Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark

polished, their steps scrubbed clean. There was no mistaking the street’s respectability. Tucked behind the splendid villas of the adjoining streets with their pillared porticoes and extravagant stucco mouldings, the houses bore themselves with the prim self-effacement of maiden aunts.
    Maribel straightened her hat and tugged the creases from her gloves. Then, descending from the cab, she walked slowly up the four shallow steps to the front door of number 8. When she pulled the bell the loudness of it startled her. She touched her tongue to her dry lips. She could hear the sound of footsteps from inside the house. She arranged her features into an expression of polite enquiry.
    The young woman who opened the door wore a dress of ice-blue silk, stiffly ruffled and bustled in a style that was no longer quite fashionable. Her hair, swept up in a knot, was mousy brown, with a short fringe frizzled over her shallow forehead. She stared at Maribel, her eyes round and pale as sucked sweets. Maribel frowned.
    ‘Is Mrs Bryant not at home?’ she asked stiffly. ‘I am expected.’
    The woman blinked, her mouth wide open in an O. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, her hands flapping at her sides. Maribel stared at her.
    ‘Edith?’
    ‘Oh my, oh my, Peggy! It’s really you!’ Glancing in alarm along the deserted street, she seized Maribel’s hand and tugged at her like an impatient child. Her own hand was hot and very damp. ‘Oh my goodness, come in, come in! Quickly, before anyone sees you. Oh, Peggy, look at you! I can’t believe you are really here.’
    Peggy. No one had called her Peggy for thirteen years. She had always hated it. No proper actress could be called Peggy, or Margaret for that matter. They were starchy schoolgirl names, names made of needlepoint and piano lessons and conjugated French verbs. Girls called Peggy were not breathless with passion, magnificent with anger, devastated by grief. They did not raise armies or plot murder or love so entirely that they would swallow poison rather than live without their beloved. They never stood before a rapturous audience, their arms filled with lilies, to receive a tearful standing ovation. Girls called Peggy mouldered for ever in the provinces, where nothing good ever happened and the only prospect was to become the wife of a red-faced squire.
    ‘I am Maribel now,’ she said.
    Pulling her sister into the house, Edith closed the door hurriedly behind her.
    ‘Oh, Peggy,’ she said. ‘I mean, Maribel, oh, I don’t know if I can call you that, it’s – well, it’s so pretty, exotic even, but – I can’t believe it. It’s really you! Mother, it’s her! It’s Peggy! Oh, Peggy, you look just as you always did! Mother would have had me at the Ragged School – Tuesday is my day for Good Works – but I simply couldn’t. You don’t mind, do you? I shan’t breathe a word, I promise. Mother has sworn me to secrecy. And the children are gone to the museum and the maid sent out on some fool’s errand and Cook won’t come upstairs, she never does, so you are quite safe.’
    Maribel blinked. ‘You are married then?’
    ‘For five years. So I suppose I’ve changed my name too, how funny. I am Mrs Hubert Birtles now. You look a little pale, Peggy. Can I fetch you some water?’
    Maribel shook her head. Perhaps it was the heat that made her so dizzy.
    ‘Mother!’ Edith cried. ‘Look, it’s Peggy. She’s come! Except that she is called Maribel now. Isn’t that a pretty name, Maribel?’
    ‘Hello, Peggy dear.’
    Maribel turned round. Her mother stood in the hall. She wore the three-stranded pearl necklace she had always worn when Maribel was a child and a green dress with a high collar. A green dress. So she was not in mourning. Maribel swallowed, silently thanking God. If it was Ida at least she was not dead.
    ‘Mother.’
    For as long as she could remember Maribel had known that her family did not belong to her, that she had somehow