Lana Newton - Her Perfect Lies

Her strength restored, she explored further, walking from the kitchen to the dining room to another guest room. They had a sauna, a swimming pool and an air hockey table in the basement. Finally, she spotted an old-fashioned piano in the drawing room. Tired now, she slid into a chair in front of it and ran her fingers over the keys. The most beautiful sounds escaped from under her fingertips and she paused for a moment, lifting her hands and staring at them as if she had never seen them before. Then she resumed playing. It wasn’t Swan Lake or any of the music she’d heard in the hospital but a melody she didn’t recognise.

‘What do you think, Molokai? Did you know I could play the piano?’ she asked the dog, who wagged his long tail in response.

As Claire contemplated this newly discovered ability, somewhere inside the house a phone rang. She stopped playing and stood up, nervously clutching her hands to her chest. What was she to do? Did she answer the phone? Or let it go to voicemail? Slightly unsteady on her feet, she walked towards the sound and watched the phone like it was an explosive device about to go off. Eventually it stopped ringing and Paul’s voice could be heard asking to leave a message. ‘Claire, it’s me, Gaby. Call me back as soon as you get this. I need to see you.’

When the person on the other end hung up, Claire returned upstairs. She felt safer there. There were no phones she could see, no unfathomable voices coming through the speakers.

Back in her bedroom, she opened the wardrobe. Walking inside – yes, the wardrobe was big enough to walk inside it – she examined rows of designer clothes, shoes and underwear. It was like being in a department store. She went through every drawer, rummaged through dresses and looked behind shoe racks. Who needed what seemed like a hundred pairs of shoes? And all these clothes … most of them looked like they had never been worn.

Suddenly, Molokai leapt off the bed and growled. Seconds later she heard the doorbell. Unsure of what to do, she froze with a shoe in her hand. Molokai ran through the door and soon his excited barking could be heard from downstairs. She followed on legs that seemed to have turned to jelly.

From behind the front door, she heard a woman’s voice. ‘Hello, anyone there?’

‘One second,’ said Claire, throwing a quick glance in the mirror and wondering whether she was dressed appropriately for a visitor. Through a gap in the curtains she could see a delivery truck parked on the opposite side of the road. Concluding it was just a courier and breathing out in relief, she fiddled with the lock. It was complex and she couldn’t open it. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have the keys for this door,’ she called out. ‘Are you delivering something? Can you leave it outside, please?’

‘Claire, it’s me, Gaby,’ she heard in reply. ‘Can I come in?’

Claire recognised the voice from the answer machine. To her surprise, a key turned and the door opened.

A stunning brunette was standing in the doorway. She looked like she had just walked off a movie set. There was a hint of something foreign about her – the Mediterranean tinge to her skin, the deep caramel to her eyes. A leather skirt hugged her slim hips. There was a bouquet of flowers in her hands.

‘Oh my God, look at you!’ she exclaimed, drawing Claire into a hug and almost crushing the flowers. Claire struggled but only for a second – resistance seemed pointless. ‘It’s so good to see you! You have no idea how worried we were.’

Claire extricated herself from the embrace, mumbling, ‘It’s good to see you, too.’ She didn’t know what else to say. Unlike Claire, Molokai seemed to know exactly who the woman was. A chewed dog toy – a plastic duck with its head missing – miraculously appeared in his mouth and he presented it to the visitor. His tail was wagging.

The brunette ignored the decapitated duck but gave Molokai a distracted stroke. ‘These are for you,’ she said. Her eyes twinkled as she shoved the flowers into Claire’s hands. ‘They’re orchids.’

Intimidated by the woman and the flowers, Claire wished she had brushed her hair instead of dousing herself in all that perfume. I must smell like a bouquet of flowers myself , she thought. But the woman didn’t seem to mind.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ The brunette shook her head with disapproval, as if talking to a child who was struggling with her homework. ‘It’s me, Gaby. Your best friend.’

As Claire stood in the doorway gawking, Gaby made her way into the dining room. She seemed to know her way around Claire’s house much better than Claire did.

‘You have the key to the house?’ Claire asked to break the silence.

‘Of course I do. You and I are like sisters. I went to school with Paul. That’s how we met.’

While Claire arranged the flowers in a vase she had found, Gaby walked into the kitchen and poured two glasses of red wine. A sudden thought occurred to Claire. Didn’t a person tell their best friends everything? If that was the case, Gaby would have all the answers she was so desperately searching for.

Gaby handed Claire her wine. Taking a careful sip, Claire put her glass down.

‘You don’t like it?’ asked Gaby. ‘It’s your favourite.’

Claire found it hard to believe. Her taste buds seemed unacquainted with the sharpness of the wine. She was desperate for a sip of water to get rid of the bitter taste but didn’t want Gaby to think less of her. She felt a little intimidated by her old self, who would have enjoyed the wine and known what to say to this beautiful stranger.

In the first week at the hospital, many people dropped in to see her, faces and conversations she could hardly remember now, so confused and drugged up she had been back then. Little by little, however, the stream of visitors dwindled, before finally disappearing altogether. There was only so much one-sided conversation even a good friend could take. Only so much small talk with someone who did nothing but sit in her bed, staring into space, not knowing what to say, not knowing who she was.

What if she couldn’t live up to the person she had once been? And how could she, if she remembered nothing about her? ‘I’m not sure I’m allowed wine. I’m on all sorts of medication.’ She pushed the glass away.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in hospital. I’ve been away for work. My first time in Japan, what a fascinating place …’ Gaby spoke fast, and her cheeks looked flushed. ‘Yesterday we went to that amazing Thai place you love. What is it called?’ She looked at Claire expectantly. ‘Oh yes. Thai Basil. Tina, Ruth and Betty were there. We were talking about you. Let me tell you, I was absolutely beside myself when I heard. I wanted to cut my trip short, of course, but there was still so much to do. And I thought, you’re already in hospital. Paul and your mum are there. There’s nothing I can do.’

‘My mum wasn’t there.’

Gaby’s eyebrows shot up in surprise but she didn’t comment. Instead, she told Claire all about Nijo Castle (‘I’ve never seen anything like it!) and Mount Fuji (‘We went on the most amazing boat.’ A boat on the mountain? Claire wanted to know. But apparently there was the most amazing lake there, too.). Finally, Gaby lowered her voice and said, ‘I’m sorry about your dad.’

‘My dad’s awake. He’s going to be okay. Paul is taking me to the hospital to see him later.’ Impatiently she looked at the clock. Another two hours to go. ‘Have you met him? What is he like?’

‘Paul?’

‘My dad.’

‘I’ve met him a few times. I thought he was quite the flirt.’

‘He was?’ asked Claire, wondering if Gaby was making things up, embellishing to make her stories more exciting. She seemed just the type to do something like that.