The Liar's Sister (ARC)

by Sarah A. Denzil

  I let my sister down once before and I never want to do that again. What she doesn’t understand is that I’ve always known that she knew I was lying, and that she’s afraid of me and has been since the night Samuel died. Nothing in the letter I found surprised me; I was only shocked by how much pain I read between the lines. The regret for not helping me through my addictions. God, I don’t blame her for that. I don’t blame her for anything.

  I knew that the trust between us had broken as soon as she found my bracelet. I’d always thought that broken trust was irreparable until I read her letter and decided to finally let her in.

  There’s just one final part she doesn’t understand.

  I promised myself I would never tell her.

  But as soon as we’re back together, I’m going to break that promise.

  And that’s why you need to survive, Hev.

  For at least five minutes the road is silent apart from the sound of my shoes slapping against the tarmac. The run could take twenty minutes or forty, I’m not sure. I jog on occasion, but I’m no runner and my lungs burn with every step. My hair is plastered to my forehead with sweat, and every part of me wants to slow down now that there’s no one chasing me.

  I don’t hear the car at first because I’m panting from the run. It’s only when I notice the illumination of headlights behind me that I know there’s someone there, which is strange, because only villagers use the back road, and even then, rarely at this time of night. I don’t know whether to hide or flag them down. Surely Colin couldn’t have got to a vehicle in such a short amount of time? Unless he’d found a spot to hide his car somewhere along the road close to the forest.

  At the last minute, I duck down into a ravine next to the verge, but it’s too late. The driver sees me and pulls over.

  A man opens the door and climbs out.

  ‘Rosie?’

  I allow myself a peek over the grass verge. The man driving the car is Peter Murray.

  ‘Rosie? Where did you go? I got a text from Heather about two hours ago and I haven’t been able to find her. Is she okay? What the hell is going on?’

  My heart beats so loud and so fast that I’m surprised he can’t hear it. He’s less than ten feet away, and I can see the brown work boots he’s wearing.

  Can I trust him? I know that Heather thinks she can, but I don’t trust anyone, especially a Murray.

  He starts walking and those boots come closer. Thump. Thump. Thump. His steps match the pattern of my heartbeat.

  Two feet away, he squats down.

  ‘Why are you hiding?’

  For a brief second I’m embarrassed to be crouching down in the grass, with mud stains and sweat all over me. He holds out a hand and I allow him to pull me out onto the verge.

  ‘I don’t know who to trust,’ I say honestly. ‘Your father just tried to kill us.’

  Peter leans away from me and lets out a short, sharp exhale. ‘He did what?’

  ‘You have to believe me,’ I say, talking quickly, still panting. ‘He’s been planning this ever since I came back. I went into the woods with Hev and he’d dug a trap for us to fall into. It’s all because of what I did all those years ago.’ In desperation I reach out and take both his hands in mine. ‘You have to help Heather. Have you got a phone? I need to call the police.’

  Peter frowns. ‘My mobile is dead. We’ll have to go to the farm and use the landline.’

  I shake my head. ‘It isn’t safe at the farm. Your father might go there.’

  ‘It’s closest,’ he says. ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean, he dug a trap?’

  I sigh. ‘It’s a long story. I just need to get to a phone. Can’t you drive me into the village?’ I glance warily in the direction of the Murrays’ farm.

  ‘Come on,’ he says gently. ‘I’ll protect you from Dad.’

  I’m about to protest, but he puts one arm around my back and leads me to his car. That arm is solid and firm. If I decide not to comply, there’s not much I can do against his strength.

  He opens the passenger door and helps me in, then slams it shut and gets into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Dad wouldn’t hurt Heather,’ he says. ‘You, on the other hand …’ He glances at me sideways and frowns, then puts the car in gear and performs a fast three-point turn to head in the opposite direction, back towards the farm.

  ‘What did Heather text you?’ I ask.

