The Lie (17 page)

It’s been two days since Chloe’s school fair. Shortly after Chloe told us what “the lady in the blue hat” had said, Will took her to find her mum, then he drove me back to Green Fields to pick up my bike. Neither of us said a word the whole way. I could sense his anger bubbling inside him like lava, but whenever I attempted to say something to diffuse the situation, the words dried on my tongue.

What could I say? That I was terrified that whoever had been sending me messages had been watching us? They knew I was in a relationship with Will and that Chloe was his daughter.

The Facebook messages hadn’t come from Daisy’s original account which featured the four of us in the cover photo – me, Daisy, Al and Leanne in some club or bar in London, with our arms around each other and drinks in our hands.

But the messages hadn’t been sent from that account and, other than a dwindling number of “RIP Daisy” and “We still miss you, Daisy” comments, it hadn’t been updated since before we left the UK. No, whoever sent the messages from Daisy had set up a new account for her, same profile photo but no friends information, no cover photo, nothing. The only information on it was her name and her location – Annapurna, Nepal.

I didn’t re-read the messages as Will’s car pulled away from Green Fields. I waited until I’d checked that every door and window was locked, then I closed all the curtains, poured myself a glass of wine, and only then did I read them again.

Help me, Emma!

It’s so cold.

You never came back for me.

I don’t want to die alone.

They must have been sent within seconds of each other, one after the other.

I read them over and over again then sat down at my laptop and Googled her – Daisy Hamilton. I clicked through page after page of newspaper articles, all basically saying the same thing the
Daily Mail
had said: that four friends had gone on holiday, and only two had returned. There was no news report saying Daisy had been found alive and well, and nothing indicating her body had been found, either. There was no way she could have survived what happened. Or was there?

As I sat in the dark with the best part of a bottle of wine inside me, I played what if. What if she’s alive? What if she’s spent the last five years looking for me? What if it’s Al? Some kind of sick joke? She’s the only one who knows about my Jane Hughes Facebook profile. Maybe she hasn’t forgiven me for my reaction to the article she wrote, but my anger was justified. She sensationalised everything that had happened at Ekanta Yatra. The article made it sound like Daisy, Leanne and I had willingly taken part in orgies and bought into Isaac’s spiritual bullshit, and that Al had had to rescue me from it all. She said the journalist had twisted what she’d said, but there was so much detail in the article, Al had to have told her.

One other possibility occurred to me last night. What if Will was pretending to be Daisy? He’d been fiddling with his mobile moments before my phone bleeped. One thing I learned in Nepal is that people who seem harmless on the surface can have the cruellest streaks. It might be a sick game to him, a way to pay me back for not trusting him enough to tell him about my past. No, I rejected the idea the second it popped into my head. It was ridiculous and, after a bottle and a half of wine, so was I.

“Hi, Jane!” Angharad waves at me from across the room. Seven aluminium bowls are laid out side by side on the counter in front of her, each of them filled with dried dog food. “I thought I’d get started on the food. That okay?”

For someone who potentially stole my letter, she seems remarkably unruffled. I’m not one hundred per cent sure she took it, though, so I need to play this situation carefully.

“Of course.” I glance at the medication sheet on the wall to my left. “Have you done the meds, too?”

“For Stella, Willow and Bronx? Yeah, I’ve put it in the food.” She points at each of the first three bowls in turn.

“Great. I’m going to get started on the cleaning. I’ll do Jack, Vinny, Murphy and Chester, if you could do the other three?”

“Of course.

“Jane!” she calls as I reach the doorway.

“Yes?”

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“That’s good. I think Sheila was a bit worried about you. She said being locked in the cupboard at that old lady’s house had given you a flashback.” She gives me an enquiring look. “That must have been scary.”

“I’m fine now.”

“Did it happen a long time ago, the thing you had the flashback about?”

“I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

“No, of course, of course.” She bends to pick up the dog food sack.

“Oh, Angharad.”

“Yes?” She looks up.

“I don’t suppose you knocked into my dresser when you came by my cottage on Friday, did you?”

“Knock into it?” She frowns. “No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Why?”

