The Liar's Room

by Simon Lelic

  And the dad, you can tell he’s worried about what he’s done because he’s looking at Adam and he’s looking at his hand, at the blood on his hand, going “He hit me first! He hit me first!” to himself and to me and to all the other people who have started gathering round.

  I try to help Adam. I’m the only one who can because everyone else is on the other side of the fence. They’re all peering at us, like we’re some exhibit or something, like in a zoo, but no one’s saying anything helpful. Just “What’s going on?” and “Is he OK?” and “What happened, did anyone see?” And the dad is still all, “He hit me first! He hit me first!” sounding like some stuck CD.

  Adam gets back on his feet. He’s holding his nose, so I can’t see how badly it’s damaged, but there’s red all between his fingers, all down his T-shirt, and I’m asking him, “Are you OK? Adam? Let me see. Are you OK?”

  But Adam shrugs me off. He starts walking. Staggering. He heads up the hill, away from the playground, from all the mums and dads, who are standing there staring as he goes. I go after him. I’m touching his arm, asking if he’s OK, telling him to show me, to let me help, just please Adam, please, when all of a sudden he whips round to face me. And the blood, it’s all in his teeth. In the gaps, I mean. And I can see it’s there because he snarls.

  “Go the fuck away from me!” he spits. So violently I feel myself flinch.

  And then I don’t know what to do. I just stand there, basically, watching Adam walk away. I want to apologize but I don’t know what for. I want to go after him but I don’t want him yelling at me again. And I start crying as he storms up the hill. It’s pathetic, I know, but I couldn’t help it. Adam doesn’t look back, doesn’t even pause to pick up his stuff. And all I can think is, what did I do? I don’t even know what I did! Even now I don’t understand it. That snarl, the blood in his teeth . . . It’s like, the little boy crying, the woman shouting, the dad punching Adam in the face: it’s like it was my fault.

  Like more than anyone Adam blamed me.

  5 P.M.–6 P.M.

  10.

  The room shudders slightly, then stills. It is barely noticeable, nothing more than a ripple in the air, but both Susanna and Adam fall momentarily silent, each of them conscious about what it means. Ruth has gone. Alina has gone. The rest of the building is finally empty.

  Susanna knew this point was coming, and she thought she was braced for it. She was but that doesn’t mean she was prepared. It feels like she’s taken a leap into the ocean, and the water is colder than she could possibly have anticipated. The loneliness—the aloneness—hits her hard, all at once, in every part of her. She finds herself gasping, struggling to fend off the encroaching panic.

  “Susanna? You look very pale, Susanna. Are you OK?”

  Susanna looks toward the window. She could run to it, now. She could hammer on the glass, use her chair to smash the pane, and scream into the street below for Ruth to rescue her. Adam couldn’t stop her. He wouldn’t. All Susanna has to do is move.

  “Susanna? Where are you going, Susanna?”

  She gets as far as her desk. She stops when on its surface she sees the framed picture of Emily. Her little girl, grinning out at the world as though nothing that was looking on could possibly harm her. As though monsters weren’t lurking just out of shot.

  Susanna turns it to her chest.

  “Please,” she says. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told me who you are? What it is you want from me? I don’t understand why you’re hiding it. Why you’re so intent on playing these games.”

  Adam affects surprise. “Games? Nobody’s playing any games, Susanna. Just ask Emily if you don’t believe me.”

  Susanna squirms at that, hugs the photograph tighter.

  “And I told you before,” Adam continues. “I’m not hiding anything. Didn’t I say that? Right at the beginning? It’s a question of time, that’s all. Your time, remember. Emily’s time.”

  Susanna hasn’t forgotten. Ruth and Alina’s leaving has only reinforced in her mind the sense that time is slipping away. But she still doesn’t understand what that means exactly: how much time they had to start with, or how much (if any) there is left. And though there is nothing Susanna wants to do more than concentrate wholly on her daughter, she knows that if she is going to find a way out of this, Adam is the riddle she needs to solve.

