Home Truths Read online

  PRAISE FOR TINA SESKIS

  For One Step Too Far

  ‘A haunting psychological thriller . . . believable yet shocking with a great twist, this is well worth a read.’

  The Sun

  ‘A whip-smart thriller that keeps you guessing right up until the final shocking twist.’

  Mirror

  ‘Intriguing . . . dreamily tense . . . a really absorbing read.’

  USA Today

  For When We Were Friends

  ‘Clever, intriguing, chilling – and utterly impossible to put down. Tina Seskis is proving herself to be master of the twist.’

  Grazia UK

  ‘One of the world’s leading experts at pulling the wool over readers’ eyes until the very end.’

  Sophie Hannah

  For The Honeymoon

  ‘Everyone’s going to be talking about the twists and turns of The Honeymoon.’

  Good Housekeeping

  ‘Endlessly gripping . . . It’s a stomach-flipping humdinger of a thriller.’

  Heat

  ‘Will keep you on the edge of your seat.’

  Prima

  ALSO BY TINA SESKIS

  One Step Too Far

  When We Were Friends

  The Honeymoon

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Tina Seskis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542093583

  ISBN-10: 1542093589

  Cover design by whittakerbookdesign.com

  For my husband and son

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Is it any...

  PART TWO

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  The food is...

  PART THREE

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  Time gets filled...

  PART FOUR

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  Time passes. Things...

  92

  93

  94

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Do I start at the beginning or begin at the end? The dichotomy is killing me. I am slowly dying, seeping into the morass that is the middle. Neither here, nor there. Neither this, nor that. What made me do it? Hate, for sure. Love, too, in a way. But whatever my motives, how on earth did I manage it? How did I cope with the lies, and the confusion, and all the goddamn effort? Maybe I just enjoyed it too much. Needed it, even.

  And now? Well, now everything is destroyed, of course. Could I have handled it differently? For sure. Am I to blame for everything? I would say not. Not everything. But we shall see. After all, the truth will always out. Eventually.

  And so now I will always be something other than what everyone thought I was. Something other than what I wished to be. That is the price I will pay, forever. And so be it.

  PART ONE

  THE BEGINNING

  THE EARLY NINETIES

  1

  ALEX

  As soon as she walked through the door, Alex noticed her. Nicely dressed blonde girls rarely made an appearance at the front desk of Finsbury Park police station in 1992. Normally it was a place frequented by errant drivers, begrudgingly bringing in their documents as requested by an overzealous traffic cop; or victims of muggings; or people who’d had their car stolen; or else known criminals being booked in for the umpteenth time, the looks on their faces ones of insouciant arrogance, fully aware they’d most likely get away with it.

  This girl was different. She had a softness about her, and yet it wasn’t the softness of weakness, Alex could tell that much. It was something much more interesting. He’d been about to leave, as his shift was almost over, but he found he was happy to handle this enquiry. His first impression of her was one of intrigue. He’d never forget the feeling.

  ‘Hello, yes? How can I help?’

  The girl looked embarrassed, and he tried to guess what it was she was about to say. She glanced over her shoulder, and a strand of her white-blonde hair slipped across her cheekbone, half-covering her left eye. She pushed it back with a barely conscious gesture, and he noticed there was a circular mark on her left ring finger, although her hands were bare. When she spoke, it was with a low American burr, which surprised him. He imagined she’d have a well-spoken, English accent.

  ‘I want to report something,’ she said, ‘but it’s a little, er, delicate.’ She didn’t need to look over at the sullen youth, dressed top to toe in sweatshirt material and waiting for his drug-dealing friend, to let Alex know that it was something juicy. He tried to guess how old she was. He reckoned she was early twenties, yet she looked younger.

  ‘OK, do you want to wait there a moment?’ Alex said. ‘I’ll be with you shortly.’ When he said the word ‘shortly’ his mouth felt dry and his voice had a squeak to it that reminded him of when he was a teenager. He turned quickly, so she couldn’t see him blush, and went out to the back office, where he told his colleague Gillian that he was taking someone to one of the interview rooms, and could she mind the front desk. Gillian smirked, and he flushed. She wasn’t one to talk anyway. She was always flirting with the prisoners or sleeping with her colleagues. Alex found it extraordinary how she could be so brazen about it, but Gillian was one of those characters who just laughed when someone tried to tease her, and so she got away with everything. Alex admired that about her – plus she’d always looked out for him, ever since they’d got caught up in the poll tax riots together. She moth
ered him, in truth.

  When Alex returned to the front counter, he buzzed the young woman through and beckoned her to follow him into the innards of the station. He could smell her perfume now, and it was delicate and summery, discordant with the aromas of grime and crime that were ingrained in the place. As he led her to a spartan interview room, her demeanour was nervy, on edge. He asked her to sit, and she did so, her hands folded in her lap, the right covering her left. It was a domestic, Alex was sure of it. He searched her face for bruises, wondered what kind of a bastard would hit someone like her.

