The Lies We Told

by Camilla Way

  Afterward, when the ordeal was finally over and she and Mac were standing outside the station doors staring back at each other, she found that she was shaking so violently that Mac had to reach out and clamp her arms firmly to her sides. “I’m so sorry, Clara,” he said miserably. “I’m so fucking sorry you’re having to deal with this.”

  She looked dazedly back at him. “Mac, I wouldn’t be able to cope with any of it if it wasn’t for you.”

  He hugged her then, wrapping her tightly in his arms, and when they drew apart, he exhaled a long breath. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get the fuck out of here and have a drink.”

  * * *

  —

  It made the national news later that night. Clara was sitting on Mac’s sofa, halfheartedly picking at some pasta he’d made for her, when Luke’s face suddenly loomed large on the TV screen. She cried out in shock, causing Mac to rush in from the kitchen, and together they watched in silence.

  “Fears grow for missing London man Luke Lawson,” the newsreader said. It was the picture she’d taken of him herself earlier that year, at a bar in Kings Cross where they’d all gone to celebrate his twenty-ninth birthday, and for a moment she was back there again, tasting the tequila shots, laughing as the whole bar joined in with an impromptu round of “Happy Birthday.” Luke smiled back at her from the TV screen, with joyful, blameless eyes.

  Anderson appeared next, addressing the camera, describing Luke’s last known movements, before he was replaced by the CCTV footage of Luke leaving work. She watched as the familiar denim-jacketed figure with its loose, easy gait made its way up Duck Lane. When the film cut to a still of the abandoned blue van, she stared at it in dismay. Such a lonely, desolate spot: had Luke really been there? It seemed unimaginable. Next and most distressing of all was a close-up of the heavily bloodstained seat.

  Finally, there Clara herself was. Huddled between Anderson and DCI Carter, her face deathly pale, her voice shaking as she read from the piece of paper that trembled in her hand. “My boyfriend, Luke, is a kind and loving man,” she began. “We all—his family, his friends—we all miss him so much. If anyone knows anything, anything at all, please, please come forward. We haven’t seen him for four days, and we just want him back. . . .” An information number ran along the bottom of the screen as she talked. When she finished, the camera zoomed in on her face, lingering on her tears. After a few more words from the detective chief inspector, the film cut back to the studio, the newsreader soon replaced by a weatherman standing before a map of Britain annotated with swirling clouds of rain.

  * * *

  —

  For two days, Mac and Clara holed up in his flat on the Holloway Road, an anxious, stultifying existence while they waited for news, broken only by aimless walks around Highbury Fields beneath the muggy May sky. On the third day they sat miserably in Mac’s local, staring into their pint glasses. “Shouldn’t you be working?” Clara asked him, it suddenly occurring to her that he hadn’t been disappearing off at night with his camera as usual.

  “I’m taking a break for a while,” he told her. “Perk of being freelance, I guess.” He looked at her. “How about you? How long have you got off?”

  “A couple of weeks. They said I could tack some holiday time onto that.”

  He nodded and each of them silently wondered the same unknowable thing: how long would it be before they were released from this nightmare?

  * * *

  —

  Realizing she could put it off no longer, she phoned her parents in Portugal, downplaying the situation for all she was worth—as much out of her ingrained desire not to cause them any trouble as to prevent them from flying over to stay with her: she wasn’t sure she could cope with that on top of everything else. “No, no,” she soothed, “there’s nothing you can do. The police are handling it. I’m sure there’ll be good news soon. I’m okay. Honest, Mum, I’m fine. Mac’s looking after me, and Zoe. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”

  Her conversations with Anderson did little to lift her spirits. They had found no identifiable fingerprints in her flat, and the upstairs neighbor, who it turned out was named Alison Fournier, a twenty-eight-year-old IT specialist from Leeds, had been traced to her cousin’s home in Middlesex, where she’d recently been staying. They had “no reason to think she was involved,” Anderson said.

