Everything but the Truth

by Gillian McAllister

  The computer beeped.

  ‘We’re up and running,’ Sandra said.

  I lay back on the bed and unbuttoned the top of my jeans. The gel was cold and wet against the denim, which stuck to my stomach.

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Wally,’ Jack said to me. He was sitting at the end of the bed, leaning forward, looking expectant.

  I was still looking out at the slices of sky just beyond the blinds. The gaps between each slat were so small, I could barely see anything. Snow. Set to snow. And then, after the winter, Wally would be here. Our baby.

  Sandra put the ultrasound sensor on my stomach and the room was filled with a muffled kind of white noise. And then. We heard it. A heartbeat, racing along like a train.

  Jack leapt up, his hands going to his head. ‘Look,’ he cried.

  And I wanted to stand, too, and hold him, and look at the amazing baby we had made. ‘Wow,’ I said.

  I hadn’t expected to be moved – had seen more ultrasound scans than I could count – but I was. There was Wally. Half me, half Jack. It felt like our future was unfurling in front of us. We would show him Oban. His accent might be ever-so-slightly Scottish, his hair dark like Jack’s. I’d teach him basic anatomy and Jack would do spellings. And then, when Wally was in bed, Jack and I would sit alone downstairs, right next to each other, and marvel at him. I was so happy, so looking forward to the future, it filled me up like helium.

  Evidently, Jack was feeling the same, because he looked over at me, and said, with tears in his eyes, ‘Having a baby with you is pretty much the best thing ever.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, torn between wanting the scan to be over so I could go and feel his arms around me and wanting it never to end, to stare and stare at Wally forever with Jack.

  ‘I hope he’s just like you,’ he added.

  And Sandra smiled, and I was proud. Of Wally. Of Jack. Of us. Of our life together.

  ‘Come,’ I said to Jack.

  Sandra shifted out of the way and Jack walked over and stood by my head and held my hand.

  ‘I can’t wait twenty weeks,’ he murmured, smiling excitedly.

  ‘They’ll fly by,’ I said, looking up at him.

  Wally’s heart was still racing. We stared at the screen, looking at his arms and legs, how he lay on his back. Was that a thumb in his mouth? We looked at his spine and his tiny feet. At the shape of his nose. Neither of us wanted it to end, and after a while Sandra raised her eyebrows and told us she had another appointment waiting.

  Jack and I giggled, and kissed too extravagantly in the lift on the way out, our bodies touching. The gel that had soaked my top got on his, and we laughed and said it looked like he’d had a scan, too.

  35

  ‘Do you remember that snow?’ I said conversationally once we were on the A-road home. ‘Did Scotland get it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Jack said.

  ‘Surely, it must have?’ I said. ‘It was awful here.’

  It was in 2009, didn’t Sandra say? That made sense. There had been feet and feet of it. Roads closed. It was on the news every night. The whole of the north changed. We didn’t know where the pavements were, and it didn’t matter because there were no cars, anyway. Argos sold out of sledges. Dad and I used baking trays on the mounds on the Town Moor. Mum had hated that. We couldn’t open the garage door because of the height of it. It went right through to the second week of January. People started stockpiling canned goods. And then it all melted, and everybody was relieved. Even now, people seemed to want it to snow less than they did before; nobody had forgotten how the snow that Christmas affected the north. It hadn’t snowed as heavily since.

  ‘Maybe? That was right after,’ Jack said.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But you said … that your Christmas had been drizzly?’ I looked across at him.

  He’d paled.

  Hadn’t he said that? Drizzly, and uneventful. That they’d taken a walk. Nobody had done any walking. There had been relentless blizzards. How could he have forgotten? How could he not know? How could Scotland not have been affected? I was sure it was the whole of the UK. A white-out.

  Haiti. And then Haiti happened. And he didn’t know about that, either.

  ‘Oh, I …’ Jack shifted uncomfortably, getting his phone out.

