difficult— impossible, perhaps— it would be to untangle. So she ignored
12
it, pretending that her daughter was fine and scraping food into the bin
13
without question and washing up cutlery that hadn’t been used.
14
Emma’s need grew and grew and my mother’s avoidance intensified,
15
until Emma was so angry and isolated and my mother so afraid for her
16
future that there was really no path to recovery. Emma never truly
17
forgave her. She moved out as soon as she was well enough.
18
I thought that she blamed our mother for her illness: not for how it
19
began, but for how it survived. I thought that their bond had been dis-
20
mantled, that they were held together, in the end, not by love but by
21
blood, a single filament stretching between them that could never be
22
snapped. I was wrong. There were other threads, thicker threads, ones
23
that held them together and that I simply couldn’t see.
24
“Jane, please,” said Emma. “Come on, now. I really did try.”
25
I didn’t reply. I wanted to ask her to think about how her actions
26
affected other people, to explain that her decision made me feel guilty
27
for not attending myself, that our mother likely felt incredibly lonely.
28
But Emma had so many feelings that she found it almost impossible to
29
negotiate the world from anyone’s hill but her own.
30
Instead, I asked her about her volunteer projects and her flat and a
31S
book I’d recommended about a dysfunctional family which it turned
32N
out she still hadn’t read. I had a shower and put on a clean pair of paja-9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 88
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mas and we spent the day on the sofa, watching DVDs that had once
01
belonged to our father— action films with male heroes and laughably
02
incompetent women— and which I’d taken as my own when he left.
03
We had watched them together, and he had pulled me onto his lap and
04
let me curl against him and fall asleep with my head to his chest, while
05
my mother was fretting elsewhere.
06
Emma took a few with her when she went home that evening. She
07
said that they’d always been hers and I knew that it wasn’t true, but I
08
didn’t really mind. There were so many things that we couldn’t talk
09
about, never said, and so this felt like a comparatively minor transgres-
10
sion. I watched as she left with them tucked in her rucksack, and I tried 11
to focus only on the sharp cut of her hair just above the bag, and not on 12
her matchstick legs poking from beneath it.
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01
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Chapter Eleven
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07
k
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Marnie and Charles were leaving on the Monday after their
wedding to spend two and a half weeks honeymooning in
Italy. Charles had planned everything: outlining their course across the
15
country, booking their flights, reserving the most luxurious rooms in
16
the most extravagant hotels. He wanted it to be a surprise, he’d said,
17
and so he had harassed me with every minute detail and with his eager-
18
ness in the preceding months. He’d rented a car in her favorite color, a
19
classic convertible. He’d opted for hotels adorned with plush velvets
20
and ornate chandeliers, rather than the sparse monotone palette that
21
he’d have preferred. He’d tracked a route through culinary favorites,
22
places he thought she’d enjoy.
23
“How would she feel about a cooking class?” he’d asked, earlier in
24
the year.
25
“What do you think of this?” he’d said, as he scrolled through the
26
website of a swish new restaurant. “Do you think she’d like this sort of
27
food? And what about the view?”
28
“What about Rome?” he’d quickly whispered one evening while she
29
was still in the kitchen. “Has she been there before?”
30
She hadn’t, and I said so, and as a result of these incessant exchanges,
31S
I became well acquainted with their itinerary. And so, that morning, I
32N
pictured them arriving at the airport, in the departure lounge, sitting
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side by side on their flight, and then waiting at the carousel for their
01
luggage. I could see them laughing together as they bundled their things
02
into the tiny boot of their car, the way his hand would sit on her thigh
03
throughout the drive. I could see the entrance to their first hotel, the
04
purple sofa in their suite, the infinity pool surrounded by hammocks
05
and overlooking vineyards. I knew every step that they’d take and I had
06
an ache in my stomach for the duration and I knew that I was jealous. I
07
loved her and I wanted her to be enjoying the most wonderful honey-
08
moon and yet I wished that I could be part of it, too.
09
We had traveled together, once or twice, visiting trashy beach desti-
10
nations where we had overindulged in garishly bright cocktails with
11
sugar sediment in each sip, and I had bronzed in the sun and she had
12
grown paler by comparison. We had shared a bed at night and thought
13
nothing of it, and held hands on turbulent flights, and negotiated pass-
14
port control together. But it was more than that. We had laughed and
15
gossiped and confessed our secrets. We had enmeshed ourselves into
16
one, with private jokes and joint suitcases and tacky threadbare brace-
17
18
But we hadn’t traveled together since she had met Charles.
19
All of those things she now shared with him: a bed, a suitcase, her
20
secrets.
21
I thought of them over those two weeks, intermittently, but always
22
with a tight dread across my chest. I felt that our roots were loosening
23
and that seemed shocking and unacceptable simply because before then
24
I hadn’t thought that it was possible.
25
26
27
Marnie called me late in the evening, just after she’d arrived home 28
from her honeymoon, when I was already almost asleep. She wanted to
29
hear my thoughts on her wedding day, the things that stood out most,
30
the things that I remembered. I told her about Ella, her six- year- old
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niece, who was wearing only socks and underwear by the end of the
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first dance and had beads of sweat glistening on her forehead as she
02
jumped and twirled. I told her about her brother, who napped drunk
03
beneath a table during the speeches. I told her about the registrar, who
04
was caught in traffic and running late and sending panicked text mes-
05
sages ahead of the ceremony.
