The Lies We Told

by Camilla Way

  She longed to see her again, yet nearly two days had passed and she’d received no more messages from Emily, leaving her with the nagging worry that she might have vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared, their meeting already taking on the unreality of a dream.

  When she’d told Mac that she thought she’d seen him that night, he’d stared back at her blankly. “Of course I wasn’t there,” he said in confusion. “You said I couldn’t come. I was right here, waiting to hear all about it.”

  “I tried to call you, though—it just went to voice mail.”

  He looked at her, mystified. “Sometimes my phone loses signal in this flat, but . . . Christ, there’s no way I wouldn’t have picked up if my phone rang, you know that!”

  She considered this. The signal thing was true; his flat seemed to be in a bit of a black spot reception-wise—she’d experienced herself, several times, the frustration of pacing its rooms, waving her iPhone around, trying to pick up a signal. She gazed back at him. He was telling the truth, she could see that. She must have been mistaken—and no wonder, when she’d been so stunned by her meeting with Emily. Plus, the street had been crowded and dark, and they’d been so far away.

  For the past two nights she had lain awake, going over and over every moment of her and Emily’s conversation. Had Clara scared her off by asking too many questions? Or was something, or someone, preventing her from making contact again? When she finally slept, her dreams were plagued by visions of Emily in distress, trapped somewhere dark and terrifying, her face morphing into Luke’s. She’d often wake, her throat constricted with fear, too anxious and upset to go back to sleep.

  Wherever she went, whatever she did, Emily was never far from her thoughts, and she began to dread Rose’s calls, the guilt she felt when she heard her voice almost unbearable, knowing that with a few choice words she could put an end to so many years of uncertainty. Yet she couldn’t shake the suspicion that Emily was somehow protecting her parents by refusing to see them; that telling Rose and Oliver might put them in danger. And though Emily had said that her and Luke’s disappearances weren’t linked, Clara wasn’t entirely sure she had believed her. Also, she had given her word that she’d let Emily go to them herself when the time was right. There was nothing she could do except wait and hope that Emily would get in touch again—and that the next time she did, Clara would be able to unravel a little more of the mystery of what happened to her twenty years before.

  * * *

  —

  Next on her and Mac’s list of women to contact was Jade Williams, the girl Luke had dated while he was at university. She tried to remember what he’d told her about this, his next serious relationship after Amy, and recalled now that he’d been unusually evasive when she’d asked him about her, had wanted in fact to change the subject as quickly as possible. She had assumed at the time that things had ended badly between them, and not wanting to pry, she hadn’t pressed him further.

  It was the twelfth night without Luke, and she and Mac were sitting at his kitchen table, halfheartedly playing a game of gin rummy and listening to music. She had phoned her parents earlier, and after that, Zoe had called, as she did almost daily, but though it was always comforting to talk to her best friend, still it felt as though she and Mac were alone in this nightmare, bound together in a hideously tense waiting game, jumping each time the phone rang, talking incessantly in painful, circular conversations about what might happen next. Through the open window the evening sounds of the Holloway Road drifted up to them: a siren’s wail, the rumble of buses, a man shouting into his phone outside the kebab shop below.

  Clara eyed Mac above her hand of cards. “So, what was she like, then—Jade? Luke never really said.”

  He frowned, trying to remember. “Bit of a party animal, good-looking, quite posh. I only met her a couple of times, though; me and Luke were at different unis.”

  She picked up a card from the pile. “Why did they split?”

  “I think she finished with him, actually. He was quite cut up about it.” He thought for a while, brow furrowed. “Actually, there was something odd about their breakup, now you mention it. I remember him calling me upset that Jade had ended it out of the blue. Said she’d accused him of something that wasn’t true.”

  “Accused him? Of what?”

  “That’s just it—he wouldn’t say. He was really down for a while. I saw him in the holidays and he wasn’t his old self at all.” He picked up a card, then shrugged. “Then the next time we spoke, he was over it.” He gave a half smile. “You know Luke, not one to dwell on things too long.”

  * * *

  —

  Jade Williams—now Spencer—lived in a smart Georgian town house in Lambeth. Pinning her down to a time she could meet had proved tricky, and when at last a day was agreed, Mac had to work, so Clara went alone. She stood on the front step after she’d rung the doorbell, taking in the freshly painted olive green door, the pots of carefully tended geraniums, and the antique glass lantern that hung above her head. It was a quiet, leafy street with expensive cars parked outside each carefully renovated house.

  The woman who answered was tall, attractive, and blond, immaculately dressed in a chic trouser suit that made Clara instantly conscious of her own jeans and trainers. From behind her, a red setter came bounding onto the step, wagging its tail and enthusiastically sticking its nose into Clara’s crotch. “Clara? How nice to meet you.” Jade’s smile was sincere but distracted as she ushered her inside.

  She led Clara down to an enormous basement with an open-plan kitchen, tasteful and expensive looking with duck-egg blue units and white marble work tops. Clara perched at the long rectory table and watched as Jade flew around making tea, talking in rapid, breathless flurries as she told Clara about the interiors company she’d started with her husband—“Honestly we’ve been working like dogs; our poor baby barely recognizes us, though luckily we’ve got the most wonderful nanny”—and the alterations they’d had done to the house—“That’s the thing about buying around here: anywhere bigger than a shoe box and you have to expect to completely gut the place. . . .”

