Liar

by K. L. Slater

  10

  Judi

  By the time we sit down to lunch, I’ve forgotten I look a mess. I’m hot and tired and frankly, not hungry in the slightest.

  Henry opens a bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, and once everyone is seated, I busy myself helping the boys get food on to their plates.

  ‘My favourite estate for grapes, the Marlborough,’ Henry says, pouring Amber a large glass. ‘Crisp and aromatic. See what you think to it, Amber.’

  Amber sniffs the contents of her glass and takes a dainty sip. ‘Mmm, this is really lovely,’ she declares.

  ‘It’s from New Zealand,’ Henry adds.

  ‘You seem to be very knowledgeable about wine.’ Amber takes another sip. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start with all the different types. Hopefully I can learn from you.’

  ‘Just stuff I’ve picked up over the years.’ Henry shrugs, but it’s obvious he’s pleased with the compliment.

  I watch out of the corner of my eye as Ben fusses over Amber. Would she like a little of this, or that? Perhaps another slice of beef? Even Henry is passing tureens of steaming potatoes and vegetables to her before helping himself. It’s unheard of.

  Once the boys are happily eating, I put a little of everything on my own plate, but not much. Nobody notices.

  Soon Amber and I are looking at the tops of four heads as the plates of food begin to be demolished.

  ‘So, Amber, tell us a bit about yourself,’ I say. ‘Are you from—’

  ‘Oh Mum. You’re not seriously going to use that corny line, are you?’ Ben looks up, grinning, but there’s a meaningful look behind his smile. ‘It’s not a job interview, you know.’

  ‘It’s fine, Ben.’ Amber reaches for a tureen of vegetables and gives me a little nod. ‘Go on, Judi, please.’

  ‘I was just going to ask where you live,’ I say reluctantly. I’m only trying to show willing, to show an interest for Ben’s sake. ‘Close by here?’

  ‘I live in an apartment now, near the city centre,’ she replies, prodding at the buttered carrots.

  ‘And your family,’ I continue. ‘Do they live in Nottingham too?’

  Amber drops the carrot batons she’s spooning all over the tablecloth. ‘Oh! I’m so sorry. How clumsy of me.’

  ‘It’s Mum’s interrogation technique,’ Ben laughs. ‘It’s enough to turn anyone into a bag of nerves.’

  ‘The cloth will wash, don’t worry,’ I say, spearing a piece of broccoli on my fork. I want to repeat my question about her family, but somehow it feels difficult to do so now.

  ‘Ben says you work with children?’ I say instead.

  ‘That’s right, at the children’s centre. It’s actually attached to Ben’s school.’ She dabs at the buttery orange stain with her napkin. ‘I’m the lead parent support worker there.’

  ‘That’s a fancy title,’ Henry remarks with his mouth full. ‘What does a lead parent support worker do, then?’

  ‘Well, one of my main roles is to help disadvantaged families access the services available to them,’ Amber says levelly, taking a sip of her wine. ‘And a big part of the job is providing practical and emotional support to families with young children. It’s very rewarding.’

  ‘I see,’ Henry says, looking a bit baffled.

  ‘It’s a really important facility for the local community,’ Ben says, and Amber looks at him gratefully, squeezing his hand.

  ‘Are you a teacher, like Daddy?’ Noah asks her.

  ‘Don’t speak while you’re chewing please, champ,’ Ben remarks.

  ‘No, I’m not a teacher, Noah.’ Amber smiles. She’s pushing the food around on her plate but I’m not sure anything has reached her glossy mouth yet.

  ‘Nanny says that the only people who are really important in school are the teachers,’ Noah states, shovelling a heap of creamy mashed potato on to his fork. ‘It’s because you have to go to university to be a teacher, but anyone can do the other jobs.’

  ‘Oh Noah, I’m sure I didn’t say anything of the sort,’ I splutter, laughing off my embarrassment. ‘Everyone’s job is important in school.’

  ‘But Nanny, you said—’

  ‘Well, I confess I haven’t been to university, so that’ll be a black mark for me,’ Amber says.

  For a second or two the air is thick with an awkward silence.

