Your Beautiful Lies
Your Beautiful Lies
Louise Douglas
To Steve, with my love.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
More from Louise Douglas
About the Author
Also by Louise Douglas
About Boldwood Books
1
Matlow, South Yorkshire, March 1984
Annie Howarth woke with a feeling of absolute dread.
She did not know what had disturbed her. She opened her eyes slowly and looked around. She was at home in the master bedroom at Everwell and everything seemed to be as normal.
It must have been a bad dream, she thought, that’s all.
She climbed out of the bed and went over to the window, pulling back the curtains and gazing out at the moors. Then she turned to look at the photograph on the wall. It was of her wedding day in April 1975, nine years earlier. Annie and William were standing together outside the church with his colleagues from the South Yorkshire police forming a guard of honour behind. William looked grand in his formal police regalia. Beside him stood his best man, Paul Fleming, smiling broadly. Annie, on William’s other side, looked young and anxious, clutching her flowers.
She was dressing when William came into the room, wearing one of the trademark suits he favoured because the colour matched both his hair and his eyes. He put her coffee on the bedside table, rested his hand on her shoulder, at the base of her neck. She pressed her cheek into his hand.
‘Do you have to go now?’ she asked. ‘It’s so early.’
‘Yes, I do. I’m meeting the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire.’
‘And he’s more interesting than me?’ ‘Of course not, but needs must, Annie.’
‘I know, I know.’ Annie moved away. She opened the wardrobe door and looked inside. ‘What is it today that’s so important? The miners’ strike again?’
‘What else? I suspect it’s going to be a long, tiresome day.’ He sighed but Annie could already sense an eagerness in him to be away and to be attending to his job. ‘Would you pick up my shirt from the dry cleaner’s?’ he went on. ‘I’ll need it for the dinner dance tomorrow.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m going into town to see Mum today anyway.’
‘I’ll see you later, then.’
‘OK.’ She held up her face to him and he kissed her forehead.
‘You won’t forget the shirt?’
Annie listened to William’s footsteps on the stairs, and mentally followed his progress as he turned off the music in his study and locked the door, put his coffee cup in the sink in the kitchen, picked up his briefcase, walked across the hall, checked his appearance in the mirror, then opened and closed the front door. Outside, she heard his footsteps on the gravel and then a pause as he climbed into his car, fastened the seatbelt and checked that he had everything he needed for the day, as he always did. After enough time had elapsed for William to finish this routine, she heard the Jaguar’s engine breathe into life and its quiet crackle over the gravel and down the drive. She listened until the car had turned into the lane and driven away. Then she finished dressing and went to wake her seven-year-old daughter.
Elizabeth’s room was along the landing, close to her grandmother Ethel’s. Annie pushed open the door and went inside, stepping over toys and books to reach the bed. She leaned over the child, smoothing the fair hair from her forehead.
‘Hey, sleepyhead,’ she whispered. ‘Wake up.’
Elizabeth wriggled further down the bed. ‘No,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘You have to, chicken, or you’ll be late for school.’
‘I don’t want to go to school today.’
‘Tough. You have to.’
Annie picked up Scooby, the toy dog that went everywhere with Eizabeth, and made him him nuzzle at her neck. The child giggled and sat up. Then she cocked her head, listening to a sound in the distance.
‘What’s that?’
‘What’s what?’
‘It’s a motorbike! It’s Johnnie, Mummy! Why has Johnnie come so early?’
Mother and daughter scrambled to the window and peered out. A motorbike was bumping up the drive, a young man hunched over the handlebars. Elizabeth waved frantically and Annie watched as her younger brother pulled his Yamaha up outside the house, kicked down the stand and took off his helmet. He crunched towards the front door.
‘I’ll go down and see what he wants,’ said Annie. ‘You get yourself dressed, Lizzie.’
‘But I want to see Johnnie!’
‘Dress first.’
