The Lies We Told

by Camilla Way

  Clara barely listened as Anderson’s voice rumbled on. When she finally put the phone down, Zoe was standing in the doorway, looking at her in dismay. “Oh God,” she said, crossing the room in seconds. “Clara, what is it? What’s happened?”

  * * *

  —

  Long after Zoe had reluctantly gone upstairs, unable to fight her exhaustion any longer, Clara sat up on her makeshift bed on the sofa, wide-awake as the night rolled slowly past. Though she was desperate to drive straight home, the wine she’d had still sloshed sickeningly in her stomach, and after trying and failing to get some sleep, she grimly drank coffee after coffee, trying to sober herself up. When Oscar woke for a feed at five a.m. and Zoe tiptoed down to the kitchen, she found Clara shrugging on her coat.

  “You can’t go yet! It’s not even properly morning,” she cried. “Stay! Please stay, Clara. Did you sleep at all? Let me make you some breakfast. I really don’t think you should be alone. . . .”

  But Clara barely heard her. “I have to go. I have to speak to the police, see what I can do to help. I can’t just hide out here, while Luke is . . .” Tears filled her eyes and angrily she swiped them away. “I just need to help find him.”

  She drove home as dawn broke over London, the new morning filling the city with a pale, golden light. She saw barely a soul as she slipped through the silent streets: the occasional homeward-bound reveler, a fox streaking between parked cars, gray puddles of sleeping forms sheltering in shop doorways. She crossed the Thames as the sun rose, staining the water red and orange, its light catching on the glass and steel of the buildings lining the river. Her body ached from lack of sleep, but her nerves were raw and jangling, her mind alert. She would go home and shower, then go to the station to speak to Anderson. She put her foot on the accelerator, her eyes focused grimly on the road ahead.

  * * *

  —

  Parked in her usual spot a short distance from her flat, she found she couldn’t move. She sat for some minutes willing herself to get out, but the thought of returning home to sit alone with Anderson’s words running through her brain filled her with despair. Impulsively she turned the key in her ignition and drove on.

  Twenty minutes later she sat at Mac’s kitchen table, his face ashen as she described Anderson’s phone call. “My God,” he said, staring at her in disbelief.

  “Do you . . . do you think he’s dead?” she asked.

  “No!” he said sharply, and in his agitation got up and began to pace around the room. “Of course I don’t.” He went to the kettle but, instead of putting it on, stood for a long time, his back to her, unmoving.

  “Mac . . . ,” she said.

  He swung round to look at her, his face white, his eyes wide and frightened.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Come and sit down. You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  “It’s just—I wasn’t expecting this,” he said. “I thought . . . I thought he would be home by now, that he would be okay.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m so frightened. What if he’s dead, Mac? What if this bloody maniac has killed him?”

  “He’s not dead!” Mac said, so loudly it was almost a shout. “We can’t think like that. If he was dead, they’d have . . . they’d have found a body. We have to keep positive.” He took a deep breath, then said more calmly, “The police will find him, I promise, Clara. You said yourself that they’re putting more people on it. It’s going to be okay.”

  She nodded, fresh waves of panic washing over her at Mac’s clear distress.

  As he made them both a cup of tea, she looked around at the familiar disorder of his flat, somewhere the three of them had spent so many hours together, surrounded by the hundreds of photographs that covered every inch of the walls: the bands and musicians he’d shot over the years, the concerts and gigs and festivals he’d documented. A gang of Mac’s large circle of friends would often end up here after a night out, it being the biggest space and central to where everyone lived. Sometimes Mac’s girlfriend would come along, if he was seeing anyone, but usually, after everyone else had gone home, it would end up just the three of them, talking long into the night, drinking and listening to records.

  The flat was situated over two floors, Mac’s photographic studio, darkroom, and bedroom above the kitchen and the large living room that housed his vast collection of books and records. The best bit was the building’s flat roof, where they could squeeze out and sit on summer evenings, looking out over their patch of north London, Highbury Fields behind them, the Holloway Road below.

  Now, as she sipped her tea, she spotted a picture on the wall she’d not seen before and, getting up, went to look at it. It was one Mac must have put up very recently, unusual in that it showed the three of them together. “Who took this?” she asked.

  “What? Oh . . .” He came and stood next to her. “My friend Pete, at my birthday last year. Do you remember? I found it the other day.”

  She nodded. It was a brilliant shot. A close-up black-and-white in which she and Mac were turned to each other, their heads thrown back in laughter, while Luke grinned straight ahead at the camera. “What were we laughing at?” she murmured.

  “Christ knows. Probably taking the piss out of Luke about something.”

  She smiled and he put an arm around her. “Listen. Why don’t you move in here for a bit? I can’t stand thinking of you in that flat by yourself. Go and get some things and come and stay for a while. If we’re going to lose our minds with worry, we might as well do it together.”

  She thought about it. There were other friends she could stay with, but none of them lived as close to her place as Mac did. Staying across the river with Zoe would have felt too cut off from her old life, as though she were abandoning Luke somehow. And she and Mac were the closest people to Luke other than his parents, the two people who cared most about finding him. It made sense. She looked at him gratefully. “That would be brilliant,” she said.

