22
her at the time, really angry, because there was so much still unsaid. I
23
found myself inserting those small truths, those small angers, into my
24
messages and into our conversations, concealed in sharp asides and
25
abrupt sign- offs and sometimes in long delays between responses. It
26
was far easier to pick at those scars than address the mighty grief swell-27
ing within me.
28
I hated her. I really did. And then, one day, I didn’t. She, too, had
29
lost the man she loved. And then she lost so much more: her mind, her
30
memories. Our lives were in very different places and yet we were both
S31
N32
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 50
11/6/19 4:33 PM
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 51
11/6/19 4:33 PM
52
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
broken, and we found something familiar in each other’s jagged edges.
02
After more than twenty years of failing to understand each other, we
03
finally had something in common.
04
Eventually I found that I, too, could erase my memories of the
05
drama; they weren’t the actions of this woman, of this mother, but of
06
some other person, now lost to the pleats of history and time.
07
“No,” I said, eventually. “Stanley wasn’t at all like Jonathan.”
08
“Then you’re well rid,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
09
“I’d say so,” I replied.
10
I turned on the television and we watched the news together. A
11
teenager had been stabbed; his assailant was disguised in a grainy pho-
12
tograph, an image frozen from CCTV. A disgraced politician spoke to
13
the press, explaining without apology, justifying his actions. A young
14
mother sobbed; her benefits had been revoked and she was unable to
15
afford childcare in order to work or to work in order to fund childcare.
16
We were shocked and unsurprised and then sad, our expressions twist-
17
ing in unison.
18
The newsreader eventually bid us farewell and I gathered my coat
19
and my handbag and snuck back into the hallway, leaving my mother
20
asleep and the television murmuring the opening credits for a new
21
quiz show.
22
23
24
I’m telling you about my mother because it’s important that you un-25
derstand her role in this story. I did hate her, but I also forgave her.
26
Remember that.
27
28
29
30
31S
32N
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 52
11/6/19 4:33 PM
01
02
03
04
Chapter Seven
05
k
06
07
08
09
10
I
11
didn’t have a date to bring to Marnie and Charles’s the following
12
Friday, but I regularly visited alone, and I was very much looking
13
forward to it. Until Marnie called me at midday to say that I couldn’t
14
come for dinner that evening because Charles had organized a surprise
15
weekend in the Cotswolds. She rang from the car and I could hear the
16
hiss of other vehicles rushing past on the motorway. I wondered how
17
long she had known she was going away. She must have been told at
18
least a few hours earlier. Because she’d had time to pack and drive out
19
of the city with its tight streets, small and cramped, bordered by parked 20
cars and with red lights every few hundred yards. She could have called
21
earlier.
22
“Whereabouts are you going?” I asked, although I don’t know why:
23
I wasn’t particularly interested in the answer.
24
“Some hotel,” she said. I heard the crackle of her phone against her
25
cheek and I imagined her turning toward Charles, who would have
26
been sitting next to her, in the driver’s seat as always, dictating their 27
path. “What’s it called?” she asked.
28
I heard him speaking, not individual, isolated words but a murmur-
29
ing, the timbre of his voice echoing against the metal innards of the car.
30
“He can’t remember,” said Marnie. “But it’s . . .”— that crackle
S31
again— “Google says we’ll be there in two hours.”
N32
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 52
11/6/19 4:33 PM
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 53
11/6/19 4:33 PM
5 4
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
I pictured them sitting side by side: Marnie’s shoes lying abandoned
02
in the footwell, her feet curled up on the seat against her thighs; Charles 03
in a smart shirt and warm jumper, ever aware of the autumn chill, and
04
the sort of man who liked to drive with the window down and his
05
elbow perched on the open ledge.
06
“Jane!” I heard him shout. And then more quietly, tenderly even,
07
“Can she hear me?”
08
“I can hear him,” I said.
09
“Go on,” Marnie replied, but not to me. “She says she can.”
