Lie to Me: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Jess Ryder

  I scrabble around blindly, feeling for the handset among the clumps of mud and grass and stones. It’s got to be here somewhere! At last I see the glow of the torch and pick it up. I turn it over and swipe in all directions. Is it broken? Please don’t let it be broken. Suddenly it comes back to life, a web of fractured light sparkling across the smashed screen. I hold it up and squint at the tiny icons along the top. Just one bar of signal again. It’s not enough. I’ve got to keep going forward…

  I get to my feet and stumble on. The field gives way to a stony path, dotted with patches of spiky gorse. I hold the phone as high as I can. The night cold is creeping under my skin, the salty wind whipping around my face. Ahead of me is the sea, its deep rumbling voice growing louder and more menacing as I walk towards it.

  The bar of signal appears again. Then a second. Thank God. With a trembling finger, I start to dial…

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jay

  He stands at the edge of the cliff and lets the cold spray lick his face, lets the relentless ocean reverberate in his head. Below, the frothy waves glisten white in the darkness. Above, the black sky twinkles with fairy lights. So this is where it ends, he thinks. In a strange place. On a starry night, miles from home…

  There are things that need to be said at a time like this, but there’s nobody to say them to. But then so much of his life has been an internal monologue. Words, actions, impulses, decisions – good and bad – line up now to be counted. His biggest regret? Not being satisfied with the acquittal. Holding on to his anger and refusing to let it go. The worst thing he did in his fifty-odd years? Taking the life of young Santianna Makepeace. Nothing else even comes close.

  His chest heaves and he blinks back tears. Poor kid… She was a pain in the arse, but she didn’t deserve that. Her mother will never understand that when he took out the knife, it wasn’t her daughter standing there, mocking him – challenging him to be a man. A red mist had risen, blurring his vision, muddling his senses. He can’t remember how the knife got from his pocket and into her chest, can’t remember the feeling of stabbing her. How will he plead? Diminished responsibility, perhaps. The best he can hope for is Broadmoor, detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. No thanks. He won’t risk it. Then there’s the kidnapping, the execution of Alice… He can’t face another trial. Better to end it here, purely and simply. Save everyone the bother.

  He steps a little closer to the edge and allows himself to blow gently with the wind. At least his mother died before she could witness the complete fuck-up of his life. Jesus Christ… It could have all turned out so differently. He probably wouldn’t have been as successful as Isobel, but he might have earned a modest living as an actor. It wouldn’t have taken much to make Mr Nellis, his old teacher, proud. He might have married and had a family – he would have liked that. But no, he preferred to keep company with all the negative emotions – anger and jealousy and hate – and he allowed them to control him. He knew he was innocent, but that wasn’t enough. Not when everyone else thought he was guilty. Not when the real killer was still out there, leading the life he’d dreamed of for himself.

  Except Isobel wasn’t the real killer after all; it was Alice. She’s confessed. Jay draws in a deep breath. He can still barely believe it. All those years of plotting revenge and he was aiming at the wrong target. Maybe that was why nothing he did ever worked. He couldn’t touch Isobel because she was innocent too. How Alice must have secretly laughed at the two of them, each convinced that the other had got away with murder. What fools they’d both been – Isobel even more than him, when you think about it. Jay permits a weary smile to cross his face.

  He doesn’t regret stabbing Alice; he hopes she’s dead. For the first time in his life, he acted decisively and spontaneously. Listened to his gut. Prison is far too good for her; no length of sentence could compensate for the damage she’s caused – to Cara, to him, to Isobel…

  But enough of them. He wants his last moments to be positive. He wants to die thinking about the only woman he ever truly loved. When he jumps off the edge, he wants to see Becca’s face shining out of the darkness; he wants to feel her full breasts pressing against his chest as he hangs in the air for the briefest of moments, then plummets like a boulder towards the rocks.

