My Biggest Lie (21 page)

‘I'm going to go and talk to his agent,' said Amy, ‘and pick up a copy of this weird book.'

‘Before you go,' I started, but she had found a space and slipped through into the aisle. The way she marched to the
book stall made me feverish. The bouncer who had not let me in was still waiting in the aisle for me, but he was suddenly pushed back by a crowd of agents, editors and journalists heading our way. Being thrown out was a delightful idea. I looked over to the drinks table, miles away, the clean white table cloth, the endless rows of golden wine.

‘Get ready to do some serious lying,' Alejandro whispered to me. ‘I'm going to try to get thrown out,' I told him. But it was too late. They were upon us.

It seemed to go on for ever. The questions, the optimistic insinuations. Journalists suggested the most outrageous turns of events, hoping we would be taken aback and reveal their truth, yet they suggested nothing as outrageous as what was actually happening. Nor was it the journalists who set my teeth most on edge, for whom making our story consistent was most frightening. It was worse with my friends, the colleagues and rivals I'd always liked and admired; they were harder to lie to not just because I didn't want to lie to them but because they knew what they were talking about, how incredible it was for an unheard-of novel by Craig Bennett to appear overnight. In our tribute to Craig, our enormous fuck-you to Craig, James and I had consigned ourselves to either a lifetime of lying or a lifetime of disgrace. The two things I had fled to Buenos Aires to try to cure myself of.

I thought the bouncer would never come for me, but after the fiftieth question I found myself with a strong arm round my shoulder, being marched towards the back of the room. I didn't even notice who he was until I was already well away from the pack. ‘I'm afraid you're going to have to leave now,' he said.

‘That's OK,' I said, leaning into him like a tired girlfriend. ‘Are you going to beat me up?' I asked as he led me into a corridor away from the party.

‘Do you want me to?'

‘There's a part of me that thinks I probably deserve it.'

‘A little guy like you? Mate, you don't deserve nothing.'

And with that he opened a fire door and pushed me outside. I was round the corner from the front entrance, but he pointed me in the other direction. ‘You're going to walk that way and I'm going to stand here and make sure you do.'

I nodded and held out my hand. He looked at it and pointed in the direction I was supposed to be going. I smiled. He didn't. It was a satisfying exchange for both of us. ‘Bye bye then,' I said. I thanked him and went.

Chapter 25

I
found James upstairs in the Academy, sitting at a table in the corner using my novel as a bar mat for a whisky. The bar wasn't very busy. A handsome man who looked like he'd been sleeping in his suit was telling the barmaid about his day at work: ‘And so I told the designers, if you want to play around with coke then do it at the Christmas party under controlled conditions and not on my fucking front cover.' The barmaid started to tell him a story in return about a cocktail she'd invented last night which used a cooked sausage as a stirrer.

I'd suspected James was going to be here, but I would have come anyway. Craig had brought me here on the night he died. Here, in the middle of my despair, he had filled me temporarily with the greatest of optimism. I walked over to James and sat down.

‘He was sitting, staring gloomily at a glass of whisky, when the boy who had killed his friend walked in.'

James looked up and took a deliberate sip. ‘Not a bad first line. Hemingwayesque? Graham Greene? Is the “gloomily” essential? What's the next line?'

‘The boy looked at him and tried to contain his anger – seriously, what the fuck was that speech? I've had Lauren Laverne trying to interview me for
The Culture Show
. My phone's been ringing non-stop. You've put me in the news.'

‘That seems a little melodramatic and implausible now as a work of fiction.'

‘It has become implausible. What are we going to do about that? The whole point is for it to
not
be implausible. And now we have a subplot about a disgraced editor who was with Craig on the day he died and who subsequently discovered his long-lost novel. And who then broke in through the girls' toilets to his book launch! Christ.'

‘But what a great
story
.'

‘Do you mean that?' And in that instant I realised he did. I put a cigarette in my mouth, put it back in my packet. I tried to say something and couldn't. ‘You did it deliberately,' I eventually managed, ‘for publicity.'

‘I did it for you.'

‘It hasn't
helped
me. You've just transferred the responsibility for this monstrosity from you to me. You arsehole. Don't think I won't bring you down when we get caught. Don't think Alejandro won't support my side of the story, how you stole my novel.'

James gulped down the rest of his whisky. ‘Liam, listen mate. What's all this? Don't think like that. I don't think like that. What we did was a terrible idea, OK, I know, I realised that on stage. I'm sorry. We should never have done it. I wanted to confess. I came this close.'

‘Can you imagine what would have become of our careers, of our lives, if you had done?'

‘I did imagine,' he sighed. ‘I imagined quickly and accurately and I changed my mind. What you said about me doing it for publicity, it wasn't like that. I did it for
you
,
Liam. I didn't expect to see you, I wasn't allowed to invite you, and then having to do a speech for your novel and not mention you – it was obscene. It was your night. I had to say something. It was an awful thing to take your night away from you.'

‘That's the least awful thing. It was never my night. Be consistent. Remember how you convinced me? You don't even believe what you're saying.'

‘I do believe what I'm saying. I always believe what I'm saying.'

‘That's the fucking problem.'

‘Liam, Liam, I just wanted to credit you.'

‘Then you shouldn't have persuaded me to forge someone else's book.'

‘Shhh,' he said, looking around him.

