The Liar's Girl

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  I turned around.

  “We were just going inside,” I said lightly. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you,” Liz said.

  “About what?”

  A pause. “About Will.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well”—Liz looked around—“this isn’t really the place for this conversation.”

  Under normal circumstances I might have said something like, “Let’s go to the bathrooms then,” or, “Come outside, to the front. We’ll find a quiet spot.” But I was so sick of Liz’s amateur dramatics and hurt by her antics—and, no doubt, emboldened by alcohol—that instead I said, “Why bring it up, then?”

  She blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “Why even bring it up if this”—I made air quotes; I was on a roll, now—“isn’t really the place to talk about it? But then, wait. Do we even need to talk about it? Or can I guess what it is now? Let me see. I’m spending too much time with him, is that it? Or he’s not your type, you don’t like him, so you don’t want to spend time with me if he’s around? Or is this something to do with you running to the Gardaí to tell them your completely and utterly irrelevant information about that poor guy who made the mistake of—gasp!—trying to talk to you at the Traffic Light Ball, God forbid, leaving you so bloody traumatized that you had to sit in my boyfriend’s lap and fucking kiss him?” I shook my head. “You just think I’m going to take it all, don’t you? That you can behave however the fuck you want, however badly you want, however like a bloody toddler you want, and I’ll just stick around. I’ll take all your little digs and insults. Your shit-stirring. Oh, you had lunch with Will in Dundrum, did you?”

  Liz bit her lip. “I didn’t say we had lunch—”

  “That’s exactly what you said. Quote unquote.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean—”

  “You think I’ll just sit there and smile while you make a face and say to friends of mine that my boyfriend isn’t your type. What the hell was that supposed to mean?” I held up a hand. “You know what? Don’t bother. I don’t care. I really don’t. Not anymore. This isn’t friendship, Liz. Newsflash. I don’t know what this is. I don’t honestly know what could be going through your head when you, like …” I had to take a breath. “When you say those things. Honestly. Why would you insult someone who’s supposed to be your friend?” My anger had fizzed out, but I wasn’t done. “Seriously, Liz. What’s going through your mind when you act that way? I’m actually asking. Because I don’t get it. Why do you want to hurt me? I’m supposed to be your best friend. And I thought you were mine.”

  “Hey.” Will had appeared by my side. “ He looked from me to Liz to me again. “Everything okay here?”

  Liz looked away. Her lip was quivering.

  “It’s nothing,” I said to him. “Did you get us a table?’

  He nodded. “Yeah. Just by the doors.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  He turned to go and I started after him, but Liz grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “It’s because I’m jealous, okay?” she whispered in my ear. “Are you happy now? It’s because I’m jealous. Because I … Because I like him too.”

  I stopped dead, turned around to her slowly.

  “I’m really sorry,” she rushed on. “It’s not like I wanted this to happen. I just … I don’t know. I have feelings for him. More than … more than just a crush. I’m sorry, Ali. But you must be able to understand that, of all people. Only imagine you can’t be with him. Imagine someone else is. And you always have to see them, right in front of your eyes, all the—”

  “Are you for real?”

  Liz blanched.

  I didn’t think for a second she was being serious. This was just more bullshit. Liz liking Will? Since when? How? Why? She’d never been alone with him. I wasn’t sure they’d ever had a conversation I wasn’t a part of. And she’d said it herself: he wasn’t her type.

  No, no. This was more of it. More drama. More theatrics.

  She didn’t like Will; she just didn’t like me having someone like him.

  “I’m telling the truth,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

  I put my hands on my hips to steady myself. I was definitely more drunk than tipsy now.

  “Let’s say that’s true,” I said. “Pretend I believe you. Let’s say, okay, that’s why you’ve been such a temperamental bitch since I got together with him.” I leaned in close until my breath was on her face. “What was your excuse for all the years before that?”

  Liz didn’t respond. She dropped her eyes to the floor.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  Before she had a chance to respond to that, I did.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, I felt the regret before I even felt awake.

  In the cold light of day, I could see that I’d completely overreacted. Even if Liz was, for some reason, just out to cause drama by saying that she liked Will, there’d really been no need for me to say the things I had. Not all of them, anyway. And especially not the last thing I’d said.

  Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure Liz had committed any worse crimes in our fifteen years of friendship prior to St. John’s that couldn’t be classified as a bad mood. We all got into them. No one was sunshine and light all the time. And as for the last few months …

  Well, maybe she was telling the truth about Will, in which case she must have been really hurting.

  We should’ve waited until we were sober, then had a proper talk. We could’ve worked everything out.

  I groaned aloud. Damn you, cider.

  While still in bed, I fumbled for my phone and typed out a text to her, saying we needed to talk. No response. I checked for one incessantly as I crossed campus to the Arts building and kept my phone on vibrate during the meeting with my tutor, hoping I’d feel a buzzing against my thigh. None came. When she hadn’t texted me back by the time I’d started back toward Will’s apartment, I tried calling her. No answer.