  Then she laughs. And Ben and Henry join in.

  ‘Honestly, the way little ones get things muddled up.’ I laugh myself, relieved. Still smiling, I reach for my glass of wine and glance over at Amber.

  She has stopped laughing now, and she blinks and holds my stare until I look away again.

  Once the table is cleared and we move to the living room, everything feels a little more relaxed.

  ‘Tea, coffee, anyone?’ I offer.

  Henry opts for a coffee but Ben pours Amber another glass of wine. Her third, I think.

  ‘Will you excuse me? I need to use the bathroom.’ She stands up.

  Ben directs her upstairs and then comes through to the kitchen while I’m making the hot drinks.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ he whispers.

  ‘She seems very nice,’ I say, spooning ground coffee into the cafetière. ‘I do hope she enjoyed her lunch.’ She didn’t comment on the food once. I saw her prodding at her meal quite a bit but I’m not sure she actually consumed anything.

  ‘She gets a bit stressed out,’ Ben glances nervously at the doorway, ‘talking about her family. There was a tragedy … her parents and sister were all killed in a car accident. Amber had stayed home with a neighbour. Awful business.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say, pouring boiling water over the grounds. ‘That’s really awful. I hope I didn’t upset the poor girl. But I was only making conversation, darling. You should have warned me if there were subjects that were off limits.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. You like her, though?’

  I look at him a moment, his face so open and hopeful. What will he do, I wonder, if I tell him I’m not massively impressed with Amber? Will it make a difference? He seems smitten by her.

  ‘She seems lovely,’ I say, and he smiles.

  11

  Judi

  I put the cups and saucers and the cafetière on a tray. I pour single cream into the Royal Albert china jug that used to be my mother’s and load a plate with after-dinner mints. Then I carry it all through to the lounge.

  As I enter the hallway, Amber appears at the bottom of the stairs. She seems to have been up there quite a while; I assumed she’d come back down ages ago.

  ‘It’s a very nice house you have here,’ she says, waiting for me to pass her with the tray. ‘Lots of space.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it has,’ I say, not wanting to sound too boastful. ‘You get used to it after a while, of course. Sometimes, when Ben and the boys are over, it feels like we could do with somewhere even bigger.’ I give a conspiratorial laugh.

  ‘But then I suppose if it’s just the two of you in the future,’ she says, ‘you’ll be rattling around in this place.’

  It’s a strange thing to say, I think, and I fall silent as we walk into the lounge.

  Noah and Josh pounce on the foil-wrapped chocolates as soon as I place the tray down on the coffee table.

  ‘No more than two each or there’ll not be enough for everyone.’ I wink at them and they grin, knowing they always get to eat lots more.

  I leave Henry to serve coffee while I pop up to the bathroom. But as soon as I get to the top of the stairs, I freeze. David’s bedroom door is slightly ajar.

  I always make a point of keeping it closed because it’s a sacred space to me. Cut off and preserved from the rest of the house.

  Henry never goes in there on principle, and although Ben has been known to do so very occasionally, he always asks me first if it’s OK.

  I’ve walked past this room several times already this morning and I know that the door was most definitely closed.

  The only person who has been up he
re alone since then is Amber.

  I pad softly down the corridor and push the door open a little further. I step inside and take a quick look around. Everything seems exactly as it was, but still, my stomach churns.

  I’d like a lock put on the door to keep the room totally private. But if I asked Henry to install one, I know he’d either laugh at the suggestion or lose his temper about the fact that I still keep the room as a shrine.

  I step back out of the room and click the door closed. I hate the thought that a stranger’s hand might have touched David’s door handle, Ben’s new girlfriend or not.

  And how terribly rude of her to go nosing around uninvited.

  When I get back downstairs, I glance over at Amber. Have you had a look around upstairs? is not the sort of thing I can ask her outright. She looks straight back at me but doesn’t smile; simply runs a manicured hand nonchalantly through her cropped hair.

  The room is strangely silent, and then Ben rushes in with the kitchen roll.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Judi,’ Amber blurts out, suddenly distressed when Ben appears. ‘I just don’t know how I could’ve been so clumsy.’

