The Lies We Told by Camilla Way (best book recommendations txt) 📕

He finished his second glass and continued to stare at her. “Are they? Are they really, Clara? Well, maybe it’s time they woke the fuck up.” He slammed his glass down on the table and went into the hall. Raising his voice, he shouted up the staircase, “Mum? Dad? Wakey wakey!”

Rushing over to him, Clara put a hand on his arm and cried, “Tom! What are you doing?”

“Something I should have done a very long time ago,” he replied, then raising his voice again, called, “Get down here now! It’s time to wake up.” He looked at Clara and muttered, “It’s time we all fucking woke up.”

Without another word he strode into the living room and flung himself onto the sofa, where he sat motionless, morosely staring ahead.

Clara watched him in horror. Should she call the police? Glancing at Mac, she began to edge back toward the hall, to where she’d left her bag hanging over the banister. If she could just get to her mobile without him seeing, she could go somewhere out of earshot and call 999. Without thinking, she let the photograph in her hand drop.

But before she could escape, Tom leaned forward and picked it up. “What’s this?” he asked.

She stopped in her tracks. “Nothing. Just a photo of Luke’s I found,” she said nervously. “I don’t know who it is. I found it in—”

Tom frowned in confusion, then looked at her strangely. “You don’t know who this is? What are you talking about? This is Emily, of course. This is my sister, Emily.”

There was absolute silence. And then Mac and Clara said at exactly the same time, “What?”

“My sister.” He stared down at it. “I didn’t know Luke had this picture of her. I thought my darling parents destroyed every last trace of her. Guilt can make you do all kinds of crazy shit, after all.”

But Clara wasn’t listening. “Emily? This is Emily?”

Tom looked back at their astonished faces in surprise. “Well, yes. Of course it is. Why? Who did you think it was?”

“But I’ve met Emily,” Clara said, her voice rising in panic. “This isn’t . . .”

“You’ve met . . . ?” He stared at her. “No, you haven’t. She disappeared twenty years ago. How could you possibly have met her?”

She glanced around at Mac, but saw he was looking now for something in his bag. “I was contacted by someone who said they were Emily,” she said, turning back to Tom. “I met up with her in a bar; she came to my flat. If this is Emily, then who have I been meeting?”

They stared back at each other.

“Clara?” Mac had pulled out his laptop and was turning it on. After a moment he brought it over to them. “This is the person you’ve been meeting, isn’t it?” She looked down at the laptop screen, and there was a picture of Emily, or at least the person who’d said that she was. It was a slightly blurred photo taken of her profile, surrounded by a crowd of people.

“Where did you get this?” she asked Mac.

He flushed and looked away. “I took it. When you said you were going to meet her in the bar that first time . . .” He met her astonished gaze. “I was worried!” he said defensively. “I know you didn’t want me to come with you, but I needed to make sure it wasn’t a trap, that you weren’t meeting someone dangerous. I’m sorry. I waited in a doorway down the road from the bar. Then when she left you, I followed her, just to check where she was going. It all just seemed so suspicious.”

Her eyes widened. “I did see you that night, then! I thought I’d imagined it.” She turned back to the picture. “Where did you follow her to?”

“Shoreditch tube. I had my Leica around my neck as usual. When she was buying a ticket, I took a picture of her, but she turned around and saw me. I just brazened it out and kept walking, got on the tube, and went home.”

Clara stared at him in horror. “What camera did you say it was?”

“The Leica, the one that—”

“Went missing from your flat?”

“Yes.”

“Could she have followed you home that night?”

He thought about it. “I suppose. I didn’t see her, but it was busy, rush hour—there were a lot of people.”

“So she could have followed you. She could have broken in later and stolen it from your flat, knowing you had her picture stored on your camera?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“So if this person isn’t Emily,” Clara said, “then who the fuck is she? Who have I been meeting with?”

It was at that moment that Tom spoke again. He was still looking at the picture on the laptop screen. “I know her,” he said. “I know this woman.” They turned to stare at him. “I met her when I was qualifying in Manchester, about—what?—ten years or so ago. Her name’s Hannah.” He shook his head in confusion. “But I don’t understand. Why is she pretending to be my sister?”

“How did you know her?” Mac asked.

“She answered an advert for a room in a house I shared. We gave the room to someone else, thank God, but after that, she seemed to be everywhere. Wherever I went—supermarket, pub, or gym, or whatever—there she’d be. I’d turn around to find her staring at me. If I approached her, she’d just walk off. It was really fucking weird. Then suddenly, she disappeared. Vanished out of the blue and I never saw her again.”

Clara listened to him in amazement. “But who on earth is she? None of this makes any sense.”

At that moment they heard footsteps on the stairs, and Oliver and Rose, crumpled and dazed in their dressing gowns, came into the room. “What’s happening?” Oliver asked. He started in surprise when he saw his son. “Tom? What are you doing here?”

Clara glanced at Tom, then said to Rose and Oliver, “Something really strange is going on.”

Rose put her hand to her mouth.