  ELEVEN

  LONDON, 2017

  Hoxton Square was almost empty when Clara arrived a couple of hours later, its bars and restaurants locked and silent now, no sign of life on the pavements except for a postman doing his rounds, a homeless woman yawning in her sleeping bag, pouring water from a bottle into her hand for her dog to drink. The sky was filled with a cool yellow light, and behind the black railings, shadows lay still and dark upon the lawn. She made her way toward her flat, telling herself she’d stay just long enough to throw some clothes into a bag, then drive straight back to Mac’s.

  Her building was silent as she let herself in and climbed the stairs. She noticed nothing unusual until she put her key to the lock and the door to her flat opened without resistance. She paused in surprise: she had locked it; she knew she had. Fear prickled the back of her neck now as she stepped inside. And as she looked around, she gasped in horror. The flat had been completely ransacked. Drawers pulled out, their contents spilled all over the floor, books torn from shelves and left scattered where they’d fallen, the sofa taken apart, wardrobes and cupboards plundered. Nothing had been left untouched. It looked very much as though someone had been searching for something, but what it was, or whether the person had found it, she had no idea.

  * * *

  —

  It was a long time later that the police finally allowed her back in. Clara closed the door behind the officers as they trudged grimly away with their bags and cases of equipment; then she stood alone, surveying the chaos. Who had done this, and why? The downstairs front door hadn’t been forced, so how did they get into the building? Whoever it was must have known she hadn’t been at home last night. She glanced up at her ceiling, the usual pounding music eerily absent now. The silence seemed to fill the room, traveling to each corner and pressing against the walls, and when her mobile rang, she jumped in shock, then leaped to answer it, desperate to hear another human voice.

/>   It was Anderson. “Clara. How are you? DC Mansfield told me they’ve finished searching the flat.”

  “Did you speak to my neighbor?” she asked. “The one I told you about?”

  There was a pause. “She wasn’t in when we called,” he told her. “We’ve left messages with her to get in touch as a matter of urgency.”

  She felt her panic rise. “But shouldn’t you— I mean, what if she knows something? What if she’s got something to do with this? Whoever did this last night must have had a key to the main door—what if it was someone who lived here, in the building? Maybe she’s got some weird kind of obsession with Luke, maybe—”

  “We have no reason to think that at this stage,” Anderson talked over her in the same infuriatingly calm manner. “We will speak to her, though, Clara, I promise. We are dealing with it. In the meantime, I would suggest you stay somewhere else for a while, at least for the foreseeable future.” She felt a little as she had as a child when her father told her to go to her room to calm down.

  “But—,” she said.

  “I called to remind you there’s a press conference scheduled for later today,” he went on. “MIT wondered if you’d be prepared to say a few words—talk about Luke, about the sort of person he is. . . .”

  She closed her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. “Is there any news about the van?” she asked.

  “Not yet, no. I’m sorry, Clara. I know this must be very frustrating for you, but we are confident that . . .”

  She sank onto the sofa, her legs suddenly weak. She listened as he reassured her they were doing everything they possibly could, and when she hung up, she stared blankly down at her phone, trying and failing to process the terrifying and utterly surreal possibility that the man she loved might die—might already have been murdered.

  * * *

  —

  Later, she tried to soothe herself with the mechanical, mindless act of righting chairs and refilling drawers, and it was while she was in the tiny, windowless room they used as an office that she found the photographs. The metal filing cabinet Luke kept his personal documents in had been upturned, its contents rifled through and scattered across the floor. She began stuffing the various invoices and bank statements back into their slots, but when she attempted to slide the drawer into place, she realized that she couldn’t. Frowning, she reached in and felt around until she found the obstruction—a large manila envelope that had become caught beneath it. Pulling it out, she found three photographs inside—all of them of the same young woman.

  She gazed down at the stranger’s face in confusion. She was very pretty, but who was she? An ex-girlfriend? In that case, why had they been so carefully hidden away—in a filing cabinet Luke knew she never looked in? They had always been open about past relationships: Luke had often pointed out his exes among the faces of smiling friends that gazed from his treasured photo albums. She knew about Amy, his first serious girlfriend from school, and Jade, the one he’d had at uni, and all the others in between and since, but this woman was definitely someone she’d never seen before—she felt sure she would have remembered such a beautiful face. If she was just someone Luke had had a casual fling with before they’d met, then why hide her photographs like this?

  The realization seeped into her like cold water. This was no past love, of course, but someone from his present. The hurt spilled through her, biting and acidic. Who was she? Had he loved her? It was the callousness she couldn’t bear; the deceit of hiding the pictures in their home, presumably to look at during stolen moments while her back was turned. Clara stood very still, staring down at the wide smile, the dazzling blue eyes. She hadn’t really known Luke at all, she saw now, had been like a stupid, trusting child, entirely oblivious to what had been going on right in front of her face, blindly believing in a love that didn’t even exist.

  At that moment the intercom buzzed loudly, startling her from her thoughts. “Yes?” she said.

  “Clara?”

