The Truth-Teller's Lie

by Sophie Hannah

  She’s left most of her things here, which I am forcing myself to see as a good sign. All night I’ve wanted to ring her, but I’ve done nothing about it. Concealing what happened to me three years ago was easy. Walking into a police station and accusing an innocent man of rape was easy. So why is it so hard to phone my best friend and say sorry?

  Yvon will think I don’t care; that I might be scared would never occur to her. Of the two of us, I’m the frightening one. She teases me about it. It’s true, I can be intimidating when I want to be. One pointed look from me is enough to make Yvon wipe up all the crumbs on the kitchen counter or put the lid back on the butter dish after she’s used it. I like things to be tidy. I can’t think straight if they’re not. Tools are never left out in my workshop overnight; I always put them back in their proper place on the shelf: my dummy mallets next to my diamond whetstone, which lives next to my chisels.

  You’d understand. At the Traveltel, you arrange your clothes neatly on the back of the sofa before getting into bed. I’ve never seen one of your socks on the floor. When I told Yvon this, she wrinkled her nose and said you sounded like a geek. I said it wasn’t like that at all, she was imagining it wrongly if she thought that. You’re cool about it, quick too. You must have practised, because you always make it seem as if you just happened to drop your clothes exactly parallel to the edge of the settee.

  Do you remember, I once said to you that if Yvon ever disappeared, the police would be able to list everything she had recently eaten without too much trouble? To think of this now that you’re missing makes the hairs on my arms stand up. But it’s true. Dried pink flakes stuck to the underside of a frying pan would point clearly to salmon for dinner the previous night. A pan of congealed white fat with burned black bits in it would be evidence that she’d had sausages for lunch.

  You told me I should insist that she clears up after herself. When I do, she accuses me of tyranny. ‘You’re turning into a monster,’ she says, reluctantly removing a three-week-old empty milk carton from the fridge.

  I’m so used to it now, my nobody’s-going-to-get-away-with-anything attitude, I don’t think I could change back. I have become —deliberately at first, though it soon stopped feeling like an effort—a person who makes an issue out of any small thing. ‘Go with the flow,’ Yvon is always telling me. But to me, going with the flow means marching obediently, at knifepoint, towards a stranger’s car.

  If I hadn’t become a monster, you might never have noticed me that day in the service station. I don’t know how much of the row you saw or heard. Nor have I ever managed to extract from you certain crucial pieces of information, such as whether you too were eating in the food court that day. Perhaps you were in the shop, on the other side of the covered walkway, and you only came over when you heard me shouting. I’d like to know, because I love the story of how we met and I want it to be complete.

  I was on my way to see a possible customer, an elderly lady who wanted somebody to restore the cube sundial in her garden, which she said was eighteenth century and in bad condition. I’d told her I did mainly original commissions and very little restoration work, but she’d sounded so despondent that I’d relented and agreed to go and look at her dial. I realised I was hungry almost as soon as I set off, so I stopped at Rawndesley East Services.

  No sane person expects decent food from a service station, and I was quite prepared for my chicken, chips and peas to be lukewarm, greasy and flavourless. I’m not like you; I don’t mind mediocre food sometimes. It can be comforting to eat junk. But on this occasion, what was handed to me on a tray was offensive. Did you see it? Were you close enough, at that point, to get a proper look?

  The chicken was grey and reeked of old dustbins that have never been washed. The smell made me retch. I told the man who was serving me that the meat was off. He rolled his eyes, as if I was being difficult, and said that I hadn’t even tasted it yet. If it tasted bad, I could bring it back and he’d give me a new meal, he said, but he wasn’t prepared to take it back when I hadn’t even tried it. I asked to speak to the manager and he told me, sullenly, that he was in charge, the boss wasn’t in yet.

  ‘When will she be in?’ I asked, hoping he was the sort of man who would hate to have a woman as a boss.

  ‘It’s a he,’ he said. ‘Not for another two hours.’

