Someone is Lying, page 20
This created more questions in a rapidly evolving case: did Issie know the pair had already met? And, if so, was she lying when she said the hit-and-run was an accident, and that she had never seen Beatriz before the moment she stepped in front of the car?
Was there a reason Issie was still covering for her boyfriend? Her parents and soon-to-be-appointed solicitor would later claim that she was scared of him but, if that was the case, then why did it later transpire that Issie was still in contact with him?
Kay
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
13 July
Kay should be getting used to spending nights lying in bed and staring at patches of damp creeping into one corner of the ceiling while her brain scrambles through countless scenarios of where her son is, why he has not called her back and what he is planning on doing while the police are wanting to speak to him. Kay assumes he knows why. And also surmises he understands Issie is the reason.
She feels sick at every part of what’s happened. That her son has done something so awful and has not told her anything of it. That his girlfriend betrayed him, because despite it being the right thing to do, she can’t imagine Dylan seeing it this way.
She can’t help questioning the story he told her, the reasons he used to explain why they went off-grid for five days. Of course this is what their fight must have been about. Did Dylan think they could cover it up? Was he attempting to persuade Issie she could too?
He knows Issie must be home by now. Maybe he also knew she was speaking to the police. Perhaps this was why he was so anxious to hear from her.
Kay shudders. Possibly he has gone to Issie’s house but, if he has, then what does he plan to do next?
She squeezes her eyes tight to try and blank out the images that keep popping into her head. The ones she tries to ignore but that refuse to go away. Neil. The man she once fell for, and who she’d had a child with. She’d never stopped looking for signs in Dylan that he was his father’s boy. When you have a son with a man like Neil, it is always there in the back of your mind, the thought that it doesn’t matter how much you do, there is a 50 per cent chance they will turn out like the wrong parent.
She’s looked for it over the years, watching the way Dylan behaved with his girlfriends, but has never seen any trace of his father there. Then, did anyone see it with Neil? When he’d done such a good job hiding it.
Perhaps she should call Jess. It would be the right thing to do, to tell her to keep her daughter safe. If only someone had done that for her twenty-odd years ago.
Kay clamps her hands over her ears as if, in doing so, she can block everything out. She screams, silently in her head, because she cannot wake Billy up with her fears, as she rocks herself into a ball. She can’t stand by Dylan’s side when he does the wrong thing again. Not if there is even the slightest of doubts creeping into her mind that he is anything like his father.
The next morning, Kay gets out of bed and drifts through the motions. She tells herself that no news is good news in a pathetic attempt to calm herself from worrying.
She rubs a hand on Billy’s back to gently wake him and asks him what he would like for breakfast. Does he want Shreddies or Weetabix?
She will go back in ten minutes to make sure he is awake still, and get him up and dressed. Isn’t it funny, she thinks, that when she is so caught up in Dylan she isn’t worrying about Billy. But then you’re only ever as happy as your least happy child.
Downstairs, she is on autopilot, putting Shreddies into Billy’s favourite Spiderman bowl, making a strong coffee for herself. She cannot face the thought of eating. She is staring out of the window at the patch of back garden and Billy’s shirts that are still hanging on the line, and the tired green shed that really needs pulling down, but that she cannot bear to because Dylan always used to love sitting inside it, playing with his cars.
She is thinking non-stop of the boy she’d grown inside her, who she has loved and adored for nineteen years. The one she has so many memories of that she can barely separate them from one another any more.
How old was he when she picked him up and carried him for the last time? When was the night he stopped sucking his thumb? At what age did he brush his own teeth, or did she stop reading to him at night and he read to himself instead? She didn’t make a record of these momentous occasions because she didn’t recognise then that they would be their lasts.
Kay has been building up a picture of her son by layering the memories on top of one another, one by one. The time he’d carefully carved a keyring out of wood at school into the shape of two hearts, and had wrapped it in toilet paper to give her. The smile on his face as she opened it that was so contagious.
Or when he sat on the bottom stair for nearly an hour as he patiently showed Billy how to tie his shoelaces. When he’d come home from his first week of working and slipped cash into an envelope for her which she’d never asked for.
Then the way his face had lit up when he’d brought Issie home to meet her, and how she knew in that moment something had changed in him. He had fallen in love, deep. Kay was aware of this from the start of their relationship. Before even Dylan was, she suspects.
The memories hurt so much they make it difficult to breathe. Is it true, what he has supposedly done? Did this boy really do something so unthinkable?
Thoughts circle like vultures, relentless, and yet somehow she manages to get Billy to eat his Shreddies and make sure his teeth are brushed and that he looks smart as they leave the house in shoes that are beginning to fall apart at the end of the school year but are nonetheless freshly polished.
She ignores the mother from Billy’s class who frowns at her as she hovers at the gate to the playground and turns to walk to the café. She doesn’t want to get into any conversation. She is running on empty.
But the mum catches her arm before she can leave, trotting beside her on the pavement.
‘Kay?’ she questions. ‘Are you okay?’
