24
too. It was a very different loss. Jonathan disappeared all at once.
25
Whereas Marnie was slipping away. I was the sand: solid and static and
26
stuck in one spot. And she was the sea: being sucked from me, siphoned
27
away by a force greater than either of us.
28
There had been a moment in which she might have chosen me. She
29
could have asked him to leave instead. She could have stepped away
30
from his arm around her waist. And yet she didn’t. Because she be-
S31
lieved what he was saying, that he was innocent, that the lies were
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01
mine. There are some natural disasters so devastating that it is almost
02
impossible to recover all that has been lost.
03
I stood and I walked along the grassy verge and back toward the
04
hotel. I contemplated settling the bill and heading straight back to Lon-
05
don. But I had committed to paying for the room already and so I un-
06
packed my small rucksack and ran a bath so hot that the steam clouded
07
the metal taps and the mirror and filled the room. I undressed and slid
08
beneath the water, feeling it pull at my hair as my face broke back
09
through the surface. The sun was low in the sky, decorating the tiles in
10
shadow. I heard voices floating up from the road underneath my win-
11
dow, a young girl squealing delightedly and the resonating laugh of a
12
much older man.
13
I stood up in the bath, the water lapping at my calves, and I peered
14
out through the mottled glass, pressing my body against the wall to
15
shield it from sight. She was very young, maybe seven or eight, and
16
wearing only a swimsuit. Her father was wearing swim shorts, still wet,
17
the water seeping into the hem of his T- shirt, and I remembered when
18
my father walked around like that, on beach holidays in Cornwall, after
19
a day spent nestled in sand. A woman— her mother— was behind them,
20
two towels flung over her shoulder and a big woven basket swinging by
21
her ankles. The girl started laughing again and bent in the middle, liter-22
ally doubled over, unable to continue walking because the movement
23
within her was just so much. Her father was laughing, too— at her, at
24
her joy, at her fearless, noisy laughter. I wanted so much to be part of
25
that family.
26
I pulled on my dressing gown, grabbed the hair dryer from beneath
27
the sink, and went back into the bedroom. I plugged it in. I would dry
28
my hair. I would put on my clothes. And I would be part of that family.
29
I don’t mean literally. I wouldn’t literally be part of that family.
30
But I was determined to be part of something more than myself.
31S
I walked back along the corridor and through the reception area. I
32N
stepped out of the doors and onto a narrow road, bookended on either
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side by two small streams. There were lights everywhere: in the pubs,
01
in the restaurants, in other hotels. I walked toward the sea, along a path 02
with a steep slope down to the pebbled beach. There were children,
03
naked but for the towels wrapped around their shoulders, skipping up
04
and down, running to the top and then back to meet their parents, who
05
were climbing more slowly, tired after a long day of sand and sea and
06
games. There were two men carrying parasols and windbreakers and
07
with sunglasses propped on their foreheads. And two women with
08
their hair pulled back in tight ponytails, damp bikini triangles im-
09
printed on their linen shirts.
10
I tried to imagine myself in the shoes of one of those women, ruck-
11
sack on my back, my children circling, sand embedded in the creases of
12
my elbows, and I couldn’t help but imagine Jonathan there at my side,
13
a brightly colored parasol slung over his shoulder.
14
Even then, I couldn’t envisage a version of my future without him in
15
it. Which was ridiculous. Because, by then, he had been dead for longer
16
than we’d known one another.
17
And yet it felt like no time at all.
18
Before he died, I had never given much thought to widowhood. Al-
19
though I suppose if you had asked for my thoughts on it, I’d have offered 20
a confident, considered response. I had lost grandparents and I knew
21
the weight of that familiar ache. Those losses had been substantial—
22
the culmination of long, well- lived lives— and yet their passing felt
23
insignificant, too. Those deaths were not tragedies. They did not be-
24
come ghosts.
25
Whereas Jonathan did. I still carry him into every conversation. I
26
bring him to every table. I am the young woman whose husband died.
27
His ghost sits beside me at weddings— do you know that she was mar-
28
ried, yes, she was, her husband died— and at funerals— she buried her 29
husband a few years ago, did you know, yes, her husband died.
30
He is there in every future, in every hope, in every dream.
S31
He haunts me, always.
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01
02
03
04
05
Chapter Fifteen
06
07
k
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
I visited Emma on my way home. She was living in a studio flat south
of the river. It was a twenty- minute walk from the nearest tube sta-
tion and the closest bus stop was almost ten minutes away and across
15
an unlit car park. I didn’t have much to spare, but even with my small
16
contribution and the odd payment from my mother’s account, it was all
17
that she could aff
ord.
18
We’d become even closer since she’d moved out of our parents’
19
house. Away from my mother— who’d always insisted on being part of
20
whatever we did together— we discovered that we really quite liked
21
each other. She was refreshingly honest, as only a sister can be. And I
22
think— and I hope that this doesn’t sound petty— that being needed by
23
her was fulfilling for me.
24
She didn’t work regularly anymore. She had been a freelance editor
25
and, for a while, she was incredibly busy, with manuscripts stacked on
26
the linoleum tiles, working through the night in order to meet her
27
deadlines, always in demand. She’d been so diligent and focused, never
28
afraid to interrogate a problem, to ask the difficult questions. But her
29
concentration dwindled, and she started to pore over every text, too
30
indecisive, afraid that she might upset a rhythm, taking so long that
31S
eventually everyone stopped sending her new projects. She then spent
32N
much of her time working with local charities. But it was all voluntary.
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I stood on the balcony in front of her flat and banged on the bright
01
red door. There was a doorbell nailed to the frame, but it had never
02
worked.
