The Lying Game

‘We weren’t abused,’ Thea says. She takes off her sunglasses and I can see there are deep shadows around her eyes. ‘Ambrose was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an abuser.’

‘That’s not the point,’ Fatima says. ‘Whatever his motives were, he abused his position, there’s no two ways about it, and you know that as well as I do. He was an irresponsible fool.’

‘He was an artist,’ Thea retorts. ‘And he never laid a finger on any of us, unless you want to say different?’

‘But that’s not how the press will see it!’ Fatima hisses. ‘Wake up, Thee. This is a motive, don’t you get that?’

‘A motive for – for his suicide?’ Thea’s face is puzzled for a moment, but then I speak, spelling it out for her.

‘A motive for us to … kill him, right, Fatima? That’s what you’re saying.’

She nods, her face pale beneath the dark wine-coloured hijab, and I feel the constriction in my throat again, choking me. The images rise up in front of my mind’s eye – Ambrose’s delicate pencil sweeps, a curve here, a line there, a brush of hair … the body in the images has changed, but my face, my face is still horrifyingly, unmistakably mine, even after all these years, staring out from the paper, so unselfconscious and so very, very vulnerable …

‘What?’ Thea gives a shaky laugh. ‘No. No! That’s ridiculous! Who’d believe it? I just don’t buy the logic!’

‘Look,’ Fatima says wearily. ‘Seventeen years ago we weren’t thinking about ourselves, we were looking at the discovery of the drawings from one perspective – Ambrose’s. They were a disaster for him, plain and simple. But look at it in the cold hard light of experience. What would you think if you saw this in the press now, today? You’ve got a group of girls at a residential school being groomed by a teacher, one of them his own daughter. You heard Kate – people in the village are already speculating about whether Ambrose was abusing her. These pictures, surfacing now after all Kate’s attempts to erase them? This changes our relationship to Ambrose pretty radically, Thee. We go from being his students to his victims. And sometimes victims fight back.’

She is whispering, her words barely audible beneath the coffee shop hubbub, but suddenly I want to put my hand over her mouth, tell her to hush, for God’s sake be quiet. Because she’s right. We buried the body. We have no alibi for the night he died. Even if it didn’t get to court, people would talk.

Thea’s coffee arrives in the silence that follows and we drink, each of us lost in our own world, thinking about the possible consequences of this scandal to our careers, our relationships, our kids …

‘So who then?’ Thea says at last. ‘Luc? Someone from the village?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fatima groans. ‘Whatever I said before, I don’t think Kate sent these, I just don’t. But the fact remains, whether she sent them or not, she lied about destroying the pictures. These aren’t the ones that the school showed us, are they?’

‘Funnily enough,’ Thea says, almost snappishly, ‘admiring my pose wasn’t the first thing on my mind that day. Isa? Do you remember?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say slowly. I am trying to remember back to the spread of images on the desk. There were only half a dozen bits of paper, only one was of me alone, at least I think so … Christ, it is so hard to remember. But I am sure of one thing – the envelope I received today contained at least three or four sheets, many more images than were scattered on Miss Weatherby’s desk. ‘I think you’re right,’ I say at last. ‘I don’t think these are the ones the school had. At least, not unless they kept some back. The ones they showed us … there weren’t enough to cover these. But I think Fatima’s right too – there’s no motive for the school to send them, surely? They have as much to lose as we do.’

‘Who then – Luc?’ Thea demands. I shrug helplessly. ‘Mary Wren? And what, is it a warning, or is someone trying to stop us from getting hurt? Could it be Kate giving us back the images so we can’t get ambushed by them in the future?’

‘I doubt it,’ I say. I would love to believe that version – the version that doesn’t involve us looking over our shoulders for the demand that is coming next. ‘But they’re copies, not originals. Why post us copies?’ Though, even as I say it, I can imagine Kate being unable to part with the drawings. God knows, after all, she has hung on to every other part of her father.

‘Could she be giving us a heads-up about their existence?’ Thea says, but her voice is uncertain. I shake my head.

‘She would have told us at the Mill. Posting them now … it doesn’t make sense.’

‘You’re right …’ Fatima says. ‘The timing’s all wrong.’

Her words trigger an uncomfortable echo inside me, and suddenly I remember my middle-of-the-night doubts, almost submerged by the arrival of the pictures and my fear over what they might mean.

I swallow my cappuccino, and when I put the cup down, it rattles a little on the saucer, betraying my nervousness about what I am about to say. I so want to be wrong. I so want Fatima and Thea to explain away my doubts – and I am not sure if they can.

‘Well, that’s another thing,’ I say reluctantly, and Fatima and Thea both look up at me. I swallow again, my throat suddenly dry and bitter with caffeine. ‘It – it’s something I’ve been thinking about, the timing of the pictures – not these ones,’ I add, seeing their puzzlement. ‘The ones the school found.’

‘What do you mean,’ Fatima frowns. ‘Timing?’

‘The day before Ambrose died was completely normal, right?’ They both nod. ‘But I don’t understand how it could have been. If the school knew about the pictures, if they’d spoken to Ambrose about them, then why did they wait twenty-four hours before confronting us? And why did they talk to us as if they didn’t know for sure who drew the pictures?’

‘B-because …’ Thea says, and then stops, trying to order her thoughts. ‘Well, I mean, I always thought that they spoke to us before they spoke to Ambrose. They must have done, surely? Otherwise they would have known they were his – he wouldn’t have denied it, would he?’

But Fatima has already got there. Her face is very pale, her dark eyes fixed on mine, and there’s a kind of fear in them that makes me even more frightened.

‘I see what you’re saying. If they hadn’t spoken to Ambrose, how did he know it was all about to come out?’

I nod, silent. I have been hoping against hope that Fatima – cool, deductive Fatima, with her clear mind and logical thinking – would see a hole in my reasoning. Now I know there isn’t one.

‘My guess,’ I say slowly, ‘in fact it’s not a guess, I think it’s pretty damn near certain, the school didn’t see those drawings until after Ambrose was dead.’

There is silence. A long, dread-filled silence.

‘So what you’re saying …’ Thea says at last, and I can see her trying to figure it out, trying to make it mean something else, other than the obvious conclusion we are all trying to skirt around. ‘What you’re saying is …’

She stops.

Silence fills the air, the noise of the cafe suddenly seeming very far away, and almost muted in comparison to the words that are screaming inside my head.

I can’t believe I am about to voice this aloud, but someone has to. I draw a breath and force myself to come out with it.

‘What I’m saying is, either someone was blackmailing him … and he knew those images were about to be sent and acted before the shit could hit the fan … or …’

But then I stop too, because I can’t say the last thing, it’s too horrific, it changes everything – what happened, what we did, and most of all the possible consequences.

It’s Fatima who spells it out. Fatima, who is used to giving out life or death information – life-changing diagnoses, stomach-punching test results. She swallows the last of her mint tea, and finishes my sentence for me, her voice flat.