The Lying Game Read Online Free

Harriet hadn’t been able to help but feel responsible. Florence had
her
genes, after all. She knew deep down that somehow it
must be her fault.
    Instead of bringing them closer, Florence’s diabetes had driven yet another wedge between them. She knew her daughter hated it when she made a fuss, but how could she
not
worry?
She fretted over every carb Florence ate, not because she gave a damn about her weight – Florence was perfect as she was, beautiful, a Fifties pin-up in the making – but because she was
terrified the diabetes would spin out of control, become unmanageable and brittle. The doctors had warned her what could happen if they didn’t keep her sugar levels in check: blindness,
kidney failure, nerve damage, even death. But she couldn’t tell Florence that, of course. Part of her job as a mother was protecting her daughter from the truth. She just wished she
didn’t have to pay such a high price for her silence.
    ‘Here,’ the nurse said, moving a plastic chair towards her. ‘You look like you need to sit down.’
    Harriet gazed at her child, suffused not just with love and tenderness, but by a familiar feeling, a feeling unique to her relationship with Florence: guilt.
    She hadn’t wished this on her daughter. Of course not. Never in a million years would she have wanted something like this to happen.
    But.
    But.
In her heart, she’d put Charlie first. Hadn’t she?
    Florence stirred suddenly and opened her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she said, through thick, dry lips. She licked them and tried again, louder this time. ‘Sorry, Mom.’
    ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,’ Harriet said fiercely.
    ‘I wish you’d been here,’ Florence murmured sleepily.
    Guilt again, thick and treacherous. ‘I wish I had been, too.’
    ‘Did you call Daddy?’
    ‘Of course. He’s on his way back from Hartford now. He should be here any minute. He sends his love.’ She squeezed Florence’s hand, but her daughter didn’t respond,
and, after a moment, she released her. ‘There’s no need to worry, darling. Everything’s going to be fine.’
    She heard the fake cheerleader note in her voice and knew Florence could too.
    ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked helplessly.
    ‘Bit tired.’
    ‘Of course.’
    The silence between them filled the room. If it were little Charlie in the bed, or George or Sam, she’d have known what to do, what to say. She’d have scooped them up in her arms,
regardless of all those wires, and held close what she’d almost lost.
    But with Florence, she was at a loss. They were two strangers thrown together by genes and happenstance.
    ‘Flo-Mo! Baby, how’re you doing?’ Oliver crossed the room in two strides and enveloped his daughter in a tight hug. ‘You had me worried witless, you know that?’
    ‘Daddy!’
    He parked himself on the bed. ‘Jesus, will you take a look at all this,’ he said, taking in the bank of monitors. ‘It’s like the bloody Starship Enterprise.’
    Already the colour was coming back into Florence’s cheeks. Oliver had this effect on every woman he met, from his daughter to the checkout girls at the supermarket. He simply lit up a
room. It wasn’t that he was particularly good-looking; a rumpled, crumpled bear of a man with two-day-old greying stubble and overlong dark blond hair, he was more Gerard Depardieu than
Robert Redford, though he’d always melted Harriet’s knees, from the first moment she’d walked into the cupboard that had passed for his office and explained how she was going to
transform his nascent business into an international empire. It was the twinkle in his creased blue eyes, the boyish charm in his wide, uneven smile. He made you feel like the most important person
in the world when he was talking to you because, for that moment, to him you were.
    ‘So, Flo-Mo. What’s up?’ Oliver asked.
    ‘I nearly
died,’
Florence said.
    ‘So I hear.’ He rumpled her hair and she grimaced, but didn’t pull away.