Here We Lie (6 page)

‘
Qu’est-ce que c’est
?’ Chabrol asks. He turns to Meunière, who places his hands on the table between us.

‘What is it, Emily?’

I gulp. ‘Some painkillers, she took them just before she went to bed, at least I assume she did.’ I pause, trying to remember the exact sequence of events. ‘She said she had a
headache, so I gave the sachet to her, then I left. But . . . but I took the same thing earlier on in the evening and I was fine.’ I stop, my mind leaping and whirling at the thought that the
ExAche powders could have had anything to do with Dee Dee’s death.

Meunière translates and Chabrol leans forward. He asks me exactly when I left the sachet with Dee Dee. I tell him, then he asks me to explain everything I did that evening. I go over it
again, describing how we ate our meal on the boat and how Dee Dee picked at her fish, then later said that she’d lost her phone. It’s like I’m disconnected from myself as I speak.
My mind is replaying the moment I handed the sachet to Dee Dee. Did she take the powders? Suppose she had an allergic reaction? Or suppose she was too young for them? I’m sure I checked the
small print to make sure of the dosage. I remember because it was in English. Just like a Lemsip, okay to take for over twelves. I rub my forehead. I need to call Martin, tell him not to touch the
rest of the powders. I break off to explain this to Chabrol. He barks something in French before Meunière has even finished translating.

Meunière frowns. ‘He wants you to explain exactly what you did again?’

‘Okay, but will you send someone to check about the powders?’

Chabrol speaks. Meunière translates. ‘You don’t need to worry, we will do our job.’

‘I know,’ I say, ‘Of course. I just can’t bear to think I might have misunderstood the dose or . . . or . . .’ My stomach is twisted into hard, painful knots. I
glance outside to where Jed is still talking with Gary. Our eyes meet. The pain in his expression is indescribable. Tears well up, my throat tight, my heart aching for him.

Jed strides to the French doors. As he opens them I can hear Gary protesting, telling him to come back, but Jed is stony-faced.

‘What’s going on?’ he demands. ‘Why is my fiancée looking so upset?’

‘It’s fine, Jed—’ But before I can say more Chabrol is on his feet, gesticulating and speaking rapid-fire French. All of a sudden Jed is shouting in French, then Gary is
by his side trying to calm him. Chabrol is talking over them both. All I can think is that upstairs, poor Dee Dee is lying dead, that she died alone, in her own vomit.

Meunière touches my arm. ‘Go and call your brother,’ he says quietly. I rush away, my tears now trickling down my cheek. Martin’s phone is still out of range so I leave
a hiccupy message, then go back to the kitchen. Gary is sitting at the table, his head in his hands.

‘Where’s Jed?’ I ask.

‘Up with the inspector, talking to Lish. They want to know where he bought the headache powders from.’

‘So Dee Dee did take them?’

Gary nods. ‘They’ve found the empty sachet by her glass, looks like she mixed it with some bottled water. They’re taking the whole lot off to be analysed.’

I nod, numbly. It all still feels so unreal. Two long hours pass while the police officers cordon off Dee Dee’s room. Her body has been superficially examined. There’s no sign that
she has been attacked, which leaves some kind of poisoning the most likely cause of death. As a result, the entire villa is thoroughly – and fruitlessly – searched for drugs while
Chabrol questions and re-questions everyone. Jed stays upstairs with Lish. I haven’t seen him since he harangued Chabrol. By midday the sun is scorching, high in the sky. Gary comes over and
tells me in a solemn whisper that the body is about to be removed, that he and Jed will go with poor Dee Dee to the morgue. He asks me to keep Iveta and Rose outside by the swimming pool.

I go and sit with them, the three of us perched side by side on one of the loungers. Jed and Gary leave with the police officials and suddenly, after hours of frantic bustle and panic, the house
falls silent. I head up to Lish’s room but he doesn’t answer my knock. As I pass the police tape across Dee Dee’s door I suddenly remember the secret she hinted yesterday that she
wanted to tell me, something she saw. Guilt wraps its cold fingers around my throat. I forgot all about it after Jed and I got back to the boat. Feeling sick, I seek out Rose and tell her how
terrible I feel. She hugs me through her tears.

‘It was probably nothing, you know what girls are like,’ she soothes. ‘Anyway, if it had been important, Dee Dee would have made sure she told someone.’

