Let Me Lie

  Your dad’s missing.

  I’d frowned at the text, looking for the punch line. I lived with my parents, but I was away overnight at a conference in Oxford, chatting over morning coffee with a colleague from London. I excused myself to call her.

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  Mum wasn’t making sense. The words came slowly, as though she was dredging them up. They’d had an argument the night before; Dad had stormed off to the pub. So far, so normal. I had long since accepted the storminess of my parents’ relationship; the squalls that would pass over as quickly as they blew in. Except this time Dad hadn’t come home.

  “I thought he might have slept at Bill’s,” she said, “but I’m at work now and Bill hasn’t seen him. I’m out of my mind, Anna!”

  I left the conference straightaway. Not because I was worried about Dad, but because I was worried about Mum. They were careful to keep the causes of their arguments from me, but I’d picked up the aftermath too many times. Dad would disappear—off to work, or to the golf course, or to the pub. Mum would hide in the house, pretending to me she hadn’t been crying.

  It was all over by the time I got home. Police in the kitchen, their hats in their hands. Mum shaking so violently they’d called a paramedic to treat her for shock. Uncle Billy, white with grief. Laura, Mum’s goddaughter, making tea and forgetting to add milk. None of us noticing.

  I read the text Dad had sent.

  I can’t do this anymore. The world will be a better place without me in it.

  “Your father took a car from work.” The policeman was about Dad’s age, and I wondered if he had children. If they took him for granted. “The cameras show it heading toward Beachy Head late last night.” My mother let out a stifled cry. I saw Laura move to comfort her, but I couldn’t do the same. I was frozen. Not wanting to hear but compelled to listen all the same.

  “Officers responded to a callout around ten thirty this morning.” PC Pickett stared at his notes. I suspected it was easier than looking at us. “A woman reported seeing a man fill a rucksack with rocks and place his wallet and phone on the ground before stepping off the edge of the cliff.”

  “And she didn’t try to stop him?” I hadn’t meant to shout, and Uncle Billy put a hand on my shoulder. I shook him off. Turned to the others. “She just watched him jump?”

  “It all happened very quickly. The caller was very upset, as you can imagine.” PC Pickett realized his poor judgment too late to bite his tongue.

  “She was upset, was she? How did she think Dad was feeling?” I whirled round, searching for support in the faces around me, then fixing my gaze on the police officers. “Have you questioned her?”

  “Anna.” Laura spoke quietly.

  “How do you know she didn’t push him?”

  “Anna, this isn’t helping anyone.”

  I was about to snap back, but I looked at my mother, leaning into Laura, moaning softly. The fight left me. I was hurting, but Mum was hurting more. I crossed the room and kneeled beside her, reaching for her hand and feeling tears wet my cheeks even before I knew they’d left my eyes. My parents were together for twenty-six years. They lived together—and worked together—and despite all their ups and downs, they loved each other.

  PC Pickett cleared his throat. “The description matched Mr. Johnson. We were on scene within minutes. His car was recovered from Beachy Head car park, and on the edge of the cliff we found . . .” He tailed off, indicating in the center of our kitchen table a clear plastic evidence bag in which I could see Dad’s mobile phone and his tan leather wallet. Out of nowhere I thought of the joke Uncle Billy always cracked, about the moths in Dad’s jacket pockets, and for a second I thought I was going to burst into laughter. Instead I cried, and I didn’t stop for three days.

  * * *

  • • •

  My right arm, squashed beneath Ella, has gone to sleep. I slide it out and wiggle my fingers, feeling the tingle as the blood returns to the extremities. Suddenly restless, I extricate myself from beneath Ella’s sleeping body with the newly acquired mothering stealth skills of a Royal Marine and barricade her on the sofa with cushions. I stand up, stretching out the stiffness that comes from too much sitting down.

  My father had never suffered from depression or anxiety.

  “Would he have told you, even if he did?” Laura said. We were sitting in the kitchen—Laura, Mum, and me. The police, neighbors, everyone, had gone, leaving us sitting numbly in the kitchen with a bottle of wine, its contents sour in our mouths. Laura’s point was a valid one, even if I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Dad came from a long line of men who believed talking about “feelings” meant you were a “poof.”

  Whatever the reasons, his suicide came from nowhere and plunged us all into grief.

  Mark—and his replacement, once one had been found—encouraged me to work through the feelings of anger I had in relation to my father’s death. I seized upon five words uttered by the coroner.

  While not of sound mind.

  They helped me separate the man from the act; helped me understand that Dad’s suicide wasn’t about hurting those he was leaving. Rather, his final text message suggested a genuinely held belief that we might be happier without him. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Harder than coming to terms with my dad’s suicide was what happened next. Trying to fathom why—after experiencing firsthand the pain of bereavement by suicide, of watching me cry for my beloved father—my mother would knowingly put me through it again.

