Liarholic Page 2

  I wish Scarlett was here, but she’s in London, celebrating Christmas and the New Year with her family. She stuffs my head with trashy stories and problem pages from bitchy fashion mags. She’d be useful right now. She’d make me laugh with her anecdotes, she’d fill my head with her talk-show wisdom, and make me forget.

  The other girls, Lilac and Annabeth, don’t like Scarlett much. I’m not sure if Daisy feels the same. She’s quiet, looks up to Lilac as thinspiration. Daisy’s nine-year-old son stays here with us when she’s signed in.

  But Scarlett is the best friend I’ve ever had. The estate has been deathly quiet without her. A haunted house. And now my ghost has returned to haunt me.

  Kill me all over again.

  I check my watch. Nearly a quarter to nine. What are they doing up there? I make the mistake of glancing at the bedroom window, and then I have to check it. And that triggers my OCD, so I have to start again at the door.

  I’m on my second round, standing on the lid of the toilet, feeling my way with my fingertips around the edge of the frosted window, when I hear the door shutting upstairs and the sound of footsteps on the stairs outside.

  ‘ . . . Plenty of space in the courtyard. And Devil’s Thirst, the lake you saw, is in walking distance.’

  ‘Yeah, good. Just bought a new Aston Martin.’

  I finish off the check, and then do the room door. Not too bad. I wait for it, the whispers, the ones that tell me to go round and start again, but it’s okay. I’ve done it right, and only two times.

  The estate is silent. I shoulder my seahorse bag, then leave my room and go down the creaky stairs.

  I stop midway.

  My foot covered in a white ballet shoe hovers over the step below and my hand is glued to the banister. I look like a doll stretched into a weird position.

  Shepherd is standing in the large gunmetal-grey foyer. His huge body blocks the communal door. Blocks the light.

  ‘Hey Amylocks.’

  Hey Amylocks? After everything he did to me, after all these years of being a ghost, and all he has to say is Hey Amylocks?

  My eyes narrow suspiciously as I take in the man I haven’t seen for years. At least, an outside observer would view it as suspicion, but Shepherd might know. Might. If he can even remember.

  I inhale a shallow breath. I hate him and his plump bottom lip. I hate his stubble and his cheekbones that could cut a girl’s heart. Most of all, I hate that he smells absolutely incredible. Beads of him evaporate into the air and I’m in a cloud of Shepherd. I quash the little skip in my heartbeat.

  He was pretty when we were teenagers, but now he’s something else. Something darkly beautiful.

  ‘Wh-What . . . What are you doing here?’ I say. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re planning to stay here as a patient?’

  I don’t look at him directly. He’s like the sun. He could turn me blind, him and those eyes of darkness.

  ‘I’m not a patient.’

  The relief is small, but instant. ‘Just a bad coincidence then,’ I say. I want this moment to be over with, so I can die later.

  ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. I’m not a patient, Amy. I’m the new owner. I’m buying the whole estate.’

  My mind swirls and I feel like I’m going to faint.

  Why would he want to buy this place? The building is an old dark-stoned Victorian house. Bleak. Haunting. Imposing. Just like him. The brick, which would’ve once been a bright shade of coral red, is now gothic black.

  It’s dusty, creaky, and too large to heat properly. There are so many empty, haunted rooms, unlived in. I’ve always wondered how the owner can keep the place going with only five of us paying for therapy.

  Swan Lake is on the edge of Greystone town, a vacant place. It’s utilitarian and grey. Cold and harshly lit. Why would he want to buy a private estate for the mentally broken?

  ‘They can’t sell this place,’ I say.

  ‘From the looks of things, the owner didn’t do a good job of taking care of this building. He’s selling it to the highest-paying property developer. Guy wants rid of it — fast.’ He smirks. ‘I wouldn’t buy it.’

  ‘So why are you then?’

  ‘I’ve got my reasons for buying Swan Lake.’

  ‘Do you even have a clue about what this place is? You’re not a shrink.’

  ‘What would you know about what I am? I like this place. Feels like home already.’

  Despite the panic I manage to say, ‘You’re moving in?’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘No . . . No you can’t do this.’