03
“I’m coming!” she yelled as I banged a second time. “Learn some
04
fucking manners.”
05
“Oh,” she said when she opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
06
“Clearly,” I said. “Is that how you greet everyone?”
07
The front door opened straight into the only room: the lounge, the
08
kitchen, the dining room, and the bedroom all combined in one small
09
space. The kitchen was at one end; the white units were relatively new
10
but the floor tiles were speckled orange. The blinds were made of plas-
11
tic and held together with thin white string. There was a coffee table, a 12
sofa, a small television, a wardrobe, and a few bookshelves. And beside
13
the door that led to the small bathroom, framed above the radiator,
14
there was a large sketch of a very thin woman. It wasn’t much, but
15
Emma had never needed very much.
16
“No one visits,” she said. “It’s only ever someone trying to sell me
17
something.” She stepped back to let me in. “Why are you here?” she
18
asked.
19
“Charming,” I replied.
20
“I don’t mean it like that,” she said.
21
“I’ve been to Beer,” I said.
22
“To Beer?” she asked. “In Devon?”
23
“Where Jonathan and I went. Do you remember?”
24
“Why’d you go there?” she asked.
25
“Marnie and I argued.”
26
“You told her.”
27
I nodded.
28
She gestured toward the sofa.
29
“I told you not to say anything,” she said.
30
“I had to,” I replied.
S31
“You bloody didn’t,” she said, taking three dark chocolate digestive
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01
biscuits from a packet and placing them onto a napkin for me. “Watch
02
the crumbs.”
03
I nodded and sat down at one end of the gray sofa. She unrolled it
04
into a bed each evening.
05
“You could have just pretended that everything was normal,” she
06
said. “Like I told you to. Then you wouldn’t be in this situation. You’d
07
still be friends.”
08
“But she needed to know the truth about her husband. Wouldn’t
09
you want to know the truth about your husband?” It seemed obvious to
10
me that if something couldn’t be said and yet still needed saying, then
11
it had to be said.
12
Emma sat on the sofa beside me. Her trouser leg lifted slightly so
13
that I could see the bones that made up her ankle. She clutched a mug
14
of warm tea between her hands. I bit into one of the biscuits and it was
15
softer than I’d expected, almost damp inside.
16
She was quiet, thinking.
17
“No,” she said. “I don’t think I would.”
18
“If your husband was a pervert?” I said. “You wouldn’t want to
19
know? And imagine that I knew he was a pervert. Put yourself in Mar-
20
nie’s position. You wouldn’t want me to say something?”
21
“I wouldn’t believe you,” she said.
22
I sat up and several crumbs shook themselves loose from the napkin
23
and fell onto Emma’s sofa. She leaned over to brush them away.
24
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why not?”
25
“Because,” she said, and then she paused. “Oh, don’t be so naive,”
26
she said eventually. “If I told you that Jonathan had hit on me, you
27
wouldn’t have believed me, not for a second.”
28
“I’d have listened to what you had to say and then— ”
29
“And then you’d have taken his side. You know what they say, and it’s
30
what everyone always says, to never give up your friends for a man, but
31S
it doesn’t matter because everyone does. Friendships are one thing, but
32N
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a true love, a romantic love? That trumps everything. Always has. Al-
01
ways will. You might like to think otherwise, but you’d have hated me.”
02
“It’s different,” I said. “Jonathan was . . . He would never— ”
03
“Ah,” she interrupted. “That’s what everyone thinks. That’s why you
04
can’t blame her for choosing him.” She sighed. “They don’t know they’re
05
thinking it, but it’s always there, whenever anything bad happens to
06
somebody else. A little voice that says, But it wouldn’t happen to me.”
&n
bsp; 07
I laughed and more crumbs fell from my T- shirt. “What a luxury,”
08
I said.
09
Emma smiled. We both knew how it felt to be the people to whom
10
bad things happened. It wasn’t that way for most of our childhoods, but
11
something changed in our adolescence. My father’s relationship with
12
his mistress became common knowledge and we became that family,
13
those girls, the daughters of that man. Emma fell first; she became that
14
girl, the thin girl, the girl who didn’t eat. My husband died. Our father 15
left. Our mother was diagnosed. Maybe once you start— once you be-
16
come one of those people— you can never stop being one.
17
Emma and I are united by a history of stares and secrets and whis-
18
pers. Perhaps that is why we both choose to live anonymous lives in a
19
city so big it swallows you.
20
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?” I asked.
21
“I don’t know,” Emma replied.
22
“I think she will,” I say. “I think I can make her.”
23
“You going to record him and send it to her?” Emma smirked. She
24
loved that story.
25
“You said you wouldn’t mention that again,” I replied. She was al-
26
ways teasing, always trying to ease the tension within me. “And, no.”
27
“You would if you could,” she insisted. “I know you. It’s still your
28
style. Skulking in when the place is quiet, clambering into a wardrobe.
29
Detective Black. Delighted to make your acquaintance. All those martial 30
arts classes. Do you have a black Lycra jumpsuit?”
S31
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
“He’s too smart,” I said. “He wouldn’t say anything incriminating.”
02
“Oh bloody fuck,” she said, and she laughed. “You’ve really thought
03
about it.”
04
“Only just now because you brought it up.” This was so typical of
05
her. It was her idea but she was blaming me.
06
“Chill,” she said. “You’re getting crumbs all over the place.”
07
“But you do think it’ll be okay, don’t you?” I asked.
08
“Probably. She’ll see sense eventually.”
09
“What do you mean?”
10
“Well, it’s not going to last, is it? The marriage?”
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 18