After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets (20 page)

Instead, I turned the key in the ignition and headed towards Katya’s house. I hadn’t had a close friend in years.

And now I had one who could blow my life apart.

T
omaso chose
my wedding anniversary to phone, exactly a month after we’d come back from Florence. My mother had just bustled in with my anniversary card. Her dogged dedication to reminding me about the date – ‘Only three weeks to your anniversary. Anything special planned?’ – always seemed more of an accusation than a congratulation. I was just going through the motions of reading the ‘special’ words in the card, as nothing in my mother’s life happened by accident, when I saw ‘Italian interpreter’ flash up on my mobile.

‘Mum, make yourself a cup of tea. I need to take this. It’s a work call.’

I knew it would lead to a diatribe about ‘pushing yourself too hard’ but fear that he might phone back when Mark was there sent me scuttling out into the garden.

I managed to answer as though I had no idea who was calling, feeling a rush of sunshine through me when he spoke my name.

‘Lee-dya. Tomaso.’

‘You’re not supposed to call me.’

‘Had to, sweetheart. You won’t reply. And you wouldn’t want me to end up in the madhouse, would you?’

Those tiny little Italian inflections. The slight trace of a rolled ‘r’. I was sure he did it on purpose to sound sexy and exotic rather than the boy from Bermondsey. He succeeded.

I couldn’t understand how someone simply asking how I was sent such a burst of excitement coursing through me. Quite different from the mixture of guilt, familiarity and love I’d experienced that morning when Mark brought me a cup of tea in bed and told me that he would marry me ‘all over again’. He’d sat on the bed, reached for my hand and said, ‘I do love you, you know.’

I couldn’t get the reciprocal words out. I’d just smiled and said, ‘Thanks.’ I did love him. But I couldn’t say it. It seemed wrong to claim such lofty emotions, when there was so much buried underground.

Yet with Tomaso, the person who knew the least – and the most – about me, I could be completely honest. I explained, without embarrassment, how hard it was for me to keep ignoring his calls, how desperate I’d been to talk to him but Jamie being ill had been a wake-up call. Adultery and motherhood didn’t mix.

‘Let me just see you once more. Please. I’ve got things I want to talk to you about.’

I could see my mother pacing up and down inside. I turned my back on her. Then swivelled round again in case she crept up on me. ‘I can’t see you, Tomaso.’

‘Just once, then I promise I’ll go away. You know it makes sense.’

I knew it definitely didn’t make sense, but it didn’t stop me wondering how I could see him without it being ‘wrong’.

There wasn’t a way it could be right.

‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Giacomo. There are a few things I’d like to run past you.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mother cleaning the inside of my kitchen windows. She was probably chiselling a bugging device into the glass.

‘If you’re quick, you can run them past me now.’

‘Come on. Don’t be like that. Just meet me for one evening.’

I heard the laugh in his voice. That suppressed giggle that made me feel carefree, young and daring.

‘I can’t. Really I can’t.’

‘I’m leaving to live in Dubai for a few years.’

‘Dubai? I thought you were moving back to Italy. Are you all going?’ I braced myself for finding out that he was back with Raffaella, heading off to a new life in the sunshine. I readied myself to be pleased for him.

‘No. No, we’re not. Just me.’

‘But what about Giacomo?’

‘I was headhunted for the job, the pay’s really good and I thought if I earned decent money for a bit, I’d be able to contribute more to his upbringing, make sure he has everything he needs.’

There was something in his tone I couldn’t quite grasp. It reminded me of Jamie when he was listing all the ‘unselfish’ reasons he should be allowed Call of Duty: ‘Then I wouldn’t irritate Izzy, then you’d have more time to work, I wouldn’t go out as much so I wouldn’t be asking you for money all the time…’

I was just trying to get my head round the logic of being a brilliant father by working thousands of miles away when he said, ‘And it will be nice to live somewhere warm. It’s supposed to be a great place to be an expat. There’s a lively social scene.’

I didn’t flatter myself that he was trying to make me jealous. And in that moment, jealousy was the last emotion that surged through me. This man was more concerned about the quality of his beach barbecues than the fact that his four-year-old might soon start calling someone else Daddy. There was something repulsive about even mentioning a social life when he was walking away from his own son. I was silent.

‘Do you think I’m making a mistake?’ Tomaso sounded hurt that I hadn’t fallen over myself to congratulate him.

‘I’d be worried about being so far away from my son for so long.’

