. The kitchen is empty, filled with summer sunshine, and I put on a coffee and then take it upstairs to drink it.

  Except … I don’t.

  Instead I stop dead in the living-room doorway, as if something has hit me, and I cannot breathe.

  Owen is sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands, and in front of him, sitting on the coffee table, are two objects, laid out like exhibits at a trial. The first is the packet of cigarettes from my bag, my tote, the one I left behind.

  And the second is the envelope – postmarked Salten.

  I stand there, my heart hammering, unable to speak, as he holds up the drawing in his hand – the drawing of me.

  ‘Do you want to explain this?’

  I swallow. My mouth is dry, and my throat feels again as if there is something lodged in it, something painful I cannot swallow away.

  ‘I could say the same thing,’ I manage. ‘What were you doing spying on me? Going through my bag?’

  ‘How dare you.’ He says it softly, so as not to wake Freya, but his voice is shaking with anger. ‘How dare you. You left your fucking bag here, and Freya went through it. She was chewing on these –’ he throws the packet of cigarettes down at my feet, spilling the contents – ‘when I found her. How could you lie to me?’

  ‘I –’ I begin, and then stop. What can I say? My throat hurts with the effort of not speaking the truth.

  ‘As for this …’ He holds out the drawing of me, his hands trembling. ‘I can’t even … Isa, are you having an affair?’

  ‘What? No!’ It’s jerked out of me before I have time to think. ‘Of course not! That drawing, it’s not – it’s not me!’

  I know as soon as it’s out of my mouth that that was a stupid thing to say. It is me – it’s self-evidently me. Ambrose is too good an artist for me to be able to deny that. But it’s not me now, is what I meant. It’s not my body – my soft, post-pregnancy body. It’s me as I was, as I used to be.

  But the look on Owen’s face tells me what I’ve done.

  ‘I mean –’ I struggle. ‘It is me, it was me, but it’s not –’

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he breaks in, his voice anguish
ed, and then he turns away from me as though he can’t bear to look at me, walks to the window. ‘I rang Jo, Isa. She said there was no bloody meet-up yesterday. It’s that man, isn’t it, Kate’s brother, the one who sent you roses?’

  ‘Luc? No, how can you ask that?’

  ‘Then who? It’s from Salten, I saw the postmark. Is that what you were doing down there with Kate, meeting him?’

  ‘He didn’t draw these!’ I shout back.

  ‘Then who?’ Owen cries, turning back to me. His face is contorted with anger and distress, his skin blotchy, his mouth square like a child trying not to cry. ‘Who did?’

  I hesitate – just long enough for him to make a noise of disgust, and then he rips the drawing in half with one shocking gesture, tearing through my face, my body, ripping apart my breasts, my legs, and he throws the two halves at my feet and turns as if to go.

  ‘Owen, don’t,’ I manage. ‘It wasn’t Luc. It was –’

  But there I stop. I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t say it was Ambrose without everything unravelling. What can I tell him? There is only one thing I can say.

  ‘It was – it was Kate,’ I say at last. ‘Kate drew them. A long time ago.’

  He comes up to me, very close, and takes my chin, staring into my eyes, holding my gaze as if he’s trying to look inside me, into my soul. I try to brazen it out, to stare back at him, hold his gaze fearlessly – but I can’t. My eyes shift and falter and I have to look away from that naked pain and anger.

  His face twists as he drops his hand.

  ‘Liar,’ he says, and then he turns to go.

  ‘Owen, no –’ I move between him and the door.

  ‘Get off me.’ He pushes roughly past, heads for the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘None of your business. Pub. Michael’s. I don’t know. Just –’ But he can’t speak now, he’s close to crying I think, his face contorted with the effort of keeping his despair reined in.

  ‘Owen!’ I cry after him as he reaches the front door, and for a moment he stops, his hand on the lock, waiting for me to speak, but then there’s a sound from above, a rising wail. We’ve woken Freya.

  ‘I –’ I say, but I can’t concentrate, Freya’s cry, high and bubbling, drills into my brain, driving everything else out. ‘Owen, please, I –’

  ‘Go to her,’ he says, almost gently, and then he lets the door slam shut, and he is gone, and I can only crouch on the stairs, while Freya screams from above, and try to muffle my sobs.

  He doesn’t come back at all that night. It’s the first night he’s ever done this – gone out, stopped out, without telling me where he was going and when he would be back.

  I eat a lonely supper with Freya, put her to bed, and then I pace the flat in the growing darkness, trying to work out what to do.

  The worst of it is, I can’t blame him. He knows I am lying to him, it’s not just the stupid, stupid slip I made over Jo, he has felt it ever since I left for Kate’s. And he’s right. I am lying to him. And I don’t know how to stop.

  I send him a text, just one, I don’t want to beg. It says Please come home. Or at least let me know you’re ok?

  He doesn’t answer. I don’t know what to think.

  Sometime around midnight I get a text from Ella, Michael’s girlfriend. It says. I have no idea what happened, but Owen is here. He’s spending the night. Please don’t tell him I sent this, it’s not my business to get involved, but I couldn’t bear to think of you worrying.

  I feel relief flood me, as real and physical a sensation as stepping under a hot shower.

  Thank you so much!!!! I text back. And then, as an afterthought, I won’t tell him, but thank you.

  It is 2.30 a.m. before I go upstairs, and even later before I finally cry myself to sleep.

