The Telling Error (39 page)

Paula laughed. ‘Er … well, yes, obviously. I think it’s a fairly well-known expression.’

‘How do you know Nicki Clements had romantic feelings for Damon? Couldn’t she have been an ardent supporter of his writing and his opinions, without there being any more to it?’

‘Trust me, she was in love with him,’ Paula said.

Offhand, Simon couldn’t think of many people he’d met that he’d trusted less. ‘How do you know? Is there any proof of that?’

‘Read her comments!’

‘I have. She was undeniably a fan of Blundy, but I’ve read nothing that suggests love.’

‘Oh, come on! The protective tone, the hurt when people misjudge him …’

‘Protectiveness can take a platonic form,’ said Simon. ‘People want to protect friends as well as … Don’t they?’

‘She was in love with him,’ Paula said flatly. ‘I can’t believe you can’t see it.’

‘I can’t see it, no,’ said Simon, feeling at last that he was on firmer ground. ‘But I believe that you can.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Simon looked pointedly at the clock on the wall.
Tick, tick, tick …

It was the perfect moment to end the interview.

‘And then I pressed “Post advertisement” and the deed was done,’ Charlie told Simon, Liv and Gibbs. She decided not to mention that so far she’d had not one single reply that wasn’t spam of one kind or another.

Simon, who had heard the story already, was furious. ‘You’re telling more people?’ he said. ‘Do you want to get sacked?’

‘Liv and Gibbs won’t say anything, will they? Morally compromised as they are. As we
all
are.’

The four of them were having dinner at Passaparola. These days, Charlie and Simon had dinner with Liv and Gibbs more often than with Liv and Dom. Charlie had never been keen on her official brother-in-law, and increasingly Dom, a lawyer with a thick skin and a high opinion of himself, seemed to need to be the centre of attention. He’d taken to prefacing nearly all of his I-know-better pronouncements with the words ‘Here’s the thing’, followed by an audible colon.

‘For once, nothing’s leaked out to the press,’ said Simon. ‘
Nothing
– and you go and do this.’

‘And still nothing’s been leaked to the press,’ said Charlie. ‘So. Relax.’

Liv clinked her fork against her glass. ‘Chris and I have something important to tell you,’ she said.

Charlie held her breath.

‘Now,
please
don’t be sad for us because we’re
absolutely fine.
OK? We’ve decided that from now on, we’re going to proceed on a new basis: just very good friends.
Best
friends!’ She beamed. ‘It won’t change anything as far as you’re concerned. We can still all meet for dinner. But … we’ve decided not to continue with the romantic side of our relationship.’

‘You’re splitting up?’ Charlie had dreamed of this day for years. Now that it had come, she felt oddly deflated. But … Gibbs had been sucking up to her like mad, and Simon had said he’d been the same with him. Charlie had been sure a large favour was about to be asked of them. Why would you butter people up in order to tell them your relationship was over? It made no sense.

‘We’re no longer an item in that sense, no, but we’ll still see each other just as often,’ said Liv. ‘Won’t we, Chris?’

Gibbs sighed. ‘If you say so,’ he muttered. Charlie turned her attention to him, away from her sister. He looked embarrassed and slightly impatient. Not distraught, not in shock … Charlie glanced at Simon, who shook his head almost imperceptibly to let her know he agreed with her: something here didn’t add up.

Whatever they were playing at, it was Liv’s idea, Liv’s crazy plan, and Gibbs was going along with it.

‘Why are you going to see each other just as often?’ Charlie asked. ‘Isn’t the one advantage of a break-up that you can finally be rid of the person?’

‘Chris and I love each other,’ said Liv. ‘We’ll always be part of one another’s lives, just in a different way.’ She reached over and squeezed Gibbs’s hand.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re lying. What I can’t work out is why.’ She turned to Simon. ‘What do they have to gain by pretending they’re not sleeping together any more?’

‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose they’ll tell us if and when they want us to know. In the meantime, we can talk about something else. Charlie spoke to another estate agent today,’ he said to Gibbs. ‘From Bateman Yoke.’

Gibbs stared down at the table.

