The Lying Game (5 page)

She ducked round a half-dressed mannequin at the foot of the narrow stairs and took them two at a time up to her tiny room. Anyone else would have turned the recession-led belt-tightening and
sudden fashion for recycling to their advantage; but not Mum. She still saw her stuff as little more than a hobby on the side, when in reality it was the shop’s USP, the only thing keeping
them afloat these days. If Nell hadn’t taken over the books last year and insisted her mother start charging halfway sensible prices, they’d have probably gone broke by now.

Flinging herself on her narrow bed, she folded her arms behind her head and gazed up at the hand-painted celestial ceiling Mum had done for her when she was a baby. It wasn’t herself she
worried for; she’d be off to uni in three years, striking out on her own. She knew exactly what she wanted to do, too – she’d always known: forensic anthropology. Like in
Bones.
She had a photographic memory, a strong stomach, and had been solving puzzles and riddles since she was old enough to read. She’d never been much good at art or literature,
but she’d wired her first plug at six, and html was as familiar to her as English. Mum couldn’t even work the TV remote control.

Frowning, she chewed the inside of her cheek. She had to get Mum settled before she left home. Mum had never been what you’d call practical, and she was getting dippier by the year.
She’d never cope without someone to sort out her computer when it crashed or remind her to pay the council tax.

Mum had met Richard when she was seven, and until then Nell hadn’t realized how much she’d been missing. She loved Richard; she always had. She totally thought of him as her dad, but
even after all these years, Mum still held him at arm’s length, refusing to marry him or even allow him to move into their flat, terrified of pushing Nell out. Nell
wanted
to be
pushed out. How could she live her own life if she was always worrying about Mum?

This summer’s trip to France, for example, and her own holiday in Cornwall with her best friend Teri and her family. She’d set the whole thing up for one reason and one reason only:
Mum and Richard needed to spend time on their own without her playing gooseberry if they were ever going to get it together. She just wanted to see Mum married so she could relax.

‘Nell?’ Mum called up the stairs. ‘Is that you?’

She swung her feet onto the floor. ‘No. Just a burglar having a nap.’

A moment later, Mum stuck her head round the bedroom door. She had a habit of wearing her failed creations – those too avant-garde or just plain weird to sell – and today was no
exception. Her skirt had once been a pair of jeans and a sequined dress; instead of a jumper, she was wearing an ex-apron embellished with pieces of a feather boa, and on her feet were a pair of
patchwork gladiator boots she’d practically lived in all winter.

‘It’s Zumba tonight, isn’t it?’ Mum asked brightly.

Nell winced. To her total disbelief – and embarrassment – her mother had turned out to be a pretty good dancer. Very good, in fact. Ten minutes into the class last week and
she’d been swinging her hips all over the shop like a Lebanese belly dancer. When Nell had called her on it, she’d smiled mysteriously and said something about a misspent youth and
dancing being like learning to ride a bike. Angel hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, even though Mum was twice his age and was wearing those awful Juicy Couture jogging bottoms Nell
had tried to throw out twice. If it were anyone but her mother, Nell would’ve wanted to rip her eyes out.

‘Mum!’ she exclaimed now, sitting up sharply. ‘You’re going out for dinner with Richard, remember? Your anniversary?’

Mum waved her hand dismissively ‘Never mind that. It’s not a real one, just eight years since we met. We can go out another time. Richard won’t mind.’

‘Of course he will! He’s gone to a lot of trouble. He’s booked that new Italian you wanted to try and everything.’ She brushed a few stray purple boa feathers from her
mother’s shoulders. ‘And you might kind of want to tone down the hippie thing tonight. Just a bit. Maybe you could wear that jersey dress Richard likes? You know, the long grey one with
the silver belt? And perhaps some different shoes?’

‘I smell a rat,’ her mother said lightly.

‘Mum. Be nice.’

‘He’s going to ask me to marry him again, isn’t he?’

‘Would it really be so bad if he did?’

‘I like things the way they are,’ Mum said stubbornly.

Nell rolled her eyes. ‘You can’t keep saying no, Mum. Richard’s got the patience of a saint but he won’t wait around for ever. And he’s so
nice.
I
don’t understand why you haven’t said yes already. He loves you. And you love him. Don’t you?’

‘I suppose so. No, that’s not fair. I
do
love him, yes.’ She sighed. ‘But
nice
isn’t always enough, darling girl.’

‘But Mum, you’re practically living together as it is. I don’t know what the big deal is about making it official.’

‘If it’s not a big deal, why do you keep pushing it?’

‘Because it would be nice to have the thing
settled
,’ Nell said. ‘Please, if he asks you again, can’t you just say yes? You need him.’

I need him,
she thought. She loved spending weekends at Richard’s big, airy house, or curling up with him and Mum on the sofa in front of
Britain’s Got Talent.
Like
a
normal
family.

‘Sweetie, if we’re going to continue this conversation, I think I’m going to need one of your cigarettes.’

‘Mum!’

‘Come on, darling. You can’t be the only fifteen-year-old in London without a secret supply of Silk Cut.’

