Page 34 of Lie For Me

Jack was snoring gently, ensconced in the middle of the bed, the very picture of healthful rest. His long legs were stretched out, the sheet wound around his waist. Lucy, stretching out her stiff arms, glowered at his sleeping form. Easing herself to her feet, she peered out between the curtains. Slender fingers of pink-yellow sunlight were peeling back the last vestiges of a dusty grey-blue night sky.

Staggering to the bathroom, Lucy rubbed her aching back and squinted through bleary eyes at her reflection in the mirror. There, right down the side of her face, was a deep red crease courtesy of the wrinkled pancake mattress. Lucy rubbed at her face and only succeeded in making the gash on her face look even more vivid and angry. She sighed and snicked the door shut to pee. Not that there was any risk of Jack waking and walking in on her, given the snores coming from the bedroom. Lucy finished, stood in the doorway, and looked at Jack. He looked so peaceful, hand tucked under his face on the pillow, whistling gently.

Splashing water into the kettle, she flicked the switch. She made no attempt to be particularly quiet as the kettle clattered on its base. Jack slept on. The little kettle burbled noisily, while Lucy sat in an armchair and flicked through the hotel room service menu, sighing loudly now and then. Still no movement from the bed. She dropped the menu to the floor, where it landed with a slap. The hotel kettle boiled to a frenzy, rattling as if it might throw itself off its base, and then clicked off. Jack snored on. Lucy grimaced at the powdered coffee sachet and tapped it into a mug, added boiling water, slopped in two milk sachets, then stirred it in, clattering the spoon around the sides of the mug. Not a peep.

Giving up on Jack doing the decent thing and waking up, she slipped her flip-flops on, tucked the hotel key card into her pyjama waistband and slipped out of the room. The corridor was quiet. No other parents had yet been forced awake by tyrannical toddlers. She sipped her bitter coffee and carried on to the end of the corridor, where French doors led to the gardens. She nudged them open and stepped out into the coolest part of the day.

It had been a late, hot summer, and it reminded her of a heatwave when she was about ten years old. The days all blurred into one long haze of ice pops, sticky fingers, and afternoons sitting under trees or hedges and reading. Their tuxedo cat Felix stretched out on the roof of the old barn, seemingly the only one enjoying the heat, while Bernard, the family Golden Retriever, slunk around panting, head down, tail low, trying out shady spot after shady spot, searching for somewhere cool to be comfortable. He eventually took up residence on the kitchen floor for weeks, the cool stone flags providing some respite.

Her mother had moaned repeatedly about the heat, firstly finding that it was impossible to feel comfortable at any time of the day, and secondly finding that she couldn't dress elegantly on the morning of such a day and still look stylish by lunchtime.

Their home was in a small village, and a stream ran behind their gardens. Throughout the heatwave, the three Carmell children and most of the rest of the children of the village, could reliably be found down there from soon after breakfast right through to dinner time. When they weren’t in the water, they were making dens, devising competitions (in Ollie’s case), or reading, in Lucy’s case. In the fuzz of Lucy’s memory, it seemed she had lived in her swimming costume and the same yellow gingham dress and blue jelly shoes all that summer long. In and out of the water, staying in until you couldn’t stop the shivers. Then, clambering up the bank, over the slippery grass into the heat, warming in the sun, wet fingers soaking and curling book pages, until you were too hot once more, and it was time to slip back into the cool running water again.

All that long, hot summer, the only people who were happy were children and cats. It seemed to Lucy that it was the last summer all three of them were really together. It was the one year that their ages made them good companions. Heather, two years older than Lucy, was thirteen but not yet so self-conscious that she had forgotten how to play. Ollie, the youngest by four years, was old enough to join them without her mother feeling the need to hover over them. The following year, Heather had gone away to a summer camp for gifted children and Ollie was at rugby camp. Lucy thought that if she had only known that summer with the three of them by the stream would be the last time they were really together—happy together—she would have paid more attention to try to remember it in all the glorious detail. Instead, she had snatches of memory, like scenes cut from a film.

