Between the Lies

by Michelle Adams

  ‘It’s no problem. I really should get going anyway,’ Guy says. He waves at me, nods towards my father. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Dr Daniels.’

  We enter the house, the cool light and chilly air sucking me back in. The whole place feels like a lie, and it doesn’t matter what Guy tells me about my father’s best intentions, or his desire to protect me. It doesn’t matter if my relationship with Andrew was falling apart. What I needed when I woke up was the truth.

  My father turns to face me as I stand inside the door. ‘Evelyn, bring a blanket,’ he says as he closes the door behind me. He tries to shuffle me out of my coat, fiddling at my zip which he can’t seem to manage in his haste. ‘You’re bloody freezing. Evelyn,’ he hollers again, sharper this time. ‘A blanket, now.’ And then he mutters something about the fact that if he’d have been at home this morning this would never have happened.

  I push his hand away and step back. ‘What is it, Chloe?’

  I look straight at him. ‘You’re a liar, Dad.’

  He is frozen to the spot. I can see the fear flooding over him, into his lungs. He can’t breathe for it.

  ‘What?’ he says, stepping away, his hands on the hall table, bracing himself.

  ‘I said you’re a liar. You told me Andrew was dead.’ He opens his mouth to protest, but changes his mind. He’s realises there’s no point in lying any more. That I know. ‘He’s alive, Dad. The police spoke to him two weeks ago. Why did you lie?’

  He moves from the table towards the stairs and sits down on the bottom step as my mother comes through from the kitchen. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s going on?’

  Where is Jess? I want her answers too. She told me I could trust her, yet she has been lying since the day I arrived.

  ‘You all lied to me,’ I say. ‘You lied about Andrew, about the fact that he is still alive.’ My voice is rising, my words building to a crescendo as I turn back to my father. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you tell me he was dead?’

  He takes a deep breath. My mother stands watching me, tears in her eyes. I see Jess in the living room doorway, her head hanging in shame. It is my father who speaks.

  ‘Because, Chloe, I wished he was.’

  The trouble was this, Chloe: I started to blame you, and it made me hate you. They say, don’t they, that there is a fine line between love and hate. I don’t think that’s true. I think love and hate are part of the same thing, the balance always swinging, more in favour of one than the other at any given time. It’s all about expectation. Because when we love somebody we start to expect, make demands, and then we get let down and love starts to morph into something else. We expect the person we love to protect us from harm. But when I needed you, you weren’t there. You always let me down. You always ran away. That’s why we are in this position now, this awful fucking position where I feel like there’s no way out.

  Because now you want to leave me behind like something discarded, scraped from your shoe and tossed to the ground. You think there’s nothing left, no reason to stay. What is it? The excitement’s gone, peaked and faded, a firework on the way back down to earth? That’s it, isn’t it? Is it my fault, because of my problems? I think it might be. I could feel it in the way you rested against me that last time, not as close as you were before, your leg after we made love like wood at my side instead of threaded through mine like silk.

  But I can’t handle being away from you, Chloe. I can’t cope on my own, not any more. When you leave, it makes me hate you, and then I miss you and love you more than I ever did.

  Almost, at least.

  And there it is again, that balance.

  Love and hate. Love. Hate.

  Now on my own, waiting for you to come back, I wonder if I’ve ever known which emotion I felt more strongly when it came to you.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘What?’ My hands are shaking. I can’t believe it. ‘You wanted him to be dead so you just told me he was?’ I look up to see my father’s set jaw, irritation that he has been caught out. He appears resigned, but not in the least bit sorry.

  ‘Chloe, you don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t.’ My mouth is dry, the taste of metal on my tongue. My head throbs. ‘Tell me why you would wish he was dead.’

  He takes a long breath, and my mother stands motionless. ‘Chloe, there is so much you don’t remember. His disappearances … the problems when he was there. The number of times you called me desperate for help.’ He looks to me for understanding, finds none, my face a portrait of expectation. ‘Don’t you remember any of it?’ he begs. ‘How many times I’ve been there to rescue you because he came home drunk and angry. He was a horrible drunk, Chloe. You remember that I told you I’ve been paying your mortgage?’ He looks up, defiant now. ‘I saw a chance to help you make a clean break. I took it.’

