by Keren David
It’s been exhausting. I know everyone’s talking about me. But this time I’m not telling any stories about anything to anyone.
Mr Zakouri apologised for not believing me, which was nice of him, and said I could talk to the school counsellor if I want to. I don’t.
There’s only one person I want to talk to about what’s happened.
The Barbarians train up in Finchley, at a swanky club with its own bar and changing rooms. The U16s have Wednesday nights, from seven till eight. I hang around outside the club, hood up, head down. I’m waiting for Ollie.
He’s one of the last ones out. It looks like he’s walking home on his own. I walk behind him for a while, till it’s just the two of us, under the orange light of the lamp-posts.
He turns around. “Are you following me?”
He shouldn’t be scared – he’s way bigger than me – but I can see how his eyes are wide and his breathing is shallow.
I stick out my hand. “I’m River,” I say.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Apparently he’s your dad too,” Ollie says.
“Yeah.” I pause. “Which makes us brothers.”
“Half-brothers.”
“Yeah. Half-brothers.”
“I’ve got two half-sisters already,” Ollie says. “They don’t look like me. They’re all blonde and pretty and cute.”
“No one’s ever called me cute,” I say. “Or pretty. Or blonde, come to that.”
All of a sudden, he grins. It makes me realise how serious his face is normally.
“I can’t believe my dad did that,” Ollie says. “It’s just bizarre. He’s so straight. So boring, even. I can’t believe he was a hippy and had dreads and all that stuff.”
“I can’t believe it either,” I say, “and I don’t even know him.”
“Do you want to know him?”
I shrug. “Not really. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to my mum. And to the people whose baby’s name he stole.”
“It was beyond wrong,” Ollie says. “Dad told me his bosses arranged it all. And he got sucked into being this new person, this different person, and it was confusing and difficult to live as a liar. But I can’t really forgive him. And my mum, well, she gave up on him years ago. Now she doesn’t even want me to see him.
“I can’t forgive him,” I say. “I never want to see him again.”
We look at each other and then it’s like we both decide to change the subject at the same time, because Ollie says, “That was a good penalty you took,” and I say, “I’m sorry about that goal,” and then we start comparing the Barbarians and my team, and then we find that we’ve walked together to his house.
“Come and meet my mum,” he says.
But I’m worried about what she’ll think and what I’ll say to her. “Another time, mate,” I say. “I’d better get the bus.”
We swap phone numbers. We agree we’ll go to Nando’s together sometime soon.
And I go home. And Mum is there, and Jason – who isn’t a fake and who isn’t an enemy and who actually knows a lot of cool stuff. He’s been telling me all about the marathon he ran in the Sahara. It’s called the Marathon de Sables, and it’s six times as long as other marathons, and you sleep in tents made out of goats’ hair and you have to carry everything you need on your back. It’s called the Toughest Foot Race on Earth, and Jason says we can train together and do it when I’m 18.
And he’s also told me a lot about the history of undercover agents provocateurs. All I can say is that a lot of people have behaved really badly all over the world for a long, long time.
I go up to my room and I get out the book that Mr Zakouri gave me. The Liar’s Handbook, I called it. I look at some of the stuff I’ve written. My so-called rules of lying.
And then I draw a line under it all and start to write.
ABOUT THE LIAR'S HANDBOOK
River and Tanya’s story is a work of fiction. But I was inspired to write it by a real-life fight for truth and compensation. A group of women, who were members of political and environmental activist groups, discovered that men they’d had relationships with were in fact undercover police officers.
The Metropolitan Police has never admitted a deliberate policy of encouraging these relationships. But they have paid compensation to several women out of court, and have lost a claim for damages in the High Court made by another woman.
In November 2015, Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt of the Metropolitan Police said the relationships had been “wrong” and were a “gross violation of personal dignity and integrity”. The women said the apology would “never make up for what we have endured”, and they pointed out that no apology was made to those children fathered by the undercover police officers.
An official Inquiry into undercover policing was announced in 2015. Its chairman, Sir Christopher Pitchford, said, “The Inquiry’s priority is to discover the truth.”
Keren David
ABOUT KEREN DAVID
Keren David is an “author of empathy and truthfulness” whose prize-winning novels explore identity, love and family dynamics. Keren started her working life as a messenger girl making coffee and running errands at a newspaper before going on to be a reporter, political correspondent and editor-in-chief.
“Life-affirming, witty and uplifting ... David gets better with every book” – Daily Mail on Salvage
