Little White Lies by Philippa East

Author:Philippa East [Philippa East]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2020-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Thursday 25th July:

Day 60

JESS

After summer term ended a few weeks later, I went to stay with Abigail, just for a few days. Then a few days turned into a week, and before we realized, I was practically living there.

My aunt and uncle were happy to have me, they knew that I was always good for Abigail. It was Mum who objected, but she always would, and by then I was sick of the tensions in our house. At my aunt’s, it had always felt easier, not rigid and stuffy and walking on eggshells. So I told Mum and Dad it would only be three days. But once I was there, I stayed much longer.

Like that very first night, I slept in her room, on the fold-out camp bed in a thin sleeping bag. The walls of her room were rose-pink now, finally painted. We woke up lazily to the sunshine each morning. Summer was at last properly here. She was a sleepyhead, slow to come around, and I made sure not to rush or jolt her. I still remembered that first night. Those bruises on my arm. The twins would already be up; sometimes we’d hear their voices in the back garden, the bump of a ball being kicked about, sometimes a shriek. They were warier now of asking her to play. Uncle Robert always left for work early. We’d come down to find his coffee mug on the draining board. If Auntie Anne was out or busy, we got ourselves breakfast. By now Abigail knew where everything was in the kitchen: bowls, teaspoons, the handle for the grill pan. Over cereal, or toast, or bacon and eggs, we sat across from each other, still in our pyjamas, hardly different at all from when we were eight.

We could do anything we liked and Abigail still had so much to catch up on. We bought magazines, binged on soaps, on TV box sets. Piece by piece, I told Abigail all the stories of our family, from those years when she had been away. They were her stories – this was her family. I made her listen, made her remember them, until she could tell them like they were her own. And I talked to her about the photographs. What she’d claimed.

‘A picture of you from the newspapers?’ I asked. I was trying to understand.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was like a proper picture, from when I was little. He said it was sent to him.’

‘But it couldn’t have been. Sent by who? How would that even be possible?’ It was silly the way we kept going round in circles. ‘I mean, what did the police say when you told them?’

But then she’d go quiet, stop answering, like I’d caught her out. Eventually she admitted she’d never told the police. It was obvious to me then that she just couldn’t accept it. The fact that he’d lied to her. Cut some picture from a magazine, said it was her.

In the end I’d just forget it, put another TV box set on.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.