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

looked so . . . happy. She was smiling, Beth. Actually smiling. And when she caught me looking at her, it was as though she flicked a switch.” He put his head in his hands. “Toby told me, he told me that she’d pushed him.”

I noticed that his hands were trembling and I reached over and took one in my own. “He said she told him to go and find you, and when he got to the top of the stairs . . .” He looked at me, his eyes full of horror. “She could have killed him.”

“I know,” I said.

“But why?” he said desperately. “Why is she like this? Is it something we’ve done?”

I chose my words carefully. “From what I’ve read, people like Hannah have no empathy, no conscience. I don’t know why she is the way she is, but she’s dangerous, Doug.”

“Then we need to get her the best psychiatrist we can find!” he said. “We can turn this around. I know we can. She’s eight years old. . . . We can get her help, can’t we? We should never have canceled that psychiatrist. Can we get another appointment? Maybe we could go private, get seen sooner.”

I closed my eyes, knowing I had to tell him the truth. “Doug,” I said. “We can’t do that. We can’t let her talk to a doctor.”

His eyes shot to my face in surprise. “Can’t? Why?”

I had no choice but to tell him. I could barely look at him as I described how I’d made the phone call behind his back all those months ago, how I’d discovered Hannah in the kitchen, how she’d overhead everything, knew everything. “I’m sorry,” I cried when I saw his horrified expression. “Oh, Doug, don’t look at me like that! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I was so frightened—I thought it would help. I needed to talk to someone.”

“But, Beth, if Hannah tells anyone—if she tells . . . oh Jesus, Beth, we’re in it up to our necks!”

I nodded. “I know.”

“But what do we do?” he asked.

“We keep Toby with us at all times,” I said. “We never, ever leave him alone with her. We’ll . . . just have to try to manage her, watch her. . . .”

He sank back into his chair and we stared up at the ceiling, to where Hannah lay sleeping in the room above. Around us the night settled into the corners of the house, the darkness outside our window growing denser, the moon hidden now behind thick clouds. From somewhere in the fields beyond our street came the solitary scream of a fox, before it, too, lapsed back into silence.

—

The next day was a Saturday. When Hannah came down for breakfast, Doug and I were already up and waiting for her. She froze in surprise to see us sitting at the table together. She turned to Doug. “I don’t want her here!” she said. “She’s going to hurt me again! Don’t let her hurt me, Daddy.”

“Hannah,” Doug said calmly. “Stop this. Stop right now. We know that you pushed Toby.”

Her eyes darted to me and then back to her father. She folded her arms. “No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, Hannah,” he said. “You did, and I know you’ve hurt him before.”

She looked like the child she was at that moment. Thwarted. She stood, barely four feet tall in her Winnie-the-Pooh slippers, her little hands balled into fists. She screamed, suddenly, running to him and pounding at his belly. “Stop it, Hannah,” he said, holding her at arm’s length, his face red. “Stop it right now. I want you to tell me why you’ve done this. Why did you want to hurt Toby? Hurt us? We’re your mummy and daddy and we love you.”

“Well, I don’t love you. I hate you! I’m going to tell everyone what you did! I know what you did and I’m going to tell on you! I’m going to tell the police!”

Doug flinched at her words and I saw the triumph that flashed across Hannah’s face. I stepped toward her. “Good,” I said, as calmly as I could. She stopped and stared at me in astonishment. “You do that. You tell the police what you know, and your father and I will be put in prison—and you will go into care. Do you know what that means?”

She hesitated, watching me intently, the look in her eyes so familiar, so eerily old beyond her years: assessing, calculating.

“It’s where children go when they don’t have a mummy or daddy to look after them anymore,” I continued. “You will be sent to a children’s home, with lots of other children, where you’ll have to do what you’re told. You won’t have any of your things, none of the nice food you like to eat. It’ll be like school, all day every day, with grown-ups making sure you follow all their rules. Do you want that, Hannah? Really?”

“I don’t care,” she said, but I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. “I hate you. I hate you and Daddy and Toby. I don’t want to live here anyway!”

“If that’s what you want, then go ahead,” I said quietly. “Go ahead, Hannah—tell whoever you want.”

There was complete silence for a moment; my eyes met Doug’s across the room. And then, all at once, I saw the fight go out of her. She sat down at the table and sullenly filled her bowl with Shreddies. We had called her bluff, and for now, at least, it seemed to have worked.

—

And so began an uneasy truce: a watchful, distrustful coexistence, during which we stuck to our promise, never leaving Hannah alone with her brother for a moment, using a constant, exhausting cycle of punishment and reward to get her to go to school and keep her behavior under control. And there was peace for a time. For five years, in fact, until she was thirteen.

At the age of eleven she went to the nearest secondary school, the same one all the kids from the village went to, and though she had