Never Tell A Lie Read online

  So when Django was born I was absolutely determined to give him the most unusual name I could find, short of actually making a name up. I found the name Django in a novel and I loved it. And – strangely – Travis agreed with me. He also wanted his son to have a special name, a name that would make him stand out from the crowd as Travis longed to do. How was I supposed to know it would become the name of a software platform? And that Django would come home from nursery school, aged five, and say, ‘Granpops was right. I should have a sensible name like the other boys. Like Thomas or John. Django is a rubbish name.’

  And while I explained that I had chosen his name because he was the best baby ever born, and I wanted him to have the most special name in the world, I felt like the worst failure of a mother. And, of course, Travis, who was still alive, forgot that he’d ever supported the choice, and made it very clear that he also thought it was a ridiculous name and that I was a failure.

  But I still like the name, and I am convinced that Django will eventually appreciate it – or change it to Bob – so I can smile when my dad teases me.

  ‘So,’ I say to my dad, ‘seeing as how you really liked babysitting, would you like to do it again? Really soon?’

  ‘How soon is really soon?’ asks my dad. ‘Because I’ve got a hot date tonight.’

  This is most likely not a lie. My dad didn’t date at all when I lived at home. After my mom died, he just focused on me and his business (he’s the best mechanic in town!) and acted like women had fallen off his radar completely. But the moment I moved out to go to university, the floodgates opened. Online dating sites, and later Tinder, and meeting women at the pub, and dating customers. The world is like a menu of eligible women to him. They never last very long – I think my mother’s sudden death damaged him too much – so I’ve learnt not to get too close to them. They vary greatly in looks and age, but they’re always nice. My father has discovered how to find a nice woman, but then he breaks their hearts and moves on. I should probably add that he’s a nice-looking man for his age. When he fetches Django from school, he always gets a few looks. And the fact that although he has lived his entire life in Johannesburg, he has a slight Irish lilt, doesn’t hurt either.

  ‘Not tonight, Don Juan,’ I tell my dad. ‘On Friday.’

  ‘You and Stace going out again? Getting to be a habit, is it?’ says my dad.

  ‘Twice isn’t a habit,’ I say. ‘And anyway, I’m not going out with Stacey.’

  ‘Book club girls?’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  Now we are both silent. He doesn’t want to ask. I want to make him ask. The habits of childhood are hard to break. But then I remember I actually need a favour, so I relent and give him what he wants.

  ‘It’s a date, Dad. I’m going on a date.’

  ‘What?’ yells my father, forcing me to move the phone away from my ear. ‘Who? Where did he find you? Oh Lord, have you finally joined Tinder? You need to be careful, you know. Lots of dodgy old men on that thing.’

  ‘Well, you’d know about that,’ I say. ‘And no, I haven’t joined Tinder. I’m too scared it’ll match me with you, and then I’d have to die.’ I say this as a joke, but this is genuinely one of the reasons why I won’t join Tinder. And a healthy fear of strange men.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ says my dad. ‘It’s that school reunion. You met someone.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Is this one of those dodgy boys you went out with at school? Please don’t tell me it’s that dreadful Dusty creature.’ My father had not been a fan of Dustin, who would rock up at our house and take off his shoes, and lie on the couch like he lived there.

  ‘Dustin wasn’t at the reunion,’ I tell my dad. This had been a great relief to me. He hadn’t taken our break-up well. He only left me alone when my father threatened him.

  ‘So you were free to meet other, nicer, people?’ My father says this as if Dustin is what has held me back all my life.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I met a very nice group of people, and I’m particularly hoping to stay friends with a woman called April.’

  ‘You didn’t have a friend at school called April,’ says my dad. ‘Oh Lord, are you having a go at being gay? I mean, that’s fine. Very trendy. And actually, maybe better given the men you choose. So that’s fine, just unexpected.’

  I interrupt my father before he completely talks himself round to me being gay. ‘No, Dad,’ I say. ‘The date is not with April – although I am seeing her this week. The date is with a guy that I liked at school, and I thought he didn’t like me, and then last night it turned out he did like me. And I guess, maybe, still does.’

  ‘Ah,’ says my father. Who knew that a person could get so much into one sound? There’s interest and surprise; but he also somehow manages to fit in judgement and an expectation of disaster based on my history with men. That ‘Ah’ is laced with some weird cocktail of hope and disappointment and resignation.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say. ‘What does “Ah” mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ says my father. ‘I just hope you don’t get hurt.’

  Again, a sentence so layered in meaning; so layered in history. It might as well be a vegetable lasagne for all the things he’s put in there.

  I sigh. ‘So can you babysit again or not?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course I can,’ he says, like he hasn’t been making me jump through hoops. ‘Django and I will go out to supper.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘That sounds like a nice idea. But just tell me where you’re going, so I don’t end up at the same place.’

  ‘I really hope this chap isn’t going to take you somewhere where a twelve-year-old boy would be happy,’ says my dad. ‘He must take you somewhere grown-up.’

  ‘Daddy, Django’s favourite food is sushi. He’s not exactly going to get that at McDonalds.’