‘We’re not lying!’ Liv insisted.

‘I don’t think Simon’s that interested,’ Charlie told her. It was a good tactic. Deprived of the attention she’d been counting on, Liv might be forced into revealing the truth. ‘He’d be very interested to hear what’s
really
going on with you and Gibbs, though, and so would I,’ Charlie said, ramming the point home.

‘I’ve told you what’s going on – we’ve broken up, but we’re still best friends.’

‘Liv, if they want to change the subject, there’s nothing you can do,’ said Gibbs. ‘We’ve done our bit. Right?’

She pursed her lips. ‘Well, I just thought … No, you’re right. We’ve told them. It’s … fine!’

Charlie watched the complex sequence of eye signals that passed between them. At that moment, she’d have given her right arm and perhaps a few toes too to know what the hell was going on.

‘Tell me about this estate agent from Bateman Yoke,’ Gibbs said.

Charlie opened her mouth, but Simon beat her to it. ‘He wasn’t one of the ones Nicki Clements asked to find her a house near Elmhirst Road last year – which is probably why she contacted him on 7 March this year and asked him what price she should ask for her Bartholomew Gardens house if she wanted to sell it as quickly as possible. She sounded upset, he said, and she didn’t seem to care about making a loss – just seemed desperate to get out of Spilling as soon as she could. The guy said he’d go round and do a valuation, but before he had a chance, Nicki had rung him back and said she’d changed her mind and didn’t want to move. She cancelled him.’

‘Are you thinking the first call was immediately after she broke up with Damon Blundy?’ Gibbs asked.

‘That’s my guess,’ said Charlie. ‘They had an affair; it went wrong; she wanted to get away from him, having only moved to the Culver Valley to be near him. Then a day or so later, her mood changed – she started to feel stronger and realised it was bad enough that she’d moved for him once. Twice would be pathetic.’

‘So Damon Blundy and this Nicki woman were having an affair, and they’d split up by 7 March?’ Liv said. ‘That sounds about right.’

‘What? What do you know about it?’ Charlie asked her.
You manipulative liar.

‘I know that by April this year Damon Blundy was having an affair with Paula Riddiough.’ It was a few seconds before Liv noticed the effect her words had had. ‘What? Why are you all staring at me weirdly? Oh, come on,
everyone
knows about Damon Blundy and Paula Privilege!’

‘Whatever you know, why the fuck haven’t you told me?’ said Gibbs, red in the face.

‘I’ve been preoccupied. We both have, with our …’ Liv stopped and bit her lip.

‘With your fake break-up?’ Charlie suggested helpfully.

‘Let’s not get sidetracked,’ said Simon. ‘Liv, tell us.’

‘I’m sorry, I thought we all knew,’ she said shakily. ‘All my Twitter friends know. Blundy and Paula had a big row on Twitter after Margaret Thatcher died – insulting and mocking each other in rhyming couplets, copying the exact metrical structure of
The Gruffalo
by Julia Donaldson.’

‘And
Tiddler
,’ said Simon.

Liv looked shocked, then giggled. ‘How do you know about
Tiddler
?’

‘I didn’t until recently. Until I read the Twitter argument between Paula Riddiough and Damon Blundy.’

‘He likes to be thorough in his research,’ said Charlie. ‘Plus, he loves books about fish.’

Simon’s face tightened, as she’d known it would. ‘
Moby Dick
’s not about a fish,’ he said. ‘A whale isn’t a fish.’

‘Tiddler’s
heavenly
,’ Liv gushed. She was in a remarkably sunny mood for someone who had recently terminated a passionate love affair. ‘Morally, it’s the opposite of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Making up stories isn’t bad – it’s the only thing that can save you. That’s the message.’

‘Interesting that your idea of “heavenly” is a book that makes the case for lying,’ Charlie muttered.

‘Can we get back to Blundy and Riddiough?’ Gibbs snapped.

‘If you followed their Thatcher witch fight, you can’t have failed to notice how it ended. Don’t you remember?’ Liv asked Simon.

‘Not word for word, no.’

‘We don’t all spend our days browsing Twitter,’ said Charlie.

