The Liar's Dictionary

He completed an uninterrupted lap of the room before switching tactics. He decided to spell out certain invisible words against the room’s carpet. By making his way across the two parallel sides of the room and then cutting across the centre, he executed an H. He then endeavoured to complete an E, then traced two Ls across the room before concluding with another lap: a final O. As well as taking up time, this had the added benefit of allowing his face to tighten with genuine preoccupation. By spelling out letters on the carpet like this, Winceworth found he could successfully evade conversation without seeming rude – by looking genially but intently in the direction he had set his abecedarian course, nobody thought to approach and engage him in discussion. This became a slightly more awkward affair once the serving staff recognised his isolation from the herd and Winceworth became aware of them tailing his progress. To credit the 1,500 Mile Society waiting staff, they were wonderfully attentive – after two further glasses of champagne, Winceworth tried to dissuade the waiter’s advance by requesting the most outlandish drinks that he could imagine. He hoped the task would prove a longwinded one and that he would be left in peace, but almost immediately he was presented with an elderflower spirit and something that apparently was derived from rhubarb honey served in a glass urn. Thwarted. It tasted of soap used by a despot with a secret. He changed tack, and decided to be frank with the waiter. He asked for whisky. It was all going on Frasham’s bill, ran Winceworth’s logic, so who was he to argue with such generosity? He also ordered drinks for the musicians in the corner – they bobbed their instruments in thanks.

Across the room one could tell that Frasham had said something witty because a fairy ring of sycophantic university friends burst into applause. Then from a side door a cake was produced, so massive and heavy it required pallbearers. The cake was mocked up to look like a book, covered in blue royal icing with the host’s name picked out in white fondant letters in the place of a title. The band struck up the first notes of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, Frasham cut into his cake with a huge knife and the 1,500 Mile Society rang to the clank of ice against glass, cufflinks against glass and canes upon the carpet. Glossop bent over the guest book, smiling.

Slices of cake were handed around by waiters and Winceworth, successfully spelling out the whole alphabet twice across the floor and now feeling quite drunk, decided that he would attempt one further circuit of the room before he left. He convinced himself that pacing rather than conversation brought out the best in him, reasoning that it was a product not of nervousness so much as flânerie. He helped himself to cake from a tray and had a flash of inspiration – he could pace out an alphabetic diagram of London’s streets beyond this room. Holding on to the wall, he began to devise specific routes through the city that would trace graphical Roman letters. Walking and alphabets could be, he decided, a marvellous distracting therapy. To pace the letter A he could begin at Cambridge Circus, trot up Earlham Street, turn at Seven Dials and follow St Martin’s Lane (with Tower Street forming the letter’s central spoke). Some letters were clear in his mind –

D would be the perimeter of Billingsgate Fish Market, for example, and St James’s Square could form the O. If he ran its perimeter five thousand times, he thought, he too could enter the 1,500 Mile Society. A general snooze of Ss and Zs existed between the newly pulled-down church on Finsbury Circus and the lunatic asylum at Hoxton House – he added all these to his expanding index.

Winceworth was dimly aware of passing Glossop. The man was licking his thumb and turning the guest book’s pages.

Winceworth often had cause to remember a textbook from his school days filled with grammar exercises and tables. One page required students to rank the following verbs according to their pace: jaunt, stride

, amble, lumber, strut, patrol, plod, prance,

run, saunter, shamble, stroll and traipse. Winceworth swept by the band once more. He jaunted marcia moderato. He strode allegro

, he ambled adagietto. He caught the eye of the waiter and signalled for another whisky. Everyone was laughing and toasting, blurs of sleeves revealing bands of naked skin and teeth bared. He lumbered larghissimo, he strutted ad andantino, he patrolled moderato. There must have been two hundred people in the room by now and they all seemed to be having quite a time of it. He plodded grave, he pranced vivacissimo.