  Sweet, kind, gentle Becca… She was older than him, a married woman, and he’d felt like a child when he was with her. He’d loved her, as in really, really loved her. She’d believed him and believed in him. She said that from the first moment she saw him in the defendant’s box she knew he was innocent, so when the prosecution barrister gave her a hard time over her story, she stood her ground. And after she’d given evidence, she came back to court every day and sat on her own in the public gallery, despite the death stares from Isobel and Cara’s family; sat there sending him constant telepathic messages of support. He’d felt them beaming down on him like rays of sunshine, warming his soul. If it hadn’t been for Becca, he would have served twenty years or more. She had saved his life.

  Becca sought him out after the trial, said she felt sorry for him – if he needed someone to talk to, she was there. There was a strange wildness in her eyes that attracted him. The second time they met – in a pub on Redborne High Street – she dragged him down an alleyway and lifted her skirt, unzipping his flies and pulling him into her, entwining her legs like snakes around his waist. He hadn’t had sex for months and the hit it gave him blew his head off. After that, she rang him several times every day, made feverish, passionate calls from phone boxes in the middle of the night, begging him to meet her. He found her intoxicating. For the first time he felt he was having a relationship with a real woman. She wouldn’t allow him into her house and refused to go to his place, so they had to have sex outside in the dark and freezing cold – in the long grass, behind bushes, against a tree. The riskier the location, the more it turned them on, and he spent his days in suspended animation, only feeling alive when they were moving together as one flesh.

  In their quieter moments, she told him desperately sad stories about her life – thrown out by her parents, bullied by the other teachers at work, badly treated by her husband, rejected by her friends. She said he was the only person in the world she could trust, that fate had brought them together and they would never be apart. He told her he felt the same. They clung to each other like a mast in a storm. Even at the time, he knew she was a bit crazy, but he didn’t care. After his time on remand and the terrifying trial, crazy had become a way of life.

  Then suddenly, after just a few months, she ended it. Told him she’d made a terrible mistake; that she didn’t love him after all and was going back to her husband. He didn’t believe her, begged her to change her mind, but she was resolute. Cruel, even. She wasn’t the Becca he knew and loved and he couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong. After that, he really had no reason to stay in Birmingham. Went home to his mum’s, packed a suitcase and caught the coach to London. He never saw or heard from her again, but in the last thirty years she’d never been far from his thoughts.

  ‘Jay? Is that you?’ A female voice comes out of the darkness. It sounds like Becca and, for a moment, he thinks he’s hearing her in his head. Then she speaks again. ‘Jay?’

  He turns around slowly, staring into the nothingness.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Me. Meredith.’ She steps closer, her face illuminated by an object she’s holding. She looks so much like Becca that if it weren’t for her quick, shallow breathing, he could believe he’d conjured Becca’s ghost.

  ‘Go away, please,’ he says. ‘I need to do this alone.’ But she doesn’t move.

  ‘I had to come out this far to get a signal,’ she says. ‘Then I saw you and…’ She pauses. ‘The police are on their way, and an ambulance. But I think it’s too late for Alice.’

  ‘Good,’ he replies gruffly. There’s a longer pause, punctuated by the roaring ocean, the slap of water against rock. ‘Now, please go.’

  ‘There’s som
ething I want to tell you first,’ she says, her voice wavering with emotion. ‘It’s hard for me to say it, and I don’t know if it will change your mind, but…’ She hesitates. He can sense her summoning up the courage. Is she going to tell him that she feels sorry for him? That’s she’s on his side? That she understands his pain and suffering and wants to make it better? Like any of that matters any more.

  Clashing sirens ring in the distance. His time is running out. If he doesn’t do it now, the police will arrest him and he’ll lose his chance. He shuffles his feet forward, balancing on his heels, feeling the air beneath the tips of his toes.

  ‘Alice told the truth about one thing,’ Meredith says. ‘The police do know about your relationship with Becca. They tested my DNA, you see…’

  But he can’t understand what she’s saying. The sirens are getting louder, skewering into his brain. He puts his hands over his ears, shutting out the noise. He has to take control. Act now. Why won’t she go away and leave him in peace?

