Lying is underrated. It gets a bad press, but really, what’s so very bad about it? I know lots of people, like teachers and the police and debt collectors, will tell you how the truth’s incredibly important. But then, that’s because they want something out of you, right? If you tell them the truth, you give them power over you – that’s the thing. You’ve given something of yourself away. Of course they want that; why wouldn’t they? It makes their lives easier, after all.

Hold on, you might be saying. Isn’t valuing the truth kind of foundational to ethics, to all the world’s major belief systems? God is truth – that’s what Pete said at Abby’s church last Sunday. But then again, he’s the pastor, so he has to say that, really. I mean, I guess he believes it too. I just smiled and nodded, like I always do. Mind you, another time, Pete said that God knows everything that’s in your head anyway, so you can’t lie to Him. Well, OK, maybe. I’d interpret that as meaning you can lie to Him, but it’s just pretty pointless and it doesn’t really matter. But other people? Why tell them things they don’t really need to know?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that the truth isn’t real or doesn’t matter or anything like that. I’m not spouting some clever-clever stuff about there being no such thing as objective reality. I mean, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t – who knows? That’s the kind of pointless argument Charity will snare you with if you’re not careful, like last Friday after an inadvisable third pint of cider, and before I knew it, she was banging on about atheism again. “Not flirting with the sky fairy, are you, Liam?” she’d said with that irritating little smirk. That’s my lovely sister for you, never wasting any opportunity to tell you what she thinks. Well, not so much telling you as bashing you over the head with a bloody big spanner. Or a brick. It’s a defence mechanism if you ask me: attack before you’re attacked. Me, I’d rather keep my opinions to myself, more often than not. Safer that way. I suppose you could say it’s just a different kind of defence mechanism. Sometimes silence works just as well as a lie.

No, I’m not saying there aren’t things that are obviously true and false. I’m just saying you don’t always have to tell the truth yourself. Lies are useful, like tools in a box, ready to deploy when the need arises. And anyone who says they’ve never lied or would never do so under any circumstances – well, that’s an outright whopper right there, surely? To give a boringly obvious example, show me the man who’s never told a tiny fib to his wife or girlfriend about her new hairstyle or whether her bum looks big in this, and I’ll show you a single man. I supposed you’d call them “white lies”; well, OK, if that makes you feel better.

Or, what if someone knocks on the door and asks to see your business partner, and if you don’t know exactly why – or you do know exactly why and it ain’t good – do you really tell them they’re hiding under the desk in the back office? No, mate, you do not.

I think there was a movie a few years ago about someone who always told the truth for some reason, with hilarious consequences, presumably. I say presumably because I never saw it. It sounds too painful to me, too much like hell on Earth. Only a masochist would want to live in a world like that. Makes me feel all cold inside just thinking about it.

Anyway, as I said, lying is a useful tool. It can get you out of trouble. It can smooth over arguments or awkward situations. It keeps the peace, and what’s so wrong with that? No, Charity, I don’t think your husband is a tedious pain in the butt, and of course I like playing Risk with him. And yes, Abby, I really like your church (and, actually, I do a bit, so that’s half true anyway – and they can be the best of all, the sort-of-lies, because they’re easier to believe, for you and everyone else).

I could get all philosophical here and say that lies only make sense in the context of objective truth, but that sounds too much like an evening at the Royal Oak with Abby, Charity, a bottle of white wine, and a bloke (yours truly) longing with every fibre of his being to be absolutely anywhere else in the cosmos instead of where his girlfriend and his sister are bickering on about God and Richard bloody Dawkins for three whole hours of his life.

So I lie selectively. It’s like a tool to be used when it’s most needed. You don’t use a sledgehammer when you need a screwdriver. And I do try not to lie to Abby; she is my girlfriend, after all. I’m not going to cheat on her and then lie about it – but then, even if I did, it would be the cheating that’s the actual wrong thing, not the lying, surely? (You see, lying gets such a bad rap, but it’s rarely the true villain, the real sin.) Charity has accused me of lying to Abby about believing in God, telling her I do when I don’t, not like Abby does anyway. But that’s not a lie, not really; it’s true enough for me, her and everyone who matters, so how can it be a lie?

I’ll admit, I’ve been known to tell Doug I’ve only got a tenner to spare when he’s asked for thirty. I know he often needs the money, but I don’t feel so guilty about that, even if he is my friend and ex-business partner. It’s not like he never lied to me, is it? Nor to Kelly even. I mean, they’ve been an item since school, off and on, but the porkies he’s told her you wouldn’t believe. That’s probably why they’ve been as off-and-on as they have, to be honest.

I do have to be much more careful with my dear sister, though. Charity knows more than the others. Sometimes, she looks at me with those narrowed eyes, that small scornful frown, even when I’m telling the truth. But then, it doesn’t matter if she catches me out occasionally. She’s not going to tell anyone else. She knows I’m sometimes economical with the truth, and I’m quite sure she knows why, even if I’ve never told her in so many words. But I still lie to her anyway, on occasion. She’s a good test: if I can fool her, then almost anyone else is a piece of cake.

The thing is, you see, if you can lie about the small things, then when that time comes when you have to tell a real whopper, when it really matters – you can do it. It comes naturally then, without blushing or sweating or stammering or over-elaborating or giving too little eye contact or too much, or any of the other giveaways that everyone thinks they know how to spot. When you’ve practised enough so that it comes naturally, you don’t even think about it; so that some part of you doesn’t even think you’re actually lying or might have even forgotten what the precise truth was in the first place. That’s the ideal. That’s something to aspire to. And if you’re happy and so is everyone else, where’s the harm?

The key thing is: practice makes perfect. It’s like a superpower. OK, that sounds a bit lame, but I’m being serious. And it really can be like a force for good, you know? I don’t lie for bad reasons – well, not often. I’m not actually proud of it either, not exactly. But it can make people happy, and sometimes it’s just necessary. Life has taught me that much. It’s the most fantastic armour, the best protection you can have. You never know when you might need it, really need to use it. When someone trusts you. When your big chance comes or when the chips are down. It might even save a life.

And if I hadn’t told the truth, all those years ago, Joe might still be here.

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