The Truth-Teller's Lie Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Part I - 2006

  Chapter 1 - Monday, April 3

  Chapter 2 - 4/3/06

  Chapter 3 - Tuesday, April 4

  Chapter 4 - 4/4/06

  Chapter 5 - Tuesday, April 4

  Chapter 6 - 4/4/06

  Chapter 7 - 4/5/06

  Chapter 8 - Wednesday, April 5

  Chapter 9 - 4/5/06

  Chapter 10 - Thursday, April 6

  Chapter 11 - 4/6/06

  Part II

  Chapter 12 - 4/6/06

  Chapter 13 - Thursday, April 6

  Chapter 14 - 4/6/06

  Chapter 15 - Friday, April 7

  Chapter 16 - 4/7/06

  Chapter 17 - Friday, April 7

  Chapter 18 - 4/7/06

  Chapter 19 - Friday, April 7

  Chapter 20 - 4/8/06

  Chapter 21 - 4/8/06

  Part III

  Chapter 22 - Saturday, April 8

  Chapter 23 - 4/8/06

  Chapter 24 - Saturday, April 8

  Chapter 25 - 4/8/06

  Chapter 26 - Saturday, April 8

  Chapter 27 - 4/8/06

  Chapter 28 - Sunday, April 9

  Chapter 29 - 4/9/06

  Chapter 30 - Sunday, April 9

  Chapter 31 - Monday, April 10

  Chapter 32 - 4/13/06

  Chapter 33 - Thursday, May 4

  Chapter 34 - 5/19/06

  Acknowledgements

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE TRUTH-TELLER’S LIE

  Sophie Hannah is the author of the international bestsellers Little Face, The Wrong Mother, and The Dead Lie Down. In 2004 she won the Daphne Du Maurier Prize for Suspense Fiction, and she is also an award-winning poet. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her husband and two children.

  Praise for Sophie Hannah

  The Dead Lie Down

  “A master of intricate plotting, Hannah seamlessly melds the police procedural with a gothic-inspired whodunit.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Hannah deals brilliantly with the issues of artistic accomplishment and success, unrequited emotion, revenge, and retribution. This stunning psychological thriller from the author of the equally outstanding The Wrong Mother has the complexities of love at its core.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “This utterly gripping thriller should establish Hannah as one of the great unmissables of this genre—intelligent, classy and with a wonderfully gothic imagination.”

  —The Times (London)

  “Beautifully written and precision-engineered to unsettle.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  “A master class in plotting that adds twist after twist in a hectic finale.”

  —The Sunday Times (London)

  The Wrong Mother

  “Shockingly (and refreshingly) blunt riffs about the violent emotions of motherhood and the familial yearnings of men, along with chilling and darkly funny revelations about lust and loyalty, make this novel one of the season’s most absorbing reads.”

  —O, The Oprah Magazine

  “Paced like a ticking time bomb with flawlessly distinct characterization, this is a fiercely fresh and un-put-downable read.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Sophie Hannah just gets better and better. Her plots are brilliantly cunning and entirely unpredictable. The writing is brilliant and brings us uncomfortably close to the dark, ambivalent impulses experienced by the parents of difficult, demanding children.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  “Sophie Hannah’s ingenious, almost surreal mysteries are so intricately constructed that it’s impossible to guess how they will end.”

  —The Daily Telegraph (London)

  “The Wrong Mother is Hannah’s most accomplished novel yet. As the revelations tumble forth, the tension is screwed ever tighter until the final shocking outcome. Exemplary.”

  —Daily Express (London)

  Little Face

  “Dark psychological suspense . . . The power this novel packs derives from narrators that play fast and loose with what they know. . . . The solution is a stunner.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Sophie Hannah . . . delves successfully into moral quandaries: What does motherhood mean? What should a mother do when she thinks her child is in danger—especially if her own family doesn’t agree? . . . It’s Alice’s choices and their consequences that make Little Face so compelling.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Few authors play with reality and perception as skillfully as Hannah does. . . . Riveting reading.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “Echoes of Gaslight and Rebecca . . . a tautly claustrophobic spiral of a story delivered with self-belief.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The author is a poet by trade and she brings a wealth of psychological and literary subtlety to bear in this impressive novel. Smart and disarmingly unnerving.”

  —Daily Mail (London)

  “A chilling thriller. I was left thinking about the book for days, and that’s usually a good thing.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  To access Penguin Readers Guides online, visit our Web sites at www.penguin.com or www.vpbookclub.com.

  For Lisanne with love

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline 2007

  Published in the United States of America by Soho Press, Inc. 2008

  Published in Penguin Books 2010

  Copyright © Sophie Hannah, 2007 All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-46096-2

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  From: NJ

  To: Speak Out and Survive

 

  Subject: This is not my story

  Date: Mon, May 18, 2003 13:28:07 +0100

  This is not my story. I’m not sure I want to share that, or my feelings, with strangers, on a website. It would seem phoney, somehow—phoney and attention-seeking. This is just something I want to say, and your website gives no address for submitting letters.

