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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
his camera, wanting to see what was farther on, around a corner, what
02
might be waiting for him ahead. For me, it was simply wonderful to be
03
so isolated, nothing to hear but the sea crashing against the rocks be-
04
neath and the squawk of gulls overhead.
05
After an hour or so, we approached another seaside village, smaller
06
than Beer, it seemed, but with a car park, a tiny building that housed a
07
few public toilets, and a café with a thatched roof.
08
“Perhaps it’s open,” said Jonathan, and because Jonathan was with
09
me, it was.
10
He ordered a mug of coffee for himself and, for me, a glass of cold or-
11
ange juice. We sat outside on the picnic benches and watched the sea as
12
we waited for our bacon sandwiches. Fishermen were huddled together,
13
protecting one another from the wind. I imagined them discussing their
14
catch, the price of cod, their plans for the rest of the day.
15
After breakfast, we wandered along the beach, the waves swim-
16
ming in and out, licking at the crevices in each stone and at the soles
17
of our boots. Jonathan spotted a small cutaway in the overgrowth at
18
the foot of the cliff and insisted that we explore further. We pierced
19
the dense shrubs, stepping away from the coast into a forest and zig-
20
zagging through thorn bushes and nettles on a narrow mud- pressed
21
path. We climbed higher and higher and yet the cliffs were still tower-
22
ing above us.
23
After ten, maybe fifteen minutes, we reached a fork in the trail; the
24
left had steps carved into the slope, the right had a thin path on the
25
very edge of an overhang.
26
“Let’s try this,” said Jonathan, pointing up and to our right.
27
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
28
He had spent his childhood in the countryside, been raised in mud
29
and hay and knee- high grass. But I wasn’t comfortable in that world. I
30
was mesmerized by the views and the sounds and the endless space, but
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I felt like an interloper, uneasy and unwelcome.
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“This looks safer,” I said, gesturing left.
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S E V E N L I E S
25
“Come on,” he said, and he smiled. “You’ll be fine.”
01
I hesitated. But I was tempted, encouraged by his faith in me, his
02
certainty. I found it so difficult to deny him whatever it was that he
03
wanted. Truthfully? I’d have done almost anything he asked.
04
I unfurled my fists, stretched out my fingers, and stepped one foot
05
toward him, onto the small lip that jutted out from the rocks.
06
He stepped backward— so easily, so agile— like a funambulist bal-
07
ancing on a tightrope.
08
“There you go,” he said. “You’re doing great.”
09
The shelf was narrow, less than a foot in width. It was impossible to
10
stand with two feet side by side.
11
“Take another step,” he said.
12
I heard our future in that moment: Jonathan talking to a child,
13
encouraging him, too. The memory of it, something that hadn’t yet
14
happened, settled within me and it made me feel bolder.
15
“What are you waiting for? Keep going,” he insisted. “I’ve got you.”
16
I lifted my back leg and slowly swung it forward, over the sea below.
17
Finally, my foot found purchase on the ledge and I exhaled.
18
“What now?” I asked. I had twisted, somehow facing the cliff, my
19
chest pressed against it, the backs of my heels resting only on air. “How 20
are you doing this?”
21
“You can walk normally,” he said. “Or just shuffle along. Try not to
22
overthink it.”
23
I looked up at him just a few steps ahead. He grinned at me, the
24
beginnings of wrinkles creasing around his eyes and dimples pressing
25
into his cheeks. His hand was stretched out toward me reassuringly, the
26
ring on his finger glinting in the sun. His other hand was holding on to
27
a ridge above us, and I could see a strip of his hip where his T- shirt had 28
lifted from his trousers.
29
I leaned toward him. But then my back foot slipped and I remember
30
the feeling of dipping, my weight falling down to one side. I remem-
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
panic that steamed through me. I felt his hand slam into my back as he
02
pushed me firmly against the rocks and my chin grazed the sharp sur-
03
face of cliff.
04
“You’re fine,” he said. “You’re okay.”
05
“No,” I said. “This isn’t safe. We shouldn’t be here.”
06
My face was stinging and my knees aching from the impact.
07
“You’re fine,” he said. “I promise. You’re okay.”
08
I shook my head vigorously.
09
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Don’t get upset. Just edge that way.”
10
I shuffled a few inches to my left, back onto the grassed pathway.
11
“There you go,” he said. “Okay?”
12
I nodded. I held my hand to my chin; I thought it was bleeding, but
13
my fingers came away clean.
14
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the top.”
15
I nodded and he darted upward.
16
I said, I know, that I’d have followed Jonathan anywhere and that
17
was true. But there was something about his fearlessness that was so at
18
odds with my innate fearfulness. And, try as I might and try as I did,
19
sometimes fear won out. I opted for the safer route and our paths
20
crossed again a few minutes later, back at the top of the cliffs.
21
If I had known then that we had just a few months ahead of us, I’d
22
have found the courage to spend those few minutes with him.
23
There is a tragic irony that— with hindsight— has embedded itself
24
in every fiber of my relationship with Jonathan. We met in a small cor-
25
ner of the city and that place became a fundamental part of how we
26
lived and loved and existed together. Until it became the place where
27
our relationship ended. Jonathan and I fell in love on a corner of Oxford 28
Street and— fatefully— that was where he died.
29
I can tell you far more about that day than I can about the day we
30
met. I rolled through that dark slideshow, the sequence that led to his
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death, nonstop for weeks. Sometimes I still do.
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27
k
01
02
Jonathan was running, for the first time, in the London marathon. We 03
were expecting rain and sleet, insistent winds. But he was excited. He
04
had been training since the autumn; he was used to running in the rain
05
and so he wasn’t concerned.
