by Louisa Reid
Louisa Reid
LIES LIKE LOVE
Contents
Part One
September
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
October
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
November
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
December
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
New Year’s Eve
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
January
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Part Two
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Part Three
February
Leo
March
Leo
April
Leo
May
Leo
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Audrey
June
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
Audrey
Leo
Audrey
July
Leo
Audrey
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Louisa Reid is married with two young daughters and currently teaches English in a girls’ school in Cambridge. She is originally from Hale in Cheshire, studied English at Hertford, Oxford, and has lived in London and Zurich. Lies Like Love is her second novel, following critically acclaimed Black Heart Blue. Find her on Twitter: @Louisareid.
Books by Louisa Reid
BLACK HEART BLUE
For my parents, David and Gillian Barry, with all my love
PENGUIN BOOKS
LIES LIKE LOVE
Praise for Louisa Reid:
‘Some books stay with you long after you’ve finished
them and Reid’s debut is one of them … A moving,
gripping story’ Sun
‘Emotive, sometimes shocking story’ Sunday Times
‘Absolutely wonderful’ Guardian
‘Stunning, shocking, sad and incredibly touching’ LoveReading
‘We read this in one sitting … ****’ Teen Now
‘Louisa Reid creates vivid characters that drag you into
their world by both hands, desperate to tell their stories.
Both heart-breaking and full of bittersweet yearning,
Lies Like Love demands to be read all at once, but
will stay with you long after. Highly recommended!’
Teri Terry, author of the Slated trilogy
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous repair.
Sylvia Plath, ‘Medusa’
Part One
THE PAIN PLACES: ME AND MY DEPRESSION BY AUDREY MORGAN, AGED SIXTEEN AND TWO MONTHS
I died three times before I was five years old. I can’t see it, can’t picture the scene, but my lungs still scream when I run and in winter it feels as if someone’s scoring my chest with hard bright nails. Mum says when I was small I only had to see water to throw myself in, no hanging about, like I was born to be a mermaid not a girl: scales for skin, eyes the colour of seaweed and a cry like a scream. But now I won’t go near pools or ponds or sea and in all my nightmares I’m turning and tumbling in filthy dark depths, weeds around my wheeling feet, water in my eyes and mouth and I’m swallowing tons of it, gasping, shrieking, falling deep. In my dreams I can’t find the light and my head is heavy, held under.
It’s because of Mum I’m still alive. Because each time I dived into that danger she’s the one who pulled me free like a fish on a line, she’s the one who pumped my chest and put her mouth on mine to give me air. She’s the one who called the ambulance later, took me to hospital, got me checked over and sat beside me the whole night through as I coughed up the silt and the sludge. Not that I can remember, but you can read about it if you’re interested: our local paper ran a story the last time – Hero Mum Saves Tiny Daughter! – with a picture of her holding me up like some sort of trophy. Mum kept a copy. Stored it with her special things in a box I’m not meant to look in. But sometimes I take out the yellowing page, smooth it flat and read about how I died. It doesn’t mention my dad though, no matter how many times I look.
I’m writing this so you’ll know all about me and my mum and what it’s like to be a teenager and poorly like this. Depressed. Not many people understand. Please leave us messages to help us get through!
Thanks and bye for now!
Audrey
September
Audrey
It was getting late when we pulled off the country lane and on to the drive, and the first thing I saw was the water. It circled the house, the Grange, our new home, and as we drove over the little bridge I grabbed the door handle – holding tight. Mum didn’t notice. Peter was still crying and I reached into the back with my other hand.
‘We’re here, Pete. It’s OK,’ I said, wiping away fresh tears. He’d been sick twice in the last hour when the roads had got so windy, and wet his pants ages ago, on the great stretch of motorway that had brought us here. I’d done what I could with the last of the wipes and an old towel that Mum kept in the boot of the car, but my brother needed a bath and cleaning up. That’s what I was thinking: that and how we’d driven off the last road to nowhere, and how instead of being glad we were here, I wished we were back at our old house, even though it was small and grotty and all burnt out. The Grange was a monster, waiting to swallow us up.
Mum pulled over and I jumped out of the car, running back down the drive just to see, to check and make sure – I had to be wrong. But no. From the bridge I stared down into the water that ran like a moat the whole way round the house and I knew it was bad.
‘What d’you reckon, Aud?’ Mum stood beside me, her hand on my back, and I looked at our reflections, broken and shifting in the murk, and wondered what was hiding down there.
‘Pretty nice, isn’t it?’ she said. We stood on the edge. Teetered. I felt the slide of mud and the pull of the water and wanted to run. Instead I turned and stared up at the house.
