Seven Lies

by Elizabeth Kay

  “Sure,” she replied. “I’ll forward you the email. You’ll laugh at the one of my parents.”

  “They were good, I thought, on the day,” I said.

  “I know,” she replied. “I thought that, too. Although—and this is just typical—it turns out that they were in Florence at the same time we were. Mum had a conference, something about allergies, and Dad went along, too. But did they tell me? Nope. Did they want to meet? To have lunch or dinner with us? Nope.”

  She always saw the worst in them, looked for the things that proved their indifference.

  “I don’t know if that’s so bad,” I said. “Perhaps they didn’t want to encroach?”

  “Well, that’s a nice way of thinking about it,” she said. “But I don’t think so.”

  I yawned, which I hoped might signal the end of the conversation, but Marnie continued regardless.

  “You know something?” she said. “I feel different now. Can I say wiser without sounding like a twat? Or maybe not? I’m not that sure I can.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sure that you can.”

  “I feel more like an adult,” she said. And then she paused. “No, that’s not quite right. I feel like I’ve just taken part in a very public display of adulthood. Like I’m pretending. Does that make sense?”

  “Not really,” I replied.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “that’s sort of why I called. We’ve decided to sell the flat. You know. Being adults and all that.”

  She paused, and I said nothing.

  “We talked about it while we were away, and we think it feels right.”

  She paused again.

  She was testing each step, placing one foot at a time on the brittle wood to see if it buckled. I knew that she was wondering—asking in a silent sort of way—whether this would be upsetting for me, if the change in routine would be a problem. They had been saying for ages that one day they would move beyond the limits of the city, to a house with a garden and a driveway and bedrooms that overlooked fields. I wasn’t sure if she was saying this with her silence, too.

  She was careful not to mention money. Charles was very successful, by which I really mean very wealthy, working in a private equity firm where he bought companies and sold them in parts for a profit. And Marnie was working harder than ever, writing about food and talking about food. She had recently taken on a new sponsor, a company selling only knives and each at a ridiculous price. Apparently, they’d seen a significant uplift in sales since she’d started featuring them in her videos and so she’d successfully negotiated a better rate.

  I, by contrast, had never felt less engaged by my job, where it seemed my primary objective was to handle customer complaints and pay as little compensation for our failings as possible. I could barely afford my rent. And she was sensitive to that, never wanting me to feel inferior.

  Oh.

  Yes.

  No. You’re right.

  I’m trying very hard to be honest. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t come very naturally to me. I’ve slightly misrepresented my situation.

  I had money—I still have money—but saved somewhere else.

  Jonathan—as a cameraman, freelancing, with no company benefits whatsoever, and because he was so endlessly efficient—had taken out a life insurance policy. I was his next of kin and so the payment had come to me.

  But I couldn’t—I still can’t—spend it. He wanted me to have it, but I cannot stand the thought that his life has been assigned a value. Because no amount of money can compensate for that loss. It doesn’t even come close. How can you quantify the light still on in the hallway when you come home after dark? How can you price a recognizable smile waiting late at the bus stop to walk you back to bed? What does it cost to replace someone whose hand so perfectly fit your own, whose warmth was reassurance, whose laughter was excitement, someone who had willingly woven his life into yours?

  If you were to try, to use their algorithm to assign numbers to loved ones, you’d discover that a man like Charles was worth far more than a man like Jonathan. Which further proves my point.

  Emma thought that I was being ridiculous. She thought I should invest the money. She sent me dozens of links to properties: modern flats in the center of the city, two-bedroom terraces in the suburbs, even a sea-view apartment on the south coast. She set me up on a date with a friend of hers—a man she volunteered with at the food bank who’d inherited a small fortune from his late wife—so that we could discuss returns on investments and the property market and a whole world in which I had no interest whatsoever. I said that I didn’t want a date, and she said that it was a banking date, and I said that wasn’t a thing and refused. And then she said the words “silver lining” and we never spoke about or acknowledged that the money existed again.

  It’s still there in that bank account.

  “I think it’s because now that we’re husband and wife we just feel like a flat probably isn’t the right sort of home for us anymore, you know?” Marnie continued. “We just feel like a house would be more appropriate. I love that flat, but there’s an argument, isn’t there, that this is the time to start thinking about the next steps in life. Room to grow and all that. Maybe in September. I think that’s meant to be a good time to sell.”

  “You should do what you want to do,” I said. “Whatever feels right.”

  “You sound just like Charles,” she replied. “You’re both so sensible. He keeps saying that we’re only just married, that we have all the time in the world to do these things, that there’s no pressure whatsoever. But I think he wants to do it, too, you know, just that he doesn’t want to be pushy. I think he likes the idea of more space. I could get him a dog—you know the one he wants; is it a husky? But then, as he says, there’s always more time, and dogs are so much work, aren’t they?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Jane?”

  I turned off my bedside lamp and closed my eyes.