It was pointless for me to try to make him confess his motives. He didn't know them himself. His promotional reflexes were so instinctual they occurred to him as morals. I could never rely on him as a friend, still less, as I had tried to, as a father figure. But I'm not convinced you can rely on most friends or fathers either, and for better or worse I was bound to him.

‘Please let's not argue,' he said. ‘Get a drink, won't you? After all, this for us is Craig's wake. Let's raise a glass to him. Go on, my card's behind the bar.'

It was not a very funereal drink. I ordered a bottle of the house champagne, the same type I remember sharing with Craig on his last visit here. It was our launch night, after all.

‘Would you like me to pop the cork?' the barmaid asked.

‘No, please stay alive,' I said.

She looked at me funnily and left the cork in. What
fragile hearts we have. What pathetic excuses I had allowed mine while I had pretended Sarah's wasn't beating.

I carried over the ice-bucket and our two flutes. James nodded. I banged the bottle down on the table like a call to business, twisted off the cork and we watched the foam rise from the neck before I poured two glasses.

‘To Craig, our friend,' said James. We clinked. ‘Angie, come over here and drink a glass for Craig,' he called to the barmaid.

It wasn't long before we had finished the bottle and another was popping. Enough was never enough. This is what I'd learned from James, from life, and this is what would kill me, like Craig, like Dad, if I didn't unlearn it. I looked at my phone to check the time, noticing the many missed calls I had accrued from unknown numbers. I had to be somewhere else in an hour.

While I scrolled through these numbers, I heard James answer his phone – ‘Clara, how are you? Of course, we're in the Academy, bring the gang. Yes, yes, I'm with Liam. Come down.'

‘Was that Clara Pembroke?' I asked, when he had put the phone down. ‘The literary editor of the
Sunday Times
?'

‘It was. She's coming down with some of the crowd from earlier.' He was excited. He had completely forgotten why I had been angry with him.

‘I told you I'm not giving any interviews about this,' I said, putting on my jacket. ‘You need to keep these people away from me, they are all
yours
now.'

I wanted to tell him to stick the money too, whatever that was going to be, however he was going to sneak it through the company's books. But I was implicated too far already, and I needed the cash.

‘Enjoy yourself, I'm off,' I said, picking up his copy of
My Biggest Lie
. I wanted that for later.

‘Liam, don't go away like that,' he pleaded. ‘You do understand, don't you? We have to forgive each other.'

‘If I ever forgive myself, I'll forgive you too,' I said. ‘But I don't think I ever will.'

With that I walked away. But I made the mistake at the door of looking back into the room before I climbed down the stairs. James was standing up, looking at me miserably. Craig was dead. We'd made sure of that. I remembered my friend who had tried to save me when I didn't deserve it and walked back to James and hugged him.

‘We've done such an awful stupid thing,' he said.

‘You never know, we might get away with it until retirement age. And if we don't it will be a relief to tell the truth. Of course we'd probably have to go to prison. Where better to write our memoirs?'

He managed a faint smile at that. ‘I'll find a way to destroy the company's manuscript accidentally,' he said. ‘Perhaps I'll burn down the offices. Except there's a copy with the agent. Perhaps I'll burn down
her
offices.' He looked excited now.

‘That's a fine plan,' I said.

‘Craig wouldn't mind, would he, what we did?'

‘Of course he would. He'd be bloody furious.'

‘He would have found it funny, I know that.'

‘We can only hope so. Let's stop being so funny, though, let's have less fun. For him. For ourselves.'

James put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me proudly. ‘A good idea, Liam.'

I didn't like that look. It didn't belong to him. But he could own that pride if he needed it. I couldn't give it to anyone else. He let go and we looked at each other sadly.

‘You sure you won't stay?' he asked.

‘I'm sure. I have to be somewhere else.'

‘Somewhere good, I hope.'

I hoped so too. Sarah had rented a new place close to our old one. She had answered my letter and agreed to meet me. We'd spoken on the phone just after the funeral but I didn't know any of the important details about how her life had changed. I had not dared to ask if she had a new boyfriend.

‘Someone good,' I said.

‘Good luck.'

I'd need more than that.

On the bus, getting close to our old stop, I took out my pen and dedicated a dead man's novel to Sarah. I crossed out Craig Bennett on the title page and wrote the very last line of the love letter.

I am sorry, Sarah, and I hope you will forgive me. Love from Liam.

It was something I could offer to her that no one else could. My biggest lie. My only love. For a moment, I toyed with throwing it out of the top window. But it was a heavy book, and I had done enough damage with it already.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to:

Peter Straus, Sam Copeland

Francis Bickmore, Jamie Byng, Andrea Joyce, Lorraine McCann, Jo Dingley, Jaz Lacey-Campbell and everyone at Canongate

Alan Mahar, Catherine O'Flynn, Keiran Goddard

Michael Schmidt, Zoe Strachan, Kei Miller

Jacquie, Naomi, Rachel and all my family

Edward Robinson and Lucila Porthe, for Argentina

Rik Evans and Kevin Pocklington, kind hosts in Scotland

Zanna Gilbert

Charlotte Payne, Johnpaul Villafrati, Ian Edwards, Johnny Nichols

Mark Richards, Lee Brackstone

Anna Kelly

 

CHANNELLING GREAT
CONTENT FOR YOU
TO
WATCH, LISTEN
TO AND
READ.