12
was an authority on the subject. And then later, when we had nearly
13
moved on, when the conversation was almost forgotten, he would say,
14
“I’m really glad we’re in agreement on that, Jane.” Even though my posi-
15
tion hadn’t been altered at all but simply silenced by his volume and his 16
posturing and his overweening confidence.
17
He would tap twice and in quick succession on the thin rim of his
18
wineglass when it wanted refilling, but only when the bottle was at my
19
end of the table, because I was seemingly unworthy of actual words. He
20
would sometimes pick up my hand and unfurl my fingers and say, “You
21
should really stop biting these, Jane.” And then later, toward the end of 22
the evening, when everyone’s eyes were shot with blood and alcohol
23
and slipping shut with tiredness, he would say these things, vulgar
24
things— always aimed elsewhere but always meant for me— like, “Prob-
25
ably time for you to be getting Jane home, isn’t it?” and then he’d wink
26
and say, “If you get my drift. Do you get my drift?” And we all did, and
27
so we smiled and laughed. And yet every time something would sink
28
lower within me. Because I hadn’t slept with anyone in three years, not
29
since Jonathan, and the thought of another man’s hands on my skin
30
made me bristle and wince.
31S
You see, the version of Charles that talked to everyone else, that
32N
charmed them, that laughed at their jokes? He was simply a disguise,
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S E V E N L I E S
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a costume worn to conceal the truth. And he deceived them all: the men,
01
in particular, but most of the women, too, who thought him handsome
02
and carefree and charismatic.
03
“So,” said Stanley, as we arrived at the bus stop. I stepped away from
04
him and pretended to read the bus times printed against the concrete
05
post. “So,” he repeated. “The plans?”
06
I looked pointedly at my watch— it had been a present from Marnie—
07
and still I said nothing.
08
“We’re probably nearer yours, don’t you think?” he said.
09
“Are we?” I replied. I ran my finger along the time sheet, the num-
10
bers printed black on white paper, fixed between two panels of plastic.
11
I tried to look relaxed and natural, as though this was something people
12
often did and not a bygone act from a previous decade.
13
“I reckon so,” he said. “Not much in it, but a bit closer to yours.”
14
I continued pretending to read.
15
I heard his footsteps against the concrete paving slabs, the weight of
16
him approaching. His breathing was loud behind me, thick and steam-
17
ing and scorched with alcohol, and I knew he was about to touch me.
18
“Jane?” he said. He took another step toward me until he was stand-
19
ing right behind me, and then he snaked his arms around my waist. He
20
kissed the back of my head, wet and noisy, and I solidified myself, drill-21
ing my heels into the ground beneath me, fixing my breath and holding
22
my body firm so that I didn’t flinch. He squeezed me— not particularly
23
forcefully— but still I felt that my entire body was being strangled, that 24
I was suffocating.
25
“How are— ” He cleared his throat. “Your place?” He stroked his
26
right palm up and down over my stomach, the upward brushes climb-
27
ing higher and higher with each movement until I could feel his fingers
28
skimming the stiff wire at the base of my bra, until I could feel them
29
reaching the smooth fabric above. “Jane, you and me . . .” He breathed
30
into my ear, his words slurred and warm and moist.
S31
“Stanley,” I said, and I moved sideways, away from him, away from
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01
the concrete post. “Stanley, I’m afraid I’m not sure that there really is a 02
you and me.”
03
“Oh,” he replied, slightly affronted but more confused than any-
04
thing else. “But I— ”
05
“It’s not you,” I said.
06
He nodded solemnly. “Is this about your late husband?” he asked.
07
He was confident again, sure that he had found the answer to some
08
unasked question, sure that he knew the very ointment to ease this
09
wound. “Marnie said— ”
10
She would have warned him to be gentle, to be careful.
11
“No, Stanley,” I said. “This isn’t about Jonathan.” Which was true.
12
“And it’s not about you.” Which was also true, I suppose. “This really is 13
just about me.”
14
A red double- decker rounded the corner, its lights bright against the
15
night sky and, for once, entirely on schedule.
16
“Do you think that maybe what you’re feeling is— ”
17
“This has been lovely,” I interrupted, although I don’t know why I
18
bothered because it was very clearly not even the slightest bit true.
19
“And do feel free to keep in touch with Charles if that makes you happy.
20
But I think this is probably it for now. In terms of a you and me. Sorry,”
21
I said. “And goodbye.”
22
I put out my left hand and the bus slowed, stopping beside me. I
23
climbed aboard and, as the doors juddered shut, I offered Stanley an
24
unnecessarily enthusiastic wave. He was still frowning as we pulled
25
away.
26
I have dated too many men in the years since Jonathan. I didn’t speak
27
to another man for over a year. But everyone started to fret, to worry
28
that I was being overwhelmed by my grief, and it felt important to reas-
29
sure them that I was still an active participant in my own life. Because—
30
and this is something else that we all learn eventually— everyone knows
31S
that a single woman who is not at the v
ery least in pursuit of romantic
32N
love is almost certainly entirely miserable.
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That’s a joke. You could smile.
01
The truth is that I wasn’t looking for another love; it was too much
02
to expect to find another great love in my otherwise underachieving
03
life. I’d had Jonathan, and I couldn’t begin to imagine that another love 04
could ever come close to that one. And I had Marnie. And it made her
05
happy to think that I was still looking, that I had faith, that I believed 06
in the goodness of the world.
07
And yet I tried not to date any man for too long, hence my swift
08
departure. Partly because I found them all— and that’s the truth: every
09
single one— suffocatingly smug and wholly insufferable.
