Where the Truth Lies

by Julie Corbin

  I’ve been sitting for five minutes when I notice a man approaching the roundabout. He has a distinctive style of walking, leaning over to one side, not quite a limp, but there is a definite tilt to his gait. Exactly like the man who came to see Sezen yesterday evening. My heart ups its rhythm. I lean into the window, but I still can’t isolate his features.

  I go through to Lisa’s bedroom. She is emptying the contents of her bedside drawer into a bag. ‘Do you have any binoculars?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I want to spy on the neighbours.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No.’ I shift my feet. ‘Have you got any?’

  ‘In the living-room bureau. They’re Dad’s old ones.’

  I find them at once. The casing is scratched and heavy, the leather strap frayed and torn, but there’s nothing wrong with the lenses. I lift them up to my eyes and turn the knob until the street is in focus. I home in on the man. He is as Jack described: swarthy and unsmiling. He waits on the corner, his heels on the kerb, his toes suspended above the gutter, rocking backwards and forwards. His eyes dart anxiously down towards the right – Monkton Terrace – the street a person would walk up if they were coming from my house.

  He sees her just before I do and I watch a slow smile spread across his face. I move the binoculars to the right, following his gaze along the street. It’s what I expect but still my hands shake as I focus on Sezen walking towards him. When she spots him, her feet quicken, almost to a run, and then she stops, straightens her spine, brings her feet back to a walking rhythm.

  My vision blurs. I am flooded with disappointment. I remember her even tone, her unblinking expression as she said to me, ‘He is nothing to me.’ She stops a few feet away from him. Neither of them speaks. Her body sways towards him and then her jaw tightens and she pulls back. The third time she does this something inside her lets go and she clasps him to her like someone lost and now found.

  ‘And this is a man who is nothing to you?’ I hear myself say out loud.

  The feeling between them is electric and I see passers-by drawn to watch them. One girl stands next to the post box and openly stares as Sezen and the man embrace, then step back and hold hands, their eyes fixed on each other. Nobody else exists. They stand like this for more than twenty seconds and then he says something. She smiles and replies. I try to lip-read, but I can’t isolate any words, and anyway, I doubt that they’re speaking English. She hands him a piece of paper and he reads it, asks her questions. She points to the page and explains the content to him. His hand goes into his trouser pocket and he pulls something out. I move and refocus the binoculars. It’s a wad of cash, several notes rolled up into a bundle, held together with an elastic band.

  My heart lurches as if I’ve just driven quickly over a speed bump. I’m witnessing an exchange. Payment for information or services rendered. It’s too much. This woman has access to my house. I’ve trusted her with Bea. Everything she’s told me I have believed. And yet here she is meeting a man she said she would never see again and giving him information for money.

  I call Julian. No answer, so I leave a message. ‘Julian, whatever you do, don’t let Bea go anywhere with Sezen. I think she may have something to do with all this.’

  12

  I put my mobile back in my pocket and lift up the binoculars again. They’re still standing there, talking and smiling.

  ‘What are you up to?’ Lisa has come up behind me.

  ‘I’m watching Sezen.’

  ‘Your cook?’

  I nod and hand her the binoculars. She holds them up to her eyes, her slender wrists trembling under the weight. She steadies them on the cross-frame of the sash window.

  ‘She’s with someone she loves by the looks of it. Have you met him?’

  ‘He came to the house last night. She told me he meant nothing to her.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s in denial. Sometimes it’s hard for people to admit they’re in love, especially if they’ve been let down in the past.’ She puts the binoculars on the windowsill and searches my face. ‘Why do you look so worried?’

  ‘Because she lied to me. Why did she tell me he wasn’t her friend?’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t see him as a friend. And anyway, you’re her employer, not her priest. She’s entitled to her privacy, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ I shake my head. I’m trying to add it all up. Sezen knows my email address because we ordered some macrobiotic ingredients on the Internet. She wasn’t at Bea’s party, but then she could have found out about it from Wendy. They talk all the time and I’m sure Wendy will have mentioned it.

  ‘Isn’t she?’

  Lisa’s waiting for me to say something else. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘In what way?’

  I briefly consider not telling her, but what’s the point in prevaricating? It hasn’t worked with Charlie and I feel even less inclined to lie to my sister. ‘Julian has been receiving emails. We’re being threatened,’ I say flatly. ‘By someone who works for Pavel Georgiev.’

  ‘What?’ She steps back and sits down hard on the arm of the couch. ‘Why? Who?’ Her head is shaking. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the case he’s working on.’

  ‘The Bulgarian gangster?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What are they threatening him with?’

  ‘The children’s safety: most specifically Bea’s.’

  I fill her in on the details. She looks increasingly worried as I talk and then, when she can bear it no more, she bursts out, ‘This is awful!’ She grabs hold of both my hands. ‘Claire, you should take the children and leave the country. Get right away from the danger.’ She gives a sharp intake of breath. ‘You’re not still in this country because of me, are you?’

  I glance back out of the window, trying to focus on Sezen and the man, but they’re too far away for me to make out their expressions. I lift the binoculars. Lisa stops my hand.

