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Seven Lies (ARC)

Page 13

by Elizabeth Kay


  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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  E L I Z A B E T H K AY

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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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