Someone is Lying, page 21
‘That’s not what I’m doing.’
‘Well it sounds like it is,’ I retort. ‘I’ve been trying to get through to Issie,’ I hiss, marvelling at how he manages to make everything sound like it is my fault. Doesn’t he think I don’t know this? That when it comes to Issie everything starts and ends with me.
I tell Scott I am going to be in my workshop, if only to escape having to look at him for a while. Once inside it I pick up the phone to Lois and a surge of relief floods me when she answers.
‘He’s only been here a matter of hours and I can’t bear it,’ I say.
‘For God’s sake, get him out of your house,’ she tells me. ‘Of course he can stay in a bloody hotel. He could buy his own if he wanted to.’
‘It isn’t about the money though,’ I tell her.
‘Then what’s it about?’
‘I don’t know any more. I felt like we needed him here, it all seemed too huge to deal with on my own. Only now he’s here, I want him gone.’
‘You don’t need him sleeping there,’ she points out.
‘No. You’re right. What’s wrong with me, Lois? I feel like everything I worked on, everything I built myself up to be when he left, was all for nothing.’
‘That’s not true,’ she is saying as I hear the beep of another call coming through.
‘Hold on,’ I tell her as I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at the screen. ‘It’s the inspector from Portugal,’ I say, with a rush of dread. ‘I’m going to have to call you back.’ I hang up and accept Melo’s call.
‘Mrs Adams, I need to speak to Issie, please,’ he says. ‘She is not answering her phone. Is she with you?’
‘Yes. She’s here,’ I say as I get up and leave the workshop, striding over the garden back to the house to where Scott is hunched over the table. I walk past him and go to the bottom of the stairs, hollering for Issie as I say to him, ‘What’s happened?’
‘Maybe you could put me on speakerphone as I talk to her,’ he says. I glance at Scott, who is looking back at me, and put the phone on speaker as Melo suggests.
Scott tilts his head questioningly and I shrug back as Issie saunters downstairs and I hand her the phone. ‘Inspector Melo wants to talk to you. He says you’re not answering your phone.’
‘No, I—’ She breaks off, not knowing how to respond that she no doubt didn’t want to answer it. She takes my mobile apprehensively.
‘Issie?’ I hear Melo say on the other end of the line. ‘I wonder if you can help me out on something. You say you did not know the name Beatriz Motto.’
‘That’s right,’ she answers, turning her back to me, but for whatever reason she doesn’t take the phone off speaker.
‘What I did not ask you was whether or not you had seen her before …’ He hesitates. ‘Before the car hit her.’
I glance at Scott, who has got up from the table and joined me in the hallway. His arms are crossed as he leans against the doorframe, his eyebrows furrowed as he stares at Issie’s back. I imagine he must be contemplating the same thing I am, the direction in which this is going. I imagine he wants to take the phone away from Issie before she says anything but to his credit, he doesn’t.
‘Had you?’ Melo is asking.
‘No,’ she says finally. ‘No. I hadn’t seen her before.’
‘And you are sure about this?’
‘Yes. I’m sure,’ Issie tells him. ‘Why?’ she asks him with a confidence I don’t expect.
‘Because,’ Melo begins, ‘Dylan was seen talking to her at the rental company. Apparently she got in the car with you both when you left.’
‘Did you know her?’ Scott demands when the call is finished.
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Okay, fine,’ he says. ‘Then no more needs to be said about it.’ He glances at me with a look that appears to tell me I don’t need to ask any more either before he flounces back out of the hallway and into the kitchen.
My heart is racing as Issie stares wide-eyed at her father with a look that feels more like admiration than anything else, but I can’t believe what he’s just said. What is worse, I cannot believe her either. Of course she must have seen Beatriz before if she was seen getting in the car with them.
I stride in after Scott. ‘You don’t tell me what I get to do,’ I say. ‘Not when it comes to Issie.’
‘Mum!’ she says, as she follows me through. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ I shout. ‘Don’t start? Are you serious? What the hell’s going on here?’ I demand, the idea that she is taking his side over mine so awful I can’t bear to imagine it.
