06
nauseating— I thought that he’d talk about the unparalleled force of his
07
love, the strength of his attachment, the way that marriage would bol-
08
ster their bond— but he didn’t and it wasn’t. He said that he’d never
09
met anyone so determined, so creative, so unafraid. He said that he’d
10
known immediately, the moment he’d seen her, that she was somehow
11
different, special, unlike anyone else. He said things about her that I
12
knew to be true, and I found myself nodding in spite of myself.
13
I didn’t sit down until after midnight, when most of the guests had
14
left and the band was packing up their instruments and the two brides-
15
maids were pressing the too- drunk guests into their taxis home. The
16
caterer was organizing the leftover bottles of wine and beer back into
17
their boxes and the manager of the venue was stacking chairs in the
18
dining room. The doors of the conservatory were open, and the air was
19
still warm and fresh with pollen. The fairy lights twinkled overhead,
20
and I knew that I was a little drunk because the brightness was fuzzy,
21
as though the light had been smeared beyond the glass baubles, yellow
22
bleeding into the darkness.
23
Charles sat down beside me, and he thanked me for my contribution—
24
those were the words he used— and I almost felt like he was being sin-
25
cere. His waistcoat was undone, slipping from his shoulders, and he’d
26
abandoned his navy bow tie. We watched Marnie floating across the
27
dance floor. Her dress was almost black at the bottom, the grime and
28
dirt of the day sullying the white silk. Her cheeks were pink and some
29
of her ringlets had fallen from their clips, hanging around her face and
30
damp with sweat.
31S
“Quite something, isn’t she?” said Charles.
32N
I nodded.
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I’m not now sure— the passing of time has blurred the edges of my
01
memory— if what happened next really happened. It may have been
02
simply a figment of my hatred, an illusion, the result of too much cham-
03
pagne and too much anger. But I don’t think so.
04
Charles sat back, leaning against the glass wall of the conservatory,
05
his hands reaching up behind his head, and then he sighed.
06
“Really quite something,” he said again.
07
He lowered his arms and one fell behind my head, slithering down
08
the back of my neck. He pulled me toward him and he kissed my fore-
09
head. His lips were wet, glazed with saliva, and the moisture burned
10
cold on my skin when he withdrew.
11
“We’re a lucky pair,” he said.
12
He was slurring. I’d drunk too much, certainly, but he was defi-
13
nitely too far gone, different somehow, sloppier than I’d seen him be-
14
fore. His left hand crawled over my shoulder, toward my collarbone,
15
sweeping past my armpit. I held my breath. I fixed my ribs. I didn’t
16
want to inhale, to expand, to force my chest toward his palm. His hand
17
swung there, inches from my breast, shackling me to the bench. I
18
couldn’t move without moving into him, making him touch me, mo-
19
lesting myself against him.
20
He laughed, a coarse and ugly chuckle.
21
He said, “Oh, Jane,” and then his fingertips grazed my nipple through
22
the yellow silk of my bridesmaid dress. I lowered my chin, choked by
23
the compulsion to look down at my chest. He pressed his palm into me
24
and, as he withdrew, he quickly pressed my nipple between his thumb
25
and index finger.
26
I wish I could tell you that I did something or said something. I wish
27
I’d challenged him. Perhaps he’d have been shocked— I might have rec-
28
ognized genuine astonishment— and I would have known then that
29
what I thought might be happening wasn’t happening at all.
30
But I did nothing, so there’s no way to know now.
S31
“I can’t believe it’s nearly over,” said Marnie, sitting down beside us
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
and resting her head on his shoulder. “What a day,” she said. “It’s been, 02
just hasn’t it been, just the best?”
03
Charles slowly pulled his arm away. I felt it slipping across the back
04
of my neck, my shoulders, retreating carefully, until we were no longer
05
touching. I felt the space between us, that sliver of fresh air, cold and 06
welcome, like a fault line splitting enemy states. My nipple ached, a
07
shadow pain.
08
“Is everything okay?” she asked, smiling. “What’s happening here?”
09
Charles looked at me and if you believe that I was sober enough to
10
read a look right then, know this: it was a look that demanded silence.
11
“Nothing’s happening,” I said, sliding a few inches farther away, far-
12
ther down the bench, a little bit farther from them and their love.
13
“Nothing at all.”
14
That was the second lie I told Marnie.
15
You see, don’t you, that I didn’t have a choice? What could I have
16
said? If I had been honest, she might have felt forced to choose. And,
17
anyway, I was all in, at all costs. And, back then, I thought that meant
18
maneuvering the truth in order to make her happy, to keep her happy,
19
to protect our roots.
20
21
22
Here is an absolute truth. That day didn’t change my feelings toward 23
Charles. I had hated him for years and that day changed nothing.
24
Is it cruel to say that their love was the most offensive, unrelenting,
25
repulsive love I have ever known? It is, I know. But their love disgusted 26
me. I hated his face, the smirk that lurked at the tip of his lips, the exag-27
gerated expansi
on of his chest as he inhaled, the way he drummed his
28
fingers against the table as if to say, You bore me. I hated feeling his fin-29
gers on my skin through that flimsy fabric, but no more than I hated
30
every other facet of his existence.
31S
I would have liked to erase him from my life. I need to be careful
32N
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S E V E N L I E S
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that I wish our stories shared no chapters, that the ink of his life wasn’t 01
there on the pages of mine, that our lives had existed concurrently, yes, 02
but had never overlapped.