Annie ran down the staircase and into the hall, which was large, light and airy with an ornate Indian rug in the centre. She opened the front door and there was her younger brother standing on the doorstep with his helmet tucked underneath his arm, swinging the key fob in the shape of the A-Team van on one finger. Behind him, the sun was already high over the moors, colouring last year’s bracken a red so bright that it seemed as if the hills were alight.
Annie crossed her arms and looked her brother up and down.
‘You’ve grown taller even since last week,’ she said.
‘Oh, get off,’ said Johnnie.
‘But no better-looking. What are you doing here so early? Do you want to come in for a bit? I can make you a cup of tea.’
He shook his head. ‘I have to get to the colliery,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to tell you that—’
‘Johnnie!’ Elizabeth came galloping down the stairs, the buttons on her blouse undone, her school tunic unzipped and her socks in her hand. She threw herself at her uncle and he picked her up. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and clung to him. ‘You’ve got to come in and have some breakfast,’ she said. ‘It’s the law.’
‘Says who?’
‘Me. And I’m the boss!’
Johnnie grinned. ‘Well, if Miss Elizabeth Howarth says so, who am I to argue?’
They followed each other into the kitchen. Elizabeth wore her uncle’s helmet while she gulped down her cereal, and Annie made tea and toast. She put a mug down in front of Johnnie.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘go on then. What is it? What did you come here to tell me?’
Johnnie took a deep breath. He glanced at Elizabeth and said quietly, ‘Tom Greenaway’s back.’
‘I thought he was still in prison,’ Annie said.
‘No, he’s out. I was talking to him not ten minutes ago. I stopped off for petrol and he was there in front of me, filling up his truck.’
Annie spread honey on the toast, making a mess of it. She pushed the plate towards Johnnie.
‘I wasn’t sure who he was at first. He came over to me, all friendly-like, and he said: “It’s Johnnie Jackson, isn’t it?”, I said it was and he said: “Well, you won’t remember me – you were only a kid when I went away, but I used to go out with your sister.” And then it clicked.’ Johnnie picked up the toast and pushed the whole slice into his mouth. Annie put another on the plate.
‘Who’s Tom Greenaway?’ asked Lizzie.
‘No one,’ Annie and Johnnie said together. Lizzie shrugged. She pretended to be making the key fob drive around the kitchen table but Annie could tell she was listening.
Johnnie went on: ‘He asked what I was doing and why I wasn’t on strike, and I told him I was working in the kitchens at the colliery – that it were only the miners that were out, not the support workers.’
‘You’d have thought he’d have known that.’
‘Mmm.’ Johnnie took a drink of tea. ‘Then he asked if I wanted to see his truck.’ He said to his niece: ‘Pass me the sugar, Lizzie. Ta. It’s a good ’un – a Ford pick-up. Writing on the side an’ all. I said: “You’re doing all right for yourself,” and he said, “Yes, I am.” Apparently he’s been out of prison for a while now and has started up his own business – laying hedges and tree-felling and the like. Greenaway Garden Services, it’s called.’
‘He was always one for the outdoors,’ Annie said quietly.
‘He asked about you – how you were, what you were doing, if you were all right.’
‘Did you tell him anything?’
‘I didn’t think you’d want me to.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not daft, Annie.’
‘I know you’re not.’
‘You are daft,’ Lizzie whispered.
‘And you’re a cheeky bugger,’ Johnnie whispered back.
‘Go upstairs and brush your teeth, love,’ Annie told her.
Johnnie waited until the child had gone, then he pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Tom asked me to give you this,’ he said. He took a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket. ‘I was going to throw it away, but he said it were important. He made me promise.’
Annie took the paper. She wrapped it in her fingers, pressed it into the palm of her hand.
‘I told him you wouldn’t read it. I told him you wouldn’t have owt to do with him ever again. Was that right, Annie?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was exactly right.’ She smiled at her brother, reached up to kiss his cheek. And then, while he was watching, she opened the door to the old coal-fired stove and dropped the paper, still folded, into the flames.
2
Annie made up a tray for William’s mother, as she did every morning. She was scooping the boiled egg out of the pan with a spoon when Mrs Miller, the private nurse, came in through the back door.
