02
disruptive solution and to minimize her own embarrassment.
03
“Of course,” said Marnie. “I’ll collect my things on Monday.”
04
“Fine,” said Abi. She turned to me and put her hands on my upper
05
arms and apologized profusely for the behavior of her staff and prom-
06
ised to address it immediately and asked if I’d please excuse her so that 07
she could have a quick word with her colleague. And then she walked
08
up to Steven and marched him into the pub.
09
Marnie ran up to me and she squealed and she threw her arms
10
around my neck and we were laughing because the whole moment was
11
so ridiculous, and because we couldn’t believe that it had worked but it
12
had, and because we felt powerful and galvanized, and because we
13
thought then that we were agents of our own lives rather than simply
14
two young women. We were united. It bonded us in a way that felt
15
exciting: a secret shared, a collective triumph, the sense that together
16
we were unstoppable.
17
We went to a bar on the way home and commandeered two velvet
18
armchairs tucked into a corner. It was still early in the evening and
19
there were few other customers, but the band was warming up at the
20
back and the bar staff were lighting candles and cleaning glasses. I or-
21
dered a bottle of champagne, because although my salary was low and
22
hers now nonexistent, we had something to celebrate.
23
We walked home later that evening, her arm looped through mine,
24
and we recounted the madness of our day. She clapped her hands to-
25
gether excitedly when I reminded her that there was no work anymore,
26
that she was free from the nine- to- five of office life. She breathed hot 27
air onto the mirrored wall of the elevator and drew a smiling face with
28
her finger. She jumped on our sofa, and insisted that I jump, too. It was 29
silly. It was fun. She held my hands as we bounced. I remember that we
30
were laughing and that it felt so ordinary to laugh noisily together. But 31S
now? I struggle to recall what it really felt like to be that way with her, 32N
to lose myself in her, to be so effortlessly us.
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01
02
03
04
Chapter Thirteen
05
k
06
07
08
09
10
I
11
visited Marnie and Charles the following Friday— just after they’d
12
returned from their honeymoon— and we were sitting, the three of
13
us, on their sofa. The chandelier overhead was switched off and the
14
wall lamps cast a golden shadow against the walls. There were candles
15
everywhere, flames flickering around their wicks. The balcony was hid-
16
den behind thick red curtains hanging in waves.
17
It had turned into the wettest August on record and— everyone had
18
agreed: the postman, the weather forecaster, my colleagues— the most
19
miserable in living memory. Every day that week had been obscured by
20
dense, heavy rain, fat droplets that bounced when they hit the sidewalk
21
or the hood of a car.
22
“The rain!” said Marnie. “We’d not seen anything like it for weeks,
23
not a drop. Everyone had said that summer in Italy was madness, that
24
we’d roast right through, and they were right. So we weren’t dressed for
25
it at all when we landed back here. We were drenched by the time we
26
got the bags out of the cab and into the lobby. Weren’t we, Charles?
27
Weren’t we drenched?”
28
He nodded with the rhythm of her words. “Oh, absolutely,” he re-
29
plied. “Soaked right through.”
30
They said that they had ventured out only once in the last two days,
S31
a hasty trip to the supermarket to restock the cupboards, and kept
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104
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
the curtains closed and the windows locked and the rain as far away as
02
possible. Rebecca and James— I recognized the names— had come for
03
lunch the day before.
04
“They’ve taken joint parental leave,” said Charles. “They’re both off
05
work. It’s the strangest thing.”
06
“Did I tell you they had a baby?” asked Marnie. “She’s four months
07
now. I’ve genuinely never seen a cuter child. She’s adorable. These big,
08
bright eyes, piercingly blue— ”
09
Charles pointed at my empty wineglass. “Top up?” he asked, and I
10
nodded.
11
“He was so good with her,” whispered Marnie, as he went into the
12
kitchen. “Honestly, there is nothing sexier than an attractive man with
13
a baby. He does this swaggery, confident thing, I know, but he’s soppy
14
as anything, really. He wanted to hold her the whole time. He barely let
15
me have a go at all.”
