No Good Lie by Claire Stibbe

Author:Claire Stibbe [Stibbe, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

30

FREYA

SINCE THE POLICE HAVE been to our house, I’ve heard nothing from Edward. It’s been a week and I’ve been dodging my early morning runs in favour of lifting weights and running up and downstairs for twenty minutes at a time. I miss the fresh air and a pale beach where choppy water sparkles near the horizon, but I can’t risk being followed.

I strip the bed and wade through a tangle of sheets. The sound of a grinder tells me Jack’s outside and I’m briefly distracted by his phone, which breaks into a neon jig, sliding along the surface of the bedside table. I jab the home button, and the PIN – the same number Jack uses for everything – no longer works. There’s no banner notification on the lock screen, and I feel like I’m underwater, running out of oxygen. Why is he changing his passwords?

A knot sticks in my throat. I look over the banisters and find another surprise. The carpet is sequined with glass and a draught blows in through a jagged hole above the door handle. A smashed pane, the same one Jack had just fixed. I feel as if I’m skimming along the surface of a wormhole and the door prickles in and out of view. Creeping around the smaller fragments, I walk out to the garden and I’m stamping the air with breaths.

Jack’s hangar door is open. A small sealing iron sits amid a clutter of tools. Seconds dwindle. The air cools. I hear the roar of a car fading to a hum.

‘Jack.’

He appears from behind the shed with a rake full of leaves. ‘Hey, sleepy head.’

‘What happened to the back door?’

He rubs his forehead and narrows his eyes. My stomach tightens and I can’t work out if it’s confusion or disappointment, and I don’t want a silly argument to become an exit opportunity.

‘Obviously I didn’t do a good job. So I’ve called the glass man this time,’ says. ‘Where the lanterns are concerned, the bulbs weren’t screwed in properly.’

‘No Jack. We both know what happened. We know.’

He looks at me with big eyes. ‘If a burglar could choose between a mansion filled with state-of-the-art electronics and a cottage with peeling paint and leaky gutters, why choose ours?’

‘You know perfectly well this isn’t some random burglar, Jack.’

Then he’s on the phone to Patti, eyes hardening and words punctuated by sighs. The complete outrage at what Edward has done with no video footage to prove it. We search the whole house this time, stopping only to retrace our steps. What we find missing is a clear message to me that all my painstaking work, my jotting down of dates and times has gone out of the window.

The fierce loyalty in Jack’s expression is almost too much to bear, and he holds me in his arms, chin resting lightly on the top of my head. We see Patti’s car pull up outside and I run out to meet her and Lucian.

‘He broke the same window,’ I say.

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