Lie With Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

embarrassed, though I might well have been, a forty-two-year-old man with nothing to his name but a few bin bags in his mother’s attic. No, I didn’t see the point. So what if I was due to be evicted in a week? I didn’t expect ever to see her again.
    When I brought the coffee through, she was sitting on the sofa, studying that framed Trinity College photograph. It was Alex’s of course, but as he and I had met there, it might just as well have been mine. ‘I took it off the wall in the loo. I hope you don’t mind. I’m looking for you.’ Her finger traced along a row of young, plump, pompous faces. ‘Ah!’ She smiled. ‘Longer hair . . . Where’s Andrew?’
    I leant across to peer. Etiolated face, peaked nose, sanctimonious expression. ‘In the middle at the front.’
    ‘Oh yes. Also longer hair.’
    ‘ More hair.’
    ‘Don’t be naughty.’ She laughed, and then looked again at the photograph. ‘I can’t see Florrie. Is she here?’
    ‘No. She came later. In my third year.’
    She put the picture on the sofa to one side of her, and then looked at me. ‘Were you happy?’
    I paused for a moment, wondering what she meant, and then said: ‘Yes, very.’
    ‘I remember, when I visited, thinking the place was very grand, and the people there were either very grand or very small. At Bristol, where I was, you could be anything. But there, you were one or the other.’
    I experienced a small internal tremor. ‘Perhaps that’s true.’
    She took a sip of her cappuccino. A lock of her hair fell forward. I could see the strands of grey in with the blonde.
    ‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Were you happy as a child?’
    It was one of my usual chat-up lines. Alice responded to type: a self-deprecating shrug, and then a sort of glow – perfectly content to talk about herself for hours. She had grown up in north London, the only child of a lawyer and a university lecturer. Private school, then Bristol, where she had met Harry. A golden life, a lucky life, she said.
    ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, living with privilege?’ She gestured to the flat, the artwork, the items of mid-century furniture, the shelves of books. ‘Do you ever feel guilty at how easy it all is, how much people like us have been given on a plate by our parents?’
    I felt another tight spasm in my chest, a need to unburden, as if I might tell her how it wasn’t , what a struggle it had been not to lead the life of my parents, how I had always hated the smallness of their ambition, their willingness to settle with meekness and mediocrity. I wondered at the extent of her privilege. How rich was this lady bountiful? How much had Harry left her? How big was her house? I managed to nod sagely. ‘Yes. I suppose one has to be mindful of that and . . . well, do one’s best to give something back.’
    She rested her hand on my arm. ‘I knew you’d understand. It’s why I do what I do. Andrew berates me for not joining a firm like his, for not doing commercial law, but it wouldn’t make me happy. I’ve always fought for the underdog, for people who don’t have a voice of their own.’
    She shook her head and took another sip from her coffee. ‘You write books,’ she said. ‘That’s a generous act in some ways. You have to open up.’
    ‘Yes. You really do.’
    ‘Are you working on anything at the moment?’
    I offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head. I lit one for myself. ‘Yes, actually. A novel about London, about immigration, about the dispossessed. State of the nation, kind of thing.’
    All lies.
    ‘Do you have a publisher? I don’t know how it works.’
    ‘Sort of.’ I leant back, and changed the subject. ‘Andrew said you do a lot of work for charity?’
    ‘I’m on various boards. Finding Jasmine is my main commitment. It’s what I feel most passionately about. Andrew helps me. In many ways, it sums up what I was just saying. You know, Jasmine wasn’t a sweet little middle-class blonde toddler like Madeleine