Lies Read online

  He stumbled backward, tripped over his briefcase, and fell.

  Hemmed in between two parked cars, he couldn’t get his arms out to break his fall. There was a heavy wet smack as his head hit the concrete.

  I stood over him for a moment.

  He lay on his back, eyes closed, mouth open. One leg crossed under the other.

  “Ben?”

  He didn’t move.

  Get up. I need to know what you meant. And why you’re so pissed off. “Ben?”

  I prodded his shoe with the toe of my mine. Maybe he was faking.

  “Ben, are you all right?” The world’s stupidest question.

  Always asked when we already know the answer.

  No reaction.

  Was he even breathing? I crouched down to look at him more closely.

  Just move, Ben. Do something. Anything.

  “Ben, can you hear me? Wake up, mate.”

  The first stab of panic in my stomach. There was a trickle of blood coming out of his ear.

  Oh, God. Oh no.

  “What’s wrong with Alice’s daddy?” I started at the small voice behind me and turned to see William standing there, his white school shirt untucked and sticking out from under his jumper. He peered at Ben’s motionless body.

  I stood up and moved to block William’s view. “He, uh, he fell down, matey.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “He’s fine. He’s just getting his breath back.”

  The blood leaking from Ben’s ear was dripping onto the ground, making a small pool on the gray concrete.

  Oh, Jesus. What have you done?

  “Blood, Daddy.”

  There was a little catch in his voice, a tightness that I knew all too well. My son tried to say something else, but the breath caught in his throat with an asthmatic rattle.

  I said, “He’s going to be fine, Wills. Are you OK?”

  His chest heaved again. “Can’t bre—”

  I squatted down in front of my son, blocking his view. The color was draining from his face. His first asthma attack, right out of the blue when he was barely a year old, had been the most terrifying experience of my life. A panicked emergency call, running paramedics, and raw, helpless terror. The memory of that fear always returned when he had another episode.

  Just like now.

  He took a thin, jagged breath, like air whistling through dry reeds. Eyes wide and frightened.

  Protect the boy. Get the inhaler.

  “Where’s your puff-puff, Wills?” I said urgently.

  He shook his head, another halting, gasping breath forcing its way down his constricted windpipe as it closed to a pinhole. I scooped him up and ran to the car, diving into the glove compartment for the spare inhaler I always kept there.

  It wasn’t there. Shit.

  Turning William’s schoolbag upside down, I emptied the contents onto the passenger seat. Books, coloring pens, a pencil case, conkers, candy wrappers, a key ring, three toy cars, and an unwrapped lollipop stuck to a crumpled letter.

  No inhaler.

  Another jolt of panic.

  Got to get him breathing again. Upstairs at hotel reception? No.

  Time wasted. Home is the nearest, surest place.

  But what about Ben?

  All the details of the moment came into sharp and brilliant focus. The dark leather soles of Ben’s shoes. A black Range Rover at the top of the ramp. Off in the distance, above ground, a siren. My son taking another half-strangled breath, thinner than the last. He swayed slightly on his feet, his movements slowing.

  Make a choice. Make it now.

  Ben still lay there, unmoving, on his back.

  Protect the boy.

  I should have stayed with Ben, gone upstairs to get the hotel staff, called an ambulance. Maybe driven him to hospital myself. I should have done something. But all I could hear was my son starting to suffocate. So I didn’t. I didn’t do any of those things.

  Instead, I panicked.

  I strapped William in and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  5

  I ran the first two red lights as I desperately tried to remember whether there was a pharmacy, a supermarket, or a doctor’s office on my route home, William heaving and wheezing beside me in the passenger seat. Just be OK, son. Be OK. Home soon. We will make you better. Hold on. There was a pharmacy—but it was closed. We flew past and blew through another amber traffic light as it was turning red, weaving through traffic with the honks of other drivers behind us.

  “You’re going to be OK, Wills. We’ll be home in a minute, and we’ll get you your puff-puff, OK?”

  He nodded weakly but said nothing. His face was deathly pale now, eyelids drooping.

  We hit a clear stretch of the North Circular, and I pushed the car harder, overtaking a van and switching lanes to pass a white SUV on the right.

  Ben.

  I should call the hotel. Get him some help.

  Except my cell phone was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t in its usual place in my jacket pocket or in my jeans. The hands-free cradle on my dashboard was empty; the glove compartment too.

  I reached under the car seat as I drove. Nothing there. It would have to wait until I could use the landline at home.

  It felt like the longest drive of my life.

  Finally, I pulled the car into my driveway with a screech of tires, grabbed William, and ran into the house, to the kitchen drawer where we kept a spare inhaler—Please be there, please be there—and sat the boy down on a kitchen chair while he took a lungful of Ventolin. Then breathed deeply, and took another. I knelt in front of him, holding him steady, hearing his breathing slowly deepen, lengthen, as it returned to normal.

  “It’s OK, Will. You’re OK. Does it feel better?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Bit better.”

  A little color was returning to his cheeks, my terror receding with it. Relief flooding through me in its place.