  Did you ever stop to wonder, when y
ou were thinking of a name for your organisation, whether speaking out is always the best thing to do? Once you tell somebody something, it makes it more real. Why take what you wish had never happened and make it happen again and again in the minds of everyone you know? I will never tell anybody my so-called story, which means there will be no justice, no punishment for those who deserve it. Sometimes that thought is pretty hard to take. Still, it’s a small price to pay for not having to spend the rest of my life being thought of as a victim.

  Sorry, a survivor. Though that word makes me feel uneasy. At no point did anybody try to kill me. It makes sense to talk about survivors in the context of a plane crash or a nuclear explosion: situations in which it might be expected that everyone involved would die. But in most cases rape is not a life-threatening event, so the sense of rare achievement that the word ‘survivor’ conveys seems patronising—a sort of false consolation.

  When I first logged on to your site, I hoped that something I read there would make me feel better, but the opposite has happened. Why do so many of your correspondents use the same cloying vocabulary: thriving, telling and healing, smiling through tears, rising from the ashes, etc.? It reminds me of the lyrics of a bad heavy-metal album. Nobody says that they do not ever expect to get over what happened to them.

  This will sound terrible, but I am actually jealous of many of the people whose stories are posted on your site: the ones with insensitive, demanding boyfriends, the ones who drank too much on first dates. At least they can make sense of their ordeals. My attacker was someone I had never seen before and have not seen since, someone who kidnapped me in broad daylight and knew every detail about me: my name, my job, where I lived. I don’t know how he knew. I don’t know why he chose me, where he took me or who all the other people were. I will not go into any more detail than that. Perhaps if I did, you’d understand why I feel so strongly about what I’m going to say next.

  On the ‘What Is Rape?’ page of your site, you list a number of definitions, the last of which is ‘any sexually intimidating behaviour’. You go on to say, ‘No physical contact needs to have taken place—sometimes an inappropriate look or comment is enough to make a woman feel violated. ’ When I read that, I wanted to hit whoever wrote it.

  I know you’ll disapprove of this letter and me and everything I’ve said, but I’m sending it anyway. I think it’s important to point out that not all rape victims have the same mindset, vocabulary and attitudes.

  Part I

  2006

  1

  Monday, April 3

  I COULD EXPLAIN, if you were here to listen. I am breaking my promise to you, the only one you ever asked me to make. I’m sure you remember. There was nothing casual about your voice when you said, ‘I want you to promise me something.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, propping myself up on one elbow, burning my skin on the yellow nylon sheet in my eagerness to be upright, attentive. I was desperate to please you. You ask for so little, and I’m always looking for small, subtle ways to give you more. ‘Anything!’ I said, laughing, deliberately extravagant. A promise is the same as a vow, and I wanted there to be vows between us, binding us.

  My exuberance made you smile, but not for long. You’re so grave when we’re in bed together. You think it’s a tragedy that you’ll soon have to leave, and that is how you always look: like a man preparing for calamity. I usually cry after you’ve gone (no, I’ve never told you, because I’m damned if I’m going to encourage your mournful streak), but while we’re together in our room I’m as high as if I were on strong, mind-altering drugs. It seems impossible that we will ever be apart, that the moment will end. And in some ways it doesn’t. When I go home, when I’m making pasta in my kitchen or chiselling Roman numerals in my workshop, I’m not there really. I’m still in room eleven at the Traveltel, with its hard, synthetic, rust-coloured carpet that feels like the bristles of a toothbrush under your feet and its pushed-together twin beds with mattresses that aren’t mattresses at all but thick, orange foam mats, the sort that used to cover the floor of the gymnasium at my secondary school.

  Our room. I knew for sure that I loved you, that it wasn’t just infatuation or physical attraction, when I heard you say to the receptionist, ‘No, it has to be room eleven, same as last time. We need the same room every time.’ Need, not want. Everything is urgent for you; nothing is casual. You never sprawl on the faded, bobbly sofa, or take your shoes off and put your feet up. You sit upright, fully clothed, until we’re about to get into bed.

  Later, when we were alone, you said, ‘I’m worried it’s going to be sordid, meeting in a shitty motel. At least if we stick to one room, it’ll feel more homely.’ Then you spent the next fifteen minutes apologising because you couldn’t afford to take me somewhere grander. Even then (how long had we known each other? Three weeks?) I knew better than to offer to share the cost.

  I remember nearly everything you’ve said to me over the past year. Maybe if I could bring to mind the right phrase, the crucial line, it would lead me straight to you. I do not really believe this, but I keep going through it all in my mind, just in case.

