Liar Liar

75

Luke Simms lay in bed, listening intently to the voices in the hall downstairs. He’d heard the key turn in the door, then earnest, fast conversation – he could tell by the deep tone of one of the voices that his father had returned from the hospital. He had rushed off there as soon as he got the call. None of them could believe the news and Luke knew that his father would have to see Alice before he could accept that it was true.

There was no way Luke could accompany him, so he’d had to stay where he was, laid up in his aunt’s spare room. Mary and her husband had popped in intermittently to check up on him and to offer him some consoling words, but they didn’t really know him and were tongue-tied anyway. So, after a while, he said he’d try to sleep and they’d left him alone.

But he couldn’t sleep of course. All he could think of was Alice. The games they used to play, the languages they invented, the way she used to fight dirty when they scrapped. She was so much younger than him but had always been mature beyond her years. She often came across as the more sensible of the two – the Grade A student to his football obsessive. She was also a brilliant manipulator, able to wrap their father round her little finger whenever she chose to. Luke had never had that gift and he envied her. For it was just him and his dad now.

He heard the landing creaking and immediately closed his eyes. Moments later, his door opened gently and he heard his father creep in. He had wanted his father to stay, so he could talk to him, be with him, but now he was back he suddenly felt overwhelmed with the misery of their situation. He didn’t want to add to his dad’s worries so, keeping his eyes closed, he pretended to sleep, working hard to calm his breathing to complete the fiction.

His father hovered above him, then suddenly leant in, planting a gentle kiss on Luke’s cheek.

‘Love you,’ he whispered, his voice quivering as he spoke.

He rose and Luke heard his footsteps receding as he crept from the room. His father hesitated in the doorway and Luke kept stock still, willing himself not to blow it now. Then his father pulled the door to and Luke was alone once more. He lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering if Alice was at peace.

As his thoughts turned on his beloved sister, he was startled by a new noise. Something he’d not heard before in his short life.

His father, in the room next door, crying his heart out.