Those Who Lie, page 12
Emily opened the box and gasped with delight at the sapphire and crystal heart-shaped pendant on a white gold chain.
‘It’s gorgeous, thank you,’ she said as Greg did up the clasp behind her neck.
It was some minutes before Greg irresolutely asked her what she made of all this talk of forgeries and fakes. ‘Does your work really look like that Russian artist’s? What was his name again? Kandinsky?’
‘Greg, I hope you’ll give Mr Kipling his money back,’ Emily said, ignoring his questions, ‘and I’d like you to promise me not to try to double-cross anyone like that again.’
‘I promise,’ Greg said, looking Emily in the eyes. ‘It was the first time, but it will be the last. And I’ll make it up to Mr Kipling. You have my word.’
Lying on the bed, Emily slid the heart pendant from side to side on its chain around her neck. She watched Greg as he undressed. His eyes were still shining and his cheeks were bright pink. She believed him. After all, Greg was a decent man, and an honest one. Usually. He would keep his promise. She knew he wouldn’t lie to her on their wedding night. At least, she certainly hoped he wouldn’t.
Chapter Thirteen
~
Oxford, December 2014
Emily knows it wouldn’t take much to unhinge her completely, but for now she’s holding it together. Just about. The familiar warning signs that she’s heading for a depressive episode are there, but no one seems to have noticed them yet. Except Emily herself, of course. She is having uncontrollable mood swings, feeling euphoric at times and irritable at others. And she has boundless energy, which she has been making the most of to try and find some answers.
She has contacted the telephone company to ask them if they can trace the number of the person who called her. She has checked over every inch of Greg’s Range Rover inside and out, looking for something – anything – that might show it was used in a pop-up ad or driven to Port Meadow. She has even been into every men’s clothes shop in town searching for similar red jumpers to Greg’s and questioning bewildered shopkeepers about customers who might have bought one.
But every single one of these ideas has led to a dead end. And for a few weeks now, apart from two more phone calls, nothing has happened. Emily refuses to allow herself to be lulled into a false sense of security, though. She knows that this can’t last, any more than her hyperactivity.
The depressive phase is on its way; she’s sure of that. She hasn’t been depressed for about eight years. Last time, it was triggered off by an unfortunate event that she’d had trouble coping with. It was the same incident, in fact, that led to Amanda and Richard’s break-up.
No one talks about that now. It’s almost as if it never happened. And ever since then, Emily has felt relatively stable. But for the last few days, her stability has felt precarious. She has had the presentiment that something dreadful is just around the corner. She keeps telling herself that it’s just her imagination, but the expectation lies heavy in her stomach.
~
It’s her birthday, and she has woken up sitting on the floor of her workshop with her head on her arms and pins and needles in her fingers. She can’t have slept for more than a couple of hours. She doesn’t need much sleep at the moment. She remembers seeing daylight before she finally decided to rest for a while. For now, that’s all she can remember. Last night’s events are sketchy, at best, in her head. She looks around her. What was I doing in here?
Last time Emily was depressed, she didn’t have any memory gaps. She sometimes forgot to do things, but that’s hardly the same thing. She seems to be blanking things out from her mind. She still hasn’t recalled all the details of the accident, for one thing. And now she can’t remember what she did last night! She feels as if two entities are fighting inside her head to take control: one of them wants her to get to the truth; the other is trying to protect her from the truth, and maybe even from herself.
Part of her wants to tell Amanda about this, but she knows she can’t. She knows what Amanda will say. The same thing that Dr Irvine, her psychiatrist at the Centre used to say: that Emily’s memory gaps were associated with her alter. And Emily doesn’t want to admit to herself that her sister might have been right all along. Perhaps ‘Em’ was real. And if that’s so, then maybe she’s back.
Emily stares at the list in front of her on the table as though seeing it for the first time. Although it isn’t as neat as usual, it’s unquestionably her handwriting. It looks as if she has scrawled down the ideas chasing each other around in her head before they escaped her altogether. There’s no doubt in her mind that this is her work, but she doesn’t recall writing these notes at all.
She was very wired last night. What did I do? What on earth did I get up to? Nebulous images start to come back to her. Oh no, she groans as she remembers ringing Josh at midnight and inviting him round. He didn’t need much persuading, as she’d expected. Inevitably they had sex – more than once – and then she asked him to leave.
What happened next? She hasn’t slept much, that’s for sure; she was far too agitated for that. She has been having difficulty sleeping for some time now, but last night was different. She has also lost her appetite – and consequently, a lot of weight – over the past few months.
Last time he visited, Matt deftly rolled three joints and left them for her. He told her the marijuana would fix her insomnia and make her hungry. She’d kept them in one of the underwear drawers in her walk-in wardrobe. Now she remembers smoking all three of them in bed after Josh left. Perhaps that’s what caused the memory gaps, she thinks.
The cannabis didn’t help her sleep, though. And she’s fairly certain she didn’t get the munchies, either. She knows she really needs antidepressants and lithium mood stabilisers, not recreational drugs. When this manic period abates, she’ll come down with a terrifying thud. It might take anything from a few weeks to several months, but at some stage she will inexorably be swamped in an asphyxiating black fog.