  ‘Fine. Then I’ll wait. And when your manager arrives, I’ll advise him to fire you.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ The man shrugged. His name was Bruce Doherty. He was wearing a badge.

  ‘You only need to take one look at this chicken to know it’s bad! It’s rotting! You taste it if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘No thanks.’ He smirked.

  I took that as an acknowledgement that the meat was past its sell-by date and he knew it; he was gloating, showing me he didn’t care. ‘I’m going to make sure you get sacked, you wanker!’ I yelled in his face. ‘What’ll you do then, hey? Brain surgeon? Rocket scientist? Or maybe something that’s better suited to your talents: wiping shit off toilets, or selling your arse to visiting businessmen round the back of Rawndesley Station!’

  He ignored me. There were people queuing behind me and he turned to the first of these, saying, ‘Sorry about that. What can I get you?’

  ‘Look, I’m very busy,’ I told him. ‘All I want is a plate of food that isn’t poisonous.’

  A frumpily dressed middle-aged woman, waiting to be served, touched my arm. ‘There are children here,’ she said, pointing to a table across the room.

  I shook her hand off me. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Children who, if it was up to you and him and everyone else in here, would be fed rotting chicken and die of E. coli!’

  Everybody left me alone after that. I phoned the woman that I was on my way to see about the cube dial and told her I’d been held up. Then I sat down at the table nearest to the serving counter, with my tray of stinking food in front of me, waiting for the boss to arrive. Rage bubbled inside me, but I think I did a pretty good job of appearing calm. I can’t control everything, but I can make sure that no stranger is able to guess how I’m feeling simply by looking at me.

  I caught Bruce Doherty’s eye every now and then. It wasn’t long before he started to look uncomfortable. Giving up didn’t enter my head as a possibility. This was one small bit of justice I was determined to get. I’ll vandalise the place, I thought. I’ll walk round the room tipping people’s trays of food on to the floor. I’ll pick up my plate of hot poisonous slop and throw it in the manager’s face.

  After I’d waited for nearly an hour and a half, I saw you walking towards me. My anger had thickened and risen inside me so that it blocked out every other thought and feeling. That’s why I didn’t notice at first how odd you looked as you approached. You were wearing your grey collarless shirt and jeans, smiling at me, balancing a wooden tray on one hand, like a waiter. I saw your smile first. I was starving, dizzy, sustained only by my vindictive fantasies. My insides felt cold and hollow, and there was a sharp metallic taste in my mouth.

  You walked a perfect straight line towards me, with your free arm behind your back. I only noticed you properly once you were standing beside my table. I was aware that the tray in your hand wasn’t the same kind as the ones that were all over the food court—discarded on tables and in a tall pile in front of the counter where Doherty was still serving his lethal slop. Your tray was real wood, not wood-effect plastic.

  On it was a knife and fork wrapped in a white cloth napkin, an empty glass and a bottle of white wine. Pinot Grigio: your favourite kind. This, like the coincidence of our meeting at the service station, sowed the seeds of a tradition. We have never shared a bottle of wine that wasn’t Pinot Grigio; we meet at the Traveltel—even though you say it’s not romantic enough, even though we could find somewhere much nicer for the same price—because Rawndesley East Services is where we first met. You have the mentality of an anxious collector, eager to preserve everything, to lose nothing we once had. Your love o
f tradition and ritual is one of the many things that has endeared you to me: the way you seize on anything pleasurable or good that happens by chance and try to make a custom out of it.

  I tried to tell the police this—that a man who insists on drinking the same wine in the same room on the same day of every week would not suddenly break his own devout routine by disappearing without notice—but all they could do was look at me with stony indifference.

  You picked up the tray Doherty had given me and placed it on the adjacent table. Then you put your tray down in front of me. Beside the napkin and cutlery was a china plate with a dome-shaped silver lid. You removed this without saying anything, smiling proudly. I was amazed, confused. As I told you later, I thought you were Doherty’s boss; somehow you’d heard about what had happened, perhaps from another member of staff, and you were here to make amends.

