Liars: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Frances Vick

  ‘Project Jen is still up and running then?’

  ‘It’s my thing now. I told you.’

  ‘I have precious little time as it is, between college and work.’

  ‘OK, how about this: it’d be more of an online journal. I mean you’re meant to keep some kind of reflective diary for the course or something, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s a nightmare actually. It feels really artificial doing this diary at the end of each session. I feel like Anne Frank.’

  ‘OK, so if you made it into a blog, you’d be doing what they want you to do with the diary and all, and you’d be helping other people and getting feedback and it’d be like a—’

  ‘You’re about to say community, aren’t you?’ Jenny grimaced.

  ‘I was. I’m sorry but, look, it’s hard what you’re doing. I just think that writing about it might help you. Everyone needs support, and this way you’ll be getting support from people who really understand what it is you’re going through… keeping up with the coursework, as well as going through therapy yourself and—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered. ‘It’s not really me. Blogging.’

  ‘Well, a bit ago, training to be a counsellor wasn’t “you” either, was it? And what if you’re not “you” anyway? Use a pseudonym. No one has to know it’s you. One of the Kardashians checks into hotels as “Princess Jasmine”.’

  ‘“One of the Kardashians”?’

  ‘Okay. Kim. It’s Kim.’

  ‘What about “Sigourney Beaver”? Is that one taken?’

  ‘You might get the wrong kind of readers with that one.’

  ‘“J-Ho”?’

  ‘Again—’

  ‘“J. K. Growler”?’

  ‘Enough. Stop. Not even this level of facetiousness can derail Project Jenny. See if you can do it first, then decide on a name. A non-porny name.’

  And so she’d talked it over with her tutor, who’d agreed that, in principle, a blog could be viewed as a reflective diary portion of the course, so long as it was anonymised. And so, online, Jenny became Jay.

  During the few weeks she spent on cautious research, she discovered that the Internet was a murky river swelled by horribly written streams of consciousness. She read blogs about childcare, about depressing Tinder dates, about gardening, weight loss, teeth alignment, and artisanal breakfasts. Freddie was right, there wasn’t much out there about training to be a counsellor – how gruelling it could be, how emotionally demanding, unexpectedly hilarious, and fascinating it was. There was a gap she could fill.

  It didn’t take long for her to get a following, especially once Freddie drafted in his ex-boyfriend to do something complicated sounding with Google to get more hits. Soon more people – mostly women– were reading her posts and seeing something of themselves in her and her situation. Freddie was right: she was a naturally inventive writer, funny, insightful, charming. She soon came to rely on the appreciation and support she received from her readers.

  When Sal had the stroke, and Jenny moved back to the village to take care of her, she changed the blog name from the almost criminally dull Jay’s Counselling Training to You Can’t Go Home Again – a strange, evocative phrase that had come to her out of the ether. It fitted perfectly; she was home again, but it wasn’t a home; she was the grown-up daughter, of a now infantile mother… the axis had changed. The messages and comments she received showed her that the world was full of women a lot like her: women with demons, women with pasts, women who loved her, who needed her. And, now that she had her ‘community’ (a hateful phrase but an accurate one), she realised how lonely she’d been without them.

  ‘I told you! Didn’t I tell you?’ Freddie had asked delightedly. ‘I mean, this could be your thing, I mean, you’re helping people, Jen!’

  Now though, that precious community was divided as the sniping continued, mushroomed. Ping ping ping. Jenny watched it unfold on her phone screen, but didn’t step in to calm things down. Instead she stared into the mirror until the steam obscured the pale oval of her face, the snaky mass of hair, the quiet, hooded eyes. Each question shouted in caps lock was horribly valid:

  WHY WEREN’T YOU WITH HER THAT NIGHT?

  SHOULDN’T YOU HAVE BEEN BETTER AT THE JOB OF LOOKING AFTER HER?

  WHAT KIND OF A DAUGHTER ARE YOU ANYWAY?

  There was a knock on the door. ‘Jenny? You’re not on your phone, are you?’ Freddie’s anxious voice told her that he too had been reading the comments. She left a long pause.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t have posted anything,’ she admitted finally.

