One More Lie

by Amy Lloyd

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I feel relieved because his anger means he clearly hasn’t seen the news while I’ve been gone or worked out what’s going on.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Let’s get going.’

  44

  Him: Now

  I’m on the train within the hour, passing through cities and countryside, back to the past. Sometimes I envy her ability to forget what happened. We are not the same. She was younger and she had already been through so much. This is something I couldn’t understand when I was an angry eleven-year-old but now it seems obvious. Though we were both there and we did the same things we had two different experiences. Everything which happened that summer took place in that space between us, space which we hadn’t even thought of before, would never have known was there until those huge events shattered that invisible barrier and abruptly ended our childhoods. I grew up, fast. But her, she seemed to freeze.

  This is why she is drawn back there; she is trying to find out who she is by figuring out what she did. To her it’s a knot she needs to unpick, a splinter just under the skin, a word right on the tip of her tongue. But half of what she remembers is already tainted by years of stories she’s read about herself. When she tells me what she knows about Luke and Mr Sampson there is only ever the barest details of truth. All the colour she adds herself, like an old black and white film rereleased in lurid Technicolor. The flourishes she gained from tabloid magazines and internet discussion boards.

  So much of it is still fresh in my memory. I don’t want to go back. It’s like taking the stitches out before the wound has even healed. The wound will never heal, though, so maybe it isn’t the same. Maybe it’s more like performing a vivisection on myself, pulling back the skin so I can stare at all the stuff I already know is inside me but now have to look at in all its bleeding, pulsing realness.

  And it fucking hurts. I am so far away but it already fucking hurts.

  45

  Her: Now

  The driver continues through the town centre and past everything I once knew so well. Beneath the roads we are driving on is the underpass where Luke cried and I held his hand and we walked slowly because Luke could walk no other way. I think about how loud it seemed then. Like it was impossible that no one could hear us. But the roar of traffic drowned it all out.

  When we turn off the main road, through a quiet residential area and on to the country roads, I tell the taxi driver he can stop wherever he likes.

  ‘Here?’ he says. ‘There’s nothing around here. Let me take you to the address.’

  ‘This is fine,’ I say. ‘I want to stretch my legs.’

  Sick of me now, the taxi driver pulls over abruptly, yanking up the handbrake and letting his seatbelt snap back as he steps out of the car to help me with Iris.

  We are on a country road; there are no pavements. Brambles snag my jeans and my hoodie as I step out. The driver has assembled Iris’s pram and is clicking Iris back into place.

  ‘She’s a good one, isn’t she?’ the driver says, not looking at me but at Iris, who smiles back at him with warmth. ‘You’re lucky: she’s a very calm baby.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh yeah. You should see my grandson. She’s an angel, trust me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. I think of all the girl told me, that Iris is so difficult, that she never stops crying, and I allow myself to imagine Iris must like me. Maybe Iris can sense I am like her: misplaced, misunderstood, miserable. Together, we make sense.

  The taxi driver closes the boot. I hand him another twenty pounds, which he tries to refuse but eventually takes.

  ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ I say.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure.’ He gets into his front seat and starts the car. As he drives away he waves out of his open window, before disappearing around a bend in the road. Everything is quiet, then. No insects, not even any wind.

  The pram bounces on the uneven road but Iris doesn’t seem to mind. We are not far away now, anyway. The route is firmly fixed in my memory. In the distance I can see the smoke stacks of the steelworks. I can see the towers and structures that loom over the countryside like a dystopian city. There are blackberries on the bushes next to me.

  ‘Look, Iris,’ I say. ‘A robin.’

  It is nice to have someone to talk to as I walk. Iris listens as I tell her how we walked this way before. How we expected, at any moment, someone to see us, someone we could hand Luke over to, but no one came. We wanted to show him the swimming pool. I tell Iris I will show her the swimming pool, if it’s still there. Does she like swimming? Iris doesn’t answer. I liked swimming. Sometimes we would have to bring our bathers and a towel to school, I tell her, and we would all be buzzing with excitement.

