Читать книгу House of Lies: A gripping thriller with a shocking twist - E. Seymour V. - Страница 16

We head for the Fiat and I jump in beside her. Stephanie expertly reverses out and drives back the way we came, taking a left along a narrow street and left again up a hill that finally drops down, past an ancient-looking hotel called The Feathers. I stare up at the exterior, a triumph of Medieval and Tudor architecture.

We don’t speak and already I’m regretting my decision to inveigle my way into her life. What started out as a mission to find out why Tom upped and dumped me changed to something sinister and inexplicable. I remain in a dilemma. Stephanie exists under the illusion her husband and father of her child is dead. How can I shatter that? Should I even try? Surely, it would be too cruel.

Medieval quaintness left behind, we travel over a bridge and underneath a railway arch, up an unprepossessing hill, past a hospital and dental surgery, until we finally turn off into a street of artisan terraced houses, Victorian by the look of them.

Stephanie drops me out while she parks tight along a wall.

“I’m here,” she says, indicating a forest-green-painted front door with an empty hanging basket attached to the red brick by an ornate metal bracket. Having lived in a tepee for the first six years of my life, I tend to notice nice surroundings more than most.

I follow her through a gate, and garden the size of a wardrobe. The front door leads straight into a sitting room with a wood-burner, and two battered sofas, a bookcase along one wall, a dresser against the other, on which there are several photographs in silver frames of a cute-looking big-eyed child, whom I assume is theirs. Only one rare pic with Tom solo graces the family collection. Recalling the photograph of him in the magazine, I’m in no doubt that he is the same man, despite the change in hair colour. I want to linger and snap a copy on my mobile, but Stephanie propels me through to the kitchen

“Sorry about the mess,” she says, although, to my eyes, it’s tidy. She sweeps off her coat with a shiver, dumps it on a chair, on which a fat black cat snoozes. “Sorry, Theo,” she says, although he doesn’t appear to mind. “I’ll put on the heating. Not normally here at this time. Take a pew.”

It’s no figure of speech. A settle in the kitchen looks as if it’s been reclaimed from an old church. I sit and watch as she makes coffee, instant, the way I like it. Mugs apiece, Stephanie stands with her back to a fancy–looking range cooker. I can’t help but notice that she is slimmer than me, her body more toned and supple. I’m not overweight but feel chubby by comparison.

She starts the conversational ball rolling.

“What did you do before you lost your job?”

I tell her. A lot of people react to journalists, or hacks, with hostility. They assume that even lowly reporters are synonymous with gutter journalism, hounding folk to get a story and dig the dirt. Uncomfortably, this is not far off the truth. I am here to dig the dirt.

A smile blossoms on her face.

“Is that funny?” I say, intrigued.

“I meet a lot of people in my line of work. All shapes and sizes. With serious buyers, you usually find out what they do for a living.”

“I suppose you need to know whether they can afford the house they are buying.”

“Not only that – because people love talking about themselves,” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes somebody will spring a surprise, but I’m right ninety per cent of the time.”

“So what did you have me down for?”

She inclines her head. “I didn’t, but now you tell me, it makes sense.”

“Really?” I exclaim, not a little unsettled.

“Journalism is a career I contemplated once but, as a young single mum, it went out of the window.”

I salt the reference to single parenthood away and sip my coffee.

“Can you get another job?” she asks thoughtfully.

I shrug. “Only if I move from Cheltenham.” I don’t enjoy revealing where I live. Makes me jumpy.

“Nice place,” she says. “I see your dilemma.”

I agree with a smile.

“So this man in your life,” Stephanie gently probes.

“Oh, let’s not talk about him.” All I want to talk about is him, but not in the way Stephanie suggests.

Endeavouring to introduce a more personal dynamic to the conversation before I tramped all over it with my big feet, she averts her gaze. Maybe Stephanie regrets inviting a stranger into her home. Eyes now fixed on the quarry-tiled floor, she asks, “What did Anita tell you, exactly?”

“That you have a daughter. That your husband was killed in Thailand in a road accident.”

She looks up with candour, sorrow in her eyes. “Four years ago.” I clamp my teeth together. Barely a year afterwards, Tom shacked up with me. “One of those soft, warm July days when the sun glows and makes promises it never intended to keep.” Her voice cracks with longing, as if a shard of pain penetrated her heart years ago and stayed there. “I’d been so looking forward to having him back.”

Her voice is plaintive and I want to reach out and put an arm around her shoulder. Tell her I’m sorry. For her. For me. Towards Tom, I feel nothing but venom.

“It doesn’t get any easier,” she murmurs.

Not daring to contemplate the difficulty of my own emotional journey, I focus on what I came for: answers.

“How come Adam was in Thailand?”

She shakes her head, grips the handle of the mug until her knuckles almost crack. “His stupid pointless brother.” What might be a plain statement coming from anyone else sounds like a curse from Stephanie’s lips. I am rapt because this doesn’t compute with Tom. Is this why Tom had such a downer on Reg?