I pray that she is right.

Another hour passes. I try to call Jed, but his mobile goes to voice mail.

‘Just calling to see how you’re doing . . .’ I check myself. What a stupid question. How on earth do I think he will be doing? ‘Just want you to know I love you.’ I
ring off.

I wander around the living room of the villa, still numb, lost. Absently I clear the wine glasses Gary and Iveta used last night. As I’m placing them in the sink, Martin calls at last.
‘Oh, Emily.’ The love and concern in his voice finally releases my own tears. I bawl my eyes out as I tell Martin everything. To my relief, he reassures me that neither he nor Cameron
have touched the ExAche sachets which the police seem to think are the most likely cause of Dee Dee’s death and that they are already on their way back to Calvi. They arrive a few hours
later, shortly followed by yet another police officer who takes statements from them both. Rose insists that we all try to eat, though nobody has any appetite. All I can think is that Dee Dee is
gone and that poor Jed must be hurting beyond anything I can imagine. He calls at last, shortly after nightfall. He is with Dee Dee’s mother, Zoe, who has gone straight to the morgue and is
sitting with their daughter’s body. Jed sounds empty, wiped out.

‘Zoe will have to stay with us at the villa,’ he says.

‘Oh.’ I can’t help the sharp intake of breath with which I receive this news. I understand, of course. But I cannot imagine what on earth it will be like to be under the same
roof as a woman who has made it so clear she hates me. ‘Do you want me and Rose to . . . to find a hotel?’ I ask, thinking that maybe this will be easiest.

‘I just want you to deal with it,’ he says dully.

‘Of course, of course.’ My stomach churns with anxiety. ‘I was just thinking of what would be easiest for Zoe.’

‘She’s lost her daughter,’ he says, his voice strained to breaking point. ‘It seriously won’t make any difference where she sleeps.’

‘I’ll . . . I’ll make up Lish’s bed for her, he can take the sofa downstairs,’ I say, eager to be helpful. ‘I’ve seen where the linen
cup—’

‘She wants to sleep in Dee Dee’s room.’

‘But . . . but the police have put tape across the door.’ This is not really my overriding concern, but saying it seems morbid to take the girl’s bed seems unhelpful.

‘That won’t stop Zoe,’ Jed says with a sigh. ‘We’ll be back in an hour or so.’

As soon as Rose hears about Zoe’s imminent arrival she suggests that she should leave the villa with Martin and Cameron and spend the night on the
Maggie May
. ‘So as not to be
in the way,’ she says, ‘then Zoe can have my room, if she wants.’

I agree, not just for the room but because it seems best that there aren’t too many people here when Jed and Zoe arrive.

After the others leave I check on Iveta, who is asleep, then on Lish, who appears to be drinking his way through the bottle of whisky that Gary bought the night we arrived. He receives the news
that his parents are on their way with a miserable shrug. The stars and the moon light the sky. It feels like years since this morning. I am ridiculously nervous at the prospect of seeing Zoe
again. Her angry rant in the school car park rings in my ears. Still, maybe losing Dee Dee will put all that in perspective. Most of all, I hope my presence here doesn’t make this terrible
evening any worse for her. I pour myself a glass of wine. My hands are shaking. I take a sip and then the front door key turns in the lock.

My legs carry me across the open-plan living room as the door opens and Jed and his ex walk in.

My life is OVER. Seriously. I want to die. Everything is as bad as it could be. And I am SO stupid to have thought it would ever be any different. It started with those year
ten girls giggling on Friday, then on Saturday Mum took me and Ava and Poppy and Marietta Hingis – who doesn’t go to my school but who we have to include because she, like, thinks
she’s best friends with me though really it’s Ava – to Pizza Paradise in Muswell Hill which is near where Daddy lives now with Emily but we didn’t see them because Mum is
still angry about Daddy coming late last Friday and anyway it isn’t my weekend with him. So, like, everything was cool with Marietta but Ava and Poppy were REALLY weird, like they
didn’t want to be there, like they’d only ever been my friends because we got sat next to each other right at the start of the year and they’d been stuck with me ever since. They
kept whispering to each other and shaking their heads like there was some BIG problem they couldn’t tell me. They left early too, even though we were all supposed to be having a sleepover.
Ava said she had to go home cos her cousins were visiting and Poppy said she wasn’t feeling well though only after she’d eaten almost a whole pizza. In the end it was just me and
Marietta which REALLY sucked. Though if that was the worst thing about it, I wouldn’t care. But now I know. I know why the year ten girls were giggling and I know why Ava and Poppy
didn’t want to hang around with me.

