Here We Lie (24 page)

I think back to Rose’s expression of disbelief when I told her I’d read Zoe’s letter to her son as an open command to murder me. Zoe’s eyes gleam with misery.

‘Yes,’ I say. And it’s the truth.

Zoe nods, her expression easing a little. ‘Good.’ She gets up. ‘So . . . well . . . just please think carefully before you do anything.’

The big graphics agency where Martin works part-time has its main office on the ground floor of a modern block. I’m sitting in reception waiting for Martin to appear,
thinking about Zoe’s visit, when Rose’s ex, Simon, saunters out of a door marked IT Section A. In all the turmoil of the morning, I’d forgotten about him working here. Simon
whistles as he walks towards the reception desk, picks up an envelope and turns to leave. I shrink down in my seat, hoping he won’t notice me. A strained chat with a man who unceremoniously
dumped my sister is the last thing I feel like dealing with at this point.

‘Hi, Emily.’

Great.

I look up. Simon is beaming down at me. He has a doughy, comfortable face with hooded eyes and a seriously receding hairline. I force a smile onto my own face.

‘Hi there.’

‘You waiting for your brother?’

‘Yes.’

There’s an awkward pause. The clock over the reception desk ticks noisily into the silence. Somewhere in the distance a phone rings.

‘Er, how’s Rose?’ A pink flush creeps over Simon’s cheeks.

‘Fine. Looking great, actually, and doing really, really well.’ I sit up straighter, on my guard. I’ve got nothing against Simon himself, but family is family. Anyway I’m
sure Rose wouldn’t want me to give the impression she was still suffering from Simon breaking up with her more than six months after the event.

‘Ah, well, Rose
always
looked great,’ Simon says wistfully. He fidgets with the edge of the envelope in his hand. ‘Is she, er, you know . . .
with
anyone these
days?’

I stare at him blankly. He’s giving every indication of still holding a massive candle for my sister. Which makes no sense. He dumped
her
.

‘It’s just I was wondering about calling her,’ Simon hurries on. ‘But obviously, if she’s seeing someone . . .’

I clear my throat. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

Simon looks around him. The reception area is empty, the receptionist behind the desk poring over a clipboard. He sits down next to me and lowers his voice.

‘Do you think she would mind if I called? I mean, before, she said she needed space . . . time . . . but it’s been a while and, if there isn’t anyone serious . . .?’

Another pause. ‘Sorry, but it sounds like you’re saying Rose broke up with you,’ I venture eventually. ‘And, maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but I thought
you
broke up with
her
.’

‘No.’ Simon’s face is the colour of beetroot. I’m pretty certain mine is a similar shade. ‘No, I don’t know where you got that idea from but no, I
didn’t break up with her. She, er, she said she needed space . . . like I said . . .’

I have no idea what to say now. Thankfully Martin chooses this minute to appear, hurrying through the saloon doors which shut behind him with a whoosh. He nods, distracted, at Simon, who stands
up, mumbles something that sounds roughly like ‘tell her I said hello’ and melts speedily away.

Martin rushes over to me, his face etched with concern. In an instant everything Simon just said goes out of my head. I’m back on the tube platform, reliving the shove and the grab. I
shiver.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ I lie.

‘Not buying it.’ The kindness of his expression threatens to make me cry, so I press my lips together and attempt to smile at him. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the
receptionist looking up. I flush, feeling self-conscious.

‘Can we talk later?’

‘Course, I’ll be home as soon as I can.’ Martin hands me his house key and asks the receptionist to call me a cab.

It’s almost one thirty when I arrive at his and Cameron’s elegant designer townhouse – whose most stunning feature is that it’s located on the banks of the river near
Twickenham. Their home is neat and stylish, full of angular furniture and several of the striking stone sculptures that Cameron collects. I wander around looking at the new pieces. The bottom level
of the house is mostly a large open-plan kitchen/diner that leads onto the garden and the
Maggie May
’s mooring in the river beyond, but up the spiral staircase there are two large
bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. The spare room is nominally Martin’s den, but apart from some gym equipment and pictures of me and Rose and our parents, it’s as bare – and
styled – as the rest of the place. Martin and Cameron moved in here a couple of years ago. I have never stayed over – after all, both my old home with Rose and my home with Jed are less
than a sixty-minute cab journey away – but now I test out the spare room’s large double bed. It’s firm and made up with crisp cotton sheets and an eiderdown. There are aluminium
blinds at the window, a metal-tipped chest of drawers and a wooden dressing table that doesn’t really fit with everything else. It used to belong to Mum, I think, though I don’t
remember it myself. Rose for some reason hated it and happily let Martin take it when he moved out years ago. Martin has lugged it around with him ever since.

