Someone is Lying, page 26
A woman I don’t recognise is standing on my doorstep. She’s in her mid-twenties and has blond cropped hair. She is pretty, tall, and has a small shiny stud in her nose that glints in the sunlight.
‘Hello, are you Jess Adams?’ she asks me.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘My name’s Lucy Hawes,’ she replies, still beaming as she holds out a hand for me to shake. I stare at it and then back at her. I’m usually too polite to ignore an outstretched hand but, after Melo’s call, I’m on edge and something tells me this is about Issie.
‘I was wondering if I might be able to have a chat with you,’ she goes on.
‘Who are you?’ I say. ‘Are you a journalist?’
‘Actually I’m a podcaster—’
‘I don’t want to speak to you,’ I interrupt and start to shut the door, but the same hand reaches out and gently pushes it back again.
‘I’m getting Kay and Dylan’s side of the story, so I think it would be good to get Issie’s across too, Jess.’
‘Don’t,’ I say, though I’m not sure what I’m telling her not to do. Don’t use my name like she knows me? Don’t stand on my doorstep and demand I tell her our story, because I cannot do that. How could I possibly do that when ours is a story built of lies?
‘I want you to leave my property,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll call the police if you don’t go.’ I push the door back with such force that it slams shut.
‘I’m going to investigate this story with or without your input, Jess,’ she calls out merrily. ‘I think you might be better off giving your side.’
I keep my hands pressed against the door, as if by holding it there is no chance of her getting to me, even though she already has. When I hear her footsteps retreating up the path, I slide down the door with my back to it, until I am sitting on the floor.
Of course they are telling their side of the story. Who can blame them? They’ll be clutching at straws. Kay must know their chances are slim compared to ours. I try not to think about Kay too much because whenever I do my heart cracks open a fraction more.
‘Mum? What’s the matter?’ Issie appears at the top of the stairs and slowly walks down them to where I am hunched over my knees.
‘Nothing, don’t worry.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Dylan’s told the police you were driving,’ I say.
She doesn’t react, though I can see her face drop and her skin pale. Surely she must have known this would happen? Did she really think he wouldn’t defend himself? Did she think he loved her that much, that he would stand by and let her do this to him? Is she still really so naive?
But of course she is. This girl, who has been scaring me with her actions, but who I love beyond anything. She is only just eighteen, she is barely an adult. She is still my child. Of course she thinks he loves her this much when he told her so in his text.
I would have done it for you, Issie, he had said. That’s the thing. You know that right? All you had to do was ask me and I would have said it was me. I would have done anything for you.
At her age you believe what anyone tells you, trust the story you want to be true. I see it in the way she laps up what Scott says, who tells her she will be okay if she sticks to her story. After all, isn’t that what I am doing too?
Kay
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
18 July
Kay meets Lucy Hawes in a coffee shop on the high street of Milford on Sea. She has never been in here before but Lucy has offered to pay and insists Kay choose a piece of cake.
Kay points out a slice of the Red Velvet she always thinks looks interesting and the young Australian girl behind the counter tells her it’s a good choice.
She likes this place, she thinks, as she goes back to the table as instructed and waits for the girl to bring her and Lucy their coffees. It is cosy and friendly, and feels slightly luxurious in a shabby chic kind of way. It’s no wonder Mike’s business has been in steady decline.
‘Paige has given me an outline of what’s happened,’ Lucy tells her when they have been served their coffees. ‘I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.’
‘Thank you. I want to know more about what you propose to do though, before I agree to anything.’
‘Of course,’ Lucy says. ‘Have you listened to any of my other podcasts?’
‘Yes. A couple.’
‘Well then, as you’ll have heard, each episode is dedicated to a new case. Usually people who have gone missing, like Issie and Dylan did at the start. Sometimes it’s known what happened to them, sometimes I look into cold cases. I do a lot of research,’ she says. ‘And I always try to give a fair representation of what’s happened. You know, it needs to be impartial.’
‘Paige said this would be helpful to us.’
‘It will. But I can’t make it one-sided just because Paige knows you – though she trusts you, Kay, and from what she’s told me I think this could be an interesting case to cover, and a good way for you to tell your side of the story.’
‘So how does this mean you’ll handle it?’
Lucy flips open a small pad in which she’s made some notes. ‘What I’ll do is go right back to the start from when Issie was first reported missing. I’ll cover everything that happened, questioning why. I’ll run it chronologically, and probably divide it into two parts. I’m thinking the first will be the mystery of where they’d vanished to, because this is what reels people in.’ She pauses and looks at Kay expectantly but Kay doesn’t respond. ‘Then the second part will be about Beatriz Motto and what happened to her. I’ll let you listen to both first, before they go live. I don’t usually do that, but as you’re a friend of Paige’s …’
‘And if I don’t like any of it?’
‘We can talk about it. We can see what I can change if there’s anything you think is contentious, but I have to be clear – this is a true crime podcast. My listeners want the story as it unfolds, they want the mystery. They like to be armchair detectives and unravel the puzzle themselves. That means it may not always feel like I’m on your side, but you know – in the end …’ She trails off. ‘I hope you’ll be happy.’
