Page 49 of Lie For Me

Lucy nodded and mumbled, ‘Yes, I know. You told me. You must be so pleased.’

‘Not before time, and of course, it’s great to be recognised, but it also means I’m on a sixty-plus hour week. It’ll be gruelling.’

Heather looked at Lucy, waiting for a reaction.

Lucy said nothing. She wasn’t going to indulge Heather’s martyr streak.

Heather suddenly lunged towards Lucy’s throat. Lucy jumped and moved away. Heather pulled at something, and Lucy felt a tug on her dress.

‘Oh, Lucy,’ Heather whispered. ‘Really? Has it come to this?’

Lucy strained her chin down to see what Heather was pulling at and realised she had left a tag on her dress. Heather arranged her features into a picture of concern and rested her hand on Lucy’s knee.

‘Is that little job so bad that you have to return that dress,’ she looked Lucy up and down, ‘after the wedding?’

Lucy shook her knee to dislodge Heather’s hand.

‘No, Heather,’ she fumbled for the tag. ‘I just didn’t realise I hadn’t cut it off.’

Heather leaned back in her chair and surveyed Lucy, running a hand over her own sleek hairdo.

‘You know this is a wedding, a big family event. You really should take a bit more care. A bit more pride in your appearance.’ She glanced over at the bar where Jack stood. ‘I’m sure the effort would be appreciated.'

‘You know what, Heather?’ Lucy sighed and felt her jaw clench as she scrabbled to reach the tag that was poking out of the neckline of her dress. ‘It’d be great if you could sit here and not pass judgement for five minutes.’

15

‘Not pass judge—’

Heather stopped and pressed her lips together so tightly they disappeared into a red seam in her face.

She hissed, ‘You know what would be great? It would have been great if you could have done anything—anything at all—to help with this event. All you’ve done is show up, and you can’t even be dressed properly for that.’

Lucy’s mouth fell open.

‘Help with this event? I offered, multiple times! I didn’t know you were all doing,’ she waved her hand to take in the room, ‘all of this.’

‘You don’t just ask and offer to help—get involved, Lucy! Involve yourself. Look at what needs doing. Mum and dad and I have worked tirelessly to make this special for Ollie and Sophie.’

Oh right, this was all about Heather.

‘Yes, because you wanted to! Because doing this makes mum and dad happy. Mum lives for this kind of event.’ Lucy looked over at her mum and dad, arms around each other, faces flushed with wine. ‘Mum seemed excited about the planning and happy to get on with it. I asked her repeatedly if there was anything I could do to help and she said no, she was enjoying it.’

‘Oh open your eyes, Lucy,’ Heather scoffed. ‘You take everything so literally. Of course mum said that, she doesn’t want to interrupt you in your job.'

Heather made air quotes again around ‘job.’

Lucy felt heat rise up her neck and her cheeks flushed.

‘There wouldn’t be anything left for me to do, anyway. You always take over.’

Lucy felt the words, long squashed down, finally spilling out.

‘You make all the decisions, Heather, you decide on everything. I don’t get involved because you make sure I can’t be. You make sure I don’t know about things, and you cut me out to try to make me look shitty because I didn’t know that…that...’ Lucy looked frantically around the room for inspiration. ‘That…that the centre pieces needed ordering, or that you were making a photographic display. I could have helped with that. But you deliberately kept it a secret until now.’

Heather’s face was grim but with a hint of a snark about her mouth.

‘And now you’re stressed, and you’re taking this out on me because, once again,’ Lucy stuck a finger up in the air, ‘you’ve taken on too much, and Mark won’t put up with you banging on about how stressed you are, and how many hours you’re working, and you don’t want mum and dad to think you aren’t practically perfect in every way.’ She used Heather’s air quotes back at her. ‘So I’m your nearest punching bag.’

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