The Lies We Hide: An absolutely gripping and darkly compelling novel Read online

  The Lies We Hide

  An absolutely gripping and darkly compelling novel

  S.E. Lynes

  Books by S.E. Lynes

  Mother

  The Pact

  The Proposal

  Valentina

  The Women

  The Lies We Hide

  Available in audio

  Mother (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Pact (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Proposal (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Women (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Part III

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Mother

  Hear More from S.E. Lynes

  Books by S.E. Lynes

  A letter from S.E. Lynes

  The Pact

  Valentina

  The Women

  The Proposal

  Acknowledgements

  For my dad, Stephen Ball, with love

  Part One

  One

  Carol

  Blackpool Pleasure Beach, 1968

  They’ve only been there five minutes when Ted grabs her hand.

  ‘Carol, look,’ he says, tilting his head. ‘The rockets! Come on!’

  In front of them is the giant spider of Maxim’s Flying Machine. Blackpool is famous for it. That and the bright pink rock that sticks your teeth together. Oh, and the illuminations, of course.

  Carol shakes her head. ‘No, Ted,’ she says, pulling against him as he drags her towards the ride.

  ‘Aw, come on! You can’t come all this way and not go on Maxim’s.’ He’s still pulling her forward; her stiletto soles slip on the grimy ground.

  ‘You know I can’t be doing with heights,’ she says. ‘You go on. Go on, go.’

  He looks at her a moment before snatching a quick kiss. ‘All right then,’ he says, already backing away. ‘Wait here for me.’

  He lets go of her hand and she watches him, the cocksure way he walks, pulling his comb from the back pocket of his suit trousers, teasing the slick duck’s arse to perfection, returning the comb with one deft hand.

  She loses him then, in the crowd. Meanwhile, the torpedo-shaped cars fill with thrill-seekers. They’re excited to be out on a Friday night, flush with a week’s pay, armed with pastel clouds of candyfloss and filthy innuendos. Lads joke and flirt. Girls laugh and smooth out their miniskirts. Fleeting orange sparks of last-minute cigarettes flash to the ground.

  Minutes later, there’s Ted: last on, hooking one drainpiped leg into his capsule, grinning and mugging at her like a lunatic. From this distance, his bootlace tie is lost against his pale pink shirt, his black velvet lapels invisible against the milk-chocolate brown of his jacket.

  No sooner is he in his seat than the rockets begin to chug, lurching along to the first slow, discordant notes of the organ. Smells of petrol, cigarettes and sugar syrup settle on Carol’s new cream mohair cardie. The rockets climb; as Ted’s capsule lifts, he half stands, wobbling, his body at a terrifying angle. The great metal spider extends its legs; the rockets climb higher. Ted is flying towards her now, coming up to eye level.

  ‘Carol Green!’ he shouts at the top of his voice as he glides past. ‘Will you marry me?’

  And then he’s gone, the back end of his capsule circling away.

  Her mouth is open in shock. She can hear Ted laughing madly, hidden inside his pod. He reappears then, further away. He’s sitting down, thank heavens, but he’s still larking about. His rocket floats lower, there on the other side of the ride; a couple of bumps and it begins to climb once more, heading back around to where Carol stands rooted to the wet tarmac.

  He begins again to stand. Oh for pity’s sake. Bloody idiot.

  ‘Ted!’ she cries out to him. ‘Sit down, will you? You’ll get yourself killed.’

  Embarrassed, she stares at her feet, covers her forehead with her hand. But here he comes again, higher and higher, over her head.

  ‘Carol Gree-een!’ Only the round base of the rocket above her. Only his voice. ‘Will you marry me? Oi! Carol! Can you hear me?’

  Never mind me, she thinks. The whole fairground can hear you.

  In the puddle by her feet, the crescent moon shines up at her: a white arc in a reflected navy sky – faceless, like the grin of the Cheshire Cat. The rockets revolve, faster now. Up and down, round and round on the ends of the spindly spider legs. The music reaches full speed: a heady, spinning waltz. She can’t hear Ted anymore and it looks like he’s sat down properly now, thank goodness. Oh, but he’s still waving his arms about, still carrying on. He’s always mucking about, is Ted. Always creating. But he’s never shouted down at her like that before, never asked her that.

  He was only joking, though.

  Obviously he was.

  She’s not stupid.

  Once he gets off, he’ll not ask her again.

  Not to her face.

  Will he?

