Book of Lies

  Piper shakes her head. “There’s no way he knows about you. I can’t believe it for a second,” she says, her words so full of conviction that I somehow accept them.

  “But how could he not know about me?”

  “I don’t know, but one thing I’m sure of is this: if he did, you and I would have been together. And if he met you now, he’d love you,” she adds, as if responding to my thoughts. Is this a twin thing—​can she somehow read the doubts in my mind? “You’re his daughter; of course he’d love you.”

  “Isobel didn’t. And I was her daughter, too.” Piper starts to deny my words, but I interrupt her. “Don’t,” I say, my voice sharp. “You don’t know; you weren’t there. She left me. Sure, she visited now and then, but she never had a kind word to say. Not once. It was more like she was just making sure I hadn’t got away.” I wrap my arms around myself. I didn’t want to talk about Isobel, yet I did—​giving away more than I intended.

  Piper shakes her head helplessly. “I don’t understand. This isn’t the same mum I knew that you’re describing to me.” Zak gives her a look, and she shrugs. “All right, I know she had some problems. I don’t know your story, and I want to, so much. Just don’t assume Dad will be the same. Despite that, he’s definitely not fit to have this sprung on him now. The shock would be too much, after everything else. But can you stay, and wait awhile until we can tell him?”

  “How can I? Where?”

  “You can stay here, of course,” Zak says. I start to protest that he doesn’t even know me, but he shakes his head. “You’re Piper’s sister. That’s good enough for me. You don’t have to decide what you want to do yet, do you? Just stay and think about it. Time enough for questions another day.”

  “But I didn’t pack any stuff. I wasn’t planning on hanging around.”

  “You can borrow from me,” Piper says. “I’ve got loads of clothes, and I’m guessing they’ll fit you perfectly. We’ll pick some up tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what to do. I’m too tired to think straight.”

  “Stay,” Zak says again. “You can think about it tomorrow.”

  I find myself agreeing. Everything they say sounds reasonable, sounds right when they say it. Or is it just that I have nowhere else to go? And I’m tired, so tired, right into my bones. The last week hasn’t involved much sleep.

  “Is there anyone you need to call?” Piper asks. “You can use my phone.”

  “No. No, thanks,” I say, and she looks disappointed. Was she hoping to get a phone number to where I come from?

  “Come on. You look exhausted,” Zak says.

  He takes me upstairs, lends me another T-shirt to sleep in, and shows me to one of two bedrooms. It’s a beautiful room, in green and pink, a flowery duvet cover. Definitely not decorated by Zak. I call him back. “Was this your mother’s room? I don’t want to intrude. I can sleep on the sofa.”

  “It’s fine. Really, it is.” He hesitates, points at the bedside table, the phone there. “If you want to call anyone, go ahead. I don’t want anyone to be worrying about you; it can be our secret.” He winks. “Good night.”

  He shuts the door. I hear murmuring voices and soft sounds from downstairs—​are they kissing on the sofa?

  Then there are footsteps below, leading to the front door. Piper’s voice floats up the stairs. She has to go and insists he can’t walk her home, that someone might see him and he’s supposed to be ill. She promises to text when she gets there.

  The door opens, then closes.

  I hesitate, then pick up the phone and push the buttons for the number I’d memorized. It’s late, but I’m pretty sure where Gran is will be open all the time.

  It’s answered with the ward name, the nurse’s name. “Hello? This is Quinn Blackwood, Sybil Blackwood’s granddaughter. Can you tell me how she’s doing?”

  “Hello, Quinn. I remember you, I admitted your grandmother. She’s doing well, much better than expected. Though she keeps asking for you.” She runs through the tests they’ve done, the results. It was a stroke, as they’d thought. “But despite her age, she’s very strong. Her speech and movement are still affected, but she’ll be able to go home soon. If someone is there to care for her for a while.”

  I hurriedly thank her, and say goodbye. Leaving the implicit When will you come? question unanswered.