  After assembly they would line us up and tell us to choose a partner. No one ever chose me, but it didn’t matter because we were going swimming. The teacher would take a girl who was sulking because her friends had partnered up and left her out and they would put her with me. She wouldn’t like it but she didn’t have a choice. We had to walk to the pool like that, in a line, paired in twos, holding our bags with our towels and bathers. We walked all the way to the leisure centre and the smell there was amazing; as soon as you stepped inside you could take a deep breath and smell the pool.

  I was a good swimmer, I tell Iris. Auntie Fay sewed the badges on to my swimming costume. The swimming instructor said I was part mermaid. I liked that. And after we’d done our lengths we were allowed to play; there were floats and a little slide and at the end they’d put on the wave machine.

  Then we had to go back. That was always the worst part. You never got dry and so parts of your clothes would stick to your wet skin and your hair would be soaking and it would dry a weird texture and your teeth would chatter all the way back to school. But for the rest of the day you could smell the pool on your hair and remember the waves, remember when everyone forgot not to like you and let you play with them, splashing and racing and floating.

  ‘Here we are,’ I tell Iris. We are in front of a pair of rusty gates, the brambles growing through the gaps. There is a sign that says trespassing is a crime and another that says danger. Then there is the faded sign that says ‘Sports Village for Boys and Girls!’ On it there used to be a bright painting of a swimming pool full of children but it is so faded now you can’t even see it any more. I push the gates and they open until the chain between them strains. There is enough room for me to get through but not enough for the pram.

  I unstrap Iris, expecting her to cry out, but instead she seems very calm, content. I hold her tight against my chest and cover her head with my hand as I squeeze through the gap in the gates.

  ‘Don’t worry, Iris,’ I say. ‘It looks creepy but there’s nothing bad here.’

  It does look creepy. Even though I am a grown-up now and I know not to believe in haunted places, my heart beats fast and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The path leading up to the old sports village is so overgrown it is like dusk even in the middle of the day. I hold Iris closer, her head on my shoulder.

  Further in and there are the rotting wooden shells of the old towel rental and ice-cream stalls. It was like this all our lives: dead, forgotten, abandoned. Once, before I was born, it was a place alive with children and screaming and sunlight. There is a tennis court and a bowling green and what was once a café that would have sold chips and sausage in a paper cone and Crusha milkshakes and Slush Puppies. There were the changing rooms running along the back, a white wooden building filled with mothers wrapping children in soft beach towels.

  For me it has always been dilapidated. An empty place, forgotten. At its centre, the pool. Empty save for the filthy water that collects at one end, the drain partially blocked with leaves and muck.

  I expect to feel something, but I don’t. Instead, I just look at the place and think of the years it has been left to crumble. How no one cared enough to take it away, to build something else, to return the land to nature.
Nothing. Everywhere I have been I have left these holes behind me, little gaps in the world, like the gap inside of me.

  There is a rustling and I spin around to see where it is coming from. I imagine police, armed, guns raised, a megaphone. The rustling gets closer and I hold Iris tighter.

  ‘Where are you?’ I shout. I feel absurd, silly. ‘Please. You’re scaring me.’

  Iris weighs heavy in my arms. I know I won’t be able to run, not fast enough. I move to the edge of the empty pool, twisting and turning to look for motion in the bushes.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ a voice says back. ‘I’m coming out. Please, don’t … do anything stupid.’

  The voice sounds like it is coming from another place, another time. Every noise in this place seems distorted, dulled.

  ‘Who is it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s me,’ the voice says, clearer this time. Twigs snap underneath his feet. When he emerges from the tangle of leaves he was hiding behind and stands tall I see he is huge, six-four, broad and muscular. His hair is shaved close to his head and he looks mean, angry. I take a step backwards. ‘It’s me, Petal,’ he says. ‘It’s only me.’

