The Truth Read Online Free PDF

cleaned his glasses, blew his nose, eased a blackberry pip from between his twofront teeth, sighed heavily and began. And that’s when the phone rang.
    In later years he wondered whether, if he’d turned the phone off as he’d intended to, all the things that subsequently happened to him would have happened at all.
    Out of habit he picked up the receiver. There was a pause, a pause long enough for Mabbut to know exactly what sort of pause this was and whack the phone down before anyone could start to sell him anything. The phone rang again, almost immediately. This time there was no pause.
    ‘You just put the phone down on me.’
    ‘How was I to know it was you? You didn’t say anything.’
    ‘You didn’t give me a chance.’
    ‘You don’t usually need a chance.’
    ‘I’m ringing with the best news of your life and you put the phone down on me.’
    ‘I thought you were trying to sell me something.’
    ‘I am, dear boy, I am. And when you hear what it is, you’ll want to buy it.’
    Mabbut’s glance was caught by a movement outside the window. From within the cloud of ivy that covered his neighbour’s wall, a fox appeared, withdrew, then reappeared, this time sloping off along the wall and dropping down into the garden next door.
    ‘I’ve just started the novel.’
    ‘We need to talk. Lunch?’
    Mabbut adjusted his chair.
    ‘It’s a trilogy. I can’t take breaks.’
    ‘Goldings at one?’
    ‘Look, this has to be something hugely important. It’s my first day. Lose this and my whole—’
    ‘It could be hugely important. Trust me, Keith. Would I lightly take an author away from his book?’
    The bus dropped Mabbut by the university and he cut through past the electronic showrooms and the Yum Yum Sushi House until he found himself outside the familiar green door of Goldings Dining Room. It was always a surprise to find it still there, with its blandfaçade of green-painted panels, and its name scrawled in italics, like a signature. It was warm enough today for two spindly tables to have been squeezed on to the pavement. He found his agent inside, at a table as far away from the sun as possible. She was ensconced with her mobile phone and a glass of red wine. She acknowledged Mabbut distractedly, and carried on talking.
    Mabbut smiled at the Croatian waitress, a strikingly beautiful girl who he sensed was unhappy.
    ‘Red?’ she asked, glancing at Silla’s half-empty glass.
    ‘Better not.’
    The waitress shrugged and gave that awkward sideways grimace which was the only thing Mabbut didn’t adore about her.
    ‘I’ve started my new book. Don’t want to lose concentration,’ he explained.
    She laid a mat on the table and looked up at him.
    ‘What is it about?’
    ‘It’s about the first men on earth.’
    The waitress frowned.
    ‘And women?’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course. Women too.’
    There was a pause, as if everything that needed to be said on the subject had been said.
    ‘What you want, then?’
    ‘Coke, please, Martina.’
    Silla, ear still clamped to the phone, shook her head vigorously, wagged her finger and mouthed ‘wine’.
    He shook his head.
    ‘No, not today.’
    Silla repeated the gesture, this time overriding Mabbut and appealing straight to the waitress. By the time Keith had protested again the glass was on the table in front of him. The Croatian gave one of her inexplicable but deeply appealing half-smiles.
    ‘The special of the day is rigatoni.’
    She turned away.
    Silla Caldwell covered the phone and hissed at him.
    ‘Sit down. Stop hovering!’
    Mabbut smiled grimly and pulled out a chair, grating it almost deliberately along the unevenly tiled floor.
    His relationship with Priscilla Caldwell went back twenty years to the days when he had, for a short time, been one to watch. Indeed, he had appeared in the ‘Ones To Watch’ list attached to a Sunday newspaper article about a new, fearless breed of journalists, none of whom anyone could remember now. Silla liked young