Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘My lying gives you heartburn?’

‘Right there.’ He rubbed the centre of his chest.

‘Oh. Well, I’m sorry about that.’

He winced and rubbed it again. ‘Your nose just grew, Pinocchio.’

I shoved him playfully. ‘Why don’t you just let me tell people the truth? In my own time, that is.’

‘I don’t think there’s enough time in the world to allow that to happen.’

‘Well, I’m not going to gather the troops and admit everything all at once but I’ll do it. I’ll do it when the time is right. How about we agree that I just won’t tell any more lies from now on, and you do your little accompanying, observing thing if you have to.’

‘How will you stop yourself from lying?’

‘I think I know how not to lie if I don’t want to,’ I said, insulted. ‘It’s not as if I have a problem.’

‘What is it about the wrong-number guy that makes you tell the truth?’

‘Who?’

‘You know who. See, you’ve just done it again,’ he said, amused. ‘Your first reaction is to deny any knowledge of anything.’

I ignored his insight. ‘I told him not to call me any more.’

‘Why? Did you call and he was engaged?’

Though he was pleased with his joke, I ignored it. ‘Nah. It was just too weird.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘Yeah,’ I said vaguely, not sure if it was pitiful. I held out my hand. ‘So have we got a deal? I don’t lie, you observe?’

He thought about it. ‘I want to add to it.’

I dropped my hand. ‘Of course you do.’

‘Every time you lie, I reveal a truth.’ He held out his hand. ‘Deal?’

I thought about it; I didn’t like it. I couldn’t truthfully promise that I would never lie again, all I could do was try, and I couldn’t trust him to reveal any amount of truth in my life, but if I agreed to the deal then at least it put the ball in my court and he wouldn’t be charging around my life like a bull in a china shop. ‘Fine. It’s a deal.’ We shook on it.

It was tense when I got back to the office. The others couldn’t figure out whether to be angry with me or not, just as they couldn’t figure out whether to be angry with Steve or not so we just worked in silence, no doubt putting aside any issues that needed discussion with one another in the newly created when everything gets back to normal tray beside the inbox and the outbox. Life faced me from the opposite desk, which was acceptable because I bet there wasn’t a soul in the room, apart from Edna, who could remember the name of the guy who worked there. He’d been knocked out in round one early last year when I had nothing to do with him from where I sat in the corner right beneath the air-conditioning vent and my sole task every day was to try keep warm and do everything to stop Graham from staring at my nipples. Needless to say, Augusto Fernández’s quite earnest promise that he would do all in his power to give Steve his job back was nonsense, and so Steve’s desk stood empty. If Life had chosen to sit at that desk, however, that would have caused a stir. It would have been too raw, too painful. Life looked through his computer all day, tap-tap-tapping and making notes, watching me, observing how I spoke to the others which was at an all-time low seeing as nobody was willing to communicate.

Then I started to think about what he’d said. About the wrong number, about Don Lockwood, about why I didn’t lie to him. I don’t know why I didn’t lie to him but the most obvious answer was because I didn’t know him, he was a complete stranger to me and the truth didn’t matter with him.

The truth didn’t matter. Why did it with everybody else?

I picked up my phone and went through my photos; I stopped at the one of his eyes, studied them, zoomed in and out of them one by one like an obsessive stalker, saw the flecks of aqua, almost green, in the blue, then I set it as my screen saver. It looked pretty impressive when I placed my phone on the desk and they were staring up at me.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Life asked me, and his sudden voice made me jump.

‘What? Jesus, you scared me. Don’t creep up on me like that.’

‘I was sitting right here, what were you doing?’

‘Oh,’ I was about to say nothing , when I looked down at the screen saver. I didn’t want to lie. ‘Just looking at photographs.’

Satisfied I was telling the truth, Life decided to take a break and headed off to the kitchen. Graham’s eyes followed him across the room; then he looked around at everyone else to make sure they were staying put at their desks, stood up and followed Life into the kitchen. I watched the door, waiting for one of them to come out but when five minutes had passed I began to worry. Life had been in the kitchen too long with Graham the Cock, I hoped he hadn’t fallen prey to one of his offers of a dalliance, a thought which I knew couldn’t be true but made me queasy. I stood at the filing cabinet which Louise had strategically placed by the kitchen door, opened a drawer and pretended to look for a file while eavesdropping.

‘So she lied about the Spanish,’ Graham said.

‘Yep,’ Life said, sounding like he was eating, and he was scraping something. A yoghurt pot, I deducted. That was Louise’s, she was on WeightWatchers and snacked all day on yoghurts which had more sugar in them than a doughnut.

‘Well, well, well. And she lied about smoking.’

‘Yep,’ he said again. Scrape, scrape, scrape.

‘You know that I smoke,’ Graham said.

‘No, I didn’t know that.’ And it sounded like he didn’t care much either.

‘We sometimes go out there together, me and Lucy, to the private place,’ Graham said, keeping his voice low, not because he was talking about the private smoking place but in that way that men did when they were talking about sexual things they had done, or more usually wished they’d done.

‘The fire escape,’ Life said, keeping his voice at normal level, which told anyone who wasn’t Graham that he didn’t want to lower his tone of voice or subject of conversation.

‘I was thinking that she might have a thing for me. That pretending to be a smoker was just a way to get close to me.’ Graham gave a naughty little chuckle, forgetting about the fact that it was always he who followed me.

‘You think?’ Scrape, scrape.

‘Well, it’s hard to get close in here, with this lot. What do you think? Has she ever mentioned anything to you about me? Or she wouldn’t have to say it, you’d just know, wouldn’t you? Go on, you can tell me.’

‘Yeah, I pretty much know everything,’ Life said and I was annoyed that Cock knew he was my life. It was enough that he tried to come on to me, never mind trying to sweet-talk my life as well.

‘So what do you think? Does she want some?’

‘Want some?’ The scraping stopped. The yoghurt had been demolished, the integrity insulted.

‘She’s turned me down a few times, I won’t lie to you, but the thing is I’m married and for a girl like Lucy, that’s not her thing. But I still feel there’s something … Has she told you anything about me?’

I heard a squeak – the bin lid rising; heard the plastic bag rustle as something was dumped – the yoghurt pot; heard a clink in the sink – the spoon. Then heard a long sigh – my life.

‘Graham, I can safely say that Lucy wants to like you and occasionally sees glimpses of a nice guy but deep down, deep, deep down she thinks you’re an absolute asshole.’

I smiled, closed the file drawer and swiftly returned to my desk. I knew then that though he’d stabbed me in the back just that morning, by the afternoon, he had my back. The office, namely Graham, was even quieter that afternoon and I wasn’t fired that day. Lying in bed that night I knew Life was awake because he wasn’t snoring. I was running through everything that had happened that day and all that had been said; between me, Life and everybody else stuck in between. I eventually came to one conclusion.