  But you weren’t wearing the red-and-blue uniform or a name badge. And this was no ordinary amends. This was Magret de Canard aux Poires. You told me the name the next time we met. To me it looked like slices of tender duck breast—brown at the sides and pink in the middle—arranged in a neat circle around a peeled, cooked whole pear. It smelled as if it came from heaven. I was so ravenous I nearly burst into tears.

  ‘You’re supposed to drink red wine with duck,’ you told me matter-of-factly. Those were the first words I heard you speak. ‘But I thought white might be better, as it’s the middle of the day.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked, preparing to be angry, hoping I wouldn’t have to be, because I was desperate to eat the food you’d brought. Doherty was watching, as mystified as I was.

  ‘Robert Haworth. I heard you yelling at that tosser.’ You nodded in the direction of the hot-food counter. ‘He’s obviously never going to give you a lunch that’s edible, so I thought I would.’

  ‘Do I know you?’ I asked, still mystified.

  ‘You do now,’ you said. ‘I couldn’t let you starve, could I?’

  ‘Where did this meal come from?’ There had to be a catch, I thought. ‘Did you cook it yourself?’ What sort of man, I was wondering, hears a stranger wrangling over a bad meal in a service station and rushes home to cook her something better?

  ‘Not me. It’s from the Bay Tree.’ Spilling’s most expensive bistro. My parents took me there once and our meal, including wine, cost nearly four hundred pounds.

  ‘So . . .’ I stared at you and waited, making it clear that further explanation was required.

  You shrugged. ‘I saw you were in trouble and I wanted to help. I rang the Bay Tree, explained the situation. Put in an order. Then I nipped down in my lorry and picked it up. I’m a lorry driver.’

  I thought you must want something from me. I didn’t know what, but I was on my guard. I wasn’t prepared to eat a mouthful, even though my stomach hurt and my mouth was watering, until I’d worked out what your agenda was.

  Doherty appeared beside us. There was a large fat stain on his shirt, roughly the shape of Portugal. ‘I’m afraid you can’t—’

  ‘Leave the lady in peace to eat her lunch,’ you said to him.

  ‘You’re not allowed to bring food—’

  ‘You’re not allowed to sell food that’s inedible,’ you corrected him. Your tone was quiet and polite throughout, but I wasn’t fooled and neither was Bruce Doherty. We both knew you were going to do something. Astonished, I watched you pick up the plate with the chicken, chips and peas on it. You pulled open the neck of Doherty’s shirt and tipped the food into the space between his uniform and his chest. He made a disgusted noise, halfway between a wail and a groan, looking down at himself. Then he walked unevenly out of the food court, spilling peas from his clothes. Some rolled on the floor in his wake, some he crushed with the soles of his black shoes. I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live.

  ‘Sorry,’ you said once he’d gone. I had the impression that you’d lost some confidence. You spoke in a more stilted way, and seemed to hunch a little. ‘Look, I just wanted to help,’ you mumbled. You seemed embarrassed, as if you’d decided that bringing me a fancy duck dish from the nearest posh restaurant was a nerdy thing to do. ‘Too many people stand by and do nothing to help people in trouble,’ you said.

  Those words changed everything.

  ‘I know,’ I said forcefully, thinking of the men in dinner suits who had applauded my rapist two years earlier. ‘I’m grateful for your help. And this—’ I pointed at the duck ‘—looks amazing.’

  You smiled, reassured. ‘Tuck in, then,’ you said. ‘I hope you enjoy it.’ You turned to leave and I was surprised all over again. I’d assumed that at the very least, you’d stay and talk to me while I ate. But you’d said you were a lorry driver. You were bound to have an urgent delivery, a timetable. You couldn’t afford to waste your whole day hanging around a service station with me. You’d done more than enough for me already.

  I knew in that instant that I couldn’t let you leave. This was the turning point in my life. I was going to make it the turning point. Instead of wasting all my energies reacting to the many bad things that happened to me, I would pursue one good thing.