  It was late afternoon when the whispers started.

  Another girl, they said. In the canal.

  Then, at the end of the day, I came out of my last lecture and saw Will waiting for me. Saw the look on his face.

  In that split second I thought she’d called him and told him everything.

  “What’s wrong?” I said when I reached him. “Did you talk to Liz?”

  He shook his head. He couldn’t look at me.

  Then his arm was around my shoulders and he was steering me, gently, down the hall. There was a little breakout area there, two sofas, set at right angles to each other. I noticed that there were two men there too, in suits, and a Garda in a bright yellow flak jacket. I wondered what they were doing there. The men in suits didn’t look like faculty, and they certainly weren’t students. The Garda I connected vaguely with the curfew, increased campus security, although I’d never seen one of them inside.

  Will sat me down on one of the couches, sat down himself too, and took both of my hands in his.

  “I’m really sorry,” he started.

  His voice sounded like he was being strangled.

  I had no idea what was happening.

  “It’s Liz,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Ali.”

  “What about her? Did you guys talk?”

  Will shook his head and when he looked up at me, I realized with a shock that he was crying now, streaks of wet tears running down his face. And I started to cry too, even though I didn’t yet know what was happening. I was just crying over the fact that he was. An instinctual response, a reflex.

  “What is it?” I squeezed his hands. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Liz,” he said again, and that time I got it.

  All the pieces fell into place. And I thought of what she’d said, about that creepy guy following
her, and how I’d dismissed her—

  And then I thought of the pub the night before, what I’d said to her, the horrible, horrible things, the unforgivable things now, because there was no one to forgive me, no one to listen while I tried to take the words back, and I felt like I was suffocating, choking, the guilt was a solid block pressing down on my chest—

  I made a sound like I was in physical pain.

  I fell forward, into Will’s arms.

  I don’t really remember much of what happened after that.

  * * * * *

  Liz died on Sunday night, or technically in the early hours of Monday morning. I got the news on Monday evening. My parents arrived on Tuesday, checking into a hotel nearby. I didn’t want to go home with them, didn’t want to leave Will—who they’d met now, suddenly and unceremoniously—and I’d been asked by the Gardaí not to leave campus permanently until they had interviewed me.

  The funeral was to be in Cork at the end of the week. I was, obviously, going home for it.

  What I didn’t know at the time was that I wouldn’t be coming back.

  I felt broken. Exhausted. Empty. Numb, but also not numb enough. I couldn’t sleep but I didn’t want to be awake. Mostly I just sat curled up on the couch in my apartment, wrapped in a blanket or in Will’s arms or nestled against my mother, or in a merciful, drug-induced sleep in my bed. Faceless figures moved around me. They offered me things: food, sympathy, advice.

  I paid them no attention.

  I couldn’t even talk to Will. I’d never said anything to him about what Liz had said to me in the pub, and now there was no way I could. All I wanted was to bury my face in his chest and stay there until the rest of the world went away.

  Liz’s parents arrived on campus soon after mine. I’d never seen such pain on a person’s face. They looked like they’d aged ten years overnight. It struck me then: whatever she was to me, she’d been a daughter to them. A sister to her brother, Ben, somewhere in the skies between here and Sydney. A granddaughter. A niece. A cousin. I’d only ever really thought of Liz in relation to me, as the person she was around me, to me. I couldn’t face any of her relatives now.

  Not just because of what I’d said to Liz, but because this feeling now—this pain—wasn’t pure grief. It was shame, too. Regret. Guilt. Embarrassment. It was about me. My pain was egocentric. Thinking about myself first and foremost, even now.

  Which only made me feel more of those things.

  At some point during that awful week, Will and I—and some other freshmen we knew—had to go to the Provost’s office to be interviewed by the Garda detectives in charge of the Canal Killer case, as the tabloids were now calling it. My mother had forced me to shower but I hadn’t bothered to dry my hair, and I was dressed in loose, gray things. A sweatshirt, leggings. I didn’t care what I looked like. I just wanted to take one of the magic pills and go back to sleep as soon as I possibly could.

  Will went in first. I waited outside on a hard plastic chair with my mother by my side. It was in the evening; no staff were around. The hallway and the other offices off it were completely quiet.

  Because of that, I could hear everything that was being said inside.

  “You saw Liz on Sunday night, I believe?”

  “Me? Very briefly. At O’Shea’s on Harcourt Street. But Alison talked to her for a bit. I only said hi, I think.”

  “But then not again?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what they talked about?”

  “No. But …”

  “What?”

  “I think one or both of them might have been upset about something.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know the details, no.”

  “You and Alison returned to Halls?”

  “Yes. We were back by eleven, eleven thirty, I think.”

  “Liz called you, though, at one point?”

  “I didn’t realize she had, until one of … Um, Garda Collins, I think it was? He asked me to check my phone. It showed a call from Liz at around three in the morning—but I didn’t talk to her. I was asleep.”

