The Liar's Handbook

by Keren David

  “We won that battle,” Mum says, “but did we win the war? Politicians say they care about the environment, but it’s all empty words. All they care about is money and power.”

  “But you’re doing so much to change things,” Jason says. She smiles and strokes his arm. It’s like they can’t keep their hands off each other. It’s disgusting.

  “Direct action felt so good,” she says. “Now we spend our time asking for support, trying to change the way laws are made. It’s legal and sensible and right … but our planet is still dying.”

  “You’re doing more than you realise,” Jason tells her. “You don’t have to shout to be heard, when the things you say are true and important.”

  “Aw,” Kai’s mum says. “You two are so good together.”

  Jason goes a bit red, and he pushes his shiny hair out of his eyes. “I mean it,” he says.

  “That’s not what my dad thinks,” Kai says.

  Puzzled, Jason looks over at Bob the Builder, who’s stuffing his mouth full of dead cow.

  “Kai means my ex,” Lorna says. “Last of the hardcore headbangers. Right now on a protest boat in the Arctic. We’re hoping he doesn’t get arrested.”

  “He won’t – will he?” Kai asks. “Dad knows what he’s doing. He’s already got so much publicity!”

  “Kevin MacDougall,” Mum tells Jason. “He and Matthew were good mates.”

  “They were, weren’t they?” Lorna says. “But I still can’t believe Matthew just up and left like that …”

  “It was a long time ago,” Mum says firmly.

  “Yes, and it’ll be a long time before Kai sees his dad again,” Lorna says. “Last time he pulled a stunt like this he spent six weeks in prison in Alaska.”

  Kai’s getting het up. “It’s not a stunt, Mum,” he says. “Dad’s a proper eco warrior! Not like you, eating meat and wearing leather shoes and leaving all the lights on …”

  “OK, OK,” says Lorna.

  “The boy’s not wrong,” Sean says.

  I don’t like Sean. He takes everything on the nose, as if he’s always gunning for a scrap. Plus, he’s mean to my mum. He says she’s sold out. He thinks – Mum told me once – that she drove my dad away.

  “They were good mates,” she says. “Kevin never forgave me for letting Matthew go. Not that I had a choice in the matter.”

  “My dad’s a proper warrior,” Kai says again.

  But Sean just shakes his head, takes a drag on his roll-up and says, “Protests are only a step up from shuffling papers.” He looks over at Mum and starts to rant. “What difference will they make out on their boat? Politicians treat us with pure contempt. They think they can get away with anything. You’ve got to hit people where it hurts. Make them listen. Let them know you’ll fight to the bitter end.”

  Lorna’s uncomfortable. I can tell by the way she says, “Anyone want any more salad?”

  Mum is glad of the chance to jump up and help. “I’ll stick some more black-bean burgers on the barbie, shall I?” she says.

  But Jason turns to Sean. “I know what you mean, mate,” he says. “Sometimes the only way is to take the law into your own hands.”

  I can’t stand his fakeness any more.

  I nudge Kai. “Come on, eco warrior,” I say. “Let’s take the bottles to the recycling bank.”

  As we lug the two heavy bags of bottles along, I brief Kai about the tattoo.

  Then we take turns dropping the bottles into the bank.

  “OK, so you need to find out a whole load more about your dad,” Kai says.

  SMASH!

  “Mum doesn’t seem to know much.”

  CRASH!

  “You know his name, don’t you? And when he was born?”

  SMASH!

  “Yes, but I don’t know anything else. Like where he was from or anything.”

  CRASH!

  “I think you can get hold of his birth certificate if you have a name and date of birth,” Kai says. “Assuming he was born in this country.”

  CRASH!

  “How will that help?” I ask.

  SMASH!

  “It’ll tell you his parents’ names and their address when he was born. And then you can find out if he has any brothers or sisters.”

  CRASH!

  “Kai, you are a genius. How did you know about that?”

  SMASH!