  ‘Oh Lord, I’m not eating that raw-fish business,’ says my dad. ‘And neither is Django when he’s with me. It’s meat and two veg for us men, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Whatever, Dad.’ I sigh. ‘Just tell me where you’re going, okay?’

  ‘Gotta go, sweetie,’ he says. ‘Mrs Labolsky’s here to pick up her car.’

  I happen to know that Mrs Labolsky is a fine-looking widow, whose car breaks down more than a car really should, especially a car that is serviced by my father.

  ‘Make sure that’s all she picks up,’ I say with a smile.

  ‘A gentleman never tells.’

  There’s a silence. I take a deep breath. We’re having such a friendly chat; this is a good time to ask him about what I saw.

  ‘Dad,’ I start. ‘When Mommy died . . .’

  I don’t know how to carry on.

  ‘Yes, love?’ says my father.

  Maybe this will be easier in person. I can speak to him when he comes to babysit for my date.

  ‘Never mind, Dad,’ I say. ‘It was nothing.’

  And now I have to plan what I’ll wear on a date. I haven’t been on a date in over a decade. I’m excited. But I’m also scared. Do I really want to let another man into my life? After Travis died, I was so sure I was done with all that. After Travis died, I never wanted to look at another man again, although possibly not for the reasons everybody thought.

  But at least I can finally answer Joshua.

  Friday night is fine.

  I pause, thinking of all Stacey’s disaster stories about bad dates. I add to the message.

  Tell me where to meet you, and what time.

  But now it sounds a bit cold and clinical.

  Looking forward. X

  I read over it again. It will have to do. I press send.

  I’m going on a date on Friday night.

  Chapter 10

  Before the date, though, there’s coffee with April. It’s possible that I am looking forward to this more than seeing Joshua, because it’s less fraught and difficult. It’s just coffee with a friend – that’s something I know how to do.

  Because we’re meeting at Exclusive Books
Rosebank, I decide to work there that morning – so I go straight there after dropping Django at school. It’s an easy drop-off morning because they’re doing computers today, and he likes that. The easy days are computers and guitar lesson. Every other day is hard. Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes he just refuses to get out of the car. On those days, sometimes I force him, sometimes I just sigh and turn the car back, and he stays home with me. On those days, he doesn’t complain about doing whatever homework there is, or even if I make him do something extra. We lie in my bed, me writing, him working, and it’s peaceful. I know he wishes it could always be like that, but I wouldn’t manage home-schooling him and I can’t work in bed every day. I try to explain this to him, and I know he understands, but part of him obviously thinks that if I really wanted to, I could make our lives into a long string of bed days.

  I’m glad that today hasn’t been one of those days, because I would have had to choose between April and Django – because I would’ve forced him to go to school so that I could have coffee with April, and then I would’ve felt guilty all day. I watch Django walk into the school: his dark blond hair, which he gets from neither Travis nor me; his restrained walk, which always looks as if he would like to be taking big strides but doesn’t have the courage or energy to execute. I sigh. I wish he was happier, but the school therapist says that children who lose parents young often feel a sense of loss that they can’t name. I’m not sure if she was talking about me or Django.

  This morning I am doing one of my favourite writing gigs. It’s good, because I’ve been obsessing about talking to my father and I need a distraction. I write reviews, or tasting notes as they call them, for a small whisky publication. When I started, they sent me on a whisky-tasting course, and I read reams of other people’s reviews while tasting the whisky in question, so that I could learn how to do it. And I took it very seriously at the beginning, spending hours searching for a clever and original way to describe each whisky. And then one day, about seven years ago, I was working from home, and Django was going through a plaster stage – you know, the way little kids want to stick plasters all over themselves. And he was running around yelling, ‘Plaster, Mommy! Gimme! Plaster!’ It was only a year after Travis’s death, and the therapist that I took Django to said that when he acted out I should just go with it and try not to get angry, even if he was acting like a three-year-old rather than a six-year-old. So I said fine, I’d meet him in the kitchen, and instead of writing that the whisky had overtones of a damp meadow at sunrise (which, I should add, is a perfectly normal thing to write about whisky), I wrote that it had overtones of a damp plaster in the kitchen. And sent it in like that.

  And I kept waiting for someone to phone and question me, but no one did. And then it was published, and every time the phone rang that month, my stomach sank because I knew I was going to lose the job – which pays rather well, because they expect you to buy expensive whisky, even though they supply the ones you are meant to taste. But no one called.

  So the next month, I completely made up one or two reviews, and waited. Nothing. And now, I’m afraid to confess, my whisky reviews have degenerated into complete fiction with unlikely metaphors thrown in. It’s completely unethical, but I have so much fun with it. And then the very best part is that over the last two years, in which I don’t think I have submitted one genuine review, I have received a bonus from the publication for my ‘excellent and insightful work’. I mean, whoever heard of a freelance writer receiving a bonus?

