Trail of lies, p.1
Trail of Lies, page 1
A Trail of Lies
K T Bowes
K T Bowes
Copyright K T Bowes © 2014
Published by Hakarimata Press
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my family, who believe in me even on those terrible days when I no longer believe in myself. Thank you to my heavenly father who created me for a purpose.
Be a VIP Reader
If you’d like the chance to download a free starter library from K T Bowes, join her mailing list. That entitles you to another 3 FREE novels and the chance to interact with the author about her writing, characters and plot lines.
Don’t just read the story; be the story.
You can join HERE
Chapter 1
The dull razor blade tinkled out onto the shower tray, glinting up at her beneath the cascading water. Calli stood holding the now redundant plastic casing of her razor, her olive face scowling in irritation at the implement’s betrayal. What else could go wrong today?
The teenager looked down at her tanned calves, which she thanked the week of sun and her outdoor sports lessons for, as the shower spray pounded the back of her willowy neck. They didn’t look too hairy; she could probably get away with it for today - as long as they didn’t have assembly. Anyone sitting on the assembly hall floor close to her would notice the small protrusions of downy hair sneaking out of her pores. Calli considered shouting for her mother, instantly rejecting the thought. The new razors were in the hall cupboard. Marcia would be sure to yell at her, especially at the moment while she was trying to get ready for work and sort the little kids out.
Calli let the soap run from her body unhindered. She smoothed conditioner into her unruly, black curls and let it stay there, the wetness touching the bottom of her back uncomfortably. She turned off the shower even as the frantic knocking sounded on the bathroom door. “Hurry up, Calli, I’ve got netball practice at seven thirty! If I’m not there on time, the coach will make me sit out of the first quarter on Saturday. Come out, or I’ll get Mum!”
Exasperated, Calli snatched up the errant razor blade and gingerly picked her way out of the slippery shower. Winding her towel around her so she could unlock the bathroom door and admit her desperate, whining sister, she felt the blade’s sharp point slip underneath the skin of her index finger and winced. She couldn’t leave it in the bathroom bin in case Jase found it. She wouldn’t put it past her baby brother to do some serious damage to himself, out of boyish curiosity. “There!” she said rudely to the skinny blonde girl who bounced up and down on the balls of her feet outside the bathroom in a thin, cotton nightdress. “Try to get up on time next week.”
Calli was almost at her bedroom door when her sister let out a piercing screech, “Mum! Callister’s been using my shower gel!”
Calli rolled her appealing blue eyes and slammed her door on the ensuing scene, currently unfolding on the landing outside the bathroom. The razor blade produced a small nick that was painful, but not life-threatening. It bled a little as the sixteen year old got dressed in her school uniform, tartan skirt and white blouse. She pulled her damp curls back into a ponytail and pouted lips that rarely exhibited their fullness in a smile. Of all of her siblings, Calli was the only one who looked like her Samoan father. Raven haired and olive skinned like Simon, the others were blonde; blue eyed, sylphlike carbon copies of Marcia, their mother. It always made Calli feel like an outsider, her dark ringlets betraying her even when the other children were white blonde from the sunshine. She once heard an old lady in the park ask her mother if she was adopted. Calli would have loved to have been blonde, with easy-to-manage poker straight hair. She might have fitted in better.
Sighing, the girl straightened her school tie and slipped on the horrid black roman sandals that were part of the school issue uniform. Turning away from the mirror after a cursory check, she refused to look at herself again. There was no point. It changed nothing.
“Calli-Walli!”
The steady knocking came from somewhere near the bottom half of the bedroom door. With an exasperated shake of her head; Calli wrenched it open to find her tiny brother standing there, his shorts on backwards and his shirt buttoned up at the wrong intervals so his small chest resembled a rolling seascape. “Help me?” he beseeched her and pulled a cute face.
“Good boy for knocking, Jase,” she told him, pulling him into the room so she could sit on the edge of the bed and deal with his haphazard dressing.