  “Shit,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Was that insensitive? There isn’t always more time. I know that. It’s why I think this way, I think, because of Jonathan. I know that sometimes life shifts unexpectedly, that the choices get taken away. Shit. Jane, I’m sorry. I was just . . . Jane?”

  “It’s fine,” I replied. “Really.”

  I wanted to go to sleep. I didn’t want to have this conversation.

  I could see that her life was expanding as mine was shrinking. I had once had the conversations that she was now having—asked myself those very same questions—and looked ahead toward a life that offered answers.

  Jonathan had always wanted to move away from the city, to live in the countryside: he’d wanted to keep chickens, and have more bedrooms than children, and build a treehouse at the bottom of the yard.

  “You know the smog outside the flat? Well, there’d be none of that,” he’d say, trying to persuade me.

  “Did you hear that?” he’d whisper, in the middle of the night, in response to bottles being broken or tires screeching on the street outside. “You don’t get that in the countryside.”

  He’d go to the supermarket and, as he unpacked the vegetables, each clinically wrapped in plastic, he would say, “I could have grown this myself.”

  I knew that eventually I would say: “Yes. Okay. Let’s do it.”

  But that moment never came.

  Chapter Twelve

  Here’s the thing. When something starts to slip away, it becomes almost impossible to think about anything other than how it was at its best. I tried to fall asleep, but I couldn’t. I could only work backward through our friendship and try to find moments that felt equally fragile.

  We had one row at school, only one. It was about something and nothing, as arguments so often are. She always pressed snooze on her alarm clock, half a dozen times at least, until she was frantic and rushing and falling into the classroom. W
e were partnered in every lesson, and drama was first on a Thursday. Almost every activity required a pair; a one on its own simply wasn’t enough. She rarely apologized for being so late. And eventually I lost my temper. It was selfish of her not to think of me, to forget that her behavior affected others. I said that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be her partner anymore. She said fine, if that was how I felt, and she stormed off with her scarf trailing behind her and her homework still clasped in her fist.

  This friction lasted an entire day. We didn’t sit together and we walked separately between classes. The hostility was unprecedented. We were normally the harmonious anomaly in among endless teenage conflict. Our teacher was so shocked by the situation that she sat us down after our last class and unraveled the issue—with words like “responsibility” and “compassion”—and insisted that we stop being so immature and learn to address our problems in an adult manner.

  And that was it. The only argument. We forgave each other, but we didn’t forget it. Instead, we carried it like a trophy, because just one argument in the course of an entire friendship seemed something worth celebrating.

  There hadn’t been another blip since. We’d moved to separate cities to study at eighteen but it felt like we were barely apart, because there was always a reason to call, a story to share, something only she’d understand. We snapped back together three years later. And then we were better than we’d ever been, a concrete team against a world that seemed confounding.

  It was in that first year in the Vauxhall flat—perhaps only a month or two before I met Jonathan—that Marnie first tried to quit her job. She’d written a letter of resignation, but her boss, Steven, had refused to accept it. She’d returned to the flat that evening perplexed and rather despondent but determined to find a solution. She hated the work and the people and her boss in particular, who thought he was irresistible to younger women, which was very much not the case. I’d met him a few times before—at her various work events—and it was clear that he still thought himself as handsome as he’d been thirty years earlier.

  Marnie tried to resign again the following week. She cornered her boss and confronted him with her letter in front of their managing director.

  “As discussed,” she’d said firmly, “my resignation.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Abi had said. “You must be disappointed, Steven.”

  “Very,” he’d replied as he reluctantly accepted the envelope.

  “I hope you’re moving on to exciting new things,” Abi had said, and she’d smiled. She had been appointed a few months earlier. She was six foot one and fiercely ambitious. The younger women in the company were impressed by her; the older men less so.

  And so Steven wasn’t going to make things easy; he was determined to make Marnie suffer for the simple crime of suggesting that she might not be entirely content in his presence. He pulled Marnie aside later that day and informed her that she had a six-month notice period and would be expected to serve the full duration. Marnie argued that it was ridiculous—that she hadn’t known what she was signing and that it was a disproportionate term of notice for an assistant—but he was insistent.

  That evening she threw herself onto the sofa and buried her head beneath the cushions and seethed because it wasn’t fair, simply wasn’t going to happen, because she couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it, couldn’t be expected to work for such an odious man for another six months.

  “Help me,” she pleaded, peeking at me from between two pillows. “I will die if I spend another month with that man. I can smell his breath on my clothes,” she said, “and I can hear his nasal laugh grating in my head all the time, even when we aren’t together, even on weekends. Help me, Jane.”

  So we devised a plan. I had done this before, of course, without her, to retaliate against her seemingly charming but fundamentally volatile first boyfriend, but it was so different, so invigorating to be sharing the anticipation. Their company’s annual summer party was the following weekend. It was a big event designed to charm their suppliers and investors and to thank the employees and to entertain their partners. It was held on the river in the garden of the company’s largest pub and the attention to detail was inspiring. It was themed—they always were—and this year the spotlight was on the circus.