Now I’ve stopped running I’m aware of how sore my arm is. I’m also extremely cold, in fact I can’t stop shivering. Trying to warm up, I go into the spare room’s en
suite bathroom and run a bath. I soak and wash my hair, then dry myself with the soft white towel on the rail. There’s a beautiful silk dressing gown on the back of the door, but I want
something warmer and cosier, so I search the chest of drawers until I find a sweater. It’s too big for me, of course, but I put it on anyway.

I think about going back down to make a cup of tea or find some painkillers to ease the dull ache in my shoulder, but I’m overwhelmed with tiredness so, instead, I crawl under the
eiderdown and fall fast asleep.

The sound of a door opening makes me wake with a start. My eyes spring open. Martin is walking into the room. He sits on the end of the bed.

‘So what’s up, Flaky?’ he asks, his concerned expression morphing into a sympathetic smile. ‘Boy trouble, eh?’ Flaky is his occasional pet name for me, a hangover
from when he was a cool sixth former and I was his dizzy little sister.

I sit up, feeling disoriented. It takes a moment for everything to come back to me. Then I shudder, remembering the sensation of falling towards the track. I launch into my story, trying to tell
everything as simply and clearly as I can.

When I get to this morning and my narrow escape from Lish’s attack on the tube platform I roll up the sleeve of his jumper and show him the dark bruise. ‘This is from where a
passer-by grabbed me and saved me.’

Martin lets out a low whistle. ‘Whoa.’ He frowns. ‘That looks sore. Are you sure you’re okay?’

I nod, though inside I am far from okay.

‘I’m going to get some ice for that bruise. D’you want a paracetamol too?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ I still feel really cold. ‘Would you mind putting on the heating too?’

‘Sure.’ Martin is already out of the door. He comes back a couple of minutes later with a tray containing water, pills and an icepack. I apply the pack to my sore skin and lie back
on the pillows.

‘Now go through what has happened again,’ Martin says very seriously. ‘Rose told me that Dan Thackeray turned up out of the blue peddling some line about Jed’s son
dealing drugs. She seems to think he’s trying to get between you and Jed in order to get you back. Is that true?’

‘No, well, yes . . . a bit,’ I explain. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘Go on.’

I take two paracetamol and tell him everything. I hesitate when I come to the recent part about kissing Dan, but then plunge ahead. Martin, like Rose, may not approve of Dan but unlike her he
won’t judge me for the kiss.

‘Holy cow.’ Martin’s only interjection is heartfelt. I finish my tale, describing first the row between Dan and Jed, then Zoe’s visit. Martin gives me a brief, fierce
hug, then shakes his head. ‘I thought I was bad, but you’re a bloody
disaster
magnet.’

We both laugh.

‘I know,’ I say with a rueful smile. Martin sighs and it strikes me that he looks tired and his suit is crumpled. There’s a sprinkling of grey in his carefully gelled dark hair
too. I’m sure that wasn’t there in the summer. I wonder if he worries about getting older. Cameron is several years younger and arguably even better-looking than Martin.

I deepen my smile. ‘At least I don’t put too much wax in my hair.’

‘You’re not too old, young lady,’ Martin jokes, echoing one of the lines our father used to say to Rose. The three of us often say the words to each other, part of the family
tradition we have constructed in the absence of our parents. Of course I have no memory of the words ever actually being spoken, but Rose and Martin do and it helps all of us keep our awareness of
Mum and Dad alive.

‘What time is it?’ I ask.

Martin checks his Rolex. I’m surprised when he says that it’s only just gone three p.m.; it feels much later.

‘You got away from work okay?’ I say.

‘Course. I was worried,’ Martin says. ‘Look, are you really sure you were deliberately pushed onto the tube track earlier?’