“I’m a good boy,” he repeated as his older sister redid his buttons and persuaded him to step out of his shorts and back in again.
“You’ve almost finished a whole term at big school,” Calli said softly, stroking his white blonde hair back from his forehead. He nodded, his face innocently proud, before snuggling in for a cuddle, his five year old hands reaching around his sister’s slender waist for a moment.
“Can I have my Easter egg now?” he asked with a cheeky grin and Calli smiled. “Good Friday is the day after tomorrow, so only four more sleeps to go.”
Jase nodded, understanding completely, but knowing with that childish optimism it was worth a try. “Will you do my buckles please?” he asked her, looking up with his bright blue eyes. “Mummy does them too tight and it hurts me.”
Calli nodded and smiled as he skipped off to get them, singing to himself. She loved her brothers, especially Jase, but clashed unbearably with eight year old Sadie. Her younger sister was a lot like Marcia. Calli and her mother both regularly sparked like an electrical storm, frequently causing significant damage to their surroundings. It was of little surprise that from the start, Calli turned her nose up at the blonde baby girl Marcia proudly presented. The fireworks began as soon as Sadie was able to let out that irritating whine.
“Get breakfast, Calli!” Marcia’s blonde head popped through the open door, her first greeting of the day being a frustrated, sharply issued order, without even a smile to soften her words.
Calli nodded once, unwilling to get into a familiar argument. Both women knew she wouldn’t eat before leaving. Her stomach wouldn’t wake up until half way through history in the third period, just in time for lunch. The doctor said she had to put weight on, but it was difficult when hunger evaded her for most of the day. The gluten free food which cost her parents an absolute fortune had a peculiar texture to it and resembled cardboard. The cereal was like something left at the bottom of a hay bale when you lifted it off the ground and her taste buds were only fooled during the first few bites.
Marcia grunted in frustration and whirled around on her heels, her full figure disappearing down the hallway. Calli relaxed and exhaled slowly. Marcia frightened her. The anti-depressants she had recently been shoving down her throat mellowed her a little more. She was less given to the loud and never ending lectures, mostly directed at Calli for some minor misdemeanor. It was good when Danny lived at home. He pulled faces behind her back and made Calli laugh, often getting her into even more trouble, but the sound of his whispers and that smirk which never failed to set her off giggling seemed like a distant memory now.
Calli bit her strawberry coloured lip to stifle the emotional pain. Danny died two years ago, his lithe, cyclist’s body crushed by a passing truck which turned across him on his way home from school. Everything for a while after that was a dull blur in Calli’s mind; his mangled bicycle and his creased, blood stained uniform, neatly folded by a medic’s careful hands and dropped off by the police. His loss left a raw, open wound in Calli’s soul; a cavernous insatiable pit of nothingness, which threatened constantly to suck her in and hold her there interminably. She hadn’t dealt with it, because she had no idea where to start.
“Mum’s angry,” Jase announced, puffing back into the bedroom and shutting the door carelessly behind him. He hopped from foot to foot looking nervous and Calli instinctively reached out for his soft body and pulled it into hers. “Next door’s doggie did another poop in our front garden. Dad’s just trodden in it putting the bins out.”
Calli rolled her eyes. Marcia detested the family next door with a passion, turning all of her unresolved grief in their direction without reservation. Their house towered above Calli’s, and it was as though the shadow cast by their structure, reminded Marcia of the spectre of doom over her whole existence. She found fault in everything they did, which was awkward, as Calli shared most of her classes with the oldest son of the family. If their dog had defecated on the lawn, which she doubted as she hadn’t seen or heard it for over six months, Marcia would never let it rest.
“Can you walk me, Calli Walli?” Jase begged as his sister did up the last buckle and sat up again, a look of reluctance in her face.
“It makes me late, Jase,” she replied, her head already shaking out a determined no and tears formed in his eyes.
