Lie With Me

by Sabine Durrant

Genres: Suspense; Mystery

Synopsis

The truth is, we all tell lies... take a deep breath and get ready for the most twisty, tense and unsettling book of the summer.

'If, like me, you have been longing for a psycho-thriller of genius since you finished Gone Girl, then the wait is finally over. There are very few books in this world that are impossible to put down. Lie With Me is one of them.' Tony Parsons

It starts with a lie. The kind we've all told - to a former acquaintance we can't quite place but still, for some reason, feel the need to impress. The story of our life, embellished for the benefit of the happily married lawyer with the kids and the lovely home.

And the next thing you know, you're having dinner at their house, and accepting an invitation to join them on holiday - swept up in their perfect life, the kind you always dreamed of...

Which turns out to be less than perfect. But by the time you're trapped and sweating in the relentless Greek sun, burning to escape the tension all around you - by the time you start to realise that, however painful the truth might be, it's the lies that cause the real damage...

... well, by then, it could just be too late.

Release date: January 11, 2018

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 304

Sample

Chapter One

It was a wet day, one of those grey, drizzly London afternoons when the sky and the pavement and the rain-streaked buildings converge. It’s a long time since I’ve seen weather like that.

I’d just had lunch with my oldest friend Michael Steele at Porter’s in the Charing Cross underpass, a wine bar we had frequented since, at the age of sixteen, we had first discovered the discretion of both its location and its landlord. These days, of course, we would both have much rather met somewhere less dank and dark (that chic little bistro on St Martin’s Lane specialising in wines from the Loire, par example), but nostalgia can be a tyranny. Neither of us would have dreamt of suggesting it.

Usually, on parting from Michael, I would strut off with a sense of groin-thrusting superiority. His own life restricted by the demands of a wife, twin boys and a solicitor’s practice in Bromley, he listened to my tales of misadventure – the drunken nights in Soho, the young girlfriends – with envy in his eyes. ‘How old’s this one?’ he’d say, cutting into a Scotch egg. ‘Twenty-four? Saints alive.’ He was not a reader and a combination of loyalty and ignorance meant he also still thought of me as The Great Literary Success. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that a minor bestseller written twenty years ago might not be sufficient to maintain a reputation indefinitely. To him I was the star of ‘Literary London’ (his phrase) and when he picked up the bill, which he could be depended upon to do, there was a sense less of charity than of him paying court. If an element of mutual bluff was required to sustain the status quo, it was a small price to pay. Plenty of friendships, I am sure, are based on lies.

That day, however, as I returned to street level, I felt deflated. Truth was, though I had kept it to myself, life had recently taken a downward swerve. My latest novel had just been rejected, and Polly, the twenty-four-year-old in question, had left me for some bum-fluffed political blogger or other. Worst of all, I had discovered, only that morning, that I was to be evicted from the rent-free flat in Bloomsbury I had, for the last six years, called home. In short, I was forty-two, broke and facing the indignity of having to move in with my mother in East Sheen.

As I have mentioned, it was also raining.

I trudged along William IV Street towards Trafalgar Square, dodging umbrellas. At the post office, a group of foreign students, wearing backpacks and neon trainers, blocked the pavement and I was pushed out into the gutter. One shoe sank into a puddle; a passing taxi soaked the leg of my corduroys. Swearing, I hopped across the road, wending my way between waiting cars, and turned up St Martin’s Lane, cut through Cecil Court, and into Charing Cross Road. The world juddered – traffic and building works and the clanging of scaffolding, the infernal disruption of Crossrail. Rain continued to slump from the sky but I had made it doggedly beyond the Tube station before an approaching line of tourists pulling luggage thrust me again out of my path and against a shop window.

I braced myself against the glass until they had trundled past, and then I lit a cigarette. I was outside Hudson & Co, a secondhand bookshop specialising in photography and film. There was a small fiction section in the back where, if I remembered rightly, I had once pilfered an early copy of Lucky Jim. (Not a first edition, but a 1961 orange Penguin with a Nicolas Bentley drawing on the cover: nice.)

I peered in. It was a dusty shop, with an air of having seen better days – most of the upper shelves were bleakly empty.

And then I saw the girl.

She was staring through the window, sucking a piece of long, red hair, her features weighted with a boredom so sensual I could feel it tingle along my fingertips.

I pinched the lit tip off my cigarette, put the remainder in my jacket pocket and pushed open the door.

