Sharon was given a spanking new BMX for her ninth birthday and I was jealous. For the last few months I had lain in bed for at least an hour every night, every muscle taut and clenched in my own wishing ritual. My eyes were squeezed shut so tight that when I eventually opened them I could barely see and the dimness ahead of me was peppered with pin pricks of the brightest light. Please, please, please…let me have a shiny red BMX. One without stabilisers. A proper, grown up BMX.

Turns out my wishing ritual had been misguided and Sharon got the BMX I had wished so hard for.

Of course I was green with envy but when she offered me a backie I couldn’t refuse. I clambered on the back with abandon and she rode around the compound where we lived. Round and round we went, for at least ten minutes, but we soon got bored. We craved adventure, and being the tomboys we were, decided the only thing for it was to walk the bike to the top of the hill and then free-wheel it down. We justified it…it wasn’t a main road... plenty of speed bumps. We looked up at the hill, eyes gleaming and made the journey up the hill, all thoughts of safety, all the lectures from our respective mothers flung aside.

Once at the top, we looked down, looked at each other, and WHOOSH.

WHOOSH…heads thrown back, laughing into the wind, the shimmering new BMX sped down the hill, gathering speed, causing us to laugh more…WHOOSH.

And then, THUD.

We hit the speed bump at the bottom of the hill and I went flying off, gathering a mouthful of concrete as my body scraped across the ground. I screeched with the pain, but startled by the noise I’d made I blinked away empty tears, too stunned to cry yet.

I picked myself up and trudged up to our fifth floor flat, filled with utter terror. Ma would kill me. She had forbidden me from riding a backie, told me never to try that hill. What would she say when she saw my shredded face and mangled knees?

As soon as I opened the door and saw her standing there I burst into tears. Huge globed droplets splashing onto the floor, threatening to cause a flood where we stood.

“What happened?" She covered me with hugs and kisses, her voice soft and smooth as she cooed like a dove.

The tears continued to flow as the pain hit me all of a sudden. I realised that I couldn’t admit to her that I had disobeyed her. Couldn’t disappoint her like that. So I did the next worst thing. I lied.

“A big Chinese man tripped me up down the stairs,” I gibbered. It was the first thing that came into my mind, it seemed plausible (the Chinese man bit anyway – we lived in Hong Kong after all). Of course I regretted it the moment those words escaped my treacherous lips.

“What man? What did he look like? Why did he do it? We’re going after him.” Big Brother Senior and Big Brother Junior were already half out the front door, incensed that anyone could do this to a child, to their little sister.

In all of ten seconds my little white lie had spiralled out of control in a terrible way. My mind reeled and I thought of how when they got downstairs they wouldn’t find a mean, Chinese man who got pleasure out of tripping up children, but instead they would find an ashen Sharon clutching guiltily onto a shiny new BMX.

I looked at their faces, my brothers in protective mode, ready to find the man who hurt their baby sister intentionally and give him a piece of their mind, and my Ma, concern practically worn into her face.

I couldn’t lie to them anymore.

“I LIED,” I bawled. “SHARON GAVE ME A BACKIE AND I FELL OFF.”


Of course the best punishment for a misdemeanour like this is humiliation. With scabby wounds on my face and knees for a fair few weeks afterwards, people would stop and ask me what had happened and my family would make me recount the whole sorry story, lies and all.

And you know what? To this day I find it next to impossible to lie.

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