Look, I don’t want anyone to think I’m a complete monster. I really was her mentor. I really think she learned a lot from me in that time. I learned a little too. But it was a mistake to introduce her to my wife, and to invite her and her boyfriend to those long boozy dinners at our London flat. It was a mistake to suggest to Amber when she graduated that she should apply for money from my wife’s foundation for young photographers. I was foolish to think these attempts to insert her legitimately and visibly into my life would protect me against temptation.
I did resist for a while. More to the point, Amber resisted. It was a full nine months. Then something changed over a series of weeks. Both of our relationships faltered, fell into bad patches. Both of us were stupid enough to get drunk with only each other for company, foolish enough to let the other know how we felt. It broke the paper-thin barrier between us. There was no going back after that point.
Until then, I really should stress, it was entirely above board. But then it was below board. Or rather, below sheets. And up against walls, and in the shower. Snatched moments in cheap hotels. All a little sordid, I know.
But I’d like to make it clear she knew exactly what she was doing. Nothing between us happened without consent. I made no offer, and she made no demand on me. There were no strings attached, no quid pro quo.
I’m sure it would all be seen very differently these days.
As I said, I’m not a monster. But I’ve never pretended to be a saint either.
And there was no way I could have known where it would all lead, and the damage it would do.
3
Amber
‘Isn’t it supposed to rain at funerals?’
Johnny is looking up at the speckless blue. It’s unusually warm and bright, a prelude of spring, and he fidgets in his heavy coat and suit.
These strange hot days out of place in the year don’t give Amber the simple pleasure they used to. But for all that, she thinks Johnny looks very beautiful in his get-up. His mother’s dense black hair and warm brown skin, his father’s smoky eyes. He’s wearing his bespoke three-piece suit, grey with the faintest check. She knows why he wanted to give it an outing. It is a release from recent months when they barely seem to have gone out or seen friends. They have been telling each other that this is the year that they will go out more, travel again. But Amber isn’t so sure about that now.
It is nearly three weeks since she saw the headline on her phone. Three weeks since that late-night call.
What the hell am I doing here?
She watches the crowd flowing out from the church. She and Johnny had arrived a little late and slipped in at the back, then made their exit as the final organ piece swelled into the nave. The neat rows of heads are now a muddle of faces. It is quite the gathering: the great and the good of photography and journalism, a smattering of celebrities, even the odd politician.
Amber was surprised to be invited. Surprised and increasingly apprehensive. Perhaps she is catching the guilt from the service. For most of it, she found she couldn’t take her eyes off the ornate arch in front of the choir stalls, flanked by vengeful angels, their wings tipped with fire.
‘The Catholic Church comes into its own at funerals, doesn’t it?’ she says to Johnny.
‘Hmm?’
She swerves from her own thought. ‘It must be an enormous comfort. If you believe all those words.’
Her husband looks sceptical. ‘Did he though? I mean Benny.’
‘I guess funerals aren’t really for the dead,’ she says, thinking of her father’s funeral, the way she does at every one of these occasions. It was a quarter of a century ago and it still feels like yesterday. A bleak, gunmetal day, a deluge falling on an ugly squat crematorium. Johnny is right: it is supposed to rain at funerals. The sun knew it had no right to shine that day.
The letter of invitation to this one arrived via Amber’s agent, handwritten by Benny’s widow, Genevieve. It spoke of how highly Benny and Genevieve had always thought of Amber’s work, and of how Genevieve had been sorry they had lost touch. It would mean a great deal if she would come to the funeral.
It should have been easy to make an excuse and not go, but somehow Amber didn’t find it was. Benny is dead now, and Genevieve is a widow. Whatever else has gone before, that much is true. And Amber is sorry, in her own way, to have lost touch with Genevieve. In her ignorance of what went on between Amber and Benny, Genevieve showed a generosity to Amber that she did not deserve.
So she is not here for Benny, Amber tells herself. She is here for Genevieve. But she knows there is something else too. It is a need to see that Benny really is gone. And more than that: to know that he went without ever saying a word to his family or friends.
Among all the faces, Amber spots her old college tutor, Freddie MacRory, chatting with the war correspondent Tim Vance. It is years since Amber has seen Freddie. The whirl of her hair is a little greyer, but no more restrained. She must now be the age Benny was, but she has lost none of the striking presence of those full lips and aquiline nose. Freddie was a little chaotic as a tutor and — as Amber came later to realise — not a very good photographer. But she was fun and warm and a bit mad in all the best senses. She is dressed now more brightly than anyone around her, as if she has come to the wrong event. But Freddie was never sombre or conventional.
Despite all the fond memories, Amber lowers her eyes, hoping not to catch Freddie’s. She is feeling a sharp stab of the lingering shame about where the introduction to Benny led. On the surface of it, Freddie wouldn’t have disapproved. She was always unembarrassed about her own many lovers, raising the middle finger to the men for their double standards. She was probably Benny’s lover too, at some point in their lives. Indeed, it was partly this closeness with Benny that makes Amber feel uncomfortable now. It was the sense that of all the people Benny could have confided his secret in, Freddie might be one.
