Read After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets for Free Online Page B

Richard.
    Jamie marched off to the fridge. My mother gazed after him. I felt my teeth clench as I waited for the ‘He needs a proper meal, young people think eating’s a movable feast’ conversation. My mother shuddered so dramatically that her necklace rattled as Jamie swigged directly out of the milk carton.
    ‘So anything happen today at school?’ I’d show my mother that we were a happy, chatty family.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did you play rugby?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Honestly. If my mother sucked her face in any more she’d look like she’d swallowed her teeth. I willed Jamie to be a bit bloody cooperative.
    ‘Did you score any tries?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Suddenly Jamie perked up. ‘There was a dad taking photos. He said I’d played really well. He’s really cool. I think he got one of me sprinting to the touchline. Can we buy it?’
    ‘No!’
    The momentary connection faded away like a dodgy Wi-Fi signal.
    ‘All right. Calm down, Kermit. Just asking.’
    ‘Sorry. You’re right. Let me think about it.’
    I glanced at my mother. Her eyebrows shot up.
    The secret contaminated another generation.

6
    O ver the next week , the idea of emigrating consumed me. Somewhere vast. Not somewhere like Britain where sixty million inhabitants trapped in a mere 94,000 square miles led to people you never wanted to see again strolling into your life and turning it upside down. I Googled Canada, America, steppes of Outer Mongolia. Then more sensibly, Northumberland, Cornwall and Pembrokeshire.
    Mark laughed and asked me if I was having a midlife crisis as I listed the benefits of starting somewhere new and isolated. ‘Never saw you as a rural tree-hugger type. You never even want to take me to Norfolk for a weekend. Go and rent a caravan somewhere for a week if you need a change of scene.’
    My sudden desire to live in the middle of a moor wasn’t at the top of Mark’s priority list anyway. Since a shop that fitted new kitchen unit fronts had opened in the high street, Mark was spending a lot of evenings adding up columns of ever-diminishing figures over and over again, then doodling diamonds on the corner of his notebook. We could have lived worry-free in a house my mother wouldn’t have approved of, with the kids at a school she would have disdained. But I’d adopted her priorities for so long as part of the post-apocalypse appeasement process, Mark would think I was lying if I tried to convince him otherwise.
    I was working harder than ever. In-between sourcing a skull-shaped wedding favour basket to hold Liquorice Allsorts, I dodged email communications from Melanie, asking me to contact Sean to sort out the photography. I kept fobbing her off with my work commitments. I refused to go to the school at all, not even to pick up the kids when it was raining. I was still waiting for the magical day when I would wake up with the determination to confront Sean. More often than not, I spent nights blinking into the darkness. Many times, I wanted to shake Mark awake, whisper my worries into his chest, have him shrug and say, ‘That was all so long ago. It’s okay now.’
    But it could never really be okay. Every time Dad sank into one of his dark depressions was a reminder of that.
    A memory I didn’t know I still had squeezed out. A little image of Mark lifting my chin shortly before we got married, staring into my eyes and saying, ‘You’re so self-contained, Lyddie. What secrets are you keeping from me?’ He said it with a smile, but I caught a note of genuine enquiry.
    I’d squirmed from his gaze, batting him away with ‘Me? What secrets would someone like me have? Reading thrillers is about as exciting as I get.’ Then I kissed him until he wasn’t thinking about my secrets, and the racing in my heart dissipated in his solid embrace.
    Would he remember that? Would he care? Would he forgive me? I just didn’t know.
    The more I tried to second-guess Mark’s reaction, the more I could only imagine domestic Armageddon, the