by Sue Watson
Our Little Lies
An absolutely gripping psychological thriller with a brilliant twist
Sue Watson
Also by Sue Watson
Psychological Thrillers
Our Little Lies
* * *
Romantic Comedies
The Love and Lies Series:
Love, Lies and Lemon Cake
Love, Lies and Wedding Cake
* * *
The Ice-Cream Cafe Series:
Curves, Kisses and Chocolate Ice-Cream
Ella’s Ice Cream Summer
* * *
Bella’s Christmas Bake Off
Snowflakes, Iced Cakes and Second Chances
Snow Angels, Secrets and Christmas Cake
Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams
The Christmas Cake Cafe
Fat Girls and Fairy Cakes
Younger Thinner Blonder
Contents
Prologue
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
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
Twelve Months Later
Love, Lies and Lemon Cake
Hear More From Sue
Also by Sue Watson
A letter from Sue
Love, Lies and Wedding Cake
Ella’s Ice Cream Summer
Curves, Kisses and Chocolate Ice-Cream
Bella’s Christmas Bake Off
Snowflakes, Iced Cakes and Second Chances
Snow Angels, Secrets and Christmas Cake
Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams
The Christmas Cake Cafe
Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to Eve Watson, my partner in crime.
Prologue
We watch the news coverage, horrified yet mesmerised. As if the body they’re putting in the ambulance now isn’t someone we know. But it is… it’s someone we know very well.
Chapter One
It’s the way he says her name that first alerts me. I’m buttering toast for the children when he says ‘Caroline…’ I don’t hear the rest, just the way his mouth caresses Caroline.
It’s hard to explain, but something tells me she’s more than a colleague. Perhaps it’s the way his tongue rolls languorously over the ‘r’, ending with a contented sigh on the ‘ine’.
I run the knife slowly along the butter as I look up and see her in his eyes. I know, I know, I haven’t a clue who this woman is and it’s stupid of me to jump to conclusions. I need more evidence than the sound of his bloody voice. But then again I know. I just know. I’ve known for some time; she’s been with us – with me – for a while. As yet undiagnosed, experience tells me these symptoms can’t be ignored. I can’t leave them to fester and bloom like cancer in my marriage. Picking up a fresh knife, I open the jar of marmalade and dig into the viscous amber stickiness. Caroline.
‘Is she new?’ I ask.
‘What?’ He feigns vagueness. ‘Oh, Caroline Harker?’ There it is again, the roll of the ‘r’, the sigh of the ‘ine’. ‘Err… no… she started in surgical before me.’
‘Where’s she from?’ I’m now cracking an egg on the side of the bowl, trying not to imagine it’s her head.
‘Edinburgh. Very talented, only thirty-two…’
I’m overcome by a sharp wave of nausea and move away from the eggs, opaque and sickly yellow. Pulling my bathrobe around me to ward off the chill, I quickly jam the lid back on the marmalade jar, like something might escape. But it might already be too late. Wobbly and disorientated, I spritz the kitchen counter, covering any lingering odour with the zing of fresh lemons.
I move around briskly now, wiping all the surfaces. I don’t stop at one, I can’t – I must clean them all.
‘I was thinking Elephant’s Breath…?’
He looks up from his phone, puzzled, an undertow of irritation on his face.
‘The paint shade for the sitting room… it’s a sort of grey?’ I explain.
He nods, absently. I’m talking about wall colours to remove Caroline from the kitchen, my kitchen, where my children are about to eat breakfast. I wipe harder at the kitchen surfaces, wishing it was as easy to wipe her away. I throw the cloth into the sink with unnecessary force and turn back to the task in hand. Breakfast.
Slicing the home-made wholemeal I baked at three this morning, I whip the raw eggs vigorously and pour freshly squeezed orange juice into three glasses. That’s better.
The twins are yelling and thundering around upstairs and I glance at Simon, who rolls his eyes.
‘Do they ever do anything quietly without trying to kill each other?’
‘That would be boring.’ I laugh, pulled out of my abyss as Sophie wafts in, a faraway look in her seventeen-year-old eyes.
I look at her and am filled with maternal love. I fell for her when I fell for Simon. He’d lost his wife, Sophie her mother. She was only seven and so lost and bewildered. I’ll never forget the first time we met and she looked up at me and asked ‘are you going to be my mummy now?’ And in that moment I melted and knew I could love this child like my own. She needed me and I like to think that once I was in her life I made the world okay for her again. I can never replace her mother, but we’re close – it’s just been difficult since I had the boys to give her the time and attention she needs. I feel guilty about that. She adores her half-brothers, but they fill our lives with their boisterousness and noisy demands and I worry Sophie may feel a little pushed out sometimes. I try and snatch half an hour here and there with her, a bit of shopping, some lunch, and we laugh together like we used to, but it’s rare, and recently she seems to have withdrawn again. I presume it’s the sudden move here, or perhaps it’s got nothing to do with home life and she’s fallen in love? Don’t do it Sophie. Don’t fall, you’ll never get up again.