“Pleeeeeeease?” he whimpered, “Mum’s being scary. I want you to take me. I’ll walk as fast as fast can be, I promise and I won’t do messing abouts on the way. I won’t.”
“No, Jase,” Calli said firmly. “You haven’t eaten breakfast yet or cleaned your teeth and we would have to leave right now.”
Jase’s eyes bulged excitedly in his head and he nodded frantically like a maniacal head-banger from the 1980’s. “Had toast,” he beamed victoriously and Calli saw the jam stain on his clean shirt.”
“Teeth!” Her face was stern as she pointed towards the bathroom.
As Jase pelted noisily down the hallway, Calli noticed the flash of metal on her desk as the rays of the sun, already streaming in through her bedroom window, licked gently a
Pulling out her desk drawer, Calli found the battered little tin where she kept her treasures and dropped it in with a gentle plink. Jase could never get the lid off with his tiny finger joints straining and his little thumbs slipping on the surface. It would be safe there.
Chapter 2
Marcia was grateful not to have to run the gauntlet at the local primary school with her son, but merely grunted in reply as Calli tentatively offered to drop him off. The mother hugged the little boy and kissed his forehead with her coffee breath, still clutching the mug in her left hand as she swallowed a cocktail of prescribed drugs meant to alter her mood, but mostly failed.
The children beat a hasty retreat and set out down Achilles Rise and through the intersection onto Discovery Drive. “Has she got a big case on again?” Jase asked, referring to his mother’s role as a lawyer. Calli nodded enthusiastically but had no idea anymore. Marcia rarely spoke about anything, preferring instead to rage about small wrongdoings at home, usually aimed at her eldest daughter. Calli often wondered if Danny had also been the buffer in his role as eldest, but it hadn’t seemed that way. Marcia didn’t like her attractive daughter and made it abundantly clear. Calli had taken to working extra hard at school, desperate to secure a university place in a city far away from Hamilton. As a bright Year 12, she only had three more terms of this year remaining and then next year to survive. Then she would be gone. A tug on her hand as Jase spied a fluffy cat and pointed, caused her heart to constrict painfully with sadness. He was the one bright point in her life and the only thing she would miss about the city.
The route to school, once rural, was now bisected by a road that cars drove along at 80km. But the pavements were huge and set back from the grey highway, separated by a large grassed berm and as promised, Jase skipped and ran and covered the distance swiftly. He came back for Calli’s offered hand to negotiate the busy roundabout as Resolution Drive intersected Borman Road and then skipped off again, his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack bouncing up and down on his slender shoulders. Calli’s heavy bag contained text books and work folders. She sincerely wished all she needed to carry was her lunch and a change of shorts and undies. “Swap with you, Jase,” Calli grinned, offering him her weighty bag and he smiled at her through sultry eyes and kept skipping.
Another small boy loped past her, catching the corner of her bag with his shoulder as he went. He listed a little as he lolloped along and Calli reasoned it was clumsiness rather than on purpose as she stopped to readjust the strap on her shoulder, feeling the weight dragging her spine sideways excruciatingly.
“Sorry,” came a male voice from behind her. “He was running to catch up with his friend.”
Calli looked harder at the dark mop-headed child, now tagging Jase on the back. The calliper on his right leg was quickly evident against the tiny tanned calf underneath it. Her heart sank into her sandals. They lived next door and would have heard Marcia’s shrieks about their damn dog earlier. “It’s fine,” she said, her manner brusque and formal. “Just an accident.” Calli deliberately didn’t look at the teenager striding quickly next to her. She already knew he was good-looking, hair the colour of black coffee, casually tipping over speckled brown eyes. A ready smile and a cute dimple had turned in her direction a few times, but she ignored it. Her mother would rant if Calli even looked his way.
The little boys were less than fifty metres ahead, but being silly on the pavement. The concrete walkway narrowed to account for the roundabout and as Jase giggled and leaped around, he came dangerously close to the edge.
“Jase!” Calli screamed as a car began negotiating the roundabout and her brother lurched again, but the sound of the traffic dulled her voice and the boys didn’t hear her cry.