  So I have a lovely time making up reviews. ‘Citrusy with an overtone of smoky goat’ and ‘the spicy rush of a slightly rotten raspberry contrasts well with the milky keynotes’ are two of my favourites from this morning. By the time April arrives, looking slightly flustered, I have finished all the reviews, and am in a very good mood.

  I stand up to greet her, my arms outstretched, and we hug like old friends who haven’t seen each other for ever; although we are not old friends, really, and we saw each other just the other day. She settles down, only for us to have to stand up and go to the counter to order drinks, and then come back – we take turns, so that we can guard each other’s things – and then, finally, we are ready to chat. Suddenly, it feels a bit awkward. The slightly hysterical camaraderie of Saturday night is missing, and April is a stranger.

  ‘Did you have to sneak out of work?’ I ask. I try to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone is freelance, although I presume that the fact that April proposed the time means that it suits her.

  ‘No, no,’ says April. ‘I don’t work like that. I don’t really have a formal job, as such. I’m more freelance.’

  ‘A freelance estate agent?’ I’m genuinely interested. I didn’t know it could work like that.

  April laughs. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Truth. I used to be an estate agent. Briefly. Like really, really briefly. And I was actually completely terrible at it. But when people ask me what I do . . . I don’t know. I hate admitting that I’m a housewife. I hate it. That I have no life outside my kids and that I am totally dependent on Leo. I feel so boring. I never thought I’d be that person, you know? I thought I’d be someone so interesting. And I’m not. So often, in those sorts of situations, I just say I’m an estate agent and everyone is like “Oh, yes, okay”, maybe they make a joke, and then we can move on.’

  She pauses in this rush of words.

  ‘I’m sorry I lied,’ she says. ‘I know it’s pathetic. I know that I should accept who I am.’

  ‘I understand,’ I say, although I’m not sure I do actually. It seems like such a random lie, especially when Linda had told us that she was a stay-at-home mom. But I don’t want to upset April. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom though. I think it’s wonderful that you can. But I get why you’d rather not say. Like me and talking about my mom. And my late husband, for that matter. Some questions are just so tiring to answer.’

  ‘Yes, exactly!’ says April. ‘And if you’re not going to see people again, what’s the harm. But I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.’

  ‘I used to dream of being a full-time mom,’ I say, remembering how I thought life with Travis would be. ‘But Travis wasn’t really that sort of husband. And since he’s died, I guess that’s never going to happen for me.’

  ‘You might meet someone?’ says April.

  A week ago I would have dismissed this idea out of hand – but now I think of my date with Joshua. Would I like to marry a man who would support us? I try to imagine it, but I can’t.

  ‘I guess I’m too used to working,’ I say to April. ‘I can’t really imagine not. And not having my own money. Travis was a bit . . . controlling . . . with money. I never want to go back to that.’ I’m surprised I’ve said this much.

  April nods enthusiastically. ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ she says. ‘I’d love to have my own money. And my own thing. I just wish I knew what my thing was.’

  ‘Start with what you enjoy and think from there,’ I say. ‘I love writing, and I make my money writing. It’s not perfect and it’s not the novel that I dreamt of writing, but at least I can support Django and me.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ says April, stirring her skinny decaff latte, ‘I’ll try to come up with a business plan, and you start writing a novel.’

  I laugh. ‘I can’t write a novel,’ I say.

  ‘And I can make business plans? I’m a failed estate agent. If I can do it, you can do it.’ She sounds so upbeat. Like she’s proposing a trip to a Greek island.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll have an idea for a novel by next week and you have an idea about a business. Deal?’

  ‘Deal!’ says April, and we clink mugs.

  ‘Maybe next time we get together you can come to my place in the afternoon?’ I suggest. ‘Bring your kids. Maybe Django and your son will get on.’

  I’ve forgotten her son’s name. Both kids, for that matter – although I remember that there are two, and that the boy is the older one, Django’s age. But their
names are a complete mystery. I’m not sure if she ever told me. I’m mortified.

  ‘That would be amazing,’ she says. ‘Zach would love that so much. But maybe I should leave Doreen with the nanny?’

  ‘Bring them both,’ I say. ‘The more the merrier. I’d like to get to know your kids. Monday afternoon?’

  ‘Divine,’ says April. ‘Should I bring anything?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I pause, remembering the talk at the reunion about how successful April’s husband is. Added to that, April doesn’t work. They’re not struggling, obviously. ‘Listen, April,’ I say. ‘My house is nothing fancy. I don’t want you to expect anything too glitzy. We have a small garden and a tiny pool. But it’s all really basic.’ I hate that I feel that I have to tell her this. And I am acutely aware that what I am describing as basic is beyond the wildest dreams of most South Africans. But I know the Aprils of this world – my child goes to school with them, thanks to the life insurance. I’ve seen the faces of those moms when Django has had play dates. Not that there’ve been many – Django does not make friends easily – but I’ve tried. I don’t want to see that look on April’s face. I would die if I saw that look on April’s face. So it’s better to warn her.

  ‘I’m not like that, Mary,’ says April, obviously understanding the subtext. She looks a bit offended.

  ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ I say. ‘But I don’t want you to be disappointed. Or your kids.’