  ‘I can do what I want, Amy. You think you can stop me?’

  Arrogant. Egotistical . . . gorgeous.

  He makes me feel like I’m standing on quicksand.

  ‘Didn’t think so. Got important business I need to take care of now, but we’ll catch up later. Amylocks.’

  He walks outside, closes the door behind him, but opens the gateway to the source of my pain.

  Betrayal. There’s nothing quite like it. Everything that feels safe suddenly crumbles like a sand castle. You look at people differently. Even the ones you love. Especially the ones you love. And this thing gnaws at you like a voice in your head, saying over and over, ‘Don’t. Trust. Anyone.’

  I’ve never hated someone as much as I hated him. I still hate him, I think. He broke my heart until it was impossible to piece it back together again.

  Surprisingly, this time the front door is firmly fastened. Shepherd shut it properly behind him.

  I hate that it makes me feel safe. And yet, I feel like I’ve been buried in some kind of underground tomb with no hope of escape.

  I want to disappear. I close my eyes and wait.

  2

  ME

  I needed you.

  I craved you.

  I lived for you.

  You were my everything.

  Until I destroyed you.

  I STAND IN THE DEAD centre of Greystone. It’s decayed and dying, underneath the darkening sun. This place never changes, fast or slowly. Twenty years makes no odds.

  The cold air bites. It hasn’t rained for days and days and days. It’s the driest for December in living and dead memory. So dry that the crows are flying with their tongues hanging out of their heads. It all spells trouble.

  I see Bishop Clark opening the doors of his bar. I remember him from way back, when I used to loiter around, making hell with the gang. He was The Old Bill. Now hitting his sixties, he’s retired and owns a pub. Seems to be the only decent place to quench a man’s thirst in this dead town. Just hope it carries more than piss-water cheap beer and watered-down spirits.

  ‘With looks like yours,’ Bishop says, ‘fellas gonna think you’re either a poet or a twat, with that long black hair and the leather jacket and the walk on you, like yours doesn’t smell.’

  He looks at me suspiciously, his dark eyes saying: Why’s he back in town?

  Month back, a ghost from the past paid me a visit at the nightclub I own. Mr Reynolds was the home manager in Greystone Children’s Home. Where I grew up. Where I was the wicked orphan boy.

  Greystone was dead to me. Full of ghosts. Secrets unburied. I left this coffin half a decade ago. Now I live in The Valley, a city thirty miles out from my hometown. And that arsehole Reynolds brought it back to life like a sucker punch to the head. He had something to give me.

  The letter.

  I smile at Bishop, up through my hair that’s grown past my ears and then some. I have the stubble of days on my chin. I’ve been hard-pressed in recent weeks. I’ll get my hair cut tomorrow. Prefer it short.

  ‘Is that so?’ I say. ‘And what’d you think of me?’

  ‘I’ve decided you’re most definitely a twat.’

  Bishop crosses his arms and sniffs. I produce a half pack of cigarettes from my jacket pocket and Bishop takes one. We stand smoking awhile, Bishop with his eyes narrowed against the sun, me with a shadow of a smile.

  ‘Well, the last thing I need is yo
u coming on to me,’ I say. I increase my smile to show teeth. My smile could charm the hardest bastard of humankind.

  He mutters something. Rats in his cellar.

  ‘Rats are there?’ I say.

  ‘As big as sheep.’

  I take a drag and then puff. ‘Do you know on the map there’s nothing at all around Greystone?’

  ‘It’s the arse end of beyond.’

  I look thoughtful. ‘Do you know? I think it is.’

  ‘You look like a man with a chip on his shoulder,’ Bishop says, putting out his smoke.

  I haven’t slept in weeks. Weeks without sleep, and everything becomes warped.

  I just want sleep. I want drugs. I want little pills of happiness to knock the hell out of me and end this waking misery for a few hours.

  Thing is, if you don’t get sleep, you start looking like the Walking Dead. I was born pale, with dark wine lips and the darkest of eyes, but now I look even more dead. Christ, I’m starting to scare kids down the street.

  ‘Seems so,’ I say.

  ‘Lady or the law?’

