Seven Lies (ARC)
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her at the time, really angry, because there was so much still unsaid. I
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found myself inserting those small truths, those small angers, into my
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messages and into our conversations, concealed in sharp asides and
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abrupt sign- offs and sometimes in long delays between responses. It
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was far easier to pick at those scars than address the mighty grief swell-27
ing within me.
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I hated her. I really did. And then, one day, I didn’t. She, too, had
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lost the man she loved. And then she lost so much more: her mind, her
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memories. Our lives were in very different places and yet we were both
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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broken, and we found something familiar in each other’s jagged edges.
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After more than twenty years of failing to understand each other, we
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finally had something in common.
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Eventually I found that I, too, could erase my memories of the
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drama; they weren’t the actions of this woman, of this mother, but of
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some other person, now lost to the pleats of history and time.
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“No,” I said, eventually. “Stanley wasn’t at all like Jonathan.”
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“Then you’re well rid,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
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“I’d say so,” I replied.
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I turned on the television and we watched the news together. A
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teenager had been stabbed; his assailant was disguised in a grainy pho-
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tograph, an image frozen from CCTV. A disgraced politician spoke to
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the press, explaining without apology, justifying his actions. A young
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mother sobbed; her benefits had been revoked and she was unable to
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afford childcare in order to work or to work in order to fund childcare.
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We were shocked and unsurprised and then sad, our expressions twist-
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ing in unison.
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The newsreader eventually bid us farewell and I gathered my coat
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and my handbag and snuck back into the hallway, leaving my mother
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asleep and the television murmuring the opening credits for a new
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quiz show.
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I’m telling you about my mother because it’s important that you un-25
derstand her role in this story. I did hate her, but I also forgave her.
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Remember that.
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Chapter Seven
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k
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I
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didn’t have a date to bring to Marnie and Charles’s the following
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Friday, but I regularly visited alone, and I was very much looking
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forward to it. Until Marnie called me at midday to say that I couldn’t
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come for dinner that evening because Charles had organized a surprise
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weekend in the Cotswolds. She rang from the car and I could hear the
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hiss of other vehicles rushing past on the motorway. I wondered how
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long she had known she was going away. She must have been told at
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least a few hours earlier. Because she’d had time to pack and drive out
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of the city with its tight streets, small and cramped, bordered by parked 20
cars and with red lights every few hundred yards. She could have called
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earlier.
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“Whereabouts are you going?” I asked, although I don’t know why:
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I wasn’t particularly interested in the answer.
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“Some hotel,” she said. I heard the crackle of her phone against her
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cheek and I imagined her turning toward Charles, who would have
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been sitting next to her, in the driver’s seat as always, dictating their 27
path. “What’s it called?” she asked.
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I heard him speaking, not individual, isolated words but a murmur-
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ing, the timbre of his voice echoing against the metal innards of the car.
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“He can’t remember,” said Marnie. “But it’s . . .”— that crackle
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again— “Google says we’ll be there in two hours.”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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I pictured them sitting side by side: Marnie’s shoes lying abandoned
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in the footwell, her feet curled up on the seat against her thighs; Charles 03
in a smart shirt and warm jumper, ever aware of the autumn chill, and
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the sort of man who liked to drive with the window down and his
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elbow perched on the open ledge.
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“Jane!” I heard him shout. And then more quietly, tenderly even,
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“Can she hear me?”
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“I can hear him,” I said.
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“Go on,” Marnie replied, but not to me. “She says she can.”
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“Jane!” he shouted again. “Can I get a favor? I’d like this beautiful
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woman to myself for the weekend. What do you reckon?” he contin-
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ued. I pressed my thumb to the earpiece to smother the sound. “Can
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you do that? Just forty- eight hours. You’ll be all right.”
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Marnie laughed, a girlish titter, and so I laughed, too, and I shouted,
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“Sure thing. She’s all yours.” Because what else was I to do? What else
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could I have said? I knew what this meant.
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“But we’ll see you next week?” said Marnie. “Same time as normal?”
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“Yes,” I said. “Same time as normal.”
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“Let me know if Stanley’s coming,” she said.
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“He won’t be,” I replied.
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“Oh,” she said. “Really? That’s such a shame.” She was surprised in
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the way that optimists so often are by facts that betray the fantasy. She 23
always hopes, always assumes, that the next man will be the right man,
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which is foolish because the evidenc
e suggests otherwise. She has never
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met any of my suitors, as she calls them, more than a couple of times.
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“Well, let me know if you want to bring anyone else,” she said.
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Marnie ended the call and I listened to the silence where her voice
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had been seconds before. I knew what was coming and I knew too that
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I was afraid. I took a deep breath, inhaling noisily, because my chest
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was tight, my ribs sort of shivering, and because air kept catching in my 31S
throat.
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You know already that there was an engagement ring. I had assumed
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that it was still in Charles’s bedside table; I’d had no reason to believe 01
otherwise. But, in that moment, I was quite sure that it was on the
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road, slipped inside a jacket pocket or in the front pouch of a suitcase
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or in the glove box of that shiny white car.
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As I lay in bed that evening, I pictured it in their hotel room, tucked
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in the drawer of a new bedside table, lying in wait until the perfect mo-
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ment. I could see it housed in its red velvet box, a gold band with three 07
bright white diamonds.
