The Lies We Told: The exciting new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Watching Edie

But Rose had smiled, and walked towards them, and in that instant Clara had known everything would be OK. This slim, pretty, fresh-faced woman in a pink summer dress was not in the least intimidating. Instead, Clara had been bowled over by Rose’s charm, the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, the genuine warmth with which she’d hugged her, her infectious, enthusiastic way of talking. Rose had led her into the kitchen that first day and patting her hand had said, ‘Come and have a drink and tell me all about yourself, Clara, it’s so lovely to have you here.’

Oliver, Luke’s dad, had emerged from somewhere out of the depths of the house, a tall and bearded bear of a man, Luke’s features mirrored in his own, his son’s kindness and good humour shining from his almost identical brown eyes. He was a university lecturer, the author of several books on art history. Slightly shy, he was quieter and more reserved than his wife but Clara had warmed to him instantly.

In fact, she’d fallen in love with everything about the Lawsons that day: their beautiful, rambling house, the easy affection they’d showed one another, even the way they argued and joked, good-naturedly mocking each other’s flaws – Oliver’s messiness and tendency towards hypochondria, Rose’s bossy perfectionism or Luke’s inability to lose at anything without sulking. It was a revelation to Clara, who’d grown up in a house where even the smallest of perceived slights could lead to weeks of offended silence. She had been conscious, that first visit to The Willows, of the strangest feeling of déjà vu, as though she’d returned after a long absence to somewhere she’d once known well; the place where she was always meant to be.

On those early visits Clara would secretly, eagerly, look for signs of Luke’s lost sister, but never found any. Emily wasn’t in any of the framed photos in the elegant living room, and only Tom and Luke’s old preschool paintings were lovingly displayed on the kitchen walls, autographed in their childish scrawls. She had sounded like such a strong and vivid personality from Luke’s description, yet even in the small attic room that had once been hers, no trace of Emily remained. She was so carefully deleted from the fabric of her family that it somehow made her all the more present, Clara thought. What had happened to Luke’s sister, she brooded; why would someone leave this loving family home so suddenly, then vanish into thin air? The question fascinated her because, despite the Lawsons’ warm hospitality, the welcoming comfort of their beautiful home, she could feel the sadness that lingered there still, in the corners and the shadows of each room.

Over the following three years Clara would hear Emily’s name mentioned only once. It was at a birthday party for Rose, The Willows full to bursting with friends from the nearby village, ex colleagues of hers from the hospital, Oliver’s writer and publishing friends and what felt like the entire faculty of the university he taught at. Oliver had been extremely drunk, regaling Clara with an anecdote about a recent research trip when suddenly he had fallen silent, staring down at his drink, apparently lost in thought.

‘Oliver? Are you OK?’ she’d asked in surprise.

He’d replied in a strange, thick voice, ‘She meant the world to us you know, our little girl, we loved her so very much.’ And to her horror his eyes had filled with tears as he said, ‘Oh my darling Emily, I’m so sorry, I’m so very sorry.’ She had stared at him, frozen, until Luke’s brother Tom had appeared and gently led him away, murmuring, ‘Come on, Dad, time for bed now, that’s right, off we go.’

At last Clara left London behind and joined the M11. It should only take her another hour or so to reach Suffolk. Would Luke be there? She gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed her foot on the accelerator. Surely he would – he had to be. Unbidden, the emails she’d read earlier came back to her – It’s going to be soon, Luke, your funeral’s going to be very soon – and she felt again the knot of fear tightening in her stomach.

She reached The Willows as the sun began to set. As she got out of the car and gazed up at the house, cawing jackdaws circled above the surrounding fields in the twilight sky. This moment of stillness before nightfall seemed to capture the place at its most magical. It was an eighteenth-century farmhouse, clematis and blood flower clambering over its red bricks, an ancient weeping willow shivering in the breeze. On either side of the low, wide oak door, crooked, crown-glass windows offered a glimpse into the beautiful interior beyond. It was a house out of a fairy story; enchanted and remote beneath this endless empty sky. She approached the door now, taking a deep breath before she knocked. Please be here, Luke, please, please, just be here.