  As if to get her attention, the funfair flashes its lights – rudely, she thinks. It might have been pouring down since dawn, they seem to say, but the rain’s stopped now, it’s getting dark and we’ll not be put out, so stop your brooding, Carol Green. This is a funfair. You’re supposed to have fun.

  A hiss and a heavy, industrial clunk. The rockets slow, descend, stop. The laughing riders clamber out: squeals, shrieks, names lost on the sticky air. The turnstile gives out greasy squeaks as, one by one, the new crowd pushes through while the old is spewed, chattering, through the exit.

  ‘Oi.’ Ted appears in front of her, blows at his black quiff, smooths one side with the flat of his hand. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

  She nods at the puddle between them. ‘Mind your shoes. Suede never comes right if you get it wet.’

  He steps over in one stride and grabs her by the shoulders. His fingers are thick. He’s hurting her a bit, but she doesn’t say anything. In the blinking coloured lights, his dark eyes shine with something like mischief. She can smell Old Spice, whisky and cigarettes – things she’s been told to avoid.
/>
  ‘Carol? Didn’t you hear me, what I was shouting?’ He hitches up a trouser leg, gets down on one knee.

  ‘Ted! Your good suit!’ Around them, people stall, stare, nudge each other’s elbows, oh heavens above.

  ‘Carol …’

  ‘I did hear you,’ she whispers. Her hand comes to rest on the swell of her belly, a bump it’s getting harder to hide. ‘But you don’t have to, you know, just because …’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’d’ve asked you anyway.’ In his black eyes, the white sliver of moon – tiny and still grinning in a smaller, darker sky. He is so handsome. She can only bring herself to look at him for a couple of seconds at a time. Any longer and she begins to feel like her make-up needs fixing or her hair has gone wrong or something.

  Ted doesn’t flinch. He never flinches. ‘Come on, Carol Green. You’d be a fool not to marry me.’

  Two

  Nicola

  Merseyside, 2019

  That’s how it starts, for me, the story of my mother. In Blackpool, that midsummer’s night, with Ted Watson, a man I ceased to call father a long time ago. All that followed would never have occurred without his flamboyant proposal in that damp, defiant funfair. So yes, it starts there, but of course there is a before. There is always a before. My mother was pregnant, her parents had thrown her out, she was living, as she called it, in sin. Marriage was the only way out of shame, as far as she was concerned, and if I can remember every detail of that scene, if I can see those flying rockets and smell the oil and the candyfloss, it is only because, in sentimental mood, she would tell me that particular story over and over. For her, it still had a romance to it, even after everything he did to her.

  It wasn’t me in her belly. It was my older brother, Graham. Conceived if not in love, since I don’t believe my father capable of it, then in passion – the furtive fumblings of late-sixties sex. Any swinging associated with the decade had not yet reached the small towns of Merseyside in anything other than music and fashion, jukeboxes and coffee bars; the pill, out of wedlock, was not something my mother ever would have dreamed of. Brought up on a Northern working-class diet of fear and gratitude, she would never have had the confidence to ask for such a thing. She would not have had the vocabulary.

  The call came a week ago. I was on my way out of court. I was meeting Seb for a drink at Waterloo before we caught the train home together. It was Friday. We always try to meet at the station on Fridays after work. On average, we achieve this twice a month, if I’m honest, sometimes once. A shared bottled of Pinot Grigio in a busy station is what passes, what has to pass, for a date just at the moment. There’s a bar called the Cabin on the upper level, where you can drink and talk and watch the train timetable on a television screen and we know we can make it to our platform in three minutes. It’s our way of being together for as many minutes and seconds as we can, and that we still want to do this is, to me, romantic. The train ride also counts. Once home, domesticity will, we know, swamp us, and by the time we are alone again, our last remaining drops of energy will have been spent on the girls.

  So when the call came, I was on the Strand. A GBH case had taken less time than I’d anticipated, and I was considering texting Seb to tell him I was heading back to chambers and that I’d see him later at home. I took my phone out of my coat pocket, and at the sight of my brother’s name, my body tingled with presentiment. I just knew, as they say.

  ‘Graham,’ I said.

  ‘All right.’ The T hissed; my blood chilled.

  ‘Is it Mum?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  You can prepare yourself for a moment you know is coming. You can make plans, even rehearse it in your mind. I knew my mother was dying. She had been transferred to the hospice a month earlier. I had travelled north the previous weekend, said goodbye just in case. I truly believed I’d made my peace with the inevitable. But now here was Graham telling me that he had held her hand and that she had taken ‘this big breath, a big gasp, like’, then closed her eyes, sending one tear trickling down each side of her face into her near-white hair.

