Seven Lies (ARC)
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“Can we maybe . . .” she says. “Maybe just not today?”
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“Ah, come on,” he replies.
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“No,” she says. “I’m being serious. Can you just . . .”
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“But you said,” he says. “You said today. And what? You’ve changed
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your mind?”
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“Next time,” she says. “I promise. But my parents. They’ll be back
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any minute.”
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“You’re doing it with someone else, aren’t you?” he says, unprovoked.
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“I’m not,” she replies. “I promise, I’m not.”
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“You’re a fucking slut, that’s what you are.”
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“I’m not! I promise I’m not,” she says. “There’s no one else. I promise.”
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“You know that if I wanted to, I could, right? You know that, yeah?”
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“Please, Tom. Let’s not— ”
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“I can do whatever I want. You know that.”
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“Stop it,” she says. “Come on, now. Don’t threaten me.”
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“You think that’s a threat? It’s a fucking promise.”
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She starts to cry.
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“My parents are away next weekend,” he says, and he stands up—
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the creak of the mattress— and he opens the door— the bristle of the
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weight of the wood on the carpet— and then he leaves.
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I stopped recording but I stayed crouched inside the wardrobe.
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Marnie went to the bathroom a few minutes later and I crept back
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out of the window and down the trellis. I sent the recording to his
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rugby coach with an accompanying email from an anonymous address
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and Thomas was quietly dismissed from the team. He sent some abu-
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sive messages to Marnie but we read them together and she never saw
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him again after that. She invited me to take some self- defense classes
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with her, some sort of martial arts medley, and it was— it still is—
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rewarding to know that my actions have made us stronger, tougher, less
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vulnerable.
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I think that she knew it was me who recorded him and sent that
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email. But she never said anything. And I think that if she thought I’d
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overstepped, she would have done. Still, in the months that followed
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she would occasionally turn to me, as though about to speak, and then
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change her mind and close her mouth.
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Now, I suppose, I hope that she knew. I hope that, in that moment,
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she realized that our roots were so tightly locked together— the thicker, 18
barkier skin so eroded at the tightest junctures, flesh on flesh— that we 19
were entirely inseparable. I hope that she knew that we were both all
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in, at all costs, for always and forever.
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The wedding was due to take place eight months after Charles’s pro-24
posal, on the first Saturday in August. I had wondered if their engage-
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ment would change things, but thankfully the steady rhythm of our
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everyday seemed unaffected. The intervening months passed without
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issue. Marnie and I still talked to each other regularly, sometimes sev-
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eral times a week. We still had dinner together every Friday evening
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and while, admittedly, our conversations often turned to floral arrange-
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ments, I had expected far worse. And so I had been relieved to discover
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that we were still very much the same people we had always been.
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At the beginning of her last unmarried weekend, on that Friday
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evening, Marnie and I were sitting together on the floor of her flat,
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stringing silver name tags to small boxes of sugared almonds. The many
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lists of things to do had dwindled over the previous weeks until there
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were just these few final details, the last of the legwork that needed
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completing.
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“When’s Charles’s mother arriving?” I asked. “Is she staying here?” It
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was a struggle to negotiate the thin silver thread through the small
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paper hole, and that kind of meticulous, detailed work had never been
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my strength.
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“Eileen?” said Marnie. “Oh. I don’t know. I don’t think so. But
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then . . . I don’t know where else she’d be staying. Hang on.” She went
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into the kitchen and returned with her laptop. She sat down on the sofa
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and lifted the screen. “I don’t know,” she said again. “I hope she isn’t
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staying here. I’d have to make up the bed and everything.”
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“I can help you,” I said. And then we moved on to the menus, all of
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which needed hole punching at the top and ribbon looping through the
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punctures to be tied in a bow.
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Charles arrived home an hour or so later. It must have been nearly
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nine o’clock. We knew that he was in a foul mood from the slam of the
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door behind him, the crack of his briefcase on the wooden floor, the
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grunt as he hung his jacket over the banister.
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“I’ll check on him,” whispered Marnie.
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I heard her voice in the hallway, a soft buoyant murmuring, with its
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own tune, almost a song. And his replies, short and sharp and snapped.
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And initially it was just the unpacking of a day, the unraveling of a rage, 25
but then her voice began to shift, too, undulating, and instead of her
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calming him, he was riling her.
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“I’ve literally just walked through the door,” he said, and his voice
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was loud now, carrying in that way that a proud man’s can. “And you’re
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asking me about wedding things. And I don’t have a clue, Marnie. I
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couldn’t tell you anything about anything to do with the wedding.”
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“I asked about your mother,” she said. “She’s your mother.”
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“It’s in hand.”
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“She’s on the table plan.”
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“Well, why is she on the table plan?” he replied.
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“Because she’s your mother,” insisted Marnie. And then quieter,
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kinder: “Isn’t she coming? We haven’t seen her in ages and— ”
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“I’m going to have a shower,” he said, and he marched up the stairs
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and she groaned and walked into the kitchen.
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I heard the tap running and the clicking of the hob and her speaking
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into the camera, melodic again. I continued cutting, threading, tying
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ribbon, and piling the finished menus into boxes.
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Charles came into the living room a few minutes later, wearing jeans
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now, his hair damp, and he slumped onto the sofa beside me. He was so
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big, so tall, over six foot and with broad shoulders and the sort of phy-
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sique that men hone simply because they want to seem strong.
