The Lies We Told: The exciting new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Watching Edie

At this she shook her head vehemently. ‘No! I haven’t seen him since Tuesday, at work, I swear to God, Clara!’

‘Were you still … seeing him?’

She shook her head again.

‘How long?’ Clara’s voice caught and she winced at the indignity of it all. She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘How long were you fucking my boyfriend?’

Sadie coloured; a delicate dusky rose staining her flawless skin. ‘It only happened once.’

Clara gave a snort of disbelief. That wasn’t what Mac had said. For the first time her hurt was replaced by an icy disdain for Luke. Beautiful or not, was this lying child what he’d in fact wanted? Really? ‘I know that’s not true,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you even care he had a girlfriend?’

Sadie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Clara. We never meant it to happen.’

We. The irony was, Clara had always liked Sadie; they’d often chatted at work dos, laughed together in the pub about Sadie’s crazy boss. She’d been too sweet, too eager to please to be considered a threat, not that Clara was in the habit of thinking of other women in those terms. Perhaps she should have been, she reflected bitterly now. ‘Why did it end?’ she asked.

‘He wouldn’t … he didn’t want to leave you. He said he loved you, wanted to marry you,’ she began to cry, ‘that I … was a mistake.’

When Clara didn’t say anything Sadie blurted, ‘You must hate me. I know you do. But I’m not a horrible person, Clara. I’m really not. I just … where do you think he is? Do you think he’s OK?’

Clara stood up. ‘How would I know, Sadie?’ she said tiredly. ‘I have absolutely no fucking idea about anything any more.’

Rose called her as she was walking to the Tube later that evening. She hesitated, weariness rolling over her, her finger hovering on the Accept Call button, unsure whether she could face going through DS Anderson’s visit with her once again. Eventually she picked up, knowing that Luke’s disappearance must surely be even worse for Rose than it was for her. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘how are you feeling today?’

‘Oh, Clara. I can’t bear it. I keep going over and over where he could be, whether he’s hurt, whether he knows how much we all love him …’ Her voice gave way to stifled sobs.

‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘I know how awful this is for you.’ She hesitated. ‘How’s Oliver taking it?’

‘Very badly. He’s dreadfully upset. This all brings back some extremely painful memories, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m worried about him, Clara. He hardly eats or sleeps, just locks himself away in his study, barely speaking to me.’

Clara’s heart ached for her. She knew how much Rose loved Oliver; her devotion to him had always touched her, how proud she was of him despite her own considerable achievements. The strength of the Lawsons’ marriage was something she’d always aspired to; its generosity and inclusiveness being so unlike the insular, unwelcoming one between her own parents.

‘It’s such a comfort to us that Luke has you,’ Rose went on. ‘That we all have you. Knowing you’re there looking for him, helping the police. You’re like a daughter to us, you know that, don’t you, Clara?’

Clara briefly closed her eyes as hurt washed through her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it’s going to be all right.’

‘I keep thinking about those awful emails. Tell me again what DS Anderson said, he does think they’re connected, doesn’t he?’

‘I don’t think he knows yet what—’

‘But it must be! The same person who broke into your flat, who took those photographs …’

For the briefest moment Clara considered telling Rose about Luke’s affair, that she was washing her hands of her son, that he had hurt her too much to care about his whereabouts any more. But even before the thought was fully formed, she knew she never would. Because despite everything, despite all that he’d done, she couldn’t do it, not to Luke, and especially not to his parents. After all, it was hardly their fault that any of this had happened. ‘I’m going to get on the Tube now,’ she said instead. ‘I’ll phone you as soon as the police get in touch. Try to stay strong, Rose. We’ll find him. I promise.’

Sitting on the Northern Line a few minutes later, Clara brooded over Rose’s distress. Her mind wandered to a weekend in Suffolk a year or so before. It had been the day of the village fete, an event organized entirely by Luke’s parents, to raise funds for a little local girl with leukaemia. There had been stalls and games, live music and dancing, and the whole village had come along, a joyful atmosphere of community and goodwill in the air. Clara had watched as Rose had danced energetically to the band, while a smiling Oliver had organized tug-of-war contests and run the coconut shy. Despite the weeks and weeks of hard work, the time and money that had gone into organizing the event, she saw how they brushed off all congratulations and thanks with self-deprecating modesty. It was only when the parents of the girl for whom the fete was in honour approached and hugged them both that Clara saw how touched and relieved they were by the day’s success.

As her train drew into Old Street, Clara got up, reflecting bitterly at how cruel life was. Why was it that bad things seemed to happen to those who least deserved it? Hadn’t Rose and Oliver suffered enough? She stepped out on to the platform, resolving that she would do everything she possibly could to help Luke’s parents find him.

