Here We Lie (39 page)

I rifle past these to the other end of the wardrobe which is stacked with shoes and old cardboard boxes. If my old text book is anywhere in this room, it will be here. I open a box that looks
likely and find myself faced with Martin’s collection of football annuals from when he was ten or eleven. Tears fill my eyes as I put the lid back on and reach for the next box. It just
contains old clothes. As I pull it away from the wall to get a purchase on the next box along, something wedged behind falls to the floor with a light thud.

It’s a phone. An iPhone, similar to my own.

What the hell is this doing here? It’s clearly not Rose’s normal phone, which has a silvery cover and is with her downstairs. Even odder, this iPhone is still attached to its
charger. There’s a plug socket right next to the wardrobe. Heart suddenly beating fast, I shove the charger into the socket. The phone whirs into life. I see the Apple icon, then the lock
screen appears.

I gasp. The screen shows a photo of myself and Dee Dee. It’s sunny and we’re smiling, the sea sparkling behind us. All at once I’m back in Corsica, standing with Dee Dee as she
took our picture while Jed went to tell Martin and Cameron that he and I needed to go back early to the yacht.

This is Dee Dee’s missing phone.

Everyone else is outside on the deck except Lish who is in the kitchen which they call the galley. I thought it would be fun being on Martin and Cameron’s yacht but so
far I’ve HATED it. It’s all because of what I saw this morning. I’ve been thinking about it all day. It’s like in my head ALL the time. I can’t stop seeing it. And I
know that it’s wrong that no one knows and they’re outside LYING and I really want to tell someone though it would be SO hard to talk about it so I’m glad I made that promise to
Bex not to say anything but now I feel all dead inside, like there’s a stone pressing down on my chest squeezing all the breath out and it hurts and I just want it to go away but it goes on
and on and I’m screaming inside my head and nobody else can hear.

I nearly told Emily earlier, when we were on that ruins bit up that hill that Daddy made us climb and I took a picture and made it my lock screen. Emily got a headache and now I’ve got
one too. I just sent Bex a text saying I really think I should tell Emily, that maybe they don’t need to know it’s me, that I could just leave a clue somewhere for her when we’re
back in the villa.

It’s not fair Daddy made me eat that fish for dinner just now. It was RANK. He doesn’t like chocolate with nuts in and nobody makes him eat THAT. I hate him, I hate him. They
think I’m in here Skype-ing with my friends but I only have one friend and thanks to HER stupid dad she can’t go online AT ALL. I HATE both of our dads. Oh, come ON, Bex. Text me
back.

There, it’s her. Back in a sec.

Oh, now I feel worse than ever. I can’t BELIEVE what Bex has texted, she says I am evil for wanting to mess up people’s lives and I shouldn’t need to tell
anyone other than her anything because she is supposed to be my best friend and she swears that if I talk to Emily she will never be my friend again. I don’t know what to do, I can’t
believe it, Bex HATES me and I thought she was like my blood sister and now the weight on my chest is like filling my whole body SO dragging and heavy and I want to DIE because it is ALWAYS like
this, that people I think will be my friends turn away and NOBODY cares.

I just went into the kitchen-galley bit of the boat to see Lish. I thought maybe I could tell him, but he was by the sink scooping stuff like tiny crystals out of a jar and
putting them in a little packet and when I said his name he jumped and shouted at me. And I said I wanted to talk and he held up the packet and he said ‘get out of here, you silly little
bitch, this stuff is fucking LETHAL, what are you doing in here’ and I said I didn’t know and he called me ‘a useless little’ then the c-word which I don’t like
saying. And he told me to go away and I did but when he didn’t know I was looking I saw him put the packet in his bag and I wanted to get it and throw it in his face but instead I came back
in here. They’ve all been talking outside all evening. Except Rose once came in to the bathroom and she smiled at me and Emily came to see how I was and I would have told her but she was in a
hurry and saying how much fun they were having outside.

Okay, there is another text.

It is Bex again, she says she is SO upset and PLEASE not to tell anyone else what I saw or it will prove I’m not her friend and she will CUT herself.

Inside me it is all dead and cold and it just made me realize Bex isn’t really a friend, she just wants me to do what she says. Who was I kidding that she would really like me for me? I
am totally alone.

