Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh
For Rob, who does everything.
Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
PART ONE
ONE
Death does not suit me. I wear it like a borrowed coat; it slips off my shoulders and trails in the dirt. It is ill-fitting. Uncomfortable.
I want to shrug it off; to throw it in the cupboard and take back my well-tailored clothes. I didn’t want to leave my old life, but I’m hopeful for my next one – hopeful I can become someone beautiful and vibrant. For now, I am trapped.
Between lives.
In limbo.
They say sudden goodbyes are easier. Less painful. They’re wrong. Any pain saved from the lingering goodbyes of a drawn-out illness is offset by the horror of a life stolen without notice. A life taken violently. On the day of my death I walked the tightrope between two worlds, the safety net in tatters beneath me. This way safety; that way danger.
I stepped.
I died.
We used to joke about dying – when we were young enough, still vital enough, for death to be something that happened to other people.
‘Who do you think’ll go first?’ you said, one night when the wine had run dry and we lay by the electric fire in my rented Balham flat. An idle hand, stroking my thigh, softened your words. I was quick to answer.
‘You, of course.’
You aimed a cushion at my head.
We’d been together a month; enjoying each other’s bodies, talking about the future as though it belonged to someone else. No commitment, no promises – just possibilities.
‘Women live longer.’ I grinned. ‘It’s a well-known fact. Genetic. Survival of the fittest. Men can’t cope on their own.’
You grew serious. Cupped my face in your hand and made me look at you. Your eyes were black in the half-light; the bars of the fire reflected in your pupils. ‘It’s true.’
I moved to kiss you but your fingers held me still; pressure on my chin as your thumb pushed against bone.
‘If anything happened to you I don’t know what I’d do.’
The briefest chill, despite the fierce heat from the fire. Footsteps on my grave.
‘Give over.’
‘I’d die too,’ you insisted.
I put a stop to your youthful dramatics then, reaching to push aside your hand and free my chin. Keeping my fingers tangled with yours, so the rejection didn’t sting. Kissing you, softly at first, then harder, until you rolled backwards and I was lying on top of you, my hair curtaining our faces.
You would die for me.
Our relationship was young; a spark that could be snuffed out as easily as coaxed into flames. I couldn’t have known you’d stop loving me; that I’d stop loving you. I couldn’t help but be flattered by the depth of your feeling, the intensity in your eyes.
You would die for me, and in that moment, I thought I might die for you, too.
I just never thought either of us would have to.
TWO
ANNA
Ella is eight weeks old. Her eyes are closed, long dark lashes brushing apple cheeks that move up and down as she feeds. One tiny hand splays across my breast like a starfish. I sit, pinned to the sofa, and think of all the things I could be doing while she feeds. Reading. Watching television. An online food shop.
Not today.
Today is not a day for the ordinary.
I watch my daughter, and after a while her lashes lift and she fixes navy eyes on me, solemn and trusting. Her pupils are deep pools of unconditional love; my reflection small but unwavering.
Ella’s sucking slows. We gaze at each other, and I think how motherhood is the best-kept secret: how all the books, all the films, all the advice in the world could never prepare you for the all-consuming feeling of being everything to one tiny person. Of that person being everything to you. I perpetuate the secret, telling no one, because who would I tell? Less than a decade after leaving school, my friends share their beds with lovers, not babies.
Ella’s still gazing at me, but gradually the focus in her eyes blurs, the way morning mist creeps over a view. Her lids drop once, twice, then fall closed. Her sucking – always so ferocious at first, and then rhythmic, relaxed – slows, until several seconds elapse between mouthfuls. She stops. She sleeps.
I lift my hand and gently press my index finger onto my breast, breaking the seal between my nipple and Ella’s lips, then pull my nursing bra back into place. Ella’s mouth continues to move for a while, then sleep takes her deeper, her lips frozen into a perfect ‘O’.
I should put her down. Make the most of however long she will sleep. Ten minutes? An hour? We are a long way from any kind of routine. Routine. The watchword of the new mother; the single topic of conversation at the post-natal coffee mornings my health visitor bullies me into attending. Is she sleeping through yet? You should try controlled crying. Have you read Gina Ford?
I nod and smile, and say I’ll check it out, then I gravitate towards one of the other new mums. Someone different. Someone less rigid. Because I don’t care about routine. I don’t want to leave Ella crying while I sit downstairs and post on Facebook about my ‘parenting nightmare’.
It hurts to cry for a mother who isn’t coming back. Ella doesn’t need to know that yet.
She stirs in her sleep, and the ever-present lump in my throat swells. Awake, Ella is my daughter. When friends point out her similarities to me, or say how like Mark she is, I can never see it. I look at Ella, and I simply see Ella. But asleep … asleep I see my mother. There is a heart-shaped face hiding beneath those baby-plump cheeks, and the curve of their hairline is so alike I know that, in years to come, my daughter will spend hours in front of a mirror, attempting to tame the one tiny section that grows differently to the rest.
Do babies dream? What can they dream of, with so little experience of the world? I envy Ella her sleep, not only because I am tired in a way I never experienced before having a baby, but because when sleep comes, it brings with it nightmares. My dreams show me what I can’t possibly know. Supposition from police reports and coroner’s court. I see my parents, their faces bloated and disfigured from the water. I see fear on their faces as they fall from the cliff. I hear their screams.
Sometimes my subconscious is kind to me. I don’t always see my parents fall; sometimes I see them fly. I see them stepping into nothing and spreading their arms and swooping low above a blue sea that sends spray into their laughing faces. I wake gently then, a smile lingering on my face until I open my eyes and realise that everything is just the way it was when I closed them.
Nineteen months ago, my father took a car – the newest and most expensive – from the forecourt of his own business. He drove the ten minutes from Eastbourne to Beachy Head, where he parked in the car park, left the door unlocked, and walked towards the cliff top. Along the way he collected rocks to weigh himself down. Then, when the tide was at its highest, he threw himself off the cliff.
Seven months later, consumed with grief, my mother followed him, with such devastating accuracy the local paper reported it as a ‘copycat suicide’.
I know all these facts because on two separate occasions I heard the coroner take us through them, step by step. I sat with Uncle Billy as we listened to the gentle but painfully thorough account of two failed coastal rescue missions. I stared at my lap while experts proffered views on tides, survival rates, death statistics. And I closed my eyes while the coroner recorded the verdict of suicide.
My parents died seven months apart, but their linked deaths meant the inquests were held the same week. I learned lots of things, on those two days, but not the only thing that mattered.
Why they did it.
If indeed they did do it.