All Your Lies: A gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end
Page 24
All Amber has now as a defence is the truth. An openness about everything she is feeling and thinking. Sometimes it has been too much. Sometimes Johnny has had to ask her to stop telling him the truth, to keep a little back. He doesn’t want to hear about her infidelity or about how she chose not to tell him anything, even when she thought her and their daughter’s lives might be in danger. I’m not your therapist, he threw at her in one moment of open anger.
But for now, he is here, waiting with her. And maybe it will all change again once their child is here, once she grows into a person with all her desires and needs and views on the world.
Amber feels a pulse of discomfort deep in her pelvis. A moment later, the feeling is gone. The child inside her moves, then settles, as if momentarily angry about the position she has found herself in. But there is nothing resembling the proper beginning of steady contractions. She thinks for the thousandth time about this new life about to start, and how it weighs against the ones ended, and the ones ruined. One in, one out, she can hear Johnny say, that day at Benny’s funeral. But the ledger doesn’t balance like that.
She reaches out a hand towards her husband, resting it on the edge of the bed. It is a few seconds before he takes it. She looks over at him. There is nothing she can say, nothing she has not tried to say in a hundred different ways. But perhaps their shared silence is okay. It at least has symmetry.
The midwife comes in, takes some more observations, and says they need to wait a little longer until the next stage of induction. She suggests Amber should try to get a little rest.
Amber nods. She would like that. She puts a hand on her belly and closes her eyes, hoping for just a small pocket of sleep. One without dreams, without images, and without any thought of the past or the future. No light getting in around the edges. Just a perfect darkness.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Brian Lynch for his sharp focus on story and structure, and to the team at Inkubator for making all this real.
My gratitude to Jon Rowe for making the connection, and to Francesca Cassidy-Taylor, James Castleman and Exposure Film labs for technical advice. Any remaining errors are my own.
To everyone who’s supported me along the way, thank you for keeping me going. There are too many of you to mention, but I hope you know who you are. And to Lizzie, for everything.
And thank you for choosing this book. If you could spend a moment to write an honest review, no matter how short, I would be extremely grateful. They really do help readers discover new authors, and writers go on writing.
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Credit
“Life is once, forever”: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Interview with Sue Davies, 1973.
About the Author
OCS Francis writes psychological thrillers and suspense novels that explore the darker corners of our lives and minds. He was born in Bristol and studied Human Sciences at Oxford. He has worked in academia, healthcare, television research, feature film development and as a telephone mystery shopper. He lives in Cambridge, UK with his wife and son. He relaxes by playing the piano and taking photographs.
You can find OCS Francis on his website.
www.ocsfrancis.com
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Published by Inkubator Books
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Copyright © 2021 by OCS Francis
OCS Francis has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
ALL YOUR LIES is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.