I found out at school this morning. There was looking and pointing when I went into Form Room. People were saying things under their breath, things I couldn’t hear. The girls were
looking at me like I was a piece of dirt and the boys were laughing. I knew that it was about me, though I had no idea why. I wished I could see Sam, I’d been thinking about him all weekend,
feeling sure we’d see each other this week. And then Georgia Dutton who’s the prettiest girl in our year came over and there were four other girls right behind her including Ava and
Poppy and they were all staring at me and Georgia said ‘So do you think you’re a model, Dee Dee-sy?’ And the other girls giggled but I didn’t understand. And then Georgia
held up her phone. And it was a picture of me, the one Sam took with my shirt undone. And under there was a tag that said ‘Dee D-Easy Tiny Tits’. My head spun and I kept staring, then
Georgia whipped the phone away and I couldn’t work out how she had seen the photo and I couldn’t stop a tear coming out and Ava saw and said to Poppy ‘she’s only got herself
to blame’ in a loud voice and they wouldn’t look at me. I ran away to the girls’ toilets on the third floor and all I could think was that everyone had seen and Sam had shown and
shared and my life, like I said, is OVER.

Aside from the angry incident in the staff car park at school, Zoe and I have never met. But I’ve seen plenty of pictures, the most recent of which were from Dee
Dee’s thirteenth birthday in June when Zoe threw a visiting Jed out of the house in a totally unprompted rage. I know that Zoe is forty-seven, just a little younger than him, and that she
looks good for her age. I know she has a heart-shaped face with a pointy chin, that she has blonde highlights and that she wears Prada perfume and designer dresses. I know that she has not found
anyone since Jed left her, that she was brought up a Catholic and that she is a terrible snob and a dilettante who plays at fashion design but has never had a proper job. I also know that her
favourite book is
Brideshead Revisited
, that she decided to become a designer after watching the famous 1980s TV series as a child and that she named both her children after the Flytes and
– in Lish’s case – a teddy bear: Sebastian Aloysius (known as Lish from day one, apparently) and Cordelia Julia (shortened to Dee Dee when she was little and couldn’t quite
manage her own full name). Most of all, I know that Zoe loathes me.

But none of these things I know prepare me for the sight that now meets my eyes. The only word I can use to describe her face is ‘broken’. Jed is helping her to walk; she leans
stiffly against him, her eyes red, her skin grey and drawn. Gary slips in after them, glances at me, then heads upstairs without a word.

The three of us are alone.

Zoe looks up, taking in the living area of the villa with blank, ghostly eyes, and I am suddenly aware that the pain I have felt over Dee Dee is nothing compared to this woman’s, that
there can, surely, be no greater agony for a mother than to lose her child. Overwhelmed with compassion for her, I move towards her, my hands clasped together.

‘Zoe,’ I say breathlessly, my heart feeling like it will burst, ‘I am so, so sorry for your loss.’

Zoe gazes at me. She frowns as if confused. She turns to Jed. ‘What?’

‘I told you Emily would be here, remember?’ He looks at me. ‘The doctor gave her a sedative; she was literally tearing her hair out.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ I stand, hovering, helpless, as Jed sets his ex onto the sofa. As he straightens, she clutches at his arm, pulling him down beside her. He sits hard, right next to her
and she buries her face in his chest. She sobs, rocking backwards and forwards, murmuring things I can’t quite catch. Jed holds her tightly. His eyes are closed but a tear trickles down his
face. I stand watching them, an outsider to their shared grief. I feel empty, unneeded. Jealousy flashes through me, a hot wave. I turn away, embarrassed by my own selfishness. It is only natural
Zoe and Jed would turn to each other at this time. I have no place here. I turn and walk out of the room.

Jed finds me in the kitchen, nursing a second glass of wine about fifteen minutes later.

‘She’s asleep,’ he says, his voice thick with misery. ‘Oh, baby.’

I’m in his arms as he reaches for me. And now he cries, the weight of his grief pulling him down to the floor. I sink down with him, holding him, stroking his hair as Rose used to stroke
mine, as I dimly remember our mother stroking my hair long, long ago when I was very little.