Tomaso sighed. ‘I know, but Raffaella would make it hard to see him anyway, so I figured I might as well get on and earn some money, while she sees sense.’

‘She might come round more quickly if you went back out to Italy and showed her she could rely on you.’ A schoolteacher tone had crept into my voice. I couldn’t imagine entertaining any life choice that would keep me from my kids for more than a few days at a time.

Tomaso sounded almost petulant. ‘I thought you’d be pleased for me.’

I realised that I was doing to him what Mark had done to me at the Surrey Business Stars Awards – taking a piece of good news and sucking all the energy out of it.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘well done’ when all I could think was,
Mark would never abandon the children like that
. I’d betrayed my husband for this man. Given him a special place in my affections, as the ‘one who really got me, with whom I could be totally myself’. Fooled myself that this person, with no backbone or staying power, was something special. Disgust at him, at myself, made me end the call quickly, barely able to articulate, ‘Good luck with it all.’

Tonight, I’d definitely tell Mark I loved him.

W
hen I went back inside
, my mother was all sucked in. ‘Why don’t you go into your office where you can concentrate? Surely you must need to write things down so you don’t forget?’

‘Sometimes walking about helps me think creatively.’ Especially about how deluded I’d been. ‘Anyway, I thought I might make a crumble for Mark for tonight.’ A total non sequitur but enough to move my mother on.

‘Your dad likes a good crumble.’

My mother couldn’t have fished for an invitation more if she’d sat there with a jar of maggots and a hook. I couldn’t invite her. She’d sit there chipping away at me when it was all I could do to hang together.

‘I promised him I wouldn’t tell you but he’s gone into one of his funny moods again.’

As always, my guilt rose like floodwater.

‘He keeps saying he thinks you’re ashamed of him because you don’t invite him to any of the children’s events at school any more,’ she said.

‘How can I? How can I risk him bumping into Sean? What do you want me to do?’

‘If you invited us round here to the house a bit more, he might not notice that you’re keeping him away from the school.’

An evening in my company would probably just confirm in Dad’s mind that everything really was as bad as he thought. But I had to try.

‘Would you like to join us tonight, then?’

‘On your anniversary? We wouldn’t want to be in the way.’

I hadn’t even mustered up a feeble ‘Don’t be silly, we’d love to have you’ before my mother was on the phone, telling my dad to check his striped shirt was ironed, as ‘Lydia is very keen for us to join her to celebrate her wedding anniversary.’

When Mark arrived home from the shop, as I’d predicted, he laughed and said, ‘Your mother does redefine the meaning of romance. Better go and get a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream and take the edge off her. Beer or red wine for your dad?’

I loved him for not making a fuss. I guess after eighteen years of marriage, he wasn’t expecting to sit there making eyes at me through the candlelight. And at least with my mother to contain, I wouldn’t have time to dwell on the fact that a month ago, I’d betrayed him with a man who had the integrity of a loan shark.

Dad’s arrival pushed every thought of Tomaso out of my head. He hovered on the doorstep, his hand gripping my arm as though he needed to anchor himself to someone, this jovial man who could sort anything when I was little with a hug and a mint toffee. It made my heart ache. And harden.

‘Dad, lovely to see you. Come on in.’

My mother followed behind him with her ‘told you so’ face on, waggling her eyebrows and jabbing her head in his direction. Mark waved them in, swiftly absorbing the panorama and taking charge by sitting Dad down and finding him a beer. My composure wobbled as Dad shrank into his chair, none of his usual quips about ‘I can smell burning’ or ‘Shall I get a takeaway?’ I wondered if he’d stopped taking the medication for what my mother always described as ‘his nerves’. She followed me into the kitchen.

‘Is Dad okay? He looks terrible.’

She sighed. ‘You know how it is. It’s cyclical. Always worse at this time of year. It’s the autumn term. He still misses launching himself into a new school year.’

When her features softened, she looked so much younger.

‘It’s been a long time though, since he was doing that,’ I said.

‘Yes, well, the things you love dearly are hard to leave behind.’

From purr to hiss. In a cartoon my mother would definitely be the cat that tricks you into thinking it’s a sweet ball of fluff, then suddenly leaps onto your back and rips half your skin off.

‘No children tonight?’ she said, as though they’d deliberately scattered for the hills the minute they knew she was coming.