  ‘Just, don’t respond, OK?’ Freddie told her. ‘Please? Or let me help?’

  ‘Fred?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘They’re right. What they’re saying – it’s true.’ She was still staring at her reflection.

  ‘It’s not true though,’ Freddie said flatly. ‘Don’t read anything else. It’s all bullshit.’

  Jenny noticed, with a detached interest, the nerve jumping beside her mouth. This hadn’t happened in years, this old twitch. This Tell.

  While Jenny was in the bath, Freddie had panic-ordered Chinese, and far too much of it. Jenny gamely ate a few spring rolls and poked about in some noodles, but an hour later, the dining table was still strewn with barely dented containers of congealing food.

  ‘You can’t let them get to you,’ Freddie said.

  ‘Is it still going on?’

  ‘A bit,’ he admitted. ‘But they’ll get sick of it soon.’

  Jenny coughed. ‘So I have to call the council on Monday.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘About the house? They’ll want it back. It was in Mum’s name, so…’

  Freddie shifted uncomfortably. ‘How long have you got then?’

  ‘Couple of weeks. I’ll have to call Kathleen.’ Kathleen was one of her shadowy ‘aunties’, who now operated a bar in Tenerife.

  ‘Well, shouldn’t she come back to help? If she’s a relative.’ Freddie huffed indignantly.

  ‘She hasn’t got the money to get on a plane just to babysit me.’ Jenny looked at him and smiled. ‘That’s what she’d say anyway.’

  ‘It’s not babysitting, it’s support.’

  ‘No.’ Jenny made a vague gesture. ‘I’ve got to clean Mum’s place, and I’m not sure Kathleen would be much of a help anyway.’

  Freddie thought of Sal’s grimy house, the stained carpets, the dirty windows. There might not be a lot of furniture to dispose of, but there would be a hell of a lot of cleaning to do. ‘OK. Listen. I’ll take leave and give you a hand with the cleaning,’ he answered firmly.

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that,’ Jenny murmured.

  ‘Babe, you don’t have to do everything yourself, you know. I think you’re expecting a bit too much of yourself,’ Freddie told her. ‘Look, all this happened today. You’re not just going to bounce back. You’re going to have to be a bit more realistic.’

  She smiled bleakly at him. ‘None of this feels real though. I feel like I’m in a play or something. And I’m under-rehearsed. Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing but me. It was stupid, I know, but I thought that if I wrote about it, I could… comprehend it.’ She looked over at her laptop. ‘But that didn’t work. Everyone’ll blame me. I know it. Everyone will start having a go.’

  ‘You don’t have an obligation to let the world know everything that happens to you. Your only obligation is to get through the next few days and weeks as best you can, and rely on your friends – your real, actual friends – to help you. Not these trolls.’

  ‘They’re just saying what everyone else thinks – Kathleen, the people in the village, the police and everyone’ll think the same thing. I wasn’t there. I should have been there, and I wasn’t,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Don’t get paranoid... Try not to get… maudlin. I mean—’

  ‘No, you’re right. What am I doing?’ She looked at him bleakly. ‘I mean, all I have to do is tell ever
yone that the woman I was caring for is dead, arrange the funeral. Find the money for the funeral somehow. Give the house back. Find somewhere to live. Oh, and when I have time, do a bit of grieving. I don’t know what I’m getting so stressed out about. Sorry, maudlin about.’ She opened her laptop, winced at the comments, closed it again.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Freddie told her. ‘You’re not doing anything by yourself, OK? You’re not. And that maudlin thing – that was a stupid thing to say, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It really was,’ Jenny replied. ‘Dick move.’ They sat in woeful silence for a minute. ‘You’re right though. I can’t just… collapse,’ she said eventually. ‘Things have got to be done, and I have to do them. There isn’t anyone else.’

  ‘Leave the blog for now though?’ he asked. ‘You don’t need these people making you feel worse.’

  She looked seriously at him. ‘I do need them though.’