The man-boy next to her ran as she covered her face with her hands. All that remained of him was a khaki green satchel, hastily flung on the ground. He crossed the dividing tarmac path with ease, reaching the two boys in a matter of seconds, yanking them both away from the traffic to safety and keeping hold of them in a tense grip. Calli gulped as Danny’s death worked its way back up her throat, filling her head and leaking out of her eyes and nose shamelessly. Relief was there somewhere, but for the moment, all she could feel was the awful blackness, descending down over her eyes and filling her lungs with oxygen-stealing fingers.
By the time Declan returned to the place where his bag lay in a heap on the path, dragging the little boys along with firm hands, Calli bent double, gasping for breath, seeing Danny’s face as he turned to wave to her before he died. Inside her head, she heard the lorry’s engine brakes and the muffled thud as her beautiful older brother’s body became crushed underneath the enormous wheels. It replayed over and over in her vision like a scratched DVD. Calli’s body froze, even as it sweated and she felt physically sick.
The sound of the metal caliper scraping on the pavement told her the children were obeying Declan’s sharp order to ‘sit,’ which crept through the sound of Calli’s own heartbeat and her violent, ragged breathing. The little boy’s leg brace made the unusual sound some more as he shuffled around on the ground. Both boys were utterly silent and Calli knew if she looked at Jase, he would cry. A tear dripped off the end of her nose, surprising her. Calli hadn’t registered she was crying and fought to contain the terrible animal noises that grappled to escape from her mouth.
The stable arms of the boy next to her forced her to stand upright. Air whooshed back into her lungs and to her embarrassment, he pulled her face into his collarbone and held her, as though understanding the grid reference for a place in which Calli had so entirely lost herself. They embraced for a while until the foot and road traffic increased and Declan became aware of people staring. He lifted Calli’s chin and used the cuff of his school jumper gripped around his thumb to brush the tears and snot away from her face. It was a tender action and his face was one of concentration and so compassion laden, his concern almost unpicked her again. Shouldering both Calli’s heavy school bag and his own, Declan pulled at her arm and made her walk. “Stay with us!” he commanded the boys gruffly and the five year olds obeyed, linking hands as best friends and walking just a few metres in front. Calli knew she should say something, but thank you seemed pathetic to her internal ears, even before the words could fall from her mouth. So she focused on scrubbing at her swollen eyes with a crumpled tissue from her blazer pocket and concentrated hard on taking decent breaths as the spasm in her lungs released its hold. “You ok?” he asked her once and she nodded gratefully.
“Sorry,” she managed finally, feeling a complete idiot. They trooped along in silence, navigating Borman Road and finding themselves almost at the primary school nestled at the foot of lush, green, rolling hills in the northernmost suburb of the city.
“Sorry Dec,” his little brother called back over his shoulder as they neared the front gates, his small face a mask of sorrow. The older boy did a curious uplift of his face, a kind of upside-down-nod and it seemed to settle the child, who resumed his brisk walk alongside Jase, his ungainly leg swinging out at a peculiar angle. Calli worked on her breathing and tried to renegotiate her equilibrium with some success.
At the gates, amongst the yummy mummies driving SUV’s which disgorged a single child and the ones in leggings and flip-flops, Calli and Declan stood out like beacons in their school uniform. To Calli’s surprise, Declan reached down and kissed his brother, Levi on the forehead and ruffled his hair.
Jase buried his face in his sister’s stomach and hugged her hard. “I love you, Calli Walli,” he whispered and smiled up at her. A soft breeze stroked his white-blonde hair, bringing the scent of the Tasman Sea with it and his pale, freckled skin seemed to shimmer ethereally. It acted as a physical kick to Calli’s chest, as fear of losing this brother too, cut through her sensibility like a knife. Her lower lip wobbled and tears rose unbidden to hover on the edges of her eyelids. Jase looked suddenly fearful.