“Some documents were … one of my documents has disappeared. If the dresser was knocked, I’ll have to move it to look underneath, but it’s very heavy. You didn’t see anything flutter to the floor when you came in? A bill or a …” I look her straight in the eyes. “… letter.”

“I didn’t see anything.” She smiles prettily. She’s either a really good liar or she’s got no idea what I’m talking about.

“You’re quite sure?”

“Yes.” She nods. “Would you like me to help you move the dresser? I could come over later, if you’d like?”

“No, thank you.” I hover in the doorway as a thought hits me. If Angharad was able to let herself in because the door was on the latch, then anyone could have come in. Someone else could have slipped into my kitchen before her and …

All the hairs on my arms prick up and I shiver.

“Everything okay?” Angharad asks. “You’ve gone awfully pale.”

“I’m fine.” I rub my hands over my forearms. “I just had one of those moments.”

“Like when someone walks over your grave? I have those all the time.”

The rest of the day passes in a blur of scrubbing, hosing, feeding, walking and inoculating. I’m so tired that everything takes twice as long as it should, and when I nearly gave Murphy a booster shot instead of Chester, Angharad insisted I sit down and rest for five minutes while she made me a cup of tea. I was expecting her to leave at lunchtime, but forgot I’d agreed for her to sit in on a potential adopter interview today.

Now we’re both sitting at a table in the small interview room in the main building. Angharad’s beside me, with Mr Archer opposite, bent over the form he was given in reception, scribbling intently. He’s a hulking giant of a man, mid-thirties, with close-set eyes and doughy cheeks.

“Here you go.” He pushes the form across the table towards me then sits back in his chair and folds his arms across his broad chest.

“Thank you.” I scan the form and smile brightly at him. “So, Mr Archer.”

“You can call me Rob.” He’s got a broad London accent. You don’t hear many of those round here. It reminds me of Al.

“Okay. Rob. Could you tell me why you’d like to adopt a dog?”

“I’m unemployed and I need the company. And I like dogs. I’ve always liked dogs. And I’d rather rescue one, help it out, you know, rather than get a puppy.” The words come out machine-gun fast.

“Right. Great.” I flip over the form and note down his answer on the back. “So you’d be able to spend a lot of time with the dog.”

“Yeah.”

“Would there be any periods when you’d have to leave the dog on its own?”

“Nah.” He shakes his head. “Well, when I go to the Job Centre, but I don’t go there often.” He laughs dryly and runs a hand over his forehead. It’s warm in the room and he’s sweating lightly.

“Okay, that’s good. We don’t like dogs to be left on their own for too long. Some of them have abandonment issues.”

“Right. Right.”

“Where do you live, Rob? House? Flat? Is there a garden?”

“Nah. I’m in a block, but there’s a park nearby. I could walk the dog there.”

“Great.” I smile reassuringly and write on the form again. He’s surprisingly nervous for such a big man, but a lot of people find this situation uncomfortable; it’s called an interview for a reason, and no one wants to be rejected. “Have you got any experience of looking after a dog?”

“Um …” He gazes at the table and tweaks his left ear. “Yeah. I had a dog as a child, a Staffie called Alfie. Have you got any of those?”

I don’t know if it’s the way his eyes just shifted from right to left, or the fact that he’s been repeatedly tapping the floor with his right foot since he said the word “Staffie”, but an alarm just chimed in my head.

“Is it only a Staffie you’re after?”

“Yeah.” He nods repeatedly and runs a hand over his thinning hair.

“And if I told you we don’t have any?”

The table judders up and down as his tapping increases. “I heard you had some.”

“We’ve got—” Angharad pipes up, but I silence her with a glance.

“Can I have a look around?” He glances towards the door. “The woman I spoke to on the phone said I could have a look at the dogs after I’d filled in the form.”

“We need to do a home inspection first.”

“What?” He looks genuinely surprised. “What’s the point of doing that if there ain’t any dogs here I want?”

“It’s a new policy,” I say, desperately hoping Angharad won’t chime in and contradict me. “Only approved adopters can see the animals – less chance they’re disturbed by repeated visits that way.”

Mr Archer rubs the back of his neck and stares down at the table. He seems torn. “So there’s no way I can see the dogs today?”