06
She laughed when I told her that the cheese tower had collapsed
07
moments after it was cut. She sighed, and I could hear that she was
08
smiling, when I told her that her parents were still dancing, her moth-
09
er’s head turned sideways against her father’s shoulder, long after the
10
band had finished, as the staff cleared the room around them.
11
“It’s so lovely to hear these things,” she said. “I feel like I missed so 12
much on the day. I planned everything so perfectly, but then I could
13
only be in one place. I’m waiting for the rest of the photographs. We’ve
14
got a few already. Only a dozen or so, some of the favorites, but there
15
are some lovely ones of you. Are you coming on Friday? I’ll show you
16
them then.”
17
“Will you send them over?” I asked.
18
We had been angled around a floral archway, the two of them, and
19
then all of us together, and then smaller groups— parents, siblings,
20
friends. We were ushered into position, told to pose, then pushed
21
quickly out of frame. I didn’t know if there was a photograph of the two
22
of us alone, but I hoped so.
23
“Sure,” she replied. “I’ll forward you the email. You’ll laugh at the
24
one of my parents.”
25
“They were good, I thought, on the day,” I said.
26
“I know,” she replied. “I thought that, too. Although— and this is
27
just typical— it turns out that they were in Florence at the same time
28
we were. Mum had a conference, something about allergies, and Dad
29
went along, too. But did they tell me? Nope. Did they want to meet? To
30
have lunch or dinner with us? Nope.”
31S
She always saw the worst in them, looked for the things that proved
32N
their indifference.
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“I don’t know if that’s so bad,” I said. “Perhaps they didn’t want to
01
encroach?”
02
“Well, that’s a nice way of thinking about it,” she said. “But I don’t
03
think so.”
04
I yawned, which I hoped might signal the end of the conversation,
05
but Marnie continued regardless.
06
“You know something?” she said. “I feel different now. Can I say
07
wiser without sounding like a twat? Or maybe not? I’m not that sure
08
I can.”
09
“No,” I said. “I’m not sure that you can.”
10
“I feel more like an adult,” she said. And then she paused. “No, that’s
11
not quite right. I feel like I’ve just taken part in a very public display of 12
adulthood. Like I’m pretending. Does that make sense?”
13
“Not really,” I replied.
14
“Anyway,” she continued, “that’s sort of why I called. We’ve decided
15
to sell the flat. You know. Being adults and all that.”
16
She paused, and I said nothing.
17
“We talked about it while we were away, and we think it feels right.”
18
She paused again.
19
She was testing each step, placing one foot at a time on the brittle
20
wood to see if it buckled. I knew that she was wondering— asking in a
21
silent sort of way— whether this would be upsetting for me, if the
22
change in routine would be a problem. They had been saying for ages
23
that one day they would move beyond the limits of the city, to a house
24
with a garden and a driveway and bedrooms that overlooked fields. I
25
wasn’t sure if she was saying this with her silence, too.
26
She was careful not to mention money. Charles was very successful,
27
by which I really mean very wealthy, working in a private equity firm
28
where he bought companies and sold them in parts for a profit. And
29
Marnie was working harder than ever, writing about food and talking
30
about food. She had recently taken on a new sponsor, a company selling
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only knives and each at a ridiculous price. Apparently, they’d seen a
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significant uplift in sales since she’d started featuring them in her vid-02
eos and so she’d successfully negotiated a better rate.
03
I, by contrast, had never felt less engaged by my job, where it seemed
04
my primary objective was to handle customer complaints and pay as
05
little compensation for our failings as possible. I could barely afford my 06
rent. And she was sensitive to that, never wanting me
to feel inferior.
07
Oh.
08
Yes.
09
No. You’re right.
10
I’m trying very hard to be honest. And yet, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t
11
come very naturally to me. I’ve slightly misrepresented my situation.
12
I had money— I still have money— but saved somewhere else.
13
Jonathan— as a cameraman, freelancing, with no company benefits
14
whatsoever, and because he was so endlessly efficient— had taken out
15
a life insurance policy. I was his next of kin and so the payment had
16
come to me.
17
But I couldn’ t— I still can’ t— spend it. He wanted me to have it, and
18
yet I cannot stand the thought that his life has been assigned a value.
19
Because no amount of money can compensate for that loss. It doesn’t
20
even come close. How can you quantify the light still on in the hallway
21
when you come home after dark? How can you price a recognizable
22
smile waiting late at the bus stop to walk you back to bed? What does
23
it cost to replace someone whose hand so perfectly fit your own, whose
24
warmth was reassurance, whose laughter was excitement, someone
25
who had willingly woven his life into yours?
26
If you were to try, to use their algorithm to assign numbers to loved
27
ones, you’d discover that a man like Charles was worth far more than a
28
man like Jonathan. Which further proves my point.
29
Emma thought that I was being ridiculous. She thought I should
30
invest the money. She sent me dozens of links to properties: modern
31S
flats in the center of the city, two- bedroom terraces in the suburbs,
32N
even a sea- view apartment on the south coast. She set me up on a date
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with a friend of hers— a man she volunteered with at the food bank
01
who’d inherited a small fortune from his late wife— so that we could
02
discuss returns on investments and the property market and a whole
03
world in which I had no interest whatsoever. I said that I didn’t want a
04
date, and she said that it was a banking date, and I said that wasn’t a
05
thing and refused. And then she said the words “silver lining” and we
06
never spoke about or acknowledged that the money existed again.
07
It’s still there in that bank account.
08
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 13
