Ree laughs. “Loving your new sarcastic vibe, Mum. Suits you.”
“I know you’re not being straight with me about that…new lot you’ve just recruited,” I tell her. “Every time I ask you directly, you change the subject. Please get rid of them. Whatever you have to do.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Do you want to know the truth about the incredibly kind and caring friends of Champ that you’re so keen to cut ties with? They’re mainly people whose dogs, exactly like Champ, have been unfairly vilified for no good reason. Okay? You think being lied about by Tess Gavey’s the only way a dog can be unjustly persecuted? You have no idea what some people have been through—lovely Darren, Sue and Dennis Cooper, Craig, the Youngs—all their dogs weren’t even accused of acts of violence before being carted away. They were just unlucky enough to have a breed—”
“Hang on, who are all these people?” Mark asks me.
“We don’t know any of them and we don’t need to,” I say firmly. “They’re nothing to do with us.”
“Oh, so we don’t care about their dogs, no?” says Ree. “We only care about our own?”
“I care about saving Champ. That’s all. That’s what this is. I’m not having my…mission diluted or turned into anything apart from that. I won’t stand for it.”
“God who made Mum fighty, make her fightier yet.” Tobes sounds impressed.
***
This next little snippet will feel like it comes out of nowhere, Large. I was pretty chuffed with myself when I worked out that it’s about Dutch Barn vodka and the advertising of that same drink by the comedian Ricky Gervais. Read it, and then I’ll explain what I think it means. You’ll notice we’re in first-person past tense for this bit, and it becomes clear after a few lines that it’s the dead dog talking again—Furbert, describing a scene in which Sally Lambert is talking to Champ.
***
“It’s genius,” Mum said. “Because it’s honest—more honest than most people are when they’re trying to sell you stuff. That’s what makes it funny. On the surface it doesn’t seem obviously funny; it just seems blunt, almost a bit rude.The humor comes from… Hmm, how do I explain a joke to a dog? Maybe you understand already. Do you? Do you, Champ-alo Soldier? Yes, you’re a gorgeous boy, aren’t you? You are. Youare.Do you and your doggy friends already understand all the jokes when you arrive on earth? Is that one of the many things we humans don’t know about you?Well, anyway, just in case you don’t get it, it’s funny because it’s true. We’re not going to be any happier, basically, if we buy this vodka rather than any other brand. But Ricky will be—he’ll be richer and happier, like the advert says. He’s not making any false claims about the drink; he’s just kind of saying, ‘If you like me and you also happen to want to buy vodka, I’d love it if you bought mine.’ That’s it! And what does it tell us, Champ, when plain and simple honesty starts to seem so outrageously hilarious? It tells us that most people are committed to being hypocritical and fake. I don’t even like vodka, but I went out and bought a bottle of Dutch Barn when I first saw that ad, because Idolike authenticity.
“And that’s why we love Ricky, Champy. He makes us laughandhe makes us think. And he just gets on with making the world a better place for animals, to the tune of gazillions of quids every year, while being bravely willing tolookbad in order todogood. Amazing! But we mainly love him because he’s a big” (tickle) “fan” (chin stroke) “of gorgeous furry boys like you! Isn’t he? And Furbert—he and Furbert are very alike, you know. And we’ll let him off not believing in heaven, won’t we? We will! Yes, wewill.Because when we’re all up there together and we bump into him, he’ll have to admit we were right about death not being the end of everything.”
***
Large, Ricky Gervais is an investor in the company that makes this particular kind of vodka. The advert Sally’s referring to here is a big photo of him grinning, and it says something like, “Drinking DutchBarn vodka makes a person richer and happier—and that person is Ricky Gervais.” I just happened to have seen that advert myself, so I knew straight away. Gervais is also well known for not believing in God or an afterlife.
When I read that bit, something else fell into place too: the stuff about star words, and learning meditation in Abbots Langley. You might not remember, but Furbert says in one of his chapters that his star word is “Ricky” and that he does a meditation that goes “Praise Ricky, Thank Ricky” when he wants to calm down. I thought to myself, “What if that’s Ricky Gervais he’s talking about?” I didn’t want to assume anything, since it could have been a coincidence—Ricky isn’t exactly a rare name—so I searched for “star word, praise, thank, Ricky Gervais” and got nothing.
Then I looked up places in Abbots Langley where you can learn meditation, and that led me to the explanation I was seeking. Guess what? Sally Lambert, in 2018, went on a meditation course in Abbots Langley and took her dog Furbert with her. The people who ran it remember him well. Apparently he climbed up on the kitchen table and helped himself to half a pot of the vegetarian goulash that was meant only for the human guests.
This particular kind of meditation involves what the teachers call the “praise attitude” and the “gratitude attitude.” That seems to map on very neatly to “Praise Ricky, Thank Ricky.” Star words also belong to this same branch of meditation, and when you go on one of these courses, you’re asked to choose a word or name that represents (for you only—it’s an individual choice) the highest good in the world. Some people choose “God” or “love” or “hope.” If you recall, Large, we’ve been told that Sally Lambert chose “FurbertHerbert Lambert” as her star word, and that’s why Furbert isn’t jealous that Champ’s got a day song and a night song—because he alone got the special distinction of being his mum’s star word.
