The Lies He Told: a gripping psychological suspense thriller

by Valerie Keogh

  The ‘thing with his ex-girlfriend’ that Ann was referring to happened two weeks after Toby moved in. I was engrossed in my writing, headphones in place, classical music calming my brain and oiling the words that tripped off the ends of my fingers. Lost in what I was doing, it was several minutes before the sound of the front door being pounded wormed its way into the music… drum rolls out of place in a piece which should simply have been strings. I took off the headphones and listened. Maybe I’d been imagining it. But then it came again. Not the polite, if frustrated knock of a delivery person, but the loud hammering of someone desperate to gain my attention.

  I frowned at my computer screen and typed two words before saving the document and pushing my chair back, the wheels rolling noisily on the wooden floor.

  The hammering came again… longer and louder… I swore softly and hurried down the stairs, taking the last few steps in a leap while shouting, ‘I’m coming, hold your horses!’

  Twisting the doorknob, I pulled the door open, ready to give whoever was there a piece of my mind. I was completely unprepared for the open-handed blow to my face that stunned me and sent me stumbling backward into the hallway, my arms windmilling as I tried to keep my balance.

  ‘You bitch!’ A wild-eyed woman stood in the doorway. Slightly smaller than me but bulkier with long hair loose around her shoulders and brown eyes narrowed in hatred.

  My first thought was that I was the victim of a misunderstanding, my second that some reader really hated my books. I lifted a hand to my face, feeling the stinging heat of the slap. ‘I think you must have confused me with someone else.’

  The woman curled a lip and clenched her hands into fists. She kicked the front door shut, then took a step closer to me.

  I was waiting for the adrenaline rush I’d read about… that I’d written about… the one that gave you the strength to fight or the speed to run. I must have been the exception to the rule because shock had frozen me into immobility.

  ‘Misty Eastwood, semi-successful writer of rubbish novels. That’s you, isn’t it?’

  I bridled at the semi-successful and lifted my chin at the rubbish novels. Attacking me was one thing, casting aspersions on my skill and my books was something else. I wasn’t a physical person, words were my usual ammunition, but before I’d time to think of something suitable to diffuse the situation a clenched fist shot out and hit me on the other side of my face.

  The pain was excruciating, the strength of the blow sufficient to send me tottering back against the wall where I lost my footing and slid to the floor.

  It took this blow, this terror, to send the adrenaline sizzling through me. I had to get away but my head was still ringing from the punch, making it hard to focus. The living room was a few feet away. If I could get inside, I could lock myself in and phone for help.

  My attacker’s mouth was wide as she screeched foul words. When her eyes squeezed shut in anger, I rolled onto my knees and scrabbled for the door but the adrenaline rush wasn’t enough to counter the steaming anger that was driving the strange woman. A kick to my side made me gasp. Instinctively I curled into a ball as the kicks and blows came relentlessly, each accompanied by grunted accusations I couldn’t understand.

  Would the attack have continued until I was unconscious, maybe even dead? I’d never know because the woman stopped her assault when the front door opened.

  ‘Toby!’ I shouted, fearful for him, for what this crazed woman would do. I uncurled, ready to leap to his defence, staggered anew to see the woman melt into his arms, a look of pure confusion on his face.

  ‘Babs, what…’ He pushed her away and looked down at me in horror. ‘Shit, Babs, what have you done?’

  Babs? I groaned and scrambled to my feet, wincing in pain. Toby hovered, trying to help. I took his arm. ‘Help me inside to a seat.’

  ‘Maybe I should ring for an ambulance,’ he said as I struggled into the living room and lowered myself onto the sofa.

  Shock was wearing off quickly, anger riding in to take over. ‘Maybe you should ring for the police.’ I flexed my arms, moved my legs, took a few deep breaths. Nothing broken. Not for want of trying. I guessed the soft shoes my attacker was wearing had prevented more damage. I’d have multiple bruises but nothing worse. The woman stood in the doorway, eyes only for Toby. I held his hand and glared at her. ‘Who are you?’

