House of Lies: A gripping thriller with a shocking twist. E. Seymour V.
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Название: House of Lies: A gripping thriller with a shocking twist
Автор: E. Seymour V.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780008240851
isbn:
The woman with the braids marches out of her office and advances. She is taller than I thought, a good three inches on me and I’m five feet six. A badge on her dress says her name is Anita. She glances from me to the closed door. Everybody hears the painful sound of someone sobbing.
“What happened?” Anita’s pale features are etched with anger. Word for word, I report what I said. Eyes half-closed, she shoots the palm of one hand to her high forehead, lets out a sigh and disappears to the back room from where I hear ‘there there’ noises.
I sit bewildered. The couple in the next-door dome continue to eye me with condemnation while failing to disapprove of their only offspring, who leaps from one sofa to another with muddy shoes. At last, and thank God, Anita returns.
“You weren’t to know,” she says, sympathetic now that she realises I’m not a bitch and didn’t deliberately set out to create mayhem. “Steffi’s husband died in a car accident in Thailand.”
A nasty taste floods my mouth. I want to say I’m sorry. Stephanie’s reference on Facebook was to this man. Not Tom. Someone else. Her husband. What a plank I am, yet despite feeling bad that I unwittingly upset a woman I don’t know, I almost buckle with relief that Stephanie Charteris has no connection to Tom.
I repeat it silently and slavishly, as if weaving one of my mother’s cosmic, supernatural charms. Consoled, I forget to ask myself why Tom was looking at her in the first place.
Anita calls to the abandoned couple, inviting them to help themselves to coffee from the machine. “Shan’t be a moment,” she says, her sympathetic gaze directed to the closed door.
“Tell her I’m very sorry.” Feeling small, I get up to leave.
“There’s no need to go,” Anita assures me with forced over-the-top jollity. “I can deal with your enquiry, if you don’t mind waiting.”
“It’s fine. I’ll come back another day.”
She looks pained and reluctant, the sales person in her disappointed at not closing a deal. “Let me give you some literature,” she says, briskly assembling a home pack while I stand there awkward, eager to escape the suddenly stuffy office. She thrusts a brochure into my hands. “My phone number is on there.” And then, as if remembering her manners or feeling that she hasn’t done enough already, she picks up a framed photograph that hides discreetly behind a plant on the desk, and waves it in front of my face.
“That’s him,” she says, “with Stephanie and their little girl, Zoe. What a lovely little family.”
Feigning interest, I look. At once, the air punches out of me. I stare. Don’t move. The walls shrink, compressing the room, so that I find it hard to breathe in or exhale. Dazed, I try to speak, but the words won’t come. Not at first. Run, I think. Run and never come back. “His name?” I mutter.
“Adam,” she says. “Adam Charteris.”
Or the man I know as Tom Loxley.
I sit in my car and let the wind scream around me. The sky, an unrelenting grey, hisses rain.
Like someone with locked-in syndrome, I think but can’t move. Not at all. I’m paralysed.
Tom Loxley is Adam Charteris.
My mind sprints: the dead parents who I found so credible; the extinct godmother I now think implausible. Through a fierce blur of stunned confusion I remind myself that Tom was married with a child and this is why he cannot marry me and refuses to father our children. It all falls into place and yet so much remains a mystery, not least why Tom would fake his own death? A spark of rage catches hold and lights me up inside.
How fucking dare he.
For if Tom had been living a lie for the past three years then, by living with him, so did I. And how could I be so easily and comprehensively deceived? Betrayed? What does that make me other than cheap, used, tawdry and second- best? God alone knows where this leaves poor Stephanie Charteris and her child. Should Tom appear at this very moment, I’d slap his face so hard his teeth would drop out.
Anger writhing inside me, I see that, in the light of my discovery, his behaviour stacks. The photograph signalled the ending of our relationship because, should someone who remembered him as Adam spot it, his deception would be exposed. No wonder he was worried. I was too close to finding out and paid the price. As motivation went, it felt solid. Knowable. Concrete.
But who the hell is Adam Charteris?
The sales office door swings open, startling me out of inactivity. Stephanie Charteris, scarf and coat pulled tight around her, runs toward the car park. Her eyes fix blindly on uneven tarmac and puddles, which she doesn’t bother to avoid. I doubt she will notice, but I slide down from view in case.
Listening.
Footsteps close by.
Cheep-cheep sound of a car unlocking.
Door swinging open and the dull tin thud of it closing.
An engine turns over. Tyres grip gravel at such speed, it spits sharp-edged bits exuberantly, machine-gun style, against the mudguards. I edge back up in my seat and watch a white Fiat 500 travel towards the exit and indicate to turn onto the main road. Quickly, I start my car and follow, dropping in two cars behind, and wish that my vehicle wasn’t quite so conspicuous.
At the end of the road the Fiat bears left at the first roundabout and picks up the A49 heading back over the border to Shropshire. Speed drops, its trajectory less erratic. Stephanie is calmer now, the upset of the morning wearing off. More than can be said for me. I shiver, despite banging the heater on full blast. Fractured thoughts swirl, collide and bruise. Instinctively, I rub my temple.
Stephanie believes her husband is dead.
How would she react if she found out that the father of her child lived somewhere else with someone else?
The thought makes me giddy. In a few words, I have the power to break down walls and destroy. God alone knows the fury I might unleash in Stephanie. But it would do nothing to expose Tom and, more than ever, I want him nailed; I don’t want him getting away with it.
A sign for Leominster appears. We travel in tandem for several miles. A car in front turns off. A tractor towing a trailer piled high with swedes slips in front of the Fiat. Although the journey is painfully slow and tortuous, it gives me time to survey this snapshot of unfamiliar scenery. Rolling countryside. Messy unkempt hedges. Muddy roads splattered with dirt and manure and debris. A beautifully tended estate that runs for miles behind black metal railings stands out from the rural crowd. Alongside twisty, turny roads, the landscape is alien and far from what I know in Cheltenham with its chic streets, wealth and café culture vibe. Far from what Tom aka Adam knew too.
At last, the tractor with its load pulls over, allowing the traffic to free-flow. The little Fiat speeds up, careering around bends in a way that suggests the driver is intimately familiar with these roads. I urge my old Fiesta on, pushing the engine to destruction, tearing up a fast stretch towards the market СКАЧАТЬ