  ‘Well?’ I prodded your shoulder with my finger. ‘Here I am, a naked woman offering to promise you anything, and you’re ignoring me?’

  ‘This isn’t a joke, Naomi.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  You like to do everything slowly, even speaking. It makes you angry if you’re rushed. I don’t think I’ve ever made you laugh, or even seen you laugh properly, though you often talk about laughing—in the pub with Sean and Tony. ‘I laughed till I cried,’ you say. ‘I laughed till the tears were pouring down my face.’

  You turned to me and asked, ‘Do you know where I live?’

  I blushed. Damn, I’d been rumbled. You’d spotted that I was obsessed with you, collecting any fact or detail I could get my hands on. All week I had been chanting your address in my head, sometimes even saying it or singing it aloud while I was working.

  ‘You saw me writing it down last time, didn’t you? On that form for the receptionist. I noticed you looking.’

  ‘Three Chapel Lane, Spilling. Sorry. Would you rather I didn’t know?’

  ‘In a way,’ you said. ‘Because this has to be completely safe. I’ve told you that.’ You sat up then too, and put on your glasses. ‘I don’t want it to end. I want it to last for a long time, for as long as I last. It has to be a hundred percent safe, completely separate from the rest of my life.’

  I understood at once, and nodded. ‘But . . . now the Traveltel receptionist knows your address too,’ I said. ‘What if they send a bill or something?’

  ‘Why would they? I always pay when I leave.’

  Does it make it easier, having an administrative ritual to complete before you go, a small ceremony that takes place on the boundary of our life and your other life? I wish I had an equivalent task to perform before leaving. I always stay the night (though I allow you to think it’s only sometimes, not every time) and march briskly out of the Traveltel the next morning, barely stopping to smile at the receptionist. It feels too informal, somehow, too quick and easy.

  ‘There’s no paperwork to send,’ you said. ‘Anyway, Juliet doesn’t even open her own post, let alone mine.’ I noticed a slight vibration in your lower jaw, a tightening around your mouth. It always happens when you mention Juliet. I am collecting details about her, too, though I wish I weren’t. Many of them involve a ‘let alone’: she doesn’t know how to turn on a computer, let alone use the Internet. She never answers the phone, let alone rings anyone herself.

  She sounds like a freak, I have wanted to say so often, and stopped myself. I shouldn’t allow my envy of her to make me cruel.

  You kissed me lightly before saying, ‘You mustn’t ever come to the house, or ring me there. If Juliet saw you, if she found out in that way, it’d break her.’ I love the way you use words. Your speech is more poetic, grander than mine. Everything I say is heavy with mundane detail. You were sta
ring past me, and I turned, half expecting, from your expression, to see a misty grey-and-purple mountain range wreathed in white cloud instead of a beige plastic kettle labelled ‘Rawndesley East Services Traveltel’, one that regularly contributes little granules of limescale to our hot drinks.

  What are you staring at now? Where are you?

  I wanted to ask for more details. What did you mean, about Juliet breaking? Would she collapse, sobbing, on the floor, lose her memory, become violent? People can break in a range of ways, and I have never been able to work out if you are frightened of your wife or frightened for her. But your tone was solemn, and I knew you had more to say. I didn’t want to interrupt you.

  ‘It’s not just that,’ you muttered, scrunching up the diamond-patterned coverlet in your hands. ‘It’s her. I can’t bear the thought of you seeing her.’

  ‘Why?’ I felt it would be tactless to tell you that you had nothing to worry about on that score. Did you imagine I was curious, desperate to know who you were married to? Even now, I have a horror of seeing Juliet. I wish I didn’t know her name. I would like to keep her as unreal as possible in my mind. Ideally, I would know her only as ‘she’ and there would be less for my jealousy to latch on to. But I could hardly have said that, could I, when we first met? ‘Don’t tell me your wife’s name, because I think I might be in love with you and I can’t stand to know anything about her.’

  I doubt you could imagine the anguish I’ve felt, climbing into bed every night this past year and thinking: Juliet will be lying next to Robert in their bed at this moment. It isn’t the thought of her sleeping beside you that makes my face twist in pain and my insides clench; it’s the idea that she regards it as ordinary, routine. I don’t torment myself with the image of the two of you kissing or making love; instead, I imagine Juliet on her side of the bed, reading a book—something boring about a member of the Royal Family or how to look after houseplants—and barely looking up when you come into the room. She doesn’t notice you undressing, getting into bed beside her. Do you wear pyjamas? I can’t picture it, somehow. Anyway, whatever you wear, Juliet is used to it, after years of marriage. This is not special for her; it’s just another boring, unremarkable night at home. There is nothing she particularly wants or needs to say to you. She is perfectly able to concentrate on the details of Prince Andrew and Fergie’s divorce or how to pot a cactus. When her eyelids start to droop, she tosses her book down on the floor and turns on her side, away from you, without even saying goodnight.