I shake my head.

“And you definitely ain’t got no Staffies?”

“No.”

“Right, then.” He rubs his palms on his thighs and stands up. “No point me being here. Thanks for your time.” He reaches forward, shakes my hand and then, without another word, strolls out of the room and turns left towards reception.

“What was that about?” Angharad whispers as his footsteps retreat into the distance.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”

“Isaac?”

He’s sitting a metre away, his arms wrapped around his legs, his forehead pressed to his knees. In one hand is a rock, slick with blood. I reach for my shorts, still down around my knees, and pull them up. The action is automatic – I am half-naked and I should cover myself up – but I barely register what I am doing.

“Isaac?”

Frank’s body is on the ground behind him, his head turned away from us. The hair is matted, a pool of blood circling it like a red halo.

“Isaac?” I wince as I crawl towards him. There’s something wrong with my right arm. I can’t move it. “Are you okay?” He flinches as I touch him. “What happened?”

He raises his head and looks at me. His face is pale, his pupils dark. There is a graze on his left cheek, his lip is split open and his left eye is bloodshot.

“Is he …”

We both watch as Frank’s chest rises and falls.

“He …” The shaking starts in my hand then continues up my arm, across my chest and into my jaw. My teeth chatter against each other. “He was …”

“I know.” Isaac shifts himself towards me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I know.”

I press my head into his T-shirt. It smells of sweat, jasmine, musk and warmth. Neither of us says a word then he gently peels himself away from me and cups his hands to his mouth. A piercing whistle fills the air, cutting through the cicadas’ chirping and slicing through the river’s roar. The sound of laughter from the waterfall stops abruptly, and then there’s a new sound – the slap, slap of feet on mud – and then they appear: Isis, Cera, Daisy and Leanne. They stop short, a good ten metres away from us. Daisy’s eyes grow big and scared as she stares at Frank’s prostrate, bleeding body.

“What happened?” Isis asks, but she’s interrupted by the crashing arrival of Kane, Jacob and Kieran.

“Frank’s hurt. I need you guys to take him to the basement” – Isaac nods towards Frank – “then go and get Sally to check him over and patch him up.”

“He looks like he should go to hospital,” Daisy says, but Isaac shakes his head.

“It’s not as bad as it looks, and Sally’s a trained nurse.”

The men rush into action, dipping down to haul Frank up from the ground, his torso supported by two of the men, the third holding his feet. They rotate him around so his head’s pointing towards the house, then set off, carrying him away.

“Emma?” Daisy takes a step towards me, her face contorted with indecision and, just for a second, I see her – old Daisy, university Daisy, the Daisy who’d sit on my bed and stroke my hair and make me imagine the sun on my face and the sea at my feet.

Please, Daisy.

She looks back towards the house. Frank and his human ambulance are tiny figures in the distance now, stick men, wind-up toys.

Help me.

Leanne exchanges a look with Isaac, then takes a step forward and loops her arm through Daisy’s. She leans close and whispers something in her ear.

“But …” I sense Daisy’s resolve slip.

“Daisy.” Isaac holds her gaze for one second, two, three. “Emma will be fine.”

Isis and Cera wander away without so much as a backwards glance. As they head towards the bridge, Leanne trails after them, her arms crossed over her narrow chest. After a moment’s hesitation, Daisy follows them. She pads after Leanne, calling her name.

“Come.” Isaac reaches for my hand.

I take one last look at Daisy as she crosses the bridge, then put my hand in his.

I falter as Isaac opens the door to the hut and inclines his head, indicating that I should go inside. My hand, still in his, feels sticky with perspiration.

“It’s okay.” He opens the door wider so the interior is flooded with light. There’s a pile of rugs on the floor, a small table in one corner and a metal bucket, covered in a towel, in the other corner. I didn’t notice the bucket when Kane gave me my massage. That feels like forever ago now. “I just want to talk to you somewhere that we won’t be disturbed.”

I step inside and press myself up against the wall as Isaac squeezes past me and closes the door. The hut is immediately plunged into darkness.

“It’s okay,” he says again. “I’ll light a candle.”