  But it was Toby who answered. ‘My ex-girlfriend.’

  His ex-girlfriend? Still lost in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, we’d not spoken about past loves. I shifted in my seat, grimacing when the tassel of a pillow dug into my bruised ribs.

  Toby, on his knees beside me, shifted backwards and got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and get a cold compress.’

  I wasn’t keen on being left alone with the crazy Babs but a cold compress might help with the swelling I could feel rising on my cheek. I held a hand to it while keeping my eyes on her. ‘It wasn’t an amicable split then, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Four years.’ The words were barely a whisper.

  I stared. Four years! I couldn’t imagine losing Toby after a few weeks… How would I feel after four years? ‘That was a long time. But it’s not my fault, is it? You can’t go around attacking people because your relationship fell apart.’

  Babs shot me a pitying look. ‘Four years. They ended two weeks ago. On the 1st of May at 4.15pm when he walked out, taking all his belongings with him.’

  6

  Misty

  I wanted to laugh off the woman’s words because it couldn’t be true… could it? This wonderful man I’d fallen in love with couldn’t have moved in with me straight from another woman’s home… another woman’s bed. Had he been sleeping with the two of us at the same time? I turned my head to look at him as he came back, the wet towel in his hand dripping splodges of water onto the wooden floor where they would mark it and remind me of this moment forever. ‘You came to me straight from her?’

  Toby looked from me to Babs and back again, his free hand creeping to his face and running down it as if to wash the guilt away. ‘I can explain.’

  My head was reeling. The physical attack had been bad enough but this onslaught of emotions was threatening to overwhelm me. Maybe he could explain, but I didn’t want to hear it then. I didn’t want to call the police either although I certainly had cause. But four years!

  Babs was still standing there, staring at Toby with the adoring eyes of a whipped puppy. What kind of a name was Babs anyway… a nickname, a lover’s name.

  I reached a hand for the towel and pressed the cold wet cloth to my face, hiding from the sight of both of them. ‘Get her out of here.’ From the safety of the darkness, I heard their footsteps recede, his heavy ones, hers a mere whisper, voices raised in the hallway, angry words fading as they moved away; on the doorstep, on the garden path, the pavement outside, then disappearing into the distance.

  I lay back against a cushion, lifted my feet onto the sofa and stretched out. Every movement hurt. My cheek was the worst. I opened my jaw wide and felt the swelling. In the morning, it would be multicoloured proof of the vicious attack.

  Four years.

  I tried to remember what Toby had said about where he’d lived. He hadn’t lied to me. Not exactly. He’d said he lived in an apartment in Streatham. He never said he lived alone. Never said he was living with his girlfriend of four years either.

  Too agitated to sit still, I slid my feet carefully to the ground and stood. Time to have a look at the damage. In the hall mirror, I took stock, my fingers gently palpating my cheekbone. It was swollen, shiny, already starting to colour. I was going to look a mess. Luckily, we had nothing planned. It would be dinner at home for the next week or so, none of the nights out in cocktail bars and restaurants that Toby preferred.

  Back in the living room, I picked up the towel and frowned at the wet patch it had made on the cotton material of the sofa. I hoped it would dry out without leaving a watermark. Hoped everything would revert to normal… that I coul
d turn the page, write a new chapter.

  Where was Toby? He should be here looking after me. I took the towel into the kitchen, lay it on the counter, and searched in the freezer for the ice cube tray. With several ice cubes knocked into the middle of it, I folded the ends of the towel over and held the makeshift cold pack against my cheek.

  Feeling beaten, mentally and physically, I went back and slumped on the sofa again, my head against the cushion. The room was west facing. It was May and the temperature had been unusually high for the last few days. The setting sun captured the gaps between houses on the opposite side of the street and the heated beams of light melted the ice before it could do any good. Cold water oozing through the towel ran down my neck and soaked into the cushion.

  Shock is exhausting. The post-adrenaline dip weighed me down and shut my eyes.

  ‘Hey.’

