Liars: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Frances Vick

  She stared at the house and felt the scummy tide of pain, of grief, of rage rush towards her. Home was where it had all started. Home was where everything wrong…

  From far away, she heard a car backfiring. Jangly music in some guttural language pumped out of a nearby window. A thin cat, one-eyed and friendly, undulated over the broken bricks. She put out one hand and stroked its ears. The animal purred, tense, purred and tensed and, in Jenny’s mind the two Sals merged and detached, merged again a blurring confusion, a foggy duo. Dancing Sal, who sang like Dusty Springfield. Dresses and shiny hair, red nails and laughter. Older Sal, cut down short like her hair, trembling before Marc, and never singing a note. And behind them both? That was the thing she didn’t want to see. Blood in her hair. She imagined small dykes carved in the snow, first deep then shallow, then mere grazes: the evidence of a useless struggle to right herself. Sal wasn’t a natural struggler. It would have been better if she hadn’t bothered. It would have been quicker.

  The wind picked up, blowing fresh sleet, limey light filtered through the black clouds hovering over The Fox and spreading towards the city.

  The cat crouched, shivered. Up close, Jenny could see that it didn’t have one eye; its left was just so infected that it had closed behind a gummy scab of pus. No collar. Fur sparsely covering its bumpy, knotted spine. It gazed at her, closed its good eye into a cat smile. Even now, it wanted to please, even now, when it looked close to death. Jenny gently picked it up, feeling it curl gratefully against her chest with a rusty purr. ‘I’ll keep you safe,’ she whispered. ‘I promise.’

  She stopped at the shop on the corner to see if they had any boxes and maybe a bag to keep it dry?

  The woman on the till shook her head sorrowfully at the animal. ‘I’ve seen that around for the last few weeks. Poor thing.’

  ‘She doesn’t belong to anyone then?’

  ‘No. She mustn’t. Nobody would let a cat get into that state.’

  ‘I want to take her to a vet,’ Jenny said.

  The woman shook her head again, with just a touch of smugness. ‘Not sure that’ll do any good. Look at her. She’s on her last legs.’

  ‘She’s purring though,’ Jenny said, a little wildly. ‘Listen!’

  ‘Oh, they purr when they’re dying,’ the woman told her. ‘It’s to make it easier for them. It means they go happy.’ They both gazed at the cat.

  ‘I want to try though,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Tell you what.’ The woman disappeared into the room, and came back with a dusty cat box. ‘Put her in this. And if she gets better, let me know.’ Together they shoved the cat into the carrier. ‘Keep the carrier.’

  ‘You’ll need it for your cat though, won’t you?’

  ‘No. He died. That’s how I know about the purring.’ The woman smiled. Her eyes were wet. She gave her some cat treats for the journey.

  And so, Jenny made her way back down the hill, the bulky cat box pressed against her chest. Behind her, her old house, her old school, the pub, everything was grimly bathed in darkening grey, and so she began to trot to stay ahead of the snow, back through the market, past trundling pensioners, and made it to the city centre just before the storm broke, huge and thrilling. She huddled with others under a shop awning, everyone infected with that giddy friendliness that bad weather brings.

  ‘Coming down fast!’ A man said half to her and half to himself. ‘Look! It’s as bad as the other night, isn’t it?’

  In the box, the cat shifted and mewed. Its one good eye shone huge through the grill.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered to the animal, ‘I’m going to get you better, and keep you safe. I promise. You and me, girl.’

  As the snow thickened this small, hard kernel of resolve grew. She would be safe. From now on, she would be safe. She deserved to be safe.

  9

  ‘Thanks so much, Cheryl. I was passing when the snow started, and my phone’s out of juice. Can I call a taxi? I didn’t interrupt anything though I hope?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Cheryl told her. ‘Get warm.’

  They were sitting in her living room, rather than in her office – a small extension adjacent to the kitchen. Jenny had never been here before. A log on the fire popped and crackled; the one-eyed cat, its wound gently sponged, luxuriated on the rug, briefly started, stared indignantly at the flames, and then settled down again.