Izzy was getting in touch with her inner thesp in some weird modern production of
Fiddler on the Roof
. Jamie was – of course – at Eleanor’s. She was like some big-breasted magnet for him. The more I tried to pull him back and clink him onto something else, the more he strained to be with her. And my Facebook snooping wasn’t getting me anywhere. After an initial flurry of Googling all the baffling abbreviations, I decided that discovering BEG meant ‘Big evil grin’ or DGA was ‘Don’t go anywhere’ was not a good use of my time. However, after reading a newspaper article about social media speak, I’d frantically combed Jamie’s interactions with Eleanor for IWSN (I want sex now) and GNOC (Get naked on camera) but there was nothing to suggest they were getting physical. But frankly, how would I know if she was offering him one behind the privet hedge (BTPH perhaps?) on a regular basis?

My mother turned the heat down under the gravy, which made my teeth grind slightly. Though not as much as her peering into the pan with ‘I think this needs a sprinkling of cornflour,’ then opening my cupboards and causing the caster sugar to cascade onto the floor. Izzy had been baking at the weekend and rarely showed the same enthusiasm for putting things away as she did for getting them out.

‘I don’t know why you don’t keep all your things in tins,’ my mother said, tutting away.

I sent up a prayer that she’d never open Jamie’s wardrobe and be buried under an avalanche of rotting rugby kit.

While I fetched the dustpan and brush, my mother wrestled with Mabel, who was like a shark circling a bleeding body as she tried to lick up the sugar. Mark had disappeared down to the shed to fetch a bottle of whisky when the doorbell rang.

I shouted through to the sitting room. ‘Dad, can you let Jamie in?’

That boy and his flaming keys.

Dad let out a wheeze of effort as he hauled himself out of the chair, then shuffled into the entrance hall. The sounds of ageing.

My mother gave Mabel a sharp belt on her bottom. I saw Mabel’s lip curl. For a dog who would happily share a pack of custard creams with a burglar before leading him to my jewellery box, it was proof positive that my mother pushed everyone to their limits.

I was just wondering if I should rescue Mabel from Dorothy the Dog Whisperer, when I heard, ‘Good evening. Sorry to disturb you, I was just wondering if Mark was in. I’ve brought back some samples he left for me.’

I shot out into the hallway, but too late. My dad was waving Sean in. ‘Come in, he’s just popped down to the shed for a minute. He’ll be along in a second.’

I stood behind him, making terrified ‘bugger off now’ faces. Sean was hovering uncertainly and holding out the bag to me. He had his hand up, ‘No, no, it’s fine, thanks. I’ll get going, just that Mark needed these for tomorrow.’

I never thought I’d see the day when I was grateful for the fact that Dad kept refusing to get his eyes checked, even though every time he drove me, I kept breathing in and braking.

Dad was looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to introduce him. Instead I snatched the samples and said, ‘Mark’s been doing a kitchen for him.’ I moved forward, intending to close the door in Sean’s face.

But Dad wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to praise Mark, though unlike my mother, he didn’t make me feel it was
just
because Mark had rescued his tainted and tarnished daughter. ‘Good, good. Bet he’s done a great job. Clever with his hands, isn’t he? Build anything out of anything.’ Dad picked up a walking stick that Mark had carved out of a piece of oak from the umbrella stand behind the door. He held it out to Sean, his veiny hands shaking slightly. ‘Look, did he show you this? So detailed.’

‘Lovely. He’s done an excellent job for me, too,’ Sean said, backing away from the front door.

I had to restrain myself from rushing at him and shouting, ‘Get lost, get lost, you’ve done enough damage!’

Over the last couple of months, I’d got used to Sean being around. I no longer experienced a great storm of emotion every time he popped up. But seeing my dad there, so trusting and vulnerable, brought a renewed surge of fury into my heart.

I wanted to scream, ‘Look what you did. Are you satisfied now? Do you remember how vibrant my dad was? How he could walk into any room and everyone would just quieten down, without him saying a word?’ Grief, raw and tender, wrapped itself around regret for all that Dad was and never would be again.

Dad returned the walking stick to the umbrella stand. He was frowning. I wished I had Izzy’s capacity for drama and could faint in a convincing way, anything: fall on the floor, throw up, haemorrhage blood. But instead I stood there like the idiot everyone is pointing behind in a pantomime, paralysed, unable to think of anything that wouldn’t draw Dad’s attention to the fact that it was
him
.

‘Lydia here won the prize at the Surrey Business Stars Awards. Best business in Surrey.’

I took Dad’s arm. I tried to make my voice kind, but it came out as a reproach. ‘He doesn’t need to know all that.’

