A Pack of Lies by Geraldine McCaughrean Read Free Book Online Page A

the mantelpiece behind Mr Singh and held up the red electricity bill behind his shoulder so that it was in plain view of her mother.
    ‘Well, if you’d really like it, I’m sure Mr Berkshire can tell you how much it’s worth.’
    MCC took the electricity bill out of Ailsa’s hands and read off it unhesitatingly, ‘Forty-three pounds thirty pence, including VAT .’
    As the shop door was pulled to behind Mr Singh, Ailsa said to MCC Berkshire, ‘How did you know the combination on Mr Singh’s bicycle padlock?’
    ‘Guessed it,’ said MCC unswervingly, as he tossed the pith helmet on to a hat-stand.
    ‘You must have done.’
    And there she left it. For, after all, there was no other explanation.

 
    Chapter Four
    The Plate:
A Question of Values
     
    Of the hundred pounds nothing remained. Other larger purchases MCC Berkshire had made at the car boot sale and flea market arrived later in the day: a set of bookshelves and a stuffed salmon in a glass case. The little shop seemed to groan at the prospect of swallowing yet more indigestible junk, and if it had not been for the sale of the clock, the bookshelves would never have found a piece of wall to lean their backs against.
    Mrs Povey said to her daughter, ‘Maybe he’s right to open up the book side of the business.’
    But when a teacher from Ailsa’s school came in one day and thumbed his way through the fiction, he was brought gradually to a halt and a shiver by the feeling that someone was watching him. He looked up, and found MCC Berkshire standing a word’s length away from him, scowling. The teacher rummaged for his wallet. But MCC said, ‘I haven’t read those yet,’ and prised the books out of the customer’s hand. ‘I’ve been saving the fiction, you see.’
    ‘Ah! Quite!’ exclaimed the teacher, and turned tail and fled, casting a look of bewildered pity at Ailsa and Mrs Povey. (The word got about school after that, that Ailsa had a strange, deranged brother at home and that he was the reason the shop was in such dire financial trouble.)
    ‘
That’s
how to sell a thing,’ said Ailsa sarcastically,when her teacher was gone. Then Berkshire looked down at the books cradled against his stomach and stroked the spines with his fingers and seemed too ashamed to speak. And Ailsa wished she had kept silent, and wondered what had possessed her to be so rude. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Books don’t pay enough to make any difference. They’re not worth anything. Mum sells them for pennies, second-hand books.’
    ‘Some are worth hundreds!’ said MCC, perking up.
    ‘We don’t have any like that.’
    ‘It’s all a question of values,’ he said, appraising his new bookshelves, full of dilapidated paperbacks, and his eyes when he said it were as deep as Chancery, full of glints of gold from the lamplight. ‘Money isn’t everything.’
    The sky outside was almost black with rain and every car that went by had its lamps switched on. With a loud crack, a thundercloud broke overhead. Two lovers, joined at the hands like Siamese twins, came bursting into the shop, laughing, and shaking off the rain. It was plain they had dashed into the first handy shelter and had no intention of buying.
    ‘Oh, this is pretty . . . Oo, look at that dear little vase . . . what a pity this has lost its lid,’ said the girl from time to time. But her boyfriend was only watching for the rain to go off. She picked up a little book of Chinese folk tales lying open on the
chaise longue
. When she lifted her eyes from browsing through it, she found herself being watched, from the dark recesses of the shop, by a young man.
    MCC pressed the palms of his hands together and bowed from the waist. He moved silently round the
chaise longue
and took the book out of her hands as if to read its title. ‘Ah! You are interested in ancient China, then!’ She recoiled in alarm. ‘In that case, permit me to draw your attention to this charming plate.’
    ‘Oh look,