‘There’s a bit in
Tiddler
, near the end, where Tiddler says, “I was lost, I was scared, but a story led me home again.” The other fish all say, “Oh no, it didn’t,” and Tiddler says, “Oh yes, it did.” Immediately after their spat on Twitter – maybe ten minutes later – Paula Riddiough tweeted Damon Blundy and said, “I was lost, I was scared, but a Tory led me home again.” Blundy tweeted back, “Oh no, he didn’t”, to which she replied, “Oh yes, he did!”’ Liv looked at Gibbs, who was staring at her open-mouthed. ‘I read that and I thought, “They
must
be having an affair.”’

‘It’s not there any more,’ Simon said to Gibbs in the voice Charlie feared, the one that always signalled his failure to notice she was alive for the foreseeable future. ‘Is it? Am I going senile?’

‘Of course it’s not there
now
,’ said Liv. ‘The incriminating tweets vanished seconds after they appeared.’

‘You sure about this, Liv?’ Gibbs asked her. ‘You didn’t imagine it, or … misremember?’

‘One hundred and fifty per cent positive. I follow both of them. I watched those tweets as they happened. I’ve still got DMs from that day, probably – friends who saw it too. I was suspicious even
before
the nicey-nicey bit at the end. Damon Blundy had no kids and regularly wrote about how he couldn’t stand children and everything relating to them – how did he know
The Gruffalo
and
Tiddler
well enough to be able to parody them at such speed, unless he was involved with Paula Riddiough? Everyone knows they’re her favourite books – well, everyone who follows her tweets, like I do. And then, when the row was followed by that lovey-dovey bit, it seemed obvious. I waited for it to blow up into a huge thing – screengrabs, the works – but no one said anything, not on general Twitter. I think a hell of a lot of people’d be scared to antagonise Damon Blundy, knowing how he goes after anyone he’s got it in for.’

A waiter was approaching. ‘No,’ Simon barked at him without looking in his direction. ‘Not now.’ The waiter retreated, looking grateful to have been warned away from a potentially toxic area of the restaurant.

‘Oh, and there was a smiley face too,’ said Liv.

‘What?’ Simon and Gibbs both pounced at the same time.

‘Yes, after what I’ve already said – “Oh no, he didn’t”, “Oh yes, he did!” et cetera – Blundy sent her a tweet that was just a smiley face. No words.’ Liv paused for dramatic effect. She was starting to enjoy the expert-witness role. ‘And … I’m not absolutely sure, but I
think
the face might even have been winking,’ she said.

The Chancery Hotel hasn’t changed since I was last here in February. I expected it to be different. I wanted it to be. Or maybe I only want me to be different – no longer the same fool who arrived here full of hope and excitement five months ago, thinking she was about to consummate her illicit love affair with one of the UK’s most famous newspaper columnists.

Still the same.

The grey and red lobby décor, the flower photographs on the walls … Separated from reception by a glass partition, there’s the same skinny rectangle of a bar, where you’d be foolish to sit and have a drink if you didn’t want the bar staff to overhear your entire conversation, not to mention the ticking and squelching of your internal organs. The room can’t be more than three feet wide. No one’s in there today; I can’t imagine that anyone ever sits at the bar, on one of the twelve high red-topped stools arranged in a perfectly straight line. Who would want to be stared at by people like me, waiting to be checked in?

There’s only one receptionist on duty, and the most tedious man in the world is in front of me. He seems determined to ask about everything a guest at a hotel might conceivably ask about: Wi-Fi, breakfast times, gym times, the business centre, newspapers, alarm calls, does his room have a minibar. I suppress the urge to scream at him, ‘How can you want and need so much?’ He even has an annoying name that he has to spell out letter by letter because it’s so unusual. U-s-k-a-l-i-s. He pushed in front of me on the hotel steps and actually jogged to reception in order to get there before me, the creep.

While I wait, I keep turning round to see if anyone walks through the hotel’s main door. All the way here from King’s Cross Station – a fifteen-minute walk – I sensed that someone was following me, but there was no sign of anyone. No streaked-haired man, no blue BMW, no one who stopped walking when I did and lowered their eyes.