Page 103 of Lie For Me

Valerie looked on with a mixture of concern and impatience.

‘Darling, spit it out. We’ve got a lunch going on, and I can’t leave our guests for long. What’s the matter?’

‘Mum, I have to tell you something.’

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell her mother the whole thing—that Jack wasn’t really her boyfriend, that she’d struggled with coming alone and asked Jack to pretend for her. That things had got muddled, and they’d slept together, and she thought they had feelings for each other, but they had fought and Jack had gone, and now she didn’t know what to do…but the whole thing felt too painful, embarrassing and ridiculous, so she stuck to her story.

‘Jack’s going to New York and—’

‘He’s made his mind up then?’

‘What?’ Lucy said.

‘He’s made his mind up, has he? Your father said when they were talking, it seemed as if he was still weighing his options.’

Lucy swallowed.

‘Oh.’

So he hadn’t decided yet. She remembered him saying that nothing was final when they were fighting. But then he also said he was due to leave in a few weeks.

‘Seems quite likely,’ she said, and shrugged. ‘And I—’ She swallowed. ‘It’s…I don’t think he wants to talk to me about it in case it influences his decision.’

‘What do you mean, influence? Why would he not be interested in the view of his girlfriend?’

Lucy felt lightheaded. She put a hand out and leaned on a tree.

‘I think…people think…Jack wants, that is.’ Her mother was staring at her.

Lucy tried again.

‘We haven’t talked about it much because Jack has been trying to work out how he feels about it, before he is influenced by what his friends think,’ she caught herself, ‘and by what I think. And I don’t know what he wants to do, and I don’t want to say too much about what I feel because I don’t want to put him under pressure.’

‘Goodness, that’s not how I look at things,’ her mother said in a forthright tone. ‘That sounds like wishy-washy nonsense cooked up by people who don’t know their own minds in the first place. I think you tell people exactly how you feel,’ she sliced a hand through the air, ‘and then it’s up to them to decide if they want to factor your wants in or not. How can they consider what you want if they don’t know what it is? All this nonsense saying we’re not to interfere and that people should make their own choices. Well, they still can, can’t they? But how can it be an informed choice if they don’t consult people around them?’

Lucy shuffled on the spot and dug her fingers into the tree. Her mother might have the tiniest of points. She picked at a piece of bark.

Valerie sighed. ‘Come here.’

Her mother took her hand and led her to a bench, and they sat down.

‘When Heather was a toddler, your father was offered a job, an exciting job as a consultant. This other company,’ Valerie waved her hand dismissively, ‘had seen what a success he was making of his own wine import business and wanted him to consult with them. It would have meant more international travel, he’d have been away for days at a time. He asked me what I thought. I could have obligingly said, Darling, you must take the opportunity, how wonderful for you, and left it at that. But I didn’t. I said, it’s a wonderful opportunity and very exciting for you. I can see why you’d want to do it and I want you to do work you enjoy.’

Lucy watched her mother’s face.

Valerie fixed an imaginary flyaway hair in her pristine bob.

‘But I also said, I will miss you, and I didn’t get married to sleep alone night after night and be on my own with a small child.’

Valerie’s gaze fell on James, who was across the lawns from them, directing the loading of the happy couple’s honeymoon bags.

‘I told him, both things are true, and either way, we’ll manage, and we’ll be fine. But the decision was his. That’s all we said on the subject. He turned the job down and, as far as I know, has never regretted it. You came along soon after. All this pussy-footing around…if one isn’t careful, one simply ends up saying nothing about how one truly feels and then wonders why one is miserable and resentful.’

Lucy sniffed and fidgeted.

Valerie looked at her.

‘You know darling, your biggest problem has always been that you sit back and wait for life to happen to you.’

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