  ‘So, what’s your name?’ he said.

  ‘Eleanor Jackson.’

  ‘And what can I do for you?’

  ‘Well . . . I . . . I think I’m being stalked.’

  ‘Oh.’ He failed to hide his surprise. ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s just that I . . . I chatted to him a couple of times, and now . . . well . . .’ She stopped, looked about the room, as if bewildered at how she came to be in such a place. She was wearing a blue linen dress and bright white plimsolls, and she looked as though she was worried that even being here was contaminating her. A tiny diamond stud glinted in her nose, which he hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Alex said. ‘Take your time.’

  ‘Well . . . I think he may have got the wrong idea, and now he keeps asking me out, even though I keep saying no. And the phone rings during the day, when I’m home alone, and there’s never anyone there.’ She spoke quickly now. ‘Plus he gives me gifts, although I don’t want them, and stares at me through my window. And then the other day when I came to use my boss’s car, the tyre was flat – for no reason – and he came and helped me change it.’

  ‘What, and you think he may have let the tyre down?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but he’s just making me nervous.’ She raked her fingers through her hair, and again he noticed the mark on her ring finger. Was she married, or not?

  ‘OK, what’s his name?’

  ‘Gavin Hewitson.’ She looked at him straight as she answered, and she seemed so vulnerable, and he felt so protective. Often in this job he found the punters nothing more than a necessary evil, but he found he wanted to help this girl, sweep her up and make sure no one could ever hurt her. And it was such an extraordinary feeling that he had a sudden urge to simply walk back out of the room and call Gillian and get her to deal with it. It was like being at a crossroads, where three of the routes contained mountains with impossible passes, and one led back the way he had come, to safety. Part of him so intensely wanted to backtrack, avoid what he sensed lay ahead of him, yet he managed to stand his ground, and took all the details as dispassionately as he could manage. He found it hard to look at Eleanor Jackson. She had an outer calm that belied the tale she was telling him. Her accent was dulcet and sugar-coated, so Brady-Bunch-perfect in its cadence she almost sounded as if she were putting it on. Her hair was so soft it kept sliding into her eyes. He wanted to lean over and tuck it behind her ear. He wanted to cup her face, kiss her Cupid-bowed mouth. He wanted to—

  Oh God. He needed to compose himself. He pretended to look at his watch, playing for time. He had no comprehension of what it said. ‘Er, I just need to go and check something,’ he said. ‘Can you wait here?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, and the way she smiled at him was as if she were reassuring him, and he wondered if it was obvious to her, the effect she was having on him. As he exited the room and marched along the corridor, feeling agitated and unsettled, he realised he’d never felt quite like this before. Up until now girls were to be kept at a distance. They were Trouble. But she, Eleanor, was In Trouble. She needed help. Who knew what this stalker was capable of? The police needed to protect her. He needed to protect her. She’d come to him. He was her Knight in Shining Armour.

  As Alex arrived at the front desk, he had no idea why he’d gone there. He stared helplessly at Gillian’s wide expressive face, her eyebrows raised in amused surprise. But it seemed that Eleanor Jackson had come into his life and thrown a curve ball across it, leaving him behaving like a love-struck teenager. If he wasn’t careful, the others might pick up on it too and then he’d never ever live it down.

  He’d made it this far. He needed to keep it together.

  Alex took a deep breath, picked up a police-issue notebook, gave Gillian what he hoped was a casually nonchalant look, and then marched as confidently as he could along the corridor, back towards the beautiful and intriguing Ms Jackson.

  2

  ELEANOR, SEVERAL MONTHS EARLIER

  After the violence of the door slam the room was too silent, as if emptied of air, of every last vibration. Eleanor remained sitting still on the couch, too stunned to go after him. What on earth had just happened? Had Rufus told her to leave? He couldn’t have – they were in love. She’d travelled thousands of miles to be with him. He was her very own English boy, with his BBC accent, his floppy hair, his slouchy jeans and posh parents in their rectory in the country. He was a gentleman, who it seemed had turned overnight into an asshole.

  Eleanor’s state of dazed, torpid denial was long and impossible for her to measure in terms of minutes or hours. It seemed her mind was struggling to make sense of the fact that she was here in her new life in London. Alone. Friendless. Boyfriendless. Her muscles felt sapped of energy, and there was just a low electric kind of buzz in her brain. She needed something to kick-start her back into action – and yet she didn’t have any of her old techniques to hand, which was probably just as well. She imagined her mother saying, ‘I told you so.’ She pictured her father, stately in his expensive-smelling, book-lined office, his job an apparently relentless campaign to help other people, and she knew that if she rang him and begged him to come, he wouldn’t.