  Ben tears off a long strip of kitchen roll and begins dabbing at the wooden flooring. I walk over and peer around the coffee table. My mother’s china jug lies in two pieces on the floor, cream flooding around it.

  ‘Oh no!’ My hand flies to my mouth.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Ben was just telling me how precious the jug is to you and …’ Her voice falters, and Ben lays his hand on her arm – her arm! – as if to offer support. ‘I picked it up to take a closer look and it just slipped from my hand. I’ll try and get you another, I promise.’

  Don’t. It won’t be the same. I’m working hard to keep the simmering resentment from exploding out of my mouth. Only this jug belonged to my mother.

  ‘Well, all’s not lost. Looks like a clean break, at least.’ Henry holds up the two pieces. ‘I’ll have a go at glueing them in the morning,’ He says it as if that should be the end of it all.

  I don’t answer. It feels like insects are burrowing under my skin, travelling down my arms and into my fingers. I shiver, even though the room is warm, and hug the tops of my arms.

  ‘Sit down, Mum,’ Ben says kindly when he’s finished mopping up the cream. I look down and see that the large area of polished wood is now dull and smeared, and although he’s done his best, the cream has surreptitiously seeped in between the boards where it might never be reached. ‘Mum?’

  I blink and see that everyone is watching me, even the two boys, with some concern. Ben nudges Noah, who moves to my side and gently pulls at my hand until I sit down.

  Amber looks down at her knotted fingers. She looks genuinely distressed.

  Ben hands me a cup of strong coffee and I take a sip, thinking how I’d have felt if I’d broken something of sentimental value belonging to Henry’s mother on our first meeting. I decide I’d have hoped she’d have looked on me kindly and given me the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘I’m sorry, Judi,’ Amber says again in a small voice, and I look up and meet her eyes.

  ‘Apology accepted,’ I reply, and smile at her.

  Henry winks at me and Ben’s face brightens as he throws me a grateful look.

  It’s as if everyone unfreezes, takes a collective breath of relief, and we’re off again.

  ‘You mentioned that you live in an apartment,’ Henry says to Amber, and she breaks eye contact with me and turns to face him. ‘Never fancied it myself. Must feel as if you’re cooped up like a battery hen, with having no garden.’

  ‘Dad!’ Ben rolls his eyes.

  ‘I suppose it might feel like that to some people, but I really like apartment living.’ Amber smiles, taking a swig of her wine. ‘There’s minimum maintenance to worry about and I feel far more secure there than living alone in a house. I’ve got one or two pots on the balcony, so there is a tiny garden of sorts, but I haven’t been there long enough to make my mark.’

  ‘Where did you live before that?’ I ask her.

  ‘Oh, another apartment in a different area.’

  ‘Tell them what you did. Before you left the last flat.’ Ben grins.

  ‘Ben, no!’ Her cheeks flush with colour. ‘I can’t believe you’ve brought that up.’

  ‘Oh go on.’ He bursts out laughing. ‘It’s hilarious, they’ll love it.’

  ‘We’re all ears.’ I pour more coffee and notice that Amber’s wine glass is almost empty again. I suppose I ought to be glad she feels able to relax so quickly after the jug drama.

  ‘Well … my landlord at the last place was an absolute pig,’ she begins. Her words are starting to sound just a touch fuzzy around the edges. ‘And when I say pig, I mean a real pig. He used to come round to my flat on the pretence of checking the meters and he’d “accidentally” touch me up as he walked by. You know the sort, right? It just kept happening.’

  Henry arches an eyebrow and I glance at Noah and Josh, who fortunately are absorbed in a game of Buckaroo, oblivious to the rather inappropriate conversation.

  ‘To cut a long story very short, when I worked up the courage to finally tell him where to get off, he gave me six days’ notice to leave. He said he wanted to sell the flat and he didn’t want me there when prospective buyers came over to view it.’

  ‘That’s not on.’ Henry shakes his head. ‘He sounds a bit of a rogue to me.’

  ‘Cut to the interesting bit.’ Ben beams, nudging her.

  ‘This is so embarrassing.’ She buries her face in his shoulder.