  ‘Claire.’ She swings me round to face her. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me that you’re not still in the country because of me.’

  I look her in the eye. ‘It has nothing to do with you,’ I say.

  Her face flushes. ‘I could always tell when you were lying. You’re no better at it now than you were when you were five and you ate the Curly Wurly I kept underneath my pillow.’ She shakes me. ‘You mustn’t put me before your children’s safety.’

  ‘I’m not.’ I hug her to me, feel her ribs jutting out, curved sticks beneath her skin. I stroke her hair. She didn’t lose it with the chemo, but it lacks lustre and feels coarse under my hand. ‘I admit it was my first impulse to take them away, but then, when I had time to think about it, I realised it was a bad idea.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Lisa, Georgiev is powerful. His reach extends further than England. Being in another country, waiting for that knock at the door or disturbance in the middle of the night would be far more stressful than staying here. I don’t want you and I to be apart, and I don’t want Julian and I to be apart. This is a time for us all to stick together. Safety in numbers. The thing is’ – I take a breath – ‘the police are organising a safe house. If we have to go, you will come with us, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course!’ She doesn’t hesitate. ‘Of course I’ll come with you all.’

  ‘They’re arranging a live-in nurse.’

  ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Absolutely. It’s the easiest way to not draw attention to ourselves. We’ll have to live very quietly, stay completely below the radar.’

  ‘Will Wendy come?’

  ‘I hope so. She doesn’t know about it yet, but on Monday the police will come to the house to brief us on what happens next.’

  ‘This is really serious.’ She looks beyond me, through the window, but her eyes are focusing inwards. ‘How will the boys cope?’

  ‘I think when they understand it’s about keeping us all safe, they’ll be fine.’

  ‘What
does Julian think?’

  ‘He goes along with the police.’

  ‘Julian’s judgement is always pretty sound. He wouldn’t expose any of you to danger.’

  ‘I know that, but then . . . Well’ – I breathe in – ‘he hasn’t exactly been keeping me in the loop.’

  She frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He kept the emails a secret for over a week, and when I found out, it wasn’t through him.’

  ‘How, then?’

  ‘Bea.’ I tell her about Bea letting slip about the emails. ‘Julian said he was going to tell me, but’ – I blow air out through my mouth – ‘he didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he didn’t want to worry me. And I do believe him. But I can’t help thinking that before I stopped work and we moved to Brighton, he couldn’t have helped but tell me. We talked all the time.’

  ‘But, sweetheart, since you came to live here, Dad died and Bea was born and then there’s been me . . .’

  ‘Logically, I acknowledge all of that.’ I pause. ‘He told Megan, though.’

  ‘His assistant?’

  ‘The instructing solicitor who works for the CPS.’ I think of Megan with her privileged background and top-of-the-class ambition. ‘The more modern, up-scaled version of me.’

  She catches my tone, which I know sounds sullen and not just a little bit sour. ‘Are you regretting giving up your work?’

  ‘No, but I’m regretting the effect it seems to have had on my marriage. I thought we were close, but now I just don’t know. He spends more time talking and being with Megan than he does with me.’

  ‘Claire, it’s the nature of his work. When this trial is over, they’ll go their separate ways.’

  ‘Maybe . . . but at the moment it feels like he’s closer to her than he is to me.’

  She recoils back a step. ‘You’re not saying . . . ?’

  ‘That he’s having an affair?’ I shrug. ‘I asked him and he said no.’

  ‘Claire!’

  ‘And I believe him, but I just . . .’ I try to find the right words to explain the unease I feel. ‘For nine days he very successfully kept the emails a secret from me, so it’s not a great leap to wonder whether he might be keeping something else under wraps.’

  ‘Look, Claire, you’ve just had the most awful shock. You’ve found out your family is under threat and that’s frightening. In fact it’s beyond frightening. But Julian is your husband and your greatest ally.’

  I want to believe her, but . . . ‘Do you remember the policeman Andrew MacPherson? Mac?’

  ‘Of course.’ Apart from Julian, Lisa is the only person I told about my extra-marital sex. And, unlike Julian, she knew it was Mac. ‘He was the reason you moved to Brighton, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He wasn’t so much the reason as the catalyst, the final straw.’

  ‘OK.’ She inclines her head. ‘If you say so.’

  I let that go. ‘Julian and Megan.’ I think back to yesterday evening. ‘I was at the window last night when they had walked down from the station and they were looking at each other with the kind of intimacy that people get when they work together: shared purpose, second-guessing, knowing what the other person’s thinking.’

  ‘And you’re worried that means he’s sleeping with her?’ She shakes her head. ‘Come on! Apart from the fact that Julian is devoted to you and the children, he’s just not the type. He’s someone who has integrity.’

  I can’t let that go. ‘And I don’t?’ I say sharply. ‘I, of all people, know how easy it is to slip up.’

  ‘You had sex with Mac once.’ Her tone slides from hectoring to reassuring. ‘There was that whole business with Kerry Smith. The circumstances were extreme.’

