Little Liar by Clare Boyd
Prologue
The nurse washed me down. I was weak on my legs. The bloody flannel between my legs didn’t embarrass me. I was flying as high as a kite. Delirious. Forgetful of what was to come.
My baby had black hair and blue eyes. He didn’t have a name yet. He would need a good name. A name that symbolised a new start, the turning of a new leaf. He was change; he was joy; he was redemption.
When the two women came in, I didn’t at first recognise their faces. One tall, one stout. Both were too solemn for the occasion. Their impassive expressions didn’t reflect the magnitude of my achievement. Could they not see my miracle lying in his plastic cot? Could they not see that he was the most beautiful baby boy in the whole hospital? Could they not see the love etched into my eyes?
‘It’s time,’ the tall one said.
A small piece of toast came up from my throat, whole, as though it had never been swallowed. It tasted poisonous.
‘No.’ I flung my body over the cot.
These two women were surely not evil enough to rip the beating heart from my chest. A sob rolled up from the depths of me. They couldn’t have him. He was my flesh and blood. He was the only good thing left in my life. He was mine.
Disconnected, I heard a wail echo around the hot room and noticed it was my own. My body shook, electrified by a wave of agony.
‘You remember what has been decided?’ the tall woman said gently, like I was a child or an imbecile.
‘If you fight it, you’ll only make it worse,’ the other woman said, almost in a whisper. I saw tears in her eyes. Her pity was unbearable.
I straightened my body, clinging to the edge of the cot with both hands, neck bent, transfixed by his tiny face. I had tried to prepare for this moment.
There was no way to prepare for hell.
His little gunky eyes were closed. He was the embodiment of peace and innocence. Two states of being that I had forgotten existed and would never feel again.
My hospital gown was damp where my breasts had leaked. They would leak empty. Like my soul.
I kissed his frowzy head and felt a yearning that was so penetrating it was as though I were dying.
As I watched his tiny little body leave the room in another woman’s arms, I knew my life was over.
Chapter One
Through the diamond-shaped panes of glass, I could see my mother at the stove under the warm kitchen light, stirring something. The children’s colourful plastic mugs sat in waiting, bright and garish against the white backdrop.
My heart was racing and my palms were clammy. I hesitated, my keys dangling at the lock. I couldn’t go in. Not yet. I needed five minutes.
Before I opened the front door, before the three-hour onslaught of the bedtime routine, I stepped back and climbed into the soft leather of my car and closed myself in, bracing myself.
When Rosie and Noah were very small, I would tell them that I was their sunrise and their moon; that I would always be there to kiss them in the morning and to tuck them up with a story at night. This week, I had left too early in the mornings to be their sunrise. But every evening, at six o’clock, I hurried on up the hill from the train station to be their moon, and every evening, the closer I got to home, the less I wanted to go back in.
Dog-tired and dried-out after a long day at work in the City, I felt as though I was about to step onto a stage to give the performance of my life, again, having had very average, if not appalling, reviews every night for ten years. In the mood I was in, I didn’t know how I would get through tonight’s drama without ad-libbing and strangling both my children in the Second Act, or at least wanting to.
I imagined all the other mothers out there wafting through bedtime, singing and laughing with their naughty little charges, and I wished with all of my heart that I was one of them. The thought of this mystical, capable breed made me want to shrivel up and die, to leave an inadequate puddle of blue suit and white shirt in the driver’s seat: the vanishing act of a working mother.
I laid my head back against the smooth, cool headrest. Just a few more minutes would be all I needed to slow my heart.
The car faced our tall, black gates and dense hawthorn hedges, behind which our 1930s Arts and Crafts house dominated the small, grassy roundabout of Virginia Close. The five other houses that wrapped around the top end – or bulb – of the close were of the same era, mostly without extensions or big gates like ours, but equally as pretty, with their low-sloping roofs, solid red-brick walls and elegant casement windows. They faced each other like a circle of friends chatting. And I guessed our house was probably the least chatty of all five.
A fox darted out from the hedge. Its eyes glinted at me through the fog that had rested on the top of this hill and around the house like a lazy cloud for days since September had struck, shrouding a breezy, warm summer, which was gone overnight. The animal stopped and looked at me as though I was the imposter.
The muscles that gripped my womb began to cramp. The baby wasn’t big enough to kick inside me, but it was enough to draw me back to my dawn and dusk responsibilities.
I eased out of the car and crunched across the gravel to my front door. I heard a rustle behind me. The fox was sloping away through the hedge into Mira and Barry’s garden next door, where it would, no doubt, prey on their chickens and leave the feathery detritus of its massacre strewn across our lawn.
The moment my key entered the lock, I heard Rosie and Noah’s feet pounding the wooden floors, and the thought of catching that first sight of them gave me butterflies. The locks clicked and sprang from the other side. I put my keys away and let Rosie open it herself. Before I could put my bag down or take off my coat, they had both bounded up like puppies, wrapping their arms around me to squeeze me with all their might.
I took Noah’s face in my hands. ‘Hello, my little one.’
His peachy skin and thick, blond eyebrows melted my heart. I buried my face into his neck and breathed him in, while Rosie clung to the back of me. Twisting around, I stroked her long, black hair and kissed her on the lips. ‘Hello, beautiful. Good day at school?’
‘Charlotte stole my rubber and then pretended she didn’t,’ she cried indignantly.
‘That’s shocking! Did you tell the teachers?’
Rosie shook her head earnestly. ‘I don’t tell on people, Mummy. I’m ten.’
‘Mummy, come see,’ Noah said, taking my hand and dragging me through to the kitchen. ‘Look what we made!’
‘Hi darling,’ my mother said, pulling a pan of milk from the stove. Her movements were slow, as if the pan weighed ten tonnes. The purple of her veins pushed through the liver spots on the back of her hand, the veins like snakes around her bones, clinging to her skeleton for dear life.
‘Hi Mum.’ I kissed her on the cheek. She smelt of sugar and soap. Her blue eyes blinked too much, like a little girl might bat away her tears to be brave.
‘Look, Mumma! We did these all by our own,’ Noah exclaimed.
A pile of fresh chocolate muffins sat in the middle of the kitchen table, next to the cold cottage pie covered in plastic wrap that I had hoped they would have eaten by now.
‘Wow, Noah, did you really make them all by yourself?’ I corrected, avoiding eye contact with my mother in case the disappointment showed on my face. The mound of picturesque muffins had morphed in my head into thousands of grams of sugar, into piles of the evil white stuff, literally flowing over the edge of the children’s recommended daily intake.
‘Can we have another one?’ Rosie asked, grabbing the biggest one from the cooling rack.
Before I had the chance to say no, my mother said, ‘Just one more then.’
My look of incredulity fell dead onto the tiles behind my mother’s back as she turned away from me.
‘Thanks, Granny Helen!’ Rosie cried, racing off before I could stop her.