  We arrived early. Giant gates sprayed in gold paint had been erected in the car park and we were ushered in by two clowns and directed through to the circus itself. There was a big top tent in stretched blue plastic and a man on stilts strolled past in bright red flares, looking straight ahead, as though entirely unaware of the world playing out around his feet, the smaller lives scrabbling at ground level.

  Marnie took my hand and together we weaved through the masses. She was wearing a black leotard and sheer black tights and she looked elegant, confident, as though her body was the very thing that she wanted it to be. I was wearing a long floral skirt and a small crystal ball on a chain around my neck. I had wanted to wear my jeans.

  Marnie paused in front of the bar and pointed at a very tall woman dressed in a red leather jacket with striped gold cuffs and black leather lapels. A small red top hat was perched on her head and a bull whip was clasped in her fist.

  “There,” she said. “That’s her; that’s Abi.”

  I nodded. “And where will I find you?” I asked.

  Marnie pointed at a wooden caravan just beyond the popcorn stand. It was painted lime green and had bright yellow stripes down the sides. “Behind that,” she said. “In fifteen minutes.”

  I approached Abi. I interrupted her conversation. I introduced myself as Pippa Davies.

  She recognized the name immediately. Pippa Davies was the daughter of one of their principal suppliers. Pippa had called Marnie the previous week and said that she was no longer able to attend, and Marnie had chosen not to amend the guest list.

  Abi was delighted to see me. She led me through the circus—she wanted to show me their site, their flagship pub, the scale of their operation—and she was pitch-perfect as she sold me their success and their ambition. I followed her willingly and slowly, subtly, focused on maneuvering us past the popcorn stand and toward the green caravan.

  “This is very elegant,” I said, and I started to circle it.

  “Sure,” said Abi, a little surprised by the unexpected detour. “I expect your father has mentioned the parties we host for the customers, too: Saint Patrick’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s Eve.”

  I stopped and I stared. It had worked. I could see that they were squabbling and so I cleared my throat. Marnie looked up and then her posture softened slightly, her weight shifting to one side, her hip jutting out, and she stepped toward him and put her hand on his shoulder. It looked illicit, flirtatious, and I felt both repulsed and delighted.

  “We feel that attention to detail is paramount and, for me, this is one of the many things that separates us from our competitors and—”

  Abi looked up and made a tiny noise, a tiny gasp, and her hands flew up to cover her lips, her whip falling to the ground beside her.

  “Steven,” she said. “What on earth . . . ? What is this?”

  He furrowed his eyebrows—it was rather endearing, really—and he glanced among the three of us, bewildered and unable to process what exactly was happening and why his boss was looking so shocked, so horrified. And then he understood. He looked at Marnie and he raised his eyebrows and he turned his head to one side as though about to shout, and then he recognized that there was a more important concern, someone else who he ought to address.

  “Abi,” he said, and he stepped backward away from Marnie. “This is not what it looks like. This is absolutely—”

  “Don’t,” said Marnie, and she held her hand up and out. “Please. Let’s just be honest. We can’t keep this a secret, not now, not anymore.”

  She was not a great actress, probably not even a good one, and her words were
stilted and sharp, her actions unnatural. But he was playing his part so perfectly. His wide eyes were scanning the garden either side of us, presumably looking for his wife. His mouth was opening and closing, unsure what to say, unsure where to start.

  “I’m sorry. We should have told you,” continued Marnie. “But for obvious reasons we’ve been trying to keep this quiet. But you should know, I think, that Stevie and I . . . we’re in a relationship.”

  “A relationship?” said Abi.

  “A what?” said Steven.

  “And I know—I’ve checked the policy—that one of us needs to resign. I understand and you know already that I’ve been thinking about my next steps and—”

  “Effective immediately?” asked Abi, clearly keen to find the least disruptive solution and to minimize her own embarrassment.

  “Of course,” said Marnie. “I’ll collect my things on Monday.”

  “Fine,” said Abi. She turned to me and put her hands on my upper arms and apologized profusely for the behavior of her staff and promised to address it immediately and asked if I’d please excuse her so that she could have a quick word with her colleague. And then she walked up to Steven and marched him into the pub.

  Marnie ran up to me and she squealed and she threw her arms around my neck and we were laughing because the whole moment was so ridiculous, and because we couldn’t believe that it had worked but it had, and because we felt powerful and galvanized, and because we thought then that we were agents of our own lives rather than simply two young women. We were united. It bonded us in a way that felt exciting: a secret shared, a collective triumph, the sense that together we were unstoppable.

  We went to a bar on the way home and commandeered two velvet armchairs tucked into a corner. It was still early in the evening and there were few other customers, but the band was warming up at the back and the bar staff were lighting candles and cleaning glasses. I ordered a bottle of champagne, because although my salary was low and hers now nonexistent, we had something to celebrate.