Truth Hurts

by Rebecca Reid

  TRUTH HURTS

  Rebecca Reid

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Before

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Before

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Before

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Before

  Chapter 11

  Before

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Before

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Before

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Before

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Before

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Before

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Before

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Before

  Chapter 32

  Before

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Before

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Before

  Chapter 39

  Before

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Six Months Later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Rebecca is a freelance journalist. She is a columnist for the Telegraph Women’s section, works for Metro Online and has written for Marie Claire, the Guardian, the Saturday Telegraph, the Independent, Stylist, Glamour, the iPaper, Indy100, LOOK and the New Statesman amongst others.

  Rebecca is a regular contributor to Sky News and ITV’s This Morning as well as appearing on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, LBC, BBC News 24 and the BBC World Service to discuss her work.

  She graduated from Royal Holloway’s Creative Writing MA in 2015. Her first novel was Perfect Liars.

  Rebecca lives in north London with her husband.

  www.penguin.co.uk

  Also by Rebecca Reid

  PERFECT LIARS

  and published by Corgi Books

  For Marcus

  ‘Ready, Mrs Spencer?’ he asked.

  No, she thought. Not ready at all.

  ‘Yes. Go ahead.’ She wanted the crowd assembled behind to hear her.

  It was a noise like nothing she had ever heard. A bang would be the easiest way to describe it, but it was more than that. Shattering. Cracking. Hundreds of years of history and memories collapsing as the wrecking ball swung into the house.

  Her house.

  She watched the honey-coloured walls fold in on themselves, watched as the ball smashed through room after room. The crowd gasped with each swing.

  It really looked like a doll’s house now. You could see right in, the rooms rudely naked without the front of the house. It was almost comical, the huge porcelain bath of the blue bathroom exposed to the elements. And then, with another swing of the ball, that was gone too. Poppy tried not to wince; she tried to look as though this was what she wanted. She had to put on a show for the people who had come to watch.

  This was entertainment for them.

  She’d dressed carefully that morning, choosing the beautifully cut trench coat and heeled boots as protection against them just as much as the cold winter air.

  I want this, Poppy told herself. This is how I win.

  Clouds of beige dust filled the air, her home reduced to nothing.

  Odd to think that once upon a time she had worried about stains on the sofa or marks on the carpet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked the man with the clipboard.

  She must be pale underneath all of the make-up. She nodded again. ‘Yes. Fine.’

  ‘Most people don’t like to watch demolitions,’ he said. His suit was cheap. Shiny. The kind of thing Drew would have despised.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Upsetting, I suppose. Seeing your home go.’

  Poppy pulled her coat around her. He had no idea. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  Those were the official words. The words she had said to the local council, to people in the village who asked about it. To the local paper when they rang to discuss her generosity.

  It was a gift to the community, she claimed. A lovely grassy park full of climbing frames and swings, somewhere for local children to play together.

  It was a way of changing a tragic place into a place of enjoyment. Of hope. And no one seemed to question it. After all, how could Poppy really be expected to go on living there, after what had happened?

  CHAPTER 1

  Five Months Earlier

  ‘Right, they’re now officially six hours late,’ Poppy said into the phone. ‘I am the only person in Ibiza who’s desperate to go to bed.’ She pulled her legs up underneath her, her bare feet a little cold.

  ‘Have you called them?’ Gina’s voice, though hundreds of miles away, was comfortingly familiar. Poppy could see her, phone to her ear, tangled up in her duvet, curls tied up on the top of her head. For the hundredth time that week she wished that Gina was here.

  ‘No, I hadn’t thought of that, I’ve just been trying to reach them with my mind,’ she sniped.

  Gina didn’t answer.

  ‘Sorry,’ Poppy said. ‘I’m just pissed off.’

  ‘I can tell.’

  ‘It’s the third time this week.’

  ‘You need to say something to her when they get back.’

  Poppy raised her eyebrows at the phone. Maybe Gina’s boss, who adored her, might take kindly to being told off by the nanny but Mrs Henderson made Cruella de Vil look like Maria von Trapp.

  ‘Have you started playing that game where you work out how much they’re actually paying you per hour?’ asked Gina. ‘That’s when you know it’s bad.’

  ‘We’re down to £3.70,’ Poppy said. Eighteen hours a day, six days a week, for four hundred quid. She’d done the calculation on her phone after the kids had gone to bed.

  Gina hissed through her teeth. ‘That’s bad. My worst was the Paris trip with the Gardiners. Seven kids, fifty quid for fourteen hours a day. And they made me keep the receipts so they could check I wasn’t buying my lunch or museum tickets with theirs. I might have actually lost money that week.’

  Poppy used her finger to hook a piece of ice from her glass of water. It slipped, falling back in. She tried again, craving the splintering of the ice in her back molars. It slipped again. ‘Why are rich people so stingy?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, babe,’ said Gina, yawning. ‘I need to hit the hay.’