16
I smiled and nodded, although I couldn’t imagine it.
17
“Did you fill mine?” asked Marnie as Charles returned with the
18
bottle.
19
“Of course,” he replied. “It’s on the side.”
20
“Thank you,” she said, standing to kiss him. “I better check on
21
dinner.”
22
He filled up my glass and then connected his phone to the fancy
23
new television, bought, he said, with gift vouchers from the wedding.
24
“I’ll show you some of the photos,” he said, and then explained the
25
intricate details of this specific model— the display, something about
26
pixels, the strength of the processor, and several different acronyms
27
that meant nothing to me. I nodded and smiled and tried to look im-
28
pressed. I was struck more than anything by the size of it; it was
29
stretched across the entire fireplace.
30
I reached for the remote control, which was standing upright in a
31S
small wicker basket on the side table. Charles was in front of the screen, 32N
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S E V E N L I E S
105
facing it, blocking my view, and yet he must have heard my movement
01
because without turning around he said, “Put it down.”
02
“Don’t you need— ” I began.
03
“The control? No. If I need it, I’ll get it. If that’s okay with you, Jane.”
04
He twisted, peering over his shoulder, inspecting me, staring at the
05
remote still clasped in my fist. I placed it on the sofa cushion.
06
He smiled. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll be amazed at what this thing
07
can do.”
08
He pressed a few buttons and began scrolling through their honey-
09
moon photographs. Somewhat unexpectedly I found myself intrigued
10
by the different locations, the beautiful scenery, that sense of the unfa-11
miliar. I wasn’t so keen on his ongoing commentary— “and that was
12
where we . . .” and “when we visited that beach . . .” and “that was the 13
bathroom of the second hotel”— but the images themselves were quite
14
something. I responded to his questions, to his descriptions, to his end-
15
less twaddle— “Oh, what glorious fields,” I said, and, “Sorry, where was 16
that again?”— but I wasn’t really listening.
17
Instead I imagined myself on their trip: posing beside Marnie on the
18
Spanish Steps, smiling on a bike at the top of a hill, surrounded by a
19
dozen wineglasses in a vineyard. It was surprisingly easy to erase
20
Charles from each image, to blur his entire being, so that he barely
21
existed. I could unsee his broad shoulders, his tight T- shirts, his white 22
teeth embedded in a perfect smirk. I could unsee his hair, slicked back
23
and thick with gel, and his muscular calves and his golden tan.
24
I could hear Marnie in the kitchen, and I amplified her noise to over-
25
whelm his. She was talking into her camera, filming herself as she pre-
26
pared dinner, describing each step that she was taking, every ingredient
27
added, every slice and stir and shake.
28
“I always wash my hands after breaking eggs, particularly when I’m
29
separating out the yokes, and I’ve been doing this quite a while, but it
30
still gets everywhere.”
S31
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10 6
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
“Should you throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks? I mean,
02
it’s entirely up to you, but I firmly believe that it’s the most accurate 03
way to test whether or not your pasta is cooked, and oh”— a yelp— “looks 04
like it is!”
05
“Should you put tomatoes in a green salad? Absolutely not.”
06
“Two minutes,” she called. And then, a little quieter, “When some-
07
one’s cooking for me, I’m always grateful to have a little bit of notice
08
before I’m due to sit down to eat because— and maybe this is just me;
09
let me know in the comments if you get this, too— I always need to go
10
to the bathroom before a meal. I don’t know what it is, but I just do!”
11
Charles looked over and rolled his eyes— gently, lovingly— and I
12
smiled in response.
13
“Right- oh,” he said. “Let’s whiz through the last few before dinner.
14
You’re not bored, are you?”