Amber turns away. She is feeling stiff today, and she stretches her back. Her lightly swelling stomach protrudes from her jacket as she does so. She brings a hand instinctively to it, then pulls her coat back around it as if embarrassed. Johnny catches the action and gives her a funny look.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ she says, ‘but I feel kinda self-conscious being pregnant at a funeral.’
Johnny shrugs. ‘One in, one out.’
‘Johnny!’ She flicks his arm with her order of service, but she is smiling.
‘Besides, you’re hardly showing. People might think you just ate a big breakfast.’
‘Are you telling me I look fat?’
He turns to face her. ‘Yes, my darling, you look wonderfully, beautifully tubby, and I adore it.’ He reaches out and takes the edges of her coat, opening it a little. As he does this, she feels a momentary twinge low down towards her pelvis. It is the tiniest expression of discomfort that flickers across her face, but Johnny spots it. ‘All okay in there?’
‘It’s fine, J,’ she says. It comes out like an admonishment.
‘Sorry.’
‘You’ve got to stop doing that, though.’
‘Doing what?’
‘You’re not going to make it another four months if you panic every time I get the tiniest little cramp.’
‘I wasn’t panicking. I’m just…’
‘I know. So am I. All the time.’ And that’s all that needs to be said about how they’re both thinking about the small life inside her. About how precarious it feels. Amber always knew she would spend her twenties avoiding having kids. But she didn’t expect how hard it would be when they finally tried. The trying and trying. The IVF they couldn’t really afford. The hope and the false hope. The twice that she ventured far into her first trimester before it all came crashing down. The giving up. The accepting that they couldn’t. Telling themselves it was probably for the best with their busy lives.
Then this. Forty years old and getting careless. And right now, just over twenty weeks pregnant. A perfectly normal scan just three days ago. Halfway t
here. In less than a month, it will be viable. In two months, if it can find its way out, it will be safe. It will be a baby. It will be their child.
A group of mourners are drawing close. There is an elderly couple shuffling along, stooped and slow. Next to them, a solitary old lady with a vacant look on her face is being pushed along in a wheelchair by a teenager on the cusp of womanhood. The group stops for a second to talk to well-wishers. The teenager lifts her hands from the wheelchair and starts to fiddle with each of her fingers in a way that reminds Amber of Benny. She must be his daughter.
A woman catches up to the party, then steps ahead. It is Genevieve Bayard-Raine, as elegant as she always was. Dark brown hair with the subtlest touch of highlights, not a strand out of place. A long midnight-purple coat and a green scarf. Still very beautiful, in that stern way she always had, amplified by the effect of the occasion.
She heads for Amber and Johnny. Amber feels a wave of weakness pass over her: not knowing what she will say, worrying about what will come out of her mouth. Genevieve moves closer to the couple, her hands open.
‘I am so glad you could come.’ The edge of her French accent is still there, although less sharp than when Amber first knew her.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ Amber says, the words feeling empty. She thinks Genevieve is about to shake her hand, and can’t help but think about how the government keeps telling everyone to wash their hands all the time. But Genevieve keeps moving forward and leans in to give Amber a short, firm hug.
‘I expect hugging will be banned soon enough,’ she says, drawing back quickly, a light, sad smile on her face, her usual steel gone.
‘A beautiful service,’ Amber finally says. The cliché feels leaden in her mouth, and Genevieve looks unconvinced.
‘If it had been up to Benny, we would have buried him in a bin bag in the North Sea. But his parents…’ She nods her head up and back to indicate the elderly couple still moving slowly a way behind her. ‘They still think they could save his soul. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be so flippant. And, you know, Benny, he had more of a spiritual hinterland than most people supposed.’
Amber thinks about this for a second, and that phrase of Benny’s from his final interview flashes into view. I think it would be cleansing to confess everything. Perhaps if he told anyone, he told a priest. Priests weren’t allowed to tell anyone else, right?
‘How long has it been?’ Genevieve is saying across Amber’s bubbling thoughts. ‘It must be a decade if it’s a day.’ And she turns to Johnny, asking him about his music, reminiscing about how she used to love hearing him play the old piano in their London flat.
Amber examines Genevieve. She barely seems to show any sign of grief, but you can never tell these things from the outside. She remembers at her father’s funeral she felt almost a sense of relief, something lifting from the days of crushing despair that had come before it. Soon after though, the despair was back. And worse.
Genevieve switches back to Amber. ‘Look, there’s a bit of time before I have to go off to the cremation.’ Her face grows more serious. ‘There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’ And Genevieve starts to move away, signalling that they should follow. Johnny throws Amber a look, flicking up his eyebrows, but all she can think about is whether either of them ever knew, ever guessed who Benny really was to her.
The trio moves away from the church towards a clutch of trees overlooking the Victorian graveyard. Amber tries to control the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knows it is ridiculous to be nervous. What is Genevieve going to say to her here, in front of Johnny? And after all this time. Her affair with Benny ended over eighteen years ago, and she knew Genevieve for a good seven or eight years after that. There were countless times in all those years that she could have accused Amber of sleeping with her husband. There were countless times Amber could have confessed. There were times she almost did.
