Here We Lie (40 page)

I clench my jaw. ‘Did it happen in Corsica?’

Rose gives a swift nod. ‘Yes. Once. But that was the very last time. Jed said it had to be, that we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing, it was wrong and . . . and sooner or later
someone would find out. I’m not sure if we would have been able to stop, though I swear we both meant to . . . but then Dee Dee died and . . .’ She sighs. ‘Honestly, Emily, I
never
wanted to take him away from you, I just wanted him to want me.’ Her voice cracks. ‘You’ve got no idea what it meant to me, such a handsome, powerful man hungry for
me
. He was like the perfect version of Brian . . . what I thought Brian was when I met him.’

‘Brian?’ I think of the harassed-looking man who dropped off the big bunch of arum lilies on Rose’s birthday. ‘So you’ve secretly being going out with this Brian as
well?’

‘No.’ Rose frowns. ‘Well, we see each other from time to time, but it’s nothing serious. And Jed wasn’t serious either – at least, not a serious threat to
you. Anyway, you didn’t really want him, did you?’

‘Don’t try and fucking justify it.’ Fury fills me. Before I know what I’m doing I’m across the room, facing Rose down. She shrinks away. I can’t believe it.
My own sister.

Dee Dee’s phone is clammy in my hand. And, suddenly, the whole horrific picture falls into place.

‘Dee Dee saw!’ I gasp.
‘Dee Dee found out.’

‘Yes,’ Rose admits. ‘The silly girl saw us upstairs at your engagement party. She must have come up to use the bathroom. She can’t have seen much, but probably enough to
make her a bit confused. I saw her walking away and I wanted to make sure she was clear that there was nothing going on between me and her father. So . . . I debated telling Jed but I thought it
would freak him out too much and then I thought about having a word with Dee Dee myself. But I knew I couldn’t compete with you in getting “down with the youth” so I decided it
was best to pretend to be one myself.’

I hold up the phone. My hand is shaking. ‘You’re “Bex”?’

‘I made friends with her, convinced her she must have misunderstood what she’d seen. Of course when Jed came to my room on our holiday and she saw us together it was impossible to
pretend any longer.’ Rose sighs. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I found the phone and saw she’d filmed our kiss, not that I think she meant to, but still . . .’ Her eyes
grow soft, almost dreamy.

I stare at her in horror. ‘You kept the phone so you’d have the texts safe – and the video as . . . as a
memento
of you and Jed?’

Rose nods again.

My stomach lurches, bile rising into my throat. ‘So it wasn’t Lish or Cameron.
You
killed her, just to stop her telling me about you and Jed.’

Rose looks up, her expression hardening as it meets mine. ‘
Kill
her? No, of course I didn’t
kill
her.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I say.

Rose’s mouth gapes as I head for the door. ‘You think I’m capable of
murder
?’ She looks horrified.

‘You’re capable of sleeping with my fiancé,’ I counter. ‘I don’t know what else you’d do. I don’t know who you are any more.’

‘Emily, I’m—’

‘Shut up.’ My heart thuds, fast and painful, in my chest. Sickened, I push past her into my room. I grab my bag.

‘Where are you going?’ Rose is on the landing.

‘I need to tell Jed what you’ve done to Dee Dee,’ I say. ‘I need to call the police.’

‘No, Emily.’ Rose’s lip trembles. ‘I didn’t touch her, I just told her that I was really Bex, and that she’d regret it if she said anything to you about me
and Jed kissing, that she was too young to understand that it really wasn’t something to be talking about. I kept her phone after she died because you all thought it was missing anyway and I
saw that Dee Dee had retrieved all the stuff I’d deleted and there was Jed and me on the film and I couldn’t bear to get rid of it all over again, especially once I realized it . . .
him and me . . . was never going to happen again . . . but it had to be a secret. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What counts is that I tried to make sure you’d never know. Don’t you
see? I was trying to protect you.’

I push past her again and walk to the stairs, my eyes blurring with tears. I don’t know any longer what is true and what isn’t or how to work it out. Everything that I thought was
certain has been thrown into the air.

‘I didn’t hurt Dee Dee,’ Rose says. ‘You’ll see the truth on her phone. And when you do, if you have any scrap of humanity in your soul, if you care about
any
of us you will let this go.’