  Blood hums in my ears like a wasp trapped against glass. I walk into the kitchen and drink a glass of water, fast, then press my hands onto the granite worktop and lean over the sink. I hear Mum, singing as she washes up; nagging Dad to clear up after yourself once in a blue moon. Clouds of flour as I made clumsy cakes in Mum’s heavy earthenware bowl. Her hands around mine—shaping biscuits, making pastry. And later, when I came back home to live, taking turns to lean against the stove while the other made supper. Dad in the study, or watching TV in the sitting room. We women in the kitchen—through design, not default. Chatting as we cooked.

  It’s in this room I feel closest to Mum. In this room it hurts the most.

  A year ago, today.

  GRIEVING WIDOW PLUNGES TO HER DEATH, read the Gazette. CHAPLAIN CALLS FOR MEDIA BLACKOUT ON SUICIDE HOT SPOT, read the unwittingly ironic Guardian headline.

  “You knew,” I whisper, feeling sure that talking out loud is not the action of a sane mind, yet being unable to contain it for a second more. “You knew how much it hurt, and you still did it.”

  I should have listened to Mark and planned something for today. A distraction. I could have called Laura. Had lunch. Gone shopping. Anything that didn’t involve moping about the house, going over old ground, obsessing over the anniversary of Mum’s death. There is no logical reason why today should be any harder than any other. My mother is no more dead than she was yesterday; no more dead than she will be tomorrow.

  And yet . . .

  I take a deep breath and try to snap out of it. Put my glass in the sink and tut loudly, as though an audible admonishment to myself will make a difference. I will take Ella to the park. We can go the long way around to kill time, and on the way back we’ll pick up something for supper, and before I know it Mark will be home and today will be almost over. This abrupt decisiveness is a familiar trick, but it works. The ache in my heart lessens, and the pressure behind my eyes fades away.

  Fake it till you make it, Laura always says. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have is another favorite. She means at work (you’d have to listen very carefully to pick up on the fact that her public-school accent is learned, not inherited) but the principle is the same. Pretend you’re okay, and you’ll feel okay. Before too long you really will be okay.

  I’m still working on the last bit.

  I hear the squeak
that means Ella is awake. I’m halfway across the hall when I see something poking through the letterbox. It’s either been delivered by hand or got caught in the slot when the postman did his rounds. Either way I didn’t see it when I collected the post from the mat this morning.

  It’s a card. I received two others this morning—both from school friends more comfortable with grief when held at arm’s length—and I’m touched by the number of people who note dates in this way. On the anniversary of Dad’s suicide someone left a casserole on my doorstep with the briefest of notes.

  Freeze or reheat. Thinking of you.

  I still don’t know whom it’s from. Many of the condolence cards that arrived after my parents’ deaths came with stories of the cars they’d sold over the years. Keys handed to overconfident teens and overanxious parents. Two-seater sports cars traded for family-friendly estates. Cars that celebrated promotions, big birthdays, retirements. My parents played a part in many different stories.

  * * *

  • • •

  The address is typed on a sticker, the postmark a smudge of ink in the top right-hand corner. The card is thick and expensive—I have to wiggle it out of its envelope.

  I stare at the image.

  Bright colors dance across the page: a border of lurid pink roses with intertwined stems and glossy green leaves. In the center, two champagne glasses clink together. The greeting is embossed and finished with glitter.

  Happy Anniversary!

  I recoil as if I’ve been punched. Is this some kind of sick joke? A mistake? Some well-meaning, shortsighted acquaintance, mistaken in their choice of missive? I open the card.

  The message is typed. Cut from cheap paper and glued to the inside.

  This is no mistake.

  My hands shake, making the words swim in front of my eyes. The wasp in my ears buzzes more loudly. I read it again.

  Suicide? Think again.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  It wasn’t the way I wanted to go. Not the way I always thought I’d go.

  If I imagined my death, I pictured a darkened room. Our bedroom. Pillows plumped behind my back; a glass of water touched to my lips once my own hands became too weak to hold it. Morphine to manage the pain. Visitors tiptoeing in single file to say their good-byes; you, red-eyed but stoic, absorbing their kind words.

  And me, gradually more asleep than awake, until one morning I never woke up at all.

  * * *

  • • •

  I used to joke that in my next life I wanted to come back as a dog.

  Turns out you don’t get that much choice.

  You take what you’re given, whether it suits you or not. A woman just like you. Older, uglier. That or nothing.

  It feels strange to be without you.

  Twenty-six years, we were together. Married for almost as long. For better or for worse. You in a suit, me in an empire-line dress picked to hide a five-month bump. A new life together.

  And now it’s just me. Lonely. Scared. Out of my depth in the shadows of a life I once lived to the full.

  Nothing worked out the way I thought it would.

  And now this.

  Suicide? Think again.

  The message isn’t signed. Anna won’t know who it’s from.

  But I do. I’ve spent the past year waiting for this to happen, fooling myself that silence meant safety.

  It doesn’t.

  I can see the hope on Anna’s face; the promise of answers to the questions that keep her awake at night. I know our daughter. She never would have believed that you and I would have stepped off that cliff of our own free will.

  She was right.

  I see, too, with painful clarity, what will happen now. Anna will go to the police. Demand an investigation. She’ll fight for the truth, not knowing that the truth hides nothing but more lies. More danger.