“You didn’t know Adam, but he had a wandering spirit. Part of the reason, I loved him.” She snatches a breath, as though it physically hurts her to recollect. “Mikey, Adam’s younger brother, got into a scrape in Thailand. God alone knows what he was doing there, but I can imagine.” There’s a bitter tang to her voice. Mikey sounds like a pain in the rear. “Anyway, Mikey got into trouble with some locals. Had his money stolen and, when he complained to the Thai police, they weren’t interested. So there he is, stuck in a foreign land, destitute, according to him.”

“And Adam went to help?” I don’t mistakenly say ‘Tom’ because already it feels as if I’m talking about a totally different person.

She chews her bottom lip and nods.

“Couldn’t Adam have simply wired funds?”

“There was a problem with it, again according to Mikey.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

She shrugs. “It’s hard to know what I believe any more.” Now is my moment to tell her the truth. I take a breath. A lick of fear travels up my spine. No, I can’t.

“So Adam dropped everything?” I say in a piercing voice that doesn’t sound real.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “He was a chef. Had quite a good job but the pay was rubbish. It’s pretty typical here. The classier the restaurant, the lower the wages. You’re supposed to work for the love of it, the prestige and status it confers.” She says it with another rare note of cynicism that doesn’t sit easy with her personality demeanour. But this isn’t what resonates with me. Tom used his occupation for both identities. I wonder about the significance of this, but not for too long because Stephanie is still talking. “And he was having to drive quite a way, all right in the day, not so good at two a.m.” I force a sympathetic smile to cover my surprise. Tom, who doesn’t drive, doesn’t have a licence. Another stupid, pointless lie. Then I remember Reg’s comment about Tom’s conversation. Is the license significant? Consumed by the thought, I almost miss what Stephanie says next. “In a way I think he was looking for an excuse to hand his notice in.

“And, as Mikey’s only brother, he felt a responsibility. Their parents died when they were children,” she explains, taking a drink. “Brought up by an elderly aunt.”

I take another scalding sip of coffee to mute a reaction. With subtle variations, same story. Same lie? I’m tempted to ask whether Tom took drugs, yet I can’t think of an easy way to slip it in. Maybe he only started when he was living with me. “The aunt?” I force the question, already suspecting the answer.

“She died before I met Adam.”

Pain seizes the muscles in my shoulders. My jaw grinds with anger. “How did you two meet?” When I talk I feel as if I’m speaking in tongues.

Beaming at the recollection, she says, “At a pub I was working in at the time. My mum had Zoe while I did evening shifts. Helped to keep the money flowing.

“We found each other really. Adam was such a gentle, private, enigmatic man.” She pronounces ‘enigmatic’ slowly as if she’s heard the word on television and thinks the description fits him best. Not a man who was edgy and unpredictable, then. Not a man who was miserable. Part of me wants to meet this paragon of a husband. It occurs to me that Stephanie had the best of him while I had the worst.

“Couldn’t stand having his photograph taken,” she recollects fondly. “I think in all the time we were together, I managed to get two shots of him.”

“The one you have on your desk,” I say.

“Anita showed you?” She frowns at the liberty taken.

“Sorry.”

She leans over and briefly touches my hand. “Not your fault. It’s my favourite because it summed him up. Little bit clueless about how the world worked, if you know what I mean, but he was such a smiler. Smiled all the time.”

Smiled? No, I don’t know what she means. I have no idea at all. “So brave,” Stephanie continues with admiration, “because, underneath it, I recognised he was a lost soul.”

I have no need to assume a troubled expression. This is for real. “In what way?” Perhaps living with Stephanie rescued him in a way that I could not. The Adam she talks of sounds like a new, improved version of Tom. After he faked his own death did his dual life screw him over?

“Wasn’t very worldly. Didn’t seem to know where he was heading. Innocent, really. And, oh my God,” she rolls her eyes and beams, “hopeless with money. As soon as he earned it, he’d blow it.” My mind seizes hotly upon the arguments I had with Tom about his propensity to spend. “Naïve about life, or maybe that’s because I’d had to grow up, what with having a child on my own.”

“Young for his age?” I chip in.

“Twenty-one going on fifteen,” she laughs. “We married two years after we met, on his twenty-third birthday. We only had four years together.” With a jolt, I factor this in with what Anita said and realise that it doesn’t compute. If I have this right, Tom is now thirty-one not thirty-five, as he led me to believe.

“And Zoe’s dad?”

Stephanie shakes her head. “Off the scene. Never should have happened, but I’m glad it did.” She flicks a shy smile. “Adam was lovely with Zoe. Very calm,” she says proudly. “Sorry, I’m droning on.”

“No, it’s fine.” And it was because every piece of information was going into my mental database.

“As you probably gather, I could talk for both of us.” Like me, I think numbly.

Her face relaxes. Happy. Sorted. She needs to talk about her man. It provides solace for her.

My coffee tastes bitter on my tongue. I allow Stephanie her memory of the husband she still clearly loves, while mine lingers ailing, sickly and not breathing terribly well.