  ‘Help me? You told me he killed himself because of me,’ I say, horrified. And for the first time in the conversation I can see that he feels a shred of shame, a sign of doubt over what he’s done. His chin drops towards his chest and he steadies himself against the table.

  ‘A mistake, Chloe.’

  ‘A mistake? Is that all you can say? Why would you do that?’ He doesn’t answer. My voice becomes weaker as my strength begins to leave me. ‘How could you let me believe that?’

  ‘I just … I saw a way to end it, that was all. I thought that if you felt guilty over his death then you wouldn’t question it. I thought you would leave it in the past. I just wanted you to move on.’

  I begin pacing again, leaving wet footprints on the floor. ‘Dad, Andrew is my husband. I had every right to know that he was alive. That I was married. You had no right to keep it from me.’

  ‘I know, Chloe, but I was just trying to save you. That’s all. I did it for you.’

  ‘For me? What were you trying to save me from?’

  He glances at my mother, then down at the floor. When he looks up again, he has puffed his chest out, making himself large. Perhaps that’s the only way he can convince himself that what he did is right. ‘From the pain of a marriage that was no longer working,’ he says quietly.

  As he continues to speak, the memories begin to come back to me, snippets from the past, hurried and urgent. I watch him confess and I know with total certainty that his disapproval of Andrew began the moment he caught us together at the old mill when we were little more than kids.

  It was a Friday night, I recall. I was up in my room trying to finish off an assignment for English literature, an essay on forgiveness for our study of The Tempest. U2’s Joshua Tree was playing low on the stereo. I heard my father complaining about something, my mother’s response. Their voices were muffled and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was nothing new: another argument, tacked onto the back of those we’d survived throughout the week. I turned the volume up and lay down on the bed, my eyes closed as ‘With or Without You’ played out. I picked up my phone, sent a text to Andrew.

  They’re arguing again. Meet me at the old mill??

  A short while later I heard the beep of an answer come through.

  Hey babe. Be there in thirty mins xx

  I closed my eyes and buried my head under the pillow. It was about twenty minutes after that when I heard a knock at my door. I knew it must be my father. He was the only one who knocked, waiting at the threshold for permission to enter ever since the day I started developing breasts. They had become a natural and insurmountable hurdle between us, a fact for which I was grateful. I sat round on the edge of the bed, lowered the volume.

  ‘Come in.’

  I was taken aback when he opened the door. His face was drawn, his eyes red. I had never seen my father cry, but I had no doubt he had been crying. His hair was all messed up, and his cheeks were flushed pink. There was a small tear in the neck of his shirt, his skin exposed.

  ‘I need your help,’ he said. I was so shocked by his appearance that I got up, followed without question. I licked my lips but my
mouth was dry, my tongue scratchy as I trailed behind him, filled with a sense of dread.

  I had seen my mother in all manner of states by that point: head in a toilet bowl, in bed for days, bloody from where she had fallen and hurt herself. They were moments that spoke of the fragility of our lives. Although she held it together for most of the time, we all knew, even Jess, who was no more than four years old at the time, that there was always a disaster just waiting to happen. We all knew that there was a chance we might open a cupboard and find a bottle of something stashed in there instead of toiletries or food. We had learnt to ignore it, shove the bottle back, pretend it wasn’t there.

  I looked out through the large gable window, a view to the night. It was cold, past dusk, the light disappearing behind the thick wall of Willows Wood. The brightest stars were already shining, the sky was that clear. There was no wind, the air so still I could hear the rush of the River Mole even though we were some distance away. How I wished I was there. But instead I was standing with my father outside their bedroom door. He stopped, turned to face me with one hand on the handle. His fingers gripped it, skin tight over bone.

  ‘I need you to do something for me.’ He looked at his cuffs, let go of the door handle to twist the left one back into alignment. ‘I need you to talk to your mother.’