She looks down again at the piece of A4 paper in front of her. There are three columns, apparently drawn up with a ruler, with the paper in landscape orientation. It starts off with relatively even letters, but the writing in the third column is almost illegible. Emily supposes her thoughts must have been racing out of control by this point. The headings are written in capital letters and underlined.
In the column on the left, Emily has noted:
PROOF THAT GREG IS ALIVE:
1) He sent two Facebook messages.
2) He was at Port Meadow.
3) He phoned three times.
3) It was definitely Greg in the photo taken in front of the Old Manor House (banner ad).
In the middle column Emily reads:
WHY HASN’T HE COME HOME?
1) He is being held against his will.
2) He is in hiding because he has swindled a customer who wants revenge.
3) He has faked his death in order to obtain insurance money.
4) He is living with his mistress.
On the right-hand side of her sheet of paper, Emily has jotted down questions she has been asking herself recently. It doesn’t look like she has come up with any answers yet.
THINGS THAT DON’T MAKE SENSE:
1) What does my father have to do with this? (He came up in the argument in the car.)
2) Does Sergeant Campbell think the car accident was deliberate? Why?
3) What was Greg doing at my childhood home (photo in pop-up ad)?
4) Why didn’t Greg speak to me at Port Meadow?
5) Who is Greg’s mistress? Do I know her?
6) If Greg is dead, who is doing this? Why?
7) Chequebook stubs: WTF???
Emily hasn’t received any more Facebook messages since she followed Josh’s advice and changed all the passwords. She has been contacted three more times, but each time it was by telephone. On one of those occasions, Greg – if indeed the caller was Greg – simply said he needed her. In the other two phone calls, he asked her to speak so that he could hear her voice. Each time she was in floods of tears after the call had ended abruptly.
Emily examines her notes again. She wonders why Greg would need to illegally claim on his life insurance. She’s also puzzled by question number seven. The acronym seems less like something Emily would use and more like something Pippa would write in a text message. But more importantly, what chequebook stubs?
Then something comes back to her. She sees an image of herself in the middle of a tidying frenzy in Greg’s study during the night. She must have cleared up his study before she came down to her studio to scribble down her thoughts.
Emily makes her way upstairs to Greg’s study. Opening the door and setting foot in the office, she gasps at the sight that meets her. Even though she has a vague memory of tidying the room, she somehow expected to see an absolute mess.
The documents, which before were strewn across Greg’s desk, are now sorted into three neat piles. On the first document in each stack is a coloured Post-it. Emily walks up to the desk and reads what she has written on each one: ‘URGENT’, ‘TO BE FILED AWAY’ and ‘MISCELLANEOUS’.
She flicks through a pile of bank statements, colour-coded yellow for ‘to be filed away’. She notices that she has organised them according to date. At first glance, Greg’s business doesn’t seem to have been doing well, but it doesn’t appear to have been going under, either. Emily will have to check the accounts more attentively later.
On Greg’s corkboard on one of the walls, Emily has taken down the holiday postcards that were displayed there. In their place, she has pinned up a meeting chart sheet. It shows a to-do list written in black marker. She reads the names of customers she has apparently decided she should ring about matters concerning Greg’s business. Unpaid bills, for example. She has also written the names of companies she needs to contact, particularly about car and life insurance policies. The phone numbers are noted, too.
Strangely, just as for the piece of paper in her workshop, it’s as if Emily has never laid eyes on the chart and the Post-its before. But again, she recognises her handwriting, even though it’s messier than usual.
As she scans the room in awe, Emily sees that she has even separated the rubbish into ‘recycling’ and ‘waste bin’. She’s stunned that she has been so meticulous and efficient.
Suddenly, she realises the chequebook stubs have slipped her mind. Where could they be? She spots Greg’s briefcase against the wall and opens it. Inside is a chequebook, but it’s his business one. She thumbs through it but nothing strikes her as out of the ordinary.
Instinctively, she walks back to Greg’s desk and opens the drawers. The middle one contains several chequebooks bound with an elastic band with one of her pink Post-its marked URGENT!!! She pulls off the rubber band and sees that she has highlighted the payee on a number of the cheque stubs. She stares incredulously at the name.
Emily’s legs buckle from under her and she sinks into Greg’s office chair. I don’t get it, she thinks. She makes herself start at the beginning of the first chequebook and counts the stubs she has highlighted. What is this? She wipes her clammy hands on her jeans before taking a sheet of paper from the bottom drawer of the desk and grabbing a pen from the pot. She jots down the dates and the corresponding figures.
The amount of each payment has increased over a period of around a year from June 2013 until July 2014. The first cheque was made out for £2,000 and the last one is for £20,000. She looks at the date of the last cheque again: 4th July 2014. The date of her tenth wedding anniversary. The month before Greg’s death.
She finds a calculator in another drawer and works out the total: £50,000. That’s a huge amount of money! And Greg has made out all the cheques to the same person! Emily can’t imagine why on earth such a large sum of money has changed hands between the two of them. Why did Greg keep me in the dark about this? Emily wonders. It’s not as if I don’t know the payee. But she’s sure there must have been a good reason. And she is determined to find out what it is.
