THE LIES SHE TOLD
Paula Johnston
“An emotional thriller, full of suspense. It leaves you on the edge of your seat wanting more!”
“Just when you think you have a handle on where this book is going, it takes you in the complete opposite direction!”
“I was hooked from the beginning and could not put it down. Gripping, full of twists and just brilliantly written. An outstanding debut novel.”
“A book you simply can’t put down. Smart, gripping and full of characters you don’t know whether to love or hate.”
“Brings the reality of modern day relationships to life. A psychological thriller that is every girl's worst nightmare.”
“Twists and turns like you’d never believe!”
Copyright
Copyright © Paula Johnston 2020
The right of Paula Johnston to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Dedication
To my Grandparents, for always pushing me to follow my dream.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Stay in touch
Prologue
We connect with people because they understand something about us; something that we possess that’s enjoyable.
Even the most toxic relationships begin with a foundation of untainted trust and pleasantries. These relationships can flourish gracefully, allowing new levels to be built, but sometimes these foundations can eventually show signs of wear and tear and inevitably start to crumble.
I like to think that I'm a good judge of character, but sometimes people don't take me just quite as seriously as they should. I give myself to people wholeheartedly with no inhibitions and to my own fault, I expect the same to be reciprocated.
When I found out, I wasn't mad at you. I wasn't even sad; there were no tears shed, my eyes were bone dry. You shouldn't have treated me this way. You made a big mistake, one I privately promised you would ultimately pay for.
As the wind blows sharply across my face today and I look down at you, I'm still not mad, I'm still not sad. I am something else, something between satisfied and amused. I know that I am a good person. This - all of this - has no reflection on me as a person because you did this, not me.
This was all your fault.
Part One
Chapter 1
Karly
The sun pierces brightly through a small gap in the curtains, sending a sharp ray of light across the length of my bedroom. I always sleep with the window open with the curtains closed, but it’s perfectly normal for a gust of wind to have blown them open slightly during the night.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not the height of summer, it could be a menacing autumn or a freezing cold winter. I never falter from routine. There’s no spectacularly interesting reason behind it. I simply enjoy listening to all the different sounds of the outside world as I fall asleep at night: the buzzing of cars that have ventured out on a late night journey, the click of shoes on the pavement as they pass by, the whistling of the wind through the trees. I find all of it comforting; the way each little insignificant noise disrupts the blanketed silence that attempts to capture and envelop me each night. These noises are a precious gift of illusion that I am not entirely on my own.
Today is the 17th of July, my birthday, and I have just turned twenty-nine years old. My birthday however makes no difference to me, everything remains the same. There are no frills, no surprises, no fuss and so it’s easy for me to carry on as normal.
There is an empty space beside me in my king size bed - a choice that was entirely my own. I could have extended an invitation to any one of my puppy dog eyed admirers to spend the night with me, just so I had someone to wake up to this morning, but I didn’t, I don’t need them.
Of course, I know that any one of them would have fallen over themselves to accept if I had asked. I suppose I should be flattered by their attempts to woo me with lavish tricks and expensive gifts, all a desperate bid to claim me as their own, but I’m not. I’m not interested in getting into a serious relationship with any of them, that’s not what I keep them around for. They have no sentimental value to me, merely play things to accommodate my free time because everyone gets a little lonely from time to time. I’m only human after all, and admittedly, as much as I enjoy and am used to my own company, I’m not ashamed to have dabbled in more than a few meaningless flings over the years to fill some gaps. Most of them have been aesthetically pleasing, but dead between the eyes. The pretty ones that you could stare at forever but god forbid you ever try to engage in some intellectual conversation with. They don't have that brain capacity, which makes them meaningless, and so meaningless flings are exactly all they are good for.
Occasionally a rarity crosses my path and successfully piques my interest. They stand out from the crowd because they have something more to them than just their handsome smiles and chiselled jaw lines. They have that wit, that jack the lad charm that I find oh so endearing - but only because it reminds me so much of him. Despite my best efforts to mould something special between us, even just a sliver of resemblance to what we have, my time with them is always short lived with the outcome always the same, because deep down I know my efforts are futile. There is no one like him.