Ignoring her, I hurry down the stairs.

Rose’s voice echoes after me. ‘I sacrificed everything for you, Emily, and never asked for a thing in return. I gave up a career, a love life, I even gave up Jed. I have suffered for
you. Lost
everything
.’

I reach the front door. I turn. I look up at her. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘But Dee Dee still died. And someone has to
pay.’

I shut the door, but I can still hear Rose storming down the stairs.

‘I haven’t breathed a word about Dee Dee for
his
sake. I’m just asking you to do the same.
Please,
Emily.’ Her voice fades as I reach the pavement.

I dart inside my car and slam shut the door so I can’t hear her any more. Without looking around, I quickly put a couple of streets between us, then I park. I am tempted just to go
straight to the police, tell them what I know. But maybe I should look at Dee Dee’s phone first, to see what Rose was saying.

I switch it on. Whatever it tells me, somebody is guilty.

Somebody should pay.

I can’t believe it. I can’t take it in. My friend Bex wasn’t real. She was Rose, Emily’s sister who I saw with Daddy. She came into my room in the
villa here after Emily went and she told me that she had been pretending to be Bex with a fake photo and made-up stories and now the pretending needed to stop. She said that it was really important
I didn’t tell Emily I saw her kissing Daddy. And I didn’t know what to say so I just looked at the bed and Rose sat beside me and said though she didn’t have her own children she
looked after Emily when she was my age and that there were things you think you understand when you’re thirteen that you don’t really.

And in my head I was thinking that what I did understand was that everyone had been lying to everyone else. But I didn’t say anything. So Rose leaned in and said all softly that if I
told Emily, Emily would just hate me EVEN MORE. I looked up then because I was surprised Rose was saying Emily hated me AT ALL because Emily is always so nice and Rose said that just today Emily
was saying how fat I looked and how embarrassing it was for Jed to have such a fat child. And Rose said that if I told Emily then ‘all hell would break loose’ and Mum and Daddy would
resent me more than they do and I still didn’t say anything but I couldn’t stop tears itching in my eyes. And Rose saw and said she understood how hard it was but it was obvious that
Daddy found me irritating and Mum had complained I was withdrawn, then she said if I talked to Mum she would be upset ‘and you don’t want to upset your mother, do you?’ and if
Daddy knew what I’d seen he would hate me for ruining things with Emily. So Rose went on that I needed to think about other people and not be selfish and that I needed to keep the
secret.

Then she gave me my phone which I’d lost a bit earlier and she said SHE had taken it and she’d deleted our texts and my film of her and Daddy and that if I promised not to say
anything I could have it back. She asked if I would promise and I said nothing so she asked again and I nodded though I still hadn’t looked up properly because my eyes were still all prickly
with tears. And she asked a third time and this time I looked up and I whispered ‘yes’ and Rose said ‘good girl’ and she left.

Once she went I thought I would cry but in fact I didn’t, I just lay in the dark on my pillow with my phone and I got back the texts and the film of Rose and Daddy because Rose had just
put them in the trash and it was easy to get them back and I needed to see they were real but in the end what was the point because I looked at all the texts from Bex who WASN’T real and
WASN’T really my friend though I thought she was my ONLY friend, and I remembered all the giggling and pointing and picking on me from everyone at school and how that would start again soon
in just a week or so when we were back from holiday and the new term started.

And I thought about Emily and how nice she’d been before, then what Rose said about what she really thought of me. And I wondered for a minute if Rose was making it up, then I
remembered hearing Daddy say yesterday to Emily in one of his loud supposed-to-be-funny whispers that maybe I broke the strap on my sandals because I was too heavy for them and how she laughed and
then, this afternoon, when I was taking pictures of her and me up at that citad-thingy place where you can see the sea I said I should take a second photo because I looked so terrible in the first
one and Emily agreed and I realize that she thinks I’m fat and stupid, just like everyone else. And anyway, in the end Mummy’s right:

Emily took Daddy away from us.

And that’s when everything started to go wrong.

I went over to the window where outside everything is hot and dark and I knew I didn’t want to go back to school and I knew I couldn’t explain to anyone why and that’s when
I decided.

