‘What is it?’
There was a car parked just at the end of the track where it met the road. A hatchback, one of those sporty ones with a spoiler at the back and double exhausts. It was quite beaten up. The front left panel had a big dent in the side, and there was a rust patch around the wheel and onto the bonnet.
Amber took another half dozen steps towards it and stopped, frozen to the spot.
‘What is it?’ I asked. But I knew already what she was going to say.
‘It’s the car. The one that was following us.’
12
Amber
Questions ricochet around Amber’s head. Why did Benny keep these negatives? What are they doing floating around in a box of pictures from 1978? What if someone has already seen them? Has Mika? Genevieve?
And where are the rest of them? She has found three images out of thirty-six that would be on the film. If Benny kept evidence of that evening, did he keep the rest? Did he keep the photo Amber took at three in the morning, her bare feet icy on the cold stone floor of the cottage? Did that picture even come out?
She finds she is scratching the light scar on the palm of her right hand, as if the wound is reawakening.
She tries to calm herself. Benny wouldn’t have been so stupid. Maybe this is all there is. Just a scrap of images to remember that weekend, squirreled away where no one would think to look. She holds that thought and tries to let it give her a little comfort, but all she can think of is those shelves and shelves of hoarded images.
She scoots back to the scanner and pulls out the negatives. She almost tears them up, but stops herself. It’s just a feeling, fallout from the unanswered questions going off like bombs in her head.
She takes an empty brown envelope from the table and puts the images inside. Then she goes to her handbag, rummages around and finds a pen drive. She takes it to the computer and saves the scans onto the drive. She puts the drive into the envelope with the negative and stuffs it away in her handbag.
She sits in silence and stillness, but her thoughts shout and contort.
The door of the studio rolls open. Amber jolts. A grunted breath escapes from her mouth.
‘You okay, babe?’
‘J, sorry, you made me jump.’
‘I think we’re needed for supper.’ He puts on a posh voice for that last word, one he would never use.
She is looking at him, with the monitor a little to her right, facing at an angle to her. As he advances towards her, she glances to her right and sees what she has done. She’s saved the pictures and stashed the envelope, but the images are still up on the screen, framed in the electronic tool panel of the scanning software.
She’s over on the wheels of the chair as quickly as she can go. Minimising the program. Gone. Her body tingles.
‘I’ll be in. Just thirty seconds.’
‘Really thirty seconds? Or one of your ten-minute thirty seconds?’
‘Look, two minutes, tops. I just need to tidy up a bit and shut everything down. I’ll be right with you.’
‘Okay, okay…’ Johnny backs away again towards the door. ‘Grub looks amazing, by the way.’
He is gone, and she breathes.
She goes back to the monitor and closes all the programs down, double- and triple-checking there are no files left on the computer.
She hasn’t been left any instructions about locking up, but she turns off all the lights and pulls the doors closed. Without the light from the studio, the clearing is now very dark. The only clear light is coming from the LEDs that glow along the path back to the house. She moves quickly across the clearing, but can’t help glancing back at the studio, square and squat in the gloom. In the moment that she pauses there is a sound, then a flicker of movement, something dark wiping between two trees.
Just a deer, she says to herself, hurrying towards the lighted path. But as she reaches it, the LEDs blink out. She is blind for a moment, a hundred tiny globes floating on her retinas. She freezes, not even aware of where the path is under her feet.
She gives herself a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, stock-still, her heart thumping. Through the beat in her ears comes the sounds of the woods. Every crackle and breath. And something else now. Something moving. Is it footsteps? Very soft, as if trying not to be heard.
Amber tries to orient herself. The sound is behind her. She turns, facing the studio, which is visible only as a block of shadow. Now the sound — soft and steady — is to her right, as if it’s picking its way around the edge of the clearing.
She fumbles for her phone, jabbing for the torch icon. She swings the light around the clearing — wanting to see and not wanting to see. The light strobes off the trees, catching and illuminating the silver birches around her. Her mouth is open to call into the darkness, but nothing comes out.
Then the sound is back. Not slow and steady anymore. It is the fast crack of human footsteps moving through the trees alongside her. Towards her? Parallel to her? She can’t tell.
She doesn’t wait to find out. She shines her phone torch at the path under her feet and runs.
13
Amber
Amber takes a minute to catch her breath, and steps through the French doors to find a kitchen that is empty but for the smell of cooking. It makes her feel momentarily queasy, and she sits down at the table for a second just as the doors click again, and Johnny wanders in.
‘Hi, babe.’
‘Hi, J.’ She forces calm into her voice. ‘Did you come back to the studio?’
He frowns. ‘No, the lady of the manor said she was just getting changed, so I nipped out for a cheeky vape.’ He wiggles his e-cigarette at her and looks a little closer. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, sorry, fine. The lights on the path went off. I just got a little spooked. Dark woods at night, y’know.’
‘Oh, I dunno, I like it.’
‘Yeah, but you’re weird,’ she said, glad to find some humour, some normality between them. But it’s just an inch deep. Inside, she still feels cold and shaky. ‘You know what, think I might change too. Just be five.’