The annoying repetitive buzz of my phone on the bedside table closest to me interrupts my train of thought. I wonder who could be texting me so early. I foolishly allow myself a moment of excitement and I’m not sure why because it’s out of character for me, but the optimistic feeling evaporates just as quickly as it surfaced. Reality is always there to starkly remind me that it’s not likely to be anyone important sending
me birthday wishes. There isn’t anyone important, not really.
I don’t have any living parents to celebrate the day of my birth with. No one to tell me sweet little anecdotes about how I took forever to arrive or how much I weighed. I don’t even have any brothers or sisters to take me out for a special meal or surprise me with sentimental gifts because I was an only child, and my dear old granny – for all she was worth - passed away just a couple of months after I turned twenty, which left me a sort of orphan, I suppose.
I don’t remember all of my birthdays that I was lucky enough to spend with my mum and dad as I was much too young; only the last one before their accident. The two of them burst into my pastel pink bedroom early in the morning with a gigantic, delicious looking chocolate cake in the shape of a caterpillar with a pink smiley face. It had five little purple and white striped candles poking out from its body; one for each year mum had said.
I giggled excitedly and clapped my hands as they sang happy birthday to me in those funny voices that they knew I loved, and then I sprang from my bed to blow out the flames and make a special wish. Mum asked me what I had wished for, but I told her not to be silly, that I couldn’t tell her that or it wouldn’t come true. She smiled down at me warmly and ruffled my then sandy blonde hair that has now darkened substantially over the years.
‘Well we wouldn’t want that would we? Time to get up now Keeks, you can have some of your cake for your breakfast. But just for today.’
I followed her and dad out of the room and into the kitchen where she cut me a large slice of the caterpillar’s body and put it on a paper plate that had lots of colourful balloons on it. I was so happy sitting at our kitchen table with the wonky wooden leg, eating my chocolate cake with my fingers as mum and dad pottered around getting themselves ready for work. My birthday was special then, and I felt special as I licked the gooey chocolate off my fingers.
Unfortunately, it turned out that my mum was right after all, having cake for breakfast that morning was just for that day. If I had known that, I would have made a different wish.
It was in October that same year, only three measly months after my birthday that both my parents were taken from me. They weren’t famous by any means, but the events which led to their deaths was so horrific that it ended up on the television and splashed all over the front pages of the local papers. A tragic five car pileup on the motorway where three people lost their lives and the surviving drivers and passengers were left critically injured. I wasn’t told too much about it all at the time, just that there had been an accident and that I wouldn't see my mummy and daddy any more. Granny used to always change the channel when she caught me watching the news and I remember being annoyed that she was hiding things from me, but the curiosity never left me and so I looked it up on the internet when I was a bit older and able to use a computer. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.
‘The car was crushed like a tin of beans’ one article reported. I hated the journalist who wrote those horrible words, they made it sound almost comical when it was anything but, and for so many years after I experienced the most horrific nightmares of my parents being trapped inside a compact metal tin; their twisted, lifeless bodies helpless with their beautiful limbs bent and broken, their blood spattering the interior.
It was simply a tragic freak accident, but one that might never have happened if things had worked out differently. My parents always took the train to work, less hassle with traffic they always said, but on this particular day, heavy construction works were taking place on the railway line and so they decided to car share into the city to avoid any delays. They should have left the car behind. Instead, they left me.
I don’t know if they would have woken me up every year with a caterpillar cake, but I never received another birthday cake of any kind when I went to live with granny, in fact she barely acknowledged the day at all. I remember tugging at her apron the year after as I danced on the spot, already dressed for school and excited to tell her that I was a big six years old today. She stopped boiling whatever was in her pot and turned to look at me for only a few moments, her eyes grey and detached, cold even, and then she turned back to the stove without saying a single word. I shuffled out of her sight, tears streaming silently down my face and I knew then that this day, my special day, would never be the same.
Everything had changed, and I hated it. I hated my new house, I hated my new dull and dark room, I hated my new school and so I refused to make friends. I even hated that I no longer had something as simple as a nickname; no more Keeks. She was gone now thanks to granny. She addressed me as Karly and Karly only. To her the pet name that my mum had gifted me was childish and un-lady like. Most of all though, above everything that had changed so suddenly in my life, the thing I hated the most was her.
Fresh tears gather painfully in my eyes at the memory of being back in my little pink bedroom, looking up at my parents and their smiling faces filled with so much love and adoration, and so I do what I always do; lock the memory back in its box, furious with myself for bringing it out in the first place.
