After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets Read Online Free Page B

eyes, thick black eyeliner distorting their beauty. Who was I to criticise the stuffed bat spread-eagled on the wall? Who cared if they donned dog collars and ate their supper from bowls on the floor? She was streets ahead of me. Fifteen years younger and generations smarter.
    Total honesty was the way to go. But would my own marriage be able to withstand it after eighteen years of half-truths?

5
    M ost of the time , my mother steered through choppy waters with the air of someone who didn’t even break a sweat until the mainsail ripped in half. In the six months leading up to Dad’s trial, when he’d been too broken to steady the family ship, my mother had written herself a list and set about ticking it off.
Sell the house.
Rent a house far away, somewhere that attracts lots of outsiders. London? Surrey? Brighton?
Find a school for Sally, now to be known as Lydia.
Find a job.
Find a solution for Tripod.
    There was no discussion about our dog. My mother wasn’t taking any chances. Tripod had lost one leg to a tumour, hence her name, and had one white ear in an otherwise black coat. My father’s photograph walking her on the beach had appeared in the papers. Too distinctive. ‘Sorry, Sally.’
    I’d hardly ever seen my mother cry. She disdained tears. Even when I said goodbye to Tripod, the effort my mother was making not to tell me off for crying penetrated the moment so deeply that afterwards I felt guilty that I hadn’t focused on Tripod completely, transmitting how much I loved her. Worrying about whether Tripod knew how much I didn’t want to let her go kept me awake for months afterwards. In the event, I needn’t have fretted. I learnt much later that my mother had her put down.
    ‘Surely you must have realised no one would have wanted a three-legged mongrel?’
    Dad had no problem with me crying. When my mother wasn’t there to cotter about ‘girls needing to toughen up, to stop expecting to be rescued by a handsome prince’, he would hug me and tell me to have a good cry, get it out of my system. He smelt of Extra Strong Mints, which I found comforting. The day after ‘all that business’, I understood why. I stumbled across him sitting on the dunes, staring across the Wash, smoking. If I’d been able to feel anything other than gut-wrenching fear, I would have been delighted to know that he had his own rebellion going on.
    I tried to tell him how sorry I was. I struggled to look at him, pretending instead to watch the seagulls swooping over the inlet.
    ‘We all make mistakes, pet. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to pay a high price to put them right,’ he said, taking a deep drag on his cigarette.
    Then we sat, the dune grasses whispering around us, while the questions I wanted to ask and the ones I hoped I wouldn’t have to answer drifted away on the autumn breeze.
    In that moment, I thought the high price would be an apology, maybe a fidgety meeting with Sean’s parents with my dad in the unusual position of accepting admonishment rather than dispensing discipline. My understanding of the magnitude of what I’d done, what he’d done, came the following day, after Dad had met with the headmaster. I listened, spying from the stairs, as he spoke to my mother in a voice I struggled to match to my dad’s booming, jolly demeanour.
    ‘It’s out of their hands now. The police have stepped in. The father wants to prosecute. It’s not looking good, Dorothy.’
    My mother muttered something sharp that I didn’t catch, something that seared a fraction more pain across my dad’s face.
    Then he said, ‘No, absolutely no chance of the headship now when Bill retires. He told me that the governors have already written a joint letter instructing him to advertise for a replacement to start next year.’
    My mother rested her hand briefly on his shoulder. She put a lamb chop and potatoes in front of him. ‘Well. That’s that, then. Always said we shouldn’t have been so lax with her. Then none of this