I felt something withdraw in my dad, a little quiver of hurt. I wanted to stamp my foot and say, ‘I’m not ashamed of you, but you really, really don’t want to know who this is.’

I grabbed the bag from Sean and was just stepping towards the front door to close it when Mark came in from the garden.

‘Sean, hello there. See you’ve met my father-in-law, Arthur. Did Lydia introduce you? Arthur, this is Sean McAllister, my best customer. Are you coming in for a quick drink, mate? It’s actually our wedding anniversary today and we were just going to pop a cork.’

Sean and I stood there like a couple of actors employed for their ability to play lampposts. I didn’t look at Dad. There was a pause while Mark waited for Sean’s answer and I waited for the sky to fall in.

The toilet cistern gurgled. Mabel’s muffled whimpers seeped through into the hallway. Sean backed away. ‘Thanks, but I need to get going. See you soon.’

Mark had barely articulated, ‘Just a quick one,’ when my dad let out a groan. He swayed a little on his feet. The expression on Sean’s face hovered midway between concern and horror. Mark swung round to Dad. ‘Arthur, are you all right?’

‘What’s he doing here?’ Dad straightened up. He drew himself up, suddenly looking less frail. Something stronger in his voice. He yanked the front door wide open. ‘What are you doing here?’

Sean put his arm out. I wasn’t sure whether it was to fend my dad off, or to steady him. Mark was doing that ‘Who? What? Where?’ thing Mabel did when she knew Izzy had hidden a biscuit in the garden for her. His gaze darted from Dad to Sean and finally came to rest on me for an explanation.

Sean opened his mouth but didn’t manage to force any words out into the air. Dad, who often looked as though he might struggle to climb the stairs, appeared to claw back a bit of authority. But what none of us had bargained on was my mother. Like a flying squirrel in full flight, she suddenly came out of the kitchen, dustpan brush in hand, and launched herself.

She echoed my father with ‘What are you doing here?’ but then took it several stages further. ‘Get away. Get away! Don’t you dare show yourself anywhere near this family. Nowhere!’

She brandished the dustpan brush at Sean, little grains of sugar flicking over the hallway.

He made the mistake of saying, ‘I’m sorry. I really am.’

This seemed to ignite my mother like a Bonfire Night rocket that soars upwards and scatters into a hundred little stars. ‘Sorry? Sorry? I’ll give you sorry. Have you any idea what you did to us? You and your bully-boy father?’

Mark stood there transfixed, as though he’d been rolled down a hill in a barrel and needed a second to get his thoughts flowing in a straight line again.

My dad stepped in. ‘You’d best go now, son.’

There was a fragment of his old teacher voice in there, a dusty souvenir of the man who’d believed so passionately that education was the greatest civilising force of mankind.

He clicked the front door shut, but didn’t turn round. Just stood there with his hand on the latch.

I touched his back. ‘Dad. Come on. Let’s go and sit down.’

Mark pulled himself out of his stupor. ‘Arthur, come with me.’ He did a ‘What the heck?’ face in my direction but I was pretty certain my expression hadn’t yet found one single emotion to settle into. He took Dad’s arm and helped him through to the closest seat, in the dining room, which now looked ridiculous with the neat little vase of roses and the sideboard with the happy family photos. How easy it was to live a lie. How difficult it was to ensure it lasted forever.

My mother skittered through, still pulsing with adrenaline, her lips moving with all the vitriol she hadn’t found an outlet for. She parked herself next to Dad, with a warning to ‘Keep it brief’. I saw an understanding pass between them and hoped to god we were all on the same page.

The smell of gravy burning reached me. I dashed out into the kitchen and snatched it off the stove. It was tempting to start checking on the lamb, stab a knife into the carrots, shake the roast potatoes to guarantee maximum crispiness. Anything to maintain the status quo for half a minute more.

Anything rather than meet Mark’s questions.

He was used to excruciating scenes with my mother. The many times when she’d felt obliged to educate a waiter in customer service. Imparted her knowledge on how to run an airline on one memorable holiday to Bordeaux. Singlehandedly attempted an explanation of how Marks & Spencer could reverse their fortunes if they’d just stock ‘the sort of clothes that people want to buy, rather than all this modern tat’.

I knew he wouldn’t yet have connected me to the latest debacle. Of course, he’d be dying to know how my mother could have encountered Sean to an extent that would merit her witch-on-a-broom scenario. But he wouldn’t have guessed that I was centre point around which all the hate revolved.

I switched off the oven and prepared myself for the past to catch up with the present.