I am not going to reply to her text except to say don’t hurt yourself love DD x. I don’t know what to do about what I saw, maybe it is best just to keep it to myself but not
because Bex says and I still want us to be friends but because it would be too hard to say anything and I will keep their secret and just hate them forever. My head is hurting. I just don’t
know, I just don’t know.

What the hell is Dee Dee’s missing phone doing in my sister’s wardrobe? I stare at the picture on the screen. I look happy and relaxed, though you can see the
tension behind my eyes from the headache I had that afternoon. Beside me Dee Dee is smiling, yet I can’t help but notice the look of desperation on her face. How did I miss that at the time?
For a moment I’m transported back to the citadel at Calvi, the sun beating down, the band of pressure across the back of my head and Jed, striding over, irritated with his daughter, ordering
her away and leading me back to the yacht.

What is Rose doing with this? Where did she get it? Why hasn’t she said anything? My mind flashes back to the morning Dee Dee died. Other than my sister’s terrified face as she stood
outside Dee Dee’s door when Jed and I came downstairs I have no memory of her involvement. She left, of course, to go to Martin and Cameron’s boat. Could Rose have picked up Dee
Dee’s phone without realizing what it was? It seems unthinkable. Even more so that she wouldn’t have mentioned it, knowing that – for a while at least – the police were
actively looking all over the villa for it.

Downstairs I hear the kettle coming to the boil. Rose is making tea. Soon she will call up the stairs and tell me it is ready and I will have to go down and face her and ask her what possible
reason she has had for keeping and hiding this phone. An image of Dee Dee’s anxious face flashes into my head again: ‘I’ve got a secret . . . It’s something I saw . .
.’

Suppose Dan and I were right? Suppose there is something on Dee Dee’s phone that explains who killed her? A cold hand circles its fingers around my heart. Suspicions press at my brain,
demanding to be let in, but I won’t give them access. I still believe there must be a logical explanation for why the phone is here, wedged behind this box in my loving, caring sister’s
house.

Numb, I swipe the screen, opening it up. I turn to the call log . . . there are nine or ten missed calls from Jed’s phone here, all placed when we were searching for the mobile. I remember
the dead look in Jed’s eyes as he handed Gary his phone and let him make call after call, each one ringing into silence. I scroll up, but see no names other than ‘Mum’ and
‘Dad’. I turn to the messages. The last set of texts are from someone called Bex, sent on the evening Dee Dee died, the evening she was made to eat fish to please her father. I scan the
converstion:

I want 2 tell Emily, or myb get her 2 fnd out smhw. She shd no, D xxxx

Ur selfish and evil messing up ppls lives, I thought I ws ur best frind so y do u want 2 tell Emily? If u tell I wont spk to u EVER agn Bex

The blood thunders in my temples.

If u want b my frend, jst dnt tlk 2 any1 else, or I wl CUT myslf Bex

Don’t hurt urslf, love DD x

That’s the final text. I frown. Who is Bex? What did she (or he) not want Dee Dee to tell me? Was this about some drug deal? I don’t see how it can be, unless Rose has somehow found
the phone and hidden it so as not to implicate Martin . . . but Martin didn’t
know
about the drug dealing until just before he died.

‘Emily, tea’s made!’ Rose calls out. Downstairs in the hallway she is humming to herself, completely unaware of what I’ve discovered.

With trembling hands I open the email then the FaceTime apps. Nothing. I turn to the photos. I can see at a glance that there are pictures here from our holiday. There’s the selfie Dee Dee
took of me and her again. But there’s also a series of videos. The start points are all closeups of Dee Dee’s face, except one towards the very end of the final row. The two figures in
the frame are blurry, entwined. I peer closer. Are they
kissing
?

I forget Rose downstairs or the bedroom around me and press play.

The film starts. The two figures
are
kissing. They pull apart and my brain registers in slow motion what my eyes have just seen.

Jed and Rose.

‘Please don’t go,’ on-screen Rose is pleading. ‘Just one more time.’

‘I want to but . . .’ Jed holds her away from him. She is wearing a sheer black slip, her breasts clearly visible underneath. ‘God, you’re fucking gorgeous.’

The video ends abruptly.

I stare at the final image on the screen, my sister a blur with her hands in the air.

