Literature / Lie With Me

Lie With Me is a thriller by Sabine Durrant, published in 2016. Set in London and Greece, it's narrated by Paul Morris, a down-on-his-luck chancer and serial womaniser who runs into Andrew Hopkins, an old friend from university, in a London bookshop. Andrew invites him to a dinner party, where he meets widowed lawyer Alice Mackenzie. Determined to get it on with Alice and replace her late husband Harry, Paul inveigles his way into a holiday on the fictional Greek island of Pyros, where Alice, Andrew, his wife Tina and their children are spending one last holiday before Circe's House, their holiday home, is demolished to make way for a new resort. It's also the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Jasmine, a teenage girl who was last seen alive in Greece, and Alice has been running a campaign to find her, dead or alive.

Then everything starts to go horribly wrong...and Paul's past starts to catch up with him.

This book provides examples of:

• All for Nothing: The search for Jasmine turns out to be this. Not only was she Dead All Along, but Alice knew all this time, being the one who killed her.
• Amoral Attorney: The Anakritis (a Greek investigative judge) who interrogates Paul after his arrest. And as it turns out, Alice - a human rights lawyer - is one too.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Even after his arrest, Paul still has a soft spot for Tina because she was always kind to him, and ultimately decides to keep quiet about her daughter Daisy's relationship with Artan, an Albanian labourer. Paul's defence lawyer also suggests he write to Tina and tell her he suspects Andrew and Alice were having an affair, but Paul decides not to. However, Tina still turns against him and closes ranks with Andrew and Alice, accusing Paul of being 'creepily intense' and telling the others about Paul stealing some soap she and Andrew had given Alice.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Boo, one of Tina and Andrew's friends, who Paul meets at a dinner party. He initially dismisses her as 'too fat and posh', but later admits he does find her sexy.
• Book Ends: Paul recalls taking a boat trip across a bay when he was last in Greece, with 'Zorba the Greek' playing, and the captain holding his arm as he got onto the boat. When he tries to escape the island, he attempts to board a boat going in the same direction, only to be told to fuck off by a passenger and manhandled off it by the captain, as he does not have a ticket and nobody wants to buy him one.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Alice's daughter Phoebe. To be fair, this is from Paul's perspective and Paul is an Unreliable Narrator, and Phoebe has every reason to be unfriendly towards him (see Dirty Old Man below).
• Broken Bird: The deaths of Alice's husband and best friend have done a number on her. Florrie ended up like this as well.
• Chekhov's Armory: There are multiple objects that become important as the book progresses. The cloth and the spanner Paul finds in the truck, Tina's shopping list, the bottles of lye and the 'Let Zeus blow your mind' t-shirt that Paul later loses are among them. The t-shirt is what makes Paul realise Alice is framing him; it was found in the well and when Paul begs Alice to tell Lieutenant Gavras about him wearing the t-shirt in London, she refuses to talk about it and he realises he left it at her house and she stole it.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Paul likes to think he's this, but his thoughts about women and girls - especially Alice and Andrew's teenage daughters - are anything but chivalrous. He also barely remembers the names of women he slept with, including a Dutch woman he pulled in Greece, and Andrew's sister. His attitude does improve slightly after his time in prison, as he likes and appreciates his defence lawyer, Andrea Karalla, despite her not being particularly attractive.
• Dead Little Sister: Andrew's sister Florrie, who was a couple of years below him and Paul at Cambridge University, and was also friends with Alice, and died young thanks to Paul.
• Dirty Cop: Lieutenant Gavras. He goes along with Alice's plan to frame Paul for Jasmine's murder and the rape of Laura Cratchett, and it's highly likely that Alice and/or Andrew bribed him.
• Did Not Think This Through: How Gavras catches out Paul's lie about getting the bus to visit some ruins while everyone else is on a boat trip, on the day the dog was murdered (a Friday). Paul actually goes for a drive in Hermes, a van he had fixed, and finds the dog on the way back. Unfortunately, what Paul does not realise is that the ruins are closed for renovation, and that there are no buses going there on Fridays.
• Dirty Old Man: How Phoebe sees Paul (who's in his forties), and she's not wrong. Paul's inner monologue has him describe her as 'half-waif, half-whore', and he puts an ice-cold drinks can on her back as a prank. She later claims he was perving on her, which may or may not be true.
• Double Meaning / Double-Meaning Title: Paul certainly does lie with Alice in the sexual sense...and both of them have an economical relationship with the truth.
  • In Greece, Alice proposes a toast to Paul 'getting what he deserves' when Paul lies about a new publishing deal. Turns out she didn't mean it in a positive way.
• Driven to Suicide: Florrie killed herself because of Paul. See It Meant Something to Me below.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Paul might be a sleazy, womanising sponge, but he is genuinely horrified when he finds out that Alice not only killed Jasmine - albeit accidentally - but she spent ten years running a search campaign to find her when she knew where Jasmine's body was all along and was constantly by Yvonne's side, acting like her friend.
• Evil All Along: Alice. She's arguably the most evil character in the book. And to a lesser extent, Andrew, as he helped cover up Jasmine's death and Louis' rape of Laura Cratchet.
• Foreshadowing: Loads.
  • One of the facts about Pyros in the information Paul's friend sends him is that the police are notoriously corrupt, as is the legal system in general, and bribes are plentiful. Andrew bribes Lieutenant Gavras and his men to stop them arresting Paul for killing the guard dog. Gavras later goes along with the evidence Alice planted to frame Paul for Jasmine's murder, and since Andrew and Alice are both very well-off and he knows Alice through the Find Jasmine campaign, it's likely they've been bribing him.
