Lie With Me Read Online Free

steaming bowl of tagine to the table. ‘Yes. My lease has come to an end and the fucking freeholder wrote to me in January to say he’s selling the land to developers. The tossers who built the Delfinos resort. Still, at least we have a stay of execution in the house if not the land – you’re coming to Circe’s this summer, Tina and Andrew, aren’t you? One last hoorah.’
    ‘Of course.’ Andrew got up again to make space for Tina to squeeze past his chair. ‘The kids would kill us if we didn’t. We’d literally be dead.’
    ‘Literally?’ I said.
    ‘Good.’ Alice sat down opposite him at the far end. She made a small dramatic gesture with her napkin, flapping it on to her lap. ‘Eat up, everyone.’
    I looked at her for a moment, and then at Andrew, and at Tina, who was sitting somewhere in the middle of the table. Anyone would think Alice was the hostess here. Was it, in fact, her signature Moroccan lamb, not Tina’s at all? I helped myself to a spoonful and then realised I should probably have served my neighbours – Susie, on one side, Izzy on the other. ‘Sorry,’ I said, offering it. ‘I’ve got no manners. You can tell I went to boarding school – the panic at mealtimes, every boy for himself.’
    ‘Boarding school? Which one?’ the balder of the two men asked.
    I told him where I had spent my formative years, and I could see he was surprised. The school has an academic reputation and I dropped a hint about my scholarship, too, mentioning I had been in the scholars’ house. Tina picked up on this. ‘Clever old you,’ she said. ‘Not just a pretty face.’
    ‘Oh, did you know Sebastian Potter?’ Izzy said. ‘He must be about your age.’
    ‘No,’ I said too quickly, and then: ‘I recognise the name. I think he might have been a couple of years above me.’
    ‘Oh, OK,’ she said. ‘Big school.’ She shrugged, her top slipping forward over the bones in her neck, the feathers in one of her earrings tangling in her hair. (Of course I knew Sebastian Potter. He was one of the bastards who made my life a misery.)
    I turned my attention to the food. It was delicious, actually – the sauce tasted of orange flower water and saffron; the meat was wonderfully tender. Whether it was Tina who made it, or Alice, frankly for this alone it was worth the trip. Andrew had poured the wine, too, from a glass decanter – presumably the 2009 Châteauneuf as promised. It slipped down smoothly: no complaints there.
    Around me the conversation wound on drably, past Tina’s wool shop, Ripping Yarns, to plans for the velodrome, to the school where people at the table appeared to have children. A new head of sixth form had just been appointed but the old head was missed; one of the science teachers wasn’t up to scratch; Boo’s daughter hadn’t got on to the Duke of Edinburgh scheme. It was over-subscribed and names had, of all things, been pulled from a hat. So unfair. Boo’s husband, who was away for work, was going to go straight in the moment he was back.
    ‘Do you have kids?’ Susie asked me.
    ‘No.’
    ‘This must be so dull for you then.’
    ‘Not at all,’ I said.
    ‘We should watch what we say,’ Alice added. ‘He’s probably making mental notes for his next novel.’
    It was another predictable comment. I’d lost count of the number of times people had said it. Alice was still wearing the apron, dotted now with gravy as well as flour. She’d applied a fresh layer of that hideous lipstick; it was smudged on the edge of her glass.
    I felt a sudden desperate need for a cigarette. My legs jangled. I made my excuses, pushed my chair back, and walked over to the expanse of glass, where I fumbled until I found a mechanism that would slide it open. I slipped through a crack, quietly sealing the door again behind me.
    The garden was in shadow – a long, wide lawn, edged with shrubs. At the end, skeleton trees against the sky and an expanse of dark nothing: a playing field. A brown smell of