Lies Between Us Read online

  About the Author

  RONNIE TURNER grew up in Cornwall, the youngest in a large family. At an early age, she discovered a love of literature and dreamed of being a published author. Ronnie now lives in Dorset with her family and three dogs. In her spare time, she reviews books on her blog and enjoys long walks on the coast. Lies Between Us is her debut novel.

  Lies Between Us

  RONNIE TURNER

  HQ

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

  Copyright © Ronnie Turner 2018

  Ronnie Turner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  E-book Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008313029

  Version: 2018-09-03

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  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

  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

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Dear Reader

  HQ Dear Reader

  Keep Reading …

  About the Publisher

  For my family – Team Turner – who are always cheering me on.

  Not all love is pure

  Not all love is kind

  Not all love is true

  Some love is blind

  Chapter 1

  Miller

  Let me tell you something I haven’t told you before…

  One, two, three, finger by finger, I squeeze down into the soft, pale skin of her neck.

  Four, five, six…

  She reaches out and grasps and grasps at thin air, small fingers searching for some salvation, even as her young face submerges and her lungs fill with water.

  Seven, eight, nine…

  It doesn’t take long. I stroke her hair and smile into her frightened brown eyes.

  Ten, eleven, twelve… I squeeze down until her arms grow limp and the last moments of life bleed into nothing.

  Thursday 19 March, 1992

  They come to you in waves, the wives clutching their hands to their chests, the husbands folding their arms in front of their stomachs, heads bowed, all wearing expressions they deem suitable for the occasion. Unbidden, they are trespassers on your grief and it’s as if they’ve pulled their expressions from their wardrobes, along with the black clothing they donned this morning. But their otherwise perfect appearance is bereft of the most crucial component: sincerity.

  You and your parents barely notice. You accept their condolences and pats on the back with good grace, but I can see behind the well-mannered veneer to the part of you wanting to be left to the solitude of her absence. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve witnessed them smile, stroke your cheek and mutter to your parents, ‘Brave little soldier.’ You only nod and force a smile onto your lips, awaiting the next chorus of ‘Ohhs’ and ‘Ahhs,’ closely followed by the ensuing pulse of ‘Such a shame, such a terrible shame’.

  As they leave, the expressions they wear already slipping, I walk up to your house and ram my nail into the puckered scratch that runs across my forearm, tears of pain slipping down my skin. Smudging them across my face, I knock on the door and wait. When you appear, you take in my appearance and I yours. Despite watching from afar all morning, I hadn’t realised how your posture has slumped, nor how your eyes are rimmed red.

  ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ I say, and like those before me I pat you on the back and smile; a mechanical act but an acceptable one.

  You nod and step aside: an invitation into your home, to share in your grief, but most of all an invitation to comfort you. If only I could, properly. If only I could gather you up in my arms and stroke your short brown hair, kiss each of your fingers and banish the pain. The desire to do all of this, my beautiful boy, is nearly impossible to ignore. But I must. You need your friend. You need the person I’ve given you. You need the illusion. The good-little-boy pretence. The neighbour. Not me. Not the oddity. I realised a long time ago who I needed to be and what I needed to do to achieve in life. You don’t have to look hard to see that ‘good boys’ go further. They get what they want when they are as sweet as me.

  It doesn’t matter that this is a pretence, though. Even being with you as someone else is good enough for me.

  My hand lingers a second too long and you pull away, but you do not close the door. I follow you into her bedroom, where I can see you and your parents spent last night. Wads of used tissues are balled up like confetti across the bed. The pink duvet is rumpled and creased. And already, her posters are beginning to peel away. Strewn across the floor are her things: bears, dolls, storybooks, the shrapnel of four years of her life already slipping into the past. You perch on the bed and look at it all, hands tucked beneath your legs so I can’t see them shake. I sit close – this way you can feel me beside you. The smell of cheese and cucumber sandwiches wafts from your mouth. I imagine you ate them to assuage your mother’s concern, each bite tasting of ash on your lips.