  You disappeared through the glass double doors at the front of the service station and soon you were no longer visible. That frightened me into action. I abandoned the food and ran outside as fast as I could. You were in the car park, about to get into your lorry. ‘Wait!’ I shouted, not caring how undignified I looked, sprinting wildly towards you.

  ‘Problem?’ You looked worried.

  I was out of breath. ‘Aren’t you going to . . . have to take the tray and the plate back to the Bay Tree afterwards?’ I said. Pathetic, I know, but it seemed like a reasonable pretext at the time.

  You grinned. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I probably ought to, yes.’

  ‘Well . . . why don’t you come back in, then?’ I said, deliberately flirtatious.

  ‘I suppose I could.’ You frowned. ‘But . . . maybe I should get moving, actually.’

  I wasn’t going to let you get away. Something amazing had happened, quite out of the blue, and I was determined not to let it slip from my grasp. ‘Would you have done what you did—bringing that food and wine—for anybody?’ I asked.

  ‘You mean anybody who’d just been handed a plate of decaying chicken?’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Probably not,’ you admitted, looking away like a shy schoolboy. That was the happiest moment of my life. That was when I knew that I was special for you. You did something no one else would have done for me, and it set me free. It made me feel I could be as crazy as you, that I could do anything. There were no limits or rules. I saw your wedding ring and disregarded it entirely. You were married. So what? Bad luck, Mrs Robert Haworth, I thought, because I’m going to take your husband away from you. I was utterly ruthless.

  For two years I hadn’t considered getting involved with a man. The idea of sex had repulsed me. Not any more. I wanted to tear off my clothes right there in the car park and order you to make love to me. It had to happen; I had to have you. Meeting you enabled me to discard my whole history in an instant. You knew nothing about me, except that I was an attractive woman with a temper. That Magret de Canard aux Poires might as well have been a glass slipper from a prince. Everything was different now, all saved and redeemed. My life had changed from a nightmare to a fairy tale in the space of minutes.

  An hour later we were booking room eleven at the Traveltel for the first time.

  The doorbell rings. I run into the hall, thinking it’s Yvon.

  It isn’t. It’s DC Sellers, who was here this morning. ‘Your curtains are open,’ he says. ‘I saw you were still up.’

  ‘You just happened to be driving past my house at two in the morning?’

  He looks at me as if it’s a stupid question. ‘Not quite.’

  I wait for him to continue. I am as afraid to discover that you’ve abandoned me by choice as that something terrible has happened to you.

  ‘Are you
all right?’ Sellers asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I come in for a minute?’

  ‘Can I stop you?’

  He follows me through to the lounge and perches on the edge of the sofa, his large stomach resting on his thighs.

  I stand by the window. ‘Do you expect me to offer you a drink? Ovaltine?’ I cannot stop acting. It’s a compulsion. I craft lines in my head and deliver them in a brittle voice.

  ‘On Monday, you told DC Waterhouse and DS Zailer that if they went to Robert Haworth’s house, they’d find something.’

  ‘What have you found?’ I snap. ‘Have you found Robert? Is he all right?’

  ‘On Tuesday, you told DC Waterhouse that Robert Haworth raped you. Now you’re concerned for his welfare?’

  ‘Is he all right? Tell me, you bastard!’ I begin to sob, too exhausted to stop myself.

  ‘What did you think we’d find in Mr Haworth’s house?’ Sellers asks. ‘And how could you be so sure?’

  ‘I told you! I told Waterhouse and Zailer: I saw something in Robert’s lounge, through the window. It made me have a panic attack. I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ There’s still a huge black hole in the middle of my memory of that dreadful afternoon. But I’m sure I saw something. I’m surer of that than of anything else. I wait until I’m calm enough to speak. ‘You must know that feeling. When you see an actor on television, and you know their name’s buried in your brain somewhere, but your memory can’t quite grasp it.’ I’m so exhausted I can hardly focus. DC Sellers is a blur.

  ‘Where were you last Wednesday night and last Thursday?’ he says. ‘Can you account for every minute of your time?’

  ‘I don’t see why I need to. Is Robert all right? Tell me!’