15
I shook my head and he flicked through the photographs at speed—
16
beautiful sunsets, orange and yellow and pink and purple, the rolling
17
hills, rippling in every shade of green, the poppy fields, a canvas of red 18
peppered by small black seeds. Bowls of pasta, platters of cured meats
19
and cheeses, pizzas the size of dustbin lids. Charles on a train, his eyes 20
closed, a crossword half finished on the table in front of him. (You
21
might like to know that crosswords were the only thing that Charles
22
and I could discuss, could do together, without the air thickening
23
around us.)
24
He continued to jab at his phone, but the television had frozen and
25
one image remained static and unblinking on the screen. It was a pho-
26
tograph of Marnie, sitting up on a sun lounger, her legs either side of the 27
wooden frame, smiling as she rubbed sunblock onto her arms. Her
28
straw hat hung jauntily over her forehead and her bikini had lifted
29
slightly, revealing the even fairer skin on the underside of her breast.
30
She was smiling, laughing, I think, and I can picture her scolding
31S
Charles, like a mother might scold her son, telling him not to take a
32N
photo, not then, only when she was ready.
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S E V E N L I E S
10 7
But I would have taken that photograph, too. Because entirely un-
01
aware of the camera she was far more herself, far less stretched and
02
posed and pouting, and far more the woman we both recognized and
03
perhaps loved.
04
“That was the last hotel,” said Charles, turning off the television so
05
that the screen snapped back to black. “It had the most incredible res-
06
taurant. It had a Michelin star. We did the tasting menu, which was
07
quite expensive but totally worth it, just delicious.”
08
I wondered if perhaps I would one day go on a second honeymoon.
09
I thought it unlikely then and I think it even less likely now.
10
Marnie called us to the table.
11
“I’ve made carbonara,” she said. She looked at me as she pulled out
12
her seat. “But not the normal one, not the one we used to make at the
13
flat.” She turned to Charles. “It’s an homage to our honeymoon,” she said.
14
“With the recipe from that hilltop place. Do you remember the one?
15
Did you show Jane the pictures from the top? The food there was just— ”
16
She held her fingers to her lips and kissed them: a loud, wet mwah. “I 17
had to beg for the recipe— a
family classic, apparently— but it’s particu-18
larly good, I think. Better than the one we did in the flat. I’ll stop ram-19
bling. I’ll let you try it.”
20
She scooped a large serving into my bowl and a ridiculous portion
21
onto Charles’s plate. He didn’t like to eat from bowls. He didn’t like it 22
when the different constituents of a meal mixed together. He didn’t
23
want to have spaghetti and salad in the same mouthful.
24
I twisted my fork against the lip of my bowl, and I could see straight-
25
away that the texture was different. The eggs had formed a silky coat-
26
ing around each strand of spaghetti. Our carbonara— and don’t get me
27
wrong; I liked it, and I still think it’s my favorite— was clumpy with
28
lumps of scrambled egg.
29
“Delicious,” said Charles. “Honestly, this tastes exactly the same.”
30
Marnie clapped her hands together. “That’s what I wanted you to
S31
say. And, Jane? Do you like it?”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to say that I prefer it to our carbonara, 02
because that would be disloyal, but it is delicious.”
03
Marnie smiled. “I knew you’d love it.” She refilled my wineglass.
04
“We brought this bottle home,” she said. “I thought it was a bit mad—
05
you know it’s never going to taste as good— but actually it’s traveled
06
rather better than I thought it would. Don’t you think?” she asked.
07
Charles nodded. “Definitely,” he replied. “Great pasta, wonderful
08
wine. If it weren’t for the rain, I could almost believe we were still
09
there.”
10
This might sound strange— and perhaps you won’t believe me— but
11
until that moment I’d never once felt like an unwelcome guest in their
12
relationship. I’d been very aware of the two competing relationships.
13
But I’d assumed that they could coexist, sort of side by side. And yet I
14
was becoming more and more conscious that my friendship with Mar-
15
nie felt like a paragraph in their story, that there was no space for
16
anything other than that one love.
17
The first few months after Jonathan died are shadowy; I can’t re-
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 15