  The softly spoken word woke me; my eyes flicked open and looked straight into Toby’s intense blue ones. I was clutching the towel to my chest, the wet had soaked through my T-shirt and the chill of it made me shiver. The chill of it, not the sudden frightening thought that I didn’t know this man at all.

  A finger gently touched my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You should have told me.’ I pushed his hand away, dropped the wet towel on the floor and sat up. ‘You left her for me?’

  Toby shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. ‘It isn’t as simple as that. Babs is…’ He walked to the window, fiddled with the catch, and pushed it open wide. ‘It’s this damn heat,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sounds like a line from a Tennessee Williams play. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, maybe.’

  Toby turned to look at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, I was…’ I shook my head and bent to pick up the wet towel. It was still cold; I wiped it across my face. ‘Babs is what?’

  He came over and sat, close enough to touch me. I thought he might, that he’d caress my arm or leg with his long fingers. I shivered at the thought… at the betraying thought that I wanted him to… despite everything… despite Babs… I wanted him to touch me.

  ‘I should have told you, but what we have is so precious, so special, I didn’t want to ruin it.’ Toby ran his fingers through his hair. His perfectly cut hair fell instantly back into place, a lock falling to kiss the edge of one eyebrow. ‘Babs is emotionally fragile. I didn’t realise it for a long time and by then I was living with her in her apartment. I loved her… or I thought I did. Over the months it became increasingly exhausting to have to keep bolstering her ego, constantly having to tell her she was the most important, beautiful, intelligent woman I’d ever met.’

  He reached out to grasp my hand, sandwiching it between both of his. ‘Almost three months ago, I told her it was over. She went ballistic. You’ve seen the way she gets.’

  I looked at him in horror. ‘She hit you?’

  He looked down, embarrassed. ‘She attacked me with an empty wine bottle. Luckily, I was able to get it from her before she did too much damage.’ He put a hand up and brushed a finger across his cheek. ‘She only caught me a glancing blow. The bruise faded in a few days.’ He covered my hand again. ‘She was so hysterical that I was worried. So, reluctantly, I gave in and said I’d stay, but it was never the same and we both knew it was only a matter of time.’

  I remembered the anger that had driven Babs, the hate that twisted her face. ‘You might have known, but I don’t think she was that aware. She seemed like a woman who’d been completely caught off-guard.’

  ‘She’s good at that. At making you feel you’re in the wrong. It’s an art she’s cultivated and she does it so well.’

  I looked at the sensitive fingers that were caressing my hand. Fingers that the previous night were caressing more intimate parts of me. I had to know. ‘Were you still sleeping with her?’

  His eyes widened. ‘Wow, no! How could you think such a thing! I swear, I hadn’t slept with her for a couple of months before I left. That’s why I thought she knew it was over. I even suggested that I pay her rent, for goodness’ sake. As far as I was concerned, we were flatmates.’

  I lifted my free arm to show the dark splodges that already coloured my fair skin. ‘Flatmates don’t generally beat up the new girlfriend.’

  Toby reached for my arm, leaned closer and planted kisses on each mark. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, sitting back. ‘I gave her your address so she could forward any post. It never entered my head that she’d come here and make trouble.’

  Make trouble seemed a gross dismissal of what I had been through. I opened my mouth to say that it was more serious than that but stopped at the stricken look on his face. It wasn’t his fault. Not really. Or not all of it anyway. ‘You should have told me about her, Toby. Mentioned that your last girlfriend was unstable. You certainly should have told me you were living with her before you came here.’ I tried to pull my hand away but he tightened his grip. ‘I don’t like the feeling of being the other woman.’

  ‘You’re not the other woman. You’re the only woman. I love you.’

  I wrote stories, used words every day… I knew how empty they could be. ‘How can I believe you?’

  He pulled me closer, ignoring my wince of pain. ‘I swear to you. She means nothing to me. I felt sorry for her and stayed with her out of some desire to be a decent guy.’ He pressed his lips to my cheek then, ever so gently, brushed them down to that angle of my neck where every nerve in my body seemed to wait for his touch to explode in a dizzying mix of sensations.

