Never Tell A Lie

by Gail Schimmel

  ‘But I still just took it as a quirk. And then I corrected her in front of someone. A friend admired my shirt, and she said something about it being an old one. And I said no, it was the new one that I’d got at Thomas Pink. I mean, it clearly was a brand-new, expensive shirt. Anyway, she smiled and laughed and said, “Oh yes, of course.” But when I came home the next day, she’d cut the shirt into tiny pieces and left them on the bedroom floor.’

  I am silent, trying to take this in. I cannot imagine it.

  ‘What did you do?’ I eventually ask.

  ‘Nothing. I threw the bits away and pretended it hadn’t happened. And I didn’t correct her in public again.’

  ‘Okay, so she’s a liar?’ I say. ‘You’re telling me not to believe her when she says you hit her?’

  ‘Oh, it goes much further than that,’ he says. ‘That shirt was just the beginning. It was like it unleashed something in her. For a while, destroying things was her modus operandi. So like, once, I commented that I really liked a vase she had bought. I mean, I thought that was nice, that she would like me for complimenting her. She just got up, picked up the vase, threw it against the wall, and went back to eating dinner like nothing had happened.’

  Again, I can’t imagine this. I must look sceptical, because he sits back.

  ‘You already don’t believe me,’ he says. ‘So you won’t believe the rest.’

  ‘Try me,’ I say. Part of me doesn’t want to hear more. It has to be lies. But I can’t stop now.

  ‘She started to hurt me,’ he says. ‘The first time, we were sitting at dinner – steak – and she asked me if I could come with her to see her mother the next day, and I explained that I was in court all day. And she just calmly leant across the table, took my hand, and cut my hand with the steak knife. No anger, just calmly.’

  ‘What?’

  He puts his hand on the table between us and shows me a scar on the top of his hand, along the side near his thumb. ‘I needed five stitches,’ he says.

  I look at his hands, remembering that I’ve noticed before how scarred they are.

  ‘Is that all from her?’ I ask.

  He turns over his hand and shows me a small scar near the bottom of his palm. ‘I got that falling off my bike when I was seven,’ he says. ‘Otherwise, it’s all April.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘You’re stronger than her. You could stop her.’

  ‘But then I’d hurt her,’ he says.

  ‘Or call the police?’

  ‘They wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘But if what you’re saying is true, she’s hurting you.’

  ‘But I’m stronger. I might hurt her worse. And I don’t know what she’ll do to get back at me if I try to get help. She might kill me in my sleep. Or poison me – she threatens that a lot. Or hurt one of the kids. That’s my real fear, I guess. That she’ll move on to the kids.’

  ‘So leave her.’

  ‘And the kids? She’ll get custody. And I can’t allow that. And I know I shouldn’t care, but what will people think? My family will say that they warned me not to marry her, but everyone else will think I’m pathetic.’

  ‘But she doesn’t hurt the kids?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘She shouts at them, and throws things. But she hasn’t hurt them. Yet. She’s worse with Reenie than Zach though. Poor Doreen – her stupid name, and a mother who seems to hate her.’

  ‘Her stupid name? You insisted on it! It’s from your grandmother!’

  ‘My grandmother. Yes. Who I hated with a burning passion, as April well knows. I have a scar on my back from when I tried to object. She did it while I was asleep. Seventeen stitches.’

  ‘But what do they think at the hospital?’

  ‘I go to different hospitals, but basically they all think that I’m very bad at DIY.’

  ‘And that?’ I say, indicating his arm.

  ‘She pushed me down the stairs.’

  I think for a bit.

  ‘But she was bruised, Leo. And I’ve seen other marks on her.’

  ‘Sometimes she actually hurts herself, so that people will think it’s me. Sometimes it’s make-up. She’s very clever with make-up. I’m not sure which it was with that bruise. I asked actually, and that’s why she pushed me.’

  It’s true that April is very good at make-up, but I can’t accept this entire ludicrous story based on that alone. And it is ludicrous. The whole idea that tiny April could hurt a strong man like Leo, that he’d be scared of her. I can’t buy it.

  ‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘it can’t be that hard for you to believe.’

  ‘It’s very hard for me to believe,’ I say. ‘Hard, verging on impossible.’

  ‘But you know what she did on that camp,’ he says. ‘Surely you can see the link.’

  ‘But, Leo,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what happened on that bloody camp. You guys assume that I remember, but I don’t. From what April said, not a lot of people knew, and I’m pretty sure I would not have been one of them.’ I stop. ‘The truth is I barely remember April from school at all. I wouldn’t have been close enough to her to know – she just wasn’t part of my life.’

  ‘Oh God, never tell her that,’ he says. ‘She will go insane.’

  ‘But what happened on camp?’ I’m feeling desperate now, like the camp is the key to everything.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve had to piece the story together from various tellings, all of which contradict each other, so you might want to ask someone from school. But as I understand it, it was on a camp in Standard 9. Someone called her out on a lie in front of a group of people. She said nothing, and acted like she was this girl’s friend, and then when the kids went on a hike, she actually pushed the girl off a cliff. Only, as it turns out, it wasn’t a proper cliff. Just a ledge. The girl wasn’t hurt, but she was very upset.’

  ‘I didn’t do any hikes that year,’ I say, remembering. ‘I’d hurt my foot playing netball. I went on camp but I didn’t do a lot of the activities.’

  ‘Well, then that explains why you didn’t know.’

  ‘And I wasn’t friends with her group.’

  ‘I really thought you knew.’

  ‘That’s just your version. You could be totally making it up, because you know that I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘So check.’

  ‘I will,’ I say. I don’t think he expects me to act immediately, but I pick up my phone and dial Stacey.

  ‘Stace,’ I say, after we’ve greeted each other, ‘random question, but do you by any chance know what happened with April on camp at high school?’

  ‘Oh God,’ says Stacey. ‘It was such a drama. I only knew because my mom was friends with Suzie Allen’s mom, and my mom told me. It was all hushed up at school. But Suzie and April had some sort of fight, and the next day Suzie said that April pushed her off a cliff. Only April denied it, but no one believed April, because we all knew how she was when she got angry. She would totally have pushed someone off a cliff, back in the day. No one would speak to her for ages, like months. And she told Suzie that if she told, she’d kill her. But obviously Suzie told, and then she was so scared, she left the school.’ She pauses. ‘I mean, April’s obviously grown up and changed. I know you guys have become good friends.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Thanks, Stace. I’ll chat to you soon.’

  ‘No prob, babe. Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Good. I’ll chat to you later.’

  ‘Okay then. Bye.’

  I really love how Stacey never questions things. Like why I suddenly want to know details of an event that happened over twenty years ago.

  ‘I . . . I need to think, Leo,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, you need to go. I just have to be alone to get my head around what you’re saying.’

  ‘I understand,’ he says, standing up. ‘It’s a lot. Just . . . please believe me.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, wrapping my arms around myself. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  �
��Okay,’ he says. ‘I get that.’

  ‘Okay.’ I pause.

  ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told,’ he says. ‘I know no one will believe me. But I . . . I like you, Mary. I think you might believe me.’

  Chapter 43

  Leo is lying. He has to be.

  I know that men are about a zillion times more likely to be abusers than women. I’ve written articles, seen the statistics, done my research. I have spent quite some time getting myself okay with this truth as the mother of a boy child.

  I know that Leo is muscly. He is strong. And April is small. He could chuck her down a flight of steps in a moment.

  I know that Leo is charming and persuasive and a little bit manipulative. He himself has said that he is a man who gets what he wants. Men like Leo . . . well, we all know them. We allow them to charm us. But we know how they are. They’re the white men who own the world. They own the discourse. We check their privilege for them, because they don’t check it themselves. These are the men with the power. Not the victims.

  And I don’t want Joshua to be right about April.

