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

no friends, nor were there any more incidents of bullying or violence. She had no hobbies, no connection with the world beyond her love of television, something that I would worry about incessantly—I still loved her, you see, back then. So when she showed an interest in computers, we were pleased, saving up to buy her a PC for her bedroom. I thought it could do no harm; when she spent more and more time alone in her room, I told myself that it was a good thing that she’d found something she liked doing.

We never gave up trying—I want to make that clear: we never stopped trying to reach her, to make her feel loved and wanted. But the truth was she didn’t want our love. And when you’re met with hostility or indifference over and over, it becomes almost impossible to keep on trying. My priority was my son, to make sure Hannah never had a chance to harm him again. Her spending her free time in her bedroom made that easier, I’ll admit.

I’ll always wonder, I suppose, if she was secretly planning what she went on to do. I like to think not; I like to think that she was happy, in her own way, or at least content during that time. But, truthfully, I think I’ve always known that my daughter is only ever really happy when she’s hurting others. If I’m honest, I think, back then, she was just biding her time.

—

Our one joy during those years was Toby. Our funny, sunny little boy. As a preschooler, despite what she’d done, he would follow Hannah around like a little duckling, his face lighting up whenever he saw her. But her active, clear dislike of him eventually took its toll and by the time he was five and she was eleven, he barely acknowledged her.

We rarely went out as a family; instead, either Doug or I would take Toby by ourselves, but despite everything, he grew up to be a happy, kind, and loving little boy. We were extremely close, he and I. He told me he loved me every day, made me little presents while he was at school. I loved him so much.

I remember him saying once, “Hannah hates me. She hates you and she hates Daddy.” By then my heart had started to become less sensitive. “Well, Hannah is Hannah,” I said. I didn’t try to hide it or deny it anymore. “Her eyes are funny,” he said. “They scare me.” There was nothing I could say to that. He was right: there was a quality there, an absence, I suppose you’d call it, that you didn’t want to dwell on for too long.

There was one incident that has always stuck with me. When she was twelve, a new neighbor popped round to introduce herself. She came in and I made us both a cup of tea. I remember feeling so pleased, because the rest of the villagers ignored us, more or less. When she left, I said good-bye to her at the door and turned to find Hannah standing on the stairs, watching us. When she saw me notice her, she continued to the kitchen to get herself a glass of milk. I thought nothing of it at the time, but later that day while I was in my room, I heard the sound of her voice.

When I went to investigate, I looked through the crack of her door to see her standing in front of her mirror, talking to herself. “Good-bye, now, Carol, so nice of you to call round,” she said. It was exactly what I’d said to the neighbor a few hours before. She practiced it over and over until she had the intonation, the inflection, just right. “Good-bye, now, Carol, so nice of you to call round!” She copied the exact way I’d smiled, the little wave I’d given. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Did I know what she was back then? Could I have stopped her? Years later, of course, at Hannah’s trial, they had no hesitation in using the term I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud. Sociopath. That’s what their expert witness called her, that beautiful summer’s day, the afternoon light pooling through the small, rather dingy windows, while she stood in the dock awaiting sentencing. But when she was still a young child, I prayed that I was wrong about her; that she’d grow out of her problems, that it would somehow all go away. And for those five years she behaved herself. She kept out of trouble. I suppose I allowed myself to hope that it would all somehow be okay.

SIXTEEN

LONDON, 2017

Turning the corner into Great Eastern Street, Clara saw the Octopus Bar ahead of her and slowed her pace, suddenly gripped with nerves. Perhaps Mac had been right: perhaps she was crazy to do this alone. “What if it’s the nutcase who’s been stalking Luke?” he’d pleaded. “It’s too risky. Let me go, please, Clara. Let me go instead just to make sure.”

But she’d brushed away his concerns, her gut telling her that Emily was who she said she was, that meeting her today would be the first step to reuniting Rose and Oliver with their daughter, a thought too exciting to risk by going back on the promise she’d made. “I said I’d go alone,” she’d told Mac stubbornly, “so that’s what I’m going to do.” Besides, the person who’d sent the messages had known about the song Luke and Emily had sung at bedtime and about the T. S. Eliot book. It had to be her. So she’d left Mac waiting at his flat, beside himself with worry, promising she’d call him as soon as she could.

Clara paused a few meters from the bar now and pretended to check her phone before glancing up and down the street. It was ten to six, the