I am losing control of everything. My mind, my daughter, my own home. All of it is slithering out of my grasp.
‘I need to get out of here,’ I say. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘Now?’ Issie asks, as if 6 p.m. is the middle of the night, when it’s still going to be light for at least another three hours. Or maybe she means now after we all know she is lying about something momentous.
But I cannot stand to be near either of them and the way they are both acting, and I don’t bother answering as I walk past her, calling behind me, ‘And, Scott, I want you to find a hotel to stay in.’
Scott has packed his things by the time I get home, though he is on his mobile again, outside the back door. This time I know it’s not work. There is something in his demeanour that tells me he’s speaking to Rita.
A bubble of anger that he’s calling his wife from my home rises within me. It takes every ounce of restraint not to demand he hangs up on her, but I refuse to make a scene. Not in front of Issie, who is in the kitchen, pouring frozen berries into a juicer. She looks up when he walks back into the house and I find myself holding back, watching them together for a moment, without them knowing I’m here.
‘Problems?’ she says.
Scott lets out a laugh. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’ Issie’s attention turns back to the juicer and Scott frowns as he stares at his phone before dropping it onto the table.
‘So you’re not going to art school then?’ he asks.
Issie shrugs as the juicer whirrs into action and I hope he doesn’t let the subject drop. When the noise finishes a few seconds later he says, albeit dismissively, ‘Good for you. You don’t make any money with paintbrushes.’
My heart skips a beat at the casual way he discards her obvious talent, the dream she’s had for eight years. Issie looks up at her father. ‘No. I know,’ she murmurs, though her heart isn’t in it and his focus has returned to his phone.
As she stands there watching him, it hits me that this isn’t the first conversation they’ve had, judging by the way he asked her, ‘You’re not going … then?’
I step out of the shadows and into the kitchen. Our daughter is still looking at Scott, waiting for more of his approval that she isn’t going to get. She turns her head slightly and only then does she see me.
‘It was you,’ I say to him as it suddenly dawns on me, and maybe I haven’t got it right but I accuse him anyway. ‘You were the one who told her not to go.’
‘No one told me not to go,’ Issie says defensively, and I know I must be right. ‘I can make decisions myself.’
‘Exactly,’ he chips in. ‘Issie’s perfectly capable of choosing what she does with her life.’
‘She had chosen what she wanted to do with her life,’ I say. ‘But then this last year she changed her mind. And you put that idea in her head because, as far as you’re concerned, she won’t make enough money doing the thing she loves most?’ I turn to our daughter. ‘Is that what it is? You think it’s not worth following your dream because your father thinks you won’t be as successful as him?’
‘No,’ she says, staring at me, making me wonder how accurate I actually am. ‘But maybe he’s right anyway,’ she adds. ‘I mean, what would I even do with a degree in art? What job am I going to get at the end of it?’
‘Oh, Issie,’ I sigh. ‘There are so many things you can do. You can do anything you want if you follow your passion.’
Issie shrugs in response and I don’t push it with Scott still here, lingering, listening. Judging. ‘Are you ready to go?’ I ask him.
‘Yes, don’t worry,’ he tells me as Issie announces she’s going for a bath. ‘I’ve got a car coming for me in half an hour.’
‘Good,’ I say, then, ‘Where are you staying?’
‘The Manor.’
I laugh. Of course he is. A five-star hotel in the New Forest that’s at least half an hour away when there are plenty closer. But no problem. The further the better.
I follow Issie out of the room, up the stairs to my bedroom where I close the door behind me and sit on the end of my bed. I am shaking with anger as I clasp my hands together and think how I had got it all wrong. How her dad has managed to influence her choices more than me. Is it him she looks up to now? But it isn’t just this. Because it also means that it wasn’t Dylan who had stopped her going to university, as I’d thought it was.
Kay
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
13 July
As Mike carries on driving to Costco, Kay concedes that he is right. She needs to find her son. Before it is too late – though too late for what, she isn’t sure.