  The man stands at the opposite end of the long, empty pool. I squint to see his face better, notice the spray of freckles on his cheeks, that his shaved hair is rusty brown.

  ‘Sean?’ I say, uncertain.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says. ‘Don’t be scared.’

  ‘How did you know that I would be here?’ I ask.

  Sean shrugs his big shoulders. ‘I just knew,’ he says. ‘When I saw you on the news—’

  ‘I’m on the news?’ My arms feel weak. For a split second they loosen their grip on Iris and she slips down my torso. I look down at her, at the toes of my shoes against the lip of the pool, and hike her back up.

  Sean tells me that it was Jack and Andrew who named me, that the internet made the connection between what he said and the news about a kidnapped baby. He slowly starts to move closer to me.

  ‘I didn’t kidnap Iris,’ I say. ‘Or at least, I didn’t mean to. It’s all just happened.’

  ‘I know, Petal, I know,’ Sean says.

  ‘Has Dr Isherwood … has she said anything? Is she OK?’

  Sean takes a step closer to his edge of the pool. ‘Not about you,’ he says. ‘She’s scared though, Petal. Of course she is.’

  ‘I would never do anything to hurt her,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t hurt Iris.’

  ‘We know that. Isherwood knows that. But it’s her baby. She’s obviously going to worry.’

  ‘She doesn’t trust me,’ I say. ‘She’s never trusted me.’

  ‘You know that isn’t true. Isherwood loves you. I know she does.’

  ‘She won’t now. She won’t ever again.’ I start to cry and Iris starts to squirm and I am so tired it is hard to keep hold of her. Iris pushes away from my body and seems to slip from my grip like soap. I catch her as she reaches my stomach, and I pull her up awkwardly, first grabbing one arm, then the other.

  ‘Do you want me to help with her?’ Sean says.

  I am out of breath from the effort of lifting her back up but I shake my head.

  ‘Maybe it would just help if I held her for a while, give your arms a rest.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lie.

  ‘OK.’ Sean moves back a little. He is acting like I am holding a bomb and I might set it off at any time. ‘Have you thought about how you’re going to give her back?’

  ‘I thought about putting her in the pram and, maybe, leaving her somewhere safe.’

  ‘Like where?’

  ‘Maybe a church or a toilet. You know, a baby-changing place.’

  ‘And then where will you go?’

  I swallow the lump in my throat and my eyes sting. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You can still fix this,’ Sean says. He is lying. There is no way back.

  ‘I’ve really messed up,’ I say. I put my wet cheek against Iris’s soft head.

  ‘It’s bad,’ Sean says. ‘But you can make it a little better. You could call Dr Isherwood, tell her where you are, hand Iris back to her, and say you’re sorry.’

  ‘Do you think she’d ever forgive me?’

  ‘I do. It just might not be the same as before.’

  Iris starts to slip again. I hold her under her armpits, and use a knee to push her back up.

  ‘I don’t think you’re holding her right,’ Sean says. ‘Can I come closer? I can show you how to hold her properly.’

  ‘Yeah. You can come here.’

  Sean walks towards me along the edge of the pool. Brown leaves crunch under his feet. When he is close I can see him properly, see the old Sean underneath all the years. I look into his eyes and time seems to rupture and all the lies we told spill out like blood from a wound.

  Without thinking, I take a step back and I feel the edge of the pool slip away under my foot and suddenly I remember, I remember everything.

  46

  Her: Then

  ‘Come on,’ I say, reaching my hand through the broken fence. ‘Come with us. We can show you something. Do you want to be our friend?’

  Luke smiles. His lips are pink from an ice lolly we saw his mum bring him a while ago.

  ‘Do you want to see our den?’ I ask him. ‘We built it ourselves.’

  Luke nods and gets up, walking towards me with his clumsy walk. He needs to crawl to get through the gap I’ve made. I hold the fence open for him and he comes out.

  Now I am supposed to keep him here, in our den, but Luke sees the park and wants to go there.