  ‘Where were you?’ I said.

  And the look on his face told me everything I needed to know.

  He had been in prison. The thought hit me like an avalanche. He hadn’t got bail. And then a fresh surge of anger came over me, like an overflowing bath. It dripped at first, slowly, but then built up until great waves were slopping over the side. I had believed lie after lie after lie. Drizzly. Too much detail. I should’ve spotted it. Who would tell you what the weather was like, anyway, when you asked them how Christmas was?

  God. He had lied. He had lied to me again. He may not have done it explicitly, but wasn’t that worse? It was evasive. Insidious. Like smoke that got thicker and thicker without you realizing it, until you couldn’t breathe.

  The scan was ruined. That perfect moment of feeling like our future was right there waiting for us. We couldn’t even get through a day – a scan – without a lie surfacing. Where would it end?

  That was the worst of it. The lying. I had thought we were finally being honest. That I knew everything. That we were, I suppose, on the same side. But I wasn’t somebody he was confiding in. I was somebody he was hiding things from. There was a barrier between us, and it was him.

  But there was something else, too. It was almost intangible. Perhaps it was easier to accept that he had made a terrible mistake one night in December a few years ago than it was to appreciate that he had been in prison. I might not have understood the events of that one night, but, once I knew he’d been in prison, I realized I did not understand an entire period of his life. Where was he? Which prison? For how long? What was it like?

  He’d been detained. A convict. He was put there by the state. They felt that was the best thing to do with him. And then I remembered it. A line from one of the available articles I’d unwittingly committed to memory from too much scrutiny. On the way to his failed bail hearing. God, it had been right there in front of me.

  I said nothing for a while. I was thinking. My top was sticky with the gel and I wanted to get inside, change it, and not speak to Jack.

  I drove us to my flat. Jack didn’t say anything.

  ‘I need a change of clothes,’ I said woodenly. ‘This gel’s gross.’

  ‘I bet,’ he said.

  Once again, I found myself wondering how things might have been if we hadn’t been in this situation. If he really was Jack, and he hadn’t murdered somebody years ago. If we had waited a few years. Got engaged. Got married. Got pregnant on a honeymoon in the Maldives. Maybe we’d be pulling up to a house in suburbia we owned jointly. The nursery would already be decorated. Neutral colours. A wooden cot. A nursing chair with a fluffy white throw on it. Jack would want an outrageous name for the baby. I’d want something more traditional. He’d suggest Maldive for where the baby was conceived and I would swat him with a Sophie the Giraffe that lay waiting in the Moses basket by our bed.

  We wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be like this. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.

  36

  He followed me inside. I was too annoyed to stop him, and I didn’t want to row outside, pregnant, in the street.

  I closed the door behind us. Jack was leaning against the counter. He was wearing jeans he’d turned up at the bottoms and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. He looked gorgeous, standing there with his parka folded over his arms, in front of him, awkwardly.

  ‘Were you in prison?’ I said.

  He looked at me. His head was tilted down ever so slightly, but his eyes were on me. His facial expression wasn’t changing at all, but I could see, behind those eyes, that his thoughts were racing.

  He looked at me closely. And then he said, ‘The snow gave it away, didn’t it?’ and that was the m
oment.

  The only sound was my boiler firing up. ‘Your reaction to my question did.’

  ‘Yes. I have been … I went to prison.’

  ‘You said you didn’t. When I asked.’ I thought back to that lie: No. I promise, Rachel. I winced.

  Where was the line? When did I decide this had gone too far? I had thought it was that I didn’t know his name. And then I had thought my deal-breaker was that locked-gaze lie. And there I was, having shifted my boundaries again. It stopped here. Lava-like fury ran just underneath the surface of my skin.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I couldn’t imagine it. That man in front of me with his expensive coat and the cat that he loved. His freelance, middle-class lifestyle, the elderflower cordial he liked to drink.