She needs to talk to someone about this. Now. The obvious choice is Amanda. Emily doesn’t have her mobile on her and she has no idea where she has left it. She has no numbers saved in the landline memory, so she uses the telephone in the office to ring her own iPhone. Stepping out onto the landing, she hears her ringtone coming from her bedroom.
But when Emily calls Amanda from her mobile, she gets her sister’s voicemail. Sitting on her bed, she leaves a message. She tries to sound casual, although she is desperate to hear what Amanda has to say about this. She’s also slightly annoyed that Amanda hasn’t rung yet to wish her a happy birthday. It’s gone noon, after all.
She toys with the idea of ringing Pippa. She may be able to shed some light on this mystery. But before Emily can make up her mind, her mobile starts simultaneously ringing and vibrating in her hand. The caller ID shows that it’s Matt.
Assuming her brother is calling for her birthday, she affects a joyful tone in spite of the shock she has just received in Greg’s study.
‘Hello, Em.’ Matt’s voice is funereal. Somehow Emily knows she’s in for an even bigger shock.
‘What’s wrong?’ Emily asks.
‘I… Mum…’ He starts to cry.
‘Calm down, Matt.’ He hasn’t cried in front of her since he was a little boy.
It’s a few seconds before Matt can get his words out, but it seems a lot longer to Emily.
‘Mum’s dead, Em.’ He speaks so quietly that Emily isn’t sure if she has heard correctly.
‘What…? How…? When…?’
‘Late last night. We think. I spoke to her…on the phone…around eight o’clock.’ Matt is overcome with emotion and Emily waits impatiently but silently for more information. ‘I found her…this morning.’
‘Oh, God. Oh, Matt.’ Emily fights against the lump that has risen in her throat. She knows that Matt’s struggling to keep a grip, so she can’t go to pieces.
‘What happened?’
‘She fell off the wagon and down the stairs.’
‘What?’ Emily can’t believe her ears. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, that’s the official line, anyway.’ There’s a hard edge to Matt’s voice now and he is more articulate. ‘That’s what the ambulance crew and the doctors said. The police think so, too. They say she was drunk and lost her footing on the stairs.’
‘You don’t believe that?’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’
‘Neither was I. But Mum hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol for over three years.’ Matt’s speech is slow, but still coherent. ‘She was fine. She sounded happy on the phone yesterday evening.’
‘Matt, I’ll pack a bag and drive down immediately.’
‘OK. Can you tell Amanda?’
‘Yes. I rang her just now actually, but I didn’t get through. I’ll try again.’ Emily thinks she’s giving a reasonable impression of being in control, but she can’t keep up the pretence much longer. ‘It’s all right, Matt. I’m on my way.’
Matt is sobbing as Emily ends the call. Her hands shaking, she scrolls down to Amanda’s number. She leaves another message, her tone distinctly different from the first one.
As she throws some clothes into a suitcase, barely able to see through her tears, Emily replays the conversation with Matt in her head. Josephine had had a drinking problem on and off through most of Emily’s life and all of Matt’s. Emily thinks it probably started around the time her father began his visits to her bedroom at night.
Over the years, Josephine made – and broke – numerous promises never to touch alcohol again. Time and time again Emily had seen her go back to the whiskey. They had all been so pleased that Josephine had managed to stay dry for so long this time. But Matt had really believed in their mother. Maybe he’d been too optimistic. Maybe he hadn’t seen her fail as many times as Emily had.
It must have been an accident. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. If Matt’s right and Josephine didn’t die because she fell drunkenly down the stairs, what could have happened? Surely Matt doesn’t really think their mother’s death is suspicious, does he?
Chapter Fourteen
~
Oxford, 23rd July 2006
The last time Emily had sunk into to an episode of depression, it had really started on the tenth anniversary. She’d been feeling very low for a few weeks, anyway, but then Richard showed up on her doorstep in tears. The problem between him and Amanda was what finally pushed her over the edge.
Emily had only met Richard twice. The first time was after a play in which he and Amanda had had the leading roles. On the second occasion, she and Greg had gone out to lunch with them at The White Horse in the city centre.
Amanda and Richard had known each other for a while from their Amateur Dramatic Club, but they’d only been dating for about six months. Amanda hadn’t told Emily about it until three months ago. Emily had found Richard pleasant, although his flattery of her sister was a bit corny, and his puns were cringeworthy. He was plainly infatuated with Amanda. But, observing Amanda’s attitude and body language towards Richard, Emily was convinced that her sister wasn’t nearly so in love with him.
‘Richard! What on earth is the matter?’ It occurred to Emily that she’d never seen a grown man cry. ‘You’d better come in.’ She stood back to let Richard pass. She wondered how he’d known where she lived.
‘It was an accident,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want her to kill it!’
‘Richard, I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ Emily said in what she hoped was a soothing voice. She led him to the sofa in the living room, and waited patiently while he pulled himself together. She pushed a box of tissues towards him along the coffee table. He blew his nose loudly, and then balled up the tissue in his hand.