‘Marlboros, actually,’ Nell said sheepishly.

‘I don’t need to tell you these are for emergency use only,’ Mum warned, opening the tiny bedroom window beside Nell’s bed. ‘This is a very bad habit to get
into.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘Your father used to smoke Marlboros,’ Mum said unexpectedly. ‘Only brand he ever liked.’

Nell went very still. Mum hardly ever mentioned her father. Nell hadn’t even known his full name until she was ten, when Richard had persuaded her mother to share the basic facts with her.
Over the years since then, Mum had let slip rare nuggets of information when she was in a nostalgic mood, leaving her to stitch together a shadowy sense of the man whose genes she shared. She knew
her father was dead, that many of her questions would always remain unanswered; but recently her longing to know more about him had started to gnaw at her. It wasn’t just that she needed to
know who her father was; she needed to know who
she
was.

Just before Christmas, she’d finally plucked up the courage to look up her father online. It had been weird to read so much about this man to whom she was biologically connected and yet
didn’t know at all. She’d stared at his photo for ages, searching his face for her own features. He was dark-haired like her – turning a bit salt-and-pepper actually – but
apart from that, she hadn’t recognized anything of herself in him. He might as well have been a perfect stranger. Which, after all, was what he was.

‘He used to blow smoke rings,’ Mum mused now, more to herself than to her. ‘He could make them go through each other. I used to call him Gandalf. God, he was sexy. There was
just something about him. When he was in a room, you couldn’t see anyone else.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘You know the first thing he said to me? “As soon as I saw you, I knew
we’d be friends or lovers. And now you’ve smiled, I know it’ll be both.” You probably think that’s terribly cheesy, but I’d never met anyone like him. He
literally swept me off my feet.’

Nell held her breath. Her mother had never opened up like this. ‘Did you know he was married?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I mean, right at the beginning?’

‘Oh yes. He never tried to hide it. But I couldn’t stay away from him. I didn’t
want
to. He was like a drug. I couldn’t get enough of him.’

Mum shivered, as if a ghost had walked over her grave. ‘I suppose I’d better go and get dressed, then,’ she said, stubbing her cigarette out on the brick window sill.
‘Seeing as how I have to tone down “that hippie thing” before I go out.’

Nell stared into space for a long time after her mother had left. She adored Richard; he was the one who’d taught her to ride a bicycle, helped her with her maths homework, sneaked her
onto the roller coaster at Thorpe Park after Mum had forbidden it and didn’t rat her out when it had made her sick. She was sad she’d never get to meet her birth dad, of course, but in
some ways it made things easier; it would have felt disloyal seeking him out when Richard was, to all intents and purposes, her father.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t get to know who Patrick had been.

Suddenly decisive, she flipped open her laptop and pulled up her Facebook page. She scrolled through her messages until she found the one she was looking for. Normally she replied to emails
instantly, but this one had been sitting unanswered in her inbox for weeks. The one from Ryan James. Her brother.

She was ready to talk to him now.

Once the idea had entered Harriet’s head, it took root. She tried to ignore it, but it was like an aching tooth she couldn’t leave alone.

What if Oliver wasn’t Florence’s father?

The notion would be unthinkable to anyone who knew her now, but she hadn’t always been this sensible, uptight (yes, she knew what people thought of her) wife and mother. She might seem the
definition of virtue and restraint today, but her past – her pre-Oliver past – had been a very different matter. She’d had a wild side Oliver knew nothing about, and which had
been buried so long that even Harriet had started to forget it had existed. For sixteen years she’d been able to draw a firm line under that part of her life, separating it from the life she
had now, the life that had started the day she married Oliver. But suddenly she could no longer be sure – not
absolutely –
that those two very distinct phases of her life
hadn’t slightly overlapped.

You’d think you’d know, wouldn’t you, if you’d been unfaithful to your husband? But clearly it wasn’t always quite so cut and dried. Sometimes, under certain
circumstances – the kind of circumstances facilitated by alcohol – there might be room for doubt. Until last week, it had never occurred to her Oliver might not be Florence’s
father. But she couldn’t argue with the facts: Florence’s blood group was A-positive. And she and Oliver were both O.

As Holmes would say:
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Reluctant as she was to believe it was true, her school biology lessons weren’t so long ago that she’d forgotten everything. When both parents were blood group O – by far the
most common blood group in the world – their children could only be group O too. A hundred online searches had confirmed what she’d suspected from the moment Florence had raised the
whole wretched subject. It was scientifically impossible for Harriet and Oliver to have a child whose blood type was A. Which meant that Florence could not,
could not,
be Oliver’s
daughter.

She’d checked with Florence’s doctor, of course, hoping against hope that her daughter had made a mistake, misheard, muddled things up. But no, the doctor had said Florence was
indeed A-positive. It had been in her records since she she’d first been diagnosed with diabetes nine years ago, and they’d tested her again before giving her the transfusion after her
accident, of course, just to be sure. The hospital hadn’t made a mistake. She was the one who’d done that, sixteen years ago.