  ‘No-o,’ Poppy whined. ‘I’ve cleaned the kitchen twice. I’ve laid the table for breakfast. I need you to entertain me …’

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  Gina was right, of course. The youngest Henderson, little Lola, would be awake in four hours, and if Poppy didn’t snatch some sleep before then she’d find herself snappy and short-tempered all day. ‘I’m not supposed to.’

  ‘That woman is a psycho. Ignore her. Go to bed.’

  ‘OK, OK. Abandon me.’

  ‘Call me tomorrow. Tell me all about how you calmly explained to them that you need notice if you’re going to be babysitting late nights.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Night.’

  Gina made a loud kissing noise and then the line went dead.

  Poppy could go to bed. Of course she could. But if Mrs Henderson came back sober enough to realize that Poppy ha
d slept on the job, she’d lose her temper. Her husband might earn a million quid a year in the City, but she wasn’t above docking Poppy’s pay over crimes like needing sleep. Poppy tipped her head back, looking up at the sky. The stars were incredible here. It was hard to believe that it was the same orange sky she looked out over every night from her tiny room in the Hendersons’ London house.

  She had hoped that the cool air out here by the pool would wake her up. It wasn’t working. She could feel her eyelids pulling downwards. She picked up her glass and walked barefoot back into the house, sliding the huge glass doors closed and locking them behind her. She padded upstairs, putting her head around Rafe’s bedroom door first. He slept, just as he always did, perfectly still and clutching a plastic gun, his round face and rosebud lips betraying none of the aggression that would fill the house once he woke up tomorrow morning.

  Damson next, Poppy’s favourite. She had decided years ago that parents weren’t allowed to have favourites, but nannies definitely were. Damson slept like her brother, perfectly still. Her iPad was in the bed next to her, still playing an audiobook of The Secret Garden. Poppy leant over to turn it off and gently stroked the little girl’s cheek. Damson hadn’t been allowed a single ice cream all holiday because her parents had decided that those cheeks were too round. Damson hadn’t questioned it, or made a fuss, but watching her stoic little face while her siblings wolfed down ice cream hurt Poppy’s heart.

  Last, Lola, curled into a little ball in her huge white bedroom. Poppy had spent every day of the holiday so far worrying that Lola would touch something white with chocolatey hands. Childproof didn’t seem to have been high on the agenda when they had booked this place.

  The blankey that Mrs Henderson insisted Lola adored was a puddle on the floor. Just yesterday, Mrs Henderson had posted on Instagram about how little Lola had told the first-class air hostess that she could have a cuddle with blankey during turbulence. The story, like everything else that woman posted, was pure fiction. As Poppy bent down to retrieve an old cup from the bedside table, a beam of white light pressed through the pale curtains of Lola’s bedroom. So, they had finally come home. She glanced at the watch on her left wrist. Twenty past two. They’d said they would be home at eight.

  ‘Oh, Poppy,’ husked Mrs Henderson, looking up as Poppy came into the kitchen. ‘Could you undo this?’ She held her wrist out. On it was a delicate, sparkling bracelet with a fiddly clasp. Poppy looked behind her, scanning the stark white living space for Mr Henderson, wondering why he hadn’t been asked to help. Mrs Henderson seemed to see where she was looking.

  ‘Mr Henderson decided to stay on at the party. But I couldn’t bear to wake up away from the children, so I came home.’ She gave Poppy a wide smile. Six years working for the Hendersons had taught Poppy to read between the lines. This was a warning shot. Mrs Henderson knew that she was late, she just didn’t expect long-suffering Poppy to challenge her on it.

  But, sleep-deprived and defensive of the children, Poppy had finally run out of patience.

  ‘You know, Mrs Henderson,’ said Poppy as she unclasped the bracelet, ‘the kids were really hard to settle tonight. You told them you’d be home by eight. They kept asking when you’d be back.’

  Mrs Henderson raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry?’

  No you’re not, thought Poppy. ‘The kids. You said that it was just a drinks party. That you’d be home by eight. Rafe and Damson didn’t want to go to bed because they thought they’d get to see you when you got home.’

  Taking one heavy jewel from her earlobe, Mrs Henderson smirked. ‘Poppy, I don’t expect to have my movements policed by you.’

  Poppy leant on the kitchen counter, trying to keep her cool. ‘I realize that, I’m just saying they were worried. And I did call a couple of times but you didn’t pick up …’ She trailed off. Mrs Henderson was taking a bottle of San Pellegrino from the fridge and walking out towards the staircase. ‘Mrs Henderson,’ Poppy heard herself saying, her volume louder than she had intended, ‘please will you listen to me?’

  Mrs Henderson turned at the foot of the stairs. Not for the first time, Poppy drank in the thinness of her limbs, the depth of her tan.

  ‘Poppy,’ said Mrs Henderson slowly, as if English was Poppy’s fifth language, ‘you’re tired. I don’t think you’re entirely in control of what you’re saying. Go to bed.’

  ‘I’m tired because I get up at six with Lola every day and you won’t let me sleep when I’m here alone with them.’

  ‘I do not pay you to sleep,’ said Mrs Henderson in a voice that could freeze ice. ‘I pay you to look after my children.’

