Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [200]
“I’m talking about you taking it from my dad,” Tim said. “Up the arse, night after night. You think some woman’s going to want to marry you if she knows what you’ve been up to, Kaveh?”
“‘Night after night,’” Kaveh said, his brow furrowing. “‘Taking it’ from your dad. What are you talking about, Tim?” He began to move the car to the edge of the lay-by.
Tim reached over and killed the engine with a twist of the key. “You and my dad fucking each other,” Tim said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Kaveh’s jaw actually dropped. “Fucking… What’s wrong with your head? What’ve you been thinking? That your father and I…?” Kaveh made an adjustment to his seat, as if with the intention of settling in for a proper natter with Tim. He went on. “Your father was dear to me, Tim, a close and dear friend. I held him in the highest esteem, and we loved each other as close friends do. But that there might have been more than that… That he and I were… Are you thinking we were homosexual lovers? How could you have come to think that? I had a room in his house, only as his lodger. You know that.”
Tim stared at the man. His face was perfectly serious. He was lying with such skill and such grace that for a moment Tim could actually almost quite nearly be poised on the edge of believing that everyone including himself had been completely wrong about Kaveh and about Tim’s father and most of all about what they’d been to each other. Except Tim had been there the night his father had declared his love for Kaveh Mehran in front of his wife and his children. And Tim had seen his father with Kaveh. So he knew the truth.
“I watched you,” he said. “Through the door. Didn’t know that, did you? Makes your situation a bit different, doesn’t it? You up on your hands and knees and Dad giving it to you in the arse and both of you liking it just fine. I watched you. Okay? I watched you.”
Kaveh looked away from him for a moment. Then he sighed. Tim thought he was going to say something along the lines of being caught out and Tim needing to keep mum on the subject round Kaveh’s family please. But Kaveh, it seemed, was full of surprises. He brought out another for Tim’s entertainment. He said, “I used to have the same sort of dreams when I was your age. They’re very real, aren’t they? They’re called waking dreams. They generally happen at the moment your body is making the transition from waking to sleeping and they seem so real that one actually thinks what’s happening in them is life itself. People believe all sorts of things because of waking dreams: they’ve been abducted by aliens, they’ve seen someone in the bedroom with them, they’ve had a sexual experience with a parent or a teacher or even a mate, and on and on. But all the time they’re merely asleep. As you were, of course, when you saw what you think you saw between your father and myself.”
Tim’s eyes widened. He wet his lips to respond but Kaveh went first.
“The fact that what you dreamed you saw between us was sexual in nature comes from the age you are, Tim. At fourteen a boy is all hormones and desire. And this is due to how his body’s changing. He has dreams of sex, often. Often he ejaculates during them. And this could be— and probably is— an embarrassment to him if no one has explained it’s perfectly normal. Your dad did explain this, didn’t he? He ought to have done. Or perhaps your mum?”
Tim’s next breath felt like a stab, not only in the lungs but in the brain and right to the centre of who he knew he was and not to the centre of whoever Kaveh was making him out to be. He said, “You fucking liar,” and to his horror, he felt tears rising and God how he knew that Kaveh would use them. He could even see the endgame now, how it would all play out no matter which way he turned or what he threatened or what, indeed, he said to anyone, but especially what he said or might say to Kaveh’s parents and his intended bride.
And there was no one else to tell those people the truth about Kaveh. No one would be motivated to do it, and even if that were not the case, Kaveh