The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew

Author:Julie Mayhew [Mayhew, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471404757
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2015-08-26T23:00:00+00:00

AUGUST 2013

The night before Dad went away, we all sat together watching a programme about the Reich’s supercomputers. Mum and Dad were sitting on the sofa, Lilli and I were on the rug. A camera panned along banks of black towers humming quietly to one another. Then it went in close on a sleek, flat touch-screen. A man in a white coat was being interviewed about what we were seeing. The men always wore white coats on those programmes, whether they were experts on the space programme or an authority on how women could make their houses cleaner.

Trust me, said the coat, I’m a scientist.

‘Our great nation has the fastest computers in the known world,’ said the man. (Clementine’s voice: ‘But they might have MUCH faster computers in Russia, or Japan, or America.’) ‘They enable us to do almost everything, from predicting the weather accurately …’ he gave a little grin at this, as if a bit of rain was the most ridiculously trivial thing for a supercomputer to be worrying about. ‘… to creating weapon simulations that ensure Germany is the safest and most formidable country on Earth.’

The camera moved across a panel of men from the security services. Each one was sitting, focused, hypnotised, by the flickering monitor of a small, flat computer that opened like a book. They were wearing headphones and listening in on ‘dangerous conversations’, though the white-coat man didn’t explain who these ‘dangerous conversations’ actually involved.

He didn’t need to, I suppose. Everyone knew that ‘dangerous conversations’ went on between evil terrorists with bombs in their briefcases. The camera went in close on one of the men’s screens to show a moving, jagged bar-code – a soundwave. This was a bad person’s voice in all its terrifying detail.

Lilli was suddenly up on her knees. ‘Look, Papi!’ she squealed. ‘You’ve got a computer like that one!’

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Dad. Slam. Like a door being shut in her face.

‘Oh,’ said Lilli.

I let my eyes slide from the screen to my sister. I watched her smile fade, her brow crease. She sat back on her heels.

The man in the white coat was saying how he was going to take the back off one of the computers now and show us its brain. I stayed watching Lilli though. I wanted to see what was going on in her brain. Which of her memories was winning the fight? Was it Dad all of those evenings, sitting in the dark of the dining room focused intently, hypnotised, by the flickering monitor of a small, flat computer that opened like a book? Was it the sensation of her little nail-bitten fingers, once or twice being allowed to touch its delicious keys? Or was it that moment – the one where Dad shot her down and told her she was wrong?

I guessed the last one. It packed quite a punch.

I looked back at the white-coat man. He’d pulled out the processor – a thing no bigger than a Curfew Mint – then

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