Page 106 of Lie For Me

Leaning his head on the window pane, Jack breathed long and deep. Could he give this up and spend a year in New York? Swap rolling green hills for towering skyscrapers? Perhaps a year abroad would do him good—broaden his horizons in a different way, introduce him to new experiences, new people, give him time to work on his new venture. Lucy’s face flashed up in his mind, and he shook his head to dislodge the image.

He felt off balance. It was as if his life was just fine, then he went to Shropshire, and came back to find someone had moved all the pieces around while he was gone. Nothing felt right. As if he had stepped into someone else’s house and shoes.

Unable to keep still any longer, Jack decided to get outside and embrace the crisp early morning Yorkshire air, especially if he was soon to swap this freshness for the big city. He pulled on his running shorts and a T-shirt, laced his trainers and headed out.

His breathing felt laboured and he couldn’t find his stride. He headed along the familiar path beside the dry stone walls before jumping over a stile and jogging through a field of grass chewed neatly to the nub by sheep. A group of suspicious sheep stared unblinking as they assessed the level of threat he presented, but he gave them a wide berth, and they, in their turn, were happy to ignore him.

He found his rhythm as the fields gave way to woodlands, his feet pounded on the soft earth, and his breathing evened out. Whenever he had decisions to make, he would walk or run. Never in a gym, always in nature, no matter the weather. Over the years, taking himself outside in all seasons when he had a question to answer for himself had become a kind of meditation. It was solace and time and inspiration all in one.

But on this day, as he ran, he felt no peace and no insight, only raging uncertainty that seemed to grow as he picked up the pace to drive himself up an embankment. His heart was racing as he reached the top and came out of the other side of the woods, and stopped, leaning on a gate, to catch his breath.

For a moment, the exertion and the strain of the run and of pushing himself up the embankment had pushed out all other thoughts except an awareness of the movements of his body and the sound of his breath, loud in his ears.

As he paused, all the thoughts of New York, Lucy, Casston Media & Communications and a hundred what-ifs crowded back in.

What if he went and came back in a year, and Lucy was with someone else? Would he regret it? What if he stayed in Yorkshire, and it turned out Lucy wanted nothing to do with him? What if he didn’t sell and then couldn’t find the time to work on his new venture? Would he feel resentful? What if he stayed, and they tried to be together, but it didn’t work out? What if he went to New York and hated it there? What if this was the end of his friendship with Lucy?

He wiped the sweat from his eyes and pushed his damp hair back from his forehead.

He wished he could stay on the hill all day and just watch the light change across the fields. Far from people and far from computers with other people sitting at the other end of them in other countries waiting for decisions. He wished he could press pause on life, just for one day. Make everything and everyone else stop while he took time to think.

The sun was up now, and he knew he needed to head back even without looking at his watch. Pressing pause on any of this wasn’t an option.

He turned down the lane and started jogging home, a flicker of hope within him still looking for insight and answers on the final leg of the run. But as he slowed his pace and clicked open his garden gate, he felt no better than before he had set out.

Pulling off his T-shirt, he wiped the worst of the sweat from his face and wandered into his bathroom. His eyes landed on the single toothbrush in its holder. That same solitary toothbrush had seemed fine four days ago. He thought of Lucy’s toothbrush, cast haphazardly across the sink in their shared bathroom at the hotel, bottles of shampoo, conditioner, pots of creams, bottles of perfumes, bags of eyeliners and lipsticks. He looked around his black and white bathroom with the one toothbrush and single bottles of shampoo and conditioner. It looked clinical.

He switched on the shower and stepped under the hot water to scrub all the thoughts and feelings away. There was no singing as he rubbed shampoo on his scalp. He couldn’t think of a song that suited his mood.

As he dressed, he kept checking his phone; no messages. It was early, he told himself. He opened his last chat with Lucy. Her last message to him was from the morning after the wedding, and it simply read, ‘Breakfast.’

They had fought soon after and hadn’t been in touch since. His fingers hovered over the keys. He took a deep breath.

‘Hope you got home okay,’ he started. Then he deleted it. He tried again. ‘Hope you’re OK.’ That sounded patronising. Delete. ‘Thanks for a good weekend,’ he paused. Delete. ‘I miss you.’ Delete.

He shoved his phone in his pocket, grabbed his car keys and headed for the door.

The kettle in the kitchen at the office seemed to take a long time to boil. Jack stood and watched, cafetiere filled with fresh coffee on one side, mug on the other. Time seemed to be moving strangely on this day, leaping about depending on what was happening. The kettle was taking longer than ever before to boil, yet the minutes left before Jack needed to sign the contract seemed to be sprinting away from him. Fingers drumming on the counter, Jack grabbed the kettle as soon as it started to steam and splashed water over the coffee. Clutching his semi-hot, part-brewed drink, he hurried back to his office as he heard the main office door open and the murmurs of staff arriving.

Clicking his door shut, he sank down at his desk. His laptop was closed. Opening it felt like it would take the might of Hercules.

On his desk, he kept a picture of him with his dad on a holiday in Spain. He was about ten in the photograph. It was the first holiday they had taken after his mum had left. It had been a learning experience for both of them, working out how to be without her, working out who they were now they were a duo. He remembered moments of frustration and of arguing with his dad; a boy trying to understand why his world had changed so much, and a dad trying to manage his own feelings as well as his son’s. But they had also found a deeper bond in their grief and a sense of partnership—it was them against the world. In the photo, his dad’s arm was tight around his shoulders, his smile wide for the camera, his eyes squinting in the sun. Jack was squirming slightly, smiling but posed awkwardly, unsure of what to do with his arms and legs.

Picking up the frame, he brushed a little speck of dust off the corner.

‘What do you think I should do, Dad?’ he whispered to the photograph.

Deep in the bottom drawer of his desk, he kept the photo album and wedding photo picture he had found in his dad’s bedside drawer. Every time they had moved offices, as the company grew, he had carefully taken the photos with him. In an odd way, it made him feel that his dad was still with him, keeping an eye on him.

He slid the wedding photograph out from the drawer, gently wiped the glass and stood it on his desk. His mum looked beautiful in white, clutching her small bouquet in front of her, her smile captivating as she gazed at the camera. His dad wasn’t looking at the camera at all. He was looking at his new wife, beaming with joy that she picked him, his hand pressed over hers where she had looped her hand through his arm.

Voices filtered through from the main office, and Jack heard the radio come on. There was a faint, good-humoured squabble about whose turn it was to pick the radio station for the day.

‘Morning!’ he heard Tim greet everyone as he arrived in the outer office.

Jack took a breath and rubbed at his eyes.

There was a tap on his door, and then Tim stuck his head in.

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