I close my eyes, recalling the blur of a memory that this morning has become. ‘No,’ I admit. ‘I mean, I was definitely shoved but I couldn’t say for sure that whoever did
it meant me actually to fall off the platform. Anyway, there’s no way of proving who it was. The guy at the ticket office said you couldn’t see a face on the CCTV of him, just that
whoever it was, was about five foot eleven and skinny. Which Lish is.’

Martin shrugs. ‘So are lots of people. I mean it
could
just be a random mugger.’

I shiver, though the heating is on now and my limbs are warming up. I look down at the eiderdown between us and twist my still-damp hair around my fingers. I feel about fourteen years old again,
on those occasions when Rose would get fed up with my behaviour and call on Martin to reason with me:
Please, Mart, Emily listens to you. Tell her that getting a navel piercing is a really bad
idea
. It strikes me suddenly that poor Dee Dee never made it to fourteen.

‘Jed was horrible earlier,’ I say. ‘He refused to listen to what Dan and I were saying. And he’s been talking to Zoe about it too.’

‘Well, it’s got to be hard for him to hear,’ Martin says softly. ‘Not to mention to see you with Dan Thackeray. Word to the wise, don’t tell him Dan kissed you. A
guy like Jed doesn’t take that sort of thing well.’ He pauses. ‘You know, when you first met him I thought he was a bit pompous and way, way too old for you, but the more times
I’ve met him the more I think he’s just what you need.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that he’s steady and he loves you as you are and he likes looking after you.’

‘Mmmn,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’

‘Relationships aren’t easy,’ Martin says. ‘I’m just saying I wouldn’t want you to split with Jed just because Dan’s turned up and you’re all
overwhelmed because he’s so hot . . .’ He tilts his head to one side and gives me a camp smile. ‘He
is
still hot, I assume?’

‘Hotter.’ I grimace, realizing the truth of this as I say it. ‘Unfortunately.’

Martin makes a face back at me. ‘Well, hot or not, I don’t want to see you acting like Rose, sabotaging relationships because they’re not exciting enough.’

‘You think Rose does that?’ What is he talking about? I suddenly remember my earlier conversation with Simon. I suck in my breath. ‘She dumped Simon, didn’t she? It
wasn’t the other way around at all, even though she said it was.’

‘Never mind Rose, I shouldn’t have brought her into this.’

‘But you did,’ I persist. ‘What did you mean by her “sabotaging” relationships?’

‘Forget it, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Said
what?
What
are
you saying? Did Rose sabotage things with Simon?’ I screw up my forehead, trying to think what this might mean in practice. ‘He gave me the
impression she dumped him, which is the opposite of what Rose said when it happened.’

Martin sighs. ‘I can’t, Emily. Rose spoke to me in confidence.’

‘Please, Mart, I know she doesn’t talk to me about stuff like that, but I half-know it now anyway. You might as well tell me the truth. Did she end it? Or did he? Because I thought
she was gutted that he dumped her; she was always saying how nice he was.’

‘Yeah, too nice for Rose.’ Martin sighs again. ‘It wasn’t that simple. Look, for God’s sake don’t tell her I’ve told you, but the truth is that Rose had
a fling with someone else while she was going out with Simon. He found out and, well, to be honest, I think he would have taken her back but Rose had fallen for this other guy quite hard, so she
kind of did an “I’m confused about how I feel . . . I need time to think” number on him.’

My mouth gapes. ‘Who was the guy she had the fling with?’

‘I don’t know,’ Martin admits. ‘She wouldn’t say, but I think he was married.’

‘
Rose
had an affair with a married man?’

‘Rose isn’t so perfect.’ Martin shifts uncomfortably on the edge of the bed. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything, I just don’t want you to go the same way,
throwing away someone steady and reliable for a guy like Dan Thackeray.’ He glances over at the dressing table in the corner. ‘It was bad like that for Mum with Dad, you know. I
remember her sitting there, in front of the mirror, telling me when I was thirteen or so.’

‘Telling you what?’

‘Dad having . . . I think she called them “ladies” . . . and being a bit unreliable, you know . . . affairs . . . well, maybe not full-on affairs but definitely flings . .
.’

I stare at him, open-mouthed, at this second bombshell. ‘You’re kidding, I thought Mum and Dad were happy together?’

‘They were, in their way,’ Martin insists. ‘But I remember Mum being miserable that she’d chosen a bad boy. Not that she put it in those terms of course.’