  ‘That you were heading to the woods. That you seemed unhinged. That she was afraid.’ He raises an eyebrow in my direction. ‘Heather doesn’t trust you, Rosie. She thinks you’re dangerous. How do I know you’re telling the truth about my dad?’

  ‘Because you more than anyone know what an arsehole he is. I saw him yelling at you and Samuel on the farm.’ I saw a lot on the farm that I shouldn’t have seen.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Peter frowns more deeply, exaggerating the seriousness of his expression.

  ‘How did you receive my sister’s text if your phone was dead?’ I ask.

  ‘It was low on battery before I came out,’ he replies. ‘I didn’t think to charge it. It died ten minutes ago.’

  ‘You’ve been driving up and down here, then? Searching for her?’ I ask.

  ‘I walked through the woods, too.’

  There’s no emotion in his voice at all, and that’s something I always remember about him. I don’t understand what Heather sees in him, and I can’t help but wonder whether I should’ve stopped whatever is happening between them. It’s too late now, though, and none of it matters. But I hope she’s right about him. I hope we can trust him.

  Because he’s our only hope.

  Thirty-Six

  Heather

  Now

  In my dark part of the forest, I shiver next to the rock, aware of the fact that I have nowhere to go. Colin’s torchlight sweeps over the surrounding area, always just a few feet out of range of me. But with each step, that distance shortens. Soon he will find me.

  I can’t run, because any movement would catch his eye. But if I stay here, he’ll see me anyway. My error was stopping to check that he didn’t have Rosie. If I’d trusted my instincts, I would’ve managed to escape.

  And that, of course, has always been my problem. I never listen to my instincts. I use my head every time. My instinct told me that Dad would never kill himself. If I’d shared that thought with Mum, maybe we could have insisted on an investigation into his death and Ian and Colin wouldn’t have got away with his murder.

  My head told me to never say a word about Rosie’s bracelet. My instinct was to tell my parents. If I had told them, maybe we could have dealt with the issue as a family rather than basing our relationships on destructive lies.

  My head told me that Rosie was involved in Samuel’s disappearance, that she might have killed him. I should have listened to my heart and reached out to her.

  When the torch sweeps ever closer, part of me wants to give up and reveal myself. Instead, I shrink down, making myself as small as possible. I screw my eyes shut in the childish way I used to as a kid, mistakenly believing that if I can’t see him, he can’t see me.

  I’m holding my breath as the yellow beam moves on and footsteps rustle further along the undergrowth. Finally I dare to open my eyes. Inching out slowly, I peek from behind the rock. The forest is silent now; maybe he’s gone. But no, he’s still there; he’s just stopped and is speaking on his phone again. With Ian dead, I have no idea who it could be this time. Perhaps he’s been forced to check in with his wife, or Ian’s wife. But at least he’s distracted and facing the other way. This could be my one chance to make my escape before he goes back to sweeping the area with the torch.

  I scramble out from behind the rock and begin my descent into the woods. I try to keep as low and as quiet as possible, but I still find brittle twigs snapping beneath my feet. When I hear Colin’s voice cry out, I don’t stop, I keep going. He’s seen me.

  As soon as I’m at the bottom of the slope, I set off running as fast as I can
, but the forest is dense here. Stones shift beneath my feet as I try to sprint. The thin soles of my pumps slip, and this time my luck has run out, because I can’t right myself. I crash to the ground, smashing a tooth on a stone, blood bursting from my lip.

  When I hear the shuffle of feet behind me, I know that Colin has almost caught up. It’s now that I need my muscles to obey as I try to push on, but I can’t physically do it. I can’t muster the strength to keep going. A hand closes around my ankle while I scrabble uselessly against the ground.

  Colin yanks me back, pulling me roughly towards him. As I’m scraped along the undergrowth, my top catches on a branch and tears. My fingernails drag through the dirt. He grabs me by the neck of my shirt and forces me up. The material digs into my neck as I clamber to my feet, leaving me gulping and gasping through my bloodied mouth.