  Clara tried to imagine what she would have been like when she was younger and dating Luke. It was a strange idea. Had she always been so intimidatingly self-assured? She couldn’t quite picture them together.

  “So, what can I do for you?” Jade asked, suddenly businesslike now that two delicate cups of ginger tea sat on the table between them. “Your e-mail said you wanted to talk about Luke Lawson.” She leaned forward, her eyes wide. “So awful, isn’t it? Though as I told the police, I’m not sure what I can possibly do to help. . . .”

  “I know this must seem strange,” Clara said. “The police, as you probably know, haven’t come any closer to finding him. . . .”

  “Yes. So I gather. I heard that they’d found a van? So odd. Dreadful. You must be out of your mind.”

  Clara nodded. “I am. We all are. My friend Mac and I are trying to find anyone who might have held a grudge against Luke. You were close to him once, and if there’s anything you can think of, anyone he might have got on the wrong side of, or who might have something against him . . .”

  “Hmm,” Jade said thoughtfully. “People who might have disliked Luke.” She pursed her lips. “He was a very popular lad at uni. Lots of friends, so . . .”

  “You were together a couple of years?”

  “More or less.”

  “Do you mind me asking why you split?”

  Jade’s smile remained exactly the same; it was only her eyes that became a touch cooler. “It’s rather personal, actually. And a long story.” She took a sip of her tea.

  Clara nodded. “Of course. I’m sorry. . . .”

  She must have looked desolate, because Jade sighed. “The thing is, Claire—”

  “Clara.”

  “Clara, sorry. The thing is, Luke Lawson . . . all that was
a long time ago. I really don’t think I can help you.”

  “I understand, and I’m sorry for bothering you.” There was a silence, and Clara felt her spirits sink. This was hopeless. The whole thing was hopeless. She shouldn’t have come—it had been a stupid idea to think she’d find anything out by sticking her nose into Luke’s past like this. She was about to get to her feet when a thought struck her, and because she had nothing else to lose, she asked, “Did you love him?”

  For a moment Jade’s poise slipped a little, and someone younger and far more vulnerable briefly took her place. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I did, at first, very much.”

  “At first?”

  She dropped her eyes. “As I said, it was a long time ago. Nearly a decade, in fact.”

  “I know. I’m just trying to get a picture of him, to work out how anyone would want to hurt him. If there was a side to his character I didn’t know, it might help track down whoever has done this to him. I don’t know where he is. My boyfriend has disappeared, possibly murdered, and no one has a clue where he is or what’s happened to him.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, forcing back her tears.

  Jade got up to fetch her a tissue. “Look, please don’t upset yourself,” she said, and then after a moment she frowned, as though mulling something over. “The fact is, Luke cheated on me. We were very young, and you know what it’s like at uni, all the parties, everyone drunk most of the time. Luke and I got together in our first term and it was great for a while. But halfway through our second year I found out he’d slept with someone else.”

  Clara looked at her in surprise. “Who with?”

  “A friend of a friend. I didn’t believe it, not at first. I went to find the girl myself. And as soon as I confronted her, I knew that it was true.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She remembered how she’d felt when she’d found out about Sadie, and she winced in sympathy.

  Jade stared down at her cup for a long moment. “It wasn’t just that he’d cheated on me,” she finally said quietly. “The girl was telling everyone that he’d pressured her into it, that they’d kissed but then she’d changed her mind, and he’d pestered and pestered her until she gave in, and that afterward, Luke started harassing her. . . .”

  “Harassing her?”

  “She said that he turned up the next night, and when she said no and showed him the door, he began bombarding her with texts, turning up at her place, trying it on with her—she said he was a nightmare, and in the end she reported him to the university. God, I felt so ashamed—you can imagine the gossip.”

  Clara’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Did you talk to him about it?”

  “Of course. He was very upset, burst into tears, in fact, admitted that he’d got hammered at a party and kissed the girl, but denied everything else. Said she was lying, insane, that she’d come on to him, had wanted to take things further, then made it all up about him harassing her because he’d turned her down.”

  “Jesus. And did you believe him?”

  She paused. “I didn’t know what to believe.”

  “But . . . didn’t this girl show you the text messages she said he’d been sending her? The missed calls and so on. I mean, did she have the evidence?”

  “No. No, she didn’t. She deleted it all. She said that as soon as he sent her a message, it freaked her out so much she got rid of it, that she didn’t want to give him head space.”

  “Well, but she could have been lying,” Clara said desperately. “She could have made it up.”

  “Yeah, she could have.”

  “Okay, so . . .”

  Jade shrugged. “Why would she lie about it? She was so certain, so sincere. You can usually tell, can’t you, when another woman’s lying to you? In the end the uni let him off with a warning. Typically, he got no comeback, apart from me dumping him, of course, and a reputation for being a pest, but the general feeling was ‘naughty old Luke, boys will be boys’ sort of thing. He continued to swear blind that the girl was lying and he certainly had no trouble getting another girlfriend after that. Let’s be honest—it’s the sort of thing that happens all the time, just the sort of shit women are expected to put up with, be flattered by, even.”