She heard the familiar sound of their ancient spaniel, Clementine, bounding to the door, followed by the latch being raised. It was Oliver who opened it. He peered out at her, not seeming to recognize her at first, clearly wary to have someone appear out of the blue, they were so remote and alone out here. Eventually, his expression cleared. ‘Good Lord, Clara!’ He turned and called behind him, ‘Rose, it’s Clara! Oh do calm down, Clemmy! Come in, come in, what a lovely surprise. What on earth are you doing here?’

She glanced over his shoulder to the cosy glow of the room behind him and felt the house’s familiar pull. She caught the smell of something cooking and pictured Rose in the kitchen listening to Radio Four while she made dinner, a welcoming, irresistible scene of affluent domesticity, so different from the chilly semi-detached she’d grown up in in Penge. But before she could reply, Rose came running up behind him. ‘My goodness, darling, hello! Where’s Luke?’ She looked beyond Clara to the car, her expression pleased and expectant.

Clara’s heart sank. Shit. ‘He’s not with me, actually,’ she admitted.

Oliver frowned. ‘Oh?’ he said, adding gallantly, ‘Oh well, how lovely to see you anyway. Come in, come in!’

But Rose was still smiling at her. ‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘You haven’t heard from him, then?’

‘No, not since the weekend.’

Before Clara could say anything else, Oliver was ushering her through to the kitchen. ‘Come in! Come in and sit down.’

While Rose bustled about putting the kettle on and Oliver chatted about a new book he was researching, Clara leant down to stroke Clemmy, and wondered how to begin.

Finally, Rose placed the tea on the table in front of her and, sitting down, said mildly, ‘So, my darling, where’s that son of ours?’

Clara took a deep breath. ‘Nobody’s seen Luke since yesterday evening, around seven thirty,’ she told them. ‘He emailed me to say he was coming home but he didn’t turn up and he doesn’t have his mobile on him. He had an important interview today, as well as a big meeting at work … but nobody’s heard anything from him.’ She looked from one to the other of their faces. ‘It’s just not like him and I’m so worried. I thought he might have come here, but …’

Oliver looked perplexed. ‘Well … perhaps he’s gone to stay with friends, or …’

Clara nodded. ‘The thing is, and it might be nothing, but he’d been getting these weird emails lately, and a few things had started to happen. A break-in at our flat, and dodgy phone calls, and, well, photographs. We hadn’t wanted to worry you, so …’

‘Phone calls? Photographs? What sort of photographs?’ asked Rose in bewilderment.

‘Whoever it was had been following Luke, taking pictures, I think they were meant to scare him.’

Rose’s face suddenly drained of colour behind her carefully applied make-up. ‘What did the emails say?’

‘They weren’t very nice,’ Clara admitted. ‘Quite threatening, saying they were going to come after him, talking about his funeral …’

‘Oh God. Oh dear God.’ Rose put a trembling hand to her mouth.

‘I don’t—’ Clara began, but was interrupted by the sound of floorboards creaking overhead, then footsteps on the stairs. She looked from Rose to Oliver in confusion. For a strange, chilly moment she wondered if it was Luke she could hear – the disquieting thought occurring to her that his parents had lied to her, that Luke had been here all along. It took her a second or two to recognize the man who appeared at the kitchen door as Luke’s older brother, Tom.

They stared at each other blankly for a moment until Tom said, ‘Clara! What – where’s Luke?’

She watched Tom as he listened to his father explain the reason for her visit. She had never quite been able to get a handle on Luke’s older brother. Perhaps it was because the rest of the Lawsons were so welcoming that Tom’s reticence was more noticeable, but it had long seemed to her that he kept himself a little apart from his family, that his aloofness almost bordered on disdain. And though he’d always been polite enough to her on the rare occasions that they met, she’d never quite managed to break through his reserve.

It was unusual to find Tom at The Willows at all, in fact. Although he lived relatively nearby, in Norwich, he was not as close to Rose and Oliver as his younger brother, visiting far less frequently than Luke. Unlike Luke, he took after their mother physically, rather than Oliver, having inherited her high cheekbones and blue, almost turquoise eyes – though apparently none of her natural warmth. She remembered Luke telling her once that Tom had split from a long-term girlfriend a year or so before, though Luke hadn’t known why. ‘That’s Tom for you,’ he’d said. ‘Closed bloody book when it comes to that sort of stuff.’

‘He’s probably just drunk somewhere,’ Tom said now with the elder-sibling dismissiveness she knew drove Luke crazy. She bit back a rush of irritation, and managed to murmur politely, ‘I hope so.’