I am not bad looking (better then, before everything happened), with the kind of face – crinkled blue eyes, strong cheekbones, full lips – I’ve been told women love. I took trouble over my appearance, though the desired result was to make it look as if I didn’t. Sometimes, when I shaved, I noticed the length of my fingers against the chiselled symmetry of my jaw, the regularity of the bristles, the slight hook in the patrician nose. An interest in the life of the mind, I believed, was no reason to ignore the body. My chest is broad; I fight hard even now to keep it firm – those exercises I picked up at Power Pulse, the Bloomsbury gym, over the course of the free ‘taster’ month continue to prove useful. I knew how to work my look, too: the sheepish, self-deprecating smile, the careful use of eye contact, the casual deep-in-thought mussing of my messy blond hair.

The girl barely looked up when I entered. She was wearing a long geometric top over leggings and chunky biker boots; three small studs in the inside cartilage of one ear, heavy make-up. A small bird-shaped tattoo on the side of her neck.

I dipped my head, giving my hair a quick shake. ‘Cor blimey,’ I said in mock-Cockney. ‘Rainin’ cats and dogs out there.’

She rocked gently backwards on the heels of her boots, resting her bottom on a metal stool, and cast a glance in my direction. She dropped the spindle of ruby hair she’d been chewing.

I said, more loudly: ‘Of course Ruskin said there was no such thing as bad weather. Only different kinds of good weather.’

The sulky mouth moved very slightly, as if vaguely in the direction of a smile.

I lifted the damp collar of my coat. ‘But tell that to my tailor!’

The smile faded, came to nothing. Tailor? How was she to know the coat, bought for a snip at Oxfam in Camden Town, was ironic?

I took a step closer. On the table in front of her sat a Starbucks cup, the name ‘Josie’ scrawled in black felt tip.

‘Josie, is it?’ I said.

She said, flatly: ‘No. That was what I told the barista. I tell them a different name every time. Can I help you? Are you looking for anything in particular?’ She looked me up and down, taking in the absorbent tweed, the cords, the leaking brogues, the pathetic middle-aged man that wore them. A mobile phone on the counter trembled and, though she didn’t pick it up, she flicked her eyes towards it, nudging it with her spare hand to read the screen above the cup – a gesture of dismissal.

Stung, I slunk away, and headed to the back of the shop where I crouched, pretending to browse a low shelf (two for £5). Perhaps she was a little too fresh out of school, not quite my audience. Even so. How dare she? Fuck.

At this angle, I smelt damp paper and sweat; other people’s stains, other people’s fingers. A sharp coldness in here too. Scanning the line of yellowing paperbacks, phrases from my publisher’s last email insinuated themselves into my head: ‘Too experimental . . . Not in tune with the current market . . . How about writing a novel in which something actually happens?’ I stood. Bugger it. I’d leave with as much dignity as I could muster and head off to the London Library, or – quick look at my watch – the Groucho. It was almost 3 p.m. Someone might be there to stand me a drink.

I have tried hard to remember if the door jangled; whether it was the kind of door that did. The shop had seemed empty when I entered, but the layout allowed anyone to hide, or lurk – as indeed I was now. Was he already in the shop? Or not? Do I remember the scent of West Indian Limes? It seems important. But perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps it is just my mind trying to find an explanation for something that may, of course, have been random.

‘Paul! Paul Morris!’

He was standing on the other side of the bookcase, only his head visible. I took a brief physical inventory: close-set eyes, receding hairline that gave his face an incongruously twee heart shape, puny chin. It was the large gap between the two front teeth that sparked the memory. Anthony Hopkins, a contemporary from Cambridge – historian, if I remembered correctly. I’d bumped into him several years ago on holiday in Greece. I had a rather unpleasant feeling that I had not come out of the encounter well.

‘Anthony?’ I said. ‘Anthony Hopkins!’

Irritation crossed his brows. ‘Andrew.’

‘Andrew, of course. Andrew Hopkins. Sorry.’ I tapped my head. ‘How nice to see you.’ I was racking my memory for details. I’d been out on a trip round the island with Saffron, a party girl I’d been seeing, and a few of her friends. I’d lost them when we docked. Alcohol had been consumed. Had Andrew lent me money? He was now standing before me, in a pin-stripe suit, hand out. We shook. ‘It’s been a . . . while,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Not since Pyros.’ A raincoat, pearled with drops, was slung over his arm. The shop assistant was looking over, listening to our conversation. ‘How are you? Still scribbling away? Seen your byline in the Evening Standard – book reviews, is it? We did love that novel you wrote – my sister was so excited when you sold it.’

‘Ah, thank you.’ I bowed. His sister – of course. I’d hung out with her a bit at Cambridge. ‘Annotations on a Life, you mean.’ I spoke as loudly as I could so the little scrubber would realise the opportunity she had passed up. ‘Yes, a lot of people were kind enough to say they liked it. It touched a nerve, I think. In fact, the review in the New York Times said—’

He interrupted me. ‘Any exciting follow up?’

The girl was switching on a blow-heater. As she bent forward, her silk top gaped. I stepped to one side to get a better view, caught the soft curve of her breasts, a pink bra.

‘This and that,’ I said. I wasn’t going to mention the damp squib of a sequel, the disappointing sales of the two books have had that followed.

‘Ah well, you creative types. Always up to something interesting. Not like us dull old dogs in the law.’

The girl had returned to her stool. The current from the blow-heater was causing her silky top to wrinkle and ruche. He was still prattling away. He was at Linklaters, he said, in litigation, but had made partner. ‘Even longer hours. On call twenty-four seven.’ He made a flopping gesture with his shoulders – glee masquerading as resignation. But what can you do? Kids at private school, blah blah, two cars, a mortgage that was ‘killing’ him. A couple of times, I said, ‘Gosh, right, OK.’ He just kept on. He was showing me how successful he was, bragging about his wife, while pretending to do the opposite. Tina had left the City, ‘burnt out, poor girl’, and opened a little business in Dulwich Village. A specialist yarn shop of all things. Surprisingly successful. ‘Who knew there was so much money to be made in wool?’ He gave a self-conscious hiccupy laugh.

I felt bored, but also irritated. ‘Not me,’ I said gamely.

Absent-mindedly, he picked up a book from the shelf – Hitchcock by François Truffaut. ‘You married these days?’ he said, tapping it against his palm.

I shook my head. These days? His sister came into my mind again – a gap between her teeth, too. Short pixie hair, younger than him. I’d have asked after her if I’d remembered her name. Lottie, was it? Lettie? Clingy, definitely. Had we actually gone to bed?

I felt hot suddenly, and claustrophobic, filled with an intense desire to get out.

Hopkins said something I didn’t completely hear, though I caught the phrase ‘kitchen supper’. He slapped the Hitchcock playfully against my upper arm, as if something in the last twenty years, or perhaps only in the last two minutes, had earned him the right to this blokeish intimacy. He had taken his phone out. I realised, with a sinking horror, he was waiting for my number.

I looked to the door where the rain was still falling. The red-haired temptress was reading a book now. I twisted my head to read the author. Nabokov. Pretentious twaddle. I had a strong desire to pull it from her grasp, grab a handful of hair, press my thumb into the tattoo on her neck. Teach her a lesson.

Turning back to Hopkins, I smiled and gave him what he wanted. He assured me he would call and I made a mental note not to answer when he did.

Chapter Two

It was two weeks later, a Tuesday afternoon in late February, when he made contact again. I was still – just – living in Bloomsbury. This was the deal: Alex Young, the owner, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic, let me have the place in exchange for feeding the cat. I only had to clear out when he and his boyfriend were in town. Lamb’s Conduit Street, with its organic coffee shops and chic ‘old-fashioned’ gentlemen’s outfitters, was my spiritual home. The flat on the top floor of a tall Georgian building, filled with nothing of mine and everything of his (paintings and white bed linen, mid-century furniture, an Italian coffee machine), presented to the world the kind of man I wanted to be. But the arrangement was coming to an end, and I was trying not to think about it.

When my phone buzzed, I was sitting in a worn velvet armchair with the London Review of Books, savouring a moment of winter sunshine. It was shining low through the long window, the shadow of the square casements casting a hopscotch pattern on the Turkish rug. On the table next to me was a cup of coffee and a cheese sandwich; I was eking out the last of the bread. Persephone, of whom I had become fond, was curled like a sliver of mink on my knee.

I didn’t recognise the number, but my guard was down. In the pub the previous night, I’d met a young graduate called Katie, who was trying to break into journalism. I’d written my contact details on her palm, told her to get in touch if she wanted some advice. As I picked up, I was already imagining the meeting (‘my place probably easiest’), her breathless deference, the bottle of wine, the gratitude, the tumble into bed.

‘Paul Morris,’ I said, with the clipped professionalism of a busy man.

‘Ah! I’ve caught you.’

Not Katie. A male voice – one I didn’t immediately recognise. Some jobsworth from one of the literary organs that occasionally employed me? Dominic Bellow, a fellow Soho barfly, who edited Stanza magazine, had recently lobbed me the new Will Self to review, and my copy was late. (That’s the problem with under-employment: even the things one has to do tend not to get done.)

‘Yes,’ I said doubtfully. Too late to pretend it was a wrong number. I’d announced my name.

‘Hello. I’m ringing to entice you down to the wilds of Dulwich.’ Dulwich? ‘Tina’s longing to meet you.’ Tina? ‘Mind you, I’d better be careful. I know what you’re like around women. I’ve never forgiven you for Florrie.’ He laughed loudly.

Florrie. Of course. Not Lottie. Florrie Hopkins, the sister of Anthony Hopkins. Andrew. Whatever his name was. I remembered, in the bookshop, the way he had said ‘litigation’, his mouth stretched out to the side, the click of his teeth.

‘Great,’ I said, thinking, Shit. ‘Lovely.’

‘How about this weekend? Saturday? A grateful client has just sent me a rather nice case of wine – thought it was a shame not to share it with friends. Châteauneuf-du-Pape. 2009. Tina was going to do her signature slow-cooked lamb. Moroccan.’

I’m not proud of myself. When you are on your own living hand to mouth, you make judgements: the cost and inconvenience of trekking to the wastes of south-east London versus the possible rewards of doing so. A good meal, a decent glass of French wine, they added up. Connections, too, are something to be alert to. I was about to be homeless and you never know who might prove useful. Also: exactly how rich was he? I thought about the cut of his suit, the way it had fitted so snugly over his shoulders, the softness of his palm as he’d shaken my hand. I was curious to see his house.

The cheese sandwich of curling Mother’s Pride stared balefully. ‘Saturday,’ I said. ‘Hang on. Yes. I’m away in New York next week but Saturday’s OK. Saturday I can do.’

‘Fantastic.’ He gave me the details and we disconnected.

I sat in the chair for a while longer, stroking the cat.

 

His address led me to a wide tree-lined street in the further reaches of Dulwich, a good ten-minute hike from the nearest station: Herne Hill, on the same line out of Victoria as Michael’s gaff in Beckenham where I often went for Sunday lunch. This was a very different kind of banlieue; less pinched and harried. It was where my tosser of an agent lived, and it figured. Here the roads were wide and self-confident. Even the trees seemed pleased with themselves.

Andrew’s house was a large, detached, late-Victorian villa, with a gabled roof and an arc of drive in which three cars were parked at awkward angles. Most of the front was covered in creeper, an abandoned bird’s nest in the crook of a drainpipe. The slatted blinds were open in the front bay and, between the wood, lights glowed, shapes drifted, a fire flickered.

I stood back, behind the hedge, and tried to light a cigarette. It was windy, coming in gusts, and it took several matches. Under my arm was a bottle of wine I’d bought at the shop by the station. A Chilean Sauvignon Blanc: £4.99. The blue tissue paper, wet from condensation, was beginning to disintegrate.

A large car drove slowly past, indulging its suspension over the speed bumps. Three teenagers ambled along on the opposite pavement, lugging musical instruments. They paused under a street lamp and stared at me; one of them whispered and the others laughed. This was the kind of place where a single man without a family, or a dog, or a Volvo 4x4, or a bloody cello, stood out. I turned my face away, back to the privet. Tangled in some twigs at eye level was a stray piece of silver tinsel. Cigarette dangling from my mouth, I pulled and brought out a Christmas bauble – red, decorated with a snowflake in white frosting. I slipped it into my coat pocket. Then I took one last deep suck, threw the cigarette to the ground and stamped it out.

It’s odd to think that, at this point, I could still have walked away, turned on my heel and headed back to the train station with my Christmas bauble, a fag butt the only evidence that I had ever been there.

 

I thought I had the wrong house at first. The door was answered by a woman with hazel eyes, a wide, open face and thick, curly hair which she had tried to tame with a green silk scarf: surely too bohemian to be Andrew’s wife. I held my arms out at each side, brandishing the wine in one hand: here I am.

The woman appraised me for a moment and then said: ‘You must be Paul Morris. We’ve been waiting for you. Come in, come in. I’m Tina.’

I put out my spare hand and she shook it, drawing me into the hall, where a large glass chandelier shot the light into pieces; small lozenge-shaped fragments across the floor and walls. Dark bannisters curved up a sweeping staircase. I removed my tweed coat and she opened a large French armoire and hung it up. I felt exposed, my chest tightening, as she opened the door to a drawing room where a group of strangers standing by a piano turned to stare. A fire flickering in sequence. An overly sweet smell of burning candle. Elaborately framed photographs on every surface of children in swimwear and salopettes.

A memory stirred, sediment at the bottom of a well. A tea-date with a boy from school. The suit my mother had put me in; the glance the boy’s mother had exchanged with her son. I swallowed hard.

Andrew came towards me. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said. ‘So glad you could fit us in before New York.’

‘New York?’ I said. ‘Oh yes, a work trip. Lightning. I’ll be back before I know it.’

I held out the wine and Andrew took it, his eyes on mine, cradling my £4.99 Isla Negra with its neck in his palm, and the base in the inside of his elbow, like a sommelier. Tiny shaving pimples dotted his neck. ‘Come and meet everyone!’

I was wearing my best suit, no tie, and a white shirt with the top three buttons undone. I was overdressed. Every person there was in jeans, with polo shirts for the men and flowery tunic tops for the women. I took a deep breath, adjusted my cuffs and stretched my mouth into a smile, the kind of smile I knew women loved.

‘This is Paul, the old university friend I was telling you about.’ Andrew led me to the piano and ran through a list of names: Rupert and Tom, Susie and Izzy – a blur of chins and sharp noses and thin legs, cashmere, dangly earrings. ‘Oh, and Boo,’ he said, delivering the name of a short, chubby woman he had almost forgotten.

A cold flute of champagne was pressed into my hand and I found myself the centre of attention. I felt my anxiety ease – I often blossom in such circumstances – and before long, I was leaning against the piano, hamming up the arduous adventure of my journey. The Tube, the train, the bloody walk. I turned to berate Andrew. ‘No one else was on foot. It was like being in LA. I had to flag down a car to ask directions. Twice.’ Andrew laughed loudly. ‘Paul’s a novelist,’ he said.

‘You’re a novelist?’ Susie said.

‘Yes.’

‘You were – what? Twenty-two when you wrote Annotations?’ Andrew said.

I smiled modestly. ‘Twenty-one. My last year in Cambridge. I was twenty-two when it was published. It was number nine on the Sunday Times bestseller list.’

How clean and innocent the words. I was aware of them landing on fresh turf and taking root – seedlings of hope, new shoots.

‘How exciting. Have you written anything since?’ asked Susie.

I felt my smile harden. ‘Bits and bobs . . . a couple of shorter novels you might not have heard of.’

‘Is it true everyone has one novel in them?’ a voice said, behind me.

It’s an annoying cliché. I turned my head to see who had uttered it. In the doorway stood a slim, slight woman, with shoulder-length blond hair, wearing an apron splattered with flour.

She stepped forward and put out her hand. Silver bracelets jangled. She had a small pointy chin and her mouth was lopsided, painted in a pale pink lipstick that didn’t suit her. There was something child-like about her, despite her obvious age. Nothing special, but more attractive at least than any of the other specimens on offer. ‘I’m Alice,’ she said. ‘We’ve met.’

She did look vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her. ‘Have we?’

She put her head to one side, her hand still out. ‘Alice Mackenzie?’

Andrew pushed himself off from the piano. ‘Paul – you remember Alice? I’m sure you’ve met before, not least that night in Greece.’ He laughed.

A chasm yawned beneath me. I didn’t like thinking about Greece. I decided to ignore her outstretched hand and bent to kiss her cheek. ‘Of course,’ I said.

She didn’t move – her face still crooked towards mine. ‘You’ve been smoking. I can smell it.’

I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender.

She leant even closer, bringing her hands up to the collar of my shirt, touching the fabric, and breathed in deeply, wafting the air near my mouth towards her nose. ‘Don’t apologise. It’s delicious. Right. Back to the kitchen. I’m needed.’

She disappeared again through the door. Andrew watched her go.

‘Alice is amazing.’ Boo had . . .