Her White Lie

  Her White Lie

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One Tara

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three Faye

  Chapter Four Then

  Chapter Five Now

  Chapter Six Tara

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine Then

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven Faye

  Chapter Twelve Then

  Chapter Thirteen Tara

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen Faye

  Chapter Seventeen Then

  Chapter Eighteen Tara

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three Faye

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six Tara

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine Then

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One Faye

  Chapter Thirty-Two Tara

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six Faye

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine Then

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One Tara

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four Then

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six Faye

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight Tara

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two Faye

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight Tara

  Chapter Fifty-Nine Faye

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One Tara

  Chapter Sixty-Two Faye

  Chapter Sixty-Three Tara

  Chapter Sixty-Four Faye

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six Tara

  Chapter Sixty-Seven One Year Later

  A letter from Jackie

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  Her White Lie

  Jackie Walsh

  For

  Jason Carr

  Chapter One

  Tara

  I can see it clearly. My new life. It’s perfect and ready to go. In three weeks’ time, I’ll be boarding a plane with my brand-new husband and leaving this life behind me. Australia is a long way away but it’s going to be wonderful. When I close my eyes I can imagine the sea air filling my senses. The smell of coconut sun lotion on my skin. The sizzle of sausages cooking on a nearby barbecue and beer fizzing from cans.

  I’ll be meeting Lucas’s family and friends for the first time but I feel I know them already from the many virtual calls Lucas has made. At first I was shy, sitting beside him smiling and nodding into the laptop with nothing to say but I soon got the hang of it and joined in.

  None of his family are travelling over here for the wedding but that doesn’t matter because we’ll be having a second celebration when we get there. His parents are throwing us a party, two days after we arrive. I’ll laugh and smile and be very polite because I want them to like me. I want his family to be happy that Lucas has found me. To know how much we are in love, how happy I make him, and he makes me.

  Of course there’s a downside to all this and it’s a big one. My dad will still be living here in Dublin, on his own. Mam died three years ago. Also I’ll be saying goodbye to my friends who say they’ll come and visit but I know won’t. It’s Australia, not London.

  But we will Skype and Facebook and WhatsApp for the first few months I imagine, maybe even the first year. And then things will move on. I’ll fade into the background of their lives. The calls will get less frequent. The WhatsApp groups will slowly dissolve, and I’ll be mentioned less and less until it will just be Tara Moore, do you remember her?

  It makes me sad to think about it but it’s the way it is. I have to focus on the good stuff. I have a chance at a brilliant new life in Australia where I’ll make new friends. Everything is so exciting; sometimes I feel like I’m the luckiest woman alive.

  * * *

  That was ten minutes ago. Now I can barely breathe. My eyes are trying to blank out the image on the television screen. This cannot be happening.

  There’s a house. Huntley Lodge. It’s surrounded by yellow tape. At the side of the building, overgrown shrubbery hides part of a crime scene tent that has been erected because a dead body has been discovered. My heart is crashing against the wall of my chest because I know exactly where that is. I stood in that spot.

  A pretty news reporter is speaking into a big fluffy mic saying that initial reports suggest the body has been lying there for some time. I swallow hard, trying to stop myself from throwing up. My head feels like the weight of the world is pushing down on it and I can no longer hear the reporter’s voice. It has become muffled, fading into the background, fading like I was supposed to fade.

  Rooted to the spot, I feel the chains of my past gripping tightly. I’m no longer able to see Huntley Lodge on the television screen because my vision has blurred… All I can see now is my beautiful new life slipping away from me.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Are you okay?’ Lucas calls from the sofa.

  I should say no but I say yes in the hope he doesn’t persist. I can’t talk about this now, not to Lucas. I need to get my head around it first. Why now? Three more weeks and I was out of here. The news reporter said the body has been there for some time. It’s been three years since I lived at Huntley Lodge. If the police discover that body has been lying there since then, they’ll come knocking. They’ll ask questions.

  A gust of cold air rushes into the room as I pull open the balcony door. With my arms wrapped across my chest I step outside and take a deep breath. The sharpness of the icy air travels deep into my lungs but a shiver of fear travels further, right through my body.

  The city lights flicker from both sides of the dark, mirroring waters. Flags hanging from tall posts down the quaysides flap wildly in the gusting winds and I feel something shift inside me.

