M. Arlidge - Liar Liar

Now Mandy’s mobile started ringing, urgent and insistent. It was on the hall table not five feet away. Would this finally pique Mandy’s curiosity? There was no point hanging around to find out so, snatching up the match, the figure dragged it down the side of the box. It flared up impressively, thanks to its soaking in paraffin, and the figure suddenly found itself laughing – with relief as much as joy. Seconds later, the match hit the pile of chairs and instantly they were consumed by flames. This had been an amateur performance, a travesty of all the careful planning and preparation – the Marlboro pack tossed in casually as an afterthought – but the job had finally been done.

RIP Mandy Blayne.

How do you sum up a life?

It was a question Thomas Simms had asked himself repeatedly as he’d made plans for the girls’ funeral. When you’re deep in shock and assaulted by grief, how do you find the right way to pay tribute to someone – to two people – whom you loved more than life itself? It was an impossible task, but it had to be done – the thought of drying up while making the funeral oration was too horrific for words.

For a long time the answer had eluded him. There were so many amazing things he could say about Karen and Alice, but each time he gathered their many virtues – the many happy memories – together, he was crippled by his sense of loss, unable to think or say anything that wasn’t steeped in bitterness and regret. And nobody wanted to hear that.

But now, as Thomas pushed his son up the church aisle in a wheelchair, he suddenly knew what he would say. There was one thing that had struck him with real force this morning as he’d straightened his son’s tie and wiped the tears from his freckled face. And that was that Karen and Alice, though gone, would live on – through Luke. They all had the same colouring and shared many of the same mannerisms. His hazel eyes were identical to Alice’s and when he laughed his nose crinkled up – that was pure Karen. They had similar beliefs and shared the same daft sense of humour – many was the time they had all been reduced to hysterics by the Airplane movies. They were so similar in so many ways and Thomas was surprised at how much comfort that now gave him.

He felt himself start to smile, then immediately swallowed it back down. People wouldn’t understand and he couldn’t be bothered to explain himself to disapproving relatives. But the feeling was real and Thomas clung to it now as he prepared himself for the most difficult two hours of his life.

‘Dad?’

Thomas looked down to find Luke’s eyes fixed on him.

‘Can you hear that?’

Thomas had been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard a thing. But he knew instantly what his son was referring to. Even above the sombre tones of the organ, loud sirens could now be heard. One, two, three emergency vehicles, maybe more, racing past the church on their way somewhere fast.

‘Do you think it’s… ?’ Luke began.

‘No, son. It’s probably just a false alarm. Nothing to do with us, so don’t worry.’

Thomas was determined that his son would not be ruled by fear. There were still many questions to be answered, many painful discoveries to make perhaps, but he refused to let his son spend his life jumping at shadows. Someone had tried to destroy his family and they had failed – Luke’s happiness and confidence would be Thomas’s riposte to the person who had tried to break them. Though his son was still working his way through his injuries, both mental and physical, it was Thomas’s job to see that he made it out the other side in one piece. As he pushed Luke to his place next to the front-row pews, Thomas knew that this was it for him now – his job was to guide his son safely through the next few years until he could stand on his own two feet. And that, Thomas reflected, was something that he shared with Karen. Had she been in his shoes, she would have done exactly the same.

She jumped from plank to plank, enjoying the simple pleasure of the game. When she’d been little, she’d played it with other truants, pretending that if you misjudged your jump and landed on the stones that separated the railway sleepers, then you’d fall through the tracks and straight down to Hell.

Later, when Naomie was older, the game had taken a more sinister turn. She would walk the railway track alone, challenging a train to appear in front of her. To alleviate her boredom she would set herself challenges, determining to walk to a certain point on the track, regardless of whether a train appeared or not. No train ever did, so she’d never had the chance to test her courage, to see whether she would have held her nerve. But she always thought she would’ve seen it through, if the cards had fallen that way.

But now things were going her way and suddenly she felt the vibrations on the tracks and, moments later, the unmistakable growl of a train approaching. It was like she could do no wrong at the moment and she laughed out loud – had she summoned the train? Was the world finally dancing to her tune? This was nonsense of course but it was a nice fantasy to indulge in. She paused to listen, revelling in the slow but steady growth in volume, as the train hastened towards her.

Now it was coming into view, arcing round the curved track a hundred feet ahead, before straightening up to charge directly at her. Still she didn’t move. She felt in control of the situation, as if the train were just a character in her movie. Her feet were glued to the tracks as they had been so many times before. But she felt no fear now, only exhilaration and joy.

A sharp blast of the train’s horn made her look up. The driver had spotted her and was sounding his horn frantically. She made no attempt to move, so now he applied the emergency brake, metal colliding with metal in a hideous scream. But it was too little, too late. Naomie had chosen her spot well and there was no way he would be able to stop in time.

So many times she’d dreamt of this moment, had seen her own destruction in a shattering explosion of blood and bone. Whenever the world was black and her bruises smarted, she had longed for this moment. But things were different now so even as the train careered towards her, as the driver repeatedly gestured to her to move, she simply smiled, raised her middle finger and stepped out of the way of the screeching train, before calmly walking away.

Things were different now. Now she had something to live for.

‘They’ll be here in five minutes. What do you want to do?’

Sanderson’s voice was as tense as her expression. Following Sharon Jackson’s tipoff, she and Helen had raced over to Mandy Blayne’s house, gaining a head start on the emergency services. Helen had called them in as a precaution, but as reports of a house fire in St Denys began to filter through via police radio, it became clear to both of them that they had been too slow to stop Naomie’s latest attack.

Helen paused, before responding to Sanderson’s question. Mandy’s house was ablaze and there was no sign of its unfortunate owner. Smoke billowed out of the windows on both floors, but more so on the lower level suggesting the fire had not fully taken hold yet. Was Mandy even in there? Helen couldn’t be sure, but Naomie hadn’t put a foot wrong so far, so they had to assume the worst. Waiting for the emergency services to arrive was the sensible thing to do, but the whole house might have gone up by then, by which point any chance of rescuing Mandy would have passed.

‘We’ve got to go in,’ Helen replied, already marching towards the back of the house. The front door was locked from the inside and Helen felt sure that Naomie would have entered the house from the rear, where her trespassing would go undetected. ‘But I’m going in alone. You wait here and -’