  ‘She’s in a state, isn’t she?’ Jenny murmured.

  ‘You found her outside your old home?’ Cheryl passed her some biscuits.

  ‘Yes. A lady – the one who gave me the carrier – said that she’s been wandering around like this for weeks.’

  ‘And she didn’t take her in herself?’ Cheryl frowned.

  ‘I never thought about that.’ Jenny frowned. ‘She liked cats, that was obvious.’

  ‘But she saw this little thing every day and never tried to help her?’

  ‘Huh. No. Weird, isn’t it?’ Jenny gently stroked the cat’s back with one toe. Its purr was immediate, and grateful.

  ‘But quite common too. People don’t want to get involved,’ Cheryl intoned. ‘It’s interesting that you found this animal, uncared for and lonely, in the same place where you were uncared for and lonely.

  ‘And people saw her, but never helped. Just like they saw me and never helped.’

  ‘Exactly. Why did you go there today?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it might make things clearer in my mind, I suppose. Scene of the crime. That’s a stupid way of putting it, sorry.’ Jenny hunched forward. ‘I… I needed to get away.’

  ‘But you went somewhere that’s unpleasant? That holds bad memories?’

  ‘Well, maybe it’s a kind of self-punishment. Something... happened today and I lied to Freddie about it.’ She looked at Cheryl through her eyelashes. ‘You know how much I hate lying. To him, especially.’

  ‘What happened today?’

  ‘The police called.’ She stared at her hands, clasped, unclasped, clasped again. ‘They want to talk to me tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’ Cheryl’s calm was slightly cracked.

  ‘Mum. Unexplained death. I suppose it’s what they have to do?’ Jenny looked at the fire, clasped her hands tighter. ‘I lied and told Freddie it was my auntie Kathleen on the phone. I didn’t want him to worry; he’s already worried enough about me, and he’s taken time off work and—’

  ‘All decisions he made himself.’

  ‘Well, yes. But I don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want people to feel they have to sort everything out for me, you know? I should be able to do all of this myself. No one needs the… hassle of looking after me.’

  Cheryl squinted. ‘Why can’t people love and support you? Why would that be a hassle for them?’ She too hunched forward. ‘The police. When are you going?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. They’re sending a car.’ One tear plopped onto her knee. Then another. ‘I’m scared, Cheryl. What if they think I did anything?’

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I’m scared of them. I was taught to be scared of the police. They were always coming round the house for Marc. I think that’s why I came back today, to the old house, to try to put all that fear in the past? But that didn’t work, did it? I’m still scared, and now I have a dying cat to deal with on top of it all.’ She tried to laugh.

  ‘What is frightening you the most about tomorrow?’

  ‘Talking about Mum. Telling them about the drinking, and… everything. It feels wrong. It feels disloyal to her.’

  Cheryl nodded. ‘Your role is to be the protector; the gatekeeper of secrets.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose.’

  ‘Roles are given by a director though, aren’t they?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who gave you this role? Who trained you?’

  ‘Mum.’

  Cheryl nodded. ‘And the production of your life hasn’t been well-structured so far, has it? The director was out of her depth, con
fused and, dare I say it, lazy.’ She held up one hand to ward off an assumed disagreement. ‘What I’m saying is that you don’t have to play the same role anymore. It’s a whole new production now. You don’t owe your mother that kind of allegiance any more.’

  ‘I should tell the truth?’ Jenny whispered.

  ‘You must,’ Cheryl replied. ‘The truth is the only thing that will set you free.’

  It was late by the time Jenny got back to the house. The furtive stench of old cigarette smoke was rising beneath the bleach. She coaxed the cat out of the carrier. It put one cautious paw on the lemony linoleum, sniffed, took a turn about the room, its tail a question mark. Jenny opened a tin of tuna and watched it eat every last strand, and then took it upstairs with her. They lay together in her childhood bed, and all night it purred, a rusty rumble, while Jenny tried and failed to sleep.