Mac was waiting for her on the street outside her building when she arrived. He was leaning against the wall, watching her warily as she approached. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I just wanted to see how you are,’ he said.

She sighed, too tired to turn him away. ‘Come up.’

Five minutes later they were sitting across the kitchen table from each other. She took in the familiar, endearing gawkiness of him, the pale skin that looked like it barely saw sunlight – which wasn’t far from the truth: Mac was a freelance photographer and spent his nights taking pictures of gigs and music concerts for a living, which meant he often slept during daylight hours. Luke’s funny, loyal friend who could usually make her helpless with laughter within seconds, who until yesterday she had thought was one of her closest friends, too. ‘Why did he do it?’ she asked. ‘We’ve only just moved in together, he told me he loved me! What the fuck was he playing at?’

Mac shrugged helplessly. ‘Because he’s a bloody idiot.’

‘You should have told me, Mac. I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am your friend. Think about the position I was in. I fucking hated it. But it needed to come from him, not me. I told him to tell you, I told him over and over, you’ve got to believe that!’

She rubbed her eyes, considering this. ‘How did it start between them?’ she asked.

‘Sadie was in the pub one night after work and Luke got talking to her. Her dad had died recently I think and she was drunk and upset, so he comforted her, told her he was always around for a chat. You know what Luke’s like, always wants to be there for people. Anyway, he said after that she used to seek him out whenever she could, they’d meet at lunch now and then, and she’d turn up at the pub after work and make a beeline for him. A few of them ended up at her flat one night and, well, I guess one thing led to another. He told me she wouldn’t leave him alone after that, saying she’d fallen for him, he was the only thing keeping her going. He got in too deep, didn’t know how to get himself out of it …’

‘I expect it helped that she looks like a fucking supermodel,’ Clara muttered, once again mentally comparing her own looks to Sadie’s and finding herself humiliatingly lacking. She was the sort of woman others referred to as ‘cute’. Five foot five with a short, Bettie Page bob, a slightly snubbed nose and freckles, she’d long made peace with the fact that she wasn’t the stuff of male fantasy – until now, that was, when suddenly every long-buried adolescent insecurity seemed to be rushing back at her with the speed of an express train.

He sighed. ‘Look, I’m not trying to excuse him, but he made a mistake, a massive one, he totally ballsed up and he knows it … he’s truly sorry, I know he is.’

‘Jesus,’ she said, putting her head in her hands. ‘I thought he was so … nice.’

‘He is nice,’ Mac said. ‘He’s just a bit of a fuck-up underneath it all.’

‘What right has he got to be fucked up?’ she said angrily. ‘I mean, you’ve met his parents, seen their beautiful home …’

Mac was silent for a while. ‘Did he ever talk to you about when Emily went missing?’ he asked.

She glanced at him. ‘No, not really,’ she admitted.

He nodded. ‘I moved down to Suffolk from Glasgow right after she disappeared. I was the lanky new kid with a weird accent. The other lads made mincemeat of me, until Luke stepped in. We just hit it off and, well, I was only a kid, but fuck me it was a horror show round at his place for a while.’

Clara frowned. ‘Go on.’

‘They were all totally destroyed by it. Rose went to bed for months and barely ate or spoke. His dad barricaded himself in his study and Tom went completely off the rails.’

She looked at him in surprise. ‘Tom did?’ It was a side of Luke’s rather uptight, pompous brother she wouldn’t have guessed at.

‘Yeah, it was like he’d just checked out of the family. He was sixteen by then and hanging out with a bad crowd – off getting pissed and high, that sort of thing, you know? I think Rose and Oliver felt they’d lost their grip on him. But the point is, after that it was as though Luke became the centre of their world, like they became fixated on him. With Emily gone and Tom out all the time, everything began to revolve around him – he was still only ten when she left, remember.’

‘What do you mean, “fixated”?’

Mac shrugged. ‘They’d never leave him alone. He couldn’t move without them breathing down his neck. They wouldn’t even go out for the evening without him, even if Tom was around to keep an eye on him. They became obsessed with everything he said and did, his schoolwork, how he was feeling, what he was thinking, every word that came out of his mouth … It was intense, like they wanted to make up for how wrong things had gone with Emily.’

Clara frowned. ‘OK …’ she said.

‘Well, so anyway, maybe growing up like that made Luke feel responsible for his parents’ happiness, for everyone’s happiness. Or maybe the attention lavished on him made him a bit selfish, a bit entitled. But you need to hear from him how sorry he is, how much he regrets it. He told me it was over with Sadie, he said it was the worst mistake he’d ever made, that he didn’t want to lose you. I believed him. Honestly, Clara, I really think it made him realize how much he loves you.’