Possibly before he finds Issie and confronts her betrayal. She has never seen Dylan angry, not to any worrying extent, at least. She cannot imagine him hunting Issie down the way Neil would her whenever she’d supposedly done something to upset him. Like the time she’d been held up late at work and he decided she must be having an affair.
But this isn’t Dylan, she thinks with waning resolve. Because, what if it is? Either she doesn’t see it, or he has been pushed to his limits.
She blows out a lungful of air, which makes Mike glance over at her. ‘What if he does something stupid?’ she says.
Mike narrows his eyes. ‘Like what? What are you thinking? Jump off a bridge?’
‘No!’ she exclaims. ‘At least, I wasn’t thinking that before.’
Mike smiles thinly. ‘He’s not going to do that.’
‘I meant if he did something stupid to Issie.’
‘Nah, he’s just hiding out. He’s not that kind of kid. When all that stuff was kicking off about him and his girlfriend, I never believed a word of it. Even if they hadn’t turned up when they did, I wouldn’t have.
‘I mean it,’ he says when she doesn’t respond. ‘He’s a good kid, Kay. One of the best.’
She nods again, wanting to believe he truly thinks this as she fights the urge to cry. With relief. With shame. She isn’t sure which, but probably it’s a mixture of the two.
‘But you do need to find him,’ he says. ‘For his own good.’
Mike is right and, as she sees it, she has two options. One, she knows roughly where Issie and Jess live. Dylan had shown her their house once on one of the websites that allow you to stalk people. Though the thought of confronting either of them terrifies her. Then secondly, there is an easier option in doing what Mike suggested and reaching out to contacts of Dylan, starting with his old boss.
She pulls out her phone and finds the number for Ron Barry, a man she’d briefly met once when Dylan first worked for him. Dylan was sixteen and had just started his apprenticeship and possibly this was why she took his number back then.
‘I don’t know what use this will be,’ Kay murmurs as she calls him and the ringtone kicks in.
Ron is a Londoner with a broad cockney accent. He answers after a few seconds and Kay explains who she is before asking if he has heard from Dylan.
‘Not a peep, love,’ he says. ‘Not since he left us in June. Listen I have another call coming through, do you want to call me back later?’
‘Tell him it’s urgent,’ Mike hisses. ‘Ask if you can see him.’
‘Erm, where are you?’ she asks and he tells her he’s working at a house on the outskirts of Lyndhurst, which is barely fifteen minutes’ drive from where they are.
‘I’ll drop you there,’ Mike says. ‘I can pick you up when I’m on the way back from Costco. Have a chat with him, see what you can find out about Dylan.’
She asks Ron if she can pop by to speak with him and, when he says yes, she hangs up and slides the phone back into her bag. ‘He’s not going to be able to tell me anything,’ she mutters.
‘It’s worth a try. And speak to some of the others he used to work with while you’re there. Some of them might be mates with him, or know someone who is. You never know,’ he adds. ‘You need to do whatever you can.’
They pull up outside a huge detached property and Mike peers through his windscreen in awe. ‘Where shall I meet you? I’m going to be a good two hours.’
Kay pulls down the passenger seat’s visor and peers in its mirror. She looks awful. She has aged in the last week and there are bags under her eyes that she hadn’t noticed when she was brushing her teeth this morning. No wonder everyone keeps asking if she is okay when clearly she looks like death.
She reties her hair into a bun, pulling it tight and low at the nape of her neck, fiddling with a couple of strands. ‘I can walk into Lyndhurst from here. I’ll wait for you there,’ she says and thanks him as she gets out of the car, running her hands down her skirt before walking up the long driveway to the house and passing what she supposes is Ron’s van. He appears from around the side, carrying a large cupboard door under his arm that he drops on the ground by his feet.
‘Hi, I’m Kay,’ she reminds him.
‘Nice to see you again, love.’ He nods to the back of his van and opens the double doors so they can perch on the edge. ‘Everything all right with your lad then? I saw the news, but thought that was all something about nothing.’