‘But what about this stalker person?’ Rose asked anxiously.

Tom shrugged and, going over to his parents’ extensive wine rack, helped himself to a bottle. ‘Probably some unhinged ex of his,’ he said, reaching for a glass. ‘God knows he’s had enough of those.’ He glanced at Clara and perhaps catching her annoyance looked a little abashed and added more kindly, if patronizingly, ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up soon. I really wouldn’t worry.’

At that moment Rose gripped her husband’s arm. ‘Oh, Oli, where is he? Where is he?’

‘Tom’s right. He’ll turn up,’ Oliver murmured, putting a comforting hand over hers, but though his voice was reassuring, Clara saw the worry in his eyes.

She got to her feet. ‘I’m so sorry for upsetting you all like this,’ she said miserably.

‘What will you do now?’ Tom asked.

‘I’ll call the police as soon as I get home, if he’s still not back. He’ll have been missing for twenty-four hours by then, so hopefully they’ll take it seriously.’ She looked around for her bag.

‘That’s actually a myth, you know,’ Tom replied.

She blinked. ‘What is?’

‘That you have to wait twenty-four hours. You can report someone missing whenever you like – the police still have to take it seriously.’

She picked up her bag, ignoring his know-it-all tone. ‘Well anyway, I’ll be off now,’ she said. ‘Mac’s back at the flat, calling around the hospitals. Just in case,’ she added, seeing Rose’s alarmed expression.

‘Oh God, oh dear, I don’t …’ Flustered, Rose got to her feet.

‘I’m sure he’ll turn up,’ Clara said with more conviction than she felt. ‘Tom’s right, he’s probably had a heavy night and is sleeping it off somewhere. I’m only going to ring the police to be sure.’

Rose nodded unhappily. ‘Will you phone me when you’ve spoken to them?’ She and Oliver looked so fearful that Clara wished she hadn’t come. For the first time since she’d met them, their characteristic energy and vitality seemed to slip, and though they were only in their sixties still, she caught a disconcerting glimpse of the frail, elderly people they would one day become.

‘Of course,’ she said firmly. ‘Straight away.’ Quickly she hugged Rose and kissed Oliver on the cheek before raising her hand and giving Tom a brief wave of farewell. ‘I’ll speak to you soon. I’m so sorry, but I’d better head back now.’

As soon as she got in her car she phoned Mac. ‘Any news?’ she asked.

‘No. The hospitals say no one’s been admitted who fits his description – no one who hasn’t already been identified anyway.’ He paused. ‘I take it his mum and dad haven’t heard from him?’

‘No,’ she said quietly.

‘Shit.’ There was a silence. ‘How’d they take it?’

‘Not brilliantly. Rose was very upset.’

‘Fucking hell, I’m going to kill that dozy bastard when I see him.’

She gave a weak laugh. ‘Oh God, Mac. Where the hell is he?’

Mac didn’t reply for a moment, and then in a voice completely unlike his, said, ‘I don’t know, Clara. I really don’t know.’

5

Cambridgeshire, 1987

Our son, Toby, was born a few weeks before Hannah’s sixth birthday and from the very first moment he was a joy. I adored being his mother; the way his little eyes would follow me around the room, how he’d reach for me as soon as I drew near – the almost telepathic way we communicated. It was as though we were one person; he seemed to melt into me when I held him, his head tucked tightly under my chin, the skin of his body warm against mine. I felt as though finally I was loved and needed in the way I’d always dreamed of being. We adored each other, it was as simple as that, and yes, I guess it did make Hannah feel pushed out a bit.

But I tried hard to make her feel included. I followed the advice in every book I could find about sibling rivalry, did my best to show her she was loved as much as her brother. It almost always backfired. ‘Today we’re going to have a Hannah and Mummy day,’ I told her one morning over breakfast. ‘What would you like to do?’ I asked her brightly. ‘Anything you want!’

She stared balefully back at me as she shovelled Shreddies into her mouth, but didn’t reply.

‘Swimming? Cinema?’

Still nothing.

‘Shopping for a new toy?’

She shrugged.

‘Shopping it is then!’

We drove to the nearest town with a large toy store in its centre. ‘We can go for tea and cakes first,’ I suggested. ‘Isn’t this fun? Us girls together? You’re such a big girl now, perhaps we can choose a pretty dress for you.’ She just stared out of the window while I prattled on.