Why am I telling you all this? Why does it matter? I think it shows how tricksy and manipulative Sally Lambert is. And clever—the long vodka marketing discussion proves that, I think. She understands humor, honesty, dishonesty, subtlety.
We all know dead dogs can’t write books, Large, so the late Furbert Herbert can’t have written this one. It’s Sally, isn’t it? Pretending to be him and laughing right in our faces, basically. Just blatantly taking the piss, making us read all about how her dead pet worships an atheist comedian so much that he’s turned him into a deity. Remember the absurdity impediment? Sally Lambert’s using it against us, entertaining herself with some truly absurd comedy and having a good laugh at our expense. And, sure, when we read it we notice the absurdity and even appreciate its entertainment value, maybe—but we miss what lies beneath it.
That’s Sally Lambert’s aim, I reckon. What she wants us not to notice (or maybe she does want us to work it out; I don’t know) is that everything she’s written, this book or whatever it is, has only one purpose and reason for existing: to contain, in a completely unprovable way, her confession to the murder of Tess Gavey.
30
Once Sarah Sergeant had been dispatched from the Many Frogs Hotel, as we Lamberts now call it, back to wherever she had hailed from, the social-media-savvy members of our party (Ree, Toby, and Corinne) explained to the social media dunces among us how the users of many online platforms were being mobilized to save Champ from the wicked machinations of the Gavey clan and their flunkies, a.k.a. Cambridgeshire Police. I’m sure no one needs me to name the dunces in question, but just in case: I meant Mum and Dad, not Champ, as it would have been impossible for him to have had a better grasp of TikTok, Discord, or Snapchat Spotlight, however hard he’d tried.
My parents, on the other hand… Much as I love them both, I can’t deny that our forward progress as a family was significantly impeded by their failure to grasp the basics of online life that you’d have thought any fool would be able to get to grips with relatively quickly—especially if said fools had Facebook accounts on whichthey’d sporadically posted pictures of me, Ree, Tobes, and Champ for more than a decade. Not Mum and Dad, though. As Corinne whispered to us Lambert offspring one night after the digital dimwits had fallen asleep: “Two Facebook accounts do not two astute social media strategists make.”
Luckily, the younger generation of Lamberts had much more flair for the sort of thing that was required. The strategy of the whole #InnocentChamp operation was devised almost entirely by Ree, while Toby’s wit, charm, sense of humor, and verbal dexterity made him the perfect copywriter and content creator and ensured that the right message was transmitted far and wide: Not only was Champ innocent and immensely lovable, but supporting him was also highly likely to make you more virtuous, popular, happy, and healthy than you’d ever dreamed of being before you stumbled across this worthy cause. Joining the #InnocentChamp effort, becoming a “Champ Champion,” seemed to offer instant membership to an in-crowd that Toby’s words brought to life in the imaginations of thousands, implying all kinds of far-reaching and life-enhancing perks without actually naming any. Declaring yourself to be “#TeamChamp” was a life choice and social status upgrade available to anyone with a social media account, at no cost whatsoever.
What’s not to like?as my non-furry siblings say. It was all so persuasive that even I, already a TeamChamp member since day one, found myself wanting to join and feeling mildly frustrated that I couldn’t because I was already “in.”
Once they’d finally grasped what was going on and that it was real and massive, not just a silly made-up game confined to Ree’sand Tobes’s burner phones, Mum and Dad jumped straight from baffled and bumpkin-like to horrified/irate. It would have been nice if there had been half an hour of “Wow, kids—this is so impressive” in between.
To be fair to them both, they did later say all the right things and apologize for having been slow to get on board. And I’m grateful to have witnessed their temporary numbskullery too, because it made me ponder some important topics at a deeper level than I otherwise might have. The conclusion I drew was this: Clever people are more likely than stupid people to be harmfully stupid. The stupidity of stupid people is rarely dangerous. It seems mainly to consist of needing to have the obvious endings and meanings of pretty basic movies and TV shows explained to them.
You can tell how many stupid people there are in Level 3 by how easy it is to find full explanations online of film endings that ought to require no clarification. Try Googling “end ofCinderellaexplained” and you’ll probably find hundreds of versions of: “What makes the prince realize it’s her is that the glass slipper fits her foot. He has already been round all the other houses and tried all the other feet, and not a single one was the perfect fit until Cinderella’s; therefore, she must be the one who ran away from him as the clock struck midnight.” (It would not surprise me at all if you also found comments saying, “However thoroughly the prince thinks he’s searched, it’s just not plausible that he’s succeeded in finding and checking the shoe size of every female in the area. Also, what if she wasn’t local?”)
While the stupidity of stupid people might be a tedious waste of time, it’s generally not capable of doing the worst kind of harm, aslong as it remains unmixed with cleverness, because there’s nothing beguiling about it. (I like the wordbeguiling. I think this is the first time I’ve ever used it, and I’m definitely going to use it again.) Clever people, on the other hand, dress up their stupidity so that it looks like a fascinating, unusual place that everyone should want to visit—and that’s when the trouble starts.
