27
that their love— a romantic love— would and must subsume ours. And
28
yet our love— one that flourished strolling shoulder to shoulder down
29
school corridors, on coaches to day trip destinations, on sleepovers—
30
seemed so much more deserving of a lifetime together.
31S
Every Friday, at around eleven in the evening when I left their flat, I
32N
found myself saying goodbye to a love that had shaped me, defined
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S E V E N L I E S
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me, decided me. It always felt so cruel to be both within it and without
01
it all at once.
02
And a truth that I knew then— and one that I still cannot fully
03
comprehend— is that, crueler still, it was a situation entirely of my own 04
making. I am wholly responsible for that first detached limb, for that
05
first broken bone, for that first forgotten memory.
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07
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01
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Chapter Three
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07
k
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13
14
Three months after I met Jonathan, I moved to live with him in his
maisonette in Islington. We were young, yes, but we were com-
pletely, utterly, entirely in love. It was unexpectedly easy, in a way that 15
something new rarely is. It was lively and exciting, in a way that my simple 16
life rarely was. I had loved living with Marnie— I had been happy— and
17
yet eventually I began to crave something more, something other.
18
I had spent most of my childhood in a home that seemed loving
19
from the outside but consistently failed to deliver on that promise. My
20
parents were twenty- five years married before they divorced. But they
21
should have separated much sooner, because their squabbling and bick-
22
ering made our family home intolerable.
23
The short version is that my father was a philanderer. He had a
24
twenty- year affair with his secretary, and there were many other
25
women who danced in and out of his affections over the course of my
26
parents’ marriage. My sister was four years younger, and so I did what I
27
could to protect her from the noise and the drama and the tension. I
28
took her out and turned the music up and was forever distracting her
29
with promises of something interesting somewhere else. But I suppose
30
that’s another story for another time. What I mean to say is that I—
31S
perhaps more than most— was susceptible to the ideals of a romantic
32N
love. I adored Marnie. But this new love consumed me completely.
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Jonathan and I met on Oxford Street when we were both twenty-
01
two years old. It was six in the evening and we were heading to our
02
respective homes at opposite poles of the city. The station entrances
03
were gated, as they so often are, due to overcrowding on the platforms.
04
The sky was dark, threatening rain, and thick gray clouds passed quickly
05
over our heads.
06
Jonathan and I— unbeknownst to each other— were both enmeshed
07
in the crowd queuing to enter the ticket hall. The throng felt like its
08
own person, with its own consciousness, an impatient desire to be any-
09
where else emanating from us as one. I could feel other bodies invading
10
my own: arms squeezed against mine, thigh on thigh in a way that
11
seemed far too familiar, someone’s chest forced against the back of my
12
head. We were pressed together so tightly that I couldn’t see beyond
13
the back of the man standing in front of me.
14
Eventually there was a clanging, metal on metal, somewhere up ahead
15
as the gates were opened from the inside. The crowd began to vibrate,
16
everyone readying themselves. The man in front of me— blocking my
17
view— leaned forward and then, as I stepped into his empty space, he
18
staggered back. He bumped into me and I into the person behind. The
19
two sides of the crowd shuffled forward steadily as we, there in the center, 20
sent a surge, a rolling wave, pushing the middle in the wrong direction.
21
“What the . . . ?” I said, regaining my balance.
22
“ You . . .” he said, turning to face me.
23
I knew. As I had with Marnie. Immediately, I knew. It sounds so
24
stupid, so naive, I know. People have levied that criticism against me
25
hundreds of times— when I moved in with him, when I agreed to marry
26
him, even on the eve of our wedding. And all I could say in response to
27
them then and all I can say to you now is that I hope one day you
28
know, too.
29
I suppose that it was different with Marnie. We were both looking
30
for someone. The next seven years at that school were stretching out in
S31
front of us and neither one of us wanted to live that alone. The joy we
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
felt at finding each other was heightened by an overwhelming sense of
02
relief.
03
Whereas with Jonathan . . . I don’t know. I had never felt like the
04
sort of woman who would fall in love in that way. And so there was no
05
want, no empty space, no something that needed substantiating. I sim-
06
ply saw him and I knew instinctively that I
needed to know him better.
07
I could tell you how it felt with words that over the decades have be-
08
come synonymous with great love, but those truisms were never true
09
for me. The world didn’t fall away beneath my feet; instead I felt solid
10
and substantial in a way that I never had before. There were no trem-
11
bling hands, no quivering hearts, no faces flushed with pink. There were
12
no butterflies. There was simply the sense that he felt, for me, like the 13
home I’d always needed but never really known.
14
“ You . . .” I said, straightening the lapels of my coat. His eyes
15
were olive green, and as he stared at me, bewildered, I felt this inap-
16
propriate urge to lift my palm to his cheek. “You just— ”
17
“My scarf,” he said, gesturing toward the floor. “You stood on my
18
scarf.”
19
“I did no such— ” I looked down. I was still standing on the tassels of
20
his navy scarf. “Oh,” I said, quickly stepping aside. “Sorry.”
21
“You want to fucking get on with it,” came a voice from behind us,
22
loud and gruff, the voice of the crowd.
23
“Yes, right,” he said, turning around. “Sorry.”
24
He began to shuffle forward and I followed, smiling in an inane,
25
vacuous way, my face still pressed tightly between his shoulder blades.
26
We stayed like that, forced together, through the ticket hall, down the
27
escalator, and toward the platforms. At some point we began talking.
