Telling Lies to Alice by Laura Wilson Read Free Book Online

list of names pinned on the fridge. He called it his Shooting List, and every so often he’d cross off one name and replace it with somebody else’s. I didn’t know who half the people were, but it never stopped him talking to them—all business as usual and then he’d invite them round to dinner! I’d be frantic to keep them out of the kitchen so they wouldn’t see the list with People Who Deserve To Be Shot and their names scrawled underneath in black Biro. My name was on there a few times. I never made it into the top ten, but Jack was a permanent fixture after they came back from the States. Not that there was any chance of him being invited to dinner—by that stage they couldn’t even agree about the time. But even after that I still thought that all Lenny needed to get well again was love, and that if I loved him uncritically and gave him security, I could save him. I must have been off my head, because the only thing I was doing was making it easier for him to drink. But I felt guilty, too, because I thought their splitting up was partly my fault. Lenny’d never talked to me about it, and Jack always swore he’d never breathed a word—about us, I mean—but I don’t know . . .
    The wall-covering—or what’s left of it—is still in the dining room. I’ve never changed it because Lenny liked it and it was the only comment I remember him making about the decoration. He left me the house—money, as well, otherwise I couldn’t live here. We’d had most of the major repairs done before he died, but it was just too soon and I couldn’t face being here on my own. I didn’t want to sell it because it was Lenny’s, so I hung on to it. Then I married Jeff so I was living in London and hardly ever came up here. I only moved in properly last November. It was unbelievably cold. The boiler broke down after a week and I was freezing for a fortnight because that’s how long it took the plumber to get the part to fix it. I slept with all my clothes on and Eustace tucked in beside me like a hot-water bottle, otherwise he would have frozen, too, and I remember some nights waking up because I was so cold and thinking, what the hell am I doing here? But when I thought about it again in the morning I knew I didn’t want to leave. For one thing, I couldn’t face going back to London, and for another, it was my decision so I wanted it to work. It was like being a bunny, in a way—something I was doing for me . Because I always seemed to let people decide things for me—Lenny, Jeff . . . even the dog. Lenny and Eustace I didn’t mind, of course. Jeff wasn’t so great, but as I say, it wasn’t his fault, really. He was older than me, as well. Ten years, something like that. Don’t think I don’t know—the older man, the father I never had, that’s what a psychiatrist would say. All I can say about that is, if that’s what they get up to with their fathers, then frankly I don’t think I’m the one with the problem. But it’s easy to look at somebody else’s life and trot out pat answers about why they do this or that. In my case, I don’t know whether it’s true or not, and what’s more I couldn’t give a monkey’s, either.
    Lenny and I hit it off from the word go. He took me to The Ark and ordered boeuf en daube for both of us—I still ate meat in those days—and two bottles of wine, straightaway. I felt a bit uncomfortable at first because I wasn’t sure where it was all going—which was ridiculous, really, when you think we’d had it off before we were even introduced —but I was half-expecting Jack to be there, and there was a touch of, you know, this man is a famous comedian, what’s he doing with me, what are we going to talk about? Which was unusual for me because I’ve been chatted up by the best of them and turned quite a few down, too, but—well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was in love with Lenny, not then . . . let’s just say I already knew that whatever happened was going