One good lie, p.27
One Good Lie, page 27
Did Greg also know about her Valium? He said he wanted to spend more time with the children. Was he looking to cast a shadow on her by showing she was buying it illegally? Surely not – she’d been so careful, kept it secret. But the suggestion left her uncomfortable and if Ruby hadn’t taken those tablets off her yesterday, she’d be on her way to the police station herself now.
Ruby… Sophie moved into the front room and pulled back the curtain. The road outside was empty now. Guilt flushed through her. Ruby had tried to warn her about Ewan. She’d said he wasn’t the man she thought he was, and she’d been right. What if she was right about their kiss too? What if he had tried to seduce her? Oh, goodness. She didn’t know what to believe.
The house, with everyone gone, was screamingly quiet. She climbed the stairs, retrieved her phone from where she’d left it in the bedroom and made her way back down. In the kitchen, she pulled a bottle of red out of the wine rack, poured herself a large glass and gulped a mouthful. It slipped down easily, leaving a gentle tang on her tongue.
Another sip as she checked her phone. Two missed calls from Greg, followed by a text. Kids are fine but need to speak with you. Call me back when you have a minute.
Sophie placed her glass down and leant back against the kitchen side. She’d call Greg in the morning. If the kids were fine, he probably only wanted to rant about something unimportant. She’d feel compelled to tell him about the raid and she didn’t have the energy to deal with that this evening.
Once again, she thought of Ruby. Of her wailing voice on Sophie’s doorstep, her warning. Ruby was looking out for her sister, just as she had always done. Only this time, Sophie hadn’t listened.
She glanced at her phone. She should call her. But, no… This was something she needed to do in person. It was time to go and resolve things with her sister. She just hoped she wasn’t too late.
Chapter 68
Ruby blinked in the darkness. She remembered being in the bedroom, the fight. Then nothing. Where was she?
She was lying on some kind of sheet. No, a blanket, bobbly and scratchy against her skin, the floor uneven beneath. She tugged at the binds on her wrist and her ankles. Switched her head from side to side to loosen the cloth pressed over her eyes.
‘Boo!’
Warm breath beside her ear made her jump. She jerked her head away.
‘Ruby, Ruby, Ruby.’ He was circling her now, disorientating her.
‘Untie me, Lewis. We can talk.’
The laughter that filled the room was menacing. Evil.
Her limbs began to judder. What the hell was going on? ‘Lewis, please? You’re scaring me.’
Silence descended. He wasn’t far away. She could smell him – the thick nicotine on his clothes, the sweetness of his hair gel, and another earthy odour she couldn’t place. He’d made no effort to disguise himself here, introducing himself as soon as she woke, yet he’d blindfolded her.
She flinched at the displacement of air nearby. He was playing games with her.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.
‘One thing at a time.’
A whoosh of air by her face. She shrank back, her legs quaking. Why would he attack her? She couldn’t work it out. Her wrists were bound tight with what felt like tape in front of her. Her ankles strapped together with something sharp. The ties cut into her flesh as she fought against them.
‘You won’t break out,’ he said. ‘You’re mine to play with now.’
Sickly acid rose in her throat. She placed his voice in the darkness, turned to face it.
A cough beside her ear made her jump.
He laughed again.
‘How did you get into my house?’
He tutted. ‘You leave a spare set of keys in the dish in the hallway. It wasn’t difficult to borrow them, get them copied. I did it ages ago.’
Ages ago. Ruby’s chest tightened. She stretched her feet against the ties. One of them was still clad in her Converse, the other in a sock. She shuffled her feet back behind her, wriggled them against the ties.
‘You shouldn’t be so lax. And you shouldn’t leave your curtains undrawn at night with the light on either: people outside can see in.’
‘It was your face at the window.’
‘Yup.’ There was a fullness to his tone now, a definite shift. As if he was proud of himself. ‘It was me who played with your door handle too. Me that followed you to Tom’s the other night. And I was your secret caller in the middle of the night.’ Another puff of breath beside her ear, the sweet smell of nicotine cloying her nostrils now. ‘You need to pay attention.’