‘Can you shout the boys for me, darling?’ I smile at her, using this as a chance to look into her face, to try and gauge the level of teenage hormones and happiness.
‘Alfieeee, Charlieeee,’ she yells loudly, virtually standing next to me.
I cover my ears playfully. ‘I could have done that,’ I say. ‘What I meant was go to the bottom of the stairs and call them.’ I’m now lifting a pile of wobbly golden eggs onto plates and putting them neatly down at each place. I smile indulgently at her through the steam.
‘Sophie, do you have to yell like that? You’re seventeen not bloody seven. Grow up!’ The sudden sharpness in Simon’s voice cuts through the warm, buttered-toast air.
He doesn’t mean to be harsh, she just gave him a start. He’s trying to concentrate and lashed out a little, something he rarely does with the children, which is why we’re so surprised. I glance at Sophie and she seems to shrink before me. I look over to see if he’s realised the effect his words have had on her, but he�
�s still on his phone, already in work mode. In his absence, I’ll put the plaster on her hurt feelings.
‘Your eggs, Your Majesty,’ I say, rolling one arm in an elaborately subservient manner while putting the plate in front of her. But it’s too late, she’s now sulkily slumping into a chair, her gossamer wings crumpled. If only he realised how much she loves him, how she so desperately wants his approval. Sophie’s always been a daddy’s girl, and I know he adores her, and would do anything for her, but her teenage insecurities overwhelm her sometimes and his insensitivity can sting. I ache for her but don’t have time to try and bring her round now. It’s already 8.15 and the twins are thundering down the stairs. They ‘land’ in the kitchen, arguing about who can do the loudest belch, and this is accompanied by vigorous and revolting demonstrations.
‘Boys please, that’s not nice,’ I say wearily, but they continue to make disgusting noises from their mouths and there are serious threats that this may extend to their bottoms.
I look at Simon who smiles indulgently at them but gives me a disapproving look like it’s me who’s suggesting a bloody burping competition. I wait for him to either reprimand them or join them in their pursuit of the loudest belch, but instead he grabs his coffee, takes it through to the orangery and settles with his phone.
My identical six-year-olds both have thick dark hair like their dad and are completely wild. Charlie, at four minutes older, is the leader of the two, usually starts the fights and is obsessed with everything vile. What Alfie doesn’t dare to do, Charlie will push him to it. They are now trying to smash their breakfast plates on each other’s heads, which apparently is a new and innovative technique to test who has the strongest skull.
‘It’s a MEDICAL EXPERIMENT,’ Charlie shouts in my face when I protest.
I speak quietly, hoping he’ll match me, and gently suggest this isn’t the time or the place for medical experiments and they must eat their eggs or they’ll be late for school. Not surprisingly, this mention of school causes a quiet rebellion and Charlie gives one final whack to his brother’s head in the name of neurological medicine.
‘That’s ENOUGH!’ I shout, as Alfie clutches his head and starts screaming.
‘Charlieeee just killed me.’
‘No he hasn’t killed you, but carry on like this and someone will – me!’
I attempt to console Alfie while reprimanding Charlie as Sophie turns the radio on to drown out the noise, which really doesn’t help. I wonder how on earth Simon can concentrate on his damned phone with this cacophony going on through the open door into the orangery. But my husband has this amazing ability to shut everything – and everyone –out, like many men, if what I hear at the school gate is anything to go by. Mind you, in Simon’s case, it’s probably a good thing, given how important his work is. He’s often on call, always checking his texts and emails 24/7 in case of any emergencies. As he says, being a surgeon isn’t a job, it’s a state of mind; it has to be, because so many people are relying on him. Someone in Simon’s position can’t just switch off and, consequently, he doesn’t always have the time or energy for the minutiae of family life. But that’s where I come in. I’m needed here in our life of crayoned pictures on the fridge, grazed knees, childish squabbles, rushed kisses in the morning and all the laughter, tears and chaos in between. I wouldn’t have it any other way, although my friend Jen thinks I’m mad.
She’s married to a wealthy man and has Juanita, her nanny, who drives like a drunk, screams at the kids and has various boyfriends over for the night. But Jen loves her, says she gave her back her life and she can do as she likes because she’s worth her weight in gold. Jen would be lost without her, but I enjoy looking after the children. Jen isn’t into kids, despite the fact she has three, but thanks to Juanita, she has lots of what she calls ‘me time’. She’s learning to dance, taking Italian lessons and is busy with all kinds of charities, but I’m not like her. I don’t need ‘me time’, I just want to be with my kids, like a proper mum.