  She’s strong. She’ll be fit again. It was the shock that did it. When I showed her the newspaper clipping, the one with the photo that said Isobel Hughes had died, Gran keeled over on the spot. I had to run the miles to the hotel in the dark to get them to call an ambulance. It was too windy for a helicopter, so Dartmoor Search and Rescue came up with the paramedics, to lower her down the rocks and scree past Wisht Tor, so they could get her out the fast way instead of going the long way around.

  During the ambulance ride, her eyes were scared. She tried to speak to me, but couldn’t. The paramedics thought she was afraid she was dying; they’d done their best to reassure her. But there was something else in her eyes. Was she scared I’d get away?

  She’s strong; the nurse said so. Does she really need me? If I go back, will she ever let me go again?

  I curl up in Zak’s mother’s bed. This feels like a good place, a safe place. There is something reassuring about Zak, like everything will be all right if he’s around. In contrast, there’s something about Piper that scares me. Is she what I’m uncertain about, or is it all her questions? There are too many things I’d rather keep to myself.

  Moments later, there is a faint beep-beep downstairs: Piper must have texted to say that she’s home.

  So her home—​the one Isobel lived in, the one Piper still lives in with our dad—​is close by. I try to imagine what it’s like and how it felt to grow up there as a cherished daughter with both parents, with friends and extended family all around. But my imagination isn’t that good.

  Piper

  They actually did it. How could they?

  It’s on the radio news in the early morning, and now there’s nothing to stop me from going back to the kennels. And then on to where Mum died.

  I almost leave a note for Dad, but if he gets up early enough, he’ll know where I’ve gone, and if my aunts found a note, they’d flip out. He came with me the first time, but I could tell he didn’t want to go back again. He didn’t want to stand there and think about what had happened. He knows I go, and thinks maybe I shouldn’t, but isn’t sure enough that it is a bad thing for me right now to try to stop me. Not that he could. Anyhow, I’ve already decided that today is the last time.

  The woman in the shop knows who I am. I see it in her eyes every morning, the pitying glance at the poor motherless girl. But she doesn’t say anything, just sells me the flowers.

  Today, I pick out not one bunch of flowers, but five. She wonders why, but doesn’t ask. When you work in a shop that is open twenty-four hours, maybe you stop asking why people buy what they do before dawn.

  This time I walk the long way around. I stop outside the kennels just as the first glimmer of sunrise finds it. All is quiet there now. It used to be that when I came past, there’d be a chorus of doggy hellos—​friendly yips and barks. I’d go to the fence past all the DANGER signs, and they’d jump around and wag their tails and lick my fingers through the fence by their cages.

  Now there’s a chain over the gate, and silence. The other dogs have been sold or returned to their owners.

  It’s a mile or more from home, through the woods on a muddy path. Today it’s so cold that the mud is stiff, half frozen.

  The path leads down to a small clearing. The police tape is gone now. There are flowers scattered from other mornings, showing all stages of life and death—​fresh, wilted, decayed.

  I know the exact place where Mum was found. I insisted on knowing. I open the bunch of red roses first, but this time, I rip the petals off each one and scatter them on the ground—​where I imagine her head was, her hands, her legs . . .


  Her heart.

  The other four bunches are colorful and mixed, like one Zak gave me once. Ness decided they were a puppy toy and ripped them apart before we could stop her.

  What happened here wouldn’t have happened if I’d been with Mum. The dogs that escaped from the kennels and did this horrible thing were my friends; they all had names I gave them, names they answered to. I should have been with Mum. Ness was my dog, as she pointed out often enough. I should have been walking her, not Mum.

  And yesterday, the dogs were destroyed. That’s the word they used on the radio. How do you destroy a dog? An injection, or something more violent?

  I’d asked them not to. You might think this coming from the poor motherless girl would go a long way. But the policewoman who spoke to me said the order was made, and that was it. Nothing could be done. I could tell she couldn’t understand why I wanted to save them.

  A bunch of flowers for each dog. I open them, spread them all around the outside of the rose petal outline, and lie down on the red petals.