03
But do I regret his death? No. I don’t.
04
I’m not sorry at all.
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
S31
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01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
The
10
11
Third Lie
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
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01
02
03
04
Chapter Ten
05
k
06
07
08
09
10
I
11
told her that it was nothing, that nothing had happened.
12
And today, more than ever, that feels relevant, an important
13
part of the story, an important part of your story. I’m not talking about 14
a motive— please don’t try to misinterpret what I’m saying— but when
15
something happens, something unexpected, something frightening,
16
the steps that led to that moment are cast in a different die.
17
There was one other person, one other and now you, who knew that
18
something had happened that evening. I told her the day afterward,
19
long before I was afraid to say that there had ever been anything other
20
than “nothing” between Charles and me.
21
22
23
The morning after the wedding, I was lying in bed, pretending that I 24
didn’t have a headache, that I wasn’t desperate for a glass of water,
25
that I didn’t urgently need the bathroom, that I was fine, when my
26
doorbell rang.
27
My blinds were down but the sun was leaching in around the edges,
28
thin white lines of light speckled by flecks of dust. I ought to vacuum,
29
perhaps mop the floor, I thought, and yet I knew that I’d do neither.
30
The place was untidy— littered with books and magazines— but I was
S31
too hungover, too tired to care. My wardrobe doors hung open and
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8 0
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
clothes fell from between them and onto the floor, endless pairs of jeans 02
and shorts and sweaters. A rickety wooden chair stood by the window
03
stacked high with piles of clean clothing and bedding and, there on the
04
top, my corseted nude knockers from the night before. My bridesmaid
05
dress was hanging on the back of my bedroom door, dark patches stain-
06
ing the underarms, a few lighter splotches— champagne, perhaps—
07
discoloring the skirt. The air in the room was thick and musty, heavy
08
with the stench of sleep and sweat. It ought to have been disgusting,
09
insufferable, and yet it felt like a familiar space, a familiar mess, a fa-10
miliar smell.
11
I stayed still, as though the noise of rustling sheets might leak
12
through my bedroom door, down the small hallway, and into the cor-
13
ridor beyond my flat.
14
The bell rang again.
15
There was a thumping— three times— and the door flinched within
16
its frame, shaking on its hinges.
17
“Jane?”
18
I recognized the voice immediately. It was Emma, my sister, younger
19
by a few years and even more my reverse than Marnie. If I am very
20
much dark and Marnie is very much light, then Emma was very much
21
both. She not only had the fairest skin and the darkest hair, but she was 22
also the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, the most vulnerable
23
and yet invincible, afraid and still brave, broken in so many ways but
24
unyielding at the same time.
25
The doorbell rang a third time. She depressed the buzzer for several
26
seconds, so that the drilling darted through the entire flat.
27
“I know you’re in there!” she shouted.
28
I stayed tucked beneath my quilt, refusing to move.
29
“I have breakfast,” she called.
30
Her voice lifted at the end of the sentence and she sang the word
31S
“breakfast.” She knew that she was playing her best hand, her ace of
32N
spades, and she knew that I knew it, too.
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On weekdays, my breakfast of choice was a bowl of cereal. I tended
01
to opt for oaty flakes that looked and tasted like recycled cardboard
; 02
floating in thick full- fat milk with the consistency of cream. Curiously, 03
it was less sugary than the semi- skimmed alternative. I had first tried it 04
a few years earlier, just after my husband’s death, when I was on a no-
05
sugar diet, trying to become very thin, as small as humanly possible.
06
Which had been a mistake. Because no small decisions made in the
07
aftermath of an almighty loss are good decisions. And so the other
08
compromises— brown rice, and no fruit juice, and brownies made from
09
beetroots— were quickly forgotten.
10
On weekends, I always wanted something sweeter.
11
“Can you smell the croissants?” Emma called. “From the bakery less
12
than ten minutes ago. Yum- mee.”
13
She paused, listening for my footsteps. I pictured her standing on
14
the worn taupe carpet, under the bright yellow lights, shifting her
15
weight between her feet, impatient as ever, frustrated at being ignored.
16
“Come on, Jane!” she shouted. “I haven’t got all day.”
17
I sat up and flung my feet over the side of the mattress and into my
18
slippers. I loved her— I really did— but there were never any boundar-
19
ies. She didn’t think it was at all abnormal to stand at my door in the
20
morning, without warning, and to hound me with her knocking and
21
her banging and her shouting. Because our lives had always flooded to-
22
gether: the challenges, the struggles, the minutiae of the day- to- day.
23
Although that isn’t quite right. It is more accurate to say that her life 24
streamed constantly into mine. I was the vessel for her anxiety. I was
25
the ear into which she confessed, the shoulder on which she felt sup-
26
ported, the hand for her to hold. She bled her burdens into me until she
27
felt a little better. And then I would carry and nurture her fears instead.
28
It had always been that way. I was loved too little and she was loved
29
too much, and it might surprise you to know that both are equally un-
30
bearable. She was often seeking space, suffocated by being the favorite.
S31
I became her ally, her safe place.
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01
She needed me. I didn’t know then that I needed her, too.
02
“Get a move on, will you?” she shouted. “It’s not like I’m going to
03
eat them.”
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 11