  ‘What about?’ I asked. We weren’t speaking a huge amount by that point, instead choosing to interact from a safe distance: a note left in the kitchen, a text message to confirm pick-up times for weekend piano lessons. I always thought it best to give her a wide berth. That way I could avoid the polar extremes of her moods.

  ‘She is packing a bag,’ he said, standing up straight and taking a step back to view himself in a mirror on the wall. From the shake of his head I assumed he didn’t like what he saw. ‘She intends to leave us, Chloe. Apparently she has somewhere better to go. But we cannot let that happen. I cannot allow her to leave this house. To leave you. She is your mother. She belongs here.’

  Despite the fact that I was nodding in agreement, the first thought that came to mind was that perhaps if she did leave it wouldn’t be so bad. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her around. It was just that I thought her not being here might be best for everybody. Herself included.

  I had so many questions when it came to relationships. I couldn’t figure out how they worked. Were individuals bad, full of problems, or was it different combinations of people that caused the fights? If she left, would she stop drinking? Or would she become free to drink as much as she wanted without intervention from her family or a reason to limit herself? If she left, would my father become a kinder man, or would he divert his angry and manipulative attentions elsewhere? Towards me, perhaps? Worse still, towards Jess?

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘I need you to tell her that she has to stay. That you need us both. That if she were to leave, you wouldn’t be able to cope.’

  It seemed so unfair, a toss-up between me and her. Because really it was Mum who couldn’t cope. That was why she wanted to leave. She had to get away, perhaps in order to survive. I understood that, just a little. But there was a selfish part of me that didn’t want to face the prospect of everyday life without her.

  ‘And tell her that Jess wouldn’t be able to cope either.’ His voice was a whisper now; he was nodding his head, turning to open the door, pushing me through, without waiting to see if I had agreed to do what he asked. Did he even care if I had agreed or not?

  I stepped through, could hear her movements inside. There was a bag on the bed, clothes strewn about like there had been an explosion. A bottle was standing on the bedside table, something clear, half empty. I looked left, then right, couldn’t see her. There was a low-level lamp shining against the far wall, casting a blood-orange glow across the bed. And that was when I got my first glimpse of her, as my eyes trailed to the corner of the room.

  She came sneaking out on all fours like an animal, unidentifiable in many ways as my mother. My father touched the light switch and she cowered away as the overhead light went on, too bright for her eyes. I turned, looked at him. His face was tight, his jaw locked. I knew in that moment that he wanted the light to dazzle her, make her flinch. A brief moment of guiltless retribution.

  ‘Go on, tell her what you wanted to say,’ he ordered.

  I took a few steps forward. ‘Mum?’ I asked, as if I wasn’t even sure it was her. Her eyes were swollen from tears, streaked with make-up.

  ‘Chloe?’ The realisation that I was there seemed to spur her on. I turned to glance at Dad, but he was looking away, unable to keep his eyes on Mum or watch what she was doing. I crouched down by her side. She was trying to stand up, wobbly on unsteady legs. ‘What do you want to say to me?’ she asked, her words slurred, voice cracking.

  I put my arms round her and lowered her gently to the soft yellow carpet, then sat down next to her. Her face was close to mine, her breath pungent and poisonous.

  ‘You can’t leave, Mum.’ God, I felt so guilty. ‘I want you to stay.’

  She reached out to touch my face, made contact with my cheek. Her hand was warm and sticky. She started to cry. ‘Chloe, I—’

  But I interrupted her. I wanted her here. Needed her. I knew it in that very moment, when I decided to put my own life above hers. I looked across at the bag on the bed and I knew I had to change her mind. ‘I need you here, Mum. Jess needs you. You can’t leave us.’

  ‘You’d be better off without me,’ she sniffed. ‘I have to leave, for all our sakes.’

  And then it was my turn to cry. ‘Please, Mum. I can’t do this on my own.’ She knew what I meant. She understood that I didn’t want to be left alone with him. ‘Please?’