  You look at her toys and books, your lips parted in an ‘O’ shape as if you can’t quite believe the ferocity with which life has taken a swipe at your family. Tears trickle down your cheeks. My hand itches to wipe them away but I keep myself in
check and instead pat you on the back again. That is the limit, the boundary. You slump into me as if I have stolen your remaining strength and begin to weep. And even as you do this, you are silent. We sit like this for what seems like hours. But it can’t be because when I leave you in her room, the sun is nudging its way into the middle of the sky. I take off down the street, words that have been bandied about by the neighbours repeating themselves over and over again in my mind:

  ‘Sweet girl. Funny girl. Happy girl.’

  I stop and look back at your house. Through the crack in the curtains, I can see you, curled up in your mother’s arms, bright-red cheeks scarred by the pale tracks tears have made down your skin. Your mother rocks you to and fro. The last vestiges of strength that have kept you on your feet all morning burn up and slide away. And I turn away and smile.

  Sweet girl. Funny girl. Dead girl.

  Chapter 2

  John

  Tuesday 17 November, 2015

  John Graham lovingly ties the red bow in her wavy brown hair and breathes in the sweet scent of his daughter, treasuring these swiftly vanishing moments before he has to put her down and watch her grow again. Now she is six years old. A bright, bubbling age in which every exhalation carries a sentence tumbling from her lips, and the hodgepodge of styles she favours catches the eyes of passing strangers. But soon she will be seven, soon she will be eight. And in no time at all, she will be gliding through their house cloaked in the confidence that comes in with the tide of adolescence, a red stripe of lipstick glistening on her lips, fingers adorned with bold rings and earplugs stuck in firmly like oversized earrings. But for now, he revels in the love she is not yet embarrassed to give.

  ‘Daddy, can I have some crisps?’ She peers into his eyes, and John laughs, knowing even before she asks the question that his answer will be yes.

  ‘OK, sweetheart, but you have to ask Mummy first.’

  She gives him a firm nod and crawls out of their makeshift tent, trailing behind her the hem of a dress five sizes too big. ‘Don’t trip!’

  ‘I won’t, Daddy.’

  John pulls himself into a sitting position and lets his eyes roam across the fabric of their tent: three duvet covers pegged together and tied to a hook in the ceiling, joining Bonnie’s three favourite cartoon characters in a splash of garish pink. She’d woken him and his wife, Jules, that morning with a trumpet call of excitement because she’d had a ‘really, really, really good idea’.

  Despite the way his back lets off a volley of cracks when he crawls out of the tent (he’s in his thirties; he’s allowed to have aches and pains now, surely?), he can’t bring himself to regret even a minute of building the monstrosity with his daughter that morning. And he can’t imagine a better way to celebrate his book becoming a bestseller than with his family, curled up in a very pink tent.

  John closes his eyes and listens to his daughter rattling around in the kitchen cupboards, his mind floating back to yesterday when his friend Don called to congratulate him. He has worked hard to get where he is. The path of an author was one paved with blood, sweat and rejections. Mostly rejections. Deception, his latest thriller, is climbing the charts and, after a clutch of published books, he finally feels happy with what he has made for himself.

  Bonnie hurtles into the lounge, stumbling over her dress, gripping a packet of crisps in her fingers. ‘Mummy is making sandwiches!’

  John wraps his arms around her and pulls her, giggling, onto his lap. ‘Oh, is she? Are you going to share those crisps, monkey?’

  She grins. ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  John kisses her head and pops a crisp into his mouth, smiling at Jules as she carries a platter of sandwiches into the lounge. She has managed to retain the youth people their age seek out in overpriced lotions and potions. Her skin is smooth and clear, hair bouncing with the rhythm of her gait, eyes bright and curious. She still looks like the Jules he met in his youth, the young woman he knew, with a certainty in the centre of his bones, that he loved, and would love for the rest of his life. They had moved from their home county to the rush of Oxford as soon as they were able, clutching delicate dreams like paper hearts in their hands. In the spare time they managed to hook away from work, they sat side by side, Jules painting to her heart’s content and he jotting down his stories, their fingers brushing when they leant back to judge their work.