‘What?’ she replies, instinctively pulling back. The mother’s name is Alison. She has a girl in Billy’s class but Kay doesn’t know which one.
‘I wanted to make sure you’re okay,’ she says again.
Kay looks behind her expecting to see a gaggle of other mothers staring in their wake but there is no one there.
‘I’m making sure, that’s all,’ she goes on. ‘I’ll be honest – I heard the stuff about your son.’
‘About Dylan?’ she says, tired of what is about to come next.
‘No.’ Alison frowns again. ‘About Billy. I heard he was being bullied. Edie told me about it.’
‘Edie?’ Every response another question.
‘My daughter? She told me some of the kids weren’t being kind to him, and I wanted to say I hope you’re okay.’
‘What are they saying?’ Kay asks.
‘Things about his brother,’ Alison tells her. ‘Some of the parents must say too much in front of their kids.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘You do know this, don’t you? The school have told you?’
‘No. They haven’t.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. You must think I’m speaking out of turn but I wanted to make sure Billy is okay. Edie says he’s such a sweet boy.’
‘Thank you.’ Kay bites her lip because Billy is a sweet boy and knowing Edie has noticed this makes her feel like she might cry. ‘I appreciate it,’ she says, while all the time she is wondering how is this one more thing she’s missed?
Alison nods. ‘Some of them are …’ She drifts off without finishing the sentence. ‘I wanted you to know we aren’t all like that. A couple of us are meeting for coffee next Tuesday, if you fancy it? You know, before the kids break up for the summer.’
‘Thanks, but I work.’
‘Of course,’ Alison says. ‘Of course. Not to worry.’ She smiles and eventually Kay makes her excuses and hurries off, her world continuing to fold inwards, because how is her son being bullied and yet the school haven’t told her?
Kay’s face is burning by the time she reaches the café, her breaths too rapid, like she has run the mile and a half to get there.
‘Jesus, Kay, what’s the matter?’ Mike asks.
‘Nothing,’ she lies. ‘I didn’t want to be late.’
‘It’s more than that,’ he murmurs, his eyes trailing her face.
She tugs at her hair that is falling out of its bun, taking the band out and winding it into another knot. ‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ she says, trying to regulate her breaths.
‘Go home. Whatever it is, if you’re not going to tell me, then please go home and sort it out.’
‘No. I’m fine. I’m sorry, my head’s on work again now.’
‘Look at it here,’ he mutters. ‘The place is hardly busy, is it? The weather isn’t getting better any time soon.’
‘I need the money, Mike,’ Kay pleads, at the same time knowing it’s money he can’t afford to pay her.
But Mike nods. ‘Then do whatever you need,’ he tells her, but he is still looking at her questioningly. ‘That boy of yours doing okay?’ he asks.
‘Which one?’ she murmurs before shaking off his question with a, ‘Yes. Everything’s fine.’
‘That’s good,’ he says, though he doesn’t look like he believes her. Eventually, he disappears back inside the café and Kay follows him, into the kitchen.
Her gaze sweeps around her at the people she works with. They all come here because they need the money but most of them don’t stick around long. They might do a summer but only a few of them, like Paige, have been here longer than a year. Kay knows so little about any of them, and they about her. It’s the way she’s always preferred it. No one asks questions. They come to do a job, make small talk and occasionally have a laugh.
The others carry on bustling around her, saying hello but not stopping to check in. All of them oblivious to the storm that’s unfurling inside of her. She wonders at the fact she has no one she can call a true friend. But, then again, she has spent all the years since she uprooted her and Dylan from her first marriage shutting herself off from other people. All it means now is she has no one she can turn to. No one bar one.
‘Mike!’ she calls out as he pushes through the back door and it slams shut behind him. She spots him unlocking his garish yellow Mazda and runs across the grass to where he always parks as close to the café as possible. ‘Mike?’ she says again as she gets near and he stops to turn to her. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she tells him. She can feel herself start to crumple.
‘Get in.’ He opens the passenger door and she walks around the car to climb in. ‘If you come to Costco with me then you’re still working and I still need to pay you,’ he says as he closes the door behind her and walks round to the driver’s side.
She feels so utterly grateful to him as he flicks his gaze to the rear-view mirror and pulls out onto the road before finally glancing at her. ‘What’s going on, Kay?’
‘I’m a bad mother,’ she says, so quietly she thinks he might not have heard her but he turns to her and frowns.
‘You’re anything but.’
‘No,’ Kay insists, ‘I am. Billy’s getting bullied at school and I didn’t even realise, and the Portuguese police want to speak to Dylan about a woman who was killed by a car.’ She turns to Mike. ‘His girlfriend told them he was driving it,’ she says. ‘Now Dylan’s done a runner, and I can’t get hold of him.’ Hot tears slide down her cheeks as she leans her head back and watches the air freshener as it sways from the mirror.
‘Bloody hell,’ he mutters.
‘Dylan won’t talk to me. I only found out by calling the police myself.’
‘You need to find him. Running away isn’t going to help. He must know that.’