06
He was uncontainable that morning, fidgeting and waffling on about
07
something and nothing, his anticipation contagious. We were so ordi-
08
nary. Our morning was set against a backdrop of alarm clocks and cof-
09
fee and breakfast and showering and looking for the house keys and
10
almost running late but not quite and the steady, reassuring rhythm of
11
the everyday.
12
I wanted to share his victory and so I went straight to the Mall. I
13
stood there by the metal barrier waiting for hours and yet I barely no-
14
ticed the time slipping past. The atmosphere was electric, excitement
15
and nervousness and encouragement sweating from the crowd around
16
me. The elite racers flashed by first— they made it look easy— followed 17
soon after by a few men, and then some women, and then a couple
18
dripping profusely from their faces, their bodies encased within dino-
19
saur costumes.
20
Jonathan was determined to complete the race in under three hours,
21
and I didn’t doubt that he would do just that. I watched him speed past
22
after two hours and fifty- one minutes and he crossed the finish line just 23
three minutes later.
24
I have never been destined for great success. I have always worked
25
hard, but never excelled. I have always participated; I’ve never won. But 26
Jonathan did; Jonathan won. He surpassed even his own bold goals.
27
I was therefore not at all surprised when he was announced as the
28
millionth marathon runner to pass the finish line since the inaugural
29
London marathon of 1981 and interviewed for a recorded segment to
30
be aired that evening on the BBC News. He had always been behind
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
the camera at sporting events, filming for news channels or sports
02
broadcasters, but he was so charming and modest with his answers that
03
day. I remember wondering if he should consider a career in front of the
04
camera rather than behind it.
05
After his interview, we headed to The Windsor Castle for a quick
06
drink, just one, to celebrate his success.
07
We never arrived.
08
As we threaded our way from the tube station at Oxford Circus
09
toward the narrow cobbled street, a drunk driver burst across a pedes-
10
trian crossing, mowing my husband down.
11
I can remember him lying there on his back on the sidewalk. His
12
knee was twisted at a jaunty angle. His eyes were closed, peaceful al-
13
most, his chin resting snug against his chest. He was still wearing his
14
black shorts and his tight yellow T- shirt. His rucksack was a yard or two 15
away and the thin foil wrap he’d been given peeped from between the
16
zippers. His bottle of water was rolling— so slowly, it seemed, inching
17
like tar— toward the curb.
18
A crowd formed, cyclists and pedestrians, but not the driver of the
19
taxi, who remained frozen in his seat.
20
Jonathan was frozen, too, strangely still, too rigid and yet somehow
21
too serene to be asleep. A puddle of blood began to form beneath his
22
cheek, to pool beneath his body.
23
I remember the ambulance arriving, pulling up beside us, its siren
24
screaming. It was quickly muted; I recall the sudden absence of noise
25
where before it had been deafening, but the flashing continued, red and
26
blue and red and blue. Paramedics jumped from the van, two of them,
27
both dressed in green, and they marched toward us, shouting over the
28
hood of the ambulance. Everything was unfolding in half time: she
29
snapped on white latex gloves, her right hand first, and then her left,
30
pulling at each fingertip. A bag was swung over his shoulder. There was
31S
a policewoman wearing a hat and I can still see her now, gesturing at
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S E V E N L I E S
29
the crowd to please take a step back, move along now, please, nothing
01
at all to see here.
02
The paramedics fussed around us, taking Jonathan’s pulse, spread-
03
ing their hands over his body, cutting off his T- shirt, shining a bright 04
white light into his eyes.
05
“If you could just— ” the woman said, and I sat back on my heels and
06
out of their way. Their arms stretched around me, the reflective strips
07
of their uniforms redirecting the van’s headlights into my eyes. I
08
squinted and I realized that they were wet.
09
They slid him onto a stretcher, a strange plastic slab, and lifted him
10
in
to the back of the ambulance. We crawled through the streets of Lon-
11
don and south to St. George’s Hospital. The police car followed and the
12
policewoman— still in her hat— reached for my elbow as I stepped
13
down from the back of the ambulance, and she sat with me in the wait-
14
ing room. She told me to keep breathing: in through my nose for six,
15
and hold for six, and then out through my mouth for six, and then she
16
left and then I was all alone, still waiting. It was dark outside when a
17
doctor called me into a side room to tell me what I already knew, to
18
confirm that Jonathan had died.
19
He offered to call someone for me, and I don’t remember if I even
20
answered his question. I left and hailed a cab and recited the address for 21
the flat in Vauxhall. When I arrived, there were three young men in
22
shorts and T- shirts sitting outside around a picnic table at a pub on the 23
river, gold marathon medals hanging around their necks. I felt a bubble
24
burst within my chest and I pictured Jonathan sitting there with them,
25
his shorts and his T- shirt, his medal, celebrating his victory. I felt bile 26
rising in my throat and I swallowed it because it wasn’t time, this wasn’t 27
real, and yet I couldn’t remember what I ought to be doing or how to be
28
me in that moment.
29
I sat down against the entrance to the building. I pictured him
30
standing up, rubbing at his elbow, brushing his hands down his chest to
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
release small specks of pavement. I imagined him shocked, and sort of
02
angry, and a small cut beneath his right eye where he’d landed, but
03
otherwise fine: walking, talking, moving, alive. I closed my eyes and
04
saw his hair, too long, his arms crossed over his chest, and his chin
05
slightly pointed, freckles scattered on the bridge of his nose, from all
06
those afternoons running for hours in the sunshine.
07
I retched because it wasn’t real— there was no small cut beneath his
08
eye, no hair too long, no freckles, no more hours of running— and I
09
would never see him again and he would never again be seen and that
10
was simply too big, too impossible, to be a thing.
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14
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Seven Lies (ARC) Page 4