  John runs a hand over his face, fingers picking out the lines and wrinkles in his skin like the brushstrokes in one of Jules’s paintings. He hasn’t aged as well; the sun has wiped a blanket of freckles over his cheeks, drying out his skin and making him look older. But he doesn’t mind. Jules and Bonnie seem fine with the way he looks. And they, in addition to Don and his parents, are the ones who mean the most to him.

  ‘Here we are.’ Jules beams, settling the platter on the duvet they have laid across the floor. Her hands find a way to her swollen stomach, tapping a loving rhythm to their unborn child. John is looking forward to meeting their baby with an intensity that sends a tremble through his body. Who will it look like? Who will it be like? Bonnie repeatedly tells them she is going to dress it up in one of her princess dresses. Complete with as many bows and frills and sparkles as she can find.

  ‘You have some paint on your neck, sweetheart.’ He gestures to his wife’s skin and smiles. He is proud of her, proud of the way she runs her successful gallery, proud of her for juggling a career with a family. It isn’t always easy but they share the care and chores and it works well for them. They have found a pattern and a routine that eases them into the day and eases them back out with enough energy left over for each other.

  Jules wipes the paint mark off with a rub of her finger and says, ‘I’m going to look like a Smurf if I get much more on me!’ Bonnie giggles, nestling deeper into the duvet.

  John shuffles to the edge as Jules lays herself down, a sigh slipping from her lips like a secret whispered to a friend. He wraps an arm around her and she wraps an arm around Bonnie. And like this they stay, until it is time to start the day again.

  Chapter 3

  Maisie

  Thursday 14 January, 2016

  ‘So, how was your day?’

  Maisie Green runs a hand through her hair and stifles a yawn, sinking back into the sofa cushions as the ache in her shoulder shoots sharp fingers of pain down her back. ‘Good. My new patient was transferred today so it was a bit hectic. How about yours?’

  ‘I’m trying to think of a really funny anecdote or something to give you but it was terrible. Bill had to break up this brawl, then he got a glass of red thrown in his face, and somehow managed to blame it on me.’ Ben, her partner of three years, chuckles and props his feet on the coffee table, leaning his head back on the sofa cushion.

  Maisie smiles, dropping a kiss on his cheek, loving him for transforming any unpleasant situation into something that tempted a giggle rather than a tear. ‘That sounds rough. One day we’ll win the lottery and you’ll be able to tell that boss of yours what you think.’

  ‘Can we win it in time for my shift tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can pull it off that quick.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ Ben weaves his fingers through hers and grins. ‘How is everything else at work?’

  Maisie is an ICU nurse and her days are usually divided between assessing her patients’ conditions, monitoring and safeguarding their care, acting as an advocate for them and their families, and supporting them through the veil of turmoil that cloaks their lives. So much of what she does is emotional. Yes, she administers medication to her patients, bathes them, and cleans and tests the equipment that keeps their bodies ticking over while they heal, but she also has to be on hand to advise, support and talk to her patients’ families, stapling together their pasts with their panicked new lives.

  Maisie has seen the varying shades of grief and loss. Wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, people from all walks of life… her job is to help them cross the border into this clinical world of disinfectant handwash and
soggy tissues. It’s a savage world, one in which they’re no longer authors of their fates, but living with the influence of brain scans, bed sores, antibiotics, drips, and the sudden impulse to pray when they haven’t prayed before. She has seen men and women clinging to hope with steel in their fingers, chanting comforting words, hands shaking and lips wobbling. They walk up to her, telling themselves that today – today! – she’ll give them the news they’re hoping for. Today, they’ll sit beside their loved one and no longer have to cling to hope, but feel it, truly feel it. For the first time in a long time it will seep into their bones. For the first time in a long time, they will find the parts of themselves they thought they’d lost.

  Maisie squeezes Ben’s hand and smiles. Although Maisie knows she shouldn’t share her patient’s details, she trusts Ben implicitly. ‘Emotional, exhausting. My new patient, Tim, was attacked and found in the middle of the street a couple of weeks ago. At least that was what I was told. The detective investigating didn’t tell us much else. They’re not sure whether it was some random attack or something premeditated. They’re looking for the culprit now but I don’t think they’re very optimistic about finding him or her.’