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“You didn’t invite her,” I said as I measured lengths of ribbon be-
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tween my fingers.
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“What?” he said.
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“You’re lying,” I said. “You didn’t invite her.”
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I don’t think he wanted to confide in me— if he’d had a choice he’d
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have chosen not to— but his pause revealed the truth. “I don’t want her
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there, okay?” he said.
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“I get it,” I said, and I did. “I didn’t invite my parents to my wedding.”
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“Exactly,” he said.
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And I think that he misunderstood, that he thought that our par-
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ents were the same, that we were the same and we weren’t at all.
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“Because she’s sick,” he continued. “And I don’t know that I can deal
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with that on my wedding day, you know. If she’s there, it becomes all
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about her. You wouldn’t believe it, the way people are around sickness.
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I’m out with her and they want to talk, all of them, about her bloody
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wig and her ongoing nausea and about diets that eradicate cancer. It’s
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gives the sickness a purpose. Anyway, it’s much easier to not invite her.”
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“But she’s your mother,” I replied.
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“What?” He had already pulled his phone from his pocket and was
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distracted by someone different somewhere else.
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“You can’t not invite her because she’s sick,” I said. “Does she know
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that it’s happening?”
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“Maybe,” he said, and he didn’t seem embarrassed at all. “I guess my
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sister might have said something at some point.”
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“But isn’t she devastated?”
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“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t asked. We aren’t close.”
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“It’s cruel,” I said.
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He put his phone down on the side table and ran his fingers through
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his wet hair. “I don’t think you have any right to say that,” he said, and 12
then wiped his hand dry on a cushion. “When you didn’t invite your
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parents either. And it’s my wedding, so it’s my decision. And I don’t like 14
sick people.”
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“You don’t like what?” said Marnie, catching only the very end of his
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sentence as she entered the room with blue and white ceramic plates
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and silver cutlery piled in her arms. She lowered them onto the table.
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“I haven’t invited my mother,” he said.
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“Because she’s sick,” I said.
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“What?” asked Marnie, as she arranged first the knives and then the
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forks. “Because she’s sick? Surely that’s a reason to invite her?”
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“Exactly,” I said.
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“No,” he said. He wasn’t angry, not like he’d been before, not like in
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the hallway, but he was firm and determined. “It’s my choice,” he said.
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“And I don’t want her there. I don’t like sick people.”
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“What if I get sick?” asked Marnie as she placed the plates in their
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positions on the table.
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“That’ll be different,” he said.
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She looked at me and she raised an eyebrow and a conversation
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passed unsaid between us, one that acknowledged that it really wasn’t
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think Marnie was mostly frustrated. The table plan would need re-
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drafting.
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“As long as that’s true, then I’m just going to pretend that this
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conversation never happened,” she said nonchalantly. “I think that’s
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probably the best thing.” And then she went back into the kitchen and
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Charles turned on the television and I finished the menus and then we
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sat down for dinner as though it genuinely hadn’t happened.
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But it stayed with me, this strange exchange. Because it confirmed
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that he wasn’t good enough for Marnie and that he never would be,
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never could be. I had a concrete moment that I could return to in which
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he had vociferously reassured me that he wasn’t right for the woman he
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was about to marry.
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I felt smug.
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Is that bad?
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Because it was confirmation that he really was detestable, that my
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hatred wasn’t unfounded or undeserved but justifiable and fair. And
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more than that, because it proved something that I hadn’t felt confident
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articulating before then: that I really was better than him. I took care
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of those who needed me: I understood that it was part of the contract
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of love, of duty, of family.
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I could see then that he wasn’t all in— not at all costs; not at all.
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Chapter Nine
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k
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T
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he day eventually arrived, the first Saturday in August, and de-
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spite an unpromising forecast, the weather was unexpectedly
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warm, the sky unexpectedly bright. There were hundreds of guests,
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from every avenue of their lives— school, university, work— and some
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they had never before met: partners of cousins, friends of their parents, 16
and new infants squalling and then giggling, seemingly without reason.
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Guests had traveled to Windsor from all over the world: Charles’s sister
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and her husband arrived from New York early that morning, his aunt
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and uncle interrupted their yearlong sabbatical to join us from South
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Africa, and Marnie’s brother, Eric, jetted back from his high- flying job 21
in New Zealand to be there for the celebrations.
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You will think that I am lying when I say this, but I promised you the
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whole truth and this is that: it really was one of the best days of my life.
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Marnie and I spent the morning together at her parents’ house and we
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ate toast layered with jam in our pajamas and she had a bath and I sat on 26
the floor beside her and stretched out across the tiles and we talked
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about how we met in that long, thin queue and the various strings that
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had been pulled and released and that had led to that very moment.
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I watched her marry a man whom I hated but whom she loved and
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it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. I watched her exclusively—
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absorbed in the way her red hair was curled into a bun at the back of
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her head; the diamond necklace; the full white skirt; the long lace
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veil— and I enjoyed her joy. I felt so proud to be part of such an impor-
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tant moment in her life. I ate too much and I drank too much and I
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danced until my feet were blistered and sore, and yet I felt wonderful.
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His speech was quite charming, really. I’d expected it to be