Lies Page 4

  “Blimey. Really?”

  “Yup. Fortunately, I managed to talk him out of that particular course of action. Not exactly textbook HR practice.”

  “Good old Mel, keeping everyone on the straight and narrow.”

  “That’s me, darling.” She smiled. “But a bit less of the old, if you don’t mind.”

  I sat back in my chair, smiling too, relief flooding through me in waves. You saw what you wanted to see, Joe, and you got it 100 percent wrong. We’re OK, after all. Everything’s good. Everything’s right where it should be.

  I held my hand up, like I was swearing an oath.

  “My name is Joseph Michael Lynch, and I am officially an idiot.”

  My beautiful wife shook her head and smiled back at me. “It’s part of your charm, darling. Always has been.”

  “Sorry for … doubting you.”

  “I’ll let you off. Just this once.”

  “But why did you fib about it?”

  She shrugged. “Client confidentiality.”

  “He’s not your client, though.”

  “You know what I mean. I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone we’d even met.”

  “Not even me?”

  “Not even you, Sherlock.” She swatted playfully at my arm. “And now you’ve made me break my promise. You’re such a meanie.”

  I slapped myself on the forehead. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Did I mention that I was sorry?”

  “You are also very silly. You had me worried earlier, when you were being all weird.”

  “I just didn’t get it. When you said you weren’t at that hotel, and I knew you were, I couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t bear the thought of you … of us … you know.”

  I looked away, my face hot.

  She got up, came around the table, and sat on my lap. Kissed my cheek, nuzzling under my ear in a way that still made me forget everything else in the world.

  “I’m sorry too, Joe,” she breathed. “For fibbing. Shouldn’t have done that.”

  I sat for a moment just enjoying it, her warmth, her scent, her touch. The shape of her on my lap.

  “After you left the hotel,” I said, “I saw Ben in the parking lot.”

  She stopped nuzzling my cheek. “Saw him?”

  “Talked to him. Kind of. He was angry, but I guess now I know why if someone’s threatening to sabotage his company.”

  “What did he say?”

  She listened as I described my encounter with Ben, how he’d fallen and I’d had to rush off. My return to the hotel later on to check he was OK, realizing I’d lost my cell phone.

  “You poor thing,” she said, concern on her face. “What an evening you’ve had. Why don’t you try Ben on the phone again? Sort things out with him.”

  But Ben wasn’t answering, landline or cell, which I guessed was fair enough considering it was getting late on a Thursday night. Mel and I talked for another half hour about what had happened, drank more red wine, apologized to each other again. We talked about school, and work, and William and his certificate, and the weekend, and going for a meal on Saturday night. I was beyond relieved to get everything back on an even keel. To get everything back to normal after what would go down as one of the weirdest days of my life.

  When the wine bottle was empty, Mel yawned and headed upstairs, and I filled the sink to do the washing-up. As I finished the dishes, I realized I hadn’t told her about Ben’s posts from my Facebook account. It was the one thing that didn’t quite make sense. It just didn’t seem to fit.

  I stared at my reflection in the dark kitchen window.

  Why would he have hijacked my account if everything Mel said was true?

  FRIDAY

  11

  Period four on Friday was free in my schedule, and I had planned to spend it marking 7B’s homework on themes and ideas in The Coral Island. But I was tired, and it had been a tough week, and there was still a nagging feeling—like an itch I couldn’t scratch—about what had happened with Ben last night. I wanted to give him a call, ask him why he’d put those messages on my Facebook account and Could I have my phone back, please?

  A part of me also wanted to apologize for what had happened and check that he was OK; it bothered me that he might have been hurt, and I wanted to put things straight. Just apologize to him, put it out there, say it, and move on. I didn’t want it to be more awkward than it had to be when we all got together at their next dinner party, or Sunday lunch, or whenever. Ben and I weren’t close; we really only knew each other through our wives, and most of my conversations with Ben were about football, the universal language invented so that men who didn’t know each other very well could still talk about something. We’d veered into politics once, but we didn’t agree on much, and I preferred not to listen to him bang on about public-sector waste and benefit cheats.

  But still, it was important to Mel that we were all friends, and I wanted to make the effort for her.

  I couldn’t call Ben until later, at home, but I had my iPad with me. I took it out of my briefcase and opened Facebook. He hadn’t posted anything today, and the two weird posts he’d put up on my account yesterday were safely deleted. I scrolled idly through recent posts on his account: the woes of Sunderland Association Football Club; a photo of the speeding fine he’d gotten for going six miles an hour over the speed limit on the A40; a link to an Anchorman sketch from Saturday Night Live. Others about the state of the economy; Game of Thrones; a picture of the foundations being laid for the new summerhouse in his garden; techie subjects relating to his industry. Sunderland AFC again.

  I was struck by what a strange view you could get of someone’s life from looking at his or her Facebook profile. I googled his name instead and got thousands of hits, starting with his company website, his LinkedIn profile, his other social media accounts, and a range of stories in the media that mentioned him.