It was such a big place. So tall, towering nearly as high as the trees, twisted over with vines and crawling with
moss. A moat belongs with a castle. But this wasn’t a castle at all. It was a 1960s rectangle – a prison or a hospital, not a home. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. But I’d thought it might be something beautiful, perhaps – an old country house where Peter and I could play at being Old Fashioned. But the hard angles and the empty windows made me think of boxes closed and taped tight, life packed away, dusty and dying. At least the garden was lovely, September green and gold. And the sky was blue, stretching forever. Peter tumbled out of the car on to the gravel and I ran back and scooped him up and on to his feet. He’d turned five in the summer, but five is little, if you ask me; five is still a baby.
‘We’re going to live here?’ I asked Mum. She nodded and stretched her arms wide, yawning.
‘Yes, what d’you think? Great, isn’t it? I never thought we’d make it though – did you, Aud? God, the traffic. Bloody terrible. But worth it, don’t you reckon?’
Mum was tired, gasping for a cuppa, she said, and Peter needed cleaning up, so Mum grabbed a bag from the boot and forged ahead. I helped Peter scoop his toys – his soft old rabbit and collection of stones – back into his bag and we followed her, scurrying to keep up. Thick grey walls, blank windows, flat roof. I smiled at my brother, tried to look excited and he looked back at me, his face hopeful, scared. No one in their right mind would live here, I thought, as Mum swept us towards the door of the house, and it opened before she even turned the key, like a yawning mouth, toothless, greedy. I listened, waiting in the hall, staring up into the dark stairwell, and then straight ahead into long corridors. Was it here? Lurking? The Thing we’d run from? But the only sound was the thud of Mum’s shoes as she climbed the stairs, speeding up as she ran the last bit, turning corners too fast, then skidding and fumbling with the keys for our flat. I pulled my T-shirt over my nose. The hallway stank of mice and mould. Gross. Mum had said the Grange was posh, renovated, all new, and she’d been excited the whole drive down – holding the wheel so tight her knuckles almost glowed, singing along to the songs on Radio 2, golden oldies, she called them – but posh wasn’t the word I’d use. No.
I found the bathroom, leant down and put in the plug and ran the bath. Water sputtered and then gushed, but at least it was warm.
‘Come on, mate. Let’s clean you up,’ I said to Peter, pulling off his shirt and his socks and shoes, damp trousers, stained vest.
‘Sorry I was sick, Aud,’ he said as I plopped him into the water and splashed it over him.
‘Don’t be daft – you’re OK now, aren’t you? Good as new.’ But I wished we had bubble bath, rubber ducks, fluffy warm towels. Instead I sang a silly song, something from a children’s programme on the telly about scrubbing and washing and getting nice and clean, and Peter joined in and laughed.
Rummaging in Mum’s bags, I found her shampoo and washed Peter’s hair, careful not to let the suds run in his eyes, and when he was all done we found his pyjamas and made up his bed with sheets and a blanket.
‘We’ll get some new stuff, Pete, don’t worry – a nice cosy duvet and some pillows. We’ll get it all set up for you, OK?’ Peter nodded and started to rearrange his stones. They were pebbles he’d found in a service station en route, picked out of a tub of flowers. Now they had names. Mr Briggs and Rupert. Bad Hat and Jim. Jim had been his friend back home, the boy next door, with a jam-smeared chin and freckles like patches of gold. Sometimes Jim let Peter share his bike. The others, I didn’t know.
‘It’s not nice here though, is it, Aud?’ Peter began to make a tower with the stones then scattered them with his hand, but I shook my head and retrieved them.
‘It is nice. It’s lovely, and you and me we can paint your room and decorate everything how you want it. And get you some new toys.’
‘What about my old room?’ he said, and I squeezed him tight and said maybe we’d go back one day, even though that was a lie.
I walked over to the window, rubbed the glass clean with my sleeve and rested my forehead there. The ring of dark water was calling. It was singing and waiting as if it had always known a girl like me would arrive here one day. The best thing to do was not to look. I walked down to the living room and pasted on a smile.
‘All right, love?’ Mum asked.
‘Yeah, I’m OK.’
I didn’t tell Mum that I still felt sick. She’d given me pills for the journey but they hadn’t worked, had made it worse, and I was always queasy, anyway, my stomach churning fear. The easy part was hiding it from Peter. The hard part was hiding it from Mum. She always knew.
‘Well, I’m going to get dinner. You tidy up a bit here, Aud.’ She looked at the room, but didn’t say anything about the tatty furniture, the bare plaster walls, the carpet that already looked old, and I wondered what I was supposed to do about it.
‘Fish and chips? All right?’
‘Great. Thanks,’ I said, but when she came back an hour later with fat parcels of greasy, lukewarm food I couldn’t force any down and Mum finished it all, even the scraps.