‘So what do we do next?’ Kay asks, shifting in her seat, unsure whether she is doing the right thing, trusting this girl who she has only just met to expose her family to public scrutiny.
Lucy smiles. ‘You tell me your story,’ she says warmly. ‘From the beginning.’
Kay spends two hours in the coffee shop with Lucy. She tells her everything from the start, like she’d asked her to, from the moment Jess Adams was waiting for her in the Little Blue Café.
Lucy speaks to Dylan but, as they thought, Jess continually refuses to speak to her, despite how many times Lucy tries to contact her. She cannot get through to Issie either. Oddly though, a friend called Lois agrees to answer her questions, determined Dylan is lying, which makes Lucy believe Jess hasn’t told her friend the truth.
Kay suspects Lois talking was part of Jess’s plan. No doubt she wasn’t able to tell a bare-faced lie herself, but using her friend was a way of getting across their side.
Lucy warns Kay it will take time for the podcast to take shape and likely won’t air for another few weeks. Still Kay has no idea if it will help them. She doubts it will as far as Dylan’s case goes, but right now they have so little hope she is clinging on to what she can.
Days turn into weeks. July ends and August begins.
Inspector Melo asks Dylan to return to Portugal so they can talk, but Eric Locke advises him not to. ‘They could arrest you as soon as you arrive in the country,’ he says to her son. ‘Let them do the work and come to you.’
Kay presumes the Portuguese police are building a case against him still. While they wait for this outcome, life must go on.
Yet, in the midst of the darkness, there are tiny flashes of light.
Their application for legal aid is accepted on the grounds of both means testing and in the interests of justice, which Kay learns is based on the fact the case could lead to prison. She does not focus on this part. What she focuses on are the good things that come in small packages, in the shape of a humanity she hadn’t learned to expect.
One morning Dylan got a call from Ron asking him to come back to work. ‘Are you sure you want me to?’ her son had asked his old boss.
‘Jesus, Dylan, you were the best worker I had. Of course I want you to.’
‘But with everything—’
‘Dylan,’ Ron had cut him short. ‘Are you coming back or not? How do you expect to earn money to pay me back if you don’t?’
Kay heard her son laugh. Going back to his old job, with mates who accepted him, was the best thing to happen to him. Right now, Dylan’s life was small, but with the promise of work, his football team, and Russ and Ashley keeping him going, she was proud of how he was coping.
Then there were her own unlikely friendships with Mike, Paige and Lucy, who were fast becoming people she wanted to spend time with. People she trusted, who were there for her when she needed them most.
And finally there was Alison. Who, one day at the school gates, had simply taken hold of her arm and said to her, ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through, Kay. You know we’re not all the same.’ She had made a sweeping gesture at the playground behind her, though towards no one in particular. ‘I want you to know some of us are thinking of you.’
That was all she’d said. There was no offer for her to talk, or to meet for coffee again, and Kay was grateful for this, because she believed it meant Alison wasn’t interested in getting the gossip.
And with Billy broken up for the summer, she doesn’t have to worry about the bullying, for now at least. Instead she has cut back her shifts in the week and picks up more hours at the weekend when Dylan can look after him. At other times, Billy comes to the café with her.
Kay can almost convince herself she is having the best summer yet with him, because in many ways she is. If she ignores the black cloud hanging over them all, that is.
But it is there. And it does not go away. Because, as the summer slowly rolls by, Melo and his team are working hard on gathering evidence. And Kay knows, deep down, that somehow they will get what they want.
Eric Locke tells them it could take up to a month to hear more from the Portuguese police and there is a date circled on her calendar of the end of August that is fast approaching.
And so Kay knows that you can never really live your life when there is a very real threat it will all fall apart at the end of the summer.
On 17 August Lucy and Paige turn up on her doorstep. They are taking Billy out for a day at Paulton’s Park so she can go to work. Lucy tells her the podcast is nearly finished. ‘I’m planning to go live in two weeks,’ she says as Billy excitedly slips his rucksack onto his back.
‘Aren’t you going to wait to see what happens?’ Kay asks.
Lucy shakes her head. ‘I can do an update when we know, but the story has become so much more than the outcome. It’s about right and wrong, and the decisions we make, and what mothers will do for their children. I think this is the best time for it to go out, because people will make up their own minds. They will get behind you and Dylan before—’ Lucy doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking. She means before Dylan is charged with manslaughter, and before the public’s minds are made up for them.
Kay thinks about what Lucy has said and considers that maybe she is right. This isn’t about neatly wrapping up a case for those who are ready to gobble it up. It’s about telling a story of lives and how they can be shattered. About judgements, and how easy it can be to get them so wrong.
In fact in all the time she’s been speaking to Lucy, it’s really ever only been about this. Because, deep down, Kay knows the podcast was never going to help them overturn the probability of Dylan being charged with a crime he has not committed.
But maybe, just maybe, if she can get a handful of people to believe them; to not judge them; to look at Issie and her perfect family and think there is a possibility they are hiding the truth inside the walls of their beautifully immaculate home, then this will at least be something.