  Mum wasn’t found until the next morning. She was still alive—​just. What was it like, lying here, bleeding, in pain, all night long?

  They called us, and we raced to the hospital, but she died before we got there.

  I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say I was sorry that I left her alone.

  I close my eyes and reach inside.

  I’m sorry, Mum.

  I’m sorry, Bob.

  I’m sorry, Boo.

  I’m sorry, Flapjack.

  I’m sorry, Hobie.

  You’d all still be alive if it wasn’t for me.

  The cold and damp seep into me from the ground. Is this what it is like to be dead—​cold and still forever?

  Mum could have found a way out of this. If she’d let herself, she could have stopped it all. I know this.

  For a long time I’d known that there were things about Mum, about me, that were different from everyone around us. There were things we could do that other people couldn’t, things we knew about those around us that we couldn’t have known. But where Mum had turned her back on what she was, I wanted to embrace that part of myself. I needed to. Like a singer denied music, or a writer denied a pen—​I needed to find an outlet for this hidden part of me, or wither and die.

  She couldn’t understand this in me; I couldn’t understand her.

  And she wouldn’t help me. She’d hint about things, but never come right out and explain anything, or answer my questions. We’d argued again that day; that’s why I left her alone. That’s why it happened.

  Today, for the first time in this place, my eyes stay dry. There has been enough crying.

  I will find a way to work out who I am—​what I can do, and how. It would be easier if Mum had helped me, but there has to be another way.

  Quinn must know; she must.

  I have to make her trust me enough to help me.

  But when I get to Zak’s place, it doesn’t go well.

  “No, thanks.” Quinn looks at the mustard brown scarf in my hands like it is a dead snake I’d suggested she wind around her head.

  “We can’t exactly walk up the road together as we are. We’re bound to draw attention.” The curse of long red hair.

  “Well, if you feel so strongly about it, you wear it.”

  I stare back at her. This is my home; I live here. I’m not the one who needs to be hidden. But then I make my face relax, and smile. “Fine. Sure. It doesn’t really matter which of us we disguise, does it?” I fix it round my hair.

  Zak comes into the kitchen, back from a run with Ness. “She should sleep well after that many miles.” As if she’s listening, she flops straight into her basket.

  He looks at the clock. “Quick shower and then I’m off to work.” He turns to Quinn. “See you this afternoon?” He bends to kiss her, and she squirms away, red creeping up her face.

  I start to laugh. “Over here, idiot.”

  He does a double take. “I just assumed, with the scarf—​oh, never mind. You two need to wear name tags or something. Here.” He kisses me once quickly, then again, slower. Under my lashes I can see Quinn is watching us, her eyes wide. Then, like she realizes she’s staring, she looks away.

  Zak heads up for a shower. “Did that weird you out?” I ask.

  “What? Zak thinking I was you?”

  “Ha! That’s weird, too. No, I meant us kissing in front of you.”

  “No. Why?”

  “You were kind of staring.”

  “Was I? Sorry.” Quinn shifts on her feet. “Where does Zak work?”

  Changing the subject? “He’s helping out at a friend’s restaurant. Waiting tables.”

  “Not great for a possible Cambridge graduate.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You’re obviously better at getting information out of people than I am. He’s just working there while he figures out what he wants to do next. Come on, let’s go.”

  We head out. Yesterday’s rain has gone, but the wind is bitter. I hug my arms around myself as we walk the short distance down Zak’s road, then up the footpath shortcut to my street. Quinn’s eyes dance around us. She was probably too freaked out when she arrived with Zak yesterday to take in her surroundings, but what she finds so interesting today is beyond me—​houses, trees. That’s kind of it.

  I walk up the drive to our house, but turn when Quinn doesn’t follow. She’s standing on the pavement, staring at our house.

  “What?” I say, and walk back to stand next to her.

  “It’s just . . . it’s so . . .” Quinn shakes her head. “Never mind.”

