MY BIGGEST
LIE
LUKE BROWN
Published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Canongate Books Ltd
14 High Street
Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2014 Luke Brown
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of the book.
Extract from ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ from Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Penguin Books, 2000). Copyright © Maria Kodama, 1998.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 037 8
ePub ISBN 978 1 78211 038 5
Typeset in Sabon LT Std by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
In memory ofMatthew Brown
Contents
Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness . . . A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist
Jorge Luis Borges
I’ve tried to be as honest as possible about everything
Diego Maradona
There was a time not long ago when I thought that lying was the most natural thing in the world. I was young and I had a good haircut and a girlfriend I loved. I had a best friend who was also my boss and he was friends with the most interesting people in London. I assume they were interesting. Looking back, I can’t remember much of what anyone said. But I remember laughing. I remember everything being the funniest thing that had ever happened. I worked hard and stayed out late. We drew a high line between fuel and poison. I wore suits I couldn’t afford in the hope that this was the way that one day I would be able to afford them. I always got the round in, and I always asked the barmaid her name. I never spoke to anyone about Sarah because if I did I’d have to tell everyone how much I adored her. I didn’t want to overcomplicate the portrait. I’d made an experiment with my character, and it seemed to be working. It was fun. It was addictive. And I forgot, temporarily, what was true and what was false. Or it was simply that I preferred the false.
It was then that I was found out.
PART ONE: MY LOVE
Chapter 1
On the last day of what I kept telling myself was a happy month, I woke up alone.
I could hear children laughing outside on the estate. The block of flats Sarah and I lived in was built around a grass square and from our bedroom window I watched a boy with an Afro kick a football to a dog who was as big to him as a horse was to me. The dog scrambled over the ball and executed a perfect Cruyff turn, accelerating away to leap up at a young girl on a pink scooter.
Ben, you big tit, you’ve knocked Tasha over. Eric, next door, leaning out of his kitchen window. I had lived here for eighteen months with Sarah and I loved the place. Sarah was giving the keys back to the landlord tomorrow and I was flying to Buenos Aires in the afternoon. The flights we’d booked were non-refundable and still valid. Even now, eight hours before take-off, I hoped I could persuade Sarah to relent and come with me.
Sarah. I found her downstairs at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, looking from a slant at the same view I’d seen from our bedroom. It was Saturday, a spring morning, a day obscene with promise. Sarah turned from the window and looked at me.
I can see her face now, project it onto the white piece of paper I’m staring at. The wisdom is that I screw that face up in a ball and throw it