Seven Lies (ARC)
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“What makes you say that?”
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Emma laughed. “You! Everything you’ve said. All the things he’s
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done? The arrogance and entitlement, the pretentious affectations, those
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irritating phrases that are so bloody offensive and he doesn’t see it at all.
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My favorite,” she said, “was that one at the bar when he needed to squeeze 16
past that woman and so he didn’t say ‘excuse me’ like a normal person
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but put his hands on her hips to steer her aside— do you remember tell-
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ing me this?— and she turned around and said, ‘What was that? That you
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just did?’ and got all huffy and in his face and he panicked and called her 20
stupid so she told him to fuck off. Maybe you should tell him to fuck off 21
more often.”
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“Sure,” I said. “Marnie will definitely forgive me then.”
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“Good point,” she said. “And anyway, if other people keep telling
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him to fuck off, then sooner or later she’ll get the message. Just relax.
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It’ll unravel itself.”
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What do you think? Whose side would you have chosen? Would it
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have been him or me?
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I’m going to assume that you’d have chosen me and, frankly, you’d
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be stupid to say otherwise, because he’s already dead.
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I think that if you’d known him, if you’d had the space in which to
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form your own opinions, you would have listened to me, agreed with
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me, trusted me. I think you’d have found him overbearing and vindic-
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tive. We would have sat down together and listed his many wrongdo-
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ings and we’d have laughed at them. I would have been your ally.
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But that will never happen. Because you will never know him.
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Which is why it’s so important that you hear this story. I will tell it only 06
once, and it has to be now.
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This is how he died.
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Pay attention.
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01
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The
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Fourth Lie
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01
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Chapter Sixteen
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k
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I
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finished work early the day Charles died. I remember it so clearly,
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every part of it, from my alarm ringing that morning and the dis-
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covery that there was no milk for my cereal, to arriving home later that
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night after it had all happened. I can reel through the images like a film 15
and I’d like to say that they move me in some way, to regret or to horror 16
or to shame, but they don’t. It was in so many ways an entirely unre-
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markable day.
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Is that true? I am trying so hard to be honest. But sometimes it’s
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difficult to know what you truly think about any one thing. For exam-
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ple, I wonder if I’m telling you that it was dull simply because I would
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rather not tell you about that day at all. It doesn’t much matter either
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way; I promised that I would tell you the truth and the facts themselves
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are indisputable.
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Work had been expectedly quiet for a couple of weeks. The summer
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months had been wet and overcast, but September was set to be bright
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and warm. We were receiving ten percent fewer calls than we had in
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the same period the previous year. I assumed that people were being
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drawn away from their homes and out to parks and to pub gardens.
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It was a Friday and I decided to leave early, thirty minutes before the
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phone lines had officially closed for the weekend. I simply picked up
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my handbag and, in a very nonchalant way, walked out of the office. I
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wondered if anyone would notice, but I don’t think that they did and I
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wouldn’t have cared if they had.
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The sidewalks were quiet. The evening exodus had yet to begin. I
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contemplated heading toward my normal tube station and the line that
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took me home, but I decided against it. It was a Friday, after all. And I 06
didn’t go home on Fridays. I went to Marnie and Charles’s.
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I headed toward a different station: it was a longer walk, but I
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wouldn’t need to change tubes halfway through the journey. I waited
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only a couple of minutes and picked a seat near the middle, where I was
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less likely to be disturbed by pensioners with their walking sticks and
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pregnant women with their protruding bumps. A young couple was
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sitting across from me, dressed casually, he in tracksuit bottoms and a
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matching sweater, and she in leggings and a navy blue hoodie. They
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were about sixteen— I wondered if they ought to have been at school—
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and utterly exquisite. They were so self- contained, so smitten. His
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hand rested on her thigh, higher than was really appropriate, and yet it
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felt endearing rather than vulgar. Her head was anchored to his chest; I
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expect she could hear his heartbeat. He dipped his chin and pressed his
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lips to her forehead repeatedly, not so much kissing, just touching.
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They seemed entirely unaware of everyone watching, everyone wishing
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that they, too, could be so oblivious, so in love, so naive.
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I was so distracted by the young couple that it wasn’t until they
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stood up and got off that I began to wonder about the reception I’d re-
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ceive from Marnie and Charles. Would they let me into the flat? Would
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they even answer the door? I used to carry around a collection of wor-
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ries just like these. All of them now seem wholly insignificant: the state 27
of my nails, the gossip lost in office politics, the things my mother had 28
and hadn’t said. Jonathan taught me to unravel my anxieties by giving
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them context: my nails mattered to no one but me, even the very worst
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rumors could only lose me my job, my mother’s words were beyond my
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control. I tried to apply that logic to this new concern, and yet it didn’t 32N
dial down my panic but simply amplified it. Because within a broader
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context, this wasn’t about whether the door was opened and whether
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they were cruel to me. It was about the trajectory of one of my most
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important relationships. I couldn’t step back the way I had with my
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mother and simply accept that she was in a terrible place. I couldn’t
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pretend that the very worst outcome would affect just a small corner of
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my life. Because there are only so many small corners that can be emp-
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tied before the room begins to look barren.