  And the other stuff, too. The stuff that was solely Jack. The way he kept Howard’s flea medicine with his own, right there in the bathroom medicine cabinet. The way he retweeted Emma Watson’s feminist speech. That he always said how much smarter I was than him.

  That man – my boyfriend – had been in prison. We’d been lied to again and again, Wally and I. We didn’t deserve it.

  ‘It was the shame of it,’ he said, still looking at me. ‘The photos. I got them taken down – I was cuffed in them. It was like being a second-class citizen. People were afraid of me. And people were afraid to be seen with me. It was a thing that happened to other people. You know? Wrongdoers. And then it was me. I thought about moving far away, but Davey …’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I said.

  And I couldn’t. But I also couldn’t imagine not telling him. There he was, in my kitchen, fully in my world, his baby inside me. And I had no access to his life at all. I knew nothing. He had deliberately locked me out, even though he knew it would hurt me.

  ‘It’s where the hypochondria comes from. Nobody had my back, there. I got these nosebleeds and nobody gave a shit, even when they went on for hours. It was probably stress, but unless you were dying, nobody cared. You were on your own.’

  I nodded. I could understand that. Health anxiety almost always sprang from a traumatic life event; a moment when everything felt at stake and you were alone with it.

  ‘Everyone watched loads of television. I watched clocks. I still dream about it sometimes. When I was out it would sometimes occur to me that, even months later, I was living by the prison menu. Mash on Tuesdays. That I could actually choose whatever I wanted to eat for dinner, and buy it. Or that I could leave my room before nine in the morning. So many things.’

  He looked at me sadly. I think he knew.

  ‘You should have told me. When I asked,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is this all?’

  ‘Oh yes, this is it. All of it,’ Jack said.

  But it was hollow. The lava erupted then.

  ‘You’ve said that so many times,’ I said. I was sobbing suddenly, like I’d skipped the start of a cry and gone straight to the middle. ‘And I’ve never left. I’ve never left you. Not when I found out I didn’t know your name, or when I found out what you’d done and that you’d lied, again and again, about the verdict, and I …’

  Jack came over to me, tried to put his arms around me and the bump, but I shook him off.

  ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,’ I said. ‘I love you. I loved you. But I can’t …’ It felt like my chest was cracking open with the pain of it.

  ‘No, Rach. No,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ I shouted, his arms still partially around me. I leant back and looked at his red-rimmed eyes. ‘What is it that’s so bad about that night that you lie and lie – over and over?’

  Jack dropped his eyes at that, avoiding mine.

  I waited for an answer, but I didn’t get one.

  What I did get was clarity. I didn’t regret sleeping with him, kissing him, discovering Scotland with him. I didn’t regret getting pregnant by him. None of it, on its own. No. I regretted ever meeting him at all. If I could have politely told that Scottish stranger where the Monument was, and moved on, I would have.

  And, with that thought, I asked him to leave.

  He pulled the door closed behind him, the bristles on the underneath of it brushing the carpet softly.

  Part 3

  * * *

  WHY?

  37

  I knocked on Mez’s door. I was ghost walking, again, unable to stay in my claustrophobic flat, needing company, wanting distracting chat.

  I heard his voice echo from within. Kate would be at the tennis club. It was a Sunday night – club night, and there was always a juniors’ match on.

  ‘Mushrooms,’ he called to me.

  That made me smile. I let myself in the front door, walked down the wooden-floored hallway, and into the garage via the side door. It was in darkness again, the mushrooms bigger, their whiteness like creatures’ eyes in the gloom.

  ‘Alright,’ he said. It had been two days since the break-up. I’d spent the first day throwing up, thinking of the time lost; our lovely spring/summer, the stupid things I did. I wished, the day after we’d broken up, that I’d never seen the email in the first place. That I didn’t know. That, if only I’d been practising investigative medicine, I wouldn’t have been so obsessed with investigating him. Or maybe I should have been wishing that Mum hadn’t died. That I hadn’t somehow learnt the message that people aren’t always who they say they are. Maybe then I’d still be with Ben, unknowingly unhappy.