  And in that second, I didn’t care if I believed him or not.

  7

  Misty

  I looked out the window of the Three Bridges restaurant ignoring the exchange of worried glances between my sisters. Getting beaten up by Toby’s crazed ex-girlfriend had been a terrifying experience but it hadn’t left me feeling as defeated as I did now that he’d left me.

  ‘Did he go back to her?’ Ursula reached across and laid a hand on mine. ‘Is that it?’

  Would it have been better if that had been the case? If he’d suddenly decided he couldn’t live without the unstable Babs. It might have been better than the truth that was becoming glaringly obvious. ‘No, he didn’t go back to her. I think he’s moved in with someone else.’ I could feel the corrosive bite of bitterness. Was this how Babs had felt? Perhaps my next step was to go around and launch an attack on this unknown, unnamed woman.

  Nice though my home is, I was under no illusions. The salubrious-looking apartment Toby had moved to in Beaufort Gardens was a huge leap upward. His designer suits would fit right in with the Knightsbridge clientele. He’d enjoy fine dining in the local restaurants, drink cocktails and expensive wines in the chic bars. And he’d never put his hand in his pocket for any of it. Reality. It was a cold awakening.

  I wasn’t sure how it had happened… how it had changed from his insistence on paying for everything the first few times we’d gone out, to my paying every time since. I had a vague memory of laughingly demanding to pay one night and his reluctance to let me, then I wanted to pay to celebrate my last book hitting the number one spot, then to celebrate signing a new contract… and suddenly it was every time. I hadn’t minded, it was the twenty-first century after all and I earned more as a writer than he did as a marketing executive. No, I’d not minded… and it was only in retrospect that I realised how much money I’d spent on him. He encouraged me to buy new clothes – smarter, more chic, sexier – and every time we went shopping, it seemed natural for him to buy clothes, too, and instinctive for me to pay.

  I felt Ursula’s hand tighten its grip and I looked up with a smile. ‘I’ll be fine. It was a bit of a shock, I thought…’ What had I thought? That this was it. Happy ever after. I gulped a mouthful of wine. ‘I thought we were perfect together.’ We were. My money, his style. A perfect combination.

  Ann tutted with motherly concern. ‘He seemed perfect and was gorgeous to look at but he was like a china doll sitting on a shelf waiting to be admired. They’re not
meant to be played with or to have fun with.’

  I had to smile. There was no point at all in telling her that Toby had been great fun to play with… the sex had been mind-blowing… I knew that wasn’t what she meant. Ann was talking about the more ordinary things: the long walks hand in hand, the nights in by the fire watching TV, cooking together, planning a future together. Things Toby and I had never done. But, despite everything, I still hurried to defend him. ‘You didn’t know him really. After all, you only met him once.’

  ‘And whose fault was that?’

  I felt the quick heat of colour on my cheeks. I hadn’t realised my sisters had disliked Toby but I knew how he’d felt about them. Fuddy-duddy, middle-class bores was how he’d rated them after dinner in Ursula’s house a few weeks into our relationship, both sisters desperate to meet the man who’d put a smile on my face.

  As a result of his dislike, he refused to go to Ann’s husband’s fiftieth birthday party at their house the following month. I’d gone without him, making a vague excuse that he was feeling unwell that I knew wasn’t believed but wasn’t questioned. I could have stayed away, too, and made another excuse. But these were my sisters, I loved them and wasn’t going to miss an event that was so important to them.

  Ursula, the middle-child peacemaker, jumped into the uneasy silence that followed Ann’s remark with a change of conversation. ‘Now you can go back to writing romances.’

  I dragged my eyes from Ann’s critical ones and looked at Ursula with a confused frown. ‘What?’

  ‘Romances.’

  Repeating one word from a sentence that didn’t make sense in its entirety was a foible of my sister’s that never ceased to irritate me. ‘Romances what?’

  Ursula waved a hand – jingle jangle. ‘Go back to writing them. I much preferred them to these psychological thrillers. All these twisted individuals, stalkers, and creepy characters. I swear you’re different since you started writing them.’