As Andrew’s packed lunches went, this was another textbook effort, even if he said so himself. “Ham and cheese,” he boasted to the camera. “Blob of pickle goes central, then we’ll just spread it out to each corner. I like to imagine it’s a traitor’s body parts being sent to the four corners of England, but come up with whatever metaphor you want. Hang on, is this a bit of iceberg lettuce? You bet it is. So who’s coming with? A packet of salt and vinegar from the multi-bag? Tick. And how about a satsuma from the Big Red Net? Ditto. Though do be careful to check it’s not one of those sneaky ones who’s pretending to be fine despite the fact its bottom’s gone moldy. I always picture a vainglorious young soldier protesting he wants to go on patrol despite a shattered fibula, but again, do choose your own metaphor.”
He was about to launch into an explanation of his Tupperware system when he faltered, staring ahead as if the autocue had broken, the wholly unwelcome reminder of Keith and Meredith’s tag-team interrogation coming into his mind.
Sitting on the train to work (wedged into the armrest by a man whose legs were spread so far apart Andrew could only assume he was performing some sort of interpretive dance about what a great guy he was), he found himself thinking back to his very first day in the office. After his momentary excitement at getting the job, he’d spent the following days desperately panicking about how he was going to set things straight with Cameron about the small matter of his made-up family. He reasoned his best chance would be to get on with Cameron very, very quickly—to go against all instincts and actively befriend him. A few illicit chats in the corridor slagging other people off, a pint of lager after work on a Friday—that’s what people did, wasn’t it?—then he’d confess, say it had been a moment of madness between you and me, mate, and they’d chalk the whole thing up to one of those white lies everyone told in interviews.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. As is dictated by UK law, Andrew had said a brief hello to his new colleagues before immediately locking himself out of his e-mails and sitting in silence for an hour because he was too embarrassed to ask for help.
That’s when he saw Cameron appear. This was Andrew’s first big chance to get on friendly terms. He was just planning a witty opening gambit about his current admin crisis when Cameron, having interrupted to wish him a happy first day and rambled on and on about “KPIs” without giving him a chance to speak, concluded by asking in a voice clearly loud enough that everyone else could hear, “How’s the family? Steph and David okay?”
So thrown was he that Cameron had blown the whole thing this early, he responded to the question of how his children were by saying, “They seem fine, thanks.”
It would have been an appropriate response to an optician asking how his new lenses were, but not so much when referring to the well-being of his flesh and blood. Flustered, he gabbled on about them seeming to have lots of homework at the moment.
“Well,” Cameron said when Andrew had finished rambling. “Easter hols, soon. You and Diane off anywhere nice?”
“Um . . . France,” Andrew said.
“Oh, top banana,” Cameron said. “Whereabouts?”
Andrew considered this.
“South,” he said. “South France.”
And that was that.
In those early days, when conversation turned to family he was forced to think on his feet. He learned quickly that he could pretend to be distracted by something on his computer, or ask for a question to be repeated as if he hadn’t quite caught it, to buy him time, but he knew he needed a more long-term strategy. In his second week, there were a few days when nothing came up, and he wondered if he might be out of the woods. Looking back, he’d been incredibly naive. This was family. This was what normal people talked about. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Meredith seemed to exist on a diet of nosiness and gossip, constantly pressing Andrew for more specific information. A case in point had been when she, Keith and a nervous graduate called Bethany were talking about weddings.
“Oh it was so excruciating,” Meredith said, gloating about a friend’s nuptials that weekend. “They were standing there up at the altar and they just couldn’t fit the ring on his big fat finger.”
“My dad thinks it’s a bit namby-pamby for men to wear a wedding ring,” Bethany said in her quivering voice that made her sound like she was perpetually being driven over a cattle grid.
“You seeeee?” Keith said, spreading his arms wide to make his point and revealing the sweat patches under his arms. “That’s what I’ve always said.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Meredith said. “If my Graham didn’t wear one I know he’d have all sorts of slappers crawling all over him.”
She strained her neck to try to see over Andrew’s screen.
“Do you wear one, Andrew?”
Stupidly, he actually checked his finger before saying no.
“Is that for any particular reason, or . . . ?”
Shit.
“No, no,” he said. “I just . . . didn’t think I’d like how it felt.”
Nobody questioned this, but he could still feel his neck starting to burn with embarrassment. He realized then that it wasn’t good enough just knowing the simple facts, having the general overview. He was going to have to accentuate the broad brushstrokes with finer ones. And so, later that evening, with Ella on in the background, he opened up a blank spreadsheet and began to fill in his family’s story. He started by establishing as many “factual” things as possible: middle names, ages, hair colors, heights. Then, over the following weeks, he began to add subtler details—remembering snippets of strangers’ conversations from which he’d take some minor detail, or asking himself how someone else’s news might have been dealt with by his own family. Before too long you could have asked him almost anything and he’d have had a response prepared. To look at the spreadsheet at random you might have found that David enjoyed touch rugby but had recently sprained his ankle. He was shy and preferred playing on his own rather than with friends. He’d begged for months for a pair of trainers that had heels that lit up when you walked, until Andrew had finally relented.
Steph had terrible colic when she was a baby, but apart from the odd case of conjunctivitis now and then they rarely had to see a doctor with her these days. She asked scarily intelligent questions in public, which often left them embarrassingly stumped. She had once played a shepherd at the nativity to mixed reviews from her costars, though of course they’d never been prouder.
