Sometimes I Lie: The gripping debut psychological thriller you can’t miss in 2017

by Feeney, Alice

  ‘You don’t know then?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘I had a chat with Matthew.’

  ‘That explains your depressive state,’ she says, glancing down at the wine list.

  ‘I think I’m going to lose my job.’

  Jo stares at my face as though looking for something. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘Madeline has given him an ultimatum. Either I go or she will.’

  ‘And he’s told you you’re out? Just like that?’

  ‘Not quite. I have until the New Year to change her mind.’

  ‘So change her mind.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they can’t do this to you.’

  ‘My contract ends in January, so they can just not renew it without there being any mess. I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Plus, I suppose it gives them time to find a suitable replacement over the Christmas break.’ I watch Jo process everything I’ve said and I can see she’s reached the same conclusion I had a couple of hours ago.

  ‘Drama really follows you like a shadow, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m fucked, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll think of something; but, first, we’re going to need more wine,’ she says.

  ‘Can I get another glass of this, please?’ I ask a passing waiter. I turn back to Jo. ‘I can’t lose this job.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I haven’t had time to do everything I needed to do.’ The waiter is still hovering nearby and gives me a look of concern. I smile. He nods politely and goes to get the wine. I glance around the bar and a straw poll of eyes confirm that I’m being too loud. It happens sometimes when I’m tired or drunk. I remind myself to be quiet.

  As soon as the wine arrives, Jo tells me to take a notepad and pen out of my bag. She instructs me to write PROJECT MADELINE in big red letters across the top of a blank page, so I do, underlining the words for good measure. Jo is the kind of girl who likes to write everything down. Being like that can get you into trouble if you aren’t careful. She stares at the notepad and I drink some more of the wine, enjoying the feel of its warmth surging down through my body. I smile and Jo grins back, we’ve had the same idea at the same time, like we so often do. She tells me what to write and I furiously scribble every word on the pad, struggling to keep up with what I’m hearing. It’s a good idea.

  ‘She thinks they’ll never get rid of her, Madeline Frost is Coffee Morning,’ says Jo. I notice that she hasn’t touched her glass.

  ‘That’s exactly what Matthew said. Perhaps it could be a new jingle,’ I say, expecting her to smile. She doesn’t.

  ‘But she doesn’t know how your chat with Matthew went. So, maybe what we need to do is get Madeline to think they’ve had enough of her temper tantrums and that they are going to get rid of her,’ she says.

  ‘But they’d never do that.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that for sure. Nobody is irreplaceable any more and I’m starting to think if we plant enough seeds, the idea will start to grow. If she didn’t have that job, she’d be nothing. It’s her life, it’s all she has.’

  ‘Agreed. But how? There isn’t enough time, not now.’ I start to cry again. I can’t help it.

  ‘It’s OK. Cry if you need to, get it out of your system. Luckily, you’re a pretty crier.’

  ‘I’m not a pretty anything.’

  ‘Why do you do that? You’re beautiful. Admittedly, you could make more of an effort . . .’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sorry, but it’s true. Not wearing make-up doesn’t make you look pale and interesting, it just makes you look pale. You’ve got a nice figure but it’s like you’re always trying to hide beneath the same old clothes.’

  ‘I am trying to hide.’

  ‘Well stop it.’

  She’s right, I’m a mess. My mind rewinds to Edward, he must have thought he’d had a lucky escape not ending up with me.

  ‘I just bumped into an ex on Oxford Street,’ I say, studying her face for a reaction.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘There’s no need to say it like that, there weren’t that many.’

  ‘More than me. Who was it?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I just felt like such a frump, such a loser. I wish he hadn’t seen me looking like that, that’s all.’

  ‘Who cares? Right now you just need to focus on what matters. Go and buy yourself a new wardrobe; a few new dresses, some new shoes, something with a heel, and get some make-up while you’re at it. You need to look really happy and confident tomorrow, just stick it all on a credit card. Madeline knew he would tell you today, so she’ll be expecting you to be upset, probably doesn’t think you’ll come in at all, but you will. We’ll start some rumours on social media. We’ll take control of the situation. You know what you have to do.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘So go shopping, then go home. Get an early night and come in tomorrow looking fabulous, as though you don’t have a care in the world.’

  I do as I’m told, drain my glass and pay the bill. I’ve always stayed within the lines when colouring in my life, but now I’m prepared to let things get a bit messy. Before leaving the bar, I rip the Project Madeline page from my notebook, screw it up and throw it on the open fire, watching the white paper brown and burn.

  Now

  Boxing Day, December 2016 – Evening

  When I first start to fall, I forget to be afraid, too busy noticing that the hand that pushed me looked so much like my own. But as I plummet into the darkness below, my worst fears follow me down. I want to scream, but I can’t, that familiar hand is now tightly clasped over my mouth. I can’t make a sound, I can barely breathe. When the terror shakes me from the recurring nightmare, I awake into another. I still don’t recall what happened to me, no matter how hard I try, no matter how badly I need to know.