  ‘Trust me, it’s brilliant,’ Ben tells us.

  Amber looks up again. ‘Obviously I had to get my own back. So once I’d packed everything up, and while I waited for the removal firm to arrive, I hid fresh prawns all over the flat.’

  ‘Prawns?’ I repeat, puzzled.

  ‘Have you ever whiffed rotting prawns, Judi? I tucked them under the edges of the carpets and in the folds of the Roman blinds, and then I poked a couple of holes in the cushions and pushed them into the foam filling.’

  ‘She even stuck some into the air vents.’ Ben laughs and slaps his knee. ‘Brilliant!’

  ‘I bet the old perv is still searching for where the smell is coming from.’ Amber grins, draining her glass.

  ‘Heavens,’ I say faintly.

  ‘Well!’ Henry manages a little chuckle, but I can tell he’s rather taken aback. ‘You certainly found an inventive way of exacting your revenge, Amber my dear.’

  ‘Told you they’d love it,’ Ben tells her, squeezing her thigh. ‘Good story, eh, Mum?’

  They both look at me, amused.

  ‘Indeed,’ I say, taking a sip of my rapidly cooling coffee. ‘Just remind me never to get on the wrong side of you, Amber.’

  She throws back her pretty head and laughs, and everyone joins in.

  12

  Judi

  ‘Sooo,’ Maura says, the next morning at work. ‘How did it go?’ She carefully places a mug of coffee down on the reception desk in front of me.

  ‘Fine,’ I say lightly, taking a tiny sip and grimacing as the almost boiling liquid scalds my lips. ‘It was fine.’

  ‘Oh no, don’t think for one second you’re getting away with that.’ Maura grins and perches her trim derrière on the edge of the desk. She’s lost a bit of weight recently and looks better for it. ‘Come on now, how did it really go?’

  ‘It was … OK.’ I sigh, inhaling the irresistible smell of coffee. ‘She seems a nice girl and I suppose I’ve just turned into a cynical old crone.’

  Maura laughs. ‘Hey, less of the old crone; at forty-nine, I’m only six years behind you. You didn’t like her, I take it?’

  ‘No! I mean, yes, I did like her. She seemed nice. Honestly.’

  ‘Judi.’ Maura lowers her chin and looks at me like a school teacher. ‘How long have we been friends?’

  ‘Oh gosh, I don’t know. Twenty years or more?’

  I first met Maura when David started comprehens
ive school. She was the school secretary at the time. I offered to help out at the Christmas fayre she was organising and we just sort of bonded. Years later, when she became the business manager at the local GPs’ surgery, she encouraged me to apply for the admin assistant position.

  ‘I’d say we’ve known each other at least twenty-five years. So I kind of know when you’re saying something that doesn’t agree with what you’re really thinking. Got it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I flash her a sheepish grin.

  ‘OK,’ she sighs. ‘So let’s start again. You didn’t like her?’

  ‘She seemed quite a nice girl, but … I don’t know, there was just something.’

  ‘Something like …?’

  ‘She was very confident,’ I say, deciding to start with something positive. ‘And she had Ben and Henry eating out of her hand right from the off.’

  Maura picks up her mug and waits.

  ‘But she broke my mother’s jug, a little Royal Albert one she used to cherish.’ I explain what happened.

  ‘How awful,’ Maura sympathises. ‘Such a shame. I’d imagine the poor girl was mortified.’

  ‘Well that’s just it, she wasn’t really. Not overly,’ I say. ‘I mean, she showed remorse at first, but then she seemed to just forget about it.’

  ‘That could’ve been just embarrassment.’ Maura shrugs. ‘She was probably so keen to put it behind her that she just pushed it completely out of her mind.’

  I’m slightly peeved that Maura’s sympathies appear to lie so completely with Amber. So I tell her the landlord story.

  ‘Well, at least she didn’t boil any bunnies.’ Maura laughs and then sees my face. ‘Oh come on, Judi. You’ve got to admire the girl’s imagination. It sounds like that landlord needed taking down a peg or two.’

  ‘I agree, but the boys were there listening and she’d only just met us. She was a bit forward, and frankly, I found it all a little odd.’