  And that’s the other thing that’s made her focus again on Adam. Susanna has the beginnings of a theory. Half a theory would perhaps be more accurate, although possibly not even that. She almost doesn’t want to look at it too closely because she knows if she does it will fall apart. Or, just possibly, it will come together, and Susanna isn’t sure what would be worse.

  “You really don’t have any idea? Do you? About me, I mean,” Adam says.

  Susanna doesn’t like that. Adam’s knowingness, above all, but also the fact he seems so able to scrutinize her thoughts.

  “How could I?” Susanna answers. “You haven’t told me anything about you. You claim you’re not playing games but as far as I’m concerned that’s all you’ve been doing. The game for you seems to be the point.”

  Adam makes a face, like he is the innocent party here and Susanna is the one who’s not being fair.

  “Your name, for example,” Susanna presses. “I don’t even know your real name.”

  “But you do,” Adam insists. “Adam Geraghty. Adam Donald Geraghty if you want my full name, though you’ll understand why I kept the Donald part quiet. These days it’s not exactly a badge of honor.”

  Susanna is about to interrupt but Adam raises a hand.

  “I know, I know,” he says. “I probably gave you the impression it was an alias, but it’s not, I swear.” He notices Susanna’s doubtful look and moves to pull out his wallet. “Here. Look.”

  The wallet is thick, jammed with loyalty cards and receipts from the look of it. Not like Susanna’s, which contains her bank cards, her driving license and little else. Old Susanna used to carry around her entire life history. New Susanna’s existence is pared virtually to the bone.

  “Here,” says Adam again, and he offers Susanna a collection of cards. There is a debit card with MR. A. GERAGHTY embossed on the lower-left corner; a library card after that showing the same; then Adam’s own driving license, a provisional one, clearly showing the name he claims is his, as well as his address and date of birth.

  “I haven’t had a chance to take my test yet,” Adam explains. “I’ve been a bit busy lately. You know. What with one thing and another.”

  Susanna focuses on the driving license. The address it shows is Flat 2, 9 Clapham New Road, SW4 0HL. Adam claimed before that he was born in London, and the driving license seems to bear this out. Or at least that he lived there, once, before he trailed Susanna here. As for Adam’s date of birth, it is recorded on the license as 30.11.1999, November 30, 1999, making him just under eighteen years old. Which means he is younger than Susanna thought he was initially but, actually, and now Susanna has time to consider it, precisely the age he claimed he was. He never revealed his age specifically but he did tell Susanna that his “girlfriend” was three years younger than he was, and Emily is indeed fourteen.

  More important, however, and the thing that strikes Susanna hardest, is that Adam’s date of birth doesn’t fit with Susanna’s theory. At the very least it distorts it, and the relief, briefly, is breathtaking.

  But then Susanna realizes what that means. She is back where she started, for one thing, working on the assumption that Adam is a fan, a fanatic, a

  (oh God)

  a copycat, and if that’s the case Susanna is no better off, Emily is no better off. If anything they have more to fear, assuming that for Emily it isn’t already too late. Oh Emily. What has he done to you? It is her daughter Susanna is most afraid for but she cannot help a corollary of that fear following in its wake. What about you, Susanna?
What does Adam plan to do to you?

  Something else strikes her. Adam has shown her his ID. Susanna knows his name, his registered address, everything. Either Adam doesn’t expect to get out of this himself or, worse, he doesn’t care whether he gets away. Which surely means neither Susanna nor Emily is getting out of this either.

  “Susanna?”

  Adam is frowning, leaning forward in his chair. He gets up and crosses to where Susanna is standing.

  “Breathe, Susanna. You’re not breathing.”

  Adam seizes the photograph of Emily and for an instant Susanna tries to resist. Adam is stronger though and Susanna hears it clatter as he slides it onto the surface of the desk.

  “Look, just . . . just sit down or something.”

