Here We Lie (11 page)

As I reach my car and fumble in my bag for the key, my name echoes across the school car park. I look up. A man in a long, dark overcoat is walking towards me. The last time a stranger
approached me in this car park it was Zoe, shrieking obscenities. I look more closely as the man draws nearer. This is not a stranger. It’s my old boyfriend, Dan, who Laura herself mentioned
the last time we met. I can’t believe it and stare, stupidly, as he approaches. Dan has filled out a little since I last saw him and there are fine lines around his eyes, but otherwise
it’s the same face, the same disarming smile.

‘Em?’ he says again. Then he stops and stares at me.

I stare back, feeling my entire body flushing under his scrutiny. Seeing him is an electric shock to my system. My heart starts racing. My mouth falls open. I even forget that I have no make-up
on and that there’s a huge paint stain on my jacket.

‘Dan?’

‘Hello.’ He grins. It’s the same sexy smile that used to floor me ten years ago. My stomach cartwheels. I clutch at the car. What is going on? What is my ex-boyfriend doing
here? Why is my body reacting like this? I haven’t thought about him since that conversation three months ago and, before then, he hadn’t crossed my mind in years. I realize my mouth is
open and close it. I swallow, my throat too dry to speak.

‘It’s good to see you.’ Dan moves closer, his hand resting on the bonnet of my car. I can see now that his coat and his haircut are both smart and expensive, that he has really
grown into his looks: broad shoulders, full lips, a long, straight nose, cool, grey eyes and dark, wavy hair. My legs feel trembly and I have to lean against the car. I have no idea why my body is
responding like this, but it’s making me angry.

‘How are you?’ Dan asks.

‘Fine.’ The word sounds harsh as I say it, more harsh that I mean it to, but if Dan is fazed by this he doesn’t show it.

‘I came to find you,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

What the hell can he be talking about? It’s eight years since he announced he was taking a job in New York and that it wasn’t practical to think our twenty-month-long relationship
would survive it. I was heartbroken for a long time. Dan, on the other hand, plunged into his new life with gusto, making little effort to stay in touch and stopping altogether within a matter of
months.

What on earth could warrant this sudden reappearance out of the blue? Is he getting married? Becoming a father? No, surely neither of those things would bring him here, like this. Could he be
dying? Or have some terrible disease which has lain dormant for ten years, which I might have caught from him?

I slam the car door shut. ‘So why are you here? What do you want?’

Now Dan does look surprised. He raises his eyebrows, a smile curling around his lips.

‘Not so pleased to see me, Emily Sarah?’ he asks. Sarah was my mother’s name as well as my middle name; and as only my parents ever used the two names together it’s
disconcerting to hear them coming out of Dan’s mouth.

Disconcerting, yet not unpleasant.

‘No, I am, it’s fine.’ I’m still flustered but my body has, at least, calmed down. I don’t know what that initial reaction was about, just shock I guess. ‘How
did you find me?’

‘It wasn’t that hard,’ Dan says. ‘I asked around. It’s cool you’ve made it as a teacher.’

‘Thanks.’ How surreal is this? A group of other teachers cross the car park. They look over and wave. I can see them checking Dan out, wondering who he is. I say nothing, just wave
back.

Dan clears his throat. ‘Look, Em, I’m really sorry just to show up out of the blue.’ He frowns, his forehead wrinkling, and I’m struck again by how he looks the same and
yet different. The eight years that have passed have been good to him. I suddenly wonder how I look in his eyes. I stop leaning against the car roof, straighten my jacket and shake back my hair.
Dan watches, still smiling. I have the uncanny sense that he can see exactly what I’m thinking.

‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘What did you want to tell me?’

Dan’s eyes flicker to my left hand. ‘Nice ring,’ he says. ‘Er, congratulations.’

‘You heard about that too?’

‘About Jed?’ He says the name as if it’s italicized. ‘I already knew. That’s . . . look, can we go somewhere? Get a coffee? There’s a café over the
road. I was waiting there earlier.’

I hesitate. Truth is, I’m equal parts intrigued and annoyed with him. Which is, I reflect, how it always used to be with Dan. I give myself a mental kick. Dan is old news, no longer part
of my life. Still, Jed won’t be back from his conference for hours and I have no plans. Plus, it will be interesting to catch up, to find out what he wants to tell me so badly that he’s
sought me out after eight years of silence.

