Seven Lies (ARC)
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or a time, I was winning. And I mean that in the simplest sense
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of the word. If life is a competition, something that can be lost—
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and I am certain that it can be lost— then it must also be something
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that can be won.
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Marnie was going on dates with a never- ending barrage of unsuitable
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men who drank too much and got stoned in children’s playgrounds on
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the weekends and snorted coke off toilet tanks, and I was falling in love 18
with a brilliant man. While her university friends were spending their
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Friday nights in horrible clubs with loud music and neon lights and
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sticky floors, I was planning a honeymoon. While they grew despon-
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dent, lamenting the failure of yet another dead- end relationship, drown-22
ing their heartbreak in gin and feeding it takeout, I was married. I had a 23
husband. And— even better than that— I really, truly loved him. They
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were arguing over small bedrooms and split bills and spilt milk, tackling 25
the buildup of pubic hair in the drain, the shower overflowing, the piles 26
of dirty dishes sitting just above the dishwasher. Whereas I was living in 27
a lovely maisonette with high ceilings and big windows. I had paint
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samples in patches on the walls and framed prints propped against the
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fireplace, waiting to be hung.
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Marnie had handed in her notice. Others were being made redun-
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dant and sometimes fired and bitching about their bosses and the
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menial tasks that made up their day- to- day: fetching coffees and booking 02
taxis and ordering reams of paper for the printer. I was being promoted. I 03
had started in an administrative role for an online retailer— they sold
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everything: books, toys, electronics— and they offered me a position in
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a new team sourcing furniture. I was in a role that I liked, in a job that 06
I felt had a future, in a growing company.
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I was better than all of them. I was happier than all of them.
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I suppose I liked that I had found love first. I feel uncomfortable say-
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ing that now, because it sounds so stupid, so childish, but it’s the truth 10
and that’s what I’ve promised you.
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Marnie was the first of us to find a boyfriend. We were thirteen and
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Richard was a year older. His parents were divorced— which felt quite
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exotic at the time— and he lived with his mother. He had bright orange
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hair and his cheeks were speckled with freckles. He and Marnie went
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to the cinema and their fingers touched in a box of popcorn halfway
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through and they held hands for the rest of the film. She went to his
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house for their second date and his mum cooked them chicken nuggets.
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But Richard broke up with Marnie the following day. He had decided
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that he had feelings for another girl in our year— I think her name was
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Jessica— whose hair was similarly orange and who was consequently
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much more compatible.
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I was determined that I, too, needed a first boyfriend and so, in the
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midst of Marnie’s heartbreak, I negotiated a date with a boy called Tim.
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We didn’t go to the cinema, but instead on a walk, and he bought me an
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ice cream and I was quite sure that I had found my soul mate. It helped
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that he was, by quite some margin, more attractive than any of the boys
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that my classmates had dated. He increased my popularity dramatically
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and suddenly I was very much the go- to for everyone’s dating conun-
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drums. Unfortunately, I wasn’t having quite such a positive influence on
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his reputation, so he called things off after a week and a half.
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Marnie and I grieved together, determined never to fall in love again
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and to become lesbians instead.
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Which in itself is sort of curious, don’t you think? Already we were
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very aware that a simple friendship wouldn’t suffice into adulthood,
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that it wouldn’t be enough. We knew— from our early teenage years—
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that romantic love would always become the most important.
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I couldn’t tell you quite when everything changed. For years— over
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a decade— we were at the epicenter of each other’s lives. We told each
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other everything, and that included boys and then men, and dating and
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then sex, and relationships and then love. And yet, at some point, a
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chasm opened between us and our romantic lives became something
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that existed outside of our friendship: something we filtered in conver-
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sation, pulling out highlights or updates, rather than living through it
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together.
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I suppose this, too, was a situation of my own making. Did I tell her
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how it felt to fall in love with Jonathan? Did I tell her how it felt that 14
first night? I don’t think that I did.
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Instead, I abandoned her. I had been to visit Jonathan after work,
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and he had cooked me dinner, and commented on all the spare storage
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in that flat, the empty shelves, the half- filled drawers, and he’d asked if 18
I’d like to fill them. The promise of a home like that— a home with
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him— was simply too enticing.
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“I’m moving out,” I said to Marnie when I returned that evening.
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“Oh, right?” she said, distracted. She was sitting on our blue and
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white sofa, her slippered feet on the co
ffee table, drumming her fingers
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against the keys of her new laptop. She had recorded her first video the
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previous evening: her recipe for carbonara, which had always been my
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favorite. “This is just impossible,” she said. “How do I— ” She picked up 26
her phone and began stabbing her thumbs furiously into the screen.
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“With Jonathan,” I said.
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“When’s that?” she replied.
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“Tomorrow,” I said.
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She looked up. “What?” Her forehead was creased with confusion.
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“Tomorrow? But you’ve only just met him.”
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“It’s been three months,” I replied.
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“But that’s nothing!”
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I shrugged. “It’s something to me.”
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“Oh,” she said, quietly. “And you’re sure?” She folded closed the
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screen of her laptop. “It has to be tomorrow?”
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I nodded.
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It would be easy to look back now and to judge myself for moving
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too fast, for being too eager, but the truth is that I wouldn’t change a
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thing.