She tugged her head away. He’d played her. He’d played her good and proper. She’d assumed it was Ewan, warning her off, frightening her, or even Tom, when it was actually one of her best friends.
She stretched her feet again and… there was a tiny gap between her ankles. She wriggled them against each other. If she could just get her ankle through… ‘I don’t get it. You were in The Prince the other night when someone was following me.’
‘No one was following you.’
‘What?’
‘You spook someone enough, you put them on edge.’
She thought of her house the other day. The odd feeling, as if someone had been in there. Convincing herself she was imagining things…
‘Why?’ Another tug. She flinched again as the plastic slid down a centimetre, then pinched the skin.
‘Because you need me. I was trying to show you. I wanted to do this properly. But you wouldn’t listen. Just when we get close, you push me aside. And you keep doing it.’
‘I thought we were friends.’
‘Sophie’s a feisty one, isn’t she?’ Lewis said, ignoring her statement. ‘Fights like a cat.’
Ruby’s stomach pitted. ‘It was you that attacked her. Oh my God, Lewis. Why?’
A stony silence. The air stilled. She tossed her head from side to side. He hadn’t answered her question. Didn’t seem to have moved either. What was he doing?
Suddenly, his hands were on her head. Sliding around the back, reaching for her neck. She pulled away, tried to resist. Her ankle was out of the tie now. She still had her heel to go. She lifted her bound hands, tried to fight him off, panic tearing through her.
The weight lifted. The air shifted. And everything brightened.
He’d taken the blindfold off.
She blinked several times. Bleary vision taking its time to focus. She was in the corner of a barn, lying on a blanket. Two camping lamps providing the only light. High ceilings, beams. Hay bales piled around them – the earthy smell she couldn’t place. A slanted ladder halfway down the room led to a mezzanine floor, piled with more hay bales.
Lewis hovered nearby, watching the comprehension in her face with strange bulging eyes.
She dug an elbow into the blanket, levered herself into a seated position. Duct tape covered her wrists. A cable tie wound around her ankles – the plastic digging into her skin as she pushed against it. ‘Where are we?’
‘A long way from home.’ His face was taut. Eyes as black as coal.
She pushed on the strap at her heel. The sock was bunched up, filling the gap. But she couldn’t give up now. She had to keep working against it. ‘Why, Lewis?’ she repeated. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘You rejected me. Just like your mother.’
Goosebumps prickled her scalp. ‘What does this have to do with my mother?’
‘It has everything to do with your mother. She fought too. Was stronger than she looked. Sophie gets it from her.’
Her heart lurched. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Your mother.’ His tone notched up a decibel. ‘Our mother, really.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Aileen gave me up for adoption.’
‘What?’ A torrent of breath flew out of her mouth.
‘I’m your brother.’
Ruby felt as though she’d been plunged into a barrel of icy water. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. ‘She got pregnant when she was fifteen, gave me away to an English couple.’
‘No… She would have told me.’
‘Would she?’ He leant in close, his eyes wild.
Ruby stared back at him defiantly. For a second, she forgot all about the shackles on her wrists, her ankles. Even if death was an inevitability, she wasn’t about to let him taint the memory of her mother. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t expect you to. But it’s true.’ He tugged at his pocket, pulled out a pile of envelopes secured together with an elastic band. Yellowed and dog-eared at the edges. She could make out inked handwriting, the ring of a coffee stain. He waved them in front of her face. ‘You see, I have proof. Your mother was a dirty cow. Six and a half months pregnant when they took her out of school and sent her to England until I was born.’
‘You’re making this up.’
‘Am I?’ He shoved the letters back into his pocket.
‘I don’t understand,’ she repeated. Pushing again at the plastic tie, desperately trying to lever her heel through the tiny gap.