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I hated the thought of it. I hated the thought that she might
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marry him.
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As a child, Marnie’s relationship with her parents had been strained:
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more like coworkers than relatives. Her mother and father were both
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doctors and very successful in their respective fields. They had always
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traveled, and so Marnie and her older brother, Eric, had been left at
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home for weeks at a time ever since they were old enough to get them-
15
selves to school and to cook their own meals. Her parents turned up on
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the good days— the parents’ evenings, the school plays— but they
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weren’t particularly present. She had no one there on the bad days, the
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normal days, the everydays that make up a life.
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Until me. That was my role. I loved her completely, unconditionally,
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without question.
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Charles thought that he could fill that space, too. But he was wrong.
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Because a bottle of champagne sent across the bar isn’t selfless but
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showy. An expensive flat isn’t generous. It’s desperate and excessive.
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And an extravagant ring isn’t a symbol of commitment but of blind
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confidence, the sort of arrogance deemed acceptable only in a man like
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Charles.
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I had discovered the ring a few months earlier.
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Marnie and Charles were about to go on holiday for a week. They
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were going to the Seychelles, I think— perhaps it was Mauritius— and
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we were due to have a heat wave in London. Marnie had been fretting
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about the plants on her balcony, if they would survive seven days with
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strong sunshine and no rain. And Charles was saying that she was
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ridiculous, because they were just plants and she could always buy
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some more.
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I ate my dinner listening to their bickering and keeping very delib-
07
erately quiet. I’d be lying if I said that I received no satisfaction from the 08
squabble— I enjoyed seeing Charles fail to understand Marnie— but I
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knew that there was nothing to be gained by my intervention. Even so,
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I wanted to tell Charles not to be such an arsehole, to say that if the
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plants mattered to Marnie then they should matter to him, too. But I
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didn’t.
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The following morning Charles called me and asked if I would mind
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watering the plants while they were away.
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I didn’t have a car; I couldn’t drive. It normally took about half an
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hour to get from my flat to theirs on the tube and so I knew immedi-
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ately that it wasn’t going to be particularly convenient.
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I wondered if they had other friends who lived nearer— colleagues
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of Charles’s perhaps, who could also afford extravagant apartments in
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old mansion houses. They did; they must have. And yet Charles had
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asked me.
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Perhaps, I thought, I am their closest friend.
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I knew, of course, that it wasn’t true.
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They had asked me simply because they knew that I’d say yes. Mar-
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nie had plenty of other friends— so did Charles— but I was efficient,
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reliable.
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Charles explained that he would leave their spare key with the con-
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cierge and that if I could just pop in after work from Monday through
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to Friday, and actually once on Saturday would be great, too, then that
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would be brilliant.
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On the Monday, I left work at half past six, exhausted from a day
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less shoppers why their packages hadn’t arrived at the time they’d
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elected. I had taken almost ten weeks off when Jonathan died, and
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when I’d returned, I’d discovered that we were no longer selling furni-
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ture and that I’d been moved into the customer service team to answer
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calls. They were adamant that there’d be opportunities to contribute to
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the company in a significant way, but it felt like a demotion to me.
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The help line was closed on the weekends and so the beginning of
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the week was always the worst. By Monday, those whose packages had
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failed to arrive on Saturday were so irate, so totally beside themselves
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with frustration— no garden furniture for their barbecue, no presents
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for their son’s birthday, no outfits for the fancy dress do— that they
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were entirely unable to contain their rage. They instead spent the best
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part of an hour hissing and spitting and swearin
g and shouting into
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their phones. And I spent an hour soothing and reassuring and promis-
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ing to correct the error and topping up their accounts with small sums
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of compensation.
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I arrived at Marnie and Charles’s flat just after seven.
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I had met the concierge on several occasions.
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“And can I see some ID?” he said when I asked for the key.
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“I don’t have any,” I replied. “But, Jeremy,” I said— he was wearing a
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name badge— “you’ve seen me here once a week for years. You know
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who I am. And look, I can see the envelope with the key right there on
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your desk. Jane Black. You know that’s my name.”
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“No ID?” he repeated.
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“I’m afraid not,” I replied.
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I offered him my sweetest smile and was frankly astounded when he
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slid the key across the table conspiratorially and said, “You didn’t get
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this from me.”
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I took the lift to their floor and, as the doors parted and I stepped
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out, the lights in the hallway flickered on. Marnie and I had spent a year 30
stepping out of elevators onto blue carpet and the building I lived in
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now offered much the same experience (the carpet was taupe, but just
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as muddied and worn). This building, however, was noticeably differ-
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ent and never failed to make me feel somewhat inferior. The walls were
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lined with framed artwork, painted signatures adorning the bottom
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right corners of each piece, and lights hung from the ceiling in neat
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pendants. The parquet flooring was thickly varnished, glinting under
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the lights, and the only evidence that any other shoes had ever walked
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those hallways was a very slight fading, a few small scuffs, at the doors 08
to the two lifts.
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I let myself into their flat and was— stupidly— surprised to find it
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dark. On Friday evenings I would ring the bell and Marnie would rush
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to answer, pulling open the door and smiling, and then darting back
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into the kitchen to stir or to season or to shake. Normally the camera
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would be set up on the countertop, filming her preparing her latest
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concoction. Her brief departure— my arrival— featured regularly in her