  ‘And I do look after them! I do a hell of a lot more looking after them than either you or your husband do.’ Poppy felt the words falling from her lips, everything she’d wanted to say for months. ‘But it’s not fair on them or me when you just waltz home six hours late without calling.’ Her volume had climbed higher and now she was shouting. At the top of the stairs, Damson appeared.

  ‘Mamma?’ she said to her mother’s back.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ said Mrs Henderson.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Damson,’ said Poppy, forcing herself to smile. ‘Just go back to bed, OK?’

  ‘Where’s Papa?’ she asked.

  ‘Out,’ said Mrs Henderson, without turning to look at her daughter. Poppy could feel the anger rising like bile. She grappled to keep a hold of it. She didn’t do this. She didn’t lose her temper, or tell people how to raise their children. She looked after the kids and she didn’t interfere. That was her job. That was the only way that this ever worked.

  ‘Go back to bed, Damson,’ said Poppy gently. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. We’re going to look at the rock pools, remember?’

  Damson’s face unrumpled. She seemed mollified. ‘OK. Night night,’ she said, trailing back to her bedroom.

  ‘Now that you’ve woken the children up and disrupted my evening, have you finished?’ said Mrs Henderson.

  Poppy sank both rows of teeth into either side of her tongue, focusing on the sharp sting of pain. Of course she wasn’t done. She wanted to tell Mrs Henderson that she was a bitch, that her children weren’t fashion accessories, and let her know that Mr Henderson had slid his hand down the back of her jeans at Lola’s birthday party last month. But she bit her tongue. She loved these kids, and God knows it had been hard enough to find a nannying job in the first place. She couldn’t afford to lose this one. She had to keep her temper.

  ‘Yes,’ said Poppy slowly. ‘But it would be really helpful if next time you could call me to let me know that you’re going to be late.’

  ‘Next time?’ Mrs Henderson laughed, starting to ascend the glass stairs. ‘Poppy, you’re fired.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t think that you could talk to me like that and still keep your job?’

  It was hard to find words. It was as if there were too many of them, all fighting to exit her mouth at the same time.

  ‘Fired?’ she repeated quietly.

  ‘Yes. Off you go,’ said Mrs Henderson as she reached the top of the stairs.

  ‘Now?’ asked Poppy, astounded that even Mrs Henderson could be this vile. ‘You want me to go now? At two in the morning? I don’t have anywhere to go. What about the kids?’

  Mrs Henderson shook her head. ‘I think you’ve done quite enough to upset the children.’

  ‘Please,’ said Poppy. ‘I’ll go in the morning. Let me say goodbye to them?’

  Mrs Henderson smiled. ‘I don’t think that would help anyone.’

  ‘What about my stuff?’

  ‘The maid will pack it. I will let you know when you can come and pick it up, at a time when the children and I are out, so that you don’t cause any more distress. And you can arrange to collect your things from the London house when we’re back.’

  Poppy didn’t know how to salvage this. She gave herself a fast, angry talking-to. She had nowhere to go, almost no money and it was the
middle of the night. She shouldn’t have lost her temper; she shouldn’t have picked a fight. Forcing her mouth to form the words, almost choking on the humiliation, Poppy put on a gentle voice. ‘Mrs Henderson, I – I’m sorry I said anything. Let’s just go to bed. Let’s talk about it in the morning—’

  Mrs Henderson shook her head.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I’m very tired, Poppy, and this is becoming undignified. Just leave.’

  Rage, pure hot rage swelled up in Poppy’s stomach. ‘Fine.’

  Hoping Mrs Henderson wouldn’t notice what she was doing, she swept the Range Rover keys her employer had dropped on the side into her hand. Reaching the door she was relieved to see she’d left her handbag hanging up. But her relief gave way to panic when she went into the hall and realized that her feet were bare and that the only shoes by the front door were the strappy gold heels that Mrs Henderson had kicked off on arrival. She couldn’t face the indignity of asking to be allowed to go to her room and get her own shoes. And even if Mrs Henderson allowed it, if she realized Poppy had the car keys, Poppy would end up walking an hour on the side of the road to the nearest town. Sighing, Poppy yanked the heels on to her feet. They were still warm and slightly damp from Mrs Henderson’s feet.

  She allowed herself a look back at the house, a second to think of the kids, whom she had pretty much raised for the last six years, and then slid into the driving seat, thanking her lucky stars that she hadn’t drunk an illicit beer earlier. There was no way Mrs Henderson had driven home sober. But, Poppy thought as she took the car in a sharp U-turn and out of the drive, the rules were different for people like her.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pepito’s was on the side of the road and full of Spanish teenagers, but it was open, and it was still serving, which was all that mattered. Poppy found the last table left outside, ordered herself a beer and then, because tonight had gone to hell anyway, asked a guy at the table next to her if she could nick a cigarette. She drew the smoke into her lungs, revelling in the burn at the back of her throat. She liked watching the ash creep towards her fingers. The beer was cold and had a thick wedge of lime shoved in the top. It was what she needed. It was a shame that she could barely afford it. The noise of the place was soothing after the silence of the Henderson house.