  “But . . . what about the sweatshirt?”

  “We’re satisfied that it belongs to Ms. Fournier.”

  “Well, what now, then?” she asked desperately.

  “We’re doing all we can,” he replied. “Clara, we are looking into everything, I assure you we’re doing our utmost to get to the bottom of this, and I’ll be in touch as soon as we have more news.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “okay.”

  After she’d put the phone down, she met Mac’s gaze and he shook his head in silent sympathy.

  “This is day eight,” she told him helplessly. “Day fucking eight since Luke went missing. Four days since they found the van. They’ve had no useful response to the appeal—he’s just completely vanished. How can that be possible? How can anyone disappear into thin air?” Her voice rose in despair. “What if this is it, Mac? What if they simply give up on him and we never see Luke again? If his mum and dad never see him again?”

  “No one’s going to give up on him, Clara,” Mac told her firmly. “They know what they’re doing. We have to trust that they’ll find him.”

  “I feel so fucking useless.”

  They sat listening to the rush hour traffic passing below, the noises from the kebab shop on the street directly beneath them. Through the wall came the applause and canned laughter of the neighbor’s TV set. Day was drifting into night, but neither of them moved to turn on the light, and a thick gloom settled into the corners of the room.

  “Whoever sent the e-mails knows Luke well,” Clara said. “Someone he must have been close to once, who for whatever reason holds a grudge.”

  Mac frowned. “Yes, but surely the police have looked into who that might be?”

  She nodded impatiently. “Yeah, maybe, but they said they’d not found anything suspicious.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “Well, I don’t know—maybe we should start looking into it ourselves? Between us we’ve probably got a good idea of the different girlfriends, colleagues, flatmates, and so on Luke has had over the years. Maybe the police have missed something?”

  “Hmmm . . . ,” said Mac doubtfully.

  “But they could have. You were at school with him, and we both know some of his old uni friends, past flatmates, or colleagues he’s mentioned. I’m sure if we start digging . . . maybe the police have missed someone? And no one knows Luke like we do—we’d have a better idea if, say, something was mentioned that sounds off about his past behavior, or if they say something that doesn’t fit with what he’s told us. And at least we’d be doing something. I feel like we’re going slowly insane here.”

  He pulled on his lip. “That’s true.”

  “Will you help me?” She looked at him beseechingly until he sighed.

  “Okay. If it’ll make you feel better, sure.”

  She smiled. “Good. We need to make a list of people to approach. Ex-girlfriends from school and uni, old flatmates and female friends, women he used to work with—before Brindle, I mean. Anyone at all that he might have got on the wrong side of, or who might know of someone he fell out with at some point.” She pulled out her phone. “Get your laptop. Let’s start with Facebook.”

  * * *

  —

  For more than an hour they sat side by side in silent concentration. It was slow work: Miles, a friend from Luke’s uni days, was still in touch with the sister of Luke’s ex-girlfriend Jade. Andrew, who once worked with Luke at the digital publishing company he’d been at before Brindle, was Facebook friends with a woman who’
d been on his team there, who herself still kept in contact with a couple more of their female colleagues. Yet despite the difficulty of their task, for the first time in days Clara felt a sense of purpose, and bit by bit, a list of women began to emerge.

  “I’m worried this could be a massive waste of time,” Mac said.

  “Keep going,” she replied, her eyes still on her phone. “At least it’s a start.”

  They were about to take a break when Clara noticed the new-message symbol on her Facebook page. She frowned in confusion when she saw she’d been contacted by someone using the name Rumpelteazer. But when she read the message, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Oh my God!” she shouted.

  Mac looked up in alarm. “What? What’s happened?”

  Wordlessly she handed him her phone. The message had been sent from a locked account, with a blank profile picture. Mac read it out aloud.

  “‘Clara. I saw you on the news. I’m Luke’s sister, Emily Lawson. It’s very important you don’t tell my family I’ve contacted you. Do not tell the police. Can we meet?’” Mac’s mouth fell open in shock. “No way,” he said as he looked from the message to Clara’s face, then back again. “No way that’s her . . .”