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She helped me to pack my bags and she gave me a set of sharp
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knives, a casserole dish the size of a cauldron, and a red dinnerware set.
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“Because you’re going to have to learn to cook,” she said. “You can’t live 13
off beans and toast.”
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“I’ll be back at mealtimes,” I joked.
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“I hope you will,” she said. “I’ll have no one to cook for without
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you here.”
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I wondered at the time if she was indulging me, if she thought I’d
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return in a couple of weeks. But I don’t know now that she was. I
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think she understood that this was my next step, the start of some-
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thing new.
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I watched as she wrapped an old Evening Standard around a set of
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red ramekins that I knew I’d never use. She set them down on the side
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and sighed. “You’re sure about this?” she asked. “Because you know I
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think he’s great, and I promise I’m asking this for you and not for me,
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but this is quick, and are you sure— are you definitely sure?”
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“I am,” I said, and I was.
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“I’ll miss you,” she said.
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“I know,” I replied. “Me, too.”
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A bubble of tears rose in my throat as I thought of all the things I’d
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miss: her brightly colored socks drying on the radiator, plastic- wrapped 31S
leftovers waiting for me in the fridge, smiley faces drawn in the mist on 32N
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the bathroom mirror. I swallowed it and I smiled, and she took my
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hands in hers and squeezed them tightly.
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The first weeks felt a little frantic as I tried to be everything to both 03
of them. I didn’t want Marnie to feel that I loved her any less— because 04
I didn’ t— and yet I so wanted Jonathan to know that I was his com-
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pletely. When Marnie’s grandmother died, just a few weeks later, she
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called me in tears in the middle of the night. I got dressed and fumbled
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my way onto the street and into a taxi, and I was at the old flat in less 08
than thirty minutes. I think, after that, she knew that she only ever had 09
to ask, that I’d always be there, just as I’d always been before.
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Marnie and Jonathan became good friends. She had never been
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taught to cycle as a child, and he took it upon himself to show her how.
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He gave her one of his old bikes and she liked that it was built for a man.
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She taught him how to cook carbonara. She had tried to teach me, she
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said, but it was too thankless a task, and so she was going to share her
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culinary secrets with him instead.
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We worked perfectly as a threesome. Jonathan had so many hobbies—
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cycling and camping and climbing— and I had only Marnie. So when he
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spent the weekend in the countryside in a tent that flapped in the wind
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with spiders in his sleeping bag and shoes damp from the rain, I stayed
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in the old flat, cozy and warm with my very best friend. Those few
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years were the greatest of my life. It was such a joy to discover that I was 22
worthy— and capable, too— of two great loves.
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When Jonathan died, I thought that our friendship would snap back
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into the thing that it had been before. It didn’t quite. I don’t know if it 25
was his absence, but everything in my life felt emptier.
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I missed so many things while I was with him. I hadn’t seen a cloud
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for over two years; I was always blinded by blue. I’d found joy in stupid 28
places: in children walking slowly, and dogs barking in the park, and the 29
light of the moon through my blinds late at night. I thought that his
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eyes were green like olives. And yet I haven’t found an olive as beautiful S31
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since. Each laugh is hard won. Each smile is fleeting. Every ache feels
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eternal. My ability to take the good and the bad of this world and to
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balance them has disappeared completely. I am uncalibrated.
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I thought that I would find myself again with Marnie. I thought that
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I could reset myself. And yet things had moved on while I’d been look-
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ing elsewhere.
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Chapter Five
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tanley and I were silent as the elevator descended to the lobby.
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We were silent as we exited from the front doors of Marnie and
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Charles’s building. We were silent as we walked down the pebbled
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pathway that led out to the street. We were side by side and yet I felt
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very much alone.
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“That was nice, wasn’t it?” said Stanley eventually. He secured the
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buttons on his coat and lifted the collar up toward his ears. “Did you
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have a good evening?”
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I looped my scarf around my neck a second time. It was September
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and I tend to think that September is still summer and yet it never is. It 21
is always a little sharper, a little cooler, despite the bright evenings.
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I didn’t answer the question. “What do you think of Charles?” I
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asked instead.
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Charles had regaled the table with the story of his and Marnie’s first
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meeting. It had been in a bar in the city. He had sent Marnie and her
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colleagues bottle after bottle of champagne until finally she acquiesced
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and joined him at his table. He thought it showed the strength of his
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love. She thought it demonstrated charm and commitment. I thought it
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made him seem desperate.
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“Great guy, right?” Stanley replied, turning toward me and grinning.
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“Really great guy.”
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I didn’t look at him; I stared forward and down the road ahead. I
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always hoped that, one day, I would ask that question and someone
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would turn to me and smile and say instead, “Absolute wanker, right?”
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Because that was entirely true of the man that I knew. He was sim-
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ply unbearable.
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“But do you really think that, Jane?” Charles would say to me,
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whenever I expressed an opinion that in any way contradicted his own.
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“Because I really think that we’re on the same page here,” he would
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continue, “and what you meant to say was— ”
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And then he’d launch into a lecture on the housing crisis, or under-
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staffing in hospitals, or the economics of inheritance tax, as though he