In the bedroom, she stows her handbag with the negatives and pen drive in it under her side of the bed, bundling a jumper next to it so it’s not visible. She goes to the bathroom and splashes cold water on her face. It’s not enough to make the feelings go, so she quickly showers and changes.
When she returns to the kitchen, Genevieve is holding a large glass of red wine, and Johnny is taking long sips from a beer. Yvey is there too, a little set back from everyone else. She has what looks like Coke in her glass, but there is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s close to her on the sideboard.
‘Sorry to be late.’
‘It’s fine,’ says Genevieve soothingly. ‘What can I get you?’
Amber wishes she could have a glass of wine. What she really wants is a cigarette. She hasn’t smoked regularly in fifteen years, but she really wants one now. Just a drag.
‘Something soft. Have you got fizzy water?’ Amber feels she could ask for a specific brand and Sam would appear out of one of the cupboards and hand it to her on a tray with a straw. But Sam is nowhere in evidence. She wonders when he left, or whether he’s still here somewhere in the house.
‘I haven’t thought to say congratulations,’ says Genevieve. ‘Do you have a due date? Johnny was telling me it’s been difficult for you.’
Amber throws a glance at Johnny. He is very free with the way he talks about their personal life. She likes to keep things tighter to her.
‘July,’ she says simply. She has refused to allow herself to focus on the precision of a date that seems mythical. She lets Johnny jump in, content on this occasion to let him talk about their baby while her mind settles.
Genevieve serves the food. Amber is sure it is delicious, but her taste buds, heightened for months by pregnancy, now seem deadened to the flavours.
The four of them settle into conversation. Johnny is in ebullient form, full of opinions and jokes. Amber is glad �
�� it allows him and Genevieve to dominate the discussion. Johnny talks about his music and how excited he is to be finally getting back into the recording studio at the end of the week with some old collaborators. It’s in Manchester, so he plans to stay away for a couple of nights.
Their conversation drifts onto talk about travel, then what’s happening in China and Italy, and whether the UK will go into lockdown. It feels both imminent and impossible. They seem to talk about everything but Benny. His absence is all around them.
Yvey eats mostly in silence. Every now and then she surreptitiously checks her phone until Genevieve scolds her. It elicits a roll of the eyes and a muttered complaint. She looks directly at her mother very little.
Amber remembers a similar period with her own mum, in the numbness of grief. They barely said a word to each other for days at a time. Later she realised the cruelty of what they were both unintentionally inflicting on each other. But it was a picnic compared to what came next.
Amber never understood why her mental unravelling was not immediate after the death of her father. It crept up on her. First came the refusal to eat enough, the anxiety and insomnia. Her concentration shot, she flunked her exams and had to resit and never regained the academic achievements of her early teens. Then came the nightmares and flashbacks to the day at the beach. And the outbursts of anger directed at her mother, throwing blame and unforgivable words at her. Their relationship never really recovered from that, and now Mum is locked away from her by dementia. She is unutterably sorry about that. She didn’t have to lose two parents.
After dessert, Yvey slips off, and it isn’t long before Johnny is yawning.
‘Sorry, burning the candle and all that.’ He stares at the empty wine bottle in front of him as if it is to blame for the number of times he refilled his own glass. ‘I might turn in, let you two catch up, talk photos and stuff.’ He goes towards the French doors, drawing his e-cigarette out of the side pocket of his jeans. ‘Crafty vape before bed,’ he says as if to himself and slips out into the back garden.
Amber fights the rising urge in her to join him, just calls, ‘G’night, rockstar,’ after him.
Genevieve gets up and puts the kettle on, and Amber feels the full weight of the knowledge that they cannot ignore Benny any longer.
14
Amber
When Genevieve comes back to the table and slumps in the chair, she looks suddenly tired. Failing to find the right words to say, Amber gets up to do the washing-up.
‘No, please, don’t worry about that.’
‘But you’ve done so much. I’m so impressed by…’
‘Just don’t tell me how well I’m doing,’ says Genevieve with a dry laugh. ‘I think people always say you’re doing so well to comfort themselves, not the bereaved.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’
‘Not you, my dear.’
My dear. Those words crystallise a feeling Amber has about her relationship with Genevieve. She is only a decade or so older than Amber, but has always talked as if she is much more senior, and wiser with it. Perhaps it is the money, the semi-aristocratic lineage, the lifelong assumption of status.
‘Thank you for coming, really,’ says Genevieve, getting up just as the kettle comes to the boil. ‘It’s been so nice to hear Johnny play again. Such a talent. Hot drink?’ Amber declines the offer, and Genevieve makes herself a herbal brew before coming back to the table. ‘So, what do you make of the archive?’
‘There’s some really interesting material in there, particularly Benny’s early work. You weren’t kidding when you said he was a bit of a hoarder. But, can I say this now… I just want… I’m not sure if I can…’
Damnit, get the words out, she is thinking. Just tell her you don’t want the job. Run away from all this. But then those negatives are back in her mind, and the rest of the roll of the film that is missing. What if someone else finds the rest?