  The truth will set you free. It sounded simple. But she knew that truths are strangely subjective. A few months ago, she’d watched and half-understood a TED talk on quantum physics, the gist of which was that The Observer Creates Reality Simply by Observing. It had filled her with a strange comfort at the time – this idea that objectivity doesn’t truly exist. Now, though, it had the opposite effect: her truth – Sal, drunk, slipped, fell and died – was, after all, The Truth, but what if the police, merely by poring over the story, altered it to make it theirs? It was so simple to trust the police if they’d never let you down, but Jenny remembered how strangely immune to common sense they could be. How many times had they stood in Marc’s kitchen, glanced dispassionately at Sal’s bruised face, at Jenny’s obvious fear, and ignored it? The police only saw what they wanted to see.

  10

  The next morning, two policemen arrived to pick her up, one young, one older. Jenny sat in the back seat and they gave her their helmets to hold in her lap. Inside she noticed that each had a little ring of foam inside them to cushion their heads, and in one of the helmets there was a biro drawing of a smiley face and ‘KIERON!!’ in shaky capitals.

  ‘Who’s Kieron?’ she asked.

  The older officer looked at her in the rear-view mirror and said: ‘My grandson. Did that last week. Little bugger.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Five. Five going on seventeen. I tell you.’

  She let a pause go by. ‘Do you see a lot of him then?’

  ‘Weekends. We have him at the weekends. His mum’s young still; she likes to go out. You know how it is with kids. You never get a minute to yourself. Got any kids yourself?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I love kids though.’

  He crinkled his eyes at her in the mirror again. ‘More trouble than they’re worth.’

  He was a nice man, she could tell. They both were. Nice, normal, ordinary people who just wanted a ‘chat’, and her fear lessened a little.

  Unfortunately, they said goodbye to her at the desk and handed her over to another officer – an older Dawn French-type woman with very small eyes, like blue marbles sunk in dough. Her smile was brisk, perfunctory, and when she showed Jenny into the interview room, she told her that the ‘chat’ was going to be taped.

  Jenny sat down. ‘I feel a bit nervous,’ she admitted.

  ‘Nothing to be nervous about.’ The woman smiled, and it almost reached her eyes. She wasn’t like the man talking about KIERON!! He’d been natural, while this woman sounded like she was reading from a script titled: ‘Put Accused At Ease With Niceties’. The weather. The job market, how hard it must be to come back home after all these years, and this last observation clunked like a hasty gear change, and Jenny knew that the preamble was over.

  ‘You came back to look after your mother... six months ago. Why was that?’

  ‘She had a stroke.’

  ‘She was very young to have a stroke? Forty-two was she?’

  ‘Forty-three.’

  ‘It’s difficult looking after a parent.’

  Jenny nodded.

  ‘It’s what you have to do though, isn’t it?’

  Jenny nodded again.

  ‘You mentioned to PCs Burns and Newell that your mother had been drinking the night she died?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The officers who took you to the hospital?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry. I’m a bit… it’s all merged into one. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s a distressing time.’ She nodded. Her smile winked on. ‘But just take your time. Your mother was drinking the night she died?’ The smile winked off.

  Jenny began to shake then and the shakes crawled up her body and settled in her chest and in her shoulders. She felt like she did when she was small and had to read in front of the class. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to shake out. ‘This is hard.’

  ‘Take your time.’

  ‘It feels disloyal that’s all. I talked to my friends about it but—’

  ‘Was your mother a problem drinker, would you say?’

  Jenny closed her eyes. ‘Yes. She hid it pretty well, but when she came out of the hospital and couldn’t work, it kind of took her over again.’

  ‘And she was also taking medication?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many pills did you give her?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I didn’t give her any. She said she’d already taken her beta blockers. I wasn’t sure that was true, but I didn’t want to give her any more in case it made her sick. She… she was pretty tipsy.’ Jenny swallowed this last word, and looked at her hands.

  The woman coughed and shuffled some papers.

  ‘Her blood alcohol was .32.’

  Jenny looked up. ‘Is that a lot?’