  “Just sit quiet for a minute, matey. Take it easy.”

  Our little-used landline phone was on the kitchen counter. Directory inquiries connected me to the hotel, and I listened as it rang six times, then put me through to an automated list of options.

  The last option was to speak to a human.

  “Listen,” I said. “There’s a man in your underground parking lot. He may be hurt. You need to send someone down there right away to help him.”

  “Sorry, sir, this is the Premier Inn, Redfield Way,” said the voice, a young man in his late teens or early twenties. “Are you sure you have the right number?”

  “Yes! There’s a man down there, he fell and banged his head. His name is Ben Delaney. Can you check he’s OK?”

  “Is he a guest of the hotel?”

  “No, but he’s on your property. Can you check on him or not?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to leave the front desk, sir, but my supervisor should be back in a bit. If you think an ambulance should be called for a member of the public in the meantime, you should hang up and do so immediately.”

  “Can’t you just run down and see if he’s all right? Lock the front door for two minutes and do a quick circuit of the parking lot?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Is this a prank call?”

  “Never mind,” I said and hung up.

  I grabbed a bottle of water for William, gave him a quick hug, and listened to him breathing again. His airway was getting back to normal. I put the inhaler in my jacket and picked him up.

  “Where are we going, Daddy?”

  “Just a quick trip out in the car before bath time.”

  “Are we going to go fast again?”

  “Quite fast, but not as fast as before.”

  My imagination ran laps as I drove, new thoughts unspooling now that William’s asthma emergency had passed. Going over everything I’d seen in the last hour. Trying to make some sense of it.

  What did you see?

  What did you actually see?
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br />   I had seen him angry, her upset. What did he say to upset her?

  Him lying on the ground, eyes closed. Blood.

  What if he’s still lying there? Of course he’s not.

  He might be.

  What if he is?

  And, rising above it all, that horrible wet smack as Ben’s head hit the concrete.

  Maybe he’s fractured his skull. Can you die from that? Of course you can. If you’re left there and no one helps you.

  Maybe there would already be police on the scene by the time I got there. Unspooling crime scene tape, putting numbered evidence markers on the ground. Floodlights. Maybe getting ready to put up one of those white tents you see on the news when the police are hiding a body from prying eyes.

  My mouth was dry, and I felt off balance, like something in my life had been dislodged from its proper place, pushing everything else out of sync. Nothing was where it should be.

  I left him there. Bleeding.

  But going back to the hotel was still the right thing to do. It was on me to put this right; that was all there was to it. My routine Thursday evening had taken a turn for the surreal, the confusing, the downright terrifying—but there was still time to get it back on track. It was just a case of doing the right thing.

  He’ll be all right. Just a bump on the head. Mel will know what to do. We’ll figure it out together.

  More than anything, I wanted to speak to my wife, make sure she was all right after her heated encounter with Ben this afternoon. Just let Mel be OK. Everything else we can deal with. Together.

  I wound down the window and breathed in gray city air. Turned on the radio, trying to find something to take my mind off things. Turned up the music. By the time I’d turned off the North Circular, I had half convinced myself that Ben would be OK. He’d already be home now, drinking an expensive single malt at the living room bar of his big Hampstead house. People don’t die from falling over and banging their head. They just don’t. Otherwise there would be thirty murders every Saturday night in every market square, in every town in Britain. I pulled onto the forecourt. Through the glass frontage of the hotel I could see the same waistcoated teenager as earlier behind the reception desk, talking on the phone.

  The entrance to the underground parking lot gaped like an open mouth.

  The barrier rose as I approached, and I drove slowly down the ramp into the dull fluorescent light below ground. Deep shadows against the concrete. I parked, leaving William in the car again, and got out. Walked up and down the four rows of cars. Went to the spot Ben’s car had occupied less than an hour ago.

  There was no crime scene tape. No white tent. No police.

  There was nothing.

  Ben and his car were gone.

  6

  My cell phone was gone too.

  As far as I could remember, this was the last place I’d had it in my hand. Right here in this parking lot, when I’d gone to talk to Ben. Maybe I’d dropped it when things turned ugly. So where was it? I looked around, patted my jacket pockets again. Dropped to my knees and checked under the parked cars. Nothing. I walked a circle around the row of vehicles, squatted down again, squinting into the shadows. But it wasn’t there. Damn. A twinge in my stomach. One more thing to worry about. Or maybe it was somewhere at home? I made a mental note to check later.

  I called Mel three times from the landline phone when I got home. Three times it went straight to voice mail. Finally, I left a message.

  “Hi, it’s me. Give me a call when you get this? Just want to make sure you’re OK. Thought you might be…” I hesitated. Might be what? “Call me back. Love you.”

  Be OK. Please be OK. Everything else I can handle, one thing at a time.

  The thing with Ben was ridiculous, I decided—I should just call him. Get to the bottom of whatever was going on—if there even was anything going on.

  Except I couldn’t call him, because all my contacts were in my cell phone, and that was lost. The address book was backed up to Mel’s iPad, but she had that with her at work. The landline was useless—we hardly ever used it, and there were only about a dozen numbers stored in its memory.