  I go on to Google and start frantically searching for content about abused men, trying to find the information that will show me that what Leo said can’t be true. But the opposite happens. I find myself going down rabbit holes, all of which seem to back up what Leo has said about how he feels. The fear of hurting the abuser. The fear of retaliation if they stand up for themselves. The fear of losing their children. It’s all there.

  But I need more. I need some sort of objective test.

  It’s not for nothing that I’m a journalist, and I’ve done some hard-core investigative work in the past. And then it hits me. I don’t need hard-core investigative journalism. I need one simple message. I send a message to all my old school connections except April – and since the reunion, I have quite a number of those as they set up a WhatsApp group to arrange it – saying, ‘Does anyone have Suzie Allen’s number for me?’ I considered explaining myself, but one of the things I have learnt is that if you don’t explain, nobody really wonders. Sure enough, seven minutes later, Bronwyn Big Boobs responds.

  Hiya Mary! I invited Suzie to the reunion! But she didn’t want to come! Shame! She missed out, didn’t she! Will send her number!

  The whole thing is interspersed with various emojis, including a totally inexplicable birthday cake, as if I wouldn’t understand the message without illustrations. But she sends the number in the next message.

  I take a deep breath, and dial, mentally composing a message, because who answers the phone from unknown numbers anymore? Suzie Allen, that’s who.

  ‘Sue speaking, how can I help you?’ she answers, like a call centre agent.

  ‘Um, hi, Suzie? Sue? My name is Mary Wilson. We went to school together. I don’t know if you remember me?’

  There’s a small pause.

  ‘Yes, Mary,’ says Suzie. ‘I do. How can I help you?’

  Okay, guess we’re not doing small talk.

  ‘This is an odd request, Suzie. But I hope you can help me, and that it won’t be painful. But I would be very grateful.’

  ‘Painful?’ says Suzie. ‘That doesn’t sound very nice.’

  ‘So, the thing is that I went to our school reunion, you know.’

  She interrupts. ‘Oh God, that bloody Bron tried to get me to go. Couldn’t think of anything worse.’

  ‘Well, I also wasn’t sure. But it was actually quite fun, and I reconnected with some people, and made friends with some people that I wasn’t really friends with at school. And that’s kind of why I need your help.’

  ‘I’m not coming to anyone’s surprise party,’ she says.

  I laugh. ‘No, nothing like that. I need you to tell me what happened with you and April at Standard 9 camp.’

  There is a long silence. So long that I think the call has cut off.

  ‘Suzie?’

  ‘I thought you were exaggerating when you said painful,’ says Suzie. ‘On second thoughts, can’t we just throw a surprise party for someone? Not April though.’

  ‘Suzie,’ I say, ‘I can’t really tell you the details, but it really makes a big difference what you tell me. I need to know.’

  ‘How can it possibly matter now? It’s been more than twenty years. And you weren’t even part of our group.’

  ‘I can’t really explain. It just really, really matters.’

  Suzie sighs. ‘I can’t remember the details of the fight that started it. It was one of those silly things – April said something, and I called her out on it. I don’t know if you remember, but April was always telling small fibs.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about April,’ I say. ‘That’s part of the problem.’

  ‘Well, she’d say things like that she was going to Disneyland for Christmas, and we all knew that she was going to stay with her grandparents in Vanderbijl, because that’s all she ever did. But we’d gloss over it, because we felt a bit sorry for her. Her mom really wasn’t nice, and they had very little, and if making up stories made her feel better, what harm?’

  ‘But then something made you call her out?’