  My face twitches as I curb a smile. When I’m around, girls fall over themselves. It’s there in the curve of my smile and the spark in my dark eyes. It’s in the way I move, owning every inch of myself. I’m a self-made billionaire, six-foot four, strong, handy even. I’ve got the kind of face that will stay young. But, even so, none of them get my cock hard.

  Except . . . one girl.

  The way Amy smelled this morning in the foyer of my new property, shifted me into some scary gear. She smelled of lemon drops and something flowery. All I could think of was how badly I wanted to take her. Do it over and over until I couldn’t get hard.

  ‘Looking for a drink?’ Bishop asks, dragging me out of my stupor.

  ‘You open? I could do time for a pint.’ I take my smoke out of my mouth and flick it away.

  ‘Could be. Don’t suppose you’re a dab hand at fixing cars, eh?’

  ‘Car problems?’

  ‘Rosie, my car,’ he says, flicks a thumb in the direction of his blue estate, ‘has her own notions of when to stop and start. She’s rusting bad.’

  He starts the engine. It turns over then dies.

  ‘Open the bonnet, Bishop.’

  I work my magic, fix a spark plug that’s misfiring. Bishop lowers himself back into the seat and starts the engine. Perfect. He gives it a rev to make sure.

  He gets out. ‘She didn’t even sound like that when I bought her new. What’re you, some sort of magician?’

  I laugh. ‘I used to buy old wrecks and sell them on. Cars, vans, you name it. Did them up. Polish. That sort of thing.’

  It was the only way I could earn cash after prison.

  ‘I’ve a red 1965 Mustang in my garage, all done up to the nines like a mistress waiting on a night out. If you’d like to help me fix her up some time?’

  ‘Count me in.’

  He grins. ‘Come inside now,’ he says. ‘Free drinks all night for the magician.’

  The sun struggles to get in through the windows of the pub, but it seeps through the smoky red velvet curtains, catches on the tables.

  Bishop puts a pint in front of me by the bar, one of many. By evening the pub is heaving, and every old Tom, Dick and Harry in Greystone is my best mate.

  As I fall out the entrance doors and look up into the starry sky, I can almost forget what I came here for.

  Anyone of those men could be my father . . .

  I slide out the letter I keep in my inside pocket. The missing letter that’d been tucked underneath the blanket in the basket I was dumped in as a baby.

  Mrs Black, a staff member of the children’s home, always said there wasn’t a letter left with me. Wasn’t I a little bastard that nobody wanted? Why would anyone be writing letters for me?

  I look at the envelope in my hand. The writing is child-like, slanted in all the wrong places.

  When I first opened the letter, it felt like the arse fell out of my world, turned inside out.

  I look again. Inside the envelope is a photograph of a girl with a half-smile holding a blurred bundle, high and awkwardly, like found treasure. I turn it over and the scribble hand never fails to deal me a left hook.

  Your name is Dean Adams. I’m your mummy, Violet Adams. This is a picture of us. I am the curse of the town. Your daddy threatened to get rid of you so I’m hiding you away. I need to keep you safe. I want to keep you but I can’t no more.

  They tell me you are wrong, born from evil. But you are not wrong, Dean. You are beautiful. Know that your mummy loves you. Know that you were wanted. Know that you are beautiful and good.

  I suck in air through my teeth, look away from the letter. Put it back in my pocket.

  Violet Adams was my mother.

  I heard the tale as a kid. Violet Adams got pregnant at thirteen. Unknown father. Greystone buried the story long ago, ashamed of its dark secret. A year after her pregnancy, Violet hung herself from a tree in Devil’s Woods.

  I’m that baby . . .

  On a night like this, with a pretty blonde girl singing a tune in my head, it would be easy to forget. I could forget, first of all, to ask what lit up my mum’s eyes, or if she ever laughed, if she liked apples or fucking pears.

  I could forget my own name.

  Dean Adams.

  After all, it’s a dead name. A name never taken, a life never lived.

  A man could almost forget his intentions, when there’s a girl spinning inside his head like a pretty ballerina.

  Sunshine hair.

  Emerald eyes.