  Instead, she steps nearer to him, reaching out – she looks like an angel, bearing a glowing beacon to lead him out of the darkness. But it’s too late for redemption. He holds his arms out like wings and leans into the wind.

  ‘Jay, please listen to me…’

  As he steps forward, he hears her voice riding the air.

  ‘You’re my father.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Me

  I’ve been here four days so far. The hospital discharged me with a few cuts and bruises, and after I’d given the police my statement, Dad drove me back to Suffolk. We haven’t agreed the length of my stay, but I know he’d like to keep hold of me for a while. He’s making a huge fuss of me. It was the same when I was a child. He never moaned when I had a cold and he had to take the day off. He’d cook my favourite meals to encourage me to eat, and he’d read me stories till his throat was hoarse. We’ve taken to playing Scrabble every afternoon – a grown-up alternative.

  So here I am, installed in the spare bedroom, although sometimes it feels as if I’m back in my room in the old house. My dressing table is sitting in the corner, I’m sleeping in the same white metal-framed bed, and he’s hung my old curtains at the window. They’re too big for this little cottage with its low ceilings, and when I wake up and see the sunlight streaming through the familiar striped fabric, it disorientates me for a few seconds. I’m at home, yet not at home. And it reminds me that I don’t really have a proper home any more, not in the sense of having a refuge. A safe place. But strangely, it doesn’t bother me.

  I can’t go back to the house share. It never really worked, and anyway, the media have been sniffing around, trying to get my side of the story. At the moment they think I’m just the ‘other hostage victim’, but if the news that I’m Jay’s biological daughter gets out, I’m in big trouble. Eliot’s promised me that won’t happen, but you can’t always trust the police not to leak information. And if the story does break, I need to be here to look after Dad.

  I’ll have to go back to London eventually, but only to pack up my stuff and move out. Right now, I’m strangely unencumbered by possessions. Surprising what you can manage without when you have to. There’s something liberating about it, makes me feel light-headed. All I needed was a change of clothes. Dad went to the big Tesco and bought me some jogging bottoms, a jumper and a pack of white T-shirts, none of which fit properly, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere at the moment. Just sitting in the conservatory, watching Dad dig the garden. Don’t want to speak to my friends or the girls at work. Don’t want to go out, not even for a walk. I’m having nightmares, screaming and waking up drenched in sweat, which I guess was predictable. I can’t help feeling that it was my fault – telling Jay that Alice was the killer; but another part of me feels she deserved to die. It’s all very confusing. The doctor signed me off for a month and says I’m going to need counselling to help me get through the next few months.

  I sit in the armchair by the window and count the toll on my fingers. Jay’s dead. Alice is dead. Isobel has had a full-scale nervous breakdown and has booked herself into the Priory. Eliot has solved his first murder case and Durley’s got his retirement present. So everything else is tying itself into a big, satisfying bow. I’m the only one with loose ends. The one with the secret.

  Downstairs, Dad is making lunch. Radio Five Live is on – he likes it for the sport. It’s a happy, comforting, normal sound. Clinking pots, the boiling kettle, radio commentary interspersed with well-worn jingles… Do I really want to disrupt all that with a piece of information that seems increasingly irrelevant? He is my father in every meaningful definition of the word. Any other label is purely biological and I’ve never been keen on science. Give me uncertainty any time. Give me speculation, intuition, gut instinct, wild leaps of the imagination. Give me human error.

  Maybe Dad already knows my true parentage. It’s certainly possible. And it makes him even more of a hero if he does, because he knowingly brought up another man’s child. My dear old dad, with his paunch, his balding head, his glasses, his heart disease… Does he need his heroism recognised? I don’t think so. Let virtue be its own reward. And what if he doesn’t know who I am biologically? The news could devastate him. No, I’m not going to take that risk. Because it doesn’t matter. It really, truly doesn’t matter. He may not be my father, but he’ll always be my dad.