  ‘I can’t even remember why. Maybe too many lies in a row, maybe too big a lie. I don’t know. I remember we were all lying in our bunks before lights out at camp, and I remember saying, “Oh, that’s not true, April”, and that she went very, very quiet, and then turned over and went to sleep. The rest of us talked a bit more, I think, and then went to sleep too. The next morning, she was back to normal.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we went on that hike. You must remember – it was hectic. We went up really high – I remember my legs were aching. My back was aching. And then it flattened out, and we were like, thank God. Only then we had to walk along a narrow path basically at the edge of a cliff. I don’t think that schools would take that risk these days, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t do the hike. I had a netball injury. But I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘Oh, okay. So anyway, we’re walking along this path, and kind of clinging to the side, and April is behind me. It’s just us – some kids were faster and up ahead, and some were behind us. But at that part, we were alone. And I say to her something about how scary it is, and she says something like, imagine if I pushed you. I remember I said, “Don’t joke like that, April, it’s not funny.” And then she said, “I don’t joke and I never tell a lie.” And then she pushed me and I fell off the cliff. I remember thinking this is it, I’m going to die.’

  She takes a deep breath.

  ‘Only, thank God, at that point it wasn’t completely a cliff. There was a small outcrop just below where I fell. I only dropped about two metres, which was still quite a fall.’

  ‘Did April know that the outcrop was there?’

  ‘She said afterwards that she did. But, you know, I didn’t believe her. And then, of course, later she denied that she’d pushed me at all. I’ll never know, but I fully believed that she wanted to kill me.’

  ‘And what happened after that? Did she apologise? Help?’

  ‘No. She leant over the edge and saw me sitting there. My ankle was hurt. And she said that if I told, she would kill me. And then Terry came along, and when April saw her, she started freaking out and saying that I’d fallen and we needed to get help.’

  ‘But you told?’

  ‘I told Terry, right then, and April denied it. But Terry believed me, and she told the teachers. And April kept threatening me. She whispered in my ear that she would kill me in my sleep, and if I looked at her and no one else was looking, she’d do that thing where you draw your finger across your throat.’

  ‘Did she hurt you?’

  ‘No, but I was so scared, I eventually wasn’t eating or sleeping. My parents moved me to another school in the end.’

  I’m quiet for a moment.

  ‘What do you think, looking back?’ I eventually ask.

  ‘You know, we were teenagers,’ she says. ‘April was a tr
oubled girl, but I don’t know what to think, really. Obviously, she wouldn’t have killed me – my fear was an overreaction. But that said, I didn’t go to the reunion mostly because I was scared she would be there. I didn’t want to see her.’

  ‘If I said to you . . .’ I pause, thinking how to phrase this. ‘If I said to you that there’s a situation now where April is either hurting someone or being hurt by someone, what would you think?’

  Suzie doesn’t answer immediately. I like that. I like her – she seems to be a thoughtful, fair kind of person.

  ‘Look, twenty years have passed. More. Anything could happen. People change, find themselves in situations. But I was friends with April for a long time, and I would be really surprised to find her becoming a victim to anything. I wouldn’t like to see what she would do to someone who tried to hurt her. But like I said, things change.’

  I thank Suzie, and after a bit of small talk, we ring off.

  Things change, I think. Only sometimes, they don’t. And everything that Suzie said resonates with Leo’s side of the story.

  I think back on all the times that I have needed April, and she hasn’t been there. All the little ways that she has let me down. And yes, the things that don’t add up when she tells a story. It’s like I was looking through a prism one way, and now I’ve adjusted it, and realised that before, everything was blurred. And now it’s clear.

  I can’t help it. Despite myself, I believe Leo. And now I have to figure out what to do.

  Chapter 44

  I message Leo and tell him to phone me when he can.

  While I’m waiting, I get a message from April.

  I have a job interview!!!!!!

  I feel like I am so deep in the sea of lies that I can hardly remember who knows what about what. But I’m not ready to tell April that I know the truth.

  That’s amazing, I message back, because I am, frankly, amazed that she did anything about the job. When/where?

  At an interiors magazine as a stylist! she says. The exclamation marks are everywhere today.

  Wow, that’s amazing, I say, repeating myself. This wasn’t one of the jobs I found for her – jobs like that are as rare as hen’s teeth. Magazines are laying off – and I should know. I’ve just had a second regular gig cancelled. I’ll find work to replace it – I always do. But it’s disappointing.