After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets by Kerry Fisher

adopted the face I used for my own mother whenever she tried to text on her mobile. No doubt they then hurried off to increase security on all things electronic but only so that I couldn’t see what they were up to.
    I fastened my seatbelt again. The image that I’d been clinging onto of marching up to Sean and having my say faded away. I couldn’t be the mother that everyone talked about. I’d been that daughter.
    My role as a mother was to have prim little conversations with other earnest parents about the benefits of learning the saxophone – improved confidence, increased connections between all the synapses – without once blurting out that Jamie’s sole motivation was that he thought it was the instrument most likely to get him a shag when he was older: ‘Who could resist me serenading them with If You Leave Me Now ?’
    I leaned back on the headrest. I needed to make Sean my friend. Or at least make him think he was. My stomach tightened into a hard marble of hate. If I wanted to get him on my side, I’d need to be patient. I’d waited three decades. It was surprising how ill-prepared I was now. I must have thought I’d never meet him, or anyone from my class or village again. Deluded.
    I reached for my phone.
    He answered immediately.
    ‘Is that Sean?’
    ‘Speaking.’
    ‘Hello, it’s Lydia Rushford, the new chair of the fundraising committee. Melanie asked me to call you. Have I called at a convenient time? Not too late?’ Just a delay of thirty years and I was nit-picking about the sacred and self-imposed rule of not calling anyone after eight-thirty.
    He greeted me as though I was the person he was most looking forward to speaking to. It made me want to lean on the horn and bellow, ‘You do know you put my dad in prison, don’t you?’
    ‘I wondered if you had any time to meet to discuss the photography you had in mind?’ I rasped out the word photography, my throat constricting, as though I’d swallowed a lump of dry bread.
    ‘Sure.’ Very American. ‘When were you thinking, Lydia?’
    Again. Had I imagined the small hesitation, the slight drawing-out of Lydia?
    I stuck to my script. ‘As soon as possible, really. I know Melanie wanted the permission letters sent out no later than next week.’
    ‘Is tomorrow any good? I’m free first thing. We could meet for coffee at the Art Café?’
    ‘Sure.’ I had never said ‘sure’ in my life. I had no idea why I was starting now. ‘Nine-thirty?’
    ‘Yes, looking forward to it.’ A little pause. ‘Lydia.’
    ‘Me too.’ A hiccup of bile rose in my throat.
    We said goodbye. I drove home with the odd feeling that I’d jumped without knowing whether my parachute would open.

8
    S ean had chosen the squidgy armchairs in the corner, under an oil painting of bright purple lips. As soon as I walked in, he jumped up. ‘Lydia, hello. What can I get you?’
    ‘I’ll get it, thank you.’
    ‘No, let me, honestly, my pleasure.’
    Social niceties would have worked better several decades ago but a coffee shop with the slogan ‘Peace, love and great coffee’ didn’t seem the correct location to start a manners revolution.
    ‘Americano with soya milk, please.’
    I still wasn’t sure whether he knew it was me. I tried to sit nonchalantly but was having difficulty encouraging my body into anything other than a straight-backed schoolmistress sort of pose.
    How was I going to broach the subject if he didn’t? Was I really going to sit there and talk fundraising? I did a quick scan of the café to see if there were any other mothers I knew, sitting there ready to record and repeat the conversation if it all turned nasty.
    Sean returned with a tray of coffee, looking as though he’d slept on scented lavender pillows with nothing more concerning than The Times crossword to solve. I, on the other hand, was carrying the rawness of an argument that had see-sawed until the early hours as Mark struggled to understand why I’d suddenly lashed out