  “My grandad’s into family history. He’s traced us back to 1700 and something. My great-great-great-grandad was a blacksmith. You just apply for the documents online.”

  CRASH!

  “Awesome! You get the last three bottles. Let’s go for it.”

  SMASH! CRASH! SMASH!

  9: REAL LIARS FAKE EVERYTHING

  Mum and Jason are going out for a drink.

  “What about River?” I hear her say.

  “He’ll be OK,” Jason says. “To be honest, Tanya, I need a night off from the constant hostility.”

  “Shh,” she says. “He’ll come round. It’s just been the two of us for a long time. Me and him. All his life, in fact.”

  “If I could just talk to him –”

  “One day. Hang in there, darling.”

  I don’t need to look to know that they’re kissing. Revolting.

  Then they head out and I’m all alone with a bowl of brown rice and butterbean stew.

  I polish that off, and then I find the box with my dad’s passport. He even left that behind.

  There he is, with his ratty dreads and his beard and his little round glasses. He looks nothing like Hagrid the goalie’s dad.

  Except for his nose.

  There’s his name – Matthew Peter Jordan.

  There’s his place of birth – London.

  And his date of birth – 07/03/1973

  I read it all, just like I’ve read it a thousand times. And I wonder, just like I always do – why would you disappear and leave your passport behind? It’s clear he didn’t mean to disappear. It’s clear he was on the run from his brother and his criminal gang. Or whatever.

  Whatever … but I never ever let myself think that my dad might have been murdered. It takes a lot of effort to block that idea.

  I message all the details to Kai and then I head upstairs. Time to investigate Jason’s stuff. I’m looking for anything which shows him up as a fake. And I’m interested to know how he paid for a trip to Costa Rica for five.

  That’s the easiest one to answer. I find some folders with bank statements in and have a look. Jason has a ton of money and a few different bank accounts. Loads of money in his savings accounts – I add it up to over £20,000. And £5,000 in a couple of current accounts too.

  I also find a file about a flat in Holland Park, which is a part of London where you only live if you’re rich enough to own a football club. And this flat seems to belong to Jason because there’s a letter from an estate agent valuing it at a cool two million quid. For a flat. A not even very swanky two-bed flat.

  So. Maybe Jason’s a drug dealer. Maybe he’s an international jewel thief. Maybe he’s like those guys on The Secret Millionaire, except none of them get married before they hand out wads of cash to poor people. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t own a football club, but you never know. Maybe he’s a Russian billionaire in disguise.

  But if he’s so rich why has he moved in here, to our tiny house where we are all falling over each other?

  He’s had to put his computer in our spare room, which is too small to even be a proper spare room. The room’s now full of Jason’s desk and Jason’s computer, Jason’s beer fridge and Jason’s box files full of articles he’s written with neat labels on. Motorway schemes. Power stations. New developments. An extra runway at Manchester airport. Toad habitats. Polar bears. Bees.

  I switch on his computer. I guess his password (Tanya plus the date of their fake beach wedding), and I’m in.

  I click on lots of random stuff and it’s all pretty boring. He’s even gone to the trouble of faking a load of photos of the Sahara m
arathon, with him cosying up to camels. They must have been taken in a zoo. A very sandy zoo.

  I’m about to give up, when I see it. Lurking in a folder called ‘admin’. There’s another folder and it’s called Jordan. My dad’s name. Jordan.

  Of course, it could be Jordan the country. Or Jordan the trainers.

  I click on the folder.

  Oh.

  It’s not Jordan the country.

  It’s not Jordan the trainers.

  It’s totally about my dad. Photos of him from years ago. Newspaper cuttings of him on protests. A whole file of interviews with people who knew him. I scan these first.

  “Matt was a great geezer. Life and soul of the party. Everyone loved him.”

  “You’d follow Matt to the ends of the earth. Maybe that’s why we did some of the crazy stuff that we did.”

  “He was always full of ideas – he was the one who said we should break into the power station, who got us the wire cutters and posters. But it was Tanya and Anders who got arrested. Matt cried off at the last minute.”