“Did you consider travelling with Adam to Thailand?”

“What would I do with a small child in the middle of Phuket?”

I shoot a smile. “I can think of worse places.”

Stephanie shakes her head vehemently. “My family and friends are here. Mum, who isn’t very well now, lives over the border. My part of the world,” she says, looking around her, “not Adam’s.”

“Where was that?” I believe I know, but I could be mistaken; so very wrong about many things.

“Torquay, Devon.”

Seaside resort. Palm trees. Tourists wanting affordable low-end breaks. Not city. Not rattle and hum. Not South London.

“And the accident?” I shouldn’t press her emotional wound, but cannot help myself. Besides, after her initial response, she doesn’t appear to mind. It seems almost a relief.

“On the way from the airport. A cab collided with a tanker. Mikey was with him.”

“They both died?”

Her look is raw, bleeding at the edges. “First I knew was when I received a knock at the door from a couple of police officers.”

My eyes blink with confusion to prevent them from shooting wide. Coppers? How the hell did that work? “I’m so sorry,” I mumble, although my apology is for something else entirely. “And your poor little girl.”

She pushes a feeble smile. “Adam might not have been Zoe’s dad, but she loved him like he was.”

“I don’t know what to say.” True.

“I thought, with my family and friends, I’d be okay.” Her expression is one of great sadness and loss.

I tiptoe up to what I say next. “But you’re not?”

She lets out a breath. “It’s worse. Nobody tells you how much grief hurts. It’s almost physical.” She thumps her chest to emphasise the point. “Anti-depressants take the edge off it, but they don’t really help. There’s no medicine to mend a broken heart, is there?”

I can’t bear to meet her bleak expression. I stumble a platitude.

“And there’s only so much your family can take,” she continues. “It’s as if there is a set time of mourning, after which you’re supposed to pick yourself up and get on with life.”

Oh God, should I tell her the truth? How can I reveal that we’ve both been deceived and betrayed? How can I rip the ground from underneath her feet? “Rarely works like that.”

“No,” she agrees with a lonely smile. “You understand, don’t you?”

It isn’t said to trap me. She speaks simply like one woman reaching out to another. Crucified, I look away, fix on a stain on the wall, and listen to the kitchen clock pounding a beat. I should go and never ever return. “Grief is the price we pay for love,” I murmur. Placing my mug on the table and pulling my coat tight around my shoulders, I make a move to leave.

And then she floors me.

“I know this is really really stupid, but I keep imagining that he’s still here. That he hasn’t died at all. That there’s been a terrible mistake.”

Unseen hands with grimy fingers close around my throat. I grip the table, as if by steadying my body I will also compose my mind. “Unsurprising in the circumstances.”

“But I believe it, do you see?”

“Part of the grieving process,” I say in a trite voice that jars.

She shakes her head. “I understand what you’re getting at. I’ve read all the books about bereavement and grief, but what I feel, what I experience,” she insists, eyes raking mine, “is stronger than that.”

Despite fear tripping through me, I check any physical response that might give the game away. Mentally, I run and keep on running. It strikes me then that this is what I do often.

“I’m not a religious person,” Stephanie says. “No time for church, but what I feel,” she says, her fingers wrapping around a pretty necklace that I suspect Tom gave her, mainly because he never gave me jewellery, “is that his spirit is here, not in my heart, but here, maybe not in this town, but somewhere. Maybe, it’s because there was nothing left to bury.”

“No?” This time, I’m unable to muzzle my shock.

“The crash obliterated everyone involved. It was literally an inferno.” Her eyes fill with utter sadness, “Thailand isn’t like England when it comes to taking care of people’s remains. Perhaps that’s why I still can’t grasp it.” She looks at me with such fervour that, although I understand that her feelings for Tom take a dissimilar shape to mine, I know deep inside how much this woman loved the man. It humbles me. “We had a funeral of sorts, so that should be the end of it.” Her voice tails off. I have no idea what to say. I’m too busy trying to stop myself from ranting and spilling all I know.

Stephanie fills the gap. “Is that so stupid of me, do you think?” Voice cracking again, she turns and swipes a box of tissues from off the work surface, snatches one out and stems a tear seeping from the corner of her eye. It takes everything I have not to do the same, if for rather different reasons.

“Hark at me go on,” she says, blowing her nose. “You have your own troubles.”

She deserves better than this. How I long to tell her the truth because, out of all of my friends, including Vick, and my brother, Stephanie alone would share my burden. It’s selfish of me, yet I’m torn. She has more right than she’ll ever know to be told that the bond she feels has not been broken, that Adam, or Tom, is alive somewhere and out there in the real world. I stumble a reply, despite a sensation of stone-cold panic that she might read the blatant struggle going on inside me. What’s worse, her face breaks out in a wide expression of warmth and reassurance.

I feel a heel. Morally bankrupt. A dissembler. Just like the man called Adam who changed his name to Tom.