Ware, Ruth - The Lying Game by Ware Ruth

Author:Ware, Ruth [Ware, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-06-14T18:30:00+00:00

SOMETIMES, WHEN I wake in the night, the sound of a shovel grating on shale in my dreams, I still cannot believe it. I have spent so long running from the memories, pushing them away, drowning them in drink and routine and everyday life.

How. The word rings in my ears. How did you bring yourself to do it? How did you ever think this was right? How could you think what you did was the solution to Kate’s terrible situation?

And most of all, how have you coped, living with this knowledge, living with the memory of that panicked, drunken stupidity?

But back then it was a different word that reverberated in my head all that night as we smoked and drank and cried on Kate’s sofa, holding her in our arms as the moon rose and the tide washed away the evidence of what we’d done.

Why.

Why had Ambrose done it?

We found out the next morning.

We had planned to stay the rest of the weekend, to look after Kate, keep her company in her grief, but when the clock that hung between the long windows showed four, she stubbed out her cigarette, and wiped her tears.

‘You should go back.’

‘What?’ Fatima looked up from her glass. ‘Kate, no.’

‘No, you should go. You’ve not signed out, and anyway, it’s better that you’re not … that you have …’

She stopped. But we knew what she meant, and that she was right, and as dawn began to break over the marshes we set out, shaking and nauseous with wine and shock, our muscles still aching, but our hearts aching harder at the sight of Kate, huddled white and sleepless in the corner of the sofa as we left.

It was a Saturday, which meant that when we crawled under our blankets, drawing the curtains against the bright morning light, I didn’t bother to set my alarm. There was no roll call at Saturday breakfast, no one checked us in and out, and it was quite acceptable to skip it and go straight in for lunch, or make toast in the senior common room, with the toaster that was one of the privileges of being in the fifth.

Today, though, we didn’t get a chance to sleep in. The knock came early, quickly followed by the scrape of Miss Weatherby’s staff key in our bedroom lock, and Fatima and I were still prone beneath our red felt blankets, blinking and dazed as she strode into the room, pulling back the curtains.

She said nothing, but her shrewd eyes took it all in – the sand-spattered jeans lying on the chair where I’d left them, the sandals clagged with mud from the salt marsh, the red wine stains on our lips and the unmistakable cherry-ripe scent of alcohol leaching out through the skin of two hung-over teenagers …

In the bed across from mine Fatima was struggling upright, raking hair out of her face, blinking in the cruelly bright light. I looked from her to Miss Weatherby, feeling my heart begin to thump in my chest.

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