It took a lie to teach me two truths

“You’re a liar!”

The words stung and stopped me in my tracks.

I protested, but he laughed and walked away. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I turned to my audience for support. They avoided my eyes and followed my accuser.

Drake.

No one called him by his first name. No one asked him what it was.

He looked back, an arrogant smile spreading across his thin lips. His piercing gaze defied me to challenge him.

In that moment, I had a choice.

Did I stand my ground? Or did I follow them back to the noise and bustle of the playground?

I was seven years old.

We’d moved to Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire a few months earlier. I knew no one. I was shy, and with my mother having left my father, I was desperate to find somewhere I belonged.

Drake was the boy everyone wanted to know. Where he went, others followed. His father owned a minimarket, which meant Drake had something else going for him.

Free sweets.

I wanted to be his friend.

There was only one problem. I was a rather ordinary boy.

So, I decided to make myself more interesting.

Thankfully, I had Enid Blyton.

The Famous Five, which gave me a sense of courage and adventure. I devoured the books, absorbing unfamiliar words, allowing my imagination to run wherever it wanted.

Soon, when the children asked me what I’d done the previous night or over the weekend, my answers became more exciting.

Joining the children next door at teatime became a treasure hunt. In reality, we’d been searching high and low to find their mother’s misplaced reading glasses.

The attic became my bedroom at the honey-coloured stone house where we lived. I had the run of the entire roof space, which contained enough old furniture to open an antique shop. I preferred to think of them as relics from expeditions to Egypt and China. There were charts and maps where treasure was hidden.

Thankfully, nobody asked to see them. A faded set of drawings that showed where the drains ran was hardly going to excite anyone.

For a while, my little embellishments worked.

Then I went too far.

One Sunday morning, I ran into James near the Norman bridge that spanned the River Avon. I’d walked to the village centre to collect the Sunday newspapers, as I usually did.

Outside the newsagent, James told me he never went inside. For a dare, he’d once taken some sweets and almost got caught.

By Monday, the story had grown.

When the children asked what I’d done at the weekend, I told them James had taken a large Fruit and Nut bar and shared it with a friend, who didn’t have enough money to buy chocolate.

But there was one thing I didn’t know.

James was allergic to nuts.

Drake knew.

Suddenly, my small embellishment wasn’t an adventure.

“You’re a liar!”

Drake turned and walked away, followed by the others.

I could have followed Drake to try and win back his approval. But he would still tell everyone I was a liar.

So, I stayed where I was, even though it meant becoming an outsider.

It wasn’t an easy choice. But it was one I never regretted.

I simply wanted people to think I was more interesting than I was.

Perhaps that’s when I learned the first truth.

I didn’t need to pretend to be someone else to make people like me.

The second truth took a little longer to discover.

The imagination that got me into trouble needed somewhere else to go.

I should have saved the embellishments for the stories I wanted to write.

I didn’t know it then, but the attic full of imaginary treasure, the adventures inspired by the Famous Five, and even that ill-fated Fruit and Nut bar, were all pointing me towards something.

I didn’t need to make my life more interesting.

I could make the stories interesting instead.

It took a lie to teach me two truths.

And perhaps, all these years later, I’m still learning.

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