10
“Jane!” he shouted again. “Can I get a favor? I’d like this beautiful
11
woman to myself for the weekend. What do you reckon?” he contin-
12
ued. I pressed my thumb to the earpiece to smother the sound. “Can
13
you do that? Just forty- eight hours. You’ll be all right.”
14
Marnie laughed, a girlish titter, and so I laughed, too, and I shouted,
15
“Sure thing. She’s all yours.” Because what else was I to do? What else
16
could I have said? I knew what this meant.
17
“But we’ll see you next week?” said Marnie. “Same time as normal?”
18
“Yes,” I said. “Same time as normal.”
19
“Let me know if Stanley’s coming,” she said.
20
“He won’t be,” I replied.
21
“Oh,” she said. “Really? That’s such a shame.” She was surprised in
22
the way that optimists so often are by facts that betray the fantasy. She 23
always hopes, always assumes, that the next man will be the right man,
24
which is foolish because the evidenc
e suggests otherwise. She has never
25
met any of my suitors, as she calls them, more than a couple of times.
26
“Well, let me know if you want to bring anyone else,” she said.
27
Marnie ended the call and I listened to the silence where her voice
28
had been seconds before. I knew what was coming and I knew too that
29
I was afraid. I took a deep breath, inhaling noisily, because my chest
30
was tight, my ribs sort of shivering, and because air kept catching in my 31S
throat.
32N
You know already that there was an engagement ring. I had assumed
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 54
11/6/19 4:33 PM
S E V E N L I E S
55
that it was still in Charles’s bedside table; I’d had no reason to believe 01
otherwise. But, in that moment, I was quite sure that it was on the
02
road, slipped inside a jacket pocket or in the front pouch of a suitcase
03
or in the glove box of that shiny white car.
04
As I lay in bed that evening, I pictured it in their hotel room, tucked
05
in the drawer of a new bedside table, lying in wait until the perfect mo-
06
ment. I could see it housed in its red velvet box, a gold band with three 07
bright white diamonds.
08
I hated the thought of it. I hated the thought that she might
09
marry him.
10
As a child, Marnie’s relationship with her parents had been strained:
11
more like coworkers than relatives. Her mother and father were both
12
doctors and very successful in their respective fields. They had always
13
traveled, and so Marnie and her older brother, Eric, had been left at
14
home for weeks at a time ever since they were old enough to get them-
15
selves to school and to cook their own meals. Her parents turned up on
16
the good days— the parents’ evenings, the school plays— but they
17
weren’t particularly present. She had no one there on the bad days, the
18
normal days, the everydays that make up a life.
19
Until me. That was my role. I loved her completely, unconditionally,
20
without question.
21
Charles thought that he could fill that space, too. But he was wrong.
22
Because a bottle of champagne sent across the bar isn’t selfless but
23
showy. An expensive flat isn’t generous. It’s desperate and excessive.
24
And an extravagant ring isn’t a symbol of commitment but of blind
25
confidence, the sort of arrogance deemed acceptable only in a man like
26
Charles.
27
28
29
I had discovered the ring a few months earlier.
30
Marnie and Charles were about to go on holiday for a week. They
S31
were going to the Seychelles, I think— perhaps it was Mauritius— and
N32
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 54
11/6/19 4:33 PM
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 55
11/6/19 4:33 PM
56
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
we were due to have a heat wave in London. Marnie had been fretting
02
about the plants on her balcony, if they would survive seven days with
03
strong sunshine and no rain. And Charles was saying that she was
04
ridiculous, because they were just plants and she could always buy
05
some more.
06
I ate my dinner listening to their bickering and keeping very delib-
07
erately quiet. I’d be lying if I said that I received no satisfaction from the 08
squabble— I enjoyed seeing Charles fail to understand Marnie— but I
09
knew that there was nothing to be gained by my intervention. Even so,
10
I wanted to tell Charles not to be such an arsehole, to say that if the
11
plants mattered to Marnie then they should matter to him, too. But I
12
didn’t.
