Page 72 of Lie For Me

She sat down beside him on the bench and took his hands. They both started giggling at the awkwardness of it all.

‘Come on, Jack, get it together!’ Lucy said, sucking in her cheeks to stop herself from smiling.

‘You look like a duck,’ Jack said, and she snorted.

‘Sorry, sorry!’ Lucy called to Jess. ‘We’re nearly ready, honestly. Wait.’ She looked down at their clasped hands. ‘What are we doing? This pose makes it look like I am giving you bad news.’

‘Okay, um, maybe you should sit on my knee after all,’ Jack said. ‘Casually.’

‘How would you formally sit on someone’s knee?’ Lucy asked. ‘Is that when you sit on your boss’s knee in a meeting?’

‘Yes. Or when MPs sit on each other’s knees.’

Lucy giggled and lowered herself gingerly onto Jack’s lap. She looped her arm around his shoulders. Their faces were just inches apart and she could smell the wood and citrus notes in his aftershave. She swallowed as he shifted under her.

‘Sorry, am I too heavy?’

‘No, you’re fine,’ he said. ‘I think it’ll take a couple of minutes for the blood flow to be cut off to my legs.’

‘Jack!’ she poked him.

‘She’s assaulting me!’ he shouted at Jess. ‘Trying to have her way with me!’

‘She doesn’t think you’re funny,’ Lucy said. ‘No one does. And me having my way with you would be getting this over with and getting some food.’ More quietly, she added, ‘Now be a good fake boyfriend and make your fake future mother-in-law very happy and take a few pictures.’

‘Okay, okay.’

They took a breath and looked into each other’s eyes, twitches of amusement still playing about their lips. As they sat there, staring at one another, listening to murmurs of encouragement from Jess––‘Great, hang on, that’s good’––the giddiness subsided, and Lucy stared into Jack’s dark eyes. She draped her arm around his shoulders, and he looped his arm around her waist, settling his hand on her hip as she sat in his lap. He reached out with his other hand and laced his fingers through hers, resting their hands on her knees.

Jess was bobbing around them. ‘That’s great, great.’

Jack’s gaze was unflinching, and in the dappled light under the tree, Lucy couldn’t tell where his pupils ended and his dark irises began. For another shot, at Jess’s urging, Jack lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to it.

Lucy stared at the dark head, bent over her hand, felt his fingers firm on her hip and his lips soft on her hand. She suddenly felt both the nonsense and the magnitude of what she had asked him to do. This charade they were engaged in, the folly of it all.

Jack at a wedding, which he hated. These pictures, which would stick around forever, documenting the lie. A lie which, she understood now, she would have to live with from now on. The lie wasn’t just this one weekend; it would never go away. It would never end, plastered all over her parent’s house, framed for all to see.

Whenever a visitor asked who the man was with Lucy in the family wedding photos, her mother would purse her lips and say, ‘Oh, that’s Jack. He and Lucy were together briefly, but it didn’t work out.’

Lucy would either need to tell the same lie to any future proper boyfriend to keep up the charade with her parents, or bring him inside the lie.

‘Nearly there,’ Jess said, hopping around them, looking between them and her camera, ‘just a few more. Maybe,’ she said, flicking through the shots she had taken, ‘maybe one with a kiss?’

‘Oh, I don’t think––’ Lucy said, as Jack said, ‘Sure.’

‘For the cameras, Luce,’ he said.

His eyes dropped to her lips, and his hand slid up behind her neck and gently pulled her head down towards him. Her lips met his and gently parted under the insistent pressure, his tongue sliding into her mouth. His other hand on her hip pulled her in closer, folding her into him, and she wound her arms around his neck to steady herself. His fingers slid into her hair and stroked the back of her neck, and she felt herself lean into the kiss. Jack’s lips were moving over hers, seeking her tongue, and everything but Jack faded to nothing as she pressed into him.

‘I think we’ve got it,’ Jess called.

Jess’s voice was like a gunshot that broke the spell, and Lucy pulled back from Jack so abruptly she nearly catapulted herself off his lap onto the grass. She grabbed the back of the bench to steady herself.

‘Oh, good!’ she called, her voice oddly shrill.

She clambered off Jack’s lap, tripping over her own feet. Jack grabbed her to stop her from falling.

‘Bloody shoes,’ she muttered, as she leaned on the bench to steady herself, cheeks flaming. She whipped her hand away from Jack.

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