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