Grazia Book Club: Truth Hurts By Rebecca Reid

Truth Hurts by Rebecca Reid ‘Ready, Mrs Spencer?’ he asked. No, she thought. Not ready at all.

‘Yes. Go ahead.’ She wanted the crowd assembled behind to hear her.

It was a noise like nothing she had ever heard. A bang would be the easiest way to describe it, but it was more than that. Shattering. Cracking. Hundreds of years of history and memories collapsing as the wrecking ball swung into the house.

Her house.

She watched the honey-coloured walls fold in on themselves, watched as the ball smashed through room after room. The crowd gasped with each swing.

It really looked like a doll’s house now. You could see right in, the rooms rudely naked without the front of the house. It was almost comical, the huge porcelain bath of the blue bathroom exposed to the elements. And then, with another swing of the ball, that was gone too. Poppy tried not to wince; she tried to look as though this was what she wanted. She had to put on a show for the people who had come to watch.

This was entertainment for them.

She’d dressed carefully that morning, choosing the beautifully cut trench coat and heeled boots as protec- tion against them just as much as the cold winter air.

I want this, Poppy told herself. This is how I win.

Clouds of beige dust filled the air, her home reduced to nothing.

Odd to think that once upon a time she had worried about stains on the sofa or marks on the carpet.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the man with the clipboard.

She must be pale underneath all of the make-up. She nodded again. ‘Yes. Fine.’

‘Most people don’t like to watch demolitions,’ he said. His suit was cheap. Shiny. The kind of thing Drew would have despised.

‘No?’

‘Upsetting, I suppose. Seeing your home go.’

Poppy pulled her coat around her. He had no idea. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

Those were the official words. The words she had said to the local council, to people in the village who asked about it. To the local paper when they rang to discuss her generosity.

It was a gift to the community, she claimed. A lovely grassy park full of climbing frames and swings, some- where for local children to play together.

It was a way of changing a tragic place into a place of enjoyment. Of hope. And no one seemed to question it. After all, how could Poppy really be expected to go on living there, after what had happened?

Five Months Earlier

‘Right, they’re now officially six hours late,’ Poppy said into the phone. ‘I am the only person in Ibiza who’s des- perate to go to bed.’ She pulled her legs up underneath her, her bare feet a little cold.

‘Have you called them?’ Gina’s voice, though hundreds of miles away, was comfortingly familiar. Poppy could see her, phone to her ear, tangled up in her duvet, curls tied up on the top of her head. For the hundredth time that week she wished that Gina was here.

‘No, I hadn’t thought of that, I’ve just been trying to reach them with my mind,’ she sniped.

Gina didn’t answer.

‘Sorry,’ Poppy said. ‘I’m just pissed off.’ ‘I can tell.’

‘It’s the third time this week.’

‘You need to say something to her when they get back.’ Poppy raised her eyebrows at the phone. Maybe Gina’s boss, who adored her, might take kindly to being told off by the nanny but Mrs Henderson made Cruella de Vil

look like Maria von Trapp.

‘Have you started playing that game where you work out how much they’re actually paying you per hour?’ asked Gina. ‘That’s when you know it’s bad.’

‘We’re down to £3.70,’ Poppy said. Eighteen hours a day, six days a week, for four hundred quid. She’d done the calculation on her phone after the kids had gone to bed.

Gina hissed through her teeth. ‘That’s bad. My worst was the Paris trip with the Gardiners. Seven kids, fifty quid for fourteen hours a day. And they made me keep the receipts so they could check I wasn’t buying my lunch or museum tickets with theirs. I might have actually lost money that week.’

Poppy used her finger to hook a piece of ice from her glass of water. It slipped, falling back in. She tried again, craving the splintering of the ice in her back molars. It slipped again. ‘Why are rich people so stingy?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know, babe,’ said Gina, yawning. ‘I need to hit the hay.’

‘No-o,’ Poppy whined. ‘I’ve cleaned the kitchen twice. I’ve laid the table for breakfast. I need you to entertain me . . .’

‘Go to sleep.’

Gina was right, of course. The youngest Henderson, little Lola, would be awake in four hours, and if Poppy didn’t snatch some sleep before then she’d find herself snappy and short-tempered all day. ‘I’m not supposed to.’

‘That woman is a psycho. Ignore her. Go to bed.’

‘OK, OK. Abandon me.’

‘Call me tomorrow. Tell me all about how you calmly explained to them that you need notice if you’re going to be babysitting late nights.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Night.’

Gina made a loud kissing noise and then the line went dead.

Poppy could go to bed. Of course she could. But if Mrs Henderson came back sober enough to realize that Poppy had slept on the job, she’d lose her temper. Her husband might earn a million quid a year in the City, but she wasn’t above docking Poppy’s pay over crimes like needing sleep. Poppy tipped her head back, looking up at the sky. The stars were incredible here. It was hard to believe that it was the same orange sky she looked out over every night from her tiny room in the Hendersons’ London house.

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