  “I don’t know. I mean . . .”

  They stared at each other. “Why has she called herself Rumpelteazer?” Mac asked.

  Clara gave a gasp of realization. “It’s from the book! Luke’s book, the one Emily gave him before she left. Don’t you remember? The T. S. Eliot one about cats.”

  Mac shook his head. “Is it?”

  “Yes!” Her eyes were wide with excitement. “The message she wrote inside the cover. ‘For Mungo something, from Rumpelteazer. Love you, kiddo.’ It’s her! It must be! How would anyone else know about that?” She jumped to her feet, feeling a mixture of elation and shock. “Bloody hell, Mac! Bloody hell!”

  “He could have shown it to loads of people over the years,” he said. “This could be from any old nutcase. Some weirdo who’s seen the news story and thought they’d stir up trouble. It’s probably just a sick joke. Seriously, Clara, I wouldn’t—”

  “But it could be Emily,” Clara persisted. “No one ever knew what became of her. And her disappearance was pre-Internet—it’s not like it was common knowledge.”

  “Why all the ‘no police’ drama, though? The ‘don’t tell my family’ stuff. Bit cloak-and-dagger, isn’t it?”

  But Clara was undeterred. “Look,” she said impatiently, “we don’t know why Emily left when she did, or what she’s been doing since. But bloody hell, Mac, what if it is her? She’s heard about her brother going missing and wants to help? Imagine if, because of this whole horrible nightmare, Emily comes back to her family!”

  “But what if it’s the nutjob who’s been stalking Luke, who’s abducted him?” Mac persisted. “What if this is just some fucked-up trick?”

  She turned back to the screen. “Then all the more reason to agree to meet them,” she said quietly, and after a moment’s thought, she began to type her reply.

  FOURTEEN

  LONDON, 2017

  No matter how frequently she checked her inbox over the following hours, Clara’s message to Emily remained unanswered. Perhaps Mac was right; maybe it had been some lonely weirdo with too much time on his hands—yet she couldn’t quite shake the hope that it really had been Luke’s sister who’d contacted her. While she waited for a reply, she imagined reuniting Emily with her family, picturing how ecstatic Rose and Oliver would be to finally see their daughter again, and felt a surge of excitement.

  To distract themselves, she and Mac went back to compiling their list of women, and by the next morning they had an assortment of names on their list: a mixture of ex-girlfriends, colleagues, and former flatmates, people who could count as significant women in Luke’s life—none of whom, she had to admit, seemed likely candidates for the role of Luke’s abductor. “I guess it’s a start,” Mac said doubtfully.

  “Who shall we contact first?” she asked.

  “Luke’s first girlfriend, Amy Lowe, I guess. She still lives in Suffolk, though, so—”

  “Right, then, let’s go,” she said, getting up.

  Mac blinked at her. “What, now?”

  “We’ve got nothing else to do.” She picked up her coat. “We’ll take your car, shall we? Do you have her address?”

  He nodded. “An old school friend of mine still knows her vaguely.”

  For the first time since Luke went missing, Clara felt her spirits lift a little. “We’ll drop in on Rose and Oliver on the way,” she said as they headed for the door.

  * * *

  —

  As they eased slowly through the London traffic, Clara again checked Facebook. Since she’d appeared on TV, there’d been a constant stream of messages from friends and well-wishers asking her how she was, whether there’d been any news, telling her they were thinking of her. And though she was touched by their concern, she’d grown to dread their messages appearing in her inbox, feeling obliquely guilty when the only possible reply she could give was “No, still nothing, I’m afraid.” Today, however, she checked through them eagerly, yet more than twelve hours since she’d first contacted her, there was still nothing from “Rumpelteazer.” Perhaps it had all been a sick joke. She sighed and finally allowed her phone to drop to her lap. She glanced at Mac. “What was she like, then—Amy?”

