by Amy Lloyd
It is too late to go back and change what’s happened. This is fucking obvious but for years it didn’t seem so clear. All we can do is move forward and leave new marks on the way.
If I could speak to her now, I would tell her that all you need to do is to make people happy. That is enough. I would like her to know that she made me happy. I hope that these are things she already knows.
49
Her: Now
The unit manager, Louise, brings me a letter. She sits with me on the edge of the bed. Even if I didn’t recognise Dr Isherwood’s elegant cursive on the front of the envelope, I would know that it was her letter because of the way Louise smiles: no teeth, eyebrows pinched inwards, eyes shining.
‘Do you want me to stay while you read it?’ Louise asks.
‘No thank you,’ I say. ‘I would like to be alone.’
Louise squeezes my knee and gets up. She leaves the door open, because that is the rule. You are supposed to respect other people’s privacy but a lot of the women here think nothing of walking in and touching everything in your room, completely uninvited.
The letter is already open because they read things before we read them. It makes me angry because I know Dr Isherwood would want to talk to me in private and not have everyone reading her letter. But this is how it has to be, for now, while I am still here.
I have waited for the letter for a long time. At first, they wouldn’t even let me write one to her. They would tell me that I wasn’t allowed to contact her because of what happened. They never said I wasn’t allowed to contact her because she didn’t want me to. That was how I knew that she missed me, too. I knew that as soon as the police had finished investigating what happened that she would contact me.
I take out the letter, written by hand on a single, folded piece of A5 paper. It is so short, so much shorter than all the letters I wrote to her that they never let me send. How can she have so little to say to me? I almost don’t want to read it because then there will be nothing left to hope for any more but I do because I have to.
My Dearest Lilly,
I hope that they are taking good care of you at the unit and that you are well. They tell me you are settling in and that your new therapist believes you are making good progress, which is good to hear.
I know you are sorry for what you did and I forgive you. Please forgive me for failing you so badly. I cared for you very deeply but this only served to cloud my professional judgement, while professional boundaries meant I couldn’t give you the love you needed. As a result, you were left with neither a therapist, nor a friend.
You deserve better. Please don’t let your past mistakes ruin your future.
With love,
Evelyn
They don’t let me reply to Dr Isherwood. They tell me that she didn’t include her address because she didn’t want me to write back but how can I tell her that she is wrong if I can’t write back? That she was always the perfect friend and the perfect doctor. I hate to think of her being sad, thinking that I hate her because she let me down somehow.
I think of it all the time, everything I would tell her if I could just have one more chance. How is Iris? I would ask. Will she remember me?
Sometimes I think of Sean, too. I wonder where he is and what he is doing. The first days after I was arrested I worried that he would be, too. That I would have dragged him down with me again. But no one has asked me about Sean, never asked me about anyone except myself and what I was thinking. I say that if I could understand it I would tell them everything, I really would.
They let us choose classes that we take three times a week. I choose computer classes where we learn about programming and building websites. I hope that when they let me out I can use it to find Sean and Dr Isherwood and that I won’t feel lonely all the time like I do here.
Lately I have had trouble sleeping. The days are OK because there is so much to do: therapy and art sessions and my computer classes. When the lights are off at ten o’clock all the bad feelings come back. I always think of Luke’s terrible eyes, of that impossibly red blood that bloomed from his skull. I think of Mr Sampson and his loneliness, whether he had done something to deserve it, like me, or if life had always been so cruel to him, right until the end.
I try to make myself feel better by imagining that Sean is happy now. I plan my perfect day, waking up in Dr Isherwood’s house and opening the curtains to let the sun in, having breakfast in the kitchen, Iris smiling and holding my finger.
I try not to think of the worst thing. The thing I still haven’t told anyone. The thing that squirms and scratches at the inside of my skull.
50
Her: Then
We watch Luke through the gap in the fence. He’s playing with his cars and he does different voices for every toy, all high-pitched and squeaky. When Sean and I laugh we have to cover our mouths so he doesn’t hear us.
Luke’s mum comes outside and when she sees him she smiles like it’s the first time she’s ever seen him. She is hiding something behind her back and Luke strains to see it. They play like this for a while, Luke trying to see what she’s hiding, Luke’s mum twisting and turning so that he can’t. They laugh and the more they laugh the more my eyes start to sting until I’m watching them through blurry eyes. I blink and let the tears trickle down the side of my nose, tickling like the legs of a ladybird over my skin.
Luke’s mum stops and shows him she is holding an ice lolly. A Rocket. She unwraps it and hands it to Luke, kissing the top of his head and ruffling his hair. This time, Luke pulls away when she does it, like all the other kids do with their mums. For a second I can see Luke’s mum’s face go all hurt before she forces her smile back on and goes inside.
Even Luke is going to grow up and start being embarrassed of his mum, like the other kids. They wouldn’t if they knew what it was like not to have one. If no one came out and brought them ice lollies and played silly games and ruffled their hair and kissed their heads then they would realise what they had was important.
I can feel the hole inside me burning at the edges.
‘We should take Luke,’ I say to Sean. ‘We can take him and then bring him back to his mum like he ran away.’
‘Why?’ says Sean.
I watch Luke roll a car over the patio. From the window his mum stares at him, her face is sad and thoughtful.
‘I just want to play with him,’ I say.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Selina, Luigi, Alison, Sonny, Rachel, Khan, Pippa, Catherine, Kelly, Glenn and everyone who puts their expertise and talent into these books. You are my dream team!
Thank you Richenda, and thank you Peter.
Thank you to my amazing family, especially Jake, Megan and Oscar.
And thank you Rhys, as always.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Published by Century 2019
Copyright © Amy Lloyd, 2019
Front cover image © Deposit Photos
Amy Lloyd has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Century
Century
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London, SW1V 2SA
www.penguin.co.uk
Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781473558328
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Amy Lloyd, One More Lie
