‘However painful it is,’ he says. ‘Just think about it. You’d want to know if she was your daughter, wouldn’t you?’
I would. Dan still wants me to come and live with him. After initially hating the idea of leaving London, he’s found himself a great job on a regional paper in Yorkshire where he can see Lulu every weekend. I’ve been up to stay and met her and Carrie and Gill. I like them all but it seems like a huge upheaval to move there myself. If I’m going to hand in my notice at work, I’ll have to decide soon. But not yet. First I have to pass on what I know about Dee Dee’s death: before I can allow myself a future, I have to deal with the lies of the past.
I park outside Zoe’s house. Jed’s car is in the drive. Well, that’s no surprise. I’d assumed they would both be here. I just hope Jed isn’t proposing to ambush me while I’m here, to press me to go back to him. I can’t think he will, not after not contacting me for all these weeks, not after the whole horrendous business with Martin. I haven’t heard from Jed at all in fact, though I have heard that the case against Benecke Tricorp has been dropped. I swing between hating him for pushing Cameron into reaching for that knife and rationalizing that Jed’s fury was understandable and that everything that happened afterwards was a terrible accident.
I check my bag for Dee Dee’s phone and walk steadily up the path to Zoe’s front door. The last time I was here was when I waited outside after Dee Dee’s funeral. That feels like a million years ago. I take a deep breath as I ring the doorbell, bracing myself. I have no idea how Zoe will react to me. She sounded okay on the phone, but I know how deeply she loathes me, though perhaps she has calmed down a bit now it seems Lish is unlikely to serve a custodial sentence. As the lawyers prepare for the court case, everything I hear about it suggests he has given the police masses of information they can use against Cameron. Not that Cameron has been hard to crack. He is, by all accounts, clinically depressed, mourning my brother. Under other circumstances I would have shared my grief with him and my sister. But now I mourn alone.
The door opens. Zoe appears, smart and slim in beige cut-offs and an open-necked powder-blue shirt.
‘Come in.’ I follow her into the nearest room. It’s a dining room, dominated by a big polished wood table with old-fashioned dark wood cabinets across one wall. It is far more formal and expensive-looking than anything in my home with Jed was. Jed himself is sitting at the table. He looks up as I walk in and I’m shocked to see how old and tired he seems, the grey hairs outnumbering the brown, his face lined and sagging with grief.
‘Hello, Emily.’ His face is a blank. Of all the states he might have been in, this dull, unhappy disengagement is the last one I expected.
‘Hi.’ I sit down opposite him, feeling flustered. ‘How are you?’
‘Okay,’ Jed says non-committally. ‘People have been kind.’
‘Gary?’
Across the room, Zoe snorts at the mention of Gary’s name.
Jed shrugs. ‘My brother has debts and he’s busy dealing with those.’
So much for sibling loyalty.
Zoe walks around the table to take the seat next to Jed. She lays her hand on his arm and I suddenly realize that Jed hasn’t just driven over, that they are together. Zoe has taken him back and he is living here with her again. I search myself and feel no jealousy, nor even any surprise. If anything, I’m pleased for him – for them – that they have each other.
‘So . . .’ Jed says. ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’ His face is entirely without expression.
I gulp, remembering the bombshell I am about to drop. I take Dee Dee’s phone and place it on the table between us.
‘I found this,’ I say. ‘My sister was hiding it.’
Zoe looks up at me, her eyes wide with shock. ‘That’s Dee Dee’s.’
I nod. ‘It explains everything,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t Cameron. Or Lish. Not exactly. It . . . it was no one. And everyone.’
I show them the texts from Bex, then the series of video diaries. I force myself to sit still while they watch. Zoe cries openly, her hand over her mouth. Jed’s eyes are dark with their pain.
They play each video in turn, right through to the end.
As Dee Dee’s voice fades for the final time, Zoe takes her hand from Jed’s arm and shrinks back in her chair. The agony in her eyes is unbearable, yet I force myself to look at her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.
Jed clears his throat. He doesn’t look up at either of us and when he speaks, his voice is suffused with shame.
‘What are you going to do with this video?’ he asks. ‘This last one, I mean.’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘No one is going to suffer for anything they didn’t do. And all of us are paying the price of what we did do.’
Jed nods slowly.
‘I think you should show Lish,’ I go on. ‘He should know how Dee Dee got hold of the potassium cyanide. He must have guessed even if he’s never said. It must have eaten away at him.’
‘He hasn’t said anything,’ Jed says, staring down at the table.
‘Other than that, it’s up to you what you do. She was your daughter.’
As I speak I meet Jed’s eyes at last.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He means about Rose.
Zoe pushes her chair back and leaves the room.
I nod, accepting the apology, then stand up. I expected to feel more angry . . . about Rose, about Martin, but now I’m here and the explanation is done, mostly I just feel relief.
As I leave the house I can hear Zoe crying. Then I shut the front door and the sound vanishes. I drive slowly back to Laura’s, aware that something has been lifted from me, some terrible weight I’ve been carrying since Martin died, maybe even since Dee Dee.
And it occurs to me that there is nothing to keep me here, in London . . . in the past.
I check the time. It’s not yet midday and the rest of the weekend stretches ahead. But I know now where I should go, where I should be. There’s no need to agonize over it any longer. Laura and her family are out, so I scribble a note, pack a small bag then get back in my car and set off. I stop on the way to lay flowers on Martin’s grave. The sun shines on the headstone and across the grass as I make my way to the car, to Dan and to the future.
Acknowledgements
Here We Lie began as a conversation with my brother, the economist Roger Bate, about his work investigating the world of counterfeit drugs. The references to drug cases in my story are taken from the real life cases in his book, Phake: the deadly world of falsified and substandard medicines and I am deeply grateful to him for his advice and his feedback as well as to Lorraine Mooney who worked with him. I’m also grateful to Ramez Hamade who filled in some of the many gaps in my knowledge about both primary school teaching and boats.
Sophie McKenzie, Here We Lie
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