All the Lies I've told

09 ; Chapter Nine

song of the chapter is Zombie by The Cranberries

I could hear my heart beating in my ears, a sound that seemed so very familiar to me now. I felt like I was always in some sort of weird state of panic. But as I looked at Freddie, I knew he was feeling the same sort of thing as me. He kept re-reading over the letter, as though if he stared at the words long enough then they would change.

    "Right, let's calm down for a minute," Freddie said as he took a seat on my bed. It looked like he was saying it to settle his own nerves rather than my own and I was sort of grateful that he knew and I wasn't alone.

    "This is exactly why I didn't want to go to the police, Viv," he started as he folded the letter back up and put it in the envelope. "I don't know whether she's fucking with us or not."

I inhaled a large breath of air and slowly exhaled it through my mouth, "you're right. I'm sorry."

Freddie just nodded his head absentmindedly a couple of times, before looking up at me with inquisitive hazel eyes, "Did she have a problem with her mother?"

I shook my head as I tried to think of something to say, "Pandora's mum is a lot nicer than mine," I stated as I gazed down the hall at my parents' closed bedroom door. "She's how you would expect a mum, friendly, warm - nice," I finished before looking back at Freddie. 

    "Maybe she's not as nice as you think," Freddie suggested as he scratched at the stubble along his jaw.

    "Considering all that she went through in her life, and the type of daughter she had, it's remarkable that she managed to stay so lovely. So her and Pandora didn't get on, Pandora didn't really get on with anyone," I replied with a shrug of my shoulders.

    "Except you," Freddie replied immediately.

I paused, thinking about what he was saying. Did Pandora and I actually get on? I obviously didn't know as much as I thought I did, which brought up the question - Did Pandora actually trust me or was I just another pawn in her game?

   "Yeah, except me."

Freddie paused himself for a couple of seconds before shaking his head and squinting his eyes, "you said considering what her mum had been through, what do you mean?"

I sighed and sat down. It wasn't a particularly nice story, or one I liked to tell. It had affected Pandora and her parents for years, and now that Pandora was gone, I assumed that her death was bringing up old memories and broken hearts.

    "When Pandora was seven or something, her family went on holiday to some beachside apartment in Spain. I think it was because her mum had recently been ill and it was supposed to cheer them all up and act as a stress reliever," I started as I sat on the bed beside Freddie and kept an eye on any movement from down the hall, "It was near the end of the holiday and Pandora fell and cut her leg pretty bad and her parents were fussing over her because she was crying. While they were doing that, Pandora's baby brother, Theo, somehow managed to fall into the pool in some sort of freak accident and drowned. He was only two or something and her mum remembered that they had left him on the terrace when they had been trying to get Pandora to calm down and she went out and found him floating face down in the pool."

The story always seemed to cut me up and make it hard to think for a while. Partly because it was so tragic and partly because it was yet another thing Pandora had lied about. She was only young, but it took a certain type of person to make up something like she did.

    "Why do I feel like that's not the end of the story?" Freddie asked.

    "Because it's not," I replied before sighing. At times like these, I felt that it said a lot about the type of person Pandora was when she repeatedly got herself caught up in all of these lies. Not only that, it also made me wonder what sort of person it made me to stick by her despite everything.