  She frowned, not recognizing the voice. “Sorry, who . . . ?”

  There was a moment of crackle and then, “It’s Tom. Luke’s brother.”

  She was so taken aback that she stared at the intercom in blank surprise before pressing the button to let him up. What on earth was he doing here? He rarely came to London, and he had certainly never just casually called round like this before; he and Luke just didn’t have that sort of relationship. Perhaps he had heard about the break-in; maybe Rose had spoken to Anderson already. Yet surely he wouldn’t have had time to drive down from Norwich? The sound of footsteps followed by a sharp knock on her door a few inches from her face jerked her from her thoughts, and just in time, she remembered the photographs she was still holding. Hurriedly she stuffed them back in their envelope and into a kitchen drawer, gripped by a sudden shame—that Luke had cared so little about her, that he had felt her worthy of such little respect.

  “Tom,” she said dully when she opened the door. “This is a surprise. . . .”

  She noticed he looked disheveled, had dark circles under his eyes, his face unshaven—very different from his usual buttoned-up, carefully groomed demeanor. “I heard about the van,” he said, following her into the living room. “My mother phoned me last night. I can’t believe—” He broke off, looking around himself in alarm. “Christ, what happened here?”

  “We had a break-in,” she told him. “You didn’t know, then?”

  “Break-in? No, I— When did . . . ?”

  “I came home this morning and found it like this.”

  His eyes widened. “My God.” He sank into a chair, then listened as she told him about the scene she’d been met with earlier.

  She continued with her tidying as she talked, aware of his gaze following her as she moved around the room. She had never been alone with him before, she realized, and she felt oddly exposed in his presence, her movements slow and clumsy beneath his scrutiny. She noticed him pick up the picture of her and Luke on Hampstead Heath and stare down at it, his expression unreadable. She wished that he would go. “What brings you here, Tom?” she asked.

  He looked up, the cool blue of his eyes meeting hers. “I had to be in town to see a client, and I wanted to see how you are.”

  “Really?” She was unable to hide her surprise.

  “I’m conscious that you’re very much on your own down here, Clara. My parents and I have each other, but . . . well.” He stopped before adding quietly, “I’m sorry if you thought I was less than sympathetic when Luke first went missing. I assumed he’d just taken off for a while—you know how impetuous he can be. I had no idea that . . .” He trailed off again, then cleared his throat. “Do the police have any inkling who might have broken in?”

  “No. They’ve searched for fingerprints, but I guess it’ll be a while before I hear anything.” She surveyed the mess hopelessly. “The problem is there must be so many prints here. And if whoever it was wore gloves, then . . .” She shrugged. “I got the impression they were just going through the motions. They haven’t got a clue. Not a fucking clue.” She realized that she was going to cry and, desperate not to do so in front of Tom, excused herself and hurried to the bathroom, where she held a towel to her face as she stifled her sobs.

  It was some minutes before she felt able to return, and she found him standing by the window, staring out at the sky, apparently deep in thought. The silence stretched and though it was in her nature to feel obliged to fill it, she sat on the sofa without speaking, unable to summon the necessary energy. She glanced at him, taking in his appearance. He was so different from Luke. They’d both inherited Oliver’s tall, broad-shouldered physique, but whereas Luke had his dad’s olive skin and softer, more boyish face, it was Rose’s pellucid blue gaze, blond hair, and strong, symmetrical features that had been passed down to Tom. Even their dress sense was different: Tom’s all sharp suits and expensive shoes, the polar
opposite to Luke’s laid-back style of jeans and T-shirts. He was a solicitor, she knew, and it was a job she’d often thought suited him, associated as it was in her mind with a certain dry meticulousness.

  He turned suddenly. “Didn’t the neighbors see or hear anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Apparently not. The woman upstairs has been away for a couple of days.” She reflected again how strange that was—seeing as she was usually there all the bloody time, playing her music, night and day. “The people on the floor below say they didn’t hear anything. I guess it must have happened during the night.”

  To her surprise, he came over and took the seat next to hers on the sofa, and she leaned away slightly, a little taken aback by his sudden proximity, the intensity of his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I didn’t mean to disturb you—I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

  “Well, uh, you know. I’ve been . . . better,” she mumbled.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Stupid thing to say.” After a moment he asked, “What will you do now?”

  She shrugged. “The police want me to help with a press appeal. Then I guess I’ll stay at a friend’s tonight. Mac’s, maybe.”

  He nodded. “If there’s anything I can do to help, or you just want to talk, I’m here. I’ll leave my number and you could . . . Well, anyway—” He broke off and she watched him pull a pen from his pocket, then scribble his number on a train ticket.

  She tried to hide her surprise. “Thank you,” she murmured as he passed it to her.

  “No problem.”

  And then to her relief he got up and began to move toward the door.

  They stood awkwardly in the narrow hallway. She would normally say good-bye to Rose or Oliver with a kiss or a hug, but that felt unthinkable with Tom. She tried to remember if this dilemma had ever occurred between them before and realized that it hadn’t: greetings and farewells were always a nod or a wave from across a room. He cleared his throat. “Well . . .”