  And that was all it took, one word from child to mother. She nodded, and a tear fell onto her skirt, a dark blush on the cream linen. ‘OK, Chloe. Please stop crying. I’ll stay, I promise.’

  I heard my father moving, his weight as it disturbed the edge of the bed. ‘Chloe, I’d like to talk to your mother alone, if that’s all right with you.’ He spoke as if I had a choice. As if I’d dare to challenge him and make a demand of my own.

  She nodded, touched me lightly on the leg as I stood up. I walked with my head down towards the door. I glanced back only once. Mum was staring at me, watching me as I left. Was that gratitude that I needed her in her eyes, or resentment that I’d asked her to stay? Perhaps it was a bit of both. Just as I closed the door behind me, I heard her ask, ‘How could you?’ I hoped her question was aimed at him rather than me.

  I headed towards the top of the stairs, knew I had to get out. I heard a door open behind me as I descended the first few steps. I didn’t intend to look back until I heard a little voice.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ I turned to see Jess standing in her doorway. She was already dressed in her coat and shoes, her eyes wide and pleading.

  I shook my head. ‘No, Jess. Go back to bed. It’s past your bedtime already.’

  She took a step forward. Mittens swung on elastic. ‘But I’m ready,’ she said, holding up her hands to show me.

  ‘I said no. I’m going to meet Andrew. It’s grown-up stuff.’ And with that I turned, ran down the stairs, and out through the back door.

  The air was freezing as I burst into the night, my skin cold and goose-pimpled. I ran up the garden, my breath fogging the air. I crossed the bridge to the old mill, where I huddled under the sheet, waiting for my saviour to come. He arrived only a few minutes later. He didn’t ask questions, and instead just slipped beneath the sheet next to me. I crawled into his arms, felt his strength and comfort. I have no idea how long we were there before one of us spoke.

  I told him what had happened and he listened in disbelief. He pulled me in closer still, my head cushioned in his neck, his pulse strong against my cheek. A crow cawed in nearby Willows Wood.

  ‘Your family make mine look normal,’ he laughed, but it was bittersweet, laced with the knowledge that it wasn’t quite true. I had been t
o his house, knew they were far from normal.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ I asked, sure that he would have the answers.

  And he did. His lips were warm on my skin as he kissed me, his fingers cold as his inexperienced hands fumbled at my clothes. I was still wearing my school uniform, so he pulled my jumper up and over my head, pushed his hands underneath my blue shirt. I shivered, yelped. He stopped for a second, looked me in the eyes, then whispered, ‘Stay here with me. Together we’ll be fine.’

  It was an empty promise, a mark of what was to come. But in that moment, it was all I needed.

  Before long we were both half undressed, and I was lying back on the flour sacks with his body pressed up against mine. My eyes were closed, my fingers gripping tight to his shoulders as he moved up against me. It was our first time. I was shaking, but this time not from the cold. I could taste his salty skin as my lips brushed against his shoulder. I felt warm, comforted. And then I heard a loud click, and my eyes flicked open.

  ‘Get off her,’ my father said, motioning with his gun for Andrew to move aside. I recognised it as the gun he took shooting. Clay pigeon, wildfowl. Andrew scrambled off, tried to fasten his trousers. My father leant down, grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet as I tried to cover myself with my half-open shirt. He looked at me, at my bare skin, and then away in shock and disgust. I wanted to get out of there, drag him away, but he was still pointing the gun at Andrew. He pressed the end of it against his forehead. Andrew froze. I heard the horses neighing in the distance.

  ‘Dad, please,’ I said, but I could only watch as his grip on the gun tightened. He pushed me away and I staggered back against a wooden beam.

  ‘If you come near her again, I will kill you.’

  Andrew said nothing. Didn’t move. My father didn’t flinch either. For a moment we all just stood there as the floorboards creaked under our weight. Then my father turned to me. ‘Get back to the house.’

  I shook my head. I wanted to say no. I wanted to protect Andrew as he had tried to protect me. ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.