Believing the Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

cellar, the boathouse. There’s something explosive. Something
kapow
. Something sexy.
    Of course, the problem was that, if Zed wanted to admit the
entire
truth of the matter, the only remotely sexy thing about his story of Nicholas Fairclough’s ninth life was the man’s wife, and she was sexy in spades. He hadn’t wanted to make too much of that fact in his meeting with Rodney Aronson because he’d been fairly certain of Rodney’s reaction, which would have come from the photograph-her-tits school of thought. Zed had kept fairly mum on the topic of the wife because she’d wished to remain in the background, but now he wondered if there was something about her that he might explore. He went to that set of notes and saw that words like
caramba
and
yikes
had indicated his initial reaction upon laying his eyes on her. He’d even nonsensically written
South American Siren
by way of describing her, every inch of her a w-o-m-a-n demanding notice from an m-a-n. If Eve had looked remotely like Alatea Fairclough, Zedekiah had concluded at the end of their only interview, it was no wonder Adam took the apple. The only question was why he hadn’t eaten the whole damn crop and the tree as well. So…Was
she
the story? The sex? The sizzle? She was stunning in all the right ways, but how did one turn stunning into story? “She’s the reason I’m alive today,” says the husband, but so what? Run a picture of her and any bloke whose parts are in working order is going to know why Nicholas Fairclough took the cure. Besides, she had nothing to say beyond “What Nick’s done, he’s done himself. I’m his wife but I’m not important in his real story.”
    Had that been a hint? Zed wondered. His
real
story. Was there more to uncover? He thought he’d dug, but perhaps he’d been too smitten with the subject of his piece. And perhaps he’d been too smitten with his subject because he wanted to believe such thingswere possible: redemption, salvation, turning one’s life around, finding true love…
    Perhaps that was the line to follow: true love. Had Nicholas Fairclough really found it? And if he had, did someone envy it? One of his sisters, perhaps, because one of them was unmarried and the other divorced? And how did they feel anyway, now that the prodigal had returned?
    Further rustling through his notes. Further reading. Another sandwich. A wander through the train to see if there was a buffet car—what a ludicrous thought in these days of marginal profits—because he was dying for a coffee. Then it was back to his seat, where he finally gave up the ghost altogether and then popped back up with the idea of ghosts because the family home was what had got him started in the first place on this piece, and what if the family home was haunted and the haunting had led to the drug addiction, which had led to the search for a cure, which had led to…He was back to the bloody wife again, the South American siren, and the only reason he was back to her was
caramba
and
yikes
, and he’d be better off crawling back home and forgetting this whole damn thing except home meant his mother and Yaffa Shaw and whoever was going to follow Yaffa Shaw in a never-ending procession of women he was meant to marry and get children on.
    No. There was a story here somewhere, the kind of story that his editor wanted. If he had to dig further to find something juicy, he’d get out his shovel and aim for China. Anything else was unacceptable. Failure was not an option.

18 OCTOBER
    BRYANBARROW
CUMBRIA
    I an Cresswell was setting the table for two when his partner arrived home. He himself had taken off early from work, a romantic evening in mind. He’d bought lamb, which was in the oven with a fragrant blanket of seasoned bread crumbs browning over the shoulder of it, and he’d prepared fresh vegetables and a salad. In the fire house, he’d uncorked wine, polished glasses, and moved before the fireplace two chairs and the old oak game table from