The white-painted floorboards creak as he crosses the room, then I hear the whirr of a lighter being flicked. The darkness lifts gradually as a tiny flame dances from the end of the lighter to the large, white church candle on the table.

“Sit.” Isaac reaches for something on the table then settles himself on the pile of rugs and pats the space beside him. “Sit down, Emma.”

My knees creak as I lower myself to the floor. Isaac hands me a bottle. There is no label and no seal on the lid. A dark liquid sloshes around inside as I tip the bottle left then right. “What’s in it?”

“Rum. Drink it, it’ll help, take the edge off the shock.”

I unscrew the lid then raise the bottle to my lips and sip. The alcohol stings then warms the back of my throat as I swallow. I take another sip and another and another. When I put the bottle back down, it’s half-empty.

“Joint?” His eyes don’t leave my face as he hands me a lit joint.

My thumb brushes his as I take it, but I barely register the sensation. All I can feel is the sharp tang of rum in the back of my throat. I raise the joint to my lips and inhale. I take another swig of rum. Suck on the joint. Repeat.

The candle flickers on the table and shadows dance on the white wooden walls of the hut. I lean back and close my eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

His whisper fills the hut. The low tones wrap around me like a blanket.

“Emma? How are you feeling?”

I reach into myself for an answer, but there’s nothing there.

“Emma?”

I try to shake my head but the movement feels too powerful so I stop.

“Emma?” Isaac says, his face creased with worry, and a cloud of paranoia so dense, so acrid, that I instantly forget how to breathe, engulfs me. The rug slips from beneath me and I plummet down through the base of the hut, down through the hard soil beneath it, and then I’m floating through blackness – grasping, reaching, but there’s nothing to hold on to. My mind has gone into freefall. And I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

“Emma!” I feel hands on my face. “Emma, look at me. You’re having a panic attack. Emma, look at me. You need to slow down. You need to breathe. Breathe with me, Emma …”

His face is inches from mine, his pupils huge, the tip of his nose lightly dotted with open pores, his top lip speckled with sharp, spiky stubble. I feel like I’m looking at him through a microscope.

“Emma, breathe. Inhale. In … one … two … three.”

I try to do what I’m told but the breath keeps catching in my throat.

“Out. Exhale, Emma. Slowly. For as long as you can, push the air out.”

My breath escapes in raggedy gasps.

“Just keep looking at me, Emma. Just keep breathing.”

In. One-two-three. Out. One-two-three.

After a couple of minutes, or a couple of hours, I can’t be sure, I reach up and touch Isaac on the arm. I can breathe but I’m still spinning. I need to root myself to the floor.

“I need … I need to lie down.”

“Okay.” He gently guides my elbow as I lower myself onto the rug, then unwraps the jumper from his waist and fashions it into a pillow. He gently slides it under my head.

“Close your eyes,” he says softly.

And I do.

I wake with a jolt, slamming one hand against the wooden wall to my right, the other against something soft to my left. The candle is still burning on the table in the hut but it’s only a couple of inches tall now. Isaac is asleep beside me, facing away, his shoulders curled, his knees bent. I stirred at some point in the night and reached for him, but he’d gone. I was too tired to care, so I fell back asleep. He must have returned while I was sleeping.

“Isaac?” I put a hand on his back. “What time is it?”

He rubs a hand over his face and slowly uncurls, propping himself up on one elbow. “I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t we get back to the oth—” I stop speaking as a memory floats lazily to the surface of my mind.

“What is it?” He sits up. “Do you feel ill again?”

I shake my head.

“Emma, talk to me.”

“Where’s Paula? Frank said she was missing.” I push myself up into a sitting position then drag the rug off my legs and stand up. “Is she? Or was he lying?”

Isaac stands up, too. He inclines his head to the left and groans with relief as his neck cracks. “Paula’s not missing. She’s in the hut next door.”

“Why?”

“She’s detoxing. She’d lost her way a bit,” he adds, before I can ask what detoxing means, “and she needed a bit of time to centre herself, to find her way back.”

“To what?”

“To contentment.”

“Is she locked in the hut?”

“Yes.”

I push the door open. It’s pitch black outside, the only light the soft haze of the moon, swathed in cloud. It’s still night-time, even though it feels like I’ve slept for hours.