  “But the call was answered. It is possible Alison talked to her?”

  “I mean, it’s possible, but she would’ve said, surely.”

  “How do you explain it, then?”

  “I think I probably just reached out to switch it off, to stop the ringing, so it wouldn’t wake up Alison, and I must have pressed accept instead.”

  “Alison was there all night?”

  “Yeah, she stayed over.”

  After about ten minutes of this, it was my turn.

  There were two men in suits—detectives—and a female Garda in uniform waiting for me in the room. When they saw me, their faces softened. A student welfare officer was sitting in the corner, managing to look both fascinated and concerned.

  I dropped into the chair they pointed to and fixed my eyes on a spot on the floor.

  “We’ll keep this brief,” one of the detectives—Shaw—said. “I’m sorry for your loss, Alison, but we’re doing everything we can to get who did this. I know this is hard, but if you could just confirm a few things for us …”

  They didn’t so much ask me questions as they asked me to confirm everything Will had said. Had I seen Liz on Sunday night, early on, at that pub? Yes. Had I talked to her? Yes. Did she seem upset? I don’t know. Other people said she looked upset. Do you know what about? She said someone was following her. She said she’d talked to you guys about it. You didn’t see her again? No. You stayed with Will that night? Yes. Do you remember his phone ringing? No. Well, if you think of anything ... Okay.

  I went straight back to my room, back into bed. Will got into it with me, held me. Neither of us spoke, each lost in our thoughts.

  I swallowed another pill and waited for the darkness to descend.

  When I woke up the next morning, the room was filled with bright sunlight; the curtains in Halls were a joke, practically transparent. Will wasn’t there and the space in the bed beside me was cold. My head felt like it was filled with a fog, the aftermath of the sleeping pill, of three or four consecutive nights of taking it.

  I rolled over, squinted in the sun—and my eyes landed on the calendar tacked to the wall above my desk.

  I saw my handwriting, lopsidedly written in to last Monday morning: tutor @ 9:00 a.m.

  And I remembered: getting up in the dark, pulling on the clothes I’d been wearing earlier, heading out into the dark night.

  That night.

  alison, now

  I opened my eyes.

  Speckled ceiling tiles. A strip of fluorescent light, powered off. A pouch of clear liquid hanging above my head, the tube attached to it going into the back of my right hand. A thick, heavy cast on my left, from fingers to elbow. My skin itched inside it. A throbbing in my head, and something scratchy across my forehead—a bandage? A thin blue curtain, daylight showing through from what must be windows on the other side.

  “Welcome back.”

  I turned and saw Malone, sitting on a chair by the side of my hospital bed.

  My mouth was so dry my tongue felt thick and swollen in it. I managed to croak some approximation of the word water, and Malone produced a Styrofoam cup with a straw in it. He held it to my lips.

  “What’s the damage?” I said once I’d gulped back as much as I could.

  “A broken arm, a concussion, and I think fifteen stitches in your head.” Malone moved to go. “I’ll go get the doctor.”

  “Don’t. Tell me what happened first.”

  “We can do that later. You should get some rest now. Your parents are in the cafeteria. They’ll be back up soon.”

  “Get some rest?” I tried to smile. “I just woke up.”

  “They told me not to tell you anything. And I was supposed to tell someone
if you woke up, so …”

  “Look at me. I’ve earned this.”

  “Fine,” Malone sighed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “He drove us into the water?”

  “At Grand Canal Dock. He was stopped at a checkpoint on Mespil Road, and the guard there heard screams coming from the trunk of the car. She asked him to step out, and that’s when he took off. A show was about to start at the theater down there, so the place was busy. Lots of people around. Luckily no pedestrians were injured. But it meant that, immediately, you had help. People jumping into the water. Apparently the car was sinking front-first—and you know you can’t open the doors until the whole thing is gone beneath the surface—so someone had the bright idea to open the trunk and see if they could get in through there. When they did that, they found you.”

  “Was it him, then? Conway was the Canal Killer?”

  “It seems that way, yes.”

  “Was he back then, too?”

  Malone nodded. “Yeah. Twenty-three Doolyn Gardens is a treasure trove of physical evidence. We’ve found files on the victims—both 2007 and 2017—and even items of clothing belonging to them, some other possessions, too. It seems you were right. He was using that attic apartment to gather information on St. John’s students. We found stacks of forms with personal details like phone numbers, addresses. Photocopied IDs. Even some bank statements. Oh, and the O’Rourkes in Ennis? They’re his grandparents. He was paying them rent—or some rent, at least—for both houses. And he wasn’t just an estate agent, Alison. He also worked three shifts a week as a security guard at St. John’s Halls, where he made himself his own set of keys and had been regularly deleting footage from the security cameras.” He paused. “Without being detected, so I think it’s safe to say St. John’s will have a civil suit on their hands soon enough.”

  “Did he have that job in St. John’s back then, too?”

  “No. In 2007 he was a graduate student, living there himself.”