  I look at our house and try to see what she sees, and fail. It’s an ordinary house on an ordinary street in ordinary Winchester. Three stories, garage, extension that doesn’t quite match. A bit hodgepodgy, Mum always said.

  “Come on,” I say. When we get to the front door, I flip the keypad open and enter the code.

  “Is that instead of a key?”

  “Yep.”

  Quinn’s eyes are wide as we step into the entrance hall. She stares at the gleaming parquet floor, the shiny balustrade on the wide front staircase. She puts a tentative hand out to stroke it.

  “You must have to spend hours polishing this.”

  “Me? No, there’s a cleaner.” I start up the stairs, but something in her eyes makes me pause. “Do you want the full tour?”

  Quinn nods yes, so I take her all through the downstairs—​the big, formal parlor we never use, the lived-in one, the dining room, the kitchen. When we go into the sitting room with all the photos on the walls, she walks up to a family portrait. I study it with her. Dad is smiling widely. I’m between him and Mum. She’s got a half smile; her eyes are distant, somewhere else.

  It was around the time this photograph was taken that I first started to suspect her of hiding things. Back then, I couldn’t begin to imagine how many.

  “That was taken on my thirteenth birthday,” I say.

  “Our thirteenth birthday,” Quinn says.

  “Yes, of course. What did you do for yours?”

  She hesitates. “Nothing I’d want photos of,” she says.

  “Do you ever give a straight answer to anything?”

  Quinn shrugs. “Depends what you ask,” she says. Then, like she realizes she didn’t even give a straight answer to that, she shrugs and rolls her eyes.

  “So that’s a no,” we say in unison, then both laugh.

  Quinn looks back at the photograph.

  “There is something very wrong with this photo, and with all the rest of them, too,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “You’re not in them. You should be in them; you should have been here. Why weren’t you?”

  “Isobel may be the only one who knew,” Quinn says, her voice quiet.

  “Quinn, I’m so sorry you weren’t part of my life before, but I hope you will be from now on.” I try to keep the desperation out of my voice. I need you, so much.

  Her ey
es are brimming, and so are mine. She blinks, hard.

  I take her hand. “Come on. Let’s raid my wardrobe. You can take anything you like.”

  Quinn

  Piper’s soft sky-blue sweater makes my eyes take its color. I stroke it as I stare into the mirror in Zak’s mother’s bedroom. I can’t believe I’m wearing anything this beautiful; I can’t believe Piper let me borrow it. She didn’t seem to care at all what I took. And these shoes are so lovely, and they fit perfectly. I suppose that makes sense: identical twins—​identical feet.

  Can she really have so many fabulous things that a few more or less make no difference to her at all? Piper seemed almost bewildered by my reaction to her home and all her stuff. She has so much, and doesn’t appreciate any of it.

  This sweater is blue, but it should be green: green for envy. Her life should have been my life. I shouldn’t be feeling grateful for a few gestures from Princess Piper. I should have a room like hers, with its own TV, laptop, sound system, bathroom, and walk-in closet full of beautiful clothes.

  There are so many things in Piper’s house I still want to see, to touch—​not least Isobel’s room. Piper skimmed quickly past it when showing me around. It was full of cupboards and shelves of books and other interesting things, a desk, and a funny piece of furniture that was half like a couch and half like a bed, where Piper said Isobel used to read stories to her when she was little.

  Hunger to know more about my parents, about the life I never had, consumes me. That should be my house. I have every right to be in it. I have every right to everything inside of it.

  I should go there now.

  There is an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Just because it should be mine, doesn’t mean it is. And what if someone comes home? But Piper and Zak left to drive her aunts home twenty minutes ago. She said they were doing it because her dad—​our dad—​was out with his brother.

  Before I can second-guess any further, my feet are flying back up the road to her house. Our house.

  I hesitate at the door. The pattern of numbers Piper entered seems clear in my memory. But what happens if I get them wrong? Will some sort of alarm go off, and police swoop down? It looks the sort of place where police would come in a hurry if anything went amiss.