SEVEN Penguin Random House Canada
Sales Reps who love SEVEN Lies
“If you enjoy Patricia Highsmith, Donna Tartt, and specifically
Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides then Seven Lies is for you. An eerie, foreboding type of psychological manipulation takes a hold of
you as you begin reading the very first page.”
—Mary Giuliano, Director - Independent Retail Sales
“I loved it! In the crowded world of unreliable narrators, Jane is a
refreshing change. Only the reader has the advantage of having a front
row seat to her disturbing obsessive behavior, brutal honesty, and of
course, each of her seven lies.”
—Robin Thomas, Director - National Mass Merchant Accounts
“Seven Lies is the best kind of thriller—it will have you hooked from the first page until the very last! But I’m warning you: once you’re
done, you’re going to start looking at your friendships in a completely
different way. I wouldn’t want Jane on my bad side.”
—Evan Klein, Manager - Indigo Sales
“The female relationship turned on its head . . . think Single White
Female with a twist!”
—Jennifer Fyffe, District Sales Manager - Western Canada
“Seven Lies is the book I’m most excited to share with friends this summer. I can’t stop thinking about Jane and Marnie and how their
story unravels one lie at a time. It’s smart, full of tension, and has a
killer hook. All the elements of a big summer blockbuster!”
—Bonnie Maitland, Imprint Sales Director - Penguin Canada
“Prepare to read something like you’ve never read before. So many
times I caught myself second guessing. I never saw this ending
coming!”
—Jennifer Herman, Director - National Accounts
“Seven Lies is a creepy read with a great hook, that draws you in little by little, until you are swept up in the deceit and betrayal of a
friendship that goes horribly wrong. Loved it!”
—Wendy Bush-Lister, District Sales Manager - Eastern Canada
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Seven Lies
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Seven Lies
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Elizabeth Kay
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For Anne and Bob Goudsmit
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or as I have always known them,
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Mum and Dad
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CONTENTS
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The First Lie
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The Second Lie
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The Third Lie
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The Fourth Lie
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The Fifth Lie
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The Sixth Lie
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The Seventh Lie
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Seven Lies
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The
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First Lie
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Chapter One
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A
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nd that’s how I won her heart,” he said, smiling. He leaned back
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in his chair, lifting his hands behind his head, expanding his
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chest. He was always so smug.
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He looked at me, and then at the idiot sitting beside me, and then
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turned back again to me. He was waiting for us to respond. He wanted to
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see the smiles stretch across our faces, to feel our admiration, our awe.
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I hated him. I hated him in an all- encompassing, burning, biblical
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way. I hated that he repeated this story every time I came to dinner,
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every Friday evening. It didn’t matter who I brought with me. It didn’t
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matter which degenerate I was dating at the time.
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He always told them this story.
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Because this story, you see, was his ultimate trophy. For a man like
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Charles— successful, wealthy, charming— a beautiful, bright, sparkling 24
woman like Marnie was the final medal in his collection. And because
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he was fueled by the respect and admiration of others, and perhaps
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because he received neither from me, he wrenched them instead from
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his other guests.
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What I wanted to say in response, and what I never said, was that
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Marnie’s heart was never his to win. A heart, if we’re being honest, which 30
I finally am, can never be won. It can only be given, only received. You
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4
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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cannot persuade, entice, change, still, steal, steel, take a heart. And you 02
certainly cannot win a heart.
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“Cream?” Marnie asked.
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She was standing beside the dining table holding a white ceramic
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jug. Her hair was pinned neatly at the top of her neck, loose curls
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around her cheeks, and her necklace was twisted, the clasp beside the
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pendant, hanging together against her breastbone.
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I shook my head. “No, thanks,” I said.
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“Not you,” she replied, and she smiled. “I know not you.”
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I want to tell you something now, before we begin. Marnie Gregory is 13
the most impressive, inspiring, astonishing woman I know. She has
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been my best friend for more than eighteen years— our relationship is
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legally an adult; able to drink, marry, gamble— ever since we met at
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secondary school.
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It was our first day and we were queuing in a long, thin corridor, a
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line of eleven- year- olds worming their way toward a table at the other 19
end of the hall. There were groups huddled at intervals, like mice in a
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snake, bulging from the orderly, single- file line.