‘It was,’ she says. ‘Only something else has happened. The police want to speak to him, but he’s disappeared. I can’t get hold of him and I’m worried. I need to find him and I have no idea where he is.’
Ron blows out a breath as he opens up a half-drunk bottle of Coke and takes a swig. ‘Like I said earlier, I haven’t heard from him since he left back in June. Don’t think any of the lads have either, but I can ask around for you. Hey, Shorty.’ He leans around the door of the van and calls out to a man Kay can’t see. ‘You heard anything from Dylan?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘You reckon any of the others have?’
‘Don’t think so,’ he replies.
‘I’ll check for sure,’ Ron says as he turns back to her. ‘But he went quiet when he and that girl of his went off. Didn’t think he’d last long, travelling,’ he jokes. ‘Thought I might have seen him back by now.’
‘Last long?’
‘Not really his thing, is it?’
‘I imagine it was Issie’s plan rather than his. I was worried about how he could afford it,’ Kay admits.
‘Hmm.’
Kay looks at Ron questioningly.
‘Your boy asked me for a loan about a month before he went. Not much, just a few hundred. I joked to him, “How you going to pay that back when you won’t be working?”’ Ron shrugs. ‘He promised he’d find the money somehow. That’s when I asked him if he’d be coming back and he said he couldn’t commit for sure. Said if I needed to find someone else to take his job he’d understand. That’s what Shorty’s here for, but he’s a useless pile of crap.’
‘Was the loan to pay for the holiday?’ Kay asks.
‘Yeah. Pretty sure it was.’
‘How much did he borrow?’
‘Eight hundred in the end. Don’t know if I’ll see it again, to be honest, but it meant a lot to him.’
‘He owes it to you so he’ll pay it back,’ Kay says. She’s not once asked anyone for money in her life and it galls her that Dylan did so for nothing more than a holiday. ‘He shouldn’t have asked in the first place. I can’t believe he did.’
‘He was desperate to go, I guess. What do the police want him for anyway?’
‘He was involved in an accident, someone got killed.’ She lets out a deep breath as Ron whistles through his teeth. ‘And Issie told the police Dylan was driving the car when it hit her.’
‘Oh,’ he murmurs, clearly an understatement. ‘And he’s run off?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the girlfriend doesn’t know where he is?’
‘I haven’t spoken to her,’ Kay admits. ‘I don’t have her number, so I’d have to go to their house and I don’t know …’ What she does know is she would never get past Jess.
‘I hoped he’d come back to work with me. I told him he always had a job here ’cos he’s a bloody good worker.’
‘That’s nice to hear.’
Ron pauses as he carefully screws the cap back onto his bottle. ‘I don’t think he was keen to leave in the first place.’
‘I thought you said he was desperate to go?’ she points out.
‘Yeah, but if he’d had it his way he would’ve only gone for a couple of weeks, if you ask me. Lads here used to joke he was under her thumb. Dylan would laugh it off, like he probably knew he was, but he didn’t care.’
‘I think he was just in love with her.’
‘Yeah. Summat like that.’ Ron laughs.
‘You don’t think that was it?’
‘I think he thought he was.’ He shakes his head. ‘He wouldn’t commit to coming back here, said he didn’t know what they would be doing. I told him he’d need a job, but he was always vague about what would happen next. I got the impression it depended on what she was doing.’ Ron stands up and starts moving planks of wood in the van behind her until he seemingly finds the one he wants. Kay stands too now. It’s apparent he wants to get back to work.
‘Did you ever meet her?’ Kay asks.
‘Yeah. Just the once.’
‘Did you like her?’ she asks, finding herself thinking about what Paige had said to her.
‘She seemed all right. Didn’t go together though, did they?’ he says.
‘Maybe not,’ Kay answers. ‘Thank you for lending him that money. You will get it back.’
Kay walks to the high street in Lyndhurst with an hour to wait before Mike collects her. She ambles along the street, window-shopping for pricey gifts she can only look at and coffee it would be ridiculous to spend money on when she can get it for free at the café.