  Adam attempts to guide Susanna into the chair behind her desk but Susanna bats him away. If his hands were to touch her skin she is sure she would gag but she is shielded by the fabric of her cardigan and anyway there is no space in her throat. The panic that has been threatening has overwhelmed her. It is a full-on, full-frontal attack. The first time Susanna succumbed like this was the first anniversary of Jake’s death. She was seated at her dressing table, doing her hair ostensibly but really just staring in the mirror, when her son all at once appeared behind her. And not just in the mirror’s reflection. When Susanna spun round, Jake was standing there as clear as the air between them. Except he wasn’t standing. Susanna saw the gap below his feet, the dressing-gown cord looped around Jake’s neck, and she realized that, somehow, he was hanging.

  And then he was gone. There were repeated appearances, repeated panic attacks, but few so severe as this one.

  Adam is glaring at her, convinced she is trying to provoke him. “What’s the matter with you? It’s not asthma. I know you don’t have asthma. If you’re faking, I swear to God I’ll . . .” Adam finishes the thought with a head shake. There is confusion in his voice but for the most part it has manifested as anger. “For Christ’s sake, Susanna, sit down.” This time he practically forces her into the chair. “And get a grip on yourself. Put your . . . I don’t know. Your head between your knees or something.”

  Adam starts rifling through Susanna’s drawers, searching presumably for the asthma inhaler he was so certain before that Susanna does not need. She wants to stop him (they’re my drawers, my things) but even though she is struggling to breathe there is a part of her that is relishing his alarm. Susanna reacting like this: for once it isn’t part of his plan.

  “For fuck’s sake.” Adam slams the final drawer shut, his hands coming out empty. He whips round to face Susanna. “I said get a grip on yourself! Stop wheezing like that. I know you’re faking. Do you hear me, Susanna? I said I know you’re faking!”

  Breathe, Susanna. Forget about Adam for a moment and just breathe. Because enjoying his agitation is one thing. But if you don’t do what he says and snap out of it, there’s no telling what he will do.

  She clings to the arms of her chair, feels her knuckles whiten as she grips.

  Adam has collected the knife. He’s holding it in front of him, waving it, the way a wizard would brandish a wand.

  “I’m going to count to ten,” Adam says. “Do you hear me, Susanna? If you don’t pull yourself together by the time I get there, I swear to God your daughter dies.” He waits for her to speak. “Susanna? I’m not kidding around, Susanna!”

  And he isn’t, Susanna can tell. Knowing this—understanding it—only makes the panic attack worse.

  “One . . .”

  Susanna leans forward in precisely the way Adam suggested, her head down between her knees.

  “Two . . . three . . .”

  She spots her handbag in the footwell of her desk. The bottle of water she bought at lunchtime is poking out. Fumbling, focusing at the same time on breathing, she attempts to unscrew the lid.

  “Four . . . five. You’re going to kill her, Susanna. You’re going to kill the both of you. Six.”

  Susanna sits straight—as straight as the tautness across her chest will allow. Her airways feel clearer but something is constricting her rib cage. If she didn’t know better she would swear she was having a heart attack. But she has been here before, coped with this before, which means if she focuses she can cope with it now.

  “Seven.”

  She raises the bottle and feeds herself a succession of sips. She tries to ignore the plasticky taste, the echo in the water of tuna sandwich.

  “Eight. Nine.”

  “Donald.”

  It comes out as a croak and Adam, reacting, moves closer, bringing the knife with him. “What was that? I’m on nine, Susanna. Nine and a half.”

  “Donald.” She forces it out, almost like a cough. And somehow this helps. Her lungs draw nourishment from her breath. Her pulse is still racing but it is slowing, slower, slow enough that she can count the beats. And, again, this soothes her, the moderating rhythm of her heart. “How did. How did you end up. With the name. Donald.”

  For a beat Adam is silent, and Susanna is convinced in that instant that he will snap. That he’ll construe the question as another challenge. A final, intolerable show of dissent.