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I was anxious, aware that I knew no one, psychologically preparing
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myself for being alone and lonely for the best part of a decade. I stared 23
at those groups and tried to convince myself that I didn’t want to be
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part of one anyway.
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I stepped forward too fast, too far, and stood on the heel of the girl
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in front. She spun around. I panicked; I was sure that I was about to be
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humiliated, shouted at, belittled in front of my peers. But that fear dis-28
sipated the moment I saw her. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but Marnie
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Gregory is like the sun. I thought it then; I often think it now. Her skin 30
is shockingly fair, a porcelain cream tempered only occasionally— after
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exercise, for example, or when she is overwhelmingly content— by rosy
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S E V E N L I E S
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pink cheeks. Her hair is a deep auburn, twisted into spirals of red and
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gold, and her eyes are a pale, near- white blue.
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“Sorry,” I said, stepping back and looking down at my shiny new shoes.
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“My name’s Marnie,” she said. “What’s yours?”
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That first encounter is symbolic of our entire relationship. Marnie
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has an openness, a tone that invites warmth and love. She is unassum-
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ingly confident, unafraid and unaware of any presumptions you might
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bring to the conversation. Whereas I am intensely aware. I am afraid of
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any potential animosity and am always waiting for what I know will
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come eventually. I am always waiting to be ridiculed. Then, I feared
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judgment for the pimples across my forehead, my mousy hair, my too-
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big uniform. Now, my tone of voice, the way it shakes, my clothing,
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comfortable and rarely flattering, my hair, my trainers, my chewed
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fingernails.
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She is light where I am dark.
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I knew it then. Now you’ll know it, too.
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“Name?” barked the blue- bloused teacher standing behind a desk at
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the front of the line.
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“Marnie Gregory,” she said, so firm and self- assured.
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“E . . . F . . . G . . . Gregory. Marnie. You’re in that classroom there, the 20
one with the ‘C’ on the door. And you,” she continued. “Who are you?”
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“Jane,” I replied.
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The teacher
looked up from the sheet of paper in front of her and
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rolled her eyes.
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“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. It’s Baxter. Jane Baxter.”
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She consulted her list. “With her. Over there. Door with the ‘C.’ ”
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Some might argue that it was a friendship of convenience and that I
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would have accepted any offer of kindness, of affection, of love. And
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maybe that’s true. In which case, I might counter that we were destined
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to be together, that our friendship was inked in the stars, because fur-
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ther down our path she’d need me, too.
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6
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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That sounds like nonsense, I know. It probably is. But sometimes I
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could swear to it.
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Yes, please,” said Stanley. “I’ll have some cream.”
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Stanley was two years my junior and a lawyer with a number of
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degrees. He had white blond hair that flopped over his eyes and he
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grinned constantly, often for no discernible reason. He could speak to
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women, unlike most of his peers: the result, I guess, of a childhood sur-
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rounded by sisters. But he was fundamentally dull.
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Unsurprisingly, Charles seemed to be enjoying his company. Which
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made me dislike Stanley even more.
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Marnie passed the jug across the table, pressing her blouse to her
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stomach. She didn’t want the fabric— silk, I think— to skate the top of 15
the fruit bowl.
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“Anything else?” she asked, looking at Stanley, and then at me, and
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then to Charles. He was wearing a blue- and- white- striped shirt and he’d 18
undone the top buttons so that a triangle of dark hairs sprouted from
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between the fringes of the fabric. Her eyes hovered there for a moment.
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He shook his head and his tie— undone and loose around his neck—
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slipped farther to the left.
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“Perfect,” she said, sitting down and picking up her dessert spoon.
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The conversation was— as always— dominated by Charles. Stanley
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could keep up, interjecting successes of his own wherever possible,
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but I was bored and I think that Marnie was, too. We were both lean-
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ing back into our chairs, sipping the last of our wine and absorbed
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instead in the imagined conversations playing out within our own
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minds.
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At half past ten, Marnie stood, as she always did at half past ten, and
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said, “Right.”
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“Right,” I repeated. I stood, too.
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She lifted our four bowls from the table and stacked them in the
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 1