  People seem to come and go, a cacophony of murmurs, strange sounds and smells. Ill-defined shapes linger over and around me, as though I am under water, drowning in my own mistakes. Sometimes it feels like I am lying at the bottom of a murky pond, the weight of the dirty liquid pushing down on me, filling me up with secrets and filth. There are moments when I think it would be a relief to drown, for it all to be over. Nobody can see me down here, but then I was always rather invisible. The new world around me turns in slow motion just out of reach, while I remain perfectly still, down in the darkness.

  Occasionally, I manage to resurface just long enough to focus on the sounds, to speed them up so that they become recognisable to me again, like right now. I can hear the sound of a paper page being turned, no doubt one of the silly crime novels he is so fond of. The others come and go but he is always here, I am no longer alone. I wonder why he hasn’t put the book down and rushed to my side now that I’m awake and then remember that for him I am not awake, for him nothing has changed. All sense of time has left me, it could be day or night. I am a silent, living corpse. I hear a door open and someone enters the room.

  ‘Hello, Mr Reynolds. You shouldn’t really be here this late but I suppose we can make an exception just this once. I was here when they brought your wife in last night.’

  Last night?

  It feels like I’ve been here for days.

  The doctor’s voice sounds familiar, but then I suppose it would if he’s been treating me. I imagine what he looks like. I picture a serious man with tired eyes, a furrowed brow eroded into a series of lines by all the sadness he must have seen. I imagine him wearing a white coat, then I remember that they don’t do that any more, they just look like everyone else and so the man I imagined fades away.

  I hear Paul drop his book and fumble around like a fool; he’s always been intimidated by medical professionals. I bet he stands to shake his hand; in fact, I know he will. I don’t need to see him to know exactly how he’ll behave, I can predict his every move.

  ‘Do you need someone to take a look at your hand?’ asks the doctor.


  What’s wrong with his hand?

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ says Paul.

  ‘You’ve bruised it quite badly. Are you sure? It’s no trouble.’

  ‘It looks worse than it is but, thank you. Do you know how long she’ll be like this? Nobody will give me an answer.’ Paul’s voice sounds strange to me, small and strangled.

  ‘It’s very difficult to say at this stage. Your wife sustained quite serious injuries in the crash . . .’ and then I zone out for a while as his words repeat themselves in my head. I try so hard, but still nothing, no memory of any accident. I don’t even have a car.

  ‘You said you were here when she arrived, was there anyone else? I mean, was anyone else hurt?’ asks Paul.

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘So she was alone?’

  ‘No other vehicles were involved. It’s a difficult question for me to ask, but there are some marks on your wife’s body. Do you know how she got them?’

  What marks?

  ‘I presumed from the accident,’ says Paul. ‘I didn’t see them before . . .’

  ‘I see. Has your wife ever tried to harm herself?’

  ‘Of course not! She’s not that sort of person.’

  What sort of person am I, Paul?

  Perhaps if he’d paid me a little more attention he might know.

  ‘You mentioned she was upset when she left home yesterday, do you know what about?’ asks the doctor.

  ‘Just stuff. Things have been difficult at work.’

  ‘And everything was all right at home?’

  All three of us share an uncomfortable silence until Paul’s voice smashes it.

  ‘When she wakes up, will she still be herself? Will she remember everything?’ I am so focused on wondering what it is that he doesn’t want me to remember, I almost miss the answer.

  ‘It’s too early to tell if she will make a full recovery, her injuries are very serious. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt . . .’

  I always wear a seat belt.

  ‘. . . she would have been travelling at some speed to have gone through the windshield like that and she sustained a serious blow to the head on impact. She’s lucky to be here at all.’

  Lucky.

  ‘All we can do is take things one day at a time,’ says the doctor.

  ‘But she will wake up, won’t she?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Is there anyone we can call to be with you? A relative? A friend?’

  ‘No. She’s all I’ve got,’ says Paul.

  I soften when I hear him say those words about me. They didn’t used to be true. When we met, he was so popular, everyone wanted a piece of him. His first novel was an overnight success. He hates it when I say that, always describes it as the overnight success that took him ten years. It didn’t last though. Things got even better, then they got a lot worse. He couldn’t write after that, the words wouldn’t come. His success broke him and his failure broke us.

  I hear the door close and wonder if I am alone again, then I hear a faint clicking sound and picture Paul sending a text message. The image jars a little and I realise I can’t remember him texting anyone before. The only other people in his life now are his mother, who refuses to communicate other than the occasional phone call when she wants something, and his agent, who tends to email now that they don’t have much to talk about any more. Paul and I text each other but I guess I’m not there when he does that. My thoughts are so loud he hears them.

  ‘I’ve told them where you are.’ He sighs and comes a little closer to the bed. He must mean my family. I don’t have many friends. An inexplicable chill makes its way down my spine as the silence settles over us once more.

  I feel a stab of hurt about my parents. I don’t doubt that he’s tried to contact them, but they travel a lot and can be tricky to get hold of these days. We often go weeks without speaking at all, although that isn’t always to do with their foreign trips. I wonder when they will come, then I rearrange the thought and wonder if they’ll come at all. I am not their favourite child, I am the daughter they always had.