It was the “they” part—him and Diane—that he found more difficult. It had felt okay when he’d allowed himself to fantasize during the interview, but this was another level altogether. Nevertheless, the details were all there: Diane had recently been made partner in the law firm (her field was human rights), and though she worked long hours she’d now stopped checking the dreaded BlackBerry on weekends. Their wedding anniversary was September 4, but they also had a mini-celebration on November 15—the anniversary of their first kiss (standing outside in the snow after an impromptu party in a friend’s halls of residence room). Their first proper date had been to see Pulp Fiction at the cinema. They went to her parents’ for Christmas and tended to holiday with the kids in France in the summer and Center Parcs in the autumn half term. They’d gone to Rome for their tenth wedding anniversary. When they could get a babysitter they’d go to the theater—but nothing too avant-garde, because they’d decided their time and money were too precious to fritter away on something without at least one of the leads having been in a Sunday night costume drama. Diane played tennis every Sunday morning with her friend Sue and was on the PTA at Steph’s school. She used to wear bright orange-rimmed glasses before taking the plunge with laser surgery. She had a little scar above her eyebrow from where a boy at school called James Bond had thrown a crabapple at her.
All of this had been such a full-on job that Andrew had barely found time to think about how his actual new role was going. He’d already been to two funerals and made difficult phone calls to several relatives (one of which involved having to explain to a man that if he wanted the council to pay for his uncle’s funeral then he’d have to return the laptop he’d taken from the house so that they could sell it to pay for the service). He’d even come along with Keith to his first property inspection and seen the room where a woman had taken her final breath. But all that felt like a walk in the park compared to keeping his deceit undiscovered. He was constantly on edge, waiting for the moment he got himself tangled up in knots or completely contradicted himself. But then a month passed, and another, and slowly he started to relax. All his hard work was paying off.
The moment that nearly changed everything came on a Friday at lunchtime, Andrew having spent a fruitless morning searching for next-of-kin clues in a shoebox full of papers recovered from a property search. He was absentmindedly watching some shop-bought macaroni and cheese rotate in the microwave and engaging in some idle chitchat with Cameron when the subject of allergies came up.
“That’s the hard part,” Cameron was saying. “You have to be totally prepared. It just means you’re on edge rather a lot. Especially when it comes to nuts. With Chris we just have to be extra vigilant, you know?”
“Mmm,” Andrew said, distractedly peeling back the plastic film and jabbing the pasta around with his fork. “Steph’s allergic to bee stings, so I know what you mean.”
It was only when he got back to his desk and was halfway through his lunch that he considered this little exchange. He hadn’t needed to mentally refer to his spreadsheet or desperately improvise something; instead he had quite calmly volunteered this information about Steph without even thinking about it, as if it had come from his subconscious. The fact that the detail had appeared so easily left him deeply unsettled. It may have helped his cause overall, another little piece of information to put meat on the bones, but it was the first time he’d really lost sight of why he was having to make things up in the first place. Allowing the fantasy to take over like that felt scary. So much so, in fact, that when he got home that evening, rather than updating his spreadsheet he spent the time looking for another job.
A week later, he had just come out of the church, having attended the funeral of a seventy-five-year-old former driving instructor who’d drowned in the bath, when he turned on his phone to find a voicemail from an HR person asking him to interview for one of the jobs he’d applied for. Ordinarily this would have thrown him into a panic, but he always felt curiously numb after the funerals, so when he heard the message he felt calm enough to call back immediately to arrange the interview. This was his chance to escape and finally stop the lies.
Another week later, he was climbing the stairs at the council office and feeling horribly out of breath, trying to convince himself that this was because he was suffering from a disease—possibly fatal—and nothing to do with the fact he hadn’t exercised for two decades, when his phone rang again. A few seconds later, he was wheezing that yes he’d be very happy to come in for a second interview. He spent the rest of the afternoon sitting at his desk and imagining how it would feel to tell Cameron he was handing in his notice already.
“You and the family up to anything nice this weekend, Andrew?” Bethany asked.
“Barbecue on Saturday if the weather’s nice,” Andrew said. “Steph’s decided she’s vegetarian, so not quite sure what’s going to be on the menu for her.”
“Oh, I am too! It’s fine—just do some halloumi cheese and some Linda McCartney sausages. She’ll love it.”
They were still discussing weekend plans some minutes later when Andrew got an e-mail from Adrian, the recruitment person who’d called him, asking him to confirm what dates he was free for the second interview. Andrew excused himself and escaped to a toilet cubicle. He didn’t want to admit to himself quite how warm and comforted he felt after little moments like this with Bethany and the others when discussing family stuff. The thought returned to him again: Where was the harm in what he was doing? He wasn’t upsetting anyone. People had actual families that they did actual diabolical things to, harming loved ones in all sorts of awful ways, and what he was doing wasn’t comparable to that in any way.
By the time he’d gotten back to his desk he’d made up his mind. He would make peace with what he was doing. He wasn’t going to turn back now.
Hi Adrian,
I’m really glad for the opportunity to have met with Jackie, but after a bit of soul-searching I’ve decided to keep on in my current role. Thank you for your time.
From then on, things started to get easier. He could happily join in with family chat feeling guilt-free, and, for the first time in a very long while, he felt happy more often than he felt lonely.