  Sexy, fuckable bod.

  Yeah, a man could forget. But I need to get my shit together. Need to shape up or ship out. This town took my life from me. Took my mother away from me. I won’t forget what I came for.

  My bastard father.

  I wasn’t ready for this. Not now. Since the day I left Nazareth Young Offender Institute when I was seventeen, I’ve been keeping my shit together, keeping my fucking cool, and then this.

  All I want is a bit of peace and quiet. Sleep without nightmares. Sleep without guilt.

  I was told my mum didn’t want me. Didn’t love me.

  She did love me.

  She did want me.

  I was seven when I was told I would be adopted by loving parents. It never happened. It was all a goddamn lie. I think that’s when I got broken. Through the cracks of lies. Hope died and all I had left were those lies. Lies to keep safe. Lies to survive. It made me who I am today.

  Ugly.

  Hollow.

  Dark.

  That’s my story.

  I’ve got no other.

  When I left Greystone, I wanted to sever all ties with it. But I never could.

  Amy Earhart. She’s the reason I stay attached to a town I hate.

  She still hates my guts. Kicker is, she’s the only girl I ever fucking loved — will ever love. I didn’t just break her heart. I ripped it out, chewed on it, and then spat it out. I was her monster. I humiliated her and then I vanished from her life.

  This letter, my mum, it’s some kind of destiny. No, it was never destiny that pulled us together. I remember now. It was Lustiny, and some ‘thing’ else in between. When this ‘thing’ got deeper, when I got into deeper shit, I did what I always did. I destroyed the only bright in my dark universe. Yeah, Lustiny, and now it’s pushing me back her way.

  If Amy hated my guts back then, she’s gonna loathe the man I am now. Because I am worse. Much, much worse.

  I’m a liarholic.

  Lying — it’s my favourite deadly sin.

  Hell, I’ve already hinted at her that I’m some kind of shrink.

  People like me, we enjoy being cold lying bastards. All that childhood abuse and neglect, I discovered by the age of around fourteen that I get great pleasure in fucking with and fucking over people at every opportunity.

  The bottom line is that no matter what I say to the world, I don’t feel the things they expect me to fe
el.

  Too many ghosts in me.

  In my world, there are no rules.

  The children’s home was right. I’m evil to the bone. I’m not Christlike.

  It will take a fucking miracle to change me.

  3

  ME

  MRS BLACK SAID my mummy was too busy working the streets to write. She said my mummy only dragged me to the church, instead of drowning me, because she couldn’t find a bucket.

  But Diana Dunn, a foster support agent, told me a different story. I was just ‘the baby’, until Diana gave me a name. I was found on the steps of Greystone Church, a baby in a basket. Diana said I was a gift. Beautiful and mysterious like Poussin’s The Shepherds of Arcadia painting.

  A reading lamp lights what’s left of Diana in her room. I had her transported to Swan Lake the second the deed was transferred into my name. I’ve put her in Crow Ward. Nobody else lives on this side of the estate, except for her private nurse, Jennifer. Diana deserves the best care I can give her. I feel guilt for not visiting her enough. Paying for her care was never enough.

  She’s so thin, she could be a puppet. Her yellow hands are crossed on her chest.

  ‘Now there’s a face,’ Diana whistles. ‘Sit down here, handsome.’ She smiles, her teeth a row of bombed houses.

  Diana is fifty-eight years old. She’s too young to get Alzheimer’s, and now breast cancer. She’s as good as dead, under the ground. That’s what they’ve told me. I’m not gonna believe it.

  When I was a kid, Diana told me a letter was left with me as a baby, but Mrs Black had stolen it. I figured it was senile talk.

  ‘You alright?’ I say.

  ‘I like Greystone’s forest close. And all the things that live in it, badgers and owls. I could sit all day listening to the trees sing. Hold my hand. I want to feel male warmth.’

  I take her hand and hold it. I can feel knotted bones, fragile skin. ‘What do the trees sing?’

  ‘All the lowlifes who inhabit Greystone.’

  ‘Do you know who I am, Diana?’

  ‘Of course I do. You’re Greystone’s little Shepherd in the basket.’