10
And also, because a very small part of me worried that they might
11
actually start to like me.
12
Does that sound too smug? It isn’t meant to. Before Jonathan, I
13
didn’t think that it was possible for someone to feel that way about me.
14
I couldn’t believe that anyone would find that sort of love in someone
15
so cheerless and so insecure. But Jonathan found things to like, things
16
to love. He admired my competitive nature. He was impressed that I’d
17
never lost a pub quiz. He thought it right that I was always early. He
18
was amazed when I read a novel in a day. He loved that I was meticu-
19
lous, a perfectionist, that I wanted to hang our pictures myself. And,
20
eventually, I began to love those things, too.
21
I didn’t want these men to fall in love with me because I knew that
22
I could never fall in love with them. And I knew then— I still know—
23
that rejection is a blister beneath the skin, a small hurt that can swell 24
into something far more significant.
25
Is that an exaggeration?
26
I don’t think it is.
27
But this isn’t the time.
28
I wish I could tell you that this would be an easy story to hear, but I
29
don’t for a moment think that it will. There will be a lot of death this
30
evening and I wish it were any other way, but I have promised the truth
S31
and this, finally, is a promise on which I can deliver.
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01
I am still unsure where this story really started— and I have no idea
02
where it will end— but how to begin.
03
A couple of years ago, Marnie and Charles were living together in
04
their flat and I was dating men who were not my husband and my fam-
05
ily life was complicated but manageable. Those are the foundations on
06
which this story started. This is the story of how he died.
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31S
32N
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01
02
03
04
Chapter Six
05
k
06
07
08
09
10
M
11
ost women in their late twenties and early thirties like vari-
12
ety, spontaneity, the chance to meet new people and do new
13
things. That was never me. I have always been that eleven- year- old girl 14
cowering in a school corridor and anticipating rejection. I have never
15
actively looked for friendships, and so I find myself with very few, but
16
those that I do have really do matter.
17
Because, you see, I had a friend. And none of the others— the pretty
18
blondes in tight denim shorts that cut above the creases of their bums,
19
the guys in loose jeans and hooded jumpers nestled together around
20
a spliff, the sports stars in their tracksuits and trainers, the library
21
girls in their glasses and blouses, the posh boys in their chinos and
22
jackets— none of them compared. I didn’t need them and so I didn’t
23
pursue them.
24
I knew what I liked. I liked routine and repetition. I still do.
25
And so the morning after I axed Stanley from my life, I went to visit
26
my mother. She was living in a residential home in the suburbs and it
27
always took at least an hour to get there. And, because I liked to arrive 28
no later than nine o’clock, so that I could be there for the beginning of 29
visiting hours, I would set an alarm before I went to sleep and then
30
leave home early to catch one of the first trains of the day.
S31
The carriages were always quiet on a Saturday morning. There was
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normally a man in a suit, hungover from a Friday night that had rolled
02
unexpectedly into a Saturday morning. There was often a woman with
03
a pram, a new mother trying to fill the hours between wake and sleep
04
and sleep and wake, hours that hadn’t existed a few months earlier.
05
There were sometimes security guards, cleaners, nurses, all traveling
06
home from night shifts. And there was always me.
07
I saw Marnie every Friday evening and I went to visit my mother
08
every Saturday morning.
09
10
11
The dayroom was at the front of the building and I passed it on my way 12
to my mother’s room. I tried not to peer inside, to focus only on her
13
door at the end of the corridor, but it always pulled my gaze. It had an
14
otherworldliness that was strangely magnetic. It was full of o
ld people
15
in armchairs, some in wheelchairs, all with blankets draped over their
16
legs. The carpet was every color, ornate and fiercely patterned. It re-
17
minded me of the carpets in fancy hotels, where the managers were
18
afraid of food stains and mud and makeup.
19
Here, the patterns were similarly effective. They disguised dirt and
20
vomit and, yes, food stains, but not from raucous three- course meals
21
with laughter and gossip and wine, but from sticky, thick mashed po-
22
tato flung deliberately onto the floor.
23
Other than the multicolored carpet, the room itself was rather
24
bland: empty beige walls, no photographs or pictures, no paintings or
25
posters, and dark leather armchairs, easy to wipe clean. And yet the
26
decor itself was really rather unimportant. This room was compelling
27
not because of its specifics, but because of its inhabitants. It served as a 28
backdrop for a scene that depicted life and death and the thin periph-
29
ery that existed between the two. Those people were half in and half
30
out. Their hearts were beating and blood was trickling through their
31S
veins, but their souls were slipping, their minds melting, their bodies
32N
crumpled and broken. It was an eerie, uncanny place, a room full of
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people who were barely still people, of life that was almost not life, of 01
death that was not quite death. My mother never wanted to spend time
02
in there and the nurses had long given up insisting.
03
She was in her room instead and was sitting upright in bed when I
04
arrived.
05
I stood in the doorway and watched her, just briefly, as she fiddled
06
with the bobbles sewn onto the blue woolen blanket draped over her
07
duvet. She pulled the bedding up toward her chin and knotted her
08
hands together and they bulged beneath the covers. The window was
09
wide open and a cool breeze lifted the fabric of the curtains so that they 10
fluttered and cast a shadow against the wall.
11
At sixty- two, my mother suffered from early- onset dementia. The
12
doctors at her facility— when they visited, once a week; we rarely
13
overlapped— had pointed out that she was at the older end of early
14
onset, as though that was a revelation that should provide some com-
15
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 6