  And with that decision firmly made – at least for the time being – I come downstairs. I sit down and he puts a plate of baked beans and cheese on toast in front of me – the cheese has been generously applied and gooey chunks of it are melting deliciously into the tomato sauce. One of my favourite snacks when I was little, and it touches me that he still remembers.

  ‘I’ve been doing a bit of research,’ he says, sitting down and starting to eat. ‘Train times and fares and all that.’ I look up him curiously. ‘I know you’re not fit enough to go back to work at the moment, but when you do… Well, I reckon you could commute from here. It’s expensive, I know, but I wouldn’t take any money off you for your keep. All in all, it would even out.’

  ‘You mean, live here permanently?’

  ‘Yes. At least till you’ve got your confidence back.’

  My response is immediate. ‘That’s a really generous offer, Dad, and you know I’ve enjoyed spending time with you, but…’ His face immediately falls as I pause, embarrassed, not knowing how to end my sentence. It’s true that I don’t want to go back to the house share, but the thought of retreating to sleepy Suffolk and spending several hours a day sitting on a crowded commuter train to do a job I don’t even care about feels like an admission of defeat. If nothing else, this experience has made me realise that I can do better than that. I can take control. And then a thought forms and the words flow into my head, and suddenly I know exactly what I want to do. I lean across the table and take his hand.

  ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about making some changes. Big changes. I’d like to take some time out, do some travelling, you know, “discover myself”… I never did that. I was going to go to Australia, remember, and then I met Eliot…’

  Dad frowns at the mention of his name. ‘You’re nearly thirty, Meri. It’s time you grew up and settled down.’

  I lower my eyes. Maybe I won’t grow up, I think, until you stop being so protective. Maybe I won’t grow up until I find out what happened to my mother. I don’t know how to explain it to him, but I feel as if I’m tied to an endlessly long cord. I keep thinking of Becca in the far distance, patiently holding on to the other end; waiting for me to tug her back into the light.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel settled until I know what happened to Becca… There’s this gap, this emptiness… I can’t describe it any other way. Whether she’s alive or dead, I just need to know.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, his tone suddenly decisive. ‘Okay.’ He pushes back his chair and stands up. ‘Just promise you won’t be angry with me.’

  ‘S
orry? Angry for what?’

  ‘Promise! I was trying to do what was best for you. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do. My best. So you have to promise.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I say, not at all sure that I mean it. What the hell is he on about? I follow him up the stairs, watching as he hooks a pole onto the handle of the loft hatch. The door opens and a wooden ladder swings down.

  ‘Steady it for me,’ he orders. I rest my foot on the bottom rung as he climbs into the black void. My heart is starting to race, and I think back to all those months ago, when I sat in the attic sorting through my baby clothes. What other secrets lay hidden there? What important treasures did I miss?

  A few moments later Dad emerges, a small shoebox wedged beneath his arm. He climbs down and hands it to me. We go back downstairs and sit in the lounge, side by side on the sofa. I untie the string and remove the lid. Inside are photos. They are old-fashioned-looking, small and square with glossy surfaces. Some of them feature Becca on her own, some are with Dad, some are of the two of us, and a few are threesomes – Mummy, Daddy and Meri. Holiday shots, mostly, taken on beaches, on a boat out at sea, on a pier. One shows me and Becca huddled together, smiling and shivering, on a picnic rug. Behind us are tall yellow sandstone cliffs. I turn the photograph over and it says West Bay, July 1989. As if I needed confirmation.

  ‘I’m not angry,’ I whisper. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Wait. There’s something else,’ he says anxiously. ‘At the bottom. Underneath the photos.’

  I delve down and take out an envelope; it’s addressed to me in the same generous, looped handwriting that’s on the videotape. Inside is a birthday card. On the cover is a drawing of two jolly rabbits, one sitting on a stool playing a guitar, the other, a lady rabbit, dressed in a flamenco dress and fluttering a fan. Feliz Cumpleaños it says in dancing pink letters. My hands start to shake as I open it and read the message. Happy birthday to my beautiful little Meri. I’m sorry I can’t be with you on your special day, but I’m thinking of you now and always. I love you. Mummy xxx