  “He was the brains and we were the soldiers.”

  “He gave me strength. He’d talk to me like I really mattered and then I’d feel on top of the world, like I could make a difference.”

  “What can I say? Matthew was one of a kind.”

  “Sometimes I look back and wonder, Was he just telling us what to do?”

  “Why did he disappear?”

  “Why did he disappear?”

  “Why did he disappear?”

  As I read all this, I feel proud and sad and confused and angry – how dare Jason snoop into my dad’s life? I read it again. I think about printing it out, but then I worry Jason will find out. Instead I email a copy to myself. Then I worry that Jason will trace that on his computer. I feel sick, and my hands are all sweaty.

  Then I hear their voices. I sneak a look out of the window. They’re sitting on the bench and Jason has his arm round my mum.

  I can’t get caught snooping. I close the file and shut down the computer. I put the box files back in order again. I worry that my sweaty hands have left marks on the boxes, that I have messed up somehow, that Jason will realise what I’ve done. But it was so worth it. I’ve found out so many secrets.

  Jason’s rich.

  Jason’s nosy.

  Jason’s far too interested in my dad.

  What if he’s part of a criminal gang that’s after my dad? He hasn’t got a tattoo that I know about, but you can have them lasered off. Or maybe this is the job that he has to do to join the gang. What if his instructions are –

  “Matthew Jordan is a traitor. Track him down and assassinate him and his family!”

  I was right to call Jason the Enemy.

  He’s seriously dangerous.

  And I need to find out more about my dad before he does.

  10: SOMETIMES THE TRUTH IS EASIER

  Kai rings me on Saturday. “Get yourself down here,” he says. “The birth certificate’s arrived.”

  When I get there his mum and Bob the Builder are working in their garden.

  “Hi, River.” Lorna waves at me.

  “Hey, kid,” says Bob.

  I wave back and head for Kai’s room.

  “Here it is,” he says, and he hands over a brown envelope.

  It’s strange to see my dad’s name in black and white on an official document. If I add this to the passport, it nearly makes a whole person.

  The information on the birth certificate is –

  Date of birth – 07/03/1973

  Place of birth – Homerton, London

  Forename(s) – Matthew Peter

  Sex – Male

  Name and surname of Father – Peter Jordan

  Name, surname and maiden surname of Mother – Elizabeth Jordan (née Lacey)

  Occupation of Father – Bus driver

  Signature, description and residence of informant – Peter Jordan, Father, 54 Rathbone Gardens, Ilford, Essex

  When registered – 09/03/1973

  The thin paper shakes in my hand as I read it. I have almost nothing from my dad, nothing, and now all this. All these facts. I imagine my grandad, driving his bus around the streets of Ilford. I imagine Peter Jordan getting married to Elizabeth – no, Lizzy. Lizzy Lacey and Pete Jordan. Happy ever after. And then they have two boys, and one is called Matthew and he has a son called River. And that’s me, and they don’t even know me.

  I wonder if they’re still alive. I wonder if they still live in Ilford. I wonder if I’ve ever got on a bus driven by my grandad, paid him my fare and said “thank you” as I got off, and neither of us knew the other.

  Imagine! But what if I’d got on a bus and looked at the driver and somehow recognised him? What if he had a spider-rose tattoo on his arm? What if I said, “Hello, I’m River,” and he said, “I know. I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

  But my dad doesn’t even know that he’s my dad, so that’s not very likely.

  But this birth certificate is a massive step nearer to finding him. Or at least it could be.

  “Let’s look on Google maps,” Kai says, like he can read my mind.

  Google maps swoops in on London … Ilford … Rathbone Gardens. And there it is. A little house, stuck to the house next door. A red front door. If you zoom right in you can see some gnomes in the front garden.

  “Wow,” I say. I’m giddy, as though I’ve actually flown to Rathbone Gardens and zoomed in on the gnomes myself.

  “I bet they still live there,” Kai says.

