Perfect Liars

by Rebecca Reid

  About the Book

  Sixteen years ago, at an elite boarding school secluded in the English countryside, best friends Nancy, Georgia and Lila did something unspeakable.

  Their secret forged an unbreakable bond between them, a bond of silence. But now, in their thirties, one of them wants to talk.

  One word and everything could be ruined: their lives, their careers, their relationships. It's up to Georgia to call a crisis dinner – she knows there’s nothing that can’t be resolved by three courses in her immaculate kitchen.

  But the evening does not go as planned …

  Three women will walk into the dinner party. Only two will walk out.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Now

  Then

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  Acknowledgements

  Read on for an extract from Truth Hurts

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PERFECT LIARS

  Rebecca Reid

  For my parents, who are so lucky to have me.

  Peonies are out of season, so they were a nightmare to find. Expensive, too – twice the price of almost any other flower. But peonies were her favourite, so none of that mattered. After all, you only do this once. It has to be perfect.

  The room seems to sigh as the doors open at the back, filling the church with icy air. The organ wheezes the strains of a familiar song, one they’ve all sung a thousand times: at school, at the weddings that used to fill their weekends and at the christenings which had inevitably followed.

  With one movement they are on their feet. Polished shoes on wooden floorboards, angled uncomfortably to fit inside the narrow pews. When was the last time any of them had entered a church?

  Two hundred eyes flick to the entrance.

  First, a priest.

  Second, a man with a pale face and a badly knotted tie.

  Then, the coffin.

  It doesn’t seem possible that she is inside that box, that the person who was so real and alive so recently could be here, and yet not here at all.

  It’s impossible not to wonder what she looks like. Would she approve of the outfit they had agonized over? The task of picking those painfully final clothes – everything from her underwear to her favourite sky-high heels, to the slim gold chain around her neck – had fallen to them because no one else had wanted to.

  The procession moves slowly. Finally, the music stops. The coffin is lowered.

  They sit.

  It’s not a bad turnout for a Wednesday morning. A hundred or so people, all in neat black outfits. Winter coats in need of a dry-clean. Black dresses which lived in the back of wardrobes and were a little too tight around the arms. Dark work suits. White shirts. Ties.

  It’s a good photo, the one they’ve chosen for the order of service. It had felt ghoulish, clicking through her social media, scrolling past weddings and holidays and parties, hunting for a photo where she looked healthy and happy. But it’s been worth it. The photo props up the lie that every person in the church has committed to. Such a shock. Such a tragic accident.

  How long do these things usually go on for? It can’t be more than an hour, surely?

  And how long will they have to stay afterwards? It will be unrelentingly grim, so strained. All the makings of a party – decent food and good booze – yet none of the fun. It doesn’t seem fair, to bring together people who haven’t seen each other since the last big do and then make them feel guilty for laughing.

  They’re too young for all of this.

  And then there’s the question of what to say. None of the usual things apply.

  No one can say she’s lived a long life or that she’s out of her pain. There isn’t anything comforting to reach for.

  Even calling it a tragedy seems inaccurate. No accident to talk about, no illness to blame it on – at least, not one that can be mentioned in polite company.

  Nothing sounds right. Every platitude seems like an accusation – like it is someone’s fault that she’s gone. As though they could have done something. As though death could have been avoided.

  NOW

  Georgia

  There was a chip in the polish on Georgia’s left index fingernail.

  Shellac wasn’t supposed to chip. It had looked perfect when she left the salon earlier, or else she would have had them start all over again, but somehow, she had managed to spoil it. Nancy would notice, of course. She would pick her hand up on the pretence of admiring her eternity ring, and then raise her eyebrows with a smile. Nancy’s own nails would be perfect. Dark-red, almost black lacquer, just as they always were.

  Annoyed, Georgia pushed her fingers into the mixture in the bowl, relishing the wrongness of her hands in the meat, pressing it together with the onions and the sage. Would anyone eat it, she wondered. Certainly not Lila. She seemed to be on a liquid diet these days – Diet Coke by day and wine by night. Which increasingly meant tears, vomit and saying things she didn’t mean. Georgia had started to worry that the liquid diet might be less about Lila trying to lose imaginary baby weight, and more about what was going on in her head.

  They’d be here soon. She had meant to have the food finished by the time they arrived, filling the house with delectable smells. It wouldn’t be done in time now, unless they were late. She shouldn’t have taken the test today. It was only supposed to take three minutes, but inevitably the whole miserable process took longer. The waiting, washing her hands, waiting again. Calling Charlie, pretending not to hear the accusation in his tone as he hurried her off the phone, rushing from one meeting to another, squeezing her wretched disappointment in between appointments with clients. It was always the same.

  But she knew Nancy wouldn’t be late. She never was. She was coming straight from the airport as no flight would ever dare be delayed with Nancy on board. Everything in her life, from the neat bobbed haircut she had worn since she was twenty-five to her patent shoes, was together. On time. Precise.