Lucy gives Kay a paper copy of the script to read as she had promised. She hands it over gingerly. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever done this,’ she reminds her. ‘The first time I’ve ever wanted someone’s approval as much as I do yours.’
Kay takes it cautiously as she says goodbye to Billy, kissing him on the top of his head and making him promise to be careful.
She has an hour before she needs to be at the café and so she makes a cup of tea and sits up at the kitchen table where she begins to read.
She winces at certain parts, like when Lucy asks So was Kay Whiting lying? And, if she was, then why?
Was she covering up for her son as people would go on to accuse her of?
She would rather Lucy not make any comparison between her and Brian Laundrie’s mother, or suggest her statement hampered a search for Issie. But she reads on until the end, as Lucy had asked, before she forms an opinion. And, by this point, Kay knows Lucy has done a good job. By giving her listeners every side of the story, she is letting them make up their own minds.
She tells her this when, at six o’clock, they drop a happy, tired boy home to her. ‘I just wish I could do more for you,’ Lucy says. ‘You know, Kay, we’re thinking of you and Dylan.’
Four days later, on 21 August, they receive news that the Portuguese police have gathered enough evidence to prove Dylan was driving the car when Beatriz was hit. They have filed an international letter of request to have Kay’s son extradited. It did not matter that he told them what really happened. As far as they’re concerned, he is guilty.
Kay and Dylan hold each other as they sit on the sofa, wrapping their arms around one another as Kay sobs against her son. ‘It’s going to be all right, Mum,’ he whispers in her ear. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
Her mind sweeps to Jess as it has done so many times. It has been six weeks since Issie and Dylan returned to Lisbon, six weeks that Jess has been burying the truth for her daughter. At any point she could have done the right thing, but she hasn’t. She hasn’t, and Kay hates her for that with an intensity she could never have believed possible.
Lucy tells them she will bring her podcast forward. It will air in two days’ time. She will work through the nights to get it finished if she has to. ‘Timing is everything,’ she says.
Kay thanks her but her heart is no longer in it. The podcast will not change anything now. Dylan’s fate is sealed.
Part Four
Jess
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
20 August
The last four weeks have passed in a blur as we’ve waited for news from Melo and his team. A month of some normality, though our lives will never be the same again. Whatever happens, I am drowning in our lies and I don’t see a way of coming up for air.
Issie is lying in a hammock at the bottom of the garden. One of her arms hangs over the edge, her fingers catching the grass as she gently swings in it. I watch her from the kitchen door, sipping a mug of coffee, wondering what my daughter is thinking. I don’t know any more. Even her disappointing A-level grades didn’t seem to affect her.
Eventually I go over to her, though every conversation I start now is with some trepidation. This summer has torn us apart in ways I could never have imagined possible. Now I think back to the months before with rose-tinted glasses, remembering the way she hugged me at the airport, the times when we weren’t fighting over Dylan. There were so many more of these lighter moments than I ever saw at the time.
I peer over the side of the hammock. ‘Remember I’m out tonight with Lois. What are you doing with the rest of the day?’ I ask her.
‘I don’t know. I might go to the gym.’
I nod. She has re-joined, thanks to Scott paying the bill and the fact that she is now friends with Leah again, which turned out to be the real reason she stopped going before. I briefly argued with her dad who insisted on paying for her, before relenting. At least she was getting some exercise.
She pushes her glasses onto her head. ‘What is it?’ she says. ‘Have you heard something?’ She is momentarily panicked until I tell her I haven’t. ‘Oh God, I thought for a moment …’ She doesn’t finish and swings herself out of the hammock. ‘Mum, what’s going to happen?’
‘With the police?’ I ask as she nods her head. ‘I don’t know, Iz.’ We have been through this so many times.
‘I mean, do you think they still believe me?’ she asks. Her tone feels childlike. ‘Do you think we haven’t heard anything because something else is going on?’
‘I don’t know what is happening,’ I tell her again. I have been holding on to a hope that Melo and his team won’t find enough evidence to extradite Dylan, because this is the best option. If they don’t then I can let myself believe the events of this summer will all somehow fizzle away. But I also know this isn’t the point. Our lie is destroying him anyway.
‘Have you heard from Dylan?’ I ask her. Now my question is no longer about concern that she is in contact with him, it is more my disbelief that she is focused solely on what happens to her.
‘No.’ Issie glances up at me, briefly, checking for my reaction before looking away. ‘And I’m glad I haven’t,’ she says.
‘Of course you are.’ I let out a laugh. ‘How do you think you would cope if you did?’
She screws her eyes up, like I have said something awful to her. I am surprised he hasn’t been in contact, and more so that Kay has not turned up on my doorstep. I think it says a lot more about her than I ever gave her credit for. Then, maybe like Issie, I force myself to stop thinking about them too much. It is the only way.
‘Sometimes I think you’re on his side,’ she says to me.
‘Oh my God,’ I spit. ‘Did you really just say that? Do you think that could in any way be true, given what I’m doing for you?’
