Here We Lie Read Free Page A

parents’ deaths, but that
wasn’t why I was all over the place.
That
would have happened anyway. And Dee Dee would be hormonal right now whether you’d split up or not.’
    Jed puts his arm around me as Dee Dee’s thick white legs thud along the cobbles away from us. She is wearing shorts and a shapeless T-shirt that only emphasizes her bulk. That bushy hairdo
doesn’t help either. I wonder why her designer-loving mother doesn’t give her some advice about how she looks.
    ‘You were a bit hard on her just then,’ I venture.
    Jed sighs. ‘I didn’t mean to be,’ he says. ‘But she really needs to learn to think before she acts.’
    ‘She’s only thirteen, Jed.’ I purse my lips. ‘Do you think there’s something bothering her? She told me she had a “secret” to tell, something she
saw.’
    Jed dismisses this with a weary wave. ‘I’m sure it’s just mood swings. She was fine this morning, bouncing about eating croissants. Anyway, what’s she got to be
“bothered” about?’ His voice tightens and hardens. ‘I pay her mother a fucking fortune so that
nothing
bothers
either
of them
.
’
    ‘I know,’ I say, wishing for the millionth time that Jed’s ex wasn’t still so angry about him leaving her. I understand, of course. But the fall-out on all of us,
especially Dee Dee, is hard.
    Jed sighs again, then steers me back along the path and through the tunnel. I fall silent, letting him take charge. As we walk along, my headache gets worse and worse. I’m concerned for
Dee Dee still but also grateful – and not for the first time – that the full beam of Jed’s forceful personality is focused on looking after me. After spending my twenties with a
succession of irresponsible boy-men, I was single for nearly three years before meeting Jed last November. The experience has been like finding a port after years of storms. The fact that he is
seventeen years older than me has never been an issue. My friend Laura was initially adamant that I’d only fallen for someone so much older because of my parents dying when I was eleven, but
I think that’s a cliché and that our ages are irrelevant. I just love the fact that, unlike all the younger men I’ve known, Jed knows exactly what he wants. And it still thrills
me that what he wants is me. Jed asked me to marry him on my thirty-third birthday last month. We are planning a big wedding next year, probably in late spring.
    ‘Let’s do it properly: church service, a big party,’ he said. ‘It’s your first time and it should be special.’
    Frankly I’d happily marry him on a towpath, but I love that he wants the best for us, that his view of marriage is still so positive even after the end of his relationship with his
children’s mother and – most of all – that despite having Dee Dee and Lish, he still wants kids with me.
    Of course there is a voice in my head that says that if he could be unfaithful to his wife with me, then there’s surely at least a chance he will one day be unfaithful to me with someone
else – and that I wouldn’t want him being as impatient with any children we might have, as he often is with his own daughter.
    But it’s only a small voice and, most of the time, I don’t hear it at all.

June 2014
    OH. MY. DAYS.
    So, like, I’d already decided to make a video diary for when I’m thirteen but I’m starting now, the day before my birthday, because the most AMAZING thing happened today and
I HAVE to say about it. I can’t BELIEVE it happened because I’d been thinking and thinking that I am going to be thirteen tomorrow and I haven’t ever been kissed, like, properly,
not pecks on the cheek or your mum but THAT kind of kissing and then I came out of school late after my piano lesson and Sam Edwards from year ten was round by the back exit near the Chapel just
lounging about like he was waiting for something, a lift maybe, but no one else was there and when I went past he said hello and I, like, nearly