  The first was a profile of him in the Evening Standard from late last year, not long after he’d moved to London. It was part of a series on young entrepreneurs in the capital, “40 under 40,” peopled by property developers and fashion designers, hedge fund traders, music producers, and digital millionaires like Ben. His profile drew on Ben’s rags-to-riches story, which had taken him from his parents’ two-bedroom terrace in Sunderland to a seven-figure mansion in one of London’s most expensive neighborhoods. The son of a dockyard worker from a tough working-class area, the only kid in his school year to make it to an elite Russell Group college, a first-class degree, first company at the age of twenty-two, first million by the age of twenty-five, three consecutive number-one games in the App Store by the age of twenty-nine as he rode the new wave of demand for smartphone gaming apps. The gushing profile even made a comparison with Steve Jobs and concluded by asking Ben for the secret of his success in business.

  Delaney admits he is an obsessive.

  “I’ve always been able to focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else—and I don’t stop until I get it. It’s what gives me an advantage. Most people get distracted. I don’t. Because no one remembers the guy who comes second.”

  Another story—a diary piece from the Daily Mail’s business pages—shed a somewhat less flattering light on Ben and his business dealings. It described an incident at an “exclusive Kensington restaurant” a month ago where police had been called and arrested a man for assault and disturbing the peace. The Mail story gleefully named the arrested man as Alex Kolnik, thirty, a former employee of Ben’s who had set up in competition with him and seen his company go bust in short order. Reading between the lines, it seemed Kolnik blamed Ben for the failure of his business and had gone to the restaurant for some payback.

  Ben had mentioned it before, I remembered. Screw with the bull and you get the horns.

  I clicked to the third page of results. More guff about Ben’s company, his career, and his rise to fortune. But there was something more interesting at the bottom of the page of results—a link to a four-year-old story in the Sunderland E
cho, a court case involving a man named Steven Beecham, who had been up for grievous bodily harm.

  It didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the results. I clicked on it. Beecham had been accused of breaking a local businessman’s kneecaps, ankles, and elbows with an iron bar. Beecham was alleged to have been paid by a third man—Peter Haskell—to beat up the victim following a dispute over the sale of property in Sunderland city center. The description of the injuries inflicted made for pretty grim reading, and I scrolled down the story farther, wondering why this had appeared in a Google search for Ben Delaney. A picture of the defendant walking into Newcastle Crown Court showed a huge scowling man, the shoulders and arms of his gray suit stretched taut over the muscles beneath.

  His dark hair was shaved to a flattop, and there were swirls of sharp Celtic tattoos up the side of his neck.

  Ben Delaney had not been involved directly with the case, but it seemed his name—along with the names of several other businessmen, investors, and high rollers—had been found in a list of contacts on one of the defendant’s cell phones. Now that was interesting. Ben had not been called as a witness in the case but had subsequently been contacted by the Echo to ask if he had any comment.

  Mr. Delaney said he was a member of the Mirage Casino’s platinum lounge and played poker tournaments there several times a year. He said: “I know a lot of the staff there. They know me. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  I read farther down the story.

  Beecham, a doorman at the Mirage Casino on Bridge Street, Sunderland, is alleged to have told a witness that “doing some c***’s kneecaps costs £500. For a grand I’ll put him in a f****** wheelchair.”

  The case continues.

  I googled “Steven Beecham court,” and a new page of results appeared: he had been found not guilty of the grievous bodily harm charge and had walked free two days later. He was pictured outside court, a death’s-head grin on his face, flanked by two thick-necked friends.

  The bell rang, and I checked my watch. It was time for the last lesson of the week.

  SATURDAY

  12

  I sat poolside on a hard plastic chair and watched William’s swimming class as they splashed and kicked and doggy-paddled from one side of the shallow end to the other, the smell of chlorine and wet towels hanging in the warm air. The swimming teacher stood waist-deep, urging the kids on, a T-shirt over her swimming costume to hide her modesty from the line of Saturday morning dads sitting by the side of the pool. William was not a keen swimmer but was willing to be bribed with chocolate after each lesson. We had an arrangement. I watched him kicking his little legs and felt a familiar glow of pride.

  There was one kid in his group who didn’t swim at all. He just walked up and down, working his arms breaststroke-style, pushing off from the bottom every so often so he could overtake all the other kids—the ones who were actually swimming. He beat them to the side every time.

  “Why does that boy walk instead of trying to swim?” I asked William later, rubbing his back with the towel.

  “Ryan?”

  “The lad with the blond curly hair.”

  “That’s Ryan.”

  “Yeah, him. He never actually swims.”

  William nodded, studying his wrinkled fingers. “His mummy is the teacher, and she says she doesn’t mind.”

  “Doesn’t she want him to learn?”

  “She says he can do it however he wants.”

  “Oh. But how’s he going to get better at swimming?”

  “His mummy says it doesn’t matter ’cause he’ll always have arm bands to keep him safe anyway.”

  I looked over at Ryan the curly-haired boy, being dried with a towel by his curly-haired mother. She was beaming at him, smiling encouragement, chatting as she dressed him.

  What lies we tell our children, I thought. But why not? I hoped for Ryan’s sake that he’d always have someone there to catch him when he fell.