  ‘These circumstances are even more extreme,’ I remind her. ‘I’m his wife and he has kept this from me for nine whole days. The first email came on 24 May. And that’s not all. He’s also resigned from the case. He didn’t tell me that either. You can’t say that’s not underhand.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s underhand, but I can see why it would be hurtful. I really can. Nevertheless I don’t think you should be jumping to conclusions about his relationship with Megan on the basis of him keeping the emails from you.’

  She’s right, of course, and when I tackled Julian about it, he was completely honest with me. I remind myself that he is not my father. There is no reason for me to suspect he’s having an affair. None. I rub my hands across my eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m rambling. I didn’t sleep very well last night. This is all so sudden. It feels like a lot to cope with.’

  ‘It is a lot to cope with. Bloody hell.’ Her face creases and she takes a few quick breaths.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ I hunker down beside her knees and take her hand. ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I know, but you have enough—’

  ‘Since when did you start to protect me?’ She looks at me sternly. ‘So what exactly are the police doing about these threats?’

  In for a penny . . . ‘Well, there’s the thing,’ I say quietly. ‘Mac’s been promoted since I knew him last. He’s running this.’

  ‘Mac?’ Her eyes fix on mine. ‘And have you seen him?’

  ‘We hadn’t spoken for years, but I met him just after I found out about the emails.’

  ‘You met him with Julian?’

  ‘No. I met him on my own.’

  She raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Because of the way Julian reacted after Bea’s party. And doesn’t that now make sense?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘So I printed off the emails and arranged to meet Mac.’

  ‘Without Julian knowing?’

  ‘He was in Sofia and I was at home with enough information to scare me but not enough to feel like there was a way through it.’

  ‘And then you met up with Mac?’

  ‘Yes. We discussed the case.’

  ‘And does Julian know?’

  ‘That I met him?’

  She nods.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And does he know that Mac was the man you slept with?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is dangerous, Claire.’ She gives me her big-sister-knows-best look: head to one side, eyebrows raised. ‘You have history with this man and if Julian finds out—’

  ‘He won’t find out. Our past involvement – brief as it was – will not get in the way of the case. I won’t let it.’

  ‘Do you still have feelings for him?’

  ‘Sexually? No! Of course not.’

  She lets my words hang in the air and grow heavy. The muscles on my face begin to stiffen and I remind myself that I’m telling the truth. There’s no reason for me to feel guilty. This is about Bea and keeping her safe. It’s not about Mac.

  ‘He’s a good policeman and I’m glad he’s on the case. I feel like he’s on my side.’

  ‘Julian is on your side.’ Her voice is firm.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So why didn’t you include him in the meeting?’

  ‘Because he was still in Sofia! And I didn’t want to wait. And because I was hurt and angry, and he’d been keeping a hefty great secret from me for long enough.’

  ‘Evening up the score?’ She looks washed out suddenly. ‘Claire, tell me you’re better than that?’

  Her look says it all and at once I feel guilty: small-minded and cheap.

  ‘This is not about me and Mac. And it’s not about me and Julian.’ I try to regain some ground. ‘It’s about protecting my family. And Mac will do the best for us. I know he will.’

  ‘Good.’ She turns away. ‘I’m going to get the rest of my stuff together.’

  I watch her slowly make her way back to her bedroom. I know she’s disappointed in me and it hurts. Shit. I go back to the window and lift the binoculars in time to catch Sezen and the man coming out of the café on the corner. They part on the pavement after he kisses her, on th
e mouth, confidently, like he knows she wants it.

  ‘Lovers, then,’ I say out loud. ‘And we all know what lovers are willing to do for each other. Look at Myra Hindley.’

  ‘You really think she might have something to do with this?’ Lisa is back. She is holding a couple of bags and a lamp.

  ‘Let me carry those.’ I put the binoculars down and she passes the bags to me. ‘Yes, I really think she might. Details in the emails prove that the blackmailer either is or knows someone who has access to our family.’ We head for the door. I wave the lamp at her as I walk. ‘There’s already a lamp in your new room.’

  ‘I’m bringing it for Bea. She likes the lampshade.’

  Out on the street, I can’t see any sign of Sezen or the man. I look out for them as I drive home, but they must have gone in another direction. When we arrive back at the house, only Jack is home. He comes forward to give Lisa a hug and lifts her off her feet.

  ‘We have another man in the house!’ she says.

  He flexes his muscles and rolls up the sleeves of his T-shirt so that she can see. ‘I’ve been working out.’

  ‘Haven’t you just!’ She hugs him again.

  They are both grinning like mad and I realise afresh that bringing Lisa home will be a good thing for her and also for the children, who love her dearly. Jack helps bring Lisa’s stuff in from the car and I go into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Sezen has left a tray of food, beautifully prepared, and alongside it are pale pink tulips in a vase. All this before she went off to meet the man who means nothing to her.

  I hear the front door open and Bea shouts, ‘Mummy!’

  ‘In the kitchen!’ I shout back.

  She comes running in and throws her arms round my legs. ‘I won a twirly thing and Daddy lifted me and Lara up high and we saw the men juggling.’ She pushes her stomach out, leans back on her heels and puckers her lips. ‘The juggling man looked like that. And he had plates on the end of a stick and he let me hold one.’