  I feel him behind me, his hot body pressed against mine, and I shudder. He releases some of the hold on my shirt, which allows me to breathe again. And then he whispers into my ear.

  ‘Come on.’ He jams the shotgun into my back. ‘You need to move.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Rosie

  Now

  ‘How does it feel to know your sister trusts me more than she trusts you?’ Peter asks, and I swear there is a smarmy, slippery feel to his words.

  ‘I think we have more important things to worry about.’ No, you can’t convince me that there’s a good soul amongst the Murray men.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘You think Dad is trying to kill you. Or at least that’s what you’re trying to convince me of. Not sure I buy it, to be honest.’ He flashes that grin at me again. It doesn’t strike me that he’s worried about Heather. Worried people don’t try to goad their lover’s sister into a fight when she’s missing in the woods. Heather could be hurt or dead for all he knows.

  He notices me watching him and the boyish grin fades from his face. A slack expression replaces it, and I feel the sensation of bugs crawling over my skin. Is this who he really is? I know he isn’t related to Colin by blood, but he reminds me of his father now.

  ‘I think you should pull over and let me out if you don’t believe me,’ I say, trying to sound more offended than scared.

  ‘I thought you needed that phone.’

  ‘I’ll walk back to the cottage.’

  ‘That’s a dangerous walk for a young woman,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to be raped.’

  I yank the door handle, but nothing happens.

  ‘Child locks,’ he says simply.

  ‘Let me out.’

  ‘No.’ When his eyes meet mine, there’s nothing in them. No pain, no sadness, no joy, nothing.

  ‘Heather only wants you because you remind her of Samuel.’ Hopefully provoking him will at least spark some kind of emotion. And if he’s emotional, he might make mistakes.

  But he just shrugs. ‘Worked out for me. I got her trust, which was the main thing, and I got to screw her over your kitchen counter.’

  ‘Why did you need to screw her when it’s me your dad wants?’

  ‘Because we needed to know how much you’d told her about the night Samuel died.’

  My heart sinks. That confirms it. Peter knows all about Samuel’s death and has been working with Colin to help him get his revenge. All this time he’s been playing Heather and spying for his father.

  Another thought clicks into place. ‘You drugged her the night she came back wasted. What did you give her?’

  ‘Something to help her loosen up,’ he says. ‘Figured it’d be a good way to find out what she knew and steal her phone in the process. If you want the gossip, I’ll fill you in. She thinks you killed Samuel but she can’t figure out how you hid the body, what with you being a scrawny girl and everything.’

  ‘If I find out you did anything to her that night …’

  ‘I enjoy the chase,’ he says. ‘But it’s no fun if they’re unconscious.’

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’

  ‘I’m going to take you back to the farm, of course. Dad’s joining us once he finds your sister.’

  ‘And then what are you going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to end this. We’re going to kill you – like we should have done years ago.’

  Thirty-Eight

  Heather

  Now

  It seems fitting that the story that began at the Murrays’ farm should end there too.

  Once Colin has me on my feet, he forces me to walk through the woods to the spot where he parked his Land Rover. It’s in a lay-by next to the back road. The gun is never more than an inch away from my back, meaning that I have no choice but to obey his every command.

  ‘Is this all because I came to the farm and asked questions the other week?’ I say, climbing into the car. ‘Would you have left us alone otherwise?’

  Colin gets in, and for a split second I consider leaping out and running away, but the moment is fleeting. He’s close enough to me that he can grab me, and I’m tired and bruised and not strong enough to fight him off.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t kill Iris’s child while she still lived. A long time ago I made a pact with myself that if your mother died before me, I’d finally end it the way I wanted to.’

  ‘What if she’d never fallen ill? What if Rosie had never come back to Buckthorpe?’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t be sitting in my Land Rover right now.’ He places the gun between him and the door and reverses out of the spot.