  Eleanor’s immobility was only finally interrupted by a peculiarly English habit she’d got into. At long last she stood up, her joints popping. She went into the kitchen, put on the kettle, opened the cupboard directly above it, got out a teabag and a bone-china mug with a picture of a sausage dog that wrapped around its circumference. Her movements were robotic, the habitual nature of them comforting. She switched on the radio and a noisy song by a newish band that Rufus loved and that she couldn’t remember the name of came on. The kettle gurgled and spluttered as she poured the water into the mug. At last the DJ’s gravelly tones gave her the answer. The Stone Roses, that was the band. That was who Rufus loved. Not her. She opened the fridge and eyeballed its contents as if they were foreign objects. The remains of the take-out pizza they’d shared last night. An almost empty bottle of wine. Three yoghurts: all black cherry, her anathema, his favourite. A punnet of strawberries, their surfaces seething with white fungus, although she’d only bought them yesterday. A thick, squat cucumber. A carton of orange juice, bulging slightly. A dribble of milk. Last night had been normal. Normal meal. Normal time together on the couch watching TV. Normal benign reluctance from him when she’d tried to initiate sex in bed. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. She racked her brains, continued to rake through the minutiae of their last few hours together. After Rufus had resisted her advances, he’d turned over and gone almost instantly to sleep. She’d lain in the dark, listening to his soft, steady breathing, reaching out to touch the warm skin on his back, as if to make sure he was there, that she was here, in London. That she really had done this. Her sleep had been flooded with rainbow-coloured dreams that she’d forgotten the instant she’d awoken, when his alarm had gone off at seven.

  This morning Rufus had got up straight away, as usual. He’d gone in the shower first, as usual. He’d eaten a bowl of Weetabix, with banana on top, as usual. And then he’d leant against the sink, with his back to the window, and proceeded to tell her that he was confused, and that he might still be in love with his old girlfriend, and that it was probably best if she, Eleanor, moved out for the time being. And when she’d pointed out, not unreasonably and suitably loudly, that he was an unfathomable bast
ard, he had turned the anger on her and stormed out.

  Eleanor poured the last of the milk into her tea, but her hand was shaking so much she slopped it over the counter, and it looked to her like thin white blood. Perhaps, if she cut herself, her veins would bleed blankly too. She felt in danger of becoming ghostlike, might soon be able to drift through walls. She thought about calling her mom, but how could she admit it to her? She’d been the big girl off on her big adventure, to join the love of her life in London. She and Rufus had met while volunteering at summer camp in upstate New York. They’d spent every second of their spare time together, and even that hadn’t been enough time. And when he’d presented her with a ‘promise ring’ at the airport, just before he’d reluctantly got on the flight back home to England at the end of the summer, she’d known he was The One. And yet still she’d hesitated, for at least a week or two, when he’d called her at her mom’s place in Maine and begged her to come to London to be with him. When at last she’d capitulated, she’d waited tables to help pay for her airfare. It had taken an age to sort out the paperwork, but several months later she’d finally arrived, pale and fizzing and nauseously excited, at Heathrow. Had that really only been four weeks ago?

  Eleanor took her tea and went over to the window, from where Rufus had delivered his weirdly dispassionate termination notice. The early spring day was pin-bright. The grass in the shared back garden was crisply frost-tinted, the sky a deep religious blue, so opaque it looked as if it might be solid to the touch. She could see daffodils brimming with brightness, the rubber-duck yellow of their newly opened petals arguably the best colour in the entire goddamn world. It was England at its finest, how she’d dreamt the countryside would be, and yet she was here in the city. She had never imagined London would be like this. She’d never even thought of the flowers.

  Eleanor had no idea what time Rufus would come home. Should she sit it out, wait for him, ask him what the hell was going on? Or should she pack her stuff and leave, as he’d suggested? She didn’t know where she would go.

  Eleanor sipped her tea, but it was cold already and tasted sour. At last it began to sink in. Rufus loved someone else. His ex-girlfriend. Eleanor wondered when they’d got back together. Before or after she’d got on the plane? How in hell had he kept up the pretence these past four weeks? And, more to the point, why? Had he simply been biding his time, trying to work out who he preferred? That would explain his reluctance for intimacy, and the way everything had felt different in London. She’d put it down to real life getting in the way of the romance of camp – the pseudo-innocent sunset trysts down at the stream, the nights sitting by the campfire, gazing into each other’s eyes, the sweet abstinence they’d managed, at first. Love had filled the hole in their souls on those heady summer nights. He’d been her beautiful English boy. She’d been his muse. His salvation.