  ‘Bitch,’ says Paul, in a voice I barely recognise as his. I hear the legs of his chair scrape against the floor. The shadows over my eyelids darken and I know that he is standing right over me. Once more, I feel the urge to scream and so I do. But nothing happens.

  His face is so close to mine now that I can feel his hot breath on my neck as he whispers in my ear. ‘Hold on.’

  I don’t know what the words mean, but the door opens and I am saved.

  ‘Oh, my God, Amber.’ My sister, Claire, has arrived.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ says Paul.

  ‘Of course I should. You should have called me sooner.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t called you at all.’

  I don’t understand the conflict between the two dark shadows looming over me. Claire and Paul have always got on.

  ‘Well, I’m here now. What happened?’ she asks, coming closer.

  ‘They found her a few miles from the house. The car is a wreck.’

  ‘Nobody cares about your bloody car.’

  I never drive Paul’s car. I never drive.

  ‘Everything will be OK, Amber,’ says Claire, taking my hand. ‘I’m here now.’ Her cold fingers wrap themselves around my own and it takes me back to when we were young. She always liked holding hands. I didn’t.

  ‘She can’t hear you, she’s in a coma,’ says Paul, sounding strangely pleased.

  ‘A coma?’

  ‘Proud of yourself?’

  ‘I know you’re upset, but this isn’t my fault.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I thought you had a right to know, but you’re not welcome here.’

  My mind is racing and I don’t understand anything that is being said, I feel like I’m in a parallel universe where nobody around me makes sense any more.

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ Claire asks.

  What is wrong with his hand?

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You should get a doctor to look at that.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  The room I can’t see starts to spin. I struggle to stay on the surface, but the water swirls around and inside me, swallowing me back down into the darkness.

  ‘Paul, please. She’s my sister.’

  ‘She warned me not to trust you.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Am I?’ Everything is so much quieter than before. ‘Get out.’

  ‘Paul!’

  ‘I said, get out!’

  There’s no hesitation this time. I hear my sister’s heeled feet retreat from the room. The door opens and closes and I am alone again with a man who sounds like my husband, but behaves like a stranger.

  Then

  Monday, 19th December 2016 – Evening

  I get off the train and make my way along the quiet, suburban streets towards home and Paul. I’m still not convinced anything can be done to save my job, but maybe this will at least buy me enough time to do what I need to do. I won’t tell him. Not yet. I might never need to.

  It wouldn’t be the first job that I’ve lost since we’ve been together. My career as a TV reporter came to an abrupt end two years ago when my editor got a bit too friendly once too often. He had a rather hands-on approach. One evening his hand slipped right up under my skirt and the next day someone keyed his BMW in the staff car park. He thought it was me and I never got on air again after that. I never got groped again either. I quit before he found an excuse to fire me and it was a relief to be honest, I hated being on TV. But Paul was devastated. He liked that version of me. He loved her. I got under his feet at home all the time. I wasn’t the woman he married. I was unemployed, I didn’t dress the same and I no longer had any stories to tell. Last year, at a wedding, the couple sat next to us asked what I did. Paul answered before I had a chance to. ‘Nothing.’ The somebody he loved became a nobody he loathed.

  He said it made it hard for him to write, me being at home all the time. He
had a fancy shed built at the bottom of the garden, so he could pretend that I wasn’t. Claire spotted the advert for the Coffee Morning job six months ago, she sent me the link and suggested I apply. I didn’t think I’d get it, but I did.

  I stumble up the garden path and feel inside my handbag for my key. I’m puzzled by the sound of music and laughter inside the house. Paul is not alone. I remember that I tried calling him this afternoon but he never answered and didn’t bother to call me back. My hands shake a little as I open the front door.

  They are sitting on the sofa laughing, Paul in his usual seat, Claire in mine. An almost empty bottle of wine and two glasses pose for a tedious still life on the table in front of them.

  She doesn’t even like red.

  They look a little shocked to see me and I feel like an intruder in my own home.

  ‘Hello, Sis. How are you?’ says Claire, getting up to kiss me on both cheeks. Her designer skinny jeans look as though they’ve been sprayed on, petite pedicured feet protruding beneath them. Her tight, white top reveals a little more than it should as she stands up. I don’t remember seeing it before, must be new. She dresses as though we are still young, as though men still look at us that way. If they do, I don’t see them. Her long blonde hair has been straightened within an inch of its life and is tucked behind her ears as though she is wearing an invisible Alice band. Everything about her appearance is neat, tidy, controlled. We couldn’t look more different. She stands too close, waiting for me to say something. Her perfume infiltrates my nostrils, my throat, I can taste it on my tongue. Familiar but dangerous. Sickly sweet.

  ‘I thought you were going out after work tonight?’ says Paul from his seat.

  His eyes narrow slightly at the sight of my shopping bags, some new outfits folded neatly in a cradle of tissue paper inside. I silently dare him to say something. It’s my money, I earned it. I’ll spend it on what I like. I put the bags down, noticing the deep red grooves the plastic handles have carved into my fingers.