  He was about to ask about the bruise on her chin, now undisguised by make-up, a green/blue smear, but he didn’t. He’d already upset her enough. Instead he sat with her, watching the storm on the blog begin to blow itself out. @Theehedgewitch was cornered into accepting that she’d started the argument. @HollybFootitt confessed that she’d never allowed herself to grieve over her own mother, and maybe that’s why she’d been such a bitch about things, and @Laundryloony2 posted a soothing Gandhi quote that Freddie was pretty sure wasn’t Gandhi at all, but Beyoncé. Once things calmed down, Jenny felt able to sleep. It was as if they’d granted her clemency.

  5

  Jenny woke late the next day with an unfamiliar brown taste in her mouth and a slight headache. Freddie had already left for work but had left her a note saying he’d try to get back early. He didn’t want her to be on her own too much.

  With her hair tied back, with no make-up, she looked so much like Sal. She stared at her haunted face in the hallway mirror: a face with brownish pouches around the eyes, crushed-looking cheeks, and, between the brows, a deep comma of worry.

  Half an hour later she was making the calls.

  Kathleen, who never cried, who prided herself on never crying, sobbed down the line from Tenerife.

  ‘She was better! When I spoke to her last week, she said she was feeling better! Said she was going to try to go back to work!’

  Jenny swallowed, hard, and met her mother’s eyes in the mirror. ‘She-she hadn’t been looking after herself,’ she managed.

  ‘What? What d’you mean not “looking after herself”?’

  ‘Well… she’d started drinking again.’

  Kathleen’s voice cracked with tearful indignation. ‘Well why didn’t you stop her?’

  Jenny’s voice cracked too. ‘I tried! I really tried, Kathleen, I did!’

  ‘And what? She had another stroke? What happened?’

  ‘No. She fell. They said she fell and hit her head. She’d had a few drinks.’

  ‘Where? In the house?’

  ‘No, outside. It was snowing; it was the middle of the night; I don’t know why she was out, I— Kathleen, don’t cry, please? If you cry, I’ll start, and—’ Jenny moved the phone away from her ear and watched her reflection wince, watched the hand holding the phone shaking, watched until it stilled. She heard the snap and fizz of a cigarette being lit. Kathleen thanked someone in a wobbly voice that sounded old, fearful. ‘I’m sorry, Kathleen, I am. I tried my hardest, but… I’m sorry to ruin your day. Don’t feel you have to come back or anything, you’ve got the bar to look after and—’

  ‘Oh bugger the bar!’ Kathleen drew a shuddery breath. ‘And, I know you did your best with her. She was her own worst enemy was Sal.’ Blowing the smoke out, Jenny could hear the little wheeze in her throat. That familiar little wheeze. ‘When’s the funeral?’ she said eventually.

  ‘After the post-mortem,’ Jenny answered softly.

  ‘What? Why’re they having a post-mortem?’

  ‘I don’t know. They said they had to. Unexplained death.’ Jenny pushed one hand through her hair and closed her eyes, pivoted her body away from the mirror. ‘It’s all just—’

  ‘I can’t take it in, Jenny. I can’t.’ Kathleen sounded scared, again. Kathleen was never scared. ‘It’s just… a shock. Thought I’d go first, you know?’

  ‘You’re tough as old boots,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I was,’ Kathleen answered seriously. ‘I was, but I’m not feeling it now.’

  ‘Kathleen, I’m-I’m sorry I had to tell you like this. On the phone. I had to though, I couldn’t not have told you. I mean, you were like sisters.’

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ And her voice was clotted with sobs again. ‘Don’t. Listen, I’ll come back – when? Tomorrow? I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  ‘What? Why?’ She caught a quick flash of her reflection again. ‘No, it’ll cost you money to come back—’

  ‘Bugger that. Roisin’ll sub me. She’s got her divorce money through.’ Roisin was one of Kathleen’s taciturn and faintly intimidating daughters. ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can, OK?’

  The next few calls were easier. Mrs Hurst who ran the cleaning business Sal had worked for had already heard via the village grapevine. Kathleen’s other daughter, Maraid, took it well, but then nothing seemed to impinge on her stoicism. Jenny then left a voicemail for her therapist, Cheryl, and called her personal tutor to explain that she wouldn’t be able to make the next few workshops and might be late with the next essay. He specialised in grief and trauma, so he was very sympathetic. The last person she called was Andreena, a relatively new friend, but already like family. She came over.