  Clara thought about it. About a time at a party when she was a teenager, a lad she’d fancied buying her shot after shot after shot, then, later, things going too far, too quickly, him not taking no for an answer until she finally managed to push him off. She’d told no one, worried it had been her fault for leading him on. Jade was right that it happened all the time, in different forms. A friend who often slept with her boyfriend when she didn’t feel like it because she couldn’t stand his endless moods if she didn’t, the time Zoe had been hit on by her flirty boss, who’d then made her life miserable when she’d turned him down. They were ordinary men, not monsters leaping out of bushes: friends, boyfriends, colleagues, getting drunk, getting carried away. A bit selfish. A bit entitled.

  She remembered the e-mails Luke had been sent. Women are nothing to you, are we Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use, or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable. . . . Think again.

  “Did you tell the police about this?” she asked.

  Jade shifted in her seat, looking slightly uncomfortable. “No, it’s not something I like to dwell on. And there’s no way it would have anything to do with Luke going missing now, so I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “Can you remember the girl’s name?” she asked.

  “Of course. How could I forget? Her name was Ellen. Ellen Michaels. We have a few Facebook friends in common from our uni days, and I saw that she’d got married recently, in fact. She’s living in Hong Kong now.” Jade was silent for a bit. “I wonder if she thinks about it ever, about what happened with Luke.”

  * * *

  —

  “So, what did Jade say?” Mac asked her later that evening. “Anything interesting?”

  They were slumped on his sofa, picking at a stir-fry she’d made for them. And to her own surprise, Clara found herself saying, “No. Not really. Bit of a waste of time, to be honest.”

  He nodded. “That’s a shame. So who’s next on the list?”

  “A couple of his old colleagues,” she said vaguely. “I’ll get on to them tomorrow.”

  She realized that she couldn’t quite face telling Mac what Jade had told her. He would, she knew, be as horrified and shocked as she was, yet she also knew that his loyalty to Luke might lead him to defend his friend, suggest that the girl was exaggerating perhaps, or even making it up, and though part of her was desperate to believe that, to be persuaded that the person she had loved for three years was incapable of behaving so badly, she also couldn’t quite face hearing it brushed aside, denied, or disbelieved either. She watched as Mac got up and began to clear the plates away, and when he smiled at her, she smiled too, before turning back to the TV.

  She thought about Luke, about his exuberance, his easy charm, how she and Mac had always laughed at how luck seemed to follow him wherever he went, how he always seemed to get what he wanted, always came out on top. It suddenly didn’t seem so funny anymore. She thought about Amy and Jade and Ellen and the way Luke had treated them. Excuses could be made, of course. He was young and frightened when he’d got Amy pregnant. Perhaps Ellen had been exaggerating. Why, then, did she feel so utterly sick to her stomach? Again she thought of the e-mails Luke had been sent. You think you’ve got away with it. Think again, Luke.

  Who’d sent that e-mail? She was pretty certain it was neither of the women she’d met over the past few days. The woman, Ellen, who’d made the accusation at university was living in Hong Kong now with a new baby, according to her check-ins and photos on Facebook, so was unlikely to be driving Luke around Britain in a stolen van. And Amy hardly seemed like a revenge-crazed psychopath either. She felt drained by th
e impossibility of it—there could be countless more women that Luke had wronged in some way, women she had no hope of knowing about, let alone tracking down. It was hopeless.

  NINETEEN

  LONDON, 2017

  A few days after they’d met at the bar, Emily contacted Clara again, asking if she could meet her somewhere private. And though she was elated to hear from her, Clara’s heart sank when she realized that the only possible place she could take her to was her own flat—Mac, after all, was not supposed to know about their meeting. The memory of her last visit there—that strange, eerie sense of being watched, the sudden, terrifying burst of music exploding down the stairwell—still haunted her, and she sat for a long moment in Mac’s living room staring down at Emily’s message before she finally typed her reply.

  She was grateful the following afternoon as she let herself into her building that Emily had at least agreed to meet in daylight. When she reached her door, she paused and listened, glancing fearfully up to Alison’s floor, but all was silent now. Once inside, she busied herself with tidying up, thankful that she wouldn’t be alone for too long.

  Sure enough, Emily arrived on the dot of two. Clara was struck afresh by her similarity to Luke, the almost identical way they smiled, the exact shade of their eyes. She watched Emily as she moved around the living room, her fingers trailing over shelves and ornaments as she drank everything in. When she came to the photograph of Luke and Clara, she picked it up and gazed down at it for a long moment. “Tell me about my brother,” she said. “Tell me what he’s like now. He was such a lovely little boy, so kind and funny and loving. Is he still like that?”

  And Clara heard herself replying, “Yes, yes he is,” because despite the disturbing things she’d learned about him over the past few days, the Luke she’d known had been kind and funny and loving—at least to her.

  “We were so close when we were kids,” Emily said wistfully. “What sort of man is he now?”