  And so, perched on the bathroom stool, a bottle of beer cooling my hand, there was nothing else to do except go through the usual evening routine. William was in the bath, swirling the water around with both hands, his plastic boats and animals circling him like a tiny flotilla around and around. He was talking to me about school things and how his little buddy Jonah had wet himself during assembly, and I was fending him off with lots of Really? and Oh, dear and Uh-huh. The long-neglected landline phone sat dark and silent on the windowsill next to me.

  “When’s Mummy coming back?” he said, putting bubble bath on his chin to make a white beard.

  “What’s that?”

  “Mummy.”

  “She’ll be home soon.”

  “Look at my beard, Daddy. I’m Santa.”

  “Good one, matey. Got a present for me?”

  “It’s not a proper beard. It’s only bubbles really.”

  The sound of keys in the front door made me jump. Mel called up in her usual way.

  “Mummy!” William shouted back.

  “We’re up here,” I added.

  She appeared in the bathroom doorway, and I hugged her, relief washing through me like a tide. I kissed her cheek, tasting the familiar salty sweat mingled with perfume.

  “Hey, you,” I breathed into her ear.

  “Hey yourself.” She disentangled herself from the embrace. “Nice welcome. What’s that for?”

  “Thought you might need a hug.”

  She smiled and kissed me, her lips soft against mine.

  “No more than usual.” She studied me for a second, taking a drink from her water bottle. “Are you OK?”

  “It’s been a hell of an evening, but I’m all right.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said, trying to summon a smile. “Tell you later. I was actually worried about you.”

  “About me?”

  “Yes, are you OK?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I saw you earlier and you seemed—”

  “Mummy! Mummy!”

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Look, Mummy, I’ve got a beard!”

  “Nice, William.” She drank the last of her water and began refilling the bottle from the tap.

  “And I had ants-ma, and me and Daddy had to come home to get my puff-puff.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, kneeling by the bath to stroke his cheek. “Are you OK now, darling? Was it a bad one?”

  “Yes. And Daddy drove really fast.”

  She looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Did he now?”

  “He was fine once I got him on his inhaler. Thought I had one in the car, but I think I used it last time and didn’t replace it. My fault, really.”

  Mel turned back to our son. “And how was school, William?”

  “I was really very good, Mummy,” he said slowly, pronouncing each word. “I got the Superstar award from Mrs. Green.”

  Mel gave him a big surprised smile. “Well, that’s fantastic, William.”

  “For sitting nicely in assembly.”

  “Aren’t you a good boy?”

  “Yes. But Daddy isn’t.”

  Mel raised an eyebrow at me. “Is that so?”

  I shook my head, forced a smile.

  Should have thought of this, talked to him about what happened.

  “It is so,” William said.

  “Why has Daddy not been good?”

  “William—” I started.

  “This sounds interesting,” my wife said.

  “It was nothing, really,” I said quickly, scrabbling to think up a way of deflecting what my son was about to say.

  “Not nothing,” William said.

  Mel took another drink of water from the bottle, looking at me. “So why was Daddy bad, William?”

  �
�Because he said I can’t have a hamster.”

  I exhaled, slowly. “I didn’t say that, big man, just that we’d see.”

  Abruptly, William stood up out of the bath, his arms outstretched.

  “Towel, Daddy! Towel, towel, towel!”

  I plucked him from the bath and wrapped him up in a towel that was bigger than he was.

  Mel crossed her arms. “A hamster, eh?”

  I shrugged. “I said we’d think about it.”

  She nodded, turned in the doorway. “I’m going to get a quick shower.”

  “Listen, Mel?”

  She turned back to me. “What’s up?”

  “You sure you’re OK?”

  “Course. Why?”

  “I saw you earlier and you seemed upset. Left you some messages.”

  She frowned, cocked her head to one side.

  “My phone’s out of charge. When did you see me earlier?”

  “About five, at this hotel on the North Circular.”

  She took a sip of water from her bottle, swallowed slowly.

  Then another.

  And that was when everything I knew started to fall apart.

  7

  “A hotel?” she said.

  “Near Brent Cross. I was worried about you.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t at a hotel, Joe; I was at tennis. Thursday night social, same as always.”

  “But I saw you.”

  “You can’t have, Joe. I wasn’t anywhere near Brent Cross.”

  I tried to make sense of what she was saying. “You weren’t?”

  She laughed quickly. “Couldn’t very well have lost 6–1 6–0 to Hilary Paine if I was, could I?”

  “But we saw you. Your car.”

  “That beer’s gone to your head, darling. I’m going to grab a quick shower before tea.”

  She turned and left.

  I stared at the empty doorway for a long moment, then started to dry William’s fine brown hair with the towel. The sound of the shower starting up in the master bathroom reached me from across the landing.

  A lie.

  I felt dizzy, disoriented, like I’d suddenly started walking up a down escalator.

  A lie. Why did she lie? Why do people usually lie?

  She was trying to protect me from something, or protect William, or both of us.