  6

  Andreena’s expressions were vivid, extreme. Like an expanding thundercloud, they spread rapidly over her face, only to disperse just as quickly. Some people found that unsettling. Jenny had met her when she’d been temping at the Council Tax department three years ago, just before her stint at the doctor’s surgery. She was warned about the fearsome HR manager who had refused to give up her office when the rest of the department went open-plan; who wore huge gold crosses and signed off her emails with a blood curdling bible verse.

  But Jenny had soon discovered that Andreena was nowhere near as terrifying as her reputation, and it was probably the fact that she was a Union representative that genuinely scared the management. Charmingly, she had a childlike love of cat memes and a genuine, fierce loyalty to those close to her. And the bible verses? They weren’t that bad once you got used to them. She tended to stick to the Psalms anyway, and avoided Leviticus after one of her nephews came out as gay.

  When Jenny heard Andreena’s little Fiesta putter down the drive, she ran to open the back door. Her friend was carefully unfurling her six-foot frame from the small car. The turban she wore added a further four inches to her height. She advanced with her arms open, like a statue of the Virgin Mary, and Jenny was enveloped in a strong, almost painful, hug.

  Over coffee in the kitchen, Dree held Jenny’s hand, glared at her affectionately and asked: ‘How are you?’

  Jenny frowned. ‘I’m not sure. Shocked, still, I think. I find myself doing normal things and then thinking I’m weird for being able to function normally. It’s… I—’

  Andreena held one hand up and managed to smile and frown at the same time. ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty.’

  ‘No?’ Jenny looked at her clasped hands, serious eyes under knotted brows. ‘I wasn’t with her. If I’d been with her I wouldn’t have let her go out for a walk. The one night I spend away…’

  Andreena’s brows pinched. Her mouth pulled down at the edges. ‘Are you eating?’ Andreena thought food cured just about everything. ‘I brought some things over—’

  ‘Oh, Freddie bought loads of food—’

  ‘Fruit. And some curry, and, what’s this? Cake? Banana bread…’

  ‘Oh, Dree, you didn’t have to do that—’

  ‘And brandy and soursop tea to help you sleep.’ She seemed to have come to the end of the bag of provisions. ‘Eat and sleep. It’s important. If
you try to be too strong, you’ll break,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve seen it. I know.’

  ‘I don’t feel very strong,’ Jenny muttered. ‘I can’t seem to pull myself together. I need to go to college. I’ve got to call the council.’

  ‘Now, you see, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.’ Andreena’s face shone with delight that she’d found such an appropriate idiom. ‘Listen; when my brother called me, told me “Mummy’s passed”, I was strong, too. I went to work. I cooked. I cleaned. I was’ – she emphasised the last word with a little hand squeeze – ‘fine. I booked my ticket and didn’t cry on the plane, or when I saw Hopeton waiting at the airport; when I saw Mummy in her coffin, I didn’t break. “Who needs to cry?” I said. All these fools are crying, and it wouldn’t do a bit of good, and Mummy didn’t like crying. Now, you know what happened when I came home?’

  ‘What?’ Jen whispered.

  ‘I went to bed and I didn’t get out of bed for a month. It all hit me – pow – like a plank, and I was no good to man nor beast.’ She grimaced with an odd sort of satisfaction.

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘It’s not healthy to be British. Carry on, carry on until you die. No. Cry. Don’t be afraid. Don’t think about other people. Stop that now,’ she said in a low, serious voice. ‘You look after yourself, you take help from your friends. You grieve.’

  And she stared meaningfully at Jenny, until she did begin to feel herself crying; first, quietly, and then loud, ugly tears. And Dree patted and cooed, gave her kitchen roll, made her sip tea until she calmed.

  Then she said: ‘Tell me. Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  Jenny’s voice was wobbly; she looked at her knees. ‘I did a rotten job of looking after her. I’m a rotten daughter. I know it. Everyone knows it.’