  When the morning comes, my mood has changed. I am no longer full of despair. I am angry. Angry at myself, at my past, at my own stupidity.

  But I am angry at Owen as well.

  I try to imagine the situation reversed – him getting roses from an old friend, an anonymous drawing through the post, and I can imagine myself seeing red. I can even imagine myself throwing accusations. But I cannot imagine myself walking out on my partner and child without telling them where I was going, without even trying to believe their side of the story.

  It’s Monday, so I’m not expecting him to come home until after work. He keeps a spare suit at his office for emergencies, so there’s no need, except perhaps for him to shave, but the times are over when the Civil Service expected baby-smooth skin on their male employees, and in any case, Michael could lend him a razor if he needed one.

  I go to the park with Freya. I push her on the swings. I pretend nothing is wrong, and I refuse to think about all the what-ifs crowding my head.

  Seven o’clock comes … and goes. I eat supper, feeling the pain in my throat again, choking me.

  I put Freya to bed.

  And then, just as I am lying on the sofa, pulling a rug over me in spite of the summer heat, I hear it – the sound of a key in the door – and my heart jumps into my throat.

  I sit up, wrapping the rug around me as if it can shield me from what’s coming … and I turn to face the door.

  Owen is standing in the doorway, his suit rumpled, and he looks as if he has been drinking.

  Neither of us says anything. I’m not sure what we are waiting for – for a clue perhaps. For the other person to apologise.

  ‘There’s risotto on the hob,’ I say at last, my throat sore with the effort of speaking. ‘If you’re hungry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he says shortly, but he turns and goes down into the kitchen, and I hear him rattling plates and cutlery. He is drunk, I can tell by the way he cracks the plate down harder than he means onto the work surface, in the way he drops the knife and fork, picks them up, and then somehow drops them again.

  Shit, I have to go down. He will scald himself at this rate – or set his tie on fire.

  When I get to the kitchen he is sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, and a plate of cold risotto in front of him, and he is not eating. He is just sitting there, staring down at the plate, and there is a kind of drunken despair in his eyes.

  ‘Let me,’ I say, and I take the plate, and put it in the microwave for a few seconds.

  When I put it back in front of him it is steaming, but he begins to eat, mechanically, not seeming to notice how hot the food is.

  ‘Owen … About last night –’

  He turns his face towards me, and there’s a sort of painful, naked pleading in his expression, and I see, suddenly, that he doesn’t want this any more than I do. He wants to believe me. If I offer him an explanation now, he will accept it, because he wants so much for this to all be over, for those accusations he hurled last night to be untrue.

  I take a deep breath. If I can only find the right words …

  But just as I’m about to speak, my phone rings, making us both jump.

  It’s Kate, and I almost don’t answer it. But something – habit, or worry, I’m not sure which – makes me tap it to pick up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Isa?’ Her voice is panicked, and immediately I know something is wrong. ‘Isa, it’s me.’

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s about Dad,’ She is trying not to cry. ‘About his body. They’ve asked … they told me –’

  She stops, her breathing coming fast, and I can tell she’s struggling against sobs.

  ‘Kate, Kate, slow down. Take a deep breath. What have they told you?’

  ‘They’re treating it as a suspicious death. They want me to come in. For questioning.’

  I go completely cold. My legs go weak and I grope my way to the kitchen table and sit down opposite Owen, suddenly unable to support my own weight.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Can you come down? We – I need to talk.’

  I know what she is saying. She is trying to make
it sound innocuous, in case Owen is listening, but we need to speak, urgently, before the police interview her, and perhaps us. We need to straighten out our stories.

  ‘Of course,’ I manage. ‘I’ll come tonight. The last train to Salten isn’t until nine thirty. I can make it if I can get a cab to the station.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ There’s a sob in her voice. ‘I know I’m asking a lot but Fatima can’t come, she’s on call, and I can’t get hold of Thea. She’s not answering her phone.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I’m coming.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, Isa. I – this means a lot. I’ll call Rick now, tell him to pick you up.’

  ‘I’ll see you soon. I love you.’

  It’s only when I hang up that I see Owen’s face, his eyes red with tiredness and drink, and I realise how this will seem to him. My heart sinks.

  ‘You’re going back to Salten?’ He spits the words out. ‘Again?’

  ‘Kate needs me.’

  ‘Fuck Kate!’ He shouts the words so that I flinch, and then he stands and picks up the bowl of risotto, food he’s barely eaten, and throws it into the sink so that the contents splatter across the tiles. Then he speaks again, more softly, a crack in his voice. ‘What about us, Isa? What about me?’

  ‘This is not about you,’ I say. My hands are shaking as I pick the bowl out of the mess of risotto, run the tap. ‘This is about Kate. She needs me.’

  ‘I need you!’

  ‘Her father’s body has been found. She’s in pieces. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Her father’s – what? What the hell is this about?’

  I put my head in my hands. I can’t face this. I can’t face explaining it all – negotiating between the truths and the lies. And Owen won’t believe me anyway, not in the mood he’s in. He is spoiling for a fight, looking for a way to feel slighted.

  ‘Look, it’s complicated – but she needs me, that’s the bottom line. I have to go.’

  ‘This is bullshit! It’s all bullshit. She’s managed without you for seventeen years, Isa. What’s got into you? I don’t understand it – you haven’t seen her for years, and suddenly she clicks her fingers and you come running?’