  William was quiet in the car, his need for activity sated for the time being. Small boys were like puppies. Both needed lots of exercise every day and had basically two gears: go and stop. They had to be walked every day; otherwise they’d go stir-crazy and start tearing the house up.

  His next engagement today was a fifteen-minute drive to Dollis Hill for a five-year-old’s birthday party. Jacob Pendlebury, one of his school classmates. A wall of noise greeted us as we stepped into the hallway and handed our coats to Jacob’s father. He gave me a welcome to the madhouse smile, eyebrows raised, as we went through to the living room and William took his place, cross-legged on the floor, with a dozen other kids. Parents were arrayed around the edge of the room on a collection of sofas and kitchen chairs. The entertainer was a loud-voiced woman dressed as a jester who did magic tricks and got the birthday boy to join in as her assistant. She was good, but the cacophony of small children in a confined space was eventually too much for my mild Saturday morning hangover. After half an hour, I sneaked out toward the kitchen, following the warm smells of home baking and fresh coffee.

  There was a petite dark-haired woman in the kitchen—her face vaguely familiar from the school playground—carefully putting five candles on a Manchester United cake. Of course. We were in North London, so of course it made sense that Jacob Pendlebury was a Man U fan. Growing up in Berkshire, I had supported Chelsea. Small boys supported winning teams. It took a few years to get used to the idea of supporting a local team that was consistently, miserably average.

  “The jester’s very good,” I said.

  She stopped planting candles and smiled.

  “She is, isn’t she? We booked her for my daughter’s birthday a couple of years ago, and Jacob always wanted to have his turn.”

  “Thanks for the invite.”

  “That’s no problem at all.”

  “I’m William’s dad, by the way.”

  She nodded, returning her attention to the cake. “I know. We’re friends on Facebook.”

  I felt a spasm of unease. That’s why her face looked familiar. How many people were there who knew me, even slightly, whom I’d friended on Facebook and then forgotten about? Some were actual friends in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but many were little more than vague acquaintances. Like this woman in her kitchen in Dollis Hill, with whom I had probably exchanged six words before today.

  “Really?” I managed. “I don’t really use it that much, to be honest.”

  “Did you find that thing you were looking for the other night?”

  “What thing was that?”

  “That bracelet. You posted a picture of it.”

  “Oh, that. Yes. Found it.” I felt my face getting warm. “Silly, really; I don’t think alcohol and social media are a good mix.”

  “I’m rubbish at Facebook. Hardly ever post anything myself.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  She stood back from the cake and looked at me again. “So, technically, I’m more of a stalker really.”

  I wonder what she really thinks about those posts from Thursday night?

  “Well,” I said, “Facebook’s certainly good for stalking too.”

  She pointed at my chest. “I like your T-shirt, by the way.”

  I smiled and looked down at the navy T-shirt, a speech bubble with white text inside: I’M SILENTLY CORRECTING YOUR GRAMMAR.

  “My wife got it for me—kind of an in-joke with English teachers. Grammar is becoming a bit of a lost art these days, with textspeak and social media and what have you.”

  There was a burst of shouts and clapping and then a disappointed wail from the other room, and we both turned toward the noise.

  “Better go and see what’s up,” I said, grabbing the opportunity to get away.

  I returned to the living room, where a game of pass the parcel had ended in tears for two little girls in dresses and plaits, both of whom had a hand on the parcel when the music stopped. The rest of them, William included, stared in fascination as the two girls screwed their faces up and com
peted to see who could cry the loudest.

  I avoided talking to Jacob’s mum again when the children trooped into the dining room for birthday lunch. As always happened at these parties, they all reached first for the Hula Hoops and chocolate fingers, leaving the carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes untouched in the middle of the table.

  * * *

  Mel was in the kitchen when we got back home. Drinking coffee and dressed for tennis again. She kissed me and handed me a cup, asked me about the party, and how was swimming, and did William manage a length of the pool? A normal Saturday. Normal stuff happening. Not for the first time, I wondered if I had just dreamed the whole of Thursday evening: Ben and my wife, the hotel parking lot, the aftermath. All just a dream, a fiction conjured from fitful sleep.

  “A courier came,” Mel said, indicating a small plastic-wrapped package on the kitchen countertop.

  I opened it. A replacement cell phone sent out on the insurance. God forbid we should ever have to go offline for more than twenty-four hours. I took the phone out of its box and unspooled the power cable.

  “Your phone didn’t turn up, then?” Mel asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You sure it’s not in the house somewhere?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Wills has started getting a bit obsessed with phones and gadgets, remote controls, that sort of thing. He puts them in with his cars. Maybe you should go and have a look.”

  I plugged the new phone in to start charging it. “Bit late now.”

  “Have you tried calling it?”

  It occurred to me that in Thursday night’s panic, I had not even tried once to call my cell to see if anyone answered. And now it had been disconnected.

  “You’re right. That’s the first thing I should have done. Wasn’t thinking straight. Think I was distracted by the Facebook stuff.”

  She frowned. “What Facebook stuff?”

  “A couple of weird posts on my account, from my cell phone.”

  “You think Ben did that?”