But each time she didn’t tell, it became harder the next time. Because to tell that one secret would have been to tell everything. How it began, how it went on, and worst of all, how it ended.
4
Benny
Friday, 9 November 2001
Life is once, forever.
I’ve always liked that line of Cartier-Bresson’s. It was his way of saying that when you capture a photograph, there’s just one chance to get it. It’s a fleeting, fluid moment, and then it’s gone. But if you catch it, it becomes indelible, eternal. It’s true of all the things we do. We act in the moment, and we can’t go back. We can’t create that moment again, and we can’t erase it. All its consequences are permanent.
It’s easy to see now that I shouldn’t have taken Amber to the cottage. But I didn’t know then what I do now. For that matter, I didn’t know on that Friday in November what I would by the Sunday morning. Not entirely.
The cottage belonged to my old pal Tim. He was in the country even less than me in those days, and he never asked any questions about who I took there when I borrowed the place for the odd weekend. He called it the Sandcastle. Not because it was grand — it wasn’t — but because its front door was almost on the beach. A small track ran down to the sands proper, just at the point that an old wooden groyne jutted in from the sea towards the grassy dunes. There was even a little wooden rowing boat tied to a post at the top of the beach, and at high tide you only had to drag it a little way and it was in the water. On calm, clear nights you could take it out and just bob under the stars.
My car crunched to a halt outside the cottage. It had taken three hours to get up from London, and my hands were numb from the vibration of the drive. I was driving the ’63 Corvette. It probably stood out a little too much. Amber had been quiet for the last part of the journey, and she stayed that way as we unloaded our bags and a box of food and went inside.
The old part of the cottage was stone, with a new wooden extension with big plate glass windows looking out to sea. The other three sides were shielded by a dense ring of tall trees, so that even across the flat sweep of the fields and the beach, it was almost invisible until you were right up close. There was an old stone chapel a few hundred yards down the lane, and a small café and farm shop just beyond that. But the nearest houses were nearly a mile away. I coveted the hell out of it, but Tim never wanted to sell. And it was probably better that it never became part of the Bayard property empire.
‘I need a drink, a big one,’ said Amber as she put down the food box. I was surprised to see her hands were shaking. She looked disconcerted by it too. She held them up in front of her, examining the effects of the stale adrenaline in her system. It was something I’d experienced myself enough on the job. After an explosion, the near-miss of a gunshot, or the surge of an angry crowd. Sometimes the shock doesn’t hit you in the moment. It can hide away for a little while, then crawl out later to leer at you.
I went to her and took her hands where they met her wrists. I held them firmly, pressing into the fleshy pads beneath her thumbs. I brought her hands up to my mouth and kissed the ends of her fingers.
‘Hey, we’re here. We’re not dead.’ I widened my eyes at her. ‘Unless you’re a ghost. Will you haunt me, my darling?’
‘That’s not funny. We could have been a lot less lucky.’
That much was true. But getting lucky was my life a lot of the time. And I couldn’t take full responsibility. It was Amber who had provoked me.
It was just past Norwich, about two and a half hours out from London, that Amber started glancing in the passenger-side mirror. I pretended not to notice for a while, but it started to irritate me. Was it something about my driving? I know I was going quite fast, but there’s no other way to drive. Was she worried the police might stop us? Finally I asked her.
‘I keep seeing the same car behind us. Since we left London.’
‘You think we’re being… followed?’ My voice was full of false drama and B-movie intonation.
‘Don’t take the piss. Seriously. Dinged front end and a b
ig rust patch — I keep seeing it behind us.’
‘It’s Friday. Lots of people are driving to the coast.’
She sank down in her seat and crossed her arms, a sulk on her face. A few seconds later, as the road straightened from a bend, she shifted back up.
‘There!’
I looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a car behind us, that much was true. I couldn’t see anything remarkable about it, but it was quite a way back. It looked like one of those low-down sporty hatchbacks, but not a new one. Maybe a late eighties model. I didn’t doubt Amber’s observational skills, but I meant what I’d said to her. It didn’t mean anything. Lots of people went up to the coast. She was just being twitchy.
But I’d been driving too long. I was bored. I was willing to play along.
‘I guess we’d better lose him then,’ I said, keeping my B-movie voice. And I squeezed some more revs into the engine. Gently at first and, once I could see the lie of the road ahead, I pushed my foot down hard. I felt the weight of my body and the punch of the engine.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amber’s hand reach out onto the dashboard. I allowed myself to glance across. I thought maybe she was smiling just a little. I pressed down harder. The straight gave way to long slow winding curves. I took the racing line along them, pushing faster and faster.
Then a twist, dropping right down through the gears, and flooring the accelerator as the road opened.
‘Okay, enough already,’ said Amber, though she was grinning now.
‘Not sure we’ve lost him,’ I said, and kept up the speed. Straight through a village at double its thirty limit. I knew there were no speed cameras here.
‘Jeez, Benny.’
I laughed, looking over at Amber. Her face still had excitement all over it.
All Your Lies: A gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end Page 2