‘There’s really no pressure, Amber. Take the job; don’t take it. It’s really up to you. But I did want you to see it. I did want you to come.’ More of the certainty has gone out of Genevieve’s voice. She looks down at the table, and Amber can see again through that crack in her shell at the current of loss underneath. ‘Benny was just starting to slow down, to work less. I thought finally we’d be able to spend more time together. For a man who was so obsessed with capturing the right moment, his timing really was appalling.’ She gives that dry laugh again.
‘Yvey said he wasn’t well.’
‘That, my dear, is an understatement.’
‘Was he…?’
‘Yes, he was dying. Oesophageal cancer. They caught it very late. Stupid men — why are they so useless at going to a doctor? I think he might have had several months, but they would have been awful ones. And he was proud and vain. The prospect of all that suffering and indignity. But then…’
‘Small mercies, I suppose,’ says Amber, thinking of the bike crash, but immediately feels how callous she sounded. ‘Sorry, it must still have been horrific when he had the accident.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it was an accident,’ Genevieve cuts in sharply. ‘Though that does seem to be the line the coroner’s going with. A dying man being reckless, yes? But…’ She takes a mouthful of her tea. ‘He loved that bike. Dreadful midlife-crisis nonsense. I think when he wasn’t able to travel after his diagnosis, it became an adrenaline fix. He used to ride a lot at night. He wouldn’t sleep. He’d be up all night in the studio or pacing round the garden, smoking. I still couldn’t get him to quit. And he would go out in the early hours, tearing around the country lanes.’ She tails off and stares into her cup. ‘I hate that I wasn’t here. I was visiting my mother. And poor Yvette, having the police turn up at the house the next morning.’
‘I didn’t realise. That must have been awful for her. What did the police say had happened?’
‘He rode far too fast into a corner. Came off at high speed and got crushed under his bike. There didn’t seem to be any other vehicle involved, and he was a good rider. He never went out if he’d been drinking, or pushed himself beyond his limits.’
As Genevieve speaks, Amber is back in the car with Benny, tearing through the village, rasping against the hedgerow, twisting and skidding to a halt. She is reminded of all the things Genevieve doesn’t know about her late husband.
‘I should have seen it coming,’ Genevieve goes on. ‘He used to talk about how he expected to die on the job. Shot or blown up, trampled to death by a mob. He once told me to push him off a bridge if he ever started getting senile. I just think he preferred the idea of a quick death over a slow one. I can see it being quite deliberate.’
‘You think he killed himself? Did he give any warning? A note?’
‘Wouldn’t it be good if suicide worked like that? It probably only occurred to him when he was on the bike. Those decisive moments, you know. But looking back… I knew there was something pent up inside him. After he was diagnosed, he kept half-starting conversations. I never pushed him to talk, and maybe I should have. But perhaps you’re right, Amber. Small mercies. I knew I was losing him. Maybe it was better this way.’ There are fine tears running down Genevieve’s cheeks, but she still has control of her voice. She wipes the tears away, and a silence settles between them.
It is Amber who speaks next. ‘What time did it happen?’
‘They didn’t find him till the next morning, but they think it was sometime between one and three. Why do you ask?’
‘Sorry, I don’t know why. I’m never very good at knowing what to say. Which is stupid, because I should be an expert.’
‘I understand. I suppose this must bring back memories for you.’
You have no idea, thinks Amber.
‘Thank you for letting Yvette spend some time with you today. You must understand what she’s going through even more keenly than I do.’
‘Did you tell her about my father?’
‘I did. I hope you don’t mind. I just thought you and she could
talk.’
‘It’s fine — it’s just she told me she’d read about it in an interview, but I couldn’t think where that would have been.’
‘Funny girl. She seems so determined to cut me out of everything at the moment. If I’m honest, things have been difficult for a little while, and since she had to move school…’ She lowers her eyes and doesn’t go on.
‘Well, you can tell her, whenever she wants to talk, she can.’ Amber gives Genevieve a thin smile. She wants to reach across and hold her by the hands. But she also knows that as they have talked, she has told Genevieve a lie. Amber does, in fact, know why she asked what time Benny died. Because Amber is thinking about the time and sequence of what she did on that night.
She had gone to bed early, putting her phone on do not disturb. Johnny crawled in around midnight. Half asleep, she held onto him, buffeted by strange dreams. A little later she woke again, needing the toilet. In her usual way, she grabbed her phone to light the way to avoid turning the lights on.
There were two notifications on WhatsApp. A missed call and a message, both from the same number. It wasn’t a number in her book, and the identity badge was just an anonymous white silhouette in a grey circle. She read the message:
I don’t know if this is still your number. Can we talk?
She stared at the words for a long time, stranded in the dark on the toilet. She crept back to the bedroom, looking in on Johnny, dead to the world. She went to the kitchen and stood by the back door, as far from the bedroom as she could get in the house.
She called the number using WhatsApp, already thinking about encryption, about secrets to be kept from prying eyes. It rang and rang and finally died to nothing. It was two in the morning.
She deleted the message and cleared the record of the call from her phone. She went back to bed, blinking and awake till dawn. Already that night, she had a strong sense of who the message was from. It was a sense that surged when she found out about Benny’s death.
All Your Lies: A gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end Page 6