‘I don’t know where to start looking and he won’t answer my calls.’ Kay realises the irony. Here she is, only a week later, in the exact same situation Jess had been. She can’t help thinking that if she’d helped Jess when she needed her to this wouldn’t be happening now.
‘Speak to his mates? Someone must have heard from him,’ Mike suggests.
Only Kay isn’t sure who Dylan is in contact with. His friendship with his oldest friend, Hannah, who he has known since he was seven, has dwindled since Issie appeared on the scene. Dylan had gone out with Hannah for six months before Issie, a mistake on both their parts they agreed, but Kay was sure Issie’s arrival put pressure on him still seeing her.
He played football before they went away, but only once a week now and she has no idea who his teammates were. The only friend she can think of is Russ, who he went to school with, but Kay doesn’t have any way of getting hold of him.
‘What about the place he worked?’ Mike suggests.
Kay considers this. She has his boss’s number, though she doubts he’ll have heard from Dylan. But she has to try something.
For a while they drive in silence as Mike winds his way round the country roads that head towards Southampton. ‘I keep thinking—’ Kay starts, before breaking off. ‘About his dad,’ she goes on. ‘He wasn’t a good man.’
‘You’ve never spoken of him,’ Mike points out.
‘I know. I never wanted to. But there must be traits, mustn’t there? I mean, I can’t be naive enough to assume Dylan inherited everything from me.’
‘You’re the only parent he knows, Kay.’
‘But is that enough?’ she questions.
‘Yes,’ he tells her with so much faith she can almost believe him. ‘Don’t start thinking like that. You need to find him and hear his side of the story first.’
‘Maybe,’ she murmurs.
‘There are always two sides,’ Mike says.
Jess
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
13 July
‘It’s good for us that Dylan’s gone off the radar,’ Scott tells Issie. ‘As long as he isn’t telling his side of the story, the only one they’re hearing is yours.’
‘What could his side of the story possibly be?’ I ask as I barge into the kitchen, interrupting their conversation.
Scott is in business mode, like he is the lawyer himself and not Issie’s father. He has been prowling the kitchen making calls to America since Carla left, shouting demands in his brash manner as Issie sits and watches him, absorbing it all.
‘I was just telling Issie about Hugo Campbell,’ he says, not answering my question. He has spoken to the solicitor on the phone, a call which appears to have buoyed him. Scott is in his element right now and it frightens me that this was once the man I loved. I hope he is thinking of our daughter, and not simply seeing the fact Dylan has gone AWOL as a potential triumph.
I, on the other hand, don’t like not knowing where he is because it means I don’t know what comes next, what he is planning. What my daughter might be planning.
Since we got home last night she has been closing down again and, with Scott in the house, in front of me every way I turn, I can’t find the time to speak to her.
Sometimes, the pain is too much. When all I am faced with is a hard shell I can’t chip into, I have no idea what’s going on inside Issie’s head, or how she is feeling. It breaks me to look at her pulling herself even further away.
It was only twelve months ago when she would still talk to me about anything. Just last summer I could walk into her room in the morning and wake her up with a cup of tea, and she would shuffle up in her bed so I could sit on the end of it.
She would sip her tea and tell me what she had on at school that day, or in the holidays she’d ask if I thought it was beach weather. We would chat, back and forth, and I would take it for granted because I knew no different.
Despite her openness, I still read all the books, preparing myself for the onslaught of teenage hormones. But when they came there was nothing I couldn’t deal with. Issie wasn’t moody or withdrawn or silent. She didn’t pull away from hugs.
I don’t have to ask what happened between then and now, because I know the answer: Dylan happened. Dylan came into her life and, slowly but surely, sucked her away from me until I had nothing left to hold on to.
When Issie finally retreats to her room I say to Scott, ‘Do you think Issie is scared Dylan will turn up at the house?’
I hope this is the reason she won’t talk to me. That I can cope with.
‘Maybe,’ he says, though his head isn’t in the conversation. It is somewhere else entirely. He is absently half looking at his phone, but now he tosses it to one side as he finally resorts to giving me his full attention.
‘Or maybe she’s scared she won’t see him again?’ I persist.
I don’t expect him to have the answer, but I want him to think about it rather than expecting everything to be solved the moment he gets Hugo Campbell on the phone.
When he doesn’t answer I gesture to his phone. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Not really,’ he replies, but doesn’t offer up any more.
His work is extending onto other surfaces. I don’t want it here. I don’t want him taking over my house, spreading his office over it. I should tell him to book into a hotel, but I know I won’t, because even now, after everything, I would feel too bad to do so, like his coming here is a favour to me. I’d thought Issie would want him here, though now I’m not so sure.
‘If you want to work you can use the spare room,’ I tell him.
‘Fair enough,’ he says, but doesn’t make any move to tidy his things away. ‘Hugo doesn’t think anything will come back on Issie but she needs to open up about what happened.’
‘Does she?’ I snap sarcastically. ‘Like I haven’t been trying to get her to do that since the moment I saw her again.’
‘Maybe you need to push harder.’
‘Jesus, Scott. How can you approach this like it’s some deal you have to close?’
