Ronnie Turner - Lies Between Us - a tense psychological thriller with a twist you won’t see coming

‘Sweet girl. Funny girl. Happy girl.’

I stop and look back at your house. Through the crack in the curtains, I can see you, curled up in your mother’s arms, bright-red cheeks scarred by the pale tracks tears have made down your skin. Your mother rocks you to and fro. The last vestiges of strength that have kept you on your feet all morning burn up and slide away. And I turn away and smile.

Sweet girl. Funny girl. Dead girl.

John Graham lovingly ties the red bow in her wavy brown hair and breathes in the sweet scent of his daughter, treasuring these swiftly vanishing moments before he has to put her down and watch her grow again. Now she is six years old. A bright, bubbling age in which every exhalation carries a sentence tumbling from her lips, and the hodgepodge of styles she favours catches the eyes of passing strangers. But soon she will be seven, soon she will be eight. And in no time at all, she will be gliding through their house cloaked in the confidence that comes in with the tide of adolescence, a red stripe of lipstick glistening on her lips, fingers adorned with bold rings and earplugs stuck in firmly like oversized earrings. But for now, he revels in the love she is not yet embarrassed to give.

‘Daddy, can I have some crisps?’ She peers into his eyes, and John laughs, knowing even before she asks the question that his answer will be yes.

‘OK, sweetheart, but you have to ask Mummy first.’

She gives him a firm nod and crawls out of their makeshift tent, trailing behind her the hem of a dress five sizes too big. ‘Don’t trip!’

‘I won’t, Daddy.’

John pulls himself into a sitting position and lets his eyes roam across the fabric of their tent: three duvet covers pegged together and tied to a hook in the ceiling, joining Bonnie’s three favourite cartoon characters in a splash of garish pink. She’d woken him and his wife, Jules, that morning with a trumpet call of excitement because she’d had a ‘really, really, really good idea’.

Despite the way his back lets off a volley of cracks when he crawls out of the tent (he’s in his thirties; he’s allowed to have aches and pains now, surely?), he can’t bring himself to regret even a minute of building the monstrosity with his daughter that morning. And he can’t imagine a better way to celebrate his book becoming a bestseller than with his family, curled up in a very pink tent.

John closes his eyes and listens to his daughter rattling around in the kitchen cupboards, his mind floating back to yesterday when his friend Don called to congratulate him. He has worked hard to get where he is. The path of an author was one paved with blood, sweat and rejections. Mostly rejections. Deception , his latest thriller, is climbing the charts and, after a clutch of published books, he finally feels happy with what he has made for himself.

Bonnie hurtles into the lounge, stumbling over her dress, gripping a packet of crisps in her fingers. ‘Mummy is making sandwiches!’

John wraps his arms around her and pulls her, giggling, onto his lap. ‘Oh, is she? Are you going to share those crisps, monkey?’

She grins. ‘Yes, Daddy.’

John kisses her head and pops a crisp into his mouth, smiling at Jules as she carries a platter of sandwiches into the lounge. She has managed to retain the youth people their age seek out in overpriced lotions and potions. Her skin is smooth and clear, hair bouncing with the rhythm of her gait, eyes bright and curious. She still looks like the Jules he met in his youth, the young woman he knew, with a certainty in the centre of his bones, that he loved, and would love for the rest of his life. They had moved from their home county to the rush of Oxford as soon as they were able, clutching delicate dreams like paper hearts in their hands. In the spare time they managed to hook away from work, they sat side by side, Jules painting to her heart’s content and he jotting down his stories, their fingers brushing when they leant back to judge their work.

John runs a hand over his face, fingers picking out the lines and wrinkles in his skin like the brushstrokes in one of Jules’s paintings. He hasn’t aged as well; the sun has wiped a blanket of freckles over his cheeks, drying out his skin and making him look older. But he doesn’t mind. Jules and Bonnie seem fine with the way he looks. And they, in addition to Don and his parents, are the ones who mean the most to him.

‘Here we are.’ Jules beams, settling the platter on the duvet they have laid across the floor. Her hands find a way to her swollen stomach, tapping a loving rhythm to their unborn child. John is looking forward to meeting their baby with an intensity that sends a tremble through his body. Who will it look like? Who will it be like? Bonnie repeatedly tells them she is going to dress it up in one of her princess dresses. Complete with as many bows and frills and sparkles as she can find.

‘You have some paint on your neck, sweetheart.’ He gestures to his wife’s skin and smiles. He is proud of her, proud of the way she runs her successful gallery, proud of her for juggling a career with a family. It isn’t always easy but they share the care and chores and it works well for them. They have found a pattern and a routine that eases them into the day and eases them back out with enough energy left over for each other.

Jules wipes the paint mark off with a rub of her finger and says, ‘I’m going to look like a Smurf if I get much more on me!’ Bonnie giggles, nestling deeper into the duvet.

John shuffles to the edge as Jules lays herself down, a sigh slipping from her lips like a secret whispered to a friend. He wraps an arm around her and she wraps an arm around Bonnie. And like this they stay, until it is time to start the day again.

‘So, how was your day?’

Maisie Green runs a hand through her hair and stifles a yawn, sinking back into the sofa cushions as the ache in her shoulder shoots sharp fingers of pain down her back. ‘Good. My new patient was transferred today so it was a bit hectic. How about yours?’

‘I’m trying to think of a really funny anecdote or something to give you but it was terrible. Bill had to break up this brawl, then he got a glass of red thrown in his face, and somehow managed to blame it on me.’ Ben, her partner of three years, chuckles and props his feet on the coffee table, leaning his head back on the sofa cushion.

Maisie smiles, dropping a kiss on his cheek, loving him for transforming any unpleasant situation into something that tempted a giggle rather than a tear. ‘That sounds rough. One day we’ll win the lottery and you’ll be able to tell that boss of yours what you think.’

‘Can we win it in time for my shift tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure I can pull it off that quick.’

‘That’s a shame.’ Ben weaves his fingers through hers and grins. ‘How is everything else at work?’

Maisie is an ICU nurse and her days are usually divided between assessing her patients’ conditions, monitoring and safeguarding their care, acting as an advocate for them and their families, and supporting them through the veil of turmoil that cloaks their lives. So much of what she does is emotional. Yes, she administers medication to her patients, bathes them, and cleans and tests the equipment that keeps their bodies ticking over while they heal, but she also has to be on hand to advise, support and talk to her patients’ families, stapling together their pasts with their panicked new lives.

Maisie has seen the varying shades of grief and loss. Wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, people from all walks of life… her job is to help them cross the border into this clinical world of disinfectant handwash and soggy tissues. It’s a savage world, one in which they’re no longer authors of their fates, but living with the influence of brain scans, bed sores, antibiotics, drips, and the sudden impulse to pray when they haven’t prayed before. She has seen men and women clinging to hope with steel in their fingers, chanting comforting words, hands shaking and lips wobbling. They walk up to her, telling themselves that today – today! – she’ll give them the news they’re hoping for. Today, they’ll sit beside their loved one and no longer have to cling to hope, but feel it, truly feel it. For the first time in a long time it will seep into their bones. For the first time in a long time, they will find the parts of themselves they thought they’d lost.