The Liar's Dictionary

‘Ah,’ I said. The girl in the café stretched out her hands and placed them in mine, turning them to show me. Which was preposterous, but she did. They weren’t tattoos at all, not even letters: just meaningless scribbles in pen, the same pen that had been used to write my name on the Styrofoam cups.

‘You were staring hard enough to rub the ink off,’ she said. And it was not a good line but it was meant to be an almost-good line, which in a way is kinder. She turned away to pass me the coffee.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘And what time do you clock off?’ the girl behind the café counter asked me. And ‘the girl behind the café counter’ became, more usefully, the pronoun you in the same way that many small details are not necessary but can become everything.

‘And are you going to be bringing the index cards back home?’ Pip asked down the phone. ‘Am I going to have to shore up our bookshelves and just accept that you won’t be able to raise your head from the pages for the next fifteen years or so?’

‘Thems the breaks,’ I said.

Aberglaube (n.), aberr (v.),

aberuncate (v.) ‘And you’re OK?’ Pip asked. ‘For real, though. Really.’

‘A little over my head,’ I said. ‘Maybe. Long day to go.’

‘I just like the idea of some guy in a … I don’t know, what do Victorians have?’ Pip said, and I imagined her throwing her hands in the air. ‘Top hats and deerstalkers and cholera. Hansom cab chases. Steam trains and telegrams. And then him sitting down and having the brass gall to make your life a misery by fabricating words for a dictionary.’

I said, ‘That’s very helpful, thank you.’

‘Here’s a spoiler: the zebra (n.) did it.’

‘Neat,’ I said. ‘Nice.’

‘See you later,’ Pip said.

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re OK?’ she said again. ‘After the morning?’

‘Hmm,’ I said, not listening.

‘I love you,’ Pip said, and I ended the call and picked up the index card in front of me.

J is for

jerque

(v.)

After some hours at his desk and beneath his headache, Winceworth slipped away from Swansby House to get some air. He took his satchel filled with made-up sketches for unusual words slung across his shoulder. He did not wander far and soon settled on a bench in St James’s Park, his shirt still slightly damp thanks to the cat and its eruptions. He stared at his knees. He stared at his hands. In his rush to reach Dr Rochfort-Smith’s appointment he had forgotten his gloves and his fingers chapped slightly in the cold.

Winceworth drew some remnants of birthday cake from his trouser pocket and turned it over. The slice was flatter and more compressed than any baker would appreciate, and sheened over with a kind of post-party next-day sweat. With a pang of fellow feeling, he inspected the slice of cake, cupping stray crumbs and brushing them from his knees. The first letter of Frasham’s name was iced onto the surface of the cake. Keeping his eyes trained on the fricative, Winceworth brought the slice up to his face and bit down hard. At the pressure, an almost imperceptible spiderweb-fracture made a mosaic of the icing.

St James’s Park was the closest green space to Swansby House, and idling members of the staff often spent time there, depending on the season, gazing into flowerbeds or feeding the ducks. The correct placement of St James’s Park’s apostrophe on the boards and fences was a bane or boon to the members of Swansby’s editorial team. In Winceworth’s first year at Swansby House there had been a war of attrition between some younger members of staff and the park-keepers concerning this apostrophe. During this time apparently many of the park’s signs dotted around the lawns and grounds were defaced (and consequently re-faced) in line with whether one or many St James’s ownerships were being asserted.

Never a dull moment.

Winceworth’s chosen bench sat tucked in a bend of a path with no good view of the lake nor any interesting sweeps and vistas. He would not be disturbed by colleagues and it was less likely to be on the route of winter-hardy courting couples or wandering tourists. The time of year also meant many of the planted beds were unremarkable, russeted-over and presenting a manicured kind of dreary. In fact the only flowers he could see near him were some early puff-faced dandelions at the feet of his bench. They had survived the rain and the cold – he would have to ask someone at Swansby House whose studies covered botany to know whether these were freaks of the season or to be expected. A freakish weed is just a flower that has not asked permission. Winceworth kicked one of the dandelions appreciatively with his heel and its head exploded.