‘What are you doing?’ Rose’s voice from across the room makes me jump.

I turn, scrambling to my feet. Dee Dee’s phone, still in my hands, is ripped out of the charger.

Rose’s eyes widen as she sees it.

‘You . . .’ My voice sounds strange, hoarse, to my ears. ‘You. . . and Jed. . .’

I see the acknowledgement in Rose’s eyes.

‘I did it for you,’ she says quietly. ‘I’ve always done everything for you.’

‘What?’ There’s a long silence as we stare at each other.

‘Emily, you need to—’

‘No. Wait. How can you . . . you and Jed . . . how can you have slept with my fiancé? How can that have been
for me
?’

Rose sits down on her bed. She pats the mattress beside her, just as she used to years ago when I had a problem I needed to share as a teenager.

I stay where I am.

Rose sighs. ‘Okay, the truth is that Jed was drawn to me. We had a few nights together in the early days of your relationship, then he pulled away, for your sake,’ she says
matter-of-factly. ‘I let him go, for your sake.’

The room is silent. I am frozen. The bed that Mum and Dad slept in, that I remember coming to when I was ill or on cold mornings, resting my feet against Mum’s legs, my head on her chest .
. . and then Rose, thinner and harder than Mum, no substitute for the hugs and cuddles I still sometimes wanted, but always there, always offering help, always in my corner.

I stare at her. I can see no contrition in her eyes.

‘Jed told me back in March, just after you moved in together, that he wanted to marry you, to look after you as I had done for so many years, that part of his reason was to help
me
,
to let me be free of all the responsib—’

‘Wait,’ I butt in, unable to stop myself. ‘You’re talking as if I’m a child. Neither of you need to “look after” me or “take
responsibility”.’

Rose shakes her head. ‘You don’t understand, Emily. I sacrificed Jed for you, because I wanted you to have him, just as I gave up my late teens and twenties to look after you
and—’

‘I didn’t ask you to give up anything. You can’t have an affair with my boyfriend and make out you were doing me a good turn. How many times did it happen? When did it
start?’

‘The first time was in March, just before you moved in together,’ Rose confesses, her cheeks flushing pink. ‘Jed came around to pick you up, but you were doing a parents’
evening and you’d forgotten to tell him you’d be late. I had to get out of the shower to answer the door and I guess my robe slipped off my shoulder and I saw him looking at the bare
skin and I offered him a drink while he waited for you to get back . . .’

I frown, trying to remember the evening she’s talking about. I did come home one night, exhausted, not really in the mood for dinner with Jed, but guilty that I was late. He was waiting in
the living room, sipping at a white wine, and brushed away my apologies, saying how wonderful it was that I did something so worthwhile as a job, unlike Zoe who had managed to run the business
he’d bought her into the ground.

I don’t remember Rose from that evening at all; she must have gone upstairs before I came back.

‘You had sex with him? In this room?’

Rose nods, her face suddenly radiant. ‘It was wonderful,’ she breathes. ‘He’s an amazing lover, so powerful . . .’

I feel sick. ‘And what about afterwards?’

‘Not for ages.’ Rose grimaces. ‘I felt terrible. I knew it was wrong, that he had chosen you. But the heart wants what the heart wants and there were a few times when we just
couldn’t help ourselves.’ She pauses. ‘You see the thing was that I knew it was wrong, but it felt so
right
. It gave me a new lease of life . . . it still does, even though
it’s been over for a long time. I can’t explain it, but I feel better about myself than I have done in years.’

I stare at her, unsure whether to believe her, uncertain whether it matters either way. Why did I never pick up on any chemistry between them? And yet, it kind of explains the new glow Rose
developed around that time, the way she lost weight and smartened up, all the new dresses hanging in the wardrobe. And then I remember Martin’s revelation from before Christmas. ‘So
Jed
was the married man you had the affair with?’

‘I think affair is putting it too strongly. It wasn’t a proper sneaking-around relationship, just a few disconnected episodes. Seriously, Emily, we couldn’t help ourselves . .
.’ she half-smiles and the sick feeling inside me gives way to a pulsing fury ‘. . . it was like we turned into
animals
, and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Jed just
couldn’t keep away, he told me I was amazing, an amazing person.’ Rose looks down at the carpet.