The shop was one of those lovely old-fashioned ones selling tasteful and expensive handmade toys for the sort of parents allergic to plastic. It wasn’t the kind of place I usually shopped in, but I’d wanted to buy Hannah something really special and original. We wandered the aisles, but though I pointed out countless dolls, games and stuffed toys, she barely glanced at them, staring back at me with undisguised boredom. I began to lose my patience. ‘Come on, love, you can have anything you want, just take a look!’

It was at that moment that I spotted, at the far end of the shop, someone I used to know from the village I grew up in. I completely froze, my heart pounding at such a strange and unexpected shock. I ducked my head and turned quickly away, hurrying along another aisle. I couldn’t face the questions that would have been asked, the inevitable fishing for details as to why Doug and I had left so suddenly all those years before.

Hiding behind a display of teddy bears I looked around for Hannah, my heart sinking when I realized she wasn’t there. ‘Hannah!’ I hissed, ‘Where are you?!’ At last I spied my former neighbour leaving and heaved a sigh of relief. At that moment Hannah appeared from around the corner.

‘I want to go home,’ she said.

I was too drained to argue any longer. ‘Fine. Have it your way.’

It was as we were leaving that I felt the hand on my arm. I turned to see a middle-aged woman glaring at me with obvious distaste. ‘You’ll have to pay for these,’ she said, tight-lipped.

It was then that I noticed her ‘Manager’ badge. ‘I’m sorry?’ I asked.

She held out her hand, filled with what looked like tiny wooden sticks. ‘She did this, I saw her,’ the woman said, nodding at Hannah. ‘You’ll need to pay for them. Would you come this way, please?’

I realized then that what she was showing me was the beautiful set of hand-painted wooden dolls from the eye-wateringly expensive doll’s house I’d pointed out to Hannah when we’d first arrived. Every single one of them had had their heads and limbs snapped off. I looked at Hannah who gazed innocently back at me.

We drove home in silence. When I unlocked the front door I all but ran to Toby, grabbing him from Doug’s arms and burying my face into his comforting, warm little neck, hurrying up to my bedroom and shutting the door behind us.

From the beginning, Doug and I dealt with Hannah’s behaviour very differently. I still had the faint scar at the corner of my eye, the sight of Lucy’s empty cage stashed forlornly in our garage to remind me what she was capable of. Toby was a very clingy baby who hated to be put down, and occasionally I’d glance up to see Hannah watching us together, gazing over at us in such an unsettling manner that it made me shiver.

So, yes, I guess I was a little over-protective of my baby son, wary and watchful of my daughter whenever she was near. As he was breastfed I always had an excuse to keep him close by me, but soon Doug began to resent me for what he saw as me monopolizing our boy. ‘You’ve made him clingy,’ he’d complain when Toby would cry for me the moment he tried to pick him up. It was as though he thought I was deliberately keeping his son from him, but that just wasn’t true.

Doug’s way of dealing with Hannah was to lavish her with attention, no matter what she did, as though he hoped the force of his love alone might steer her on the right track. If he came home from work, for example, and found her on the naughty step, he would – much to my annoyance – scoop her up and give her a biscuit, taking her with him to the living room to watch her favourite cartoon on TV, while I played with Toby in a separate room. Slowly our family began to divide into two, with Toby and me on one side, Doug and Hannah on the other. It was true that she was much better behaved when she was with her father, but I sensed that she enjoyed the growing rift between Doug and me. I saw the spark of pleasure in her eyes when we argued, how happy she seemed when we ate our meals in offended silence.

A few months before Hannah turned seven Doug and I were summoned, yet again, to the school to talk about her behaviour. We’d had a row earlier that morning and drove there in almost complete silence, Toby sleeping in his car seat behind us, Doug staring grimly at the road ahead. As we drove I brooded over Hannah. Had I caused it, whatever ‘it’ was? Had the pain of those years of childlessness affected how I’d bonded with my first child? I had felt so broken, so utterly alone back then; nobody had understood, not really – not even Doug. In my misery and isolation had I put up such a self-protective wall between myself and the world that it’d made my heart harder, incapable of fully loving and accepting my daughter when she finally came along? Is that what she sensed and railed against? I stared out of my window, trying to fight my tears, until we drew up in front of West Elms Primary.