  The woman raised one eyebrow. ‘Yes.’

  Jenny let out all her breath, nodded to herself, and then sat up straighter. ‘I think she was stockpiling alcohol and hiding it. I just… I didn’t confront her. I should’ve, but I didn’t.’

  The woman’s blue pebbly eyes rested on Jenny’s. ‘You were in the house all day you said?’

  ‘Yes, but I did some shopping at six. Or six thirty. But it could have been seven. I just don’t know for sure, I’m sorry.’

  ‘And was she already drunk?’

  ‘Not too bad. But when I came back from the shops she was. I tried to get her to eat something – I opened a tin of soup, but she wouldn’t eat it. I tried to get her to bed then; I want to say it was around nine?’

  ‘Do you know how the picture on the stairs got damaged?’

  Jenny squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Oh I don’t want to say.’

  ‘Can you tell me?’

  She opened her eyes again. They were dull with pain. ‘She didn’t want to go to bed. She… look, she didn’t know what she was doing, all right?’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘She… pushed me. Not on purpose, just sort of pushed past me, but hard. And I fell, hit my head against the frame. It was an accident.’

  ‘And the bruise here? On your chin?’

  ‘Oh this? That was my own stupid fault. I slipped on the ice on the way back from the shop, that’s all.’

  A silence grew into each corner of the room.

  ‘And after the picture broke?’

  ‘Well, it seemed to sober her up a bit, to tell the truth. She said she was sorry, and we had a hug, and that was it.’

  ‘And the frame and the broken glass stayed where it was?’

  ‘I wanted to clean it up, and I started to. Cut myself too, look.’ She showed the officer her thumb. ‘And got blood on the carpet. Mum said she’d clean it all up. She said it was her job; she’d broken it, so she’d fix it. She was cleaning it up when I left.’ Jenny shook her head. ‘That was stupid of me. I should’ve stayed.’

  ‘You told the officer at the scene that you didn’t know how the blood got there, or how the picture was damaged.’

  ‘I… I know I did,’ Jenny admitted. She looked at her hands, twisting together in her lap ‘I wasn’t thinking, or rather I was thinking, but not properly. Shock I just… it felt awful
to tell the truth about it. Like I said, it felt… disloyal somehow. She wasn’t herself. She was drunk.’

  ‘And what time did you leave?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something was on the TV – Teens Who Kill, I think it was called, but I don’t know what time that’s on, or even the channel. I remember before I left I turned the TV down. Her neighbour – Mrs Mondesir – she complains about the noise sometimes. Mum tends to leave the TV on all night. Tended to.’

  ‘And did anyone see you leave?’

  ‘No? No, I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘Was it snowing when you left?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘We’re trying to work out exactly how long she was outside before she fell. We’re appealing for witnesses.’

  There was a silence. ‘You mean people that might have seen her? But surely if anyone had seen her, they would have helped her—’ Jenny began.

  ‘We’d like to talk to anyone who saw your mother, yes, but also anyone who saw you walking to the Lees-Hills’ house, and at what time,’ the officer said evenly.

  Jenny stared at her. ‘What does that mean though? Do you mean I need an alibi?’ She tried to laugh, but it sputtered into hitching, fearful breath.

  ‘This is all routine, and I don’t want you to worry about this, or concern yourself or—’

  ‘But how can I not though?’ Jenny’s voice was high as a little girl’s. ‘Am I suspected of anything?’

  The woman’s face was empty of all expression. ‘It’s just timings we need to be certain about. When your mother left the house, how long she was out there, things like that.’

  ‘God, I’ve been thinking that too. Over and over.’ Jenny seemed to be speaking to herself. ‘I think about her in the snow.’ She looked up. ‘It’s so horrible, thinking of her like that, alone. And maybe shouting for help and no one hearing…’ And then Jenny began to cry the big hitching sobs that she hadn’t allowed herself before. She cried until her eyes shrank into little red pinwheels.

  The woman stopped the tape, and she handed her a tissue. After a while, Jen quietened.