I once considered retraining, going back to art college and brushing up on new techniques, but, as Simon said, why? We don’t need the money, he has a good salary, his mother died a couple of years ago leaving him a fortune, and besides, who’d look after the children? At seventeen, Sophie’s pretty self-sufficient, but she needs me there as much as the boys do – just in a different way. It’s good for her to have someone to talk to, especially since we moved and she had to say goodbye to her friends, but there are times I really have to stretch myself. My days are filled with cleaning the house, cooking, ferrying the boys around and preventing them from harming themselves, or anyone else within a five-mile radius.
Simon might be considered a little old-fashioned by some people, but he appreciates the traditional roles. When we met, he was a struggling junior surgeon and widower with a young daughter, his wife had died the previous year and life was hard for him, so I know how much he appreciates everything I do. He doesn’t value me any less because he goes out to work while I stay at home and nurture our family, keep our home clean and welcoming.
‘We’re a team, Marianne,’ he always says. ‘Your job is no less important than mine. Without you I couldn’t earn a living and give you all the things you want.’
To everyone else, he’s Dr S. Wilson, the dashing and brilliant cardiac surgeon, but to me he’s just Simon, my husband and father to the children. He’s also one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known – I don’t even understand his job title, which includes a specialty in mitral valve repair, transcatheter aortic valve implantation and atrial fibrillation surgery (I learned that by heart to impress him, I just hope he never tests me on it!). I understand how stressful his work is and sometimes he brings that stress home, especially at the moment as he’s hoping for a promotion to Senior Consultant Surgeon. He’s working incredibly hard – we barely see him some days – but as he says, it will be worth it if he gets the post, and I have faith he will. My concern is that he’s so driven, he puts huge demands on himself and bottles up his stress. Thing is, he can’t really share it with me because I don’t understand the intricacies and skills of heart surgery – who does? Caroline does.
‘Darling, I can’t even begin to explain to you what happened today because you wouldn’t understand,’ he said the other evening when I asked if he was okay. ‘People’s lives are in my hands… I’m permanently on high alert. I don’t get coffee breaks and days off like some halfwit bean counter.’ I think he was referring to Peter, Jen’s husband, who’s big in banking. Jen had invited us to their place in Cornwall for the weekend, but Simon couldn’t get the time off and the kids and I were disappointed, which made him cross. He hated saying no to us and was angry with himself; Simon hated letting his kids down.
I should have just accepted this, but I pushed things, as usual, and pointed out that we’d been excited about spending the last weekend of summer in Cornwall with the Moretons. I made him feel terrible and we argued quite vigorously that night, but later, when the kids were in bed, I joined him on the sofa and it was soon forgotten. Even now, after being together for ten years, I still can’t be cross with him for long, and one look into those eyes is all I need to remind myself that he’s everything I ever wanted. And I’m so lucky.
I’ve always loved Simon, from the minute I saw him, and though we’ve had our problems I was just beginning to feel like we were back on an even keel when we moved here. But now there’s the spectre of Caroline, a ‘talented’ thirty-something he spends his days with. I can’t for a moment let him think I’m going down that road again though. So I will keep my unwelcome thoughts to myself, and try not to imagine them together in theatre, masked up, their eyes meeting over an open chest, flirting over a defibrillator. I feel the blood rising in my neck as I imagine her passing him his scalpel, long eyelashes batting, their gloved hands ‘accidentally’ touching. I hear his commanding, sexy voice instructing the team while working on a complex quadruple bypass, causing every woman present to go weak a
t the knees – I do, just thinking about it. Jealousy fills my stomach and chest until I’m so packed with it I want to vomit at this imagined tableau imprinted now on my brain. I feel faint and far away watching Alfie take his revenge on Charlie with a teaspoon to the ear. I do nothing.
As the boys scream and shout and hurt, I take a scouring brush and clean the sink, pushing away my stupid nightmare fantasies of Simon with another woman and turn my attention to the good stuff. I stop scrubbing for a moment and glimpse the children now eating their breakfast; seeing them always makes me feel better. Okay, so the boys are pushing their food inelegantly into their mouths while slurping down orange juice, but I feel that familiar rush. I feel the same watching Sophie nibble delicately on a small corner of toast, her big, blue eyes gazing ahead, probably dreaming of her prince, or whoever she’s got a crush on in Year 13 this week. Then there’s my gorgeous husband – who may or may not be contemplating an affair while sitting in our beautiful orangery, looking gorgeous, his thick, dark fringe over one eye as he drinks his coffee and gazes into his phone. It’s all so Instagrammable – I want to capture it, to photograph them here in our beautiful home. #MyHome #MyLoves. The hidden message to any Carolines out there who think they might have a chance, the clue is in the pronoun – my, mine – NO ONE else’s.