  Think again.

  What you don’t know can’t hurt you. I have to stop Anna going to the police. I have to stop her finding out the truth about what happened, before she gets hurt.

  I thought I’d seen the last of my old life the day I drove to Beachy Head, but I guess I was wrong.

  I have to stop this.

  I have to go back down.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  ANNA

  I ring Mark back. Leave a message about the card that makes so little sense I have to stop, take a breath, then explain myself again.

  “Call me as soon as you get this,” I finish.

  Suicide? Think again.

  The meaning is clear.

  My mother was murdered.

  The hairs on the back of my neck are still prickling and I turn slowly around, taking in the wide stairs behind me, the open doors on either side with their floor-to-ceiling windows. No one there. Of course there isn’t. But the card I hold has unnerved me as surely as if someone had broken into the house and put it directly into my hand, and it no longer feels as though Ella and I are alone in the house.

  I stuff the card back into its envelope. I need to get out of here.

  “Rita!”

  There’s a scuffle in the kitchen, followed by a skittering of claws on the tiles. The result of a rehoming appeal, Rita is part Cyprus poodle, part several other breeds. She has auburn tufts that fall over her eyes and around her mouth, and in the summer, when she’s clipped, the white patches on her coat look like snow. She licks me enthusiastically.

  “We’re going out.”

  Never one to be asked twice, Rita races to the front door, where she cocks her head and looks at me impatiently. The pram is in the hall, tucked beneath the curve of the stairs, and I push the anonymous card into the shopping basket at the bottom, covering it with a blanket as though not seeing it changes the fact that it’s there. I pick up Ella just as she’s morphing from contentment to grouchiness.

  Suicide? Think again.

  I knew it. I’ve always known it. My mother had a strength I wish I had a tenth of—a confidence I coveted. She never gave up. She wouldn’t have given up on life.

  “Let’s go and get some fresh air, shall we?”

  Ella roots for my breast again, but there’s no time. I don’t want to be in the house for another minute. I find the diaper bag in the kitchen, check for the essentials—diapers, wipes, burp cloths—and throw in my purse and the house keys. This is usually the point at which Ella will fill her diaper, or throw up her milk and require a full set of clean clothes. I sniff cautiously at her bottom and conclude that she’s fine.

  “Right—let’s go!”

  There are three stone steps that lead down from the front door to the graveled area between the house and the sidewalk. Each step dips in the middle, where countless feet have trod over the years. As a child, I would jump off the bottom step, my confidence growing with my years until—accompanied by my mother’s Do be careful!—I could leap from the top step and land square-footed on the drive, my arms raised for inaudible applause.

  Ella in one arm, I bounce the pram down the steps before putting her inside and tucking the blankets firmly around her. The cold snap shows no sign of lifting, and the sidewalks glitter with frost. The gravel makes a dull crunch as clumps of frozen stones break apart beneath my feet.

  “Anna!”

  Our neighbor Robert Drake is standing on the other side of the black railings that separate our house from his. The properties are identical: three-story Georgian houses with long back gardens and narrow outdoor passages that run from front to back between the houses. My parents moved to Eastbourne in 1992, when my unexpected appearance had curtailed their London lives and launched them into married life. My late grandfather bought the house—two streets from where Dad had grown up—for cash (It’s the only currency people listen to, Annie) and, I imagine, for significantly less than Robert paid when he bought
the neighboring property fifteen years later.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” Robert says. “It’s today, isn’t it?” He gives a sympathetic smile and tilts his head to one side. The action reminds me of Rita, except that Rita’s eyes are warm and trusting, and Robert’s . . .

  “Your mother,” he adds, in case I’m not following. There’s a touch of impatience in his voice, as though I should be more grateful for his compassion.

  Robert is a surgeon, and although he has never been anything but friendly toward us, he has an intense, almost clinical gaze that makes me feel as though I’m on his operating table. He lives alone, mentioning the nieces and nephews who occasionally visit with the detachment of a man who has never had, and never wanted, children of his own.

  I wrap Rita’s lead around the handle of the pram. “Yes. It’s today. It’s kind of you to remember.”

  “Anniversaries are always tough.”

  I can’t listen to any more platitudes. “I was just taking Ella out for a walk.”

  Robert seems glad of the change of subject. He peers through the railings. “Hasn’t she grown?” There are so many blankets around Ella that he couldn’t possibly see, but I agree and tell him what percentile she’s on, which is probably more detail than he needed.

  “Excellent! Jolly good. Well, I’ll let you get on.”

  The drive is the width of the house, but only just deep enough for cars. Iron gates lie flat against the railings, never closed in my lifetime. I say good-bye, then push the pram through the opening and onto the sidewalk. Across the street is a park, a grown-up space with complicated planting, and signs that keep you off the grass. My parents would take it in turns to walk Rita there, last thing at night, and she strains now at the lead, but I pull her back and push the pram toward town instead. At the end of the row of town houses, I turn right. I glance back toward Oak View, and as I do I realize Robert is still standing on his driveway. He looks away and walks back into his house.