The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah Read Free Book Online

shout.
Please don’t come upstairs.
    What will Adam do? I listen for clues, with the cursor hovering over ‘Sign Out’ in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
Please go into the kitchen, Adam. I need a few more seconds
…
    I hear the creak of a door – the lounge, I’m guessing – followed by Adam trying unsuccessfully to talk to the children. He gives up after a minute or so. I hold my breath, listening for footsteps on the stairs.
    Nothing. He must have gone into the kitchen, or to the loo.
    You don’t know that. Sign out. Don’t risk it.
    I type:
    Need to go now. Might explain later. No promises, though. Bye. N x
    I press ‘send’, then sign out. Then I go to ‘History’, click on ‘Show All History’ and delete all the Hushmail entries. I’m so grateful that I can do this. It’s the online equivalent of saying a few Hail Marys and being absolved of all your sins.
Thank you, technology.
    What next? I can’t think straight. Oh yes, I know: Yahoo Mail, my respectable email account.
    Adam pushes open the box-room door as I’m opening a message from my mum. ‘Hi, hon,’ he says. ‘OK day?’
    ‘Brilliant, thanks,’ I tell him. ‘You?’
    ‘Why brilliant?’
    ‘Well, actually … not
that
brilliant.’
Come on, Brain, start working, for fuck’s sake.
I have nothing to be excited about, not officially. I must keep this in mind – for the rest of my life, ideally.
    It’s a good sign that, after only three weeks and four days of being good, I am already much worse at lying.
    I’m not going to start lying to Adam again. I can’t
.
    ‘I had to go to school and back four times,’ I say. The email from my mother about when we’re next all going to get together is still up on the screen. Not at all secret from my husband, but still … I ought to feel more guilty about this ongoing correspondence than I do about the one with Gavin.
    If I’m making a list of people to cut off contact with, my parents have surely earned their place at the top.
    You’re not cutting anyone off, though, are you? You never will
.
    How did I not hear Adam on the stairs? He could so easily have caught me.
    But he didn’t
.
    Being bad and getting away with it: there’s no feeling like it.

Who’s a Bad Sport, Keiran?
Damon Blundy, 6 September 2011,
Daily Herald Online
    In
The Times
yesterday, Keiran Holland explained why he believes that disgraced sprinter Bryn Gilligan doesn’t deserve a second chance, now or ever. Having read Holland’s sermon and found it unpalatable, both conceptually and digestively, I would like to offer Holland one of the greatest gifts one human being can offer another. By coincidence, it’s the very thing he seeks to deny Gilligan: the gift of a second chance. Keiran, you must be embarrassed about what you wrote, so why don’t I take a week off to reread my Jeeves and Woosters, and you take my next column, with my blessing. Use it wisely. By which I mean, use it to lament the ethical cataracts that prevented you from seeing clearly in the bad old days ( yesterday, this morning ) when you were a hapless churner-out of received opinion.
    My regular readers know all about Bryn Gilligan, since I’ve written about him more than once . Gilligan was found guilty of doping and, having first protested his innocence , eventually made a full confession and apologised. Later, he apologised more satisfactorily , for all the good it did him. Yesterday, his appeal to overturn his lifetime Olympic ban was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Keiran Holland believes Gilligan’s life sentence must remain in place because ‘ His contrition is plainly not genuine .’ ‘If that sounds harsh, it isn’t,’ Holland assures us. ‘Bryn Gilligan is a liar and a cheat, and has admitted as much himself.’
    There’s a problem with this argument that I hope all proud owners of more than half a brain cell will be able to spot instantly. It was the lying and cheating Gilligan did that created the