  I try to find another way to keep him talking, but I can’t think of anything. To my surprise, he begins to speak anyway, which is out of character for the incredibly laconic man I remember from my childhood.

  ‘You left,’ he says. ‘You don’t know what it’s like out here with nothing. I’m out there every day in the fields, breaking my back. And for what? We can’t sell owt. Supermarkets sell milk for less than it’s worth. The meat trade is on its knees. There’s little footfall in the shop. We can drag ourselves round to farmers’ markets every month, but there’s only three of us and we’re tired. I’ve sold most of the tractors for a pittance and borrowed more from the bank than I can pay back in this lifetime.’ His fingers wrap around the steering wheel, squeezing the leather as though it’s someone’s neck. ‘We’ve been bleeding ever since your sister accused Samuel of that awful crime. He was my firstborn son. The farm would be his when I went. But when your sister tainted it all, folk wouldn’t come near us. We were dirty. It took years to earn back some of the reputation she ruined, but by then we were in a huge amount of debt. The farm continued to bleed and bleed until its veins ran dry. I’ve had enough. It’s time for it all to end.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, somehow controlling my voice, because now that I know the full extent of his psychological issues, he has become even more dangerous to me. It’s clear what he wants from tonight. He wants to complete a suicide mission. ‘You’re hurt, and I understand that. But hurting other people isn’t the answer to your problems.’

  ‘It’s an answer.’ His voice has a vague, distracted sound to it.

  ‘What about Peter?’

  He directs his face away from me, staring at the wing mirror. ‘Peter has no future here, and he knows that.’

  ‘Your wife, then? She doesn’t even know that Samuel is dead.’

  ‘I’ll tell Lynn before it ends. I’ll tell her where he is.’

  So that confirms it. Colin plans on committing suicide after he kills me and Rosie. I lean forward and place my head in my hands. It’s not often I allow the tears to come, but there’s no hope left. Nothing. I can’t fight this man. I can’t talk him out of his plans. There’s nothing I can do.

  If only I hadn’t allowed Lady to spook at that tree all those years ago. If only I’d kept my nerves under control, none of this would have happened. Rosie would never have spent any time with Samuel and we would all have gone on with our lives as normal. I caused all of this. My fear set everything in motion. Now I’m overcome by fear again. It
’s in every pore, and in the tears flowing between my fingers.

  When the car comes to a stop, I lift my head to see that we’re in the courtyard of the farm I used to love. The door opens and Colin drags me out. My body tingles with the anticipation of what’s to come.

  He’s gentler than before, perhaps because he thinks he’s broken my spirit. He doesn’t grip me as hard as he could. He assumes that I’m compliant now, but he’s wrong; there’s still a part of me that’s willing to be brave. I wrench my arm out of his grip and start to run. The gun goes off, but the bullet doesn’t hit me; instead it hits the flagstones, sending up a cloud of dust.

  ‘I have your sister!’ he yells.

  No, he’s lying. I won’t make that mistake again.

  ‘I’ll kill her,’ he shouts.

  ‘Actually, I found her.’ The voice makes me stop short, and I glance back to watch him come out of the same stable I used for Lady time and time again. He has Rosie by the collar, and I can tell from the pallor of her face that the tight grip is causing her pain.

  ‘Peter,’ I breathe.

  He nods slowly.

  A few hours ago, his mouth was on mine and I wanted him deeply. I felt something; not love, but more than lust: a connection. I stupidly thought we’d formed a connection. All this time I’ve been berating myself for using him for comfort, but what I haven’t even considered is that he was using me. I close my eyes, desperate for the images of our afternoon together to stop running through my mind.

  ‘It’s okay, Hev,’ Rosie says. ‘You didn’t know.’

  Colin walks slowly towards me with the gun still trained on me. There’s a cautionary expression in his eyes, a warning for me to behave.