  At least the kitchen looked good. Charlie had been horrified when she’d campaigned to knock half the ground floor into this huge, open-plan room. But now, with the twilight streaming through the huge French windows and the table set for six, laden with flowers and candles and crisp linen napkins, no one would be able to question her taste. Not even her friends. Georgia the scholarship girl with second-hand school uniform and Primark school shoes was dead and buried.

  The sound of a key turning in the lock distracted her. She shook the stuffing off her hands and turned to the sink, knocking the tap on with her elbow and hurriedly rubbing her hands under the tepid water. Had Charlie snuck out of work early to come home and help her get ready? She felt the corners of her mouth pulling into a smile. He could be quite sweet sometimes.

  ‘Gee? It’s me.’ Lila’s breathy voice came from the hall. ‘Sorry I’m early.’

  Lila had never been early in her life. She was
the latest person Georgia had ever encountered. What did this mean? Surely Lila wasn’t turning over a new leaf now, when Georgia had summoned Nancy all the way from Boston to talk some sense into her.

  Georgia had only given Lila a set of house keys as a goodwill gesture, and because she lived a ten-minute drive away. They were meant for emergencies, not for letting herself into the house whenever she felt like it, but that message didn’t seem to have got through. Nevertheless Georgia forced a grin and opened her arms to hug Lila.

  ‘I thought you and Roo were coming at eight?’

  Georgia had last seen Lila a few weeks ago. But she’d changed since then. Had she been ill? Her limbs had always been long and sinewy, but now her face looked entirely hollow, and while she still sported the kind of tan that only comes from spending eight weeks a year in blazing holiday sunshine, there was an almost yellow tinge to her skin. She looked, for the first time in as long as Georgia could remember, like shit.

  She watched as Lila dragged up her jeans, jeans which should have been skin-tight but sagged around her thighs. The white top she wore was clearly designed to be loose and floaty, but it was slipping off one angular shoulder.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry to surprise you, but I was coming past, and Roo was home early so he can do the babysitter and everything. Anyway, I wanted to see you on your own for a bit before everyone else got here. Is that OK?’ Lila’s face crumpled and for one horrible moment Georgia thought she might be about to cry. ‘Am I a nightmare? Shall I go? I can call an Uber if you want, it’s no big deal. I can go and come back – should I go and come back?’

  Yes. She should. Early was coming at seven forty-five when the invitation had said eight. Not arriving at six while Georgia had stuffing all over her fingers and a coffee stain on the front of her T-shirt dress.

  She parted her lips to say all that, but the needy, pinched look between Lila’s eyebrows pulled at Georgia’s chest.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s fine. You can help.’

  Lila immediately perked up.

  ‘You’re so cute, by the way,’ said Lila, following her into the kitchen. ‘Taking the day off to get dinner ready for Her Highness. What’s this visit all about anyway? Are we in trouble?’

  Georgia fixed her smile, wondering whether her tinted moisturizer would cover the flush in her cheeks. ‘Of course not. And I haven’t taken the day off for her, I didn’t have to go into work today.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Lila, heading towards the kitchen.

  ‘The office is closed for the day. Some kind of training thing.’

  The office was closed for staff training, so it had been wonderful luck that she could be home – that was the official party line. She’d made Charlie practise it that morning, and the previous night. She wasn’t sure he would remember. He had rolled his eyes as if it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. ‘Why can’t they know the truth?’ he had asked. ‘There’s no shame in it.’

  Yet there was shame in it. There was always shame in failure. And whichever way you cut it, not being able to get pregnant was a failure.

  ‘Lots of people take leave when they’re doing this,’ he had added. It simply wasn’t true. She was the first person in the entire company ever to make use of their IVF leave scheme. Six weeks of unpaid holiday while she faced the worst of the injections and scans and invasive procedures and, worst of all, the crushing hope. Everyone knew that the scheme wasn’t actually there to be used, that it was a nice-sounding, decorative bonus to lure the shiny young female graduates. It certainly wasn’t meant to be used by people like her: admin staff. Replaceable people.

  But she had done it anyway. She had booked a meeting with her thousand-year-old boss, reminded him that the scheme existed, quietly explained her situation, and announced that she’d be hiring a temp to cover herself in her absence. She’d left him blinking, but under no illusions that this was what was going to happen, whether he liked it or not. No one seemed to have found a way around the glaringly obvious problem that if you weren’t pregnant on your return, everyone would be looking at you as if your entire family had died in a house fire. But that was an outcome she refused to contemplate.

  Maybe she could have told Lila. It might have been nice, Lila might have understood. She’d had a baby, she knew what it was to crave a pregnancy. Lila could, when she was sober, be trusted to be understanding. But never discreet. She might tell Nancy.

  Georgia tried not to wince at the mess as Lila chucked her huge leather handbag on to the side table, kicked her ballet pumps into the middle of the floor and headed towards the other end of the kitchen, not even pausing to sit down before she took a wine glass from one of the cupboards and pulled a bottle of wine from the double fridge. Georgia allowed herself an internal sigh of relief. Her concerns about Lila being on best behaviour, about Nancy thinking Georgia had exaggerated how bad things were, had been unfounded.