  • Alice accuses Paul of only remembering things he wants to. It takes several mentions of the incident in the restaurant in Greece to jog Paul's memory, and the further we get into the book, the more he remembers about how badly he behaved, and that he wasn't just drunk, but that he was making horrible comments about Florrie that upset both Andrew and Alice. He also doesn't remember Florrie's name, making it clear how little she really meant to him.
• Gratuitous French: Paul has a habit of dropping French words and phrases like 'roué' or 'oeuvre' into his sentences. Alice later calls him out on it.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Paul could give the Boy Who Cried Wolf a run for his money. His habit of lying about things, such as a book deal that never was or the time of his flight, ends up seriously biting him in the arse. Which is what Alice was counting on.
  • Paul also tries to escape from the island by boat, but is refused by the captain as he hasn't got a ticket, and none of the passengers will buy one for him. He then finds Andrew waiting for him. Andrew reveals that he went down to the harbour to look for Paul while the police went into the town of Trigaki, because of a comment Paul made earlier about how, if he was Jasmine's kidnapper, he'd escape by sea as it would be harder to catch him.
• How We Got Here: Paul is in prison at the start and end of the novel. The majority of the novel tells the story of the chain of events that caused him to end up there.
• Hypocrite: Alice is arguably just as bad as Paul when it comes to lying, if not worse. Paul might have lied about the plane he took, or the book he was working on, or how much money he had, but Alice covered up someone's death and very likely a rape as well.
  • For someone who looks down on the upper middle classes, Paul is very keen to ingratiate himself with them and brag about his Cambridge education.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Both Andrew and Tina beg Paul not to hurt Alice, as she's pretty fragile after the death of her husband. It also turns out that Alice said the same thing to Paul when he was going out with Florrie, because she knew Florrie was vulnerable and easily hurt.
• It Meant Something to Me: This is a major plot point regarding Paul's relationship with Florrie at university. Paul only saw it as a fling, as shown by the fact he barely remembers Florrie's name and it only comes back to him after Andrew and Alice talk about her. Florrie lost her virginity to Paul and genuinely loved him, but Paul barely gave her a second thought and Florrie was so broken by Paul's cruelty and disregard for her that she killed herself.
• Karma Houdini: Played with. Alice successfully frames Paul for Jasmine's murder and Paul is sent to prison, but he launches an appeal and his lawyer has evidence to prove that Alice and Andrew are lying. It is left open as to whether Paul succeeds in the end. Paul also sees Alice for one last time with Yvonne, Jasmine's mother, and realises that she is essentially trapped in a situation of her own making.
• Mama Bear: Louis might be a difficult teenager, but Alice is still willing to protect him even if it means covering for him when he gets drunk and rapes a girl. Admittedly, this is partly to get revenge on Paul. Downplayed with Yvonne, who wasn't that close to Jasmine. Some passers-by even speculate that she killed Jasmine.
• Rape as Drama: Laura Cratchet, the Geordie girl Paul meets on the bus to Pyros (and in a bar the night before, though he has no memory of this), is raped on a night out and Paul is later accused of the rape, not helped by some nasty comments Paul makes about the scantily-clad girls he sees in town. It's heavily implied that it was actually Louis who raped her. The condom found was the same make as the ones Paul stole from Andrew's bag as a joke, which Gavras uses to draw the dots, but the make in question is also sold in a chemist near Louis' school.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Paul gets one from Andrew and one from Alice, both about his treatment of Florrie.
  Alice: Of course it means nothing. Do you think I felt anything for you? Ever? I've had to put up with your absurdly inflated sense of your own looks, your snobbery and sponging. Your affected little French phrases, your desperate made-up stories. Why would I be interested in a loser like you? I did it all for Florrie, but I actually hate you. You are a loathsome, self-centred, self-satisfied human being. You deserve everything I've done to you.
• Really Gets Around: Paul, and it heavily informs his attitude to women and teenage girls, as he views them primarily in terms of attractiveness. He's just come out of a relationship with a younger woman when the story starts, and his Establishing Character Moment involves him hitting on a young bookshop assistant and feeling insulted to the point of wanting to physically hurt her when she clearly isn't interested.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Paul is right that Jasmine is dead, but not about who killed her.
• Scenery Porn: The part of the book set on Pyros is full of vivid descriptions of the scenery of the island. You can almost feel the intense heat and hear the cicadas.
• She Is All Grown Up: Alice is an attractive older woman but is revealed to have been fat and plain when she was a student at Bristol University and had come to visit Florrie at Cambridge. Paul barely remembers her because as Alice bitterly points out, she 'probably didn't register for him sexually'.
• Shoot the Dog: Paul is accused of murdering a loud guard dog because he finds its body and accidentally gets his blood on his hands and shirt, and is then spotted by builders. It was actually Artan who did it. Andrew paid him.
• Shout-Out:
  • Paul compares Laura to Rita Ora.
  • A crossword in the paper is based around Under Milk Wood and Paul attempts to flirt with Alice and impress her by quoting lines from the play.
  • While Paul is doing a Google search for stories about Florrie Hopkins, one of the links he finds is an article about Katie Hopkins.
• Was It All a Lie?: Paul's reaction when Alice betrays him and reveals that she always hated him.
• Wham Line: "But you weren't." For context: Alice says this to Paul when he's being interviewed by the police at the holiday home and they accuse him of raping Laura Cratchet. Paul argues that he has an alibi as he was at home in bed at the time, and Alice denies it. She then lies that she woke up at midnight and found Paul fully dressed, and he had clearly not come to bed.
• Would Hurt a Child: Alice hit Jasmine while driving drunk and killed her. Jasmine was fourteen when she died, so legally a child.