White Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

voice, high and strained, calling her mum a bitch, asking why couldn’t she just let her make her own fucking decisions. And Angela losing it, slamming a palm against a cubicle door, saying for God’s sake, Clare, you’re acting like a child.
    The waitress, waiting at the front desk, didn’t even attempt a smile as we pushed Dad through the door, yanking his arms into his coat like an overtired toddler.
    The cold air struck us into silence. We gathered ourselves for a moment on the pavement outside, eyes adjusting to the streetlight glare and the flashing of headlamps on the wet road, wrapping scarves around our throats and shoving hands into pockets.
    “Where did Angie park?” I said, but Sabine ignored me and Dad shrugged. A laugh curled up and died in my throat.
    I shook Angela’s handbag until I was able to follow the sound of jingling keys to an exterior pocket. I aimed the remote at the dark lines of parked cars on the street, eventually saw the blink of her car’s indicators down to the right, and herded my unwilling companions towards it.
    By the time we reached the car, Dad seemed to have deflated to half his previous size inside his coat, eyes no longer full of the righteous anger that so effectively destroyed my right to reply. He let me help him into the back seat of Angela’s Fiesta and folded his hands into his lap.
    I slammed the door harder than I needed to and leaned against the side of the car. Sabine was looking at her phone, and I had no chance to say anything apologetic before Angela came jogging up.
    “Where is he? Is he okay?”
    I nodded to the car. “Where’s Clare?”
    “Still in the toilets. How much do I owe you?”
    “What? Oh. Shit.”
    “You didn’t pay? Oh my God, Matthew.”
    Angela snatched her bag out of my hands and ran back round the corner to the restaurant, returning a few minutes later, still alone, with a voice that said there was a lump high up in her throat.
    “Well, we’re not going there again. Clare’s not inside. Did you see her come out?”
    We shook our heads.
    “She’s driving me mad. She hates me at the moment. She - ” Angela sighed, decided against explaining. Asking for help seemed to almost cause her physical pain. “She’s probably gone to Becca’s. And I need to get Peter home. Back, I mean.”
    I wanted to hug her but I waited too long to carry out the thought and she began scrambling in her bag, trying to hide her reddening face. I hated Sabine, then, for her lack of womanly solidarity. She should have been the one to be patting Angela’s arm and telling her it would all be okay, but she stood there, scrolling with one finger on her phone’s screen, as though she couldn’t hear us at all.
    “I’ll take him,” I said, but Angela emerged from her handbag and thrust a gift-wrapped rectangle at me.
    “Happy birthday. Sorry, Matt. I’ll talk to you later. If you hear from Clare, let me know, okay?”
    When her car had disappeared over the hill, Sabine and I found ourselves still standing apart from each other, looking in different directions - too much distance for us to be a couple.
    My phone rang and I answered it without seeing who it was, regretting it the moment I heard the response to my hello.
    “Matty,” Alex said. “Are you home? I’m coming over.”

Chapter Four
    The doorway calls. The belt of my dressing gown slithers along the carpet as I step through and leave my bedroom behind, a breadcrumb trail back to the present. For a moment, in the space within the portal, there is unadulterated silence, full of the promises of death. Onward. Onward to go backward, following the scent of a time long gone but never forgotten. How could I forget this night? I emerge the other side, wavering with the shift of gravity. It takes time to adjust to the change in the spinning of the earth, but then I solidify, feet rooting into the ground like bindweed.
    Home. Standing in the perfect trapezium of light cast by the streetlamp outside the