With Heather and Ollie away, Lucy would have happily whiled away that next summer reading and playing by the river on her own. But Valerie had other ideas. She enrolled Lucy in tennis lessons, which abruptly ended when the coach advised Valerie that, regrettably, Lucy lacked the coordination to advance to even a recreational playing level. Undeterred, Valerie booked Lucy into gymnastics classes, which came to a sudden halt when Lucy fell off the parallel bars and broke her leg.

‘I’m not sporty, mum,’ Lucy had said, lying in her bed, her broken leg elevated on pillows. ‘That’s not what I’m good at.’

‘The problem, Lucy,’ her mother had said as she briskly tucked in the sheets, ‘is that we’ve yet to discover precisely what you’re good at.’

The sunny weather had turned then, and it had rained for much of the rest of the holidays. Heather and Ollie called on the phone occasionally, and Lucy had lain in bed and stared at the rain running down the windows and wondered why she wasn’t clever like Heather or athletic like Ollie. She passed the hours drawing intricate pictures of plants and animals and wrote poems and short stories in notebooks she kept in the drawers beside her bed.

Now, wandering around the gardens in the magic hour before anyone else was about, she felt a lump well up in her throat as she thought of the children they once were, before they had to decide who to be in front of the world. When the days stretched out lazily before them with no goals or agendas and expectations to be met. When they didn’t have to live up to anything, they were just themselves. It seemed like that summer at the stream was the last year that all three of them were easy with one another, before the world taught them to compare themselves to each other and everyone else.

Lucy wiped her eyes and sipped her coffee. Her feet were wet with the dew and she sucked in the cool air as she took a deep breath. As she rounded the corner, hotel staff were opening the doors to the terrace and setting out tables for breakfast. The smell of fresh bread and pastries wafted in the breeze. A frazzled looking man sat at one of the tables with a little boy, about three years old. The boy who had been promised a trip to the zoo, Lucy assumed. Across the lawns, a dog walker yawned and scrolled on his phone as a terrier ferreted excitedly beneath a hedge. Remembering she was only wearing her pyjamas, Lucy decided it was time to head back. If Jack wasn’t awake by now, she resolved to wake him up.

She let herself back into the room and saw that the bed was empty. The sound of running water came from the bathroom, and an off-key rendition of ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane.’ Lucy grinned. Jack’s taste in music was eclectic.

She crawled onto the bed to finish the last of her coffee and was sitting up in bed when Jack emerged from the bathroom.

‘Aha! You’re back,’ he said, by way of greeting. His towel was slung low about his hips, beads of water running down his lightly tanned chest. Lucy kept her eyes glued to his face. He reached for a half-drunk cup of tea that was sitting beside the kettle and took a sip. ‘Where did you get to?’

‘I woke up early because my bed deflated in the night.’

Jack raised his eyebrows and peered over the bed at the flattened mattress.

‘And you were sleeping like a bloody baby.’

Jack had the courtesy to look a little sheepish.

‘So I went for a walk until you did the decent thing and woke up. And now,’ Lucy reached over and deposited her empty cup on the bedside table, ‘we have to get ready for brunch. And to convince all my family and friends that we’re a happy couple even though I am shattered, and I think I need to see an osteopath about my shoulders.’

She winced and rubbed her arm, making sure to hammer her point home.

‘Oh, my poor baby,’ Jack crooned, perching on the edge of the bed, damp, dark hair glistening in the sunlight. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

‘Yes, poor me.’

Lucy giggled.

‘Do you think you can make it through the day?’ Jack said, leaning towards her, his face a picture of feigned concern.

Lucy considered. ‘I think if I take it slowly, eat lots of cake and drink lots of wine—for medicinal purposes, of course—I’ll probably be okay.’

Jack nodded, understanding.

‘Such a relief that you’ll pull through. And, seeing as you’ve suffered so much and hardly mentioned it at all, you can have the bed tonight.’

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