“You can run back to the house and sound the alarm if you want to, but Paula
wanted
to be locked in the hut.”

I can feel the heat of his body as he stands behind me, and the cold of the night air on my face. The house is dark apart from a dull light flickering in the meditation room. Isaac told the men to take Frank to the basement. I have no idea where that even is.

“What’s going to happen to Frank?” I ask.

“We’ll look after him until he’s well enough to leave, and then I’ll escort him to the gate myself.”

I look back at him. “What if someone attacks him on his way back down the—”

The unfinished question hangs in the air. Isaac says nothing, but the edges of his mouth twitch upwards, ever so slightly.
Do you care, Emma?

“Take me to see, Paula,” I say.

“I wouldn’t normally interrupt someone’s detox,” Isaac says as he reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a key and inserts it into the lock, “but Paula was due to return to the house today anyway, so …” He shrugs and pulls at the handle.

The stench of faeces and urine hits me the second the door opens, and I cover my nose and mouth with my sleeve.

“It’s just me” – Isaac steps into darkness – “and Emma. She wanted to check you were okay.” He looks back at me. “Wait here for a second.”

The door closes behind him and I’m alone, standing in the darkness outside.

There’s a creaking sound, like floorboards being stepped on, then nothing for a couple of minutes. Finally, I hear the low rumble of a male voice and the shrill peel of female laughter.

“Come in, Emma,” Isaac says.

I push gently at the door.

“I’m sorry about the smell,” Paula says as I step inside.

Her voice is bright but her words are slurred, pooling together like spilt mercury. It takes me a while to adjust to the gloom, but then I see her, sitting cross-legged in the corner.

“I’m sorry.” I twist away, shielding my view with a hand. “I didn’t realise—”

“It’s fine. I’m comfortable with being naked.” She pauses. “Sorry, I forgot you’re an outsider. You can look now.”

When I turn back she’s clutching a blanket to her chest. Isaac is standing beside her, his back to the wall, smoking. The scent of tobacco does little to mask the smell emanating from the bucket at his feet.

“Is there anything you’d like to ask Paula, Emma?” He asks the question casually, but there’s a tension to the way he’s standing – ramrod straight, with one arm crossing his body, gripping his side.

“Are you okay?” It’s feeble but it’s the best I can manage.

“I’m fucking wonderful!” Paula laughs again.

“Did you agree to be locked in here?”

I expect her to look at Isaac. Instead, she stares me straight in the eye. “Yes.”

I stare into the gloom, unsure what to say next. Even if she didn’t come here of her own volition, Paula is not about to admit that to me with Isaac listening in. His presence fills the hut.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Paula stands up suddenly and lurches towards me. The blanket falls from her body but she doesn’t stoop to pick it up. “Don’t pity what you don’t understand.”

“I don’t. But you’re right, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

She glances down at my hands, knotted together in front of me. “That’s because you’re still rooted in your old life. You’re still hanging on to the thoughts, feelings and values you think are normal but actually make you desperately unhappy. How old are you, Emma?”

“Twenty-five.”

She takes another step forward until her face is millimetres from mine. “And for how many of those years have you felt truly content?”

I fight the urge to cover my nose with a hand. I can smell alcohol on her breath but there’s something else too, a rancid scent I can’t identify.

“Some.”

“Some?” She smiles, her teeth and the whites of her eyes dull and grey in the darkness. “Or none? Because you can lie to yourself all you like about the value of friendship and the importance of family, but you will never know true contentment until you let go of your attachments.”

“That’s enough, Paula.” Isaac puts a hand on her shoulder. “Sit back. Sit back and relax.” He eases her back down to the floor and wraps the blanket around her, tucking it across her chest and under her armpits like a parent settling a child at naptime. “Emma only came here to check you’re okay.”

“I should go.” I take a step backwards, towards the cool, fresh air outside.

Isaac reaches for the joint behind his ear, then gently lifts one of Paula’s hands and puts the roll-up between her fingers. She takes it and places it between her lips as he sparks his lighter.

And that’s when I see it: the violent red mark that circles her right wrist like a snake.