So I tore the top off the headache powders and scrunched it up and put it down the loo and got a glass then I went along the corridor to Lish’s room where he was asleep and I found his
bag under the bed and I got out the packet he took before with the crystals that he said were ‘f-word lethal’ and I tipped a teeny tiny bit, less than a quarter of a teaspoon, of the
crystals into the headache powders Emily gave me then I put the crystals packet back exactly where I found it in Lish’s bag so Lish wouldn’t know and get mad, then I picked up my glass
and came back in here. I put in some water from my bottle and mixed in the headache powders that contained the teeny bit of crystals and sat on the bed.

So here is the drink and I am going to have it now. I don’t know what it will do, maybe just give me stomach cramps and I’ll be sick.

Or maybe it will be enough and in the morning they’ll find me.

Then the pain will stop.

Then it will all be over.

Then they’ll all be sorry.

Two months to the day since Martin’s funeral I take the recording to Zoe and Jed. Why have I waited so long? Partly because I wanted to spare them the knowledge that
their daughter died so pointlessly, in so much anguish. Partly because it can’t change anything.

And partly because of the deep guilt I feel that I was so blind to Dee Dee’s unhappiness, that among all the adults who failed her, I have to count myself.

Rose, of course, is totally against them seeing the recordings. But I don’t care what Rose thinks. I haven’t spoken to her for weeks. Straight after I’d watched Dee Dee’s
diaries I took all my things from the house and stored them in Laura and Jamie’s attic, directly above their tiny spare room where I’m still sleeping. I know I’m in the way here,
with the new baby due soon, but I keep to myself as much as possible and babysit for them twice a week, so for the time being it’s okay. They don’t know what I’ve found out. The
only person I’ve told is Dan and it’s him, as much as anything, who persuades me at last that Dee Dee’s parents deserve to know how she died.

‘However painful it is,’ he says. ‘Just think about it. You’d want to know if she was your daughter, wouldn’t you?’

I would. Dan still wants me to come and live with him. After initially hating the idea of leaving London, he’s found himself a great job on a regional paper in Yorkshire where he can see
Lulu every weekend. I’ve been up to stay and met her and Carrie and Gill. I like them all but it seems like a huge upheaval to move there myself. If I’m going to hand in my notice at
work, I’ll have to decide soon. But not yet. First I have to pass on what I know about Dee Dee’s death: before I can allow myself a future, I have to deal with the lies of the past.

I park outside Zoe’s house. Jed’s car is in the drive. Well, that’s no surprise. I’d assumed they would both be here. I just hope Jed isn’t
proposing to ambush me while I’m here, to press me to go back to him. I can’t think he will, not after not contacting me for all these weeks, not after the whole horrendous business
with Martin. I haven’t heard from Jed at all in fact, though I have heard that the case against Benecke Tricorp has been dropped. I swing between hating him for pushing Cameron into reaching
for that knife and rationalizing that Jed’s fury was understandable and that everything that happened afterwards was a terrible accident.

I check my bag for Dee Dee’s phone and walk steadily up the path to Zoe’s front door. The last time I was here was when I waited outside after Dee Dee’s funeral. That feels
like a million years ago. I take a deep breath as I ring the doorbell, bracing myself. I have no idea how Zoe will react to me. She sounded okay on the phone, but I know how deeply she loathes me,
though perhaps she has calmed down a bit now it seems Lish is unlikely to serve a custodial sentence. As the lawyers prepare for the court case, everything I hear about it suggests he has given the
police masses of information they can use against Cameron. Not that Cameron has been hard to crack. He is, by all accounts, clinically depressed, mourning my brother. Under other circumstances I
would have shared my grief with him and my sister. But now I mourn alone.

The door opens. Zoe appears, smart and slim in beige cut-offs and an open-necked powder-blue shirt.

‘Come in.’ I follow her into the nearest room. It’s a dining room, dominated by a big polished wood table with old-fashioned dark wood cabinets across one wall. It is far more
formal and expensive-looking than anything in my home with Jed was. Jed himself is sitting at the table. He looks up as I walk in and I’m shocked to see how old and tired he seems, the grey
hairs outnumbering the brown, his face lined and sagging with grief.