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Marnie and I hadn’t spoken in a week. I know that doesn’t sound
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like a substantial period, but for us it was unusual. At school, we were
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always together: laughing too loudly on the bus, side by side behind two
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desks, eating lunch in the canteen. And, at university, we spoke every
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day because there were so many things that happened, so many mo-
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ments, when we thought, She’d find that funny, or interesting, or perti-13
nent somehow. And, even as adults, we communicated at least once a 14
day, not always a phone call, sometimes a text or an email or just a
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photograph, but— like children with paper cups and a ball of string
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stretching between their bedroom windows— there was a channel that
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connected us always.
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I hadn’t known how to reinitiate a conversation. Whenever I thought
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about it, I felt a surge of panic swelling within me. I didn’t want to ac-20
knowledge that she had been forced to choose and that she hadn’t cho-
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sen me. I didn’t want to acknowledge that she had, for the very first
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time, demanded that I leave her apartment. I couldn’t begin to think
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that this might be unfixable. I wanted to send her a photograph of my
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beans- on- toast dinner, or the sun setting over the sea, or the strange
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curl in my hair that day.
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I considered getting off the tube and heading home instead. I would
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have been fine at home, I think. I would have ordered takeout and
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watched a film. But I didn’t. I wanted to see Marnie. I needed to see her.
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I flickered between pretending that I was entirely comfortable—
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this was a familiar tube station, a familiar walk, a familiar building—
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and sudden floods of abject fear. I knew, I was sure, that she wouldn’t
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sacrifice our friendship completely. And yet I wonder now if I was really 02
as sure as I thought I was.
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If I had been that sure, so categorically sure, would I have done
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what I did?
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“Afternoon, miss,” said the doorman as I entered the lobby.
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“Evening, Jeremy,” I replied, smiling. He didn’t stand and walk to-
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ward me and declare that I was no longer allowed in this building and
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demand that I leave immediately, so I felt the beginnings of relief as I
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stood and waited for the lift.
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I hoped that Charles might still be at work and that I could talk to
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Marnie alone, to explain the situation as I saw it. I knew I could make
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her understand.
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The lift was empty, and I watched my face in the mirrored walls as
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it ascended. I think I always knew that Marnie was destined for that
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sort of life, with parquet floors and chandeliers and doormen and mir-
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rored lifts in which the glass was always clean, never a fingerprint or a 17
smudge.
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I approached their door and rang the bell, but there was no response.
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The bulb overhead had blown, and I was shrouded in shadow, standing
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in a puddle of gray, with a gold haze on either side from the lights above 21
the neighboring doors. It was quite beautiful, the dark between the
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light, and a little unnerving, too. I hovered there and waited what felt
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like an appropriate length of time before ringing the bell again, de-
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pressing the buzzer for longer this time.
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Again, there was no answer.
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I pressed my ear against the door. I was listening for Marnie’s voice
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or the radio or the rush of cars passing beneath their balcony. I could
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only hear the sound of my own skin scratching against the thick wood of
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their door. I stood back and looked from side to side. There was no one
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around; no residents or visitors at any of the apartments on this stretch 31S
of corridor.
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I rooted through my handbag: I knew that it was still in there. I
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hadn’t used it in a very long time— I hadn’t needed to— but I thought it 01
might be useful, so I’d kept it. I found the key at the bottom of the
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little pouch sewn into the inner lining of my bag, the hidden compart-
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ment where I kept painkillers and tampons and sticks of lip balm.
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I paused again, listening, and then inserted the key into the lock. I
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pulled my hand away, and looked around, checking once more for
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neighbors. But I was still alone.
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I want you to know that I wasn’t planning anything sinister. I didn’t
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know then what was going to happen next; there was no way to know.
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I suppose I really wasn’t thinking that far ahead, not when I remem-
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bered that I had the key and not moments later when I found it.
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I’d like to say that I wanted to drop off some flowers, to maybe leave
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a nice card. I’d like it even more were I able to say that I planned to cook 13
them a meal, something special.
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But those would all be lies— the kind that I’ve already warned you
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about, those that are so appealing that you, too, are tempted to be-
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lieve them.
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I had no reason to think that Charles would be dead less than ten
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minutes later.
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I let myself inside. I suppose I was planning— and it is important
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that you know this now, that you understand my intentions— to quickly
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look downstairs and then upstairs and then I’d have gone back into the
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hallway to wait for one of them to arrