The Lies We Told by Camilla Way (epub read online books .txt) 📗

She was conscious of his eyes on her still and busied herself with fiddling with her phone.

“What are you both doing here?” he asked then, and listened while Mac quickly ran through their plan.

“We’re starting with Luke’s first girlfriend,” he told him, “Amy Lowe. Did you know her?”

Tom shook his head. “Not well. I’d left for university by the time they started going out. Are you off there now?”

“Yeah, she lives outside Framlingham now, apparently.” Mac checked his phone and read out the name of Amy’s street.

“I know it,” said Tom. “I’m heading in that direction myself, actually. I’ll show you the way if you want to follow me.” He paused, and finally Clara looked up and met his gaze. “Actually, there’s a pub nearby called the Kestrel,” he said. “I could do with a drink, if you . . . ?”

“Sure.” Mac shrugged before she could make up an excuse. “We’ll follow you there.”

—

As they pulled out of the Willows’ driveway and began to follow the black Audi, Clara expelled a long breath. “God, that was weird,” she said. “What the hell was going on between Tom and Rose?”

“Christ knows.”

“As if she hasn’t got enough on her plate without him laying into her too,” she said angrily. “He’s so bloody strange.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I guess they’re all just very upset.” After a while he said, “They looked awful, didn’t they, Rose and Oliver?” He flicked his indicator and followed Tom as he turned left, away from the village. “Poor bastards. I can’t believe this has happened to them again.”

Clara watched the countryside slip past her window, the hedgerows and verges just beginning to burgeon into spring, and thought about Rose. When they’d first met a few years before, Rose had been in her mid-sixties and newly retired, enjoying a “life of leisure,” as she’d laughingly put it. Gardening, cooking, taking long holidays in Europe with Oliver, relishing her newfound freedom after such a long and distinguished career in medicine. Clara had seen pictures of her taken in her forties and fifties—a good-looking, impeccably dressed woman whose eyes had shone with intelligence and purpose and responsibility—but now, though she was still all those things, there was a softness, an ease and comfort, about her too that Clara thought made her even more attractive.

She recalled now a time a year or so earlier when she’d first caught a glimpse of that other Rose, the coolly capable doctor she’d once been. It was a weekend in November and they’d all taken a walk together through the frost-covered fields. Rose and Clara, slightly ahead of the others, had come across a hare caught in a barbed wire fence. It was bleeding, its face contorted in fear and pain. While Clara had cringed and fretted uselessly at its suffering, Rose had knelt and carefully freed it, but rather than hopping away, the animal had lain there, eyes bulging, still bleeding profusely. “Poor thing,” Rose had murmured. “It’s dying. I think it’ll be kinder if I just . . . don’t look, darling, if you’d rather”—and then she’d picked the animal up and deftly wrung its neck. And though Clara had felt a little sick, she had been filled with admiration for Rose’s unflappable efficiency, her ability to get on with what was necessary, no matter how unpleasant or bloody.

“I wonder what Rose and Oliver were like,” she said now, “before Emily left, I mean. I met them so many years afterward, I can’t imagine how it must have changed them.”

“They were quite a big deal by the sound of things,” Mac replied. “Rose was head of pediatric surgery at the hospital, and Oliver had written his first book, which had got a lot of attention—TV appearances and so on. They were pretty well-known in the area, very active in the village, fund-raising and all that—then there were all the huge parties they used to throw. Luke told me their house was always full of people.” He glanced at Clara. “So, yeah. I’d say they had it pretty good.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s just so fucking tragic the way things turned out. They don’t deserve it, they really don’t.”

—

Tom was waiting for them in the pub when they arrived. It was a beautiful Tudor building with low black beams and wide oak floorboards, roaring fires and battered leather sofas. “They’ve got quite a decent menu here if you feel like eating something,” he said, his manner markedly more relaxed now that he was away from the Willows.

Mac glanced at her. “I am pretty hungry, actually. What do you think?”

She shrugged, suddenly realizing that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a proper meal. “All right.” She nodded and forced herself to return Tom’s smile.

For the first ten minutes or so after they’d ordered, she listened to them discuss their old school and the local people they knew. She watched as Tom slowly became more at ease and talkative, the way people generally did in Mac’s company. He had a self-deprecating humility that even the chilliest of people tended to warm to, a willingness to listen and let the other person lead. It occurred to her that she and Mac were pretty similar in that sense. Was that what had drawn Luke to them both? she wondered. And was it that same lack of ego, her readiness to take a backseat and let him shine, that had allowed him to cheat on her with Sadie, to treat her with such little respect? She remembered a girl she’d once lived in halls with who’d said with a mixture of pity and scorn, “You’re such a people pleaser, aren’t you, Clara? Doesn’t it get dull?” She felt a rush of contempt for herself now and with effort pushed the thought away, forcing herself to turn her attention back to Mac and Tom.

They were talking now about the area of Norwich where Tom lived, but though he was chatting quite easily, there still persisted the sense that he was keeping