The Liar's Dictionary

We never fight, not really. Not about the expected stuff: not about ambitions, not about our future, not about exes. Ex is included as verb in Swansby’s – it is defined as ‘to obliterate character by typing x over it; to cross out in this way’ – and as a noun: a mark made in lieu (of a signature). Often witnessed.

In three years the closest we had come to a row really came down to one of us wanting the other to take definitive action.

‘Where did that come from?’ I said.

‘Forget it,’ she said.

‘I’m out enough,’ I said.

‘Are you?’ Pip asked. This face is left intentionally blank, her tone seemed to say to me.

I get on-the-tip-of-my-tonguish when it comes to being out. For a start, the tenses go all wrong and my thoughts all come disjointed and panicked, disarrayed like an upturned box of index cards. I’ve been gay since I can care to remember but haven’t been able to tell other people. I say it’s because I haven’t got around to it, and maybe one day this will be true. I hadn’t told my parents even though I don’t think they would mind. They would care, I think, but I don’t know if they’d mind. Compared with so many places in the world etc.

etc. it is a good time to be out. I know that. It’s nice out. That’s what I know to be true and yet and yet.

Pip has been out her whole life and can’t understand why I would be uneasy or unable to. My brain loops round and through and in and in and in on itself if I try to put it into words. It’s not interesting. It is interesting. It shouldn’t define me. It definitely should. I wish I had an easy way to remember how to spell mnemonic. I wish I could remember how to use ‘surely’ and ‘definitely’ when it came to finding words for myself.

‘Just tell me what’s wrong,’ Pip would ask at home. ‘I’m here, I’m listening.’

You’re unbelievable, a voice in my head whispers.

I can never quite get the thoughts and words in order. ‘Maybe I’m not ready yet’ feels like cowardice, or strangely prissy, I am a special rare bud or fruit.

The word closet is flimsier than cupboard or wardrobe, right? No one would miss a closet and its unstable walls. No one cares about a closet. I hate that it matters. I hate that I matter, sometimes. I haven’t got the right words for me.

Swansby’s

defines closet, amongst many things, in terms of a ‘closet of ease (n.), a toilet, a privy’ and a ‘closet of the heart (n.), the pericardium, which encloses the heart; a chamber within the heart, the left atrium or ventricle. Obsolete.’

‘It’s not lying to not be out,’ I said, slowly.

‘I never called you a liar,’ Pip said.

‘I don’t know why you’re crying,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. She wiped the corner of her eye with her sleeve, not-angry but not-not-angry, and then she squared her shoulders. ‘The sooner we can get this done, you know, the sooner you can leave this job. I don’t feel comfortable with you working somewhere where you’re being threatened.’

‘Is this about the phone calls? I’ve told you, it’s just some idiot.’

She stared at me. ‘Just is doing a lot of work there. Look, forget I ever said anything.’

‘I don’t want to fight,’ I said.

Pip hugged me again. I wished there was a word for marshalling a loved one to safety. I wish that I could be the one to coin it.

‘I’m sorry.’ She perched again on the windowsill and patted my seat. ‘I’m tired, I love you, and I’m feeling on edge. Come on: we can do another hour or so. Let’s find what else is up the garden path.’

P is for

phantom

(n. and adj. and v.)

On the train to Barking, if he concentrated, Winceworth believed that he could almost hear the genteel roll of the dessert trolley and the squeak of waiters’ feet in the rock and rumble of the carriage. He used to only ever daydream about the picture of the cottage in Cornwall. The salt on the breeze in his hair, the soft hum of bees. It seems that this dream had been ousted and replaced.

Perhaps he should think of it as a badge of honour that Frasham felt compelled to send him on such an obviously made-up errand. It was absurd, of course – imagine anyone being jealous of me. But there was some comfort that Frasham had noticed Sophia’s interest in him, or friendship, or tenderness. It clearly was significant enough to cause him to intervene.

Barking. Honestly.