Parallel Lies

Chapter 2

Chris catches my attention from across the room and gesticulates for us to come over; he's got us a table so we make our way through the gathering towards him. Someone behind me is calling for silence and a hush descends as the village hall chairman announces that we're about to start. We reach our table and Chris greets us with his usual abundance of northern good humour. He's a great friend and although only in his fifties I had high hopes for him and Diane; she loves a younger man, I know, and even though she tells me there's no interest between them I don't get it as they seem perfectly suited to me.

"How did the trip go?" Chris whispers as we get ourselves organised.

"Very good, certainly worth taking a day off work for," I say. Chris loves a day out whenever I can manage to drag him away from his desk where he writes dry as dust academic papers on something that he's told me about before but that I still can't get my head around.

We're going to be trying whites and reds this evening, three of each, only small taster glasses but I know most of this crowd will be rolling out of here later, they can't help themselves. Once those bottles are opened there's no stopping them until every drop is gone. The wine merchant who organises this evening knows this well enough and does a roaring trade though he is far too savvy to actually be seen rubbing his hands in glee.

People are taking their seats and I see Kourtney coming out of the kitchen. I watch as she circulates the room delivering platters of cheese and biscuits to each table. These are provided in an attempt to counteract the intake of alcohol and are a most sensible addition to the event decided upon by the wisest members of the village hall committee a few years ago. This was well before my time and apparently followed a particularly raucous evening which culminated in fisticuffs on the village green after an unfortunate flare up between the then rival committees of the Village Hall and the Playing Field. All differences between the two parties are now done, dusted and relegated to the distant past, I'm told, though you can never be too sure with the fickle nature of village politics.

"Is this seat taken?" I glance over to see Paul, his hand on the back of the chair next to Chris.

Shit.

"No, go ahead," I say, staying true to my character and knowing that was the correct thing to do.

He comes closer and moves in for the kiss. It's what they do here, at least what many do, and I've had to learn the custom although it's always unnerving. Left cheek or right? I think it's meant to be right but there are a few who throw you a curve ball and go for the left then there's that embarrassing near miss with the lips. Others have gone fully European and adopted the two kisses approach and as I understand it the Belgians now do three so it's only a matter of time before that exaggeration arrives over here. Whatever form it takes it's a hazardous business and I'm relieved to get past the moment and sit back down.

"Fancy seeing you here," Diane says to Paul, "it is good of you to come and support another village's events." She's acting all innocent but I can see the wicked twinkle in her eyes as she smiles at him. Chris is suppressing a grin too and I glare across at him.

"I enjoy the company of certain parishioners, Diane," Paul replies.

"Oh, I never knew you cared," and she laughs a laugh which has a faux flirty tinkle to it and I try not to roll my eyes too obviously as I kick her under the table. She ignores me but before she can say anything further the first wine arrives and I realise I need it more than I thought.

I have little interest in wine but listen politely as each is introduced. I drink the whites, because they are there, the reds because I prefer them, and I nibble at the crackers and cheese. I play verbal ping pong with Paul, who because he's driving isn't drinking at all which rather misses the point of the evening, and Diane and Chris assist in keeping the conversation going for which I'm grateful, because after the coach trip I have little left to say to him.

This is a sociable village and as the evening wears on the noise level increases, people mingle, swop tables, chat, laugh and gossip. Over it all though I keep hearing Letitia, that braying laugh of hers that sets my nerves on edge, that high pitched whiny tone to her voice that surely only dogs could hear most of the time, and every sound she makes seems to reverberate louder than anyone else's in the room. Then there's her frequent use of the word 'Wow!' If ever there was a word overused by her it is that one, and it always comes with an exclamation mark. Almost every sentence she utters begins with it and it is her go to for any emotion that needs to be expressed.

I'm on my way to work. Wow!

My dog's died. Wow!

It's going to rain. Wow!

Seriously annoying, and I believe an affectation.

Diane says she behaves like she does because she's insecure, and lacking in self-esteem, but I just don't get it. What the hell has she got to feel insecure about? The big house? The rich husband? Which brings me on to him.

Her other half, Ben, is here tonight and playing to the room. If anyone wants to order any of the wines they've tasted they can. Most do it discreetly, a quiet word at the end of the evening, a slip of paper handed over. Not him. Oh no. He's a pretentious tosser, who's as loud as the peacock blue checked jacket he's wearing (Savile Row you will be told, even if you didn't ask) with his designer jeans. There's a bullish arrogance about him I truly dislike and I suspect he was already pretty drunk when he got here, I've noticed he has been early on at other events, and I hear him now, in fact the whole room hears him as he yells out, "Put me down for three cases of the Barolo."

Dickhead.

Paul asks after my work, about which I'm always deliberately vague, but there's not much about my job with an insurance company that is likely to prolong this direction of conversation and I find it soon causes a glazing over of the eyes. Most people's attention span is so poor, and my job so utterly uninspiring, that when we meet a second time they tend to look puzzled as if they should know, but can't quite remember so end up asking again what it is I do. This suits me and I use it to my advantage as I generally find that not only do people not see what's right in front of them but no one listens to anything anyone else has to say anyway.

I should add that the one anomaly in all this is Chris. He takes everything in. I never think he does but then months after I mention something in passing he'll refer to it again, so I have to be wary when he's close by.

These are good people, I think as I gaze around the room. I regret the fact I lie to them but tell myself I only do it to protect myself. I sometimes think had I been born here with all the advantages that a stable family life bring, I would totally be the lovely likeable person they all think I am. But you can't choose where you're born, or what you're born into and because of this I'm never completely at ease here. This is not familiar territory for me and I know I do not fit in even though it appears as though I do and because of that I can't ever relax, not fully, for fear of letting something slip. Fortunately, I'm good at putting on a front, at covering my nerves and quashing those anxieties which keep me as tightly coiled as a spring and as I sit here, surrounded by friends, neighbours and other villagers, I wonder, and not for the first time, what they would think if they knew what I really was.

I keep an eye on Kourtney. She's delivering glasses, bottles and top ups for the platters before clearing the empties and disappearing back out to the kitchen. She's a hard worker and is kept busy, just like she is when she works at the pub but tonight she's subdued, I can sense it in her, and towards the end of the evening I've had enough to drink and want to find out more. I stand and on the pretext of going to the ladies I pick up a few discarded glasses on the way and head into the kitchen. Kourtney is washing up but looks over when she hears me enter.

"Thanks," she mutters, "put 'em over there," gesticulating with her head to the over-crowded counter to her right.

"You okay?" I ask. She's a pretty girl. Long dark hair that's straightened, pulled back and held in place with an elastic band. Eyes made up in that way that makes them look like they've seen it all, and I hope they haven't.

"Yeah, fine."

"How's school going?"

"I've left." Which was what I'd feared.

"Oh, right!" I say this as if it's a positive thing and try to sound more perky about it than I feel. "What are you planning to do now?"

She shrugs her shoulders. "I dunno." Which is as I could have guessed but I'm heartened by the fact she doesn't sound fatalistic but more, searching, like she doesn't know at the moment but she desperately wants to. This is exactly what I'd expect from her.

I first met Kourtney when she was twelve years old and she turned up at my cottage with the bread I'd ordered from the shop and forgotten to collect. She comes from Oxland Drive at the far end of the village, a small estate where Kourtney and her family live in one of the few properties still in council ownership. Her mother is an 'eight by four' and I suspect number nine is on the way although the latest in the string of feckless men she attracts walked out...