  I think of Faye. Where is she now? Has she seen the report? Faye was my best friend back then. Confident, wild, she made everything exciting and fun. The day I first set eyes on her small skinny body she was standing by the back wall of the school yard, her green skirt and white shirt pristinely ironed and her hair pulled back from her face by a matching green hairband. Faye was scanning the crowd like she was deciding who she would and would not become friends with. A silent confidence oozed from her and it fascinated me how someone who took up so little space could make such a big impact on me. When break was almost over, I leaned against the wall a few feet away from her. Faye lifted her foot up behind her and rested it against the wall. I did the same. She crossed her arms. I crossed mine.

  ‘Are you copying me?’ she asked in a quiet voice. I could tell she wasn’t annoyed.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She smiled, revealing her two front teeth were missing. When I smiled, revealing mine were missing too, we both laughed. We were only eight at the time, totally unaware of the years of fun we were about to share.

  And now Faye is Dr Faye Connolly. I knew she’d make it. Behind all tha
t confidence was a kindness and willingness to help others that was matched only by her determination to succeed. Faye didn’t hesitate the day I asked her for help. I remember it like it was only yesterday but it was more than three years ago when I walked into her bedroom not knowing what her reaction would be. Faye was in the middle of exams at the time and was studying at a makeshift desk Andriu her boyfriend had put together for her. I can still feel the comfort from her gentle smile as she offered to do anything she could to help me. Faye made it seem like it was no big deal. But it was, especially for her.

  ‘Come in out of the cold,’ Lucas says now, sticking his head out into the elements and pulling me out of my memories. His soft blue eyes squint in an effort to avoid the ruthless cold wind that hits him in the face. The man was reared on sunshine and surfboards. Embracing this weather seems crazy to him.

  ‘I’ll be in in a minute,’ I say.

  Wrapping my arms tighter around myself, I watch the dark clouds hurry across the sky. The bright moon highlights their journey. I lift my head, close my eyes and let the cold, harsh wind crash into my face. I try to picture Faye. I remember her green eyes sparkling every time she was happy or excited. Faye was smaller and a lot skinnier than me as a kid. Not so much when we grew into our teens. She hated her brown hair, especially when the weather was damp and it would go all frizzy. I wonder if she still has a fringe. Does she still use MAC make-up to cover her snow-white skin? Faye used to say I was lucky to have sallow skin, but she was never jealous of me. Having Faye as a friend was very special and it took a lot of getting used to when she ended it so abruptly. It’s something I could never get my head around. Her walking out on me the same week my mother died. My two best friends… gone.

  The pain still lives in me. It sleeps most of the time. But now I can feel it stir. Did Faye see the news bulletin? Is she worrying like I am, praying that we did a good enough job covering our tracks?

  Chapter Three

  Faye

  ‘Holy fuck… is that Huntley Lodge?’ I can’t believe what I’m looking at. The red-brick kip of a house that I spent a lot of my time living and partying in when I was in college is splattered all over the TV.

  My body moves like it’s being controlled by someone else in the direction of the screen situated about four feet above my head on the wall in front of me. My eyes fix on the image of the house surrounded by police cars, cops and tape. I strain my ears in an attempt to hear the reporter. The TVs are all set on low volume in this place so as not to disrupt the calm, relaxed ambience we aim to create here at the clinic. But I need to hear this. I need to know what is going on and at the same time I don’t need to hear this. I don’t want to know what’s going on because I never wanted to be brought back there. Things happened at Huntley Lodge. Bad things.

  With my face glued to the reporter’s lips, I try to match their movements to the mutterings that are barely audible and scrape together the information.

  A woman’s body has been found at the house. It’s been there for a while. The reporter doesn’t say how long and I very much doubt they know that yet. How would they? They’ve only just discovered it. Taking in a deep breath I try to slow down my racing heart. Is this really happening?

  Behind me, I hear footsteps. I glance around to see one of the security guys I’m not too familiar with going off duty.

  ‘Is there any chance I can have the volume upped on this TV?’ I say but he tells me the settings are fixed and he’s no way of increasing it without climbing up and adjusting it from behind. The maintenance room is all locked up for the day so he can’t access the ladder but he suggests I go to the patients’ TV room down the hallway. I don’t want to do that. I’ve a load of paperwork to get finished and if I go in there someone will delay me.

  ‘Ok thanks,’ I say. My eyes continue to watch the drama unfolding silently on the screen until it disappears into the next story. I take my phone from my pocket and open my newsfeed to see if I can find out anything more.