The school tried its best to be understanding, Hannah’s young teacher earnestly offering us strategies and action points to help deal with our delinquent, troubled daughter, giving us leaflets to read, suggesting counselling – before quietly intimating that Hannah would eventually be asked to leave if it continued, that they had the other children to consider, after all. ‘Does she have any friends?’ I asked miserably.

Miss Foxton sighed. ‘She tends to select a certain type of child with whom to attach herself; the more vulnerable and easily led types. Hannah can be very persuasive when she puts her mind to it. She’ll allow that child to be her ally for a time, and then she’ll grow bored and turn on them completely. It’s a pattern we’ve witnessed repeatedly.’ Her eyes slid away to the pencil she was fiddling with. ‘Daisy Williams is one example, of course. But no, I’ve never seen her truly befriend anyone as such.’

I nodded, remembering Daisy. Shy and eager to please, she was a very pale, thin child with white-blond hair and red-rimmed eyes who reminded me a little of a skinned rabbit. Hannah had homed in on her during the previous school term, enjoyed her new friend’s admiration and slavish devotion for a few weeks, before Daisy had been found, tied up with her own skipping rope and soaking wet, in the playground toilet block. Hannah, all wide-eyed innocence, had maintained that they’d merely been playing a game of cops and robbers, and Daisy had eagerly backed up this claim, but from then on the school had done everything they could to keep the two girls apart, at the insistence, I was sure, of Daisy’s mother, who glared at me with open hostility whenever we crossed paths in the playground.

After our talk with Hannah’s form teacher we walked back to the car in miserable silence. ‘Oh, Doug,’ I said when I was sitting in the passenger seat.

He looked at me and sighed. ‘I know.’ He reached over and took my hand, and for a second something of the old closeness between us flickered. He opened his mouth to speak but at that moment Toby woke and began to cry.

I glanced at Doug and began to open my door. ‘I’d better sit in the back with him,’ I said. Doug nodded, put the key into the ignition and we drove home without another word.

A few days after the school meeting we sat Hannah down and told her what her punishment would be. It was always hard to discipline her because it was difficult to find anything – any treat or toy – that she was genuinely attached to: she literally didn’t care if I confiscated any of her belongings. The only thing she really liked to do was watch television. So on that occasion we told her there’d be no TV for a week. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look of fury, of pure venom on her face when we gave her the news.

I found the bruise on Toby’s arm the next day. Earlier in the morning I’d left him sitting in his little bouncy chair while I got Hannah ready for school. It was as I was fetching her some clean socks from the tumble dryer that I heard his howl of pain. I raced back up the stairs and there he was, red-faced and hysterical, though moments before I’d left him cooing happily. When I went to find Hannah she was sitting in exactly the same spot on her bedroom floor, placidly doing a jigsaw puzzle. She didn’t even look up when I came in. It wasn’t until later that I found the bruise; a small, angry, purple mark on Toby’s upper arm – as though, perhaps, he’d been pinched very hard. I couldn’t prove it was Hannah, but I knew that it was. Of course I did.

6

London, 2017

Shell-shocked, Clara and Mac walked back from the police station. When they’d arrived and told their story to the young officer at the front desk, he’d appeared unimpressed at first, listening with studied patience as Clara haltingly went through her story. His attitude had changed, however when, putting Luke’s laptop on the desk in front of him, she described the hundreds of threatening emails, the break-in a few months before, the letter and the photographs stuffed through their door.

‘I see,’ he’d said. ‘If you’ll just come with me please.’ She and Mac had been ushered through to a small, windowless room and told to wait. They’d sat in nervous silence as they listened to footsteps come and go in the corridor beyond the closed door.

When it opened they were greeted by a slender black woman who introduced herself as Detective Constable Loretta Mansfield. Briskly she approached them and shook their hands with a firm dry handshake, her eyes quickly searching theirs as she smiled, before sitting down and placing Luke’s laptop on the table between them. ‘Right, Clara,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a chat with my colleague about Luke, and what we’re going to do next is fill in a missing person’s report.’

Clara swallowed hard, her mouth dry with nerves as she went over again what she’d told the officer on the front desk, DC Mansfield’s calm, almond-shaped eyes flicking up to meet hers at various points in her story.