Later that night I crept out. Peter was in bed, fast asleep already, but Mum sat staring at her phone, waiting. I hoped her friends, the people she said she knew here, would ring soon; that we’d all have friends soon. We’d always been so impermanent, spindly and frail, ready to topple in the slightest gust of wind, but Peter needed roots; we both did. I left the flat and walked downstairs, letting the heavy front door slam behind me, then trod towards the water – stepping lightly so as not to feel the pain of sharp stones underfoot. There’s a way, if you think really hard, to make it stop hurting. Anything. But I shouldn’t be afraid, Dad always said that – no worries, whistling and swinging my arm when he walked me to school all those years ago, and I looked up at him and he was a hero, the safest thing. No worries, be happy, Aud, he’d said, and I was warm for a moment, remembering.
Leo
‘So.’ Graham looked at Leo. ‘How’ve you been?’
Leo rubbed his hands through his hair then grinned. He picked up his glass of water and drank it down in a long gulp. Graham watched, waiting.
‘I’m OK, I think. No, actually, better than that. I’m fine,’ Leo said, clearing his throat and nodding as if to assert the truth of his words. Graham sat forward, pleased. He liked this lad.
‘Yeah? Good, that’s what we want to hear. You’re sleeping all right?’
‘Yes. Fine. It’s all the running.’ Graham laughed and Leo smiled, a small grudging smile. You had to when Graham guffawed like that; the noise was so large it demanded acknowledgement.
‘Ah, yes, the power of fresh air and exercise. It’s underestimated, you know, Leo. You’ll be joining me, then, for the marathon, this year?’
‘No. I’m not a fanatic, unlike some.’ Leo met Graham’s eye. His therapist had a rosy face, blunt nose and a wide laughing mouth. He could say anything to him.
‘All right, well, we’ll see. You’ll be a convert yet.’
Leo shrugged.
‘What about friends? Found any of them yet?’ Leo wasn’t really interested in any of the kids round here or their lives. But Graham said that wasn’t a healthy attitude, that he needed to interact and make an effort. It was a theme.
‘Yeah, sure, I have friends.’
‘I don’t mean kids you pass the time of day with, Leo.’ Graham leant forward again. ‘I mean people you talk to, open up to.’
‘I know what you mean. And I have you for that, don’t I?’
‘No. Not all the time.’
Leo thought about it. Since he’d come to live in the sticks, he had his aunt, and Graham, and that was about it. The guys at school were all right; he’d been out to a few parties and so on and there were plenty of invitations and some girls who’d been friendly too. Too friendly, some of them. Like Lizzy Carr. But mostly he had lost touch with his past and that meant there wasn’t really anybody to text or call, or just sit and talk about nothing with for a while.
‘All right,’ he told Graham, ‘point taken. I will make an effort
.’ He saluted, made a serious and determined face and Graham nodded and the consultation time was up. Leo wandered out to find his aunt, who’d been browsing in the small art gallery in town while he’d had his therapy. The word made him feel ridiculous, but Graham didn’t; Leo always came out feeling just a little bit more certain that the days were going to get brighter and better and the past was just that. Past.
They drove home to the farm through the rich, thick brightness of the afternoon, the sun shining on turning leaves that tunnelled the lanes back into the country. The feeling that summer wasn’t quite done with, not yet, that he could snatch a bit of that time back, hold the green for a while longer, made Leo itch to get home and out into the last of the day. He’d spent July and August outside, in the woods, the fields; cycled the miles to the sea, throwing himself into the rising waves, hot and tired after the ride. And now, in mid September, he was thinking of what lay ahead, not behind.
He thought about school. Friends. It was an easy way out, to say you didn’t like something therefore you didn’t need to bother. Leo decided he would have to try.
Audrey
The day after we moved in, Mum let me and Peter loose in the supermarket. We could have whatever we wanted for our rooms: new covers for the beds and sheets, lampshades, rugs, toys for Peter. Mum filled up the trolley, piling it with mugs and throws, a toaster, saucepans, doormats, curtains. I grabbed essentials: toothbrushes, soap, towels. And then there was my school uniform and brightly coloured files and felt-tip pens and paper. She even got me a Parker pen, like I’d always wanted, not to mention tons of other stuff we definitely didn’t need – a coffee machine, electronic scales, a huge print of Marilyn Monroe in a thick black frame, which I guessed would never get hung. The till bleeped and Mum packed, the numbers flickered and I winced. It was too much, but Mum handed over the credit card like it didn’t matter. She caught me staring.
‘Don’t worry, love. We got the insurance money, remember?’
I smiled back and nodded, following her out and into the car park; the trolley rattled over the concrete.
‘We’ll do the place up nice, won’t we, Aud?’ Mum yelled over the racket.
‘Yup.’ I walked quicker to keep up, the bags were heavy and cutting into my fingers. Mum’s strides were long, determined.