‘No, you wouldn’t. You see, you’re all the same, you McBrides. Your mother didn’t understand either, not until I explained it to her, and even then she was suspicious. Until I told her my surname – Lehane. White as a sheet she went.’ Ruby recoiled. ‘I bided my time, gave her a chance to get to know me. Once the cat was out of the bag, I wanted to hug her, to feel the warmth of her embrace, to be wanted. She said she needed more time. To come to terms with it. And she kept me at arm’s length. Just like the woman who’d called herself my mother.’
The woman who’d called herself… Past tense. ‘I thought your mother lived in London?’
He flexed his hands. For a second, she believed he was going to lash out. Then his face relaxed and he stared into space. ‘Diane Lehane died just over two years ago. Peacefully in her sleep, the doctor said. She had cancer. Well, peacefully with a bit of help.’
A shiver rushed through Ruby.
‘Told me exactly how I came about on her deathbed. Made me wait that long.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘She’d always wanted a child and couldn’t have one. So, when the opportunity arose to take on someone else’s, she leapt at it. Problem was, she wanted a little girl who’d sit and colour and play with dolls. She wanted to plait her hair and dress her up. Instead, she got me.’ His face twisted. ‘Her husband, Harry, bonded with me instantly. With her and me, there was always something missing. And after the accident, all she ever saw in me was sorrow and death.’
Ruby gulped. ‘The accident?’
Lewis’s eyes glazed. He gazed into space. ‘I was nine. We were going to the shops, all three of us in the car. I saw a girl playing ball with a dog in a field. A Labrador it was. Black. I loved dogs, was desperate to have one. Whenever I saw them, I pointed them out to Harry. And that’s all I did really. I shot forward, shrieked. Tapped his bony shoulder.’ His face crumpled. ‘Harry was about to pull out of a junction. I had no idea it would make him slam the brakes. Lose concentration. His foot slipped as he turned to speak to me…’ He shook his head. ‘I still don’t know how Diane and I survived.’
He’d related the tale with such macabre preciseness it made Ruby shudder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t my mother that gave you away. It couldn’t have been.’
The faraway look dropped. ‘Diane kept the letters exchanged with Aileen’s family in a box in the attic. There’s no mistake,’ he hissed. ‘It all changed with your mother that last day you came into the shop,’ Lewis said.
A vague memory of calling into Hattie’s a week before Aileen’s death tripped into her mind. Her mother was rearranging the window display. Lewis was on a ladder hanging something from the ceiling.
‘She was talking about introducing me properly to you girls. “When the time is right,” she said. You first, you were the easier of the two. Sophie was stand-offish. She’d take a while to come around. But as the weeks passed, I started to wonder. And then you were there, chatting, smiling. She knew we were friends. She knew I’d kept my side of the bargain and stayed quiet. Yet she wasn’t prepared to keep hers.’
Ruby recalled the times he’d sat at their Sunday dinner table, the evenings she’d been out drinking with him. All the while, him knowing they shared the same blood.
‘She could easily have told you that day. Dropped it into conversation, with the three of us there together. But, no. She did just what Diane had always done. Sidelined me. Poor little Lewis. Well, I wasn’t about to be poor little Lewis any more.’
‘You killed her.’ The realisation was like a sharp fist in the gut.
His mouth stretched into a pernicious smile. He was enjoying himself now. ‘Becky was out the afternoon she died, I was covering the shop. It was quiet. Both Aileen and I alone, with only the wall between us. I’d planned to lock up a few minutes early, access her shop through the fire escape at the back. And then I heard her and Colin in the afternoon. I sat on the stool behind the counter and listened to it all. The argument. The fight. He couldn’t have made things easier for me. I waited a good hour until after he’d gone and then broke in and surprised her.’
The sheer pride in his voice clouded Ruby’s vision. ‘What about Charlotte?’