‘Fine.’ I lock my car and we walk side by side to the café. Dan takes off his coat. He’s wearing a navy suit, expensively cut. He shrugs off the jacket as we sit down.
His pale blue shirt brings out the hint of blue in his grey eyes. I can see now that his new physique – that filled-out body – is partly muscle. I can just make out the cut of his
biceps under the fine cotton of his shirt, though his height stops him from looking bulky or overdeveloped. Everything about him seems so much more manly than I remember. There is a faint rash of
stubble on his chin which I’m certain he never had when he was younger. I check his hands. No rings, no jewellery of any kind. I wonder if he still has the swallow tattoo on his upper right
arm. We were supposed to get them together, but I chickened out at the last moment.

I remove my jacket as the waitress comes over. We order coffees then I sit back. I gaze out of the window. I can almost see my car from here just beyond the edge of the school fence.

I can feel Dan’s gaze lingering on my face.

‘It’s really good to see you, Em,’ he says. ‘It’s been, what, eight years?’

‘That’s right.’ I meet his eyes.

‘Okay, I’ll get to the point. Firstly, I’m still a journalist. After my job in the States I did a short stint in South Africa, then back to the States for the past six years.
Now I’ve moved home and I’m freelancing. There’s a story I started following a couple of weeks ago when I saw your . . . when I saw about your stepdaughter, about what happened in
Corsica.’

‘You read about that?’

Dan nods. ‘I’m so sorry, it must have been awful. You were there, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, but I don’t understand, what’s that—?’

‘I noticed the article because Jed Kennedy was named in it.’ He pauses. ‘As you know, he was in the news back in the summer because he’d just got that minister off. I
noticed him because of his connection to you.’

‘How did you even know we were together?’

‘I’ve known that for a while actually.’ Dan smiles. ‘I still see Charlie and he’s still in touch with Ben who hears about you through Eve.’ He rattles off the
names of mutual friends from uni I haven’t thought about in years. Eve and I used to be close, but now it’s just the occasional drink. I thought everyone I knew back then had lost touch
with Dan when he went to the States years ago. Eve certainly hasn’t mentioned him in ages. Our coffees arrive and Dan takes a slurp then makes a face. ‘I have to say this is not the
greatest cup of coffee ever. The one I had earlier was better.’

‘I’ve never been in here before,’ I say, feeling stupidly defensive. ‘I’m not in the habit of going out around here.’

‘I just meant . . . I’m sorry I suggested this place, it just seemed convenient.’ Dan sets his cup down. He looks at me again, his eyes taking in my hair, my face. I start to
blush over my unbrushed hair and paint stain. Then I shake myself. What does it matter how I look? I’m only here because Dan claims to have something to tell me. Nothing else is
important.

‘You were telling me that you saw an article about Dee Dee,’ I prompt, hoping he can’t see how flustered I’m feeling.

‘Yes.’ Dan says. ‘Which must have been just the most terrible thing to go through.’ He pushes his cup away from him. Mine still sits in front of me, untouched. ‘The
article I saw mentioned the fact that you’d all been on holiday, that you had a headache and Dee Dee’s brother bought some painkillers from a local store that contained traces of
potassium cyanide. Of course it said what happened to poor Dee Dee, then that Jed Kennedy had taken out a civil suit against the manufacturers Benecke Tricorp. I was already aware of a scandal from
South Africa a few years back. Another powder-based painkiller. I used to know people who wrote stuff about faked and substandard drugs. They’re more common than I realized.’ Dan rubs
the back of his head. It’s a tiny gesture, but a terribly familiar one, transporting me straight back to our first proper date. How he took me to the pub, then dinner, eager to hear about my
life, telling me about his job, then rubbing the back of his head in that vulnerable, slightly self-conscious way of his, as he confided his parents were getting divorced after years of growing
apart from each other. Later, he drove me home where he followed me out of the car and kissed me on the street corner in a way that made my legs fold and my entire body tremble. It’s
pointless to make the comparison but with Jed I felt overpowered from day one, as if I’d been knocked off my feet by a tidal wave. Falling for Dan was more like a poison that coursed through
my veins before I’d realized I was even under its influence, taking me over from the inside.