‘Morning!’ she said cheerfully. ‘And what a lovely one, too. It feels like spring out there.’ She shrugged off her coat. Annie slipped the egg into the egg cup on the tray.
‘About time it picked up a bit,’ she replied. ‘Right – this is all ready for you to take up, Mrs M. The tea’s fresh in the pot and there’s toast and a bit of that apricot jam that Ethel likes.’
‘That’s grand,’ said Mrs Miller. She put her voluminous handbag down on the kitchen table, opened it, and rummaged inside. Elizabeth, who was ready for school, sidled over. ‘Ooh – look what I’ve found,’ Mrs Miller said. ‘A Finger of Fudge. Do know anyone who might like that, Lizzie?’
Elizabeth smiled shyly. ‘Me?’ she suggested.
‘Oh! You? Well, I never would have thought. You’d best take it then.’ Mrs Miller passed the chocolate to the child. ‘Save it for your elevenses,’ she advised.
‘Thank you, Mrs Miller.’
‘You’re welcome, pet.’
‘Come on now, Lizzie, we’re going to be late,’ Annie said. She opened the back door, Elizabeth ran through and Annie called goodbye to Mrs Miller.
They followed the path round to the front garden and Elizabeth skipped to the spot on the lawn where she always stood to wave goodbye to her grandmother. Ethel Howarth liked to look out from the little square window of her bedroom in the gable end of the house. Sometimes she forgot she had a granddaughter and did not come to the window at all. That morning though, when Annie and Elizabeth looked up, Ethel was there, her face a pale shadow behind the glass.
‘I’m going to do a cartwheel for Grandma,’ Elizabeth announced, throwing her satchel onto the lawn.
‘Quick then,’ said Annie.
She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked at the house. Everwell had been built a century earlier for the family who originally owned the Matlow colliery. The house had been named after the well in the back garden and had changed hands twice before William bought it back in 1971 with money he’d inherited from his father. He’d had the building sympathetically refurbished and modernised before he married Annie. From the outside, Everwell was still as beautiful as it had been when it was first built. An old wisteria was draping its new spring leaves around the faces of the mullioned windows. The garden sloped downhill, daffodils bobbing at the edges of the lawn, lines of 100-year-old beech on either side of the gravel drive. The derelict gamekeeper’s cottage that William would, one day, either renovate or knock down stood beside the wall of the home meadow, and beyond was the sweep of the moor, rising 400 yards away beneath a perfect blue sky.
It was a beautiful place to live. Sometimes, even now, Annie could not quite believe her luck, how far she had come.
After dropping Elizabeth off at her private school, she drove her Volkswagen Golf down towards the town. The colliery had been built on the side of the hill, its buildings, slagheaps, wheels and towers looming over the town. Annie had to slow and stop the car because a crowd of men had gathered around the gates and were blocking the road. An older man in a jacket and trilby was addressing the men through a megaphone; she couldn’t hear what he was saying, only the boom and echo of his voice. Some of the men were standing or sitting on the boundary wall; others were grouped on the road, smoking and laughing into their collars. A couple of police officers were talking with them, sharing jokes and cigarettes. The older men were muscular and stringy, their faces beneath flat caps hollowed out from years of working underground. The younger ones had longish hair. A few were still wearing flared jeans. Matlow was always a couple of years behind the rest of Yorkshire when it came to fashion. Annie looked at the faces and recognised a few of them. She had been at school with some of these men, back when they were boys.
As she inched the car forward a few feet, she heard a burst of crude laughter. Were the men laughing at her? Mocking her? She knew the townspeople still called her names behind her back – her mother, Marie, had told her they did. Perhaps the men sitting on the wall recalled the days when she lived in Matlow and worked in the typing pool at the Town Hall. Perhaps they remembered that she had once been Tom Greenaway’s girlfriend.
Annie exhaled shakily. She was moving very slowly, just a few feet at a time. Then suddenly a shout went up somewhere in the crowd and those around her dropped their cigarettes and moved away, huddling closer together. Fumbling with the gearstick, she put the car into second and accelerated away.