‘Stupid cow. I spent ages looking for her. Ages following the junkies she used to hang out with. Word on the street was she ran because she was indebted to Tony G. I guess she thought she was safe to come back after he was arrested. Killing her on the night of your mum’s birthday was unfortunate, but once I knew she was back, I couldn’t risk the police finding her.’
He huffed, as if the conversation was becoming tedious. ‘Stupidly, I still hoped there’d be a chance for us. We were making progress. Possibly, in time, Sophie would come around too. Until you threw me out of the house the other night.’
‘Is that why you attacked Sophie? To get at me?’
‘Oh, you’re finally keeping up.’ A sneer curled his lip. ‘Only I picked the wrong sister.’
Chapter 69
As soon as Sophie pulled into a space opposite Ruby’s she knew something was wrong. She glanced up at her sister’s house. It was only just after 8:30 p.m. It was unlike her to draw the curtains so early.
Sophie grabbed her mobile, tried to call. Clicked off when the voicemail clicked in. Ruby always answered her phone, even in the middle of the night.
She was closing the door of her car when she noticed the lights to Ruby’s Fiesta flick on. Sophie jumped, waved. Ruby must have left the house, seconds before she arrived. ‘Hey,’ she called, walking towards the Fiesta. ‘Rubes!’
The car reversed. A short, jerked reaction, as if someone was in a hurry.
‘Ruby!’ Sophie shouted, blinking as the lights blinded her.
But the driver didn’t stop. Instead, they pulled out and sped off, leaving Sophie standing in the middle of the road. Her sister must have seen her in the rear-view mirror. Must have heard her calls. They might have argued, but it wasn’t like her to dash off like that. Unless she was in trouble.
Sophie called her a second time. Still in the middle of the road, phone pressed to her ear. Again, the phone rang out and went to voicemail. She looked across at her sister’s desolate house, a sense of disquiet filling her. Had something happened?
Kat would know. Ruby confided in her.
Kat answered on the second ring. ‘Hi, Soph! How are you?’ Not the voice of anyone under strain.
Sophie said she was okay and asked if Ruby was with her.
‘No. I haven’t spoken to her since this morning. Everything all right?’
She didn’t know. And Sophie couldn’t afford to waste another moment with explanations. ‘Yes, I just called round to talk to her and she’s out. Don’t worry.’
She rang off quickly, before Kat could ask another question, and looked again at the house. Perhaps Ruby’d had another argument with Tom. Yes. That was it. Her sister was struggling with their ailing relationship. Maybe she should call him.
Sophie bit her lip as the phone rang out. It had been a while since they’d spoken.
‘Hi, Sophie.’ Tom didn’t disguise the surprise in his voice. ‘How are you? I was shocked to hear about what happened.’
With everything that had gone on since, she’d almost forgotten about the attack. ‘I’m okay, thanks. Sorry to bother you.’ She paused, trying to find the right words. ‘Have you spoken to Ruby this evening?’
‘No. Sorry.’
Her stomach dropped to her toes. It wasn’t an argument with Tom then. She explained to him how her sister had dashed off, the car revving as it sped down the street. Her phone call with Kat.
‘That doesn’t sound like Ruby,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Do you have any idea where she was going?’
‘No, we haven’t spoken since the weekend.’ The line crackled. ‘What about Lewis?’ she asked. ‘I know Ruby’s been spending time with him.’
‘What’s going on, Sophie?’
She wasn’t sure how much to say. ‘Ruby and I, we’ve not been speaking – you probably know that. I came over to sort things out and she’s not here at the house. I can’t reach her on her mobile either.’
Tom was quiet a moment. ‘Let me try Lewis and call you back.’
The line cut. Sophie leant against the side of her car. She was starting to feel sick. Please, God. Let her be okay.
Her mobile erupted in her hand. ‘No answer,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve tried Lewis and Ruby.’
‘I’m worried, Tom. It’s so unlike her.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Outside Ruby’s. The curtains are drawn. I haven’t got a key.’
‘I have. I’ll meet you there.’