  ‘Your fridge is so healthy,’ Lila commented, standing with the door open, the rim of her wine glass resting against her lips. ‘Ohh – bread. Do you eat carbs now?’

  Georgia knew that Lila knew the answer to this question, because she asked it at least once a month, but it was their little routine, a routine which had been forged in their first year at school together, and was now nearly twenty years old.

  ‘Nope. That’s for Charlie.’

  ‘So you still don’t?’

  ‘No, I usually just have a few berries or some Greek yogurt. I don’t miss it,’ Georgia lied.

  ‘What about pizza?’ asked Lila, in a pornographic voice. ‘Don’t you miss pizza?’

  There was no way that Lila had eaten a pizza in the last decade. She might have taken a nibble of Roo’s while she sat on his lap talking in a baby voice and trying to look cute, but the chances that any notable quantity of refined carbohydrates had passed her lips were somewhere between slim and fuck-all.

  ‘I miss pizza,’ Georgia conceded. ‘And I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Lila, looking at the floor. ‘It’s just there’s a lot going on at the moment. Inigo isn’t sleeping, Roo is crazy busy at work, I’ve been thinking a lot about—’

  ‘I thought Inigo was better now?’ Georgia cut across Lila’s words, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence. At least not until Nancy arrived. ‘When we had dinner at yours with the Hendersons, you were saying he’d been perfect?’

  That had been a weird night, looking back on it. Lila had opened the door with red eyes and a fake smile and spent the entire evening talking about how wonderful her son was. She’d served lukewarm soup and dry chicken and then Roo had announced that he had a work call he couldn’t put off. They’d all left at eleven, saying that they’d had a lovely time but desperate to go home and pretend that the whole awkward, awful evening hadn’t happened.

  Lila pulled out one of the kitchen stools and seated herself at the island. The stool’s legs made a painful scraping noise against the stone floor. Georgia tried not to wince.

  ‘Guess we spoke too soon,’ replied Lila, pouring more wine into her glass. If she was drunk by the time Nancy arrived then naturally it would all be Georgia’s fault. Typical Nancy, defecting to Boston for the last decade and leaving her completely responsible for Lila. ‘He’s a little twat most of the time.’

  Georgia laughed. She’d learned from watching her friends procreate that it didn’t do to look shocked when someone called their child a twat.

  ‘Is he with the nanny now?’

  ‘Babysitter. Anna quit. I don’t think we’re going to replace her.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah, Roo says there’s no point. I wasn’t working that much before anyway, and it doesn’t pay well, so he feels I might as well be home with Inigo because it’s cheaper and better for the baby.’

  Silence hung between them. The question ‘But what about what you want?’ seemed the obvious one to ask, but it was Lila and Roo’s business how they raised their children, and it was
true, Lila’s styling business had never taken off. A few shoots here and there, a couple of music videos for small-time singers. But nothing to write home about. Not enough to justify missing her son growing up. Anyway, once Georgia got pregnant and had her baby they’d be able to share childcare.

  ‘I think that’s lovely,’ said Georgia resolutely. ‘I bet most mothers would be so jealous of you, being able to be at home all day with Inigo. And you’ll probably have another one before long, don’t you think?’

  Lila’s face changed, as if Georgia had poked her finger into a bruise.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Lila’s gaze fell to her wine glass.

  ‘I was only asking, it’s just … Inigo’s nearly three, I assumed you’d be thinking about having another one.’

  Lila stood up, her feet either side of the stool and reached over the counter, stretching for Georgia’s phone. It lit up as she pressed the button at the bottom of the display. Georgia bristled at the invasion but said nothing. There was no point in scolding her, not this early in the evening.

  Lila picked up the phone and pointed at the time. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

  Georgia wanted to keep pressing. She wanted confirmation, to hear Lila say out loud that she and Roo weren’t going to have another one. But the moment had passed.

  ‘No, of course not. I’m not wearing this,’ Georgia replied, gesturing at the T-shirt dress. ‘I’m going to change. And shower.’

  ‘Really? Nance will be here in like an hour and a half – you know what she’s like. The earliest person in the world. She doesn’t get that being super early is way worse than being late.’

  So Lila did understand the theory of turning up on time. ‘Do you mind if I go and get ready?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Lila. It was the happiest she’d sounded since she arrived. ‘Let’s get ready together. Why do people stop doing that when they get older? It’s so fun.’ She tipped more wine into her glass and got to her feet. ‘Upstairs?’

  People stop getting ready together when they’re older because it’s more time-efficient, Georgia thought to herself. And practical. And because it’s nice to have some privacy when you’re getting ready. Her mind moved to the bruises on her torso from the IVF injections. Every time Charlie stuck the needle into her stomach he winced at them, and then made the same joke: ‘You bruise like a Georgia peach.’ If Lila noticed, she’d ask questions. Sharing the innermost workings of her marriage wasn’t Georgia’s style at the best of times. And this certainly wasn’t the best of times.