  ‘No, Luke,’ I say. ‘Stay here. We need to wait for Sean.’

  Luke is already crawling up the hill and into the fields. I laugh and follow him. I say, ‘Luke! Luke! Where are you going?’

  Luke starts to walk to the swings but changes his mind when he sees a dog down the other end of the park. The dog sees him and runs to him, ears bouncing, tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Luke laughs. The owner calls the dog back and it gallops away and Luke sees someone blowing bubbles and starts towards them.

  ‘Luke. Luke! Do you want to come and see something really good?’ I ask, but Luke doesn’t pay me any attention.

  ‘Oi!’ Sean runs from the bottom of the park and when he stops by me his face is bright red and his forehead is shiny with sweat. ‘I told you to wait with him in the den.’

  ‘He wandered off!’ I say. ‘Look, he’s enjoying himself.’

  ‘His mum is going to notice he’s missing now. We need to take him back.’

  The plan was that Sean was going to go round to Luke’s front door and knock, asking if she had seen Sean’s cat. I was going to get Luke to come into our den. Then when Luke’s mum went back in and noticed that Luke was missing we were going to take him back round the front of the house and say we found him. Then maybe Luke’s mum would invite us to parties in the future because she would know we were good and not bad like everyone says we are.

  ‘We can go the long way,’ I say. ‘Luke’s having fun. Aren’t you, Luke?’ Luke doesn’t listen to me but he is smiling and laughing and so anyone can see that he is having more fun than staying in the back garden all the time.

  ‘She’s going to call the police,’ Sean says. ‘She’ll be really scared.’

  Sean seems bigger, lately, and always worried about things he never used to worry about. It already feels like he’s growing away from me. After the summer we won’t even be in the same schools any more and then I don’t know if he will want to be friends with me or if he will have all new friends.

  ‘But Luke’s OK,’ I say. ‘She’ll like us for looking after him.’

  I catch up to Luke and hold his hand. In his other hand he carries the little toy car he takes everywhere. Luke is small for his age, even small compared to me. Auntie Fay said that’s because he was born really early and when he was a baby he was so small you could hold him in your two hands pretty much. Auntie Fay said it was a miracle he was OK. Uncle Paul says it wasn’t
a miracle; it was the doctors who made him OK.

  I hold his hand and I pull him away from the bubbles, which makes him upset.

  ‘Do you want to go and get some sweets?’ I ask him. ‘We can go past the shops on our way back to your house and get some sweets.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ says Sean but Luke is already agreeing and starts his wobbly walk with me through the gates and out of the park.

  ‘The longer he’s missing, the happier his mum is going to be when we take him home,’ I say. ‘If Luke gets upset then we’ll go home straight away.’

  ‘We can’t take him to the shops,’ Sean whispers. ‘Then people will see us and they’ll know we didn’t take him straight home.’

  Luke seems happy enough and doesn’t seem to notice when we turn the opposite way from the shops and more towards the main roads. We have to walk way more slowly than usual because of Luke and it’s annoying because it takes longer to get anywhere and it’s so hot in the sun.

  ‘Do you want to go in the tunnel?’ I ask Luke. We are standing at the end of the underpass that goes beneath the road. If we go under there it will be cooler and Luke won’t get sunburn but Luke shakes his head.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he says.

  ‘I know it looks scary but it isn’t,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s just take him home,’ Sean says.

  ‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘Come on, Luke, let’s go in the tunnel.’

  Luke starts to cry. He pulls his hand out of mine and it slips out easily because my hands are all sweaty.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Don’t be a baby.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to,’ Sean says.

  I grab Luke’s arm and pull him along. Instead of walking he falls over and his knees scrape the pavement. Then he starts to cry harder.

  ‘Get up,’ I say.

  Luke gets up, and limps slowly behind me and I squeeze his hand in mine. I want to hug him, I want to slap him, I want to calm him down and make him happy again.