  ‘And then she let go,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘And that was it, like. That was it.’

  My brother doesn’t say much, but he had known, without me asking, that I would need every detail, second by second, and he had given it his best shot. It was his way of including me in the immense and private privilege of our mother’s last moments.

  ‘Thanks for calling,’ I said, which seems ridiculous to me now, like thanking someone for reminding me of a hair appointment or a delivery. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘Yes. I’m meeting Seb.’

  ‘Good. Tell him I said all right.’

  ‘OK. Talk to you tomorrow.’

  I had prepared. But there is no preparation. Nothing can or will help. Any plans you make for yourself and how you will behave will be forgotten. You will be alone, not with loved ones, as planned. You will be alone on the street and you will be crying like you told yourself you would not, and you will descend into precisely the red, snotty mess of your fears, blowing loud sobs into a crowd of strangers, there in your suit and your high-heeled shoes – the armour you were foolish enough to think would protect you. And you will find the sight of so many people carrying on as if nothing has happened so surreal, so fucking offensive, frankly, that you will have to stagger into a side street and find a wall to lean on while you get yourself together enough to text your husband.

  Mum’s gone.

  Seb would still be at work. I wasn’t sure if he’d even have his phone with him; tried not to let that thought fill me with panic. But he rang immediately.

  ‘Hey. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I managed.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The Strand.’

  ‘All right. I can be there in half an hour, three quarters.’ He paused, enough to sense that I couldn’t speak. ‘First one there gets the drinks. I’m on my way, Nick. I’ll see you soon, all right? Walk there. Take the air, look at the beautiful city. Do you want me to stay on the phone?’

  ‘No. No, I’m all right. I’ll see you there.’

  If you were walking across Jubilee Bridge that day, you would have seen a very smartly dressed woman with a great haircut weeping snottily into a shrivelled tissue. Perhaps you would have smiled your sympathy and looked away. But she would not have seen you. That day she didn’t even remember to look at the view: the South Bank Centre, the London Eye, the glorious sweep of the capital’s riverside. And when she arrived at the bar, she had no idea how she had got there.

  Seb was already sitting on the red leather couch at the back. Bottle of white in a silver wine cooler. This didn’t make sense; I’d been nearer to Waterloo than him, but now I think about it, I think I must have wandered about in a daze for a bit. I have a memory of looking at lipsticks in Boots that can only have been that afternoon, a shop assistant asking if she could help me. I never buy lipstick in Boots. The way Seb looked at me as I made my way through the bar was enough to make tears come again. I blinked them back and sank down beside him. He kissed the top of my head.

  ‘Petes,’ he said.

  Story on that: my brother’s nickname for me is posh twat. I’m not, not really, but everything’s relative. When I first met Seb at a juvenile court case long ago, I told him this and it amused him. I don’t know what you’re laughing at, I said. You’re a much posher twat than me. Posh twat became PT, which became Petey, which became Petes. There.

  I let Seb hold me while I cried into the new cashmere jumper I’d bought him for Christmas, the one he said was too expensive for a social worker but which he’d not had off his back.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘This jumper’s dry-clean only,’ Seb replied, which made me laugh while, with the discretion of a priest, a waiter slid a stack of white paper napkins onto the table.

  I took one and pressed it to my face. ‘It’s all right, I cried mos
t of my mascara off on the Strand.’ I met his eye. ‘Don’t say anything kind.’

  ‘All right. Shall I tell you I was called Shrek four times today?’

  I laughed, tears spilling. Seb isn’t ugly, but his ears stick out and his nose is, how can I put it … kind of rickety. Like a contraption that would straighten if you were to wiggle it. We have both broken our noses, actually, though mine was only a hairline fracture, with no lasting disfigurement. And of course Seb’s was broken by a slope at St Anton whereas mine was broken by a fist. His eyes aren’t all that fantastic either, to be honest. With Seb, it’s all about the smile. Think ice caps melting. Think jelly legs. Think this is probably my subjective opinion.

  He had filled my glass, was now topping up his own, saying nothing.

  ‘I’ll be all right in a minute,’ I said.

  ‘I know you will.’ He moved closer along the couch until our thighs touched. He tightened his arm around me and kissed my hair, and I was more grateful for him in that moment than I had been in a while. He is so kind that I forget it. That he would only ever lay his hands on me in affection or desire is something I don’t think about. But I gave silent thanks in that moment for the fact that I’d married a man so unfailingly kind that I have the luxury of letting it slip my mind.