28
And I couldn’t tell you now what it was that we said, but when it was
29
time to separate, he to go north and I to go south, we were squabbling
30
both about the scarf and about a pub that he said didn’t exist.
31S
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’ve been there
32N
dozens of times. I could take you there right now.”
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“Okay,” he replied.
01
People were rushing around us, filtering into two streams, one on
02
either side of us, and dispersing onto the platforms.
03
“What?” I asked.
04
“Let’s go,” he replied.
05
The pub did exist, as I’d said it would: a traditional wood- paneled,
06
almost medieval hideaway with low ceilings and an open fire. It was—
07
and still is, although I haven’t been there in years— called The Windsor 08
Castle. It’s ten minutes from Oxford Circus and tucked down a narrow
09
cobbled street, a welcome nod to an older version of the city that stood
10
long before the towering flagship stores and coffee shops that repeat
11
every hundred yards.
12
We stayed there for hours, until the landlady rang her bell for
13
last orders, when we trundled back to the ticket hall, now almost
14
empty, and said our goodbyes with kisses— which were entirely out of
15
character— and promises of next time. I felt something shift inside me
16
when he lifted his hands from my hips. As I watched him walk away
17
from me, his dark green coat flapping at his thighs, I knew that I loved
18
him already.
19
That love was the foundation on which I would have— could have—
20
built a life. There is a version of this world in which Jonathan and I are 21
still together, still smitten. We promised each other an unyielding love, 22
a life that celebrated laughter and a bond that would never for a mo-
23
ment waver. It is sometimes impossible to believe that we failed to de-
24
liver on something that once seemed so certain.
25
He asked me to marry him a year later— to the day— in that very
26
same pub. He knelt awkwardly on one knee and told me that he’d
27
planned a speech, he’d learned it by heart, but that he couldn’t remem-
28
ber a single word he’d wanted to say. But he’d love me for as long as he
29
lived, he said, if that was enough for now.
30
I thought it was more than enough for me.
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We were married that autumn in a registry office. We had no guests
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
and we celebrated with the most expensive champagne that the nearest
02
off- license stocked. We went to The Windsor Castle for our wedding
03
breakfast. It felt only right that it should be the headquarters for all the 04
major milestones of our relationship. I placed our order at the bar, care-05
fully enunciating as I declared that my husband would like a burger.
06
The bartender rolled her eyes but smiled, vaguely amused by this young
07
bride in a pale blue dress and her groom in a green tie. Our desserts—
08
brownies accompanied by vanilla ice cream— were served with Con-
09
gratulations written in chocolate icing around the rim of each plate.
10
We wheeled our bags to Waterloo and caught the train down to the
11
south coast to stay in a small bed- and- breakfast in a seaside town called 12
Beer. We arrived late that evening and checked in, announcing in the
13
way that only newlyweds do that the room was booked for Mr. and
14
Mrs. Black.
15
“For Jane?” said the elderly woman managing the front desk. It was
16
nearly ten o’clock and she was clearly keen that we recognize the incon-
17
venience.
18
“Yes,” I replied. “For Jane Black.” She could say whatever she liked,
19
do whatever she wanted, and none of it could even begin to scratch at
20
the edges of my happiness.
21
“Upstairs, end of the corridor, on the right.” She held out a small
22
gold key attached by a thin gold chain to a thick wooden slab engraved
23
with the word four. “Anything else?”
24
We shook our heads.
25
Jonathan carried our bags upstairs, down the hallway, and into our
26
room. The floorboards were dark wood and the bedspread embroidered
27
with s
mall pastel flowers. The curtains— the color of rust— had been
28
drawn closed and a small pink lampshade shone softly in the corner. A
29
miniature bottle of champagne had been left in an ice bucket on an old-
30
fashioned mahogany desk. He popped the cork and poured two glasses,
31S
and we toasted our wedding a second time.
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k
01
02
We woke the following morning as the sun rose and speckled our bed-03
spread yellow and orange. I remember the warmth of his chest against
04
my back as he bent himself around me, the soft skin of his palm smooth-
05
ing my stomach and his lips against my shoulder blade. I remember how
06
it felt to be enveloped by him, to be wrapped so safely inside someone
07
else, and the way his hands would turn me toward him, his kisses would
08
shift and solidify, when he wanted something more.
09
It was only later, when there was a knock at the door and a woman
10
apologetically handed over the towels that should have been left in the
11
bathroom, that we scrambled from the bed and made a plan for the day.
12
I pulled back the curtains and looked out at the sea. It was flattened
13
across the horizon and bordered on either side by white cliffs topped
14
with thick green grass. It was October and yet the sky was bright,
15
cloudless, welcoming.
16
We pulled on our walking boots and our thick woolen jumpers.
17
Outside, the beach was pebbled. I started along the path toward it,
18
toward the sea, toward the waves that rolled inward, collapsing against
19
the shore.
20
“This way,” called Jonathan, pointing upward instead at the cliffs
21
above. “I think we should go this way.”
22
And so we climbed the road, marching along the pavement, past
23
parked cars and curtained windows, until we reached a grassy verge
24
with signs about hours and bank holidays and a small ticket machine.
25
“Let’s keep going,” said Jonathan, weaving through the few parked
26
vans and across the grass.
27
From then, we walked in silence, sometimes hand in hand, some-
28
times he was in front and I behind, getting distracted by something and
29
then rushing to catch up.
30
He was always so focused, particularly outdoors, always there with
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 3