I pull myself together. ‘So you saw a story about Dee Dee and . . .’

‘And at first it looked pretty straightforward: some kind of accident at the factory, or some psycho employee adding potassium cyanide in order to kill people at random.’ Dan pauses.
‘But then I read up on the investigation and it was obvious that there was nothing, not one single shred of evidence that pointed to either of those possibilities. Plus, there have been no
other cases of ExAche containing cyanide.’

‘Well, that could be because they withdrew the powders from sale.’ I frown. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at. There isn’t another explanation. I handed Dee
Dee the sachet myself and the cyanide was inside the sachet. There’s no way it could have got there except when the powders were manufacturered.’

‘Ah,’ Dan says. ‘You see, this is my point. No one found the top of the sachet, did they?’

‘No, they think Dee Dee probably flushed it down the loo when she went to get a glass for her water, but it doesn’t make any difference. I
gave
her the sachet. It was properly
sealed. I would have noticed if it hadn’t been.’

‘Of course, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell
how
it had been sealed,’ Dan goes on. He leans forward, his eyes intent. ‘Suppose the potassium cyanide was
added after the ExAche sachet left the chemist where Jed’s son bought it but
before
you gave it to Dee Dee?’

‘I don’t understand. What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that it’s possible a tiny amount of potassium cyanide was added deliberately to the sachet then resealed so that no one would know. You just said yourself the top
bit of the sachet was never found, so the seal can’t be analysed.’

‘That’s crazy,’ I say. ‘Not one single person who has investigated has suggested that could possibly have happened.’

‘Only because whoever added the potassium cyanide to the sachet knew what they were doing. They knew how to get hold of it for a start and they had enough expertise to reseal the sachet
after adding the poison, so it looked just like all the others in the box. It’s clever, almost a perfect crime.’

‘But it doesn’t make sense. That means it was someone on the holiday! Why would anyone in her family want to kill Dee Dee?’ I ask. Anxiety swirls in my stomach. ‘In fact,
why would
anyone at all
want to kill her?’ I stare at him. ‘Why are you even interested in all this?’

‘Because you’re going to marry Jed Kennedy and . . .’ Dan lowers his voice ‘. . . and you have a right to know.’

‘Know what?’

The chatter in the café fades as Dan lowers his voice further. ‘It’s Lish Kennedy, Jed’s son. I dug around a bit and I found out that he was cautioned last year, when he
was eighteen, for possession.’

‘What . . .
Lish
?’ I shake my head. Jed has never mentioned this. ‘
Drugs?
’

‘It happened a few months before you met Jed, when Lish was in his last term at school. Jed Kennedy is a lawyer with a lot of clever friends and the argument was that Lish was simply in
possession of a bit of grass, a line of coke and a few E’s – all for his own consumption. But as far as I can make out from the volumes and the drugs involved, he was actually supplying
them to his classmates. Normally for Class A’s it’s a custodial sentence but, like I say, Lish just got a caution.’

‘No,’ I say. I can’t believe this. Or that Jed wouldn’t have told me something so serious.

‘Okay, so that’s in the past and obviously Lish didn’t have drugs on him when Dee Dee died, or the police would have found them, but it’s a drug connection so I get
suspicious and I keep digging, which includes going to where the guy is at uni, and hey presto, when I ask around there I’m told he’s the go-to person for all sorts of illegal stuff:
mostly pharmaceutical drugs, like Viagra and Vicodin. Basically, if it’s chemicals you want, Lish Kennedy can get them for you at a knock-down price.’

‘You’re saying he’s a drug dealer?’ I stare at him, horrified.

‘Exactly – specializing in illicit pharmaceuticals. He’s known for it at his uni.’

No way. I can’t believe it. Apart from anything else, Lish surely doesn’t have the confidence to peddle drugs – and it would totally go against the way Jed has brought him
up.

‘It’s a weird coincidence, don’t you think?’ Dan goes on. ‘That some grungy posh boy who deals in pharmaceutical drugs at college is also the person who basically
hands his sister a packet of ExAche containing potassium cyanide.’

‘That’s ridiculous. For a start, I took one sachet on the boat and I was fine, then it was my brother who gave me the second sachet to take away with me.’

‘And who gave the second sachet to Martin? I bet it was Jed’s son.’