My phone buzzes again, refusing to be ignored and I reach over and tug the charger from the bottom, tossing it carelessly away as I enter my password, allowing my sleepy and now damp eyes to adjust to the bright attack of the screen.
Happy Birthday Beautiful x
My stomach flips wildly at the sight of his name. This is a surprise. It’s been about four months since we last spoke, and I knew I would hear from him at some point today; I just didn’t expect it to be so early.
I won’t ask him where he’s been or why he left, there’s never any point. I learned that cruel and harsh lesson after the first couple of times he vanished. The very first time though, that was something else. The pain was surreal. I felt like my heart had been brutally ripped from my chest by his bare hands. Even the pain I felt as a child when I lost both of my parents didn’t compare to the ache his absence left.
Everything was fine between us - more than fine, until suddenly it wasn’t. His name stopped appearing online, my messages failed to send, and his number was always out of use. A constant churning ache lodged deep inside my stomach yearned for him every single day. I began to doubt everything and anything. Did I do something wrong? Had I said something to upset him? Is he testing me to make sure that I am good enough? There was also that gut wrenching worry that something had happened to him, that he had been hurt or involved in an accident. Everything was out of my control, I felt completely helpless.
He couldn't have left me on purpose, we had plans - big plans. With only a couple of weeks to go before his big move to Glasgow from London, we had been discussing the silly things like what size of television we would get and what colours we would paint our rooms, when out of nowhere, my big beautiful dream of a life together morphed into my very own living nightmare. I mentally tortured myself searching for the answers that only he could give me, and I cried myself to sleep every single night for the first few weeks after his disappearance.
After six long difficult months had passed; just when life without him almost started to become that little bit more bearable, he returned to me, with carefully constructed excuses ready in his hands. Although I was extremely hurt at the realisation that he had in fact made the decision to leave me willingly, and admittedly quite sceptical, I quickly realised that whatever his reasons were for leaving me high and dry, they didn’t actually matter to me now that he had chosen to come back to me. He was no longer a ghost.
Foolishly, I allowed myself to dive head first back into the whirlpool of our relationship, falling for him harder than I thought possible, much deeper than before – and then it happened again, and again, and again.
His erratic behaviour formed a solid pattern over the years and I had no choice but to accept it. Ultimately, he was the one with the power and always would be and so now I accept when it happens. I simply go with the flow, because I know now that this is just what he does and inevitably will always happen unt
il he is ready. Whenever the possibility of a committed and stable life together edges closer to reality, instead of getting excited, I prepare myself for what is about to come.
I’m not stupid though. Of course, I confronted him about his vanishing acts when they were in their infancy, but he always had an answer ready to keep me pacified. He had multiple reasons why it wasn’t possible for us to be together just yet. Sometimes a few of his more brutally honest answers included there being another girl in his life, someone closer to home, and although I was practically turning emerald green with jealousy at the obscene idea of him being with someone other than me, I confidently knew that they would just be there to pass the time; just something to do until we could finally be together properly. I didn’t however expect his current fling to go that one step further, but unfortunately it did. Another outrageous inconvenience spiralling its web attempting to keep us apart. I had to keep reminding myself that she was temporary because I'm forever.
One thing is a certainty though, it doesn't matter how many times he tries to leave, he always comes crawling back. It might be a week, a month, or even a year but he and I both know that our relationship is special. There is an undeniably solid connection that binds us together. That thing you always see in those cliché, predictable rom-coms and wonder if it could really be possible for two human beings to feel so strongly for one another. Let me tell you, it is possible, because that’s what we have.
I was only a few months shy of eighteen when I stumbled across his profile online. I was scrolling through one of my many social media accounts on my laptop after work one night when I noticed that I had a new friend or follower request, whatever they were called back then. I knew the minute I saw his picture: his beautiful face, his thick dark hair, his perfectly tanned skin that looked flawless under his white t-shirt. His perfect white teeth glistened as he bit his bottom lip slightly in a seductively charming grin. He was the one for me, I just knew it and if I had learned one thing from life it's that it's far too short and dull to not go after what you want.
The Lies She Told: A wickedly twisted psychological thriller that you cannot put down! Page 1