  So far there’s just a body. No name, no date, no suggestion of murder. I walk down the corridor and sit at my desk where I open a file, hoping to distract myself. I need to take my mind off the discovery but I’m finding it impossible and now I’m holding my phone again and searching a few more sites. Still nothing. I’m about to stop looking when a news alert flashes on the screen. Woman Found in Disused Pit. Shit. I remember that pit. Nobody ever went near it when I was living there. It was covered in weeds and brambles and barely visible. If we hadn’t been warned about it when we first moved in, we may never have known it was there.

  My eyes devour the information on the screen. Huntley Lodge is currently being renovated and that’s how the body was discovered. The builders found it at the bottom of the ten-foot-deep pit while they were digging new foundations for a massive extension being planned to the rear of the old house. The report goes on to say that no one is currently living at Huntley Lodge but it doesn’t say when it was last inhabited. Were we the last people living there? I hope not.

  I close the phone and picture the building as I remember it. The red brick, the white wooden sash windows all in need of repair. Granite ledges. The old red wooden door with beautiful stained-glass panels. One of the panes of glass broke during a party one night and we replaced it with cheap plain glass. As students it was all we could afford but it looked terrible.

  I promised myself I would never let my mind go back there, I would never revisit that night, but I can’t help it. Seeing that image of Huntley Lodge has brought everything rushing back. My breath is getting shallower. Breathe in, Faye… but nothing helps. It’s like the whole cast from that dreadful nightmare has pulled up in a bus inside my head and now they’re all stepping off and back into my life.

  Tara Moore is the first down the steps. I hate her. The kind of hate you can only muster up for someone you once loved. Tara was my best friend. We grew up together. Did everything together. I loved that girl… I was there when she needed me because I thought she would have done the same for me. But then she did the unthinkable. I didn’t know what Tara Moore was capable of.

  My mind is rambling, remembering, trying to make sense of the sudden surge of memory bursting through the barrier that I’ve built to protect it. My head is slumped, tears are welling in my eyes and then I hear the sound of the intercom in the hallway calling my name. My last appointment of the day. Shit. Dabbing my eyes, I take a deep breath and inhale the soft scent of vanilla in the air. I pull a smile onto my face and hope to hide the utter turmoil going on inside me. People need to have faith in their doctors; they need to believe they’re strong, that they have everything under control. So this is not the first time I’ve had to disguise my crumbling interior.

  Taking the file from the table, I brush myself down. I lift my head high, shaking off the fear, the truth, the anxiety over what is going to happen now. The knot in my stomach tightens as I walk out the door and, not for the first time, wish I had never set foot in Huntley Lodge.

  Chapter Four

  Then

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Six hundred euro a month.’

  ‘That’s for nothing, why is it so cheap?’ Tara’s eyes are open wide, staring at me in disbelief and excitement. I’m sitting on her bed watching her try out some makeup her Aunt Rose gave her for her birthday. The room is small compared to my bedroom in my parents’ house but it’s cosy. We prefer hanging out here. Tara’s an only child so unlike at my house, where there are three of us, we don’t have to put up with the constant rows over someone touching something belonging to someone else.

  ‘I know, great isn’t it? He’s a friend of my father’s and just wants someone staying in it for a few years until he’s ready to renovate it or something like that. Anyway my dad thought of us because it’s so close to the college.’

  ‘But that’s just three hundred each a month!’

  ‘Two, if we get someone else in.’

  Tara turns away and looks at her image in the mirror. Mo
ving closer to the glass, she sweeps lipstick across her lips. Her green eyes are sparkling bright at the thought of us finally getting our own place to live. It’s something we always talked about but it’s so expensive to rent in Dublin. And with neither of us working we thought the dream would be a long time in the making. But here we are. After just one year in college our wish is coming true.

  I know how Tara feels. I was blown away too, unable to believe my luck when my dad asked if we’d be interested in renting the place. The only condition attached is that my name doesn’t appear on the lease. The man who owns it is a client of Dad’s and it might cause trouble down the line. He suggested we put Tara’s name on it.

  ‘This is crazy, Faye,’ she says, clasping her hands with excitement. ‘Do you know when we can move in?’

  ‘I presume as soon as we want. He’s not looking for a deposit and my dad says he’ll pay the first month’s rent to give us a start.’

  ‘What?’

  I nod, then squeal, unable to keep the excitement locked up any longer. I’m so happy to be telling Tara this news, to be the one who found us a place.