  Instead, abruptly, Adam laughs. It is the first time he’s done so and it sounds completely spontaneous. He has a nice laugh, Susanna realizes through her fug. Deep and genuine and warm. It doesn’t endear him to her. On the contrary, she finds herself hating him all the more. And she does hate him, it strikes her. Susanna, who these days never allows herself to hate anyone, would cheerfully shove Adam through the window. Never mind that the fall wouldn’t kill him. He’d break his legs and then suffer all the more. Good. Because that laugh of his proves this isn’t him. That he’s choosing to do what he’s doing rather than being subject to some inner compulsion. More than that, he used that laugh to trap Susanna’s daughter. He gazed at her with those beautiful brown eyes of his and hypnotized her into thinking he was her friend. He must have done. How else would he have been able to get close?

  Again Adam laughs, and this time it is his false laugh. His persona laugh. The laugh he thinks makes him sound all big and clever.

  “You really want to know?” he says. “You almost choked to death, and you’re sitting there asking me how I got my middle name?”

  Susanna shivers, pulls her cardigan more tightly around her. She always feels like this after suffering an episode. Weak, cold, faintly sick. She aches too. There is an arc of pain running from her fingers to her neck. Oddly (or perhaps not) it is the type of ache she remembers from when Jake was a baby. Emily never had trouble sleeping but Jake . . . Sometimes Susanna would be up with him all night. Singing, pacing the nursery, patting him gently on the curve of his little hunched back. That tension across her neck the next morning, as though she had spent the night shrugging suitcases: it was exactly the same as she feels now.

  Adam reads her silence as affirmation.

  “OK,” Adam says. “Why not. You want to hear about my background? I’ll tell you if you really want to know. If you really think it will help.” He perches on the edge of Susanna’s desk. His anger has vanished. “It’s funny,” he says. “You know, tell me about your mother.” He gestures with his eyes to their surroundings. “It’s just a shame you haven’t got a couch.”

  Which is interesting. Not the couch part. The fact that when he thought about telling Susanna about his background, the first thing that occurred to him was his mother. The woman he implied earlier he barely knew.

  And something else. He’s pleased. He wants to tell Susanna his story. Meaning this is all part of the game he’s playing too.

  “So,” he says. “Where to begin.”

  11.

  I could do the whole biography thing.

  You know, I was born here, on this date, and spent my early years blah-di-blah-di-blah.

  But I always find that tedious. Don’t you? Like with famous peopl
e, their memoirs. I read a lot, true stuff mainly. Not stories—I always think what’s the point? There’s so much stuff that actually happened, why would you bother with anything made up? Although I bet you don’t think that at all. Do you, Susanna? I bet your bedside table’s stacked with novels. I don’t mean Mills and Boon or, I don’t know, crime stories.

  Definitely not crime stories.

  What I mean is Literature. With a capital L. The type of stories that don’t actually have any story at all but are all about feelings and finding yourself and meaning. I’m sure you love books like that. Am I right? I bet I’m right. I can tell from your expression that I am.

  But I started to say: memoirs. Biographies. What I’m interested in when I’m reading about someone famous is the famous bit. The bit that made me take the book out in the first place.

  My parents, then. Because that’s the part you want to hear about. Right, Susanna?

  As far as my mother goes, there’s not a lot I can tell you. Because I was five when she died, like I said, and to be honest, I can barely remember her. She—

  Her name was Catherine, by the way. Catherine Geraghty.

  I know she was beautiful because I’ve seen pictures. And I’m not just saying that because she was my mum. She had this thick brown hair and these deep blue eyes, so objectively you would have to say she was beautiful.

  But before she died . . . I don’t remember her ever being around. All I can remember from when I was young are small things mainly. Unimportant things. Like, a jumper I had. A teddy bear. The first time I tried Coca-Cola, which was from a half-empty can I found on the street. Not because I was poor or anything, no poorer than anyone else. Just because I was gross. But anyway, things like that. Sitting in my bedroom. Reading. Lots of reading. Playing with my cars. Being lonely, there was a lot of that as well. I remember feelings too. Being sad or, I don’t know. Angry. And then, when my mother died, what I most remember is feeling nothing at all, other than glad my father was so upset.