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

that went wrong. I tried to follow the advice that Mark often gave to Jamie: ‘Focus on the outcome you want. You can’t change the past, only the future.’
    Before I could speak again, Sean twirled his coffee cup. ‘Dad died ten years ago. I never did connect with him properly. We started to get a bit closer when Eleanor was born.’
    I wondered what his daughter looked like. Like him? A hint of rebellion and a smile everyone remembered? Or like Katya, elfin and petite?
    Sean carried on. ‘Dad was much softer with her, light of his life really, like he’d got all the hardness out of him in my childhood. He mellowed as he got older.’
    I noticed the Norfolk in his speech. Those soft vowels and country burr.
    Social convention demanded that I utter the word, ‘Sorry’. But I wasn’t sorry. I hoped Sean’s grief had ripped him apart. That he’d experienced some of what my father lived every day, the loss of the future that he – we – should have had, that searing, tearing feeling of life changed forever, our permanent low-level fear of him spiralling downwards, unable to get out of bed. I wondered if my mother even told me the half of it.
    I put down my mug and plunged in. ‘I don’t want to discuss what happened with anyone from round here. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.’ There. The request for my future, undisturbed, unchanged, was out there.
    The electronic plink-plonk of a baby’s toy filled the silence.
    This time, an unmistakable shrug. ‘No one’s really going to be interested in some ancient story of a misspent youth, are they? Everyone’s got naked with someone they shouldn’t have at one time or another with unpredictable consequences.’ He gave me a cheeky grin.
    An unbidden image of Sean peeling off my school shirt bounced into my mind. I hoped to god that he wasn’t recalling my Playtex bra and my Woolworths knickers. He did look amused, which, if he wasn’t careful, might result in him needing a plot in the cemetery sooner than he’d anticipated. Flutters of emotion were vibrating all the way from my stomach to the base of my throat, as though I was standing on a bridge with heavy lorries thundering underneath.
    I dabbed at my lips with my napkin. ‘I don’t think you have any idea what we went through.’ I concentrated on looking Sean straight in the eye. ‘So I’d be really grateful if you kept quiet about it. We’ve made a new start here. I’d like to draw a line under it and not contaminate my children’s lives with it. They don’t need to know their granddad was in prison. And I definitely don’t want a discussion about the photograph.’
    Sean laughed. Actually burst out with chuckle of proper merriment. ‘Come on. They’re watching all sorts on the computer. I bet teenagers today think a threesome is old hat. I doubt that they’re going to be too scandalised at us oldies getting a bit frisky.’
    ‘Frisky’ was for lambs gambolling about in spring. It went nowhere near describing the mayhem that had ensued from a few bloody Polaroids. Sean was grinning, as though if he waited for a minute or two, I might develop a sense of humour.
    ‘Sean. Let’s be really clear. No one is to know anything about this. Ever. Especially my kids. Or my husband.’
    ‘Mark doesn’t know?’ He flopped back in his seat. ‘Does he think your real name is Lydia?’
    ‘No. He knows that my first name is Sally. He just doesn’t know why I don’t use it.’
    Sean sat shaking his head. ‘Jesus. Are we going to pretend we don’t know each other at all?’
    ‘Yes please.’
    ‘Better not blurt out that you’ve got a Mickey Mouse-shaped mole on your left buttock then.’
    I blushed until I could feel my eyebrows sweating. At thirteen, my fledgling sexuality had been hammered into a box with a boulder rolled on top. I’d never managed to shake off the idea that I shouldn’t actually be doing ‘it’, even after I was married. So Sean thinking about my left buttock –