Believing the Lie

know what else. So to bring him here, into this situation, perhaps permanently… How could we do that to him?”

“First of all,” Freddie replied after a moment of thought, “he’s in a very good school where he can sort himself out if he’s a mind to it. Our part is to give him that mind. He’s wanting a mum and a dad to stand behind him and believe in him and in the possibility that one can actually pick up the pieces of one’s life and go on.”

“Oh, very well and good, but how long can we give him that if we take him now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come along, Freddie,” Manette said patiently, “don’t be obtuse. You’re quite a wonderful catch and one of these women you’re dating is going to reel you in. Then Tim and Gracie will face another broken situation and how can we ask either one of those children to go through that?”

Freddie looked at her steadily and said, “Ah. Well. Have I been wrong, then?”

“Wrong about what?”

“About us. Because if I have, I’ll dash back upstairs and get myself out of my wedding togs.”

She looked at him till she could no longer see him for her blurring of vision. She said, “Freddie… Oh, Freddie… No. You’re not wrong.”

“Excellent. I was feeling … well, a bit more certain than perhaps I should have done, so I spoke to the registrar, who’s perfectly willing to make an exception in our case and allow us a wedding. Today. I’ll need a best man and you’ll want a bridesmaid. Shall I rouse Tim for the job?”

“Do,” Manette said. “I’ll phone Gracie.”

ST. JOHN’S WOOD LONDON

Zed Benjamin sat in the car park outside his mother’s flat, and he stared at the route he needed to walk to get inside. He knew what awaited him there, and he wasn’t anxious to confront it. It wasn’t going to take long for his mother to work out the fact that he’d lost his job, and that was going to be a real teeth grinder to deal with. In addition to that, there was Yaffa to be faced, and what he really didn’t want to see was her expression when she listened to the tale of how he’d failed in every possible way pursuing his story of the century in Cumbria.

Worse, he felt like hell. He’d awakened that morning in a budget hotel along the motorway. He’d left Cumbria at once on the previous day, directly after speaking to Rodney Aronson and collecting his things in Windermere. He’d driven as far as he could towards London before he’d had to stop for the rest of the night. That night had been spent in a grubby room reminiscent of those Japanese sleeping boxes he’d once read about. He felt as if he’d attempted slumber inside a coffin. Make that a coffin with a loo, he thought.

He’d risen that morning as rested as a man could be after having a fight break out in his hotel corridor at three A.M., necessitating an appearance by the local police. He’d got back to sleep at half past four, but at five the various workers for the day shift in the various shops and takeaway food stalls of the services area had begun to arrive, and they did their arriving with the accompaniment of the slamming of car doors and the shouts of greeting to each other, so round half past the hour, Zed had given up on sleep altogether and crammed himself into the upright packing crate that went for a shower in the bathroom.

He’d gone through the rest of his morning rituals by rote: shaving, cleaning his teeth, dressing. He hadn’t felt like eating, but he wanted a cup of coffee and he was in the cafeteria of the services building when the daily newspapers arrived.

Zed couldn’t help himself. It was force of habit. He’d picked up a copy of The Source and had taken it back to his table to see that the tabloid was running a follow-up to the earth- shattering Corsico piece about the mixed-race child of the minor royal. The paper was giving it Major Breaking Story treatment, this time with the banner headline He Declares His Love accompanied by suitable photographs. It seemed that the minor royal in question — who appeared to be getting more minor by the moment — intended to marry the mother of his bastard child since the revelation of his relationship to the woman had just obliterated her career as a third-rate Bollywood star. Turn to page 3 to see who the mother of the bastard child might be…? Zed did so. He found himself looking at a sensuous woman with more than her share of mammaries, posing with her royal suitor cum fiance with their child abounce on the royal’s knee. He was grinning toothily, on his face a self-satisfied expression declaring to the men of his country, “Look what I managed to get for myself, you wankers.” And it was true. The idiot had a title to recommend himself. Whether he had brains to go with the title was another matter entirely.

Zed had tossed the paper to one side. What a load of tosh it all was, he thought. He knew what would be going on at The Source as a result of this piece and the one that had preceded it, though. It would be celebration of Mitchell Corsico’s unerring ability to sniff out a story, shape the public debate, and manipulate a member of the Royal Family — no matter how obscure — to take an action predetermined by the tabloid. He — Zedekiah Benjamin, struggling poet — was better off shot of the place.

He shoved his way out of his car. He could no longer avoid the inevitable, he thought, but he could damn well paint it as a positive alteration in his life if the proper words would come to him.

He had nearly reached the door when Yaffa came out of the building. She was wrestling with her rucksack, so he reckoned she was on her way to the university. She didn’t see him, and he considered ducking into the shrubbery in an attempt to hide from her, but she looked up and clocked him. She halted.

She stammered, “Zed. What a… well, what a… a lovely surprise. You didn’t say you were returning to London today.”

“It won’t be so lovely when I give you the news why I’m here.”

“What’s wrong?” She sounded so concerned. She took a step towards him and put her hand on his arm. “What’s happened, Zed?”

“The sack.”

Her lips parted. How soft they looked, he thought. She said, “Zed, you’ve lost your job? But you were doing so well! What about your story? The people in Cumbria? All of the mystery surrounding them and what they were hiding? What were they hiding?”

“The how and why and who-knows-what-and-when about having babies,” he told her. “There’s nothing else.”

She frowned. “And Scotland Yard? Zed, they cannot have been investigating having babies.”

“Well, that’s just the worst of it, Yaff,” he admitted. “If there was anyone from Scotland Yard up there, I never saw him.”

“But who was the woman, then? The Scotland Yard woman?”

“She wasn’t Scotland Yard. Haven’t the foggiest who she was and it doesn’t much matter now I’m through, eh?” He was carrying his laptop, and he shifted it from one hand to the other before going on. “Fact is,” he said, “I was rather enjoying our little charade, Yaff. The phone calls and all that.”

She smiled. “Me, too.”

He shifted the laptop again. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands and his feet all of a sudden. He said, “Right. Well. So when d’you want to schedule our breakup? Better be sooner rather than later, you ask me. If we don’t engineer it in the next couple of days, Mum’ll be talking to the rabbi and baking the challah.”

Yaffa laughed. She said in a way that sounded like teasing, “And is that such a very bad thing, Zedekiah Benjamin?”

“Which part?” he asked. “The rabbi or the challah?”

“Either. Both. Is that so bad?”

The front door opened. An elderly woman toddled out, a miniature poodle in the lead. Zed stepped aside to let her pass. She looked from him to Yaffa to him. She leered. He shook his head. Jewish mums. They didn’t even have to be one’s mum to be one’s mum, he thought with resignation. He said to Yaffa, “I don’t think Micah would much like it, do you?”

“Ah, Micah.” Yaffa watched the old lady and her poodle. The poodle lifted its tufted leg and did some business against a shrub. “Zed. I fear there is no Micah.”

He peered at her earnestly. “What? Damn. You broke up with the bloke?”