  He turns the image back into a map, zooms out, finds the nearest tube station. It’s just around the corner from the house where my dad might have grown up. We look up the map of the London Underground – it’s on the Central Line. If we get the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus and change, we could go there. We could take a look.

  “You doing anything this afternoon?” says Kai.

  “I am now,” I reply.

  It takes us forty minutes to get to Rathbone Gardens. We’re hot and hungry, because we forgot to have lunch. Kai looks with longing at a Burger King by the station (their fries are the best), but I drag him away.

  And now we’re standing outside a little house, feeling completely stupid.

  “Shall we knock?” Kai says. “After we’ve come all this way?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, yes. I mean no. Definitely no.” I don’t move.

  “We should just ask,” he says. “Go on, think of a cover story. You’re good at stories.”

  It’s funny how you can’t drum up lies when you need them. My mind is a blank.

  “We could say … we’re doing a survey for a Geography project,” I say at last.

  “A survey of what?”

  “Ages,” I say. “We have to find out the ages of everyone in the street and then work out the mean, median and mode.”

  “Pathetic.”

  “Can you think of anything better?”

  “Collecting for charity?”

  We get half way up the path – there are the gnomes and a little statue of a pixie – before I get cold feet.

  “I can’t do it!” I tell Kai.

  “You can! Go on!”

  We’re still arguing when the door opens. An old lady looks out at us. “Do you want something, boys?” she asks.

  I’m struck dumb. She has to be Lizzy Jordan. She’s just the right age.

  “We’re collecting –” Kai starts, but I step on his toes.

  “Are you Mrs Jordan?” I ask. I’m trying to smile. I’m trying to look like the sort of boy you’d want as a grandson.

  “I am indeed,” she replies.

  11: LIES CAN'T GET YOU OUT OF TROUBLE ALL THE TIME

  Mrs Jordan is looking nervous, wary, on edge. I try and relax, so she’ll trust me. I want her to like me.

  “What can I do for you?” she asks. “How do you know my name?”

  “I was wondering.” I pause. How to put it? “Did you have a son called Matthew?”


  She looks at me like I’m speaking a different language. One she doesn’t understand.

  “Matthew?” she says.

  “Matthew Jordan,” I say.

  “Matthew Peter Jordan,” Kai says.

  She looks at us, and I can’t tell if she’s happy or sad or it’s just that she has no idea what we’re talking about. Then she turns around and shouts up the stairs, “Peter! Peter!”

  We wait in silence, while an old man huffs and puffs down the stairs.

  “What is it, Elizabeth?” he barks.

  She points a shaking finger at us. “These boys … they …”

  “What? Are they after my gnomes? Hands off, you louts.”

  “We’re not louts,” Kai says.

  Mrs Jordan’s mouth is wobbling. Her eyes are wet and her voice is wavery. “They … they were asking about Matthew.”

  “Matthew?” Mr Jordan’s hairy grey eyebrows shoot upwards. His mouth gapes. His eyes are wide open behind his thick specs.

  “Matthew Peter Jordan,” Kai says again, trying to be helpful.

  “And what do you want with Matthew Peter Jordan?” the old man says.

  “We were hoping you might be able to tell us something about him,” I say. “About where he is now. About his life.”

  Two things happen when I say that. The old lady bursts into tears, pulls a tissue from her cuff and sobs into it. And the old man explodes with anger.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” he roars. “Are you doing this on purpose? Because it’s a pretty sick joke!”

  “We didn’t mean to upset you –” I say, shocked, but he’s coming at me. He raises his hand and grabs my ear and sort of twists it, which is very, very painful.

  “Ow!” I howl. “What?”

  “Clear off!” he yells, in my other ear. “Go! And never come back.”

  “But we were just –”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” he bellows. “Look, it’s one thing to nick my gnomes and litter the street. It’s quite another to march up and ask my wife … can’t you see her heart is broken … all these years and it still cuts like a knife …”

  “But we didn’t …” Kai never gets the words out.