The Carrier by Sophie Hannah Read Free Book Online

Germany?’
    ‘No. I’ve never lied to him before. Four years we’ve been together. This is the first lie I’ve told him. I couldn’t tell him the truth.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because. I couldn’t. Keep your nose out, all right?’
    I can’t force her to tell me. Although her mouth is at least as much to blame as my nose is. She shouldn’t have mentioned her about-to-be-wrongly-convicted acquaintance if she wasn’t prepared to share the full story.
    I look at my watch. ‘You’re not going to be back by quarter to twelve UK time. It’s impossible.’
    ‘I know! That’s what I’m saying: Jason’s going to go mental.’
    ‘What will he do?’
    ‘He thinks I’m at my mum’s. He’s going to ring her, isn’t he? Obviously. And she’s going to tell him I’m not there. They’ll both go off their heads. Believe me, you do
not
want to see Jason angry. Or my mum, for that matter.’
    ‘Which one are you more scared of?’ I ask.
    She looks at me, puzzled, as if I’ve introduced a topic that’s unrelated to what we were talking about. ‘Jason. I’m not normally scared of Mum, not unless I’ve been taking the piss and she’s going to find out.’
    Impatience buzzes in my veins. I’m going to have to skip a stage. ‘Ring your mum,’ I say. ‘You haven’t lied to her yet, so you’re still in credibility credit. You’ve told her nothing, right? As far as she knows, you’re at home with Jason this evening. Ring her now, tell her the truth. Get her to ring Jason and say you’re at her house, you’ve got food poisoning, you can’t come to the phone . . . Et cetera.’
    ‘What do you mean, I haven’t lied to Mum?’ No one else on the coach is speaking at all. Everybody is listening to Lauren’s shrill voice; it’s better at travelling than she is. ‘Course I’ve lied! I’ve said I’m at her house – how can I tell her that without letting on that I’ve lied?’
    ‘You haven’t lied to
her
. You haven’t told
her
you’re at her house, have you?’
    Lauren inspects me disdainfully. ‘Well, I couldn’t do that, could I?’ she says. ‘Mum’s at her house. She knows I’m not there. She can see with her own eyes.’
    Deep breath.
‘I know that, Lauren. My point is: if you tell her the truth now, confide in her about how you’ve had to lie to Jason . . .’
    ‘No.’ She shakes her head vigorously. ‘She’d ask me why.’
    Aha. Progress. ‘And you don’t want to tell her?’
    ‘Maybe I could tell her, but not with you right in my face, not with all these people earwigging. Thinking they’re better than me.’
    ‘Oh, give it a rest,’ I snap before I can stop myself.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your favourite refrain: “Everyone thinks they’re better than me”. Does the innocent man you’re sending to prison think he’s better than you?’
    ‘I told you: I don’t want to talk about that.’
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ I say casually. ‘I must have forgotten.’
    ‘No,’ Lauren mutters after a few minutes. ‘He’s one of the few people that doesn’t think it.’
    And you’re rewarding him by letting him go down for murder. Interesting.
In the silence that follows, I wonder if I will try to do anything for this unidentified innocent man once I get back to England. Probably not. What could I do? Go to the police and tell them what I know?
    Yes. I could do that. Whether I will or not is another matter. In situations of severe abnormality, I find it hard to imagine what I might do once restored to my normal setting. Sean doesn’t understand this. Many times he’s berated me over the phone, when I’ve been in an airport or a train station or a car hire office, for not knowing if I will or won’t want dinner when I get home.
    ‘It’s not me sending him to prison,’ Lauren says sulkily, doing a convincing impression of someone who does, in fact, want to talk about it. ‘Do I look like the police?’
    ‘Letting him go to prison, sending him there – is there a