Free The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock Page A

from the Grammar School. The Press had printed a long article about The Vacuum of Authority and Dad had written a response, which they’d even-for-once published. Dad had said that the restlessness and frustration felt by young people on the Island was totally understandable, since it was an echo of what happened during the Occupation, when so many children were evacuated from the Island never to return, and those that stayed found it difficult to relate to their parents’ passivity in the face of the enemy. Dad claimed that the Occupation had left A GAPING WOUND between one generation and the next. A lot of people disagreed and there were more letters saying so, but Dad was right as per always.
    It’s why we went to Pleinmont.
    Pleinmont was important to the Germans because it’s at the rocky southwestern tip of the island, which is why they built bunkers and gun placements and a watchtower 23 thingy that’s as ugly as most Modern Art. For a while this was where all Guernsey’s Dispossessed Youth™ did their dispossessing.
    We used to meet in the car park every Sunday and wander up to the watchtower, which is over 50 foot high. It has rubble-filled corridors and dark narrow stairs up to the first floor, but after that there’s just a rusty ladder and a strong smell of pee. The nearby bunker is for glue-sniffers and used condoms. It doesn’t sound very glamorous and believe me it wasn’t. The only thing that made it interesting was the graffiti, from which I learnt some intriguing new words.
    There’s no point in mentioning names, but Jason Guille and Pete Mauger are important to this story – Jason is in the Sixth Form at the Grammar and has half a finger missing, Pete’s his best friend and is missing his whole brain. There’s also Marc Le Page and J-P, although they matter less. Pagey now works in a bank and wears leather ties, J-P is a stick insect with no obvious eyebrows. They don’t talk to me anymore and I can’t pretend to care. They probably still light their own farts and find it funny.
    Nic and I would sit in the car park and watch them do wheel spins on their motorbikes or handbrake turns in their cars. It’s funny, she had no interest in engines or electrics but when it came to boys she was a brilliant mechanic. She knew just what knobs to twiddle.
    She liked Pete Mauger the most at first. His dad worked in the off-licence on the Esplanade, which meant his car boot was often full of cigarettes and cut-price booze. 24 Nic preferred Silk Cut Purple because she could also steal them from Therese. Therese only smoked three-a-day-on-the-patio, but Nic could smoke a whole packet in an hour. Pete said it was like kissing an ashtray but obviously didn’t mind. Nic would smile and pull herself close to him and blow smoke right into his mouth. She could be quite slutty like that. I’m sure that makes me sound spiteful and jealous, but I never tried to compete with Nic, I just sat in the corner and drank/talked a lot. Maybe it was because of the drinking that we first fell out. Or maybe it was because of tomatoes.
    It was after five in the afternoon and as per usual we’d crammed into Jason’s car to listen to the charts. Nic was in the front on Pete’s lap and I was in the back by the only window that worked. I was trying to concentrate on the music but I wished it was just me with Nic, alone together. We used to sing along to all our favourite songs. I was also annoyed with Pagey, who kept moaning about how his dad made him work in his greenhouses 25 after school. I know sons are meant to hate their fathers as per the Ancient Greeks, but I told Pagey to show some respect. I then explained to him (and everyone else) how the tomato didn’t arrive in Guernsey until 1834 , and that it was initially grown as a decorative plant because people thought it was poisonous. How funny then, that it became our major export and a kind of national