My Mother, The Liar - Ann Troup

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was now standing at a freezing bus stop next to a person who obviously had failed to see the relevance of the ‘i’ in iTunes. Tinny music was leaking from his earphones and intruding into her already abrasive mood. Where the fuck was her dad?

      They needed to talk. About what was in the papers. About why he was in the papers.

      She had been in the office writing up patient notes before handover, when the other student, that supercilious wanker Nick Gribble, had slapped a newspaper down on the desk. Everyone had looked up as he’d said, ‘Never told us your dad was a criminal, Amy.’

      Mortification hadn’t been the word for it. She’d told him to fuck off and had got a bollocking from her supervisor and sent home. The prospect of bouncing off the walls in the nurse’s home hadn’t appealed, so she’d come ‘home’ home, and no one was going to be there. What made her most angry was the fact that if something like a bank had gone out of business and money was at stake, the fucking papers wouldn’t have even thought about raking something up that had happened over thirty years ago! Money always trumped people in a news story.

      There was a photograph of Charlie taking up half the page. Because a woman who’d gone missing, and who had probably killed her husband and kid, had been a witness at her dad’s trial. Didn’t put a photograph of her in there, did they? How fair was that?

      Neither he nor Gran had ever talked about why he’d been in prison. She’d always known he had been, ever since her second day at school when Lee Price, a noxious kid who always had dried snot on his jumper sleeve had said, ‘My mum said your dad is a murderer. He chopped your mum into little pieces.’

      She’d stared at him in disbelief, trying to equate what he had said with her big, strong lovely dad. She’d been horrified and angry and had yelled, ‘At least I’ve got a hanky! I don’t wipe bogeys on my clothes.’

      She still felt stupid when she thought about it.

      Gran had picked her up from school that day, and had been shocked to see a bandage on her hand. Lee Price had stabbed her with a pencil over the snot jibe. The story had come out in a tearful torrent and Gran had told her that it was true that her dad had gone to prison, but that it wasn’t true that he’d killed anyone. His first wife had been killed, but not by him. Amy had taken this on her five-year-old chin, because if Gran said it, the ‘it’ was gospel.

      She had never since questioned his innocence. Even though on occasion (mostly when she was pissed off with him, like now) she had been haunted by the thought that he did seem to have a habit of marrying people who had suffered untimely deaths.

      After that Gran wouldn’t discuss it, and Amy had been warned on pain of death to ask her father about it. Even so, the story ate at her. The dead first wife became the antagonist in her nightmares and she’d had no choice but to find out what had happened.

      When she was thirteen, she’d gone to the library and had mastered the mysteries of the microfiche machine and had read the reports of what her father was supposed to have done. It didn’t stand up in her mind: the words ‘frenzied attack’ in the same sentence as her father’s name were so incongruent she had laughed. Still did. In her imagination she had packed the whole thing away in the same box as her mother’s death. It was all in the mental filing cabinet labelled ‘Romantic Tragedies’ along with other things that were too difficult to think about very often.

      As far as Amy was concerned, the fact that bodies had been found at The Limes proved that her dad was innocent beyond doubt. Whoever had been killing people in that house, it hadn’t been him. Whoever the killer was, they had more than likely framed him. Simple.

      At least that’s what she believed on good days. That’s what she would tell someone if they asked. On not so good days, when the world felt full of impending doom, she saw it differently. She was torn then. Between what she wanted to believe and what her logical mind suggested to her. The conviction that her father was incapable of being a frenzied murderer was absolute, but the suspicion that he might be capable of great passion, immense rage and deep hurt created a worm of doubt that wriggled in her brain from time to time. She knew for a fact that he’d done anger management courses over the years. Yet he’d never once lost it with her.

      All she could base her darker thoughts on were the facts that her father loved her with a devotion that bordered on obsession, and he still loved her mother. If Gran didn’t stay him, he would have locked his child in the house for life just so he could keep her safe. She wouldn’t just be wrapped in cotton wool; she would be buried in it.

      He never had curbed her freedom but she could tell he wanted to. Only the voice of reason stopped him taking her to a desert island where she would be safe for ever. She knew he still loved her mother because he never talked about her, and if anyone asked him his face would cloud with hurt so intensely that no one dared ask him again. That couldn’t be anything else but love, could it?

      If he had loved the first wife as much, would he have killed her rather than lose her to someone else? Amy knew for a fact that he would kill anyone who threatened her safety. He had said so often enough.

      A few years before, she had shared her worries with her best friend Kayleigh. Kayleigh had said that the only way to find out if he had killed the first wife was to ask her via ‘spirit’. They had hidden themselves in Gran’s bedroom and made a Ouija board out of scrabble tiles and had invoked the spirit of Patsy. Gran’s room had been a good choice of venue – after all, how scary could anything be if it was experienced on a bed of quilted pink satin surrounded by kitten ornaments?

      Bloody terrifying as it turned out. They had scared each other shitless.

      Kayleigh had led the proceedings. Her mother owned a deck of Tarot cards and she was familiar with the ritual of such things, having been witness to many a prediction of handsome strangers and sudden windfalls. Kayleigh had laid the letters out in a circle and had written ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on two pieces of paper. On a third she had written ‘goodbye’. She’d placed them in the circle. In the middle, she put a glass tumbler.

      They had debated the glass. It had a picture of Blackpool Tower on it and didn’t seem a serious enough object to use in the circumstances, but it was all they had to hand and neither of them thought that any restless spirit would be too concerned about a bit of kitsch. Kayleigh had said that any spirit manifesting in Delia’s bedroom would have to be oblivious to tat, otherwise they wouldn’t bother coming at all. Amy had laughed with her, but had felt mildly offended all the same.

      They had both said the Lord’s Prayer, just in case, before each putting a tentative digit on the upturned glass. ‘Is anybody there?’ Kayleigh had asked, sounding like Boris Karloff in a bad horror film. Amy had nearly fainted when the glass started to move. She’d pulled her finger away, accusing Kayleigh of pushing it, which she strenuously denied, saying, ‘If you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m going home.’ There had been pouting and umbrage taken.

      Amy had reassured her that she was deadly serious and they had tried again, watching as the glass propelled itself under their fingers. The first few words it spelled out were nonsense, not even real words. Only when Kayleigh asked for Patsy to communicate with them did anything significant happen.

      ‘Are you Patsy?’ Kayleigh asked the air.

      Amy had shuddered as the glass moved towards the slip of paper bearing the word yes.

      ‘Were you murdered?’ was the next question. Again the glass moved to yes.

      Kayleigh had stared at Amy, eyes wide. ‘Who murdered you?’

      Amy had been barely able to breathe as the glass had moved around the circle in undecided moves, finally spelling out the words: ‘not him’.

      ‘See,’ Kayleigh had said, pleased with herself.

      Scared and unconvinced, Amy had asked the question again, but nothing happened. The glass hesitated and quivered under their fingers. ‘Did my father kill you?’ she demanded, desperate for a reiteration that it wasn’t him.

      The glass moved again, sweeping

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