13
The following morning Charles called me and asked if I would mind
14
watering the plants while they were away.
15
I didn’t have a car; I couldn’t drive. It normally took about half an
16
hour to get from my flat to theirs on the tube and so I knew immedi-
17
ately that it wasn’t going to be particularly convenient.
18
I wondered if they had other friends who lived nearer— colleagues
19
of Charles’s perhaps, who could also afford extravagant apartments in
20
old mansion houses. They did; they must have. And yet Charles had
21
asked me.
22
Perhaps, I thought, I am their closest friend.
23
I knew, of course, that it wasn’t true.
24
They had asked me simply because they knew that I’d say yes. Mar-
25
nie had plenty of other friends— so did Charles— but I was efficient,
26
reliable.
27
Charles explained that he would leave their spare key with the con-
28
cierge and that if I could just pop in after work from Monday through
29
to Friday, and actually once on Saturday would be great, too, then that
30
would be brilliant.
31S
On the Monday, I left work at half past six, exhausted from a day
32N
sitting behind a desk and in front of a screen, trying to explain to rest-9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 56
11/6/19 4:33 PM
S E V E N L I E S
57
less shoppers why their packages hadn’t arrived at the time they’d
01
elected. I had taken almost ten weeks off when Jonathan died, and
02
when I’d returned, I’d discovered that we were no longer selling furni-
03
ture and that I’d been moved into the customer service team to answer
04
calls. They were adamant that there’d be opportunities to contribute to
05
the company in a significant way, but it felt like a demotion to me.
06
The help line was closed on the weekends and so the beginning of
07
the week was always the worst. By Monday, those whose packages had
08
failed to arrive on Saturday were so irate, so totally beside themselves
09
with frustration— no garden furniture for their barbecue, no presents
10
for their son’s birthday, no outfits for the fancy dress do— that they
11
were entirely unable to contain their rage. They instead spent the best
12
part of an hour hissing and spitting and swearin
g and shouting into
13
their phones. And I spent an hour soothing and reassuring and promis-
14
ing to correct the error and topping up their accounts with small sums
15
of compensation.
16
I arrived at Marnie and Charles’s flat just after seven.
17
I had met the concierge on several occasions.
18
“And can I see some ID?” he said when I asked for the key.
19
“I don’t have any,” I replied. “But, Jeremy,” I said— he was wearing a
20
name badge— “you’ve seen me here once a week for years. You know
21
who I am. And look, I can see the envelope with the key right there on
22
your desk. Jane Black. You know that’s my name.”
23
“No ID?” he repeated.
24
“I’m afraid not,” I replied.
25
I offered him my sweetest smile and was frankly astounded when he
26
slid the key across the table conspiratorially and said, “You didn’t get
27
this from me.”
28
I took the lift to their floor and, as the doors parted and I stepped
29
out, the lights in the hallway flickered on. Marnie and I had spent a year 30
stepping out of elevators onto blue carpet and the building I lived in
S31
now offered much the same experience (the carpet was taupe, but just
N32
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 56
11/6/19 4:33 PM
9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 57
11/6/19 4:33 PM
58
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
as muddied and worn). This building, however, was noticeably differ-
02
ent and never failed to make me feel somewhat inferior. The walls were
03
lined with framed artwork, painted signatures adorning the bottom
04
right corners of each piece, and lights hung from the ceiling in neat
05
pendants. The parquet flooring was thickly varnished, glinting under
06
the lights, and the only evidence that any other shoes had ever walked
07
those hallways was a very slight fading, a few small scuffs, at the doors 08
to the two lifts.
09
I let myself into their flat and was— stupidly— surprised to find it
10
dark. On Friday evenings I would ring the bell and Marnie would rush
11
to answer, pulling open the door and smiling, and then darting back
12
into the kitchen to stir or to season or to shake. Normally the camera
13
would be set up on the countertop, filming her preparing her latest
14
concoction. Her brief departure— my arrival— featured regularly in her
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 8