  He shrugged. “Nice. She and Luke were pretty serious back then. I know he was really keen on her.”

  She remembered the pictures she’d seen in Luke’s photo albums. An attractive, curvy teenager, with big blue eyes and blond waves—the sexy girl-next-door type that the boys at school always went for. In the photos, she and Luke invariably had their arms around each other, surrounded by happy crowds of friends, faces flushed, eyes shining, taken at some party or other. She felt another pang of doubt; it seemed so unlikely that someone so sweet looking could have sent such threatening e-mails.

  She stared out the window, watching as the city’s outskirts segued into the green and yellow fields of Essex. For a while they drove in silence, lost in their own thoughts, until finally Mac fiddled with the stereo and Bowie’s “Life on Mars” filled the car. A memory of the three of them listening to it on other, happier trips returned to her, visits to Glastonbury and Bestival, someone’s wedding in Hampshire to which they’d traveled in a huge convoy of cars filled with all their friends.

  She glanced at Mac. The stress was beginning to take its toll on him. Although on the surface he was keeping it together, trying to put on a brave face for her, she could tell that underneath he was starting to fray. He seemed to have a perpetual haunted look in his eyes, a queasy pallor to his skin as though he’d barely slept for days. “Thanks,” she said to him quietly, “for doing this with me. I really don’t know what I’d have done without you through all this.”

  “Don’t be daft. You and Luke are my best mates,” he said. “What else was I going to do?”

  She smiled, and staring out the window again, she thought about Mac for a while. She’d often wished he would find a girlfriend, worried he might feel awkward tagging along with her and Luke all the time. But on the subject of his love life, Mac had always been intensely private. Occasionally he’d disappear for a few months, alluding vaguely to someone new he was seeing, and sometimes he’d even introduce a girl to them, but nobody ever seemed to last. “She’s not the one,” he’d said once, when pushed. “So what’s the point?”

  “Our Mac’s a hopeless romantic,” Luke had said with a laugh.

  “Oh well,” Clara had said encouragingly, “the right one’s out there somewhere, you’ll see.”

  “Aye.” He’d grinned. “I expect she is.” And then he’d changed the subject.

  They were less than a mile from the Willows when a reply from Emily finally arrived. Clara’s heart leaped. When can
we meet? it said. I can come to London.

  “What shall I say?” she asked Mac excitedly. “Shall I tell her I can see her tomorrow?”

  He glanced at her in alarm. “You’ve got to make sure it’s really her you’re talking to first. You can’t just go and meet any old weirdo off the Internet—it could be anyone.”

  “Yeah,” she said reluctantly. “I guess you’re right.” It seemed such an incredible thought, to find Emily at last, she could hardly begin to believe it might happen. She looked at Mac. “What was Emily like, do you think? I mean, I know you didn’t move to the area until after she’d left, but I guess Luke used to talk about her to you?”

  He thought for a moment. “Not much, to be honest. She was always kind of present, in the sense that you knew they all thought of her all the time, but no one ever mentioned her. I do remember Luke saying she was a big character, quite stubborn and fiery, you know, into her politics and good causes and so on, but that’s about it. Rose especially took her disappearance so hard, I guess they all got used to not talking about Emily in front of her.”

  * * *

  —

  When they drew up to the Willows not long after, Clara felt a small lurch of shock when she saw Tom’s black Audi parked in the drive. It hadn’t crossed her mind that he would be there today, and she sat staring at it, lost in thought. Mac glanced at her in surprise as he began to open his door. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” She undid her seat belt and followed him to the house.

  When Oliver opened the door, Clara was astonished at the change in him. It was as though he’d aged a decade since last she’d seen him, and she saw reflected in his face the same careening horror she’d endured herself those past few days: a vertiginous, eternal free fall where you almost longed for the ground to hit you, because that final violent impact must surely be better than this dreadful, endless plummeting.