  I thought about the things Jack had lost, too. How he might have avoided all of this by sitting me down outside the Monument and telling me all about it. I could have made up my own mind then. Or maybe sometime after that; the first time I asked, or even the second.

  But then, if we’re wishing things, he might have truly avoided it all by moving house. Being firmer with the police. Not happening to be in on that night. Not owning an air rifle. Anything, really.

  I missed so many things about Jack. The way he covered his mouth when he was laughing, as if he was doing something naughty. His silly selfies. Howard.

  And I was mourning the future, too. That Wally wouldn’t spend Christmas Eves with both of his parents, dressed up like a Santa or a Christmas pudding, overindulged in the morning. That he’d never cringe at his parents kissing in the playground. That birthdays would be spent shuffled between the two of us, or awkwardly with both of us present at his party. That he would have to tell every anecdote, everything that happened to him at school, twice, and that it would be diluted for either one of us in the retelling. That he would feel independent much earlier than his little friends; aware of one parent’s fragile emotional state around the other. That he would never sit and feel small and looked-after next to both of us. I thought of the things that I would miss, too. Half of his life, if we were to split his custody. Half. A first step? First laugh?

  My eyes spilt over with tears and I gasped. It was doubly painful. I loved him. And Wally loved him. That was the worst.

  ‘Y’alright?’ Mez said, poking his head around one of the mushroom beds.

  And his northern lilt, the y’alright, was so like Jack’s that I sobbed properly, loudly, then.

  Mez wrapped his arms around me. He smelt like family. Of Kate’s washing powder and their familiar house smell; the Air Wick in their hall, the candle in their bathroom. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt. The arms were too short for him. They always were.

  ‘Jack and I are no more,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

  I cried even harder at that. He knew. Everybody knew, of course. We were doomed from the start.

  ‘He did something and we couldn’t get past it. In the end.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mez murmured.

  ‘I’ve ruined Wally’s life,’ I sobbed.

  ‘No, you haven’t. It’s a spectrum, isn’t it? Jack might’ve been a bad boyfriend – I’m guessing – but he’s not a bad person.’

  ‘Hmm?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you know
. You trust your dad to love you and want the best for you, but you also trust that he’s a pedantic idiot at times,’ Mez said. He took a step back from me, his hand connecting with my shoulder in a sort of friendly punch, then picked up his watering can again. ‘But don’t worry, because you can still trust Jack. Not in the way you trust a boyfriend – to not lie to you, or to be faithful – but just as the father of your child. To do right by Wally. Can’t you?’ he said, turning his gaze on me. ‘It’s a spectrum, isn’t it? Trust.’

  ‘No,’ I said, not really fully understanding what he meant. ‘It’s all wrong. It all feels wrong.’

  ‘Kate and I aren’t perfect right now,’ Mez said to me. He put the can down noisily and started fiddling around with plant food in slippery sachets.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘I crossed a line. She hasn’t forgiven me. It’s been – I guess it’s been hard since your mum.’

  ‘I know. It’s … it’s so complicated. The way we feel about it. Death makes everything complicated.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Which line did you cross?’

  ‘She says I abused her,’ he said.

  I could see the scepticism on his face. Ah. That was why she hadn’t forgiven him.

  ‘And did you?’ I said.

  ‘No. We were just, you know, rowing. About schools. Politics. It was stupid. I got self-righteous, maybe.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shouted a lot.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said.

  I treated a woman once, in A&E, who had been hit by her partner. She looked at me, one eye ringed with a bruise in its inception, and said, ‘Men don’t understand what it’s like to be around people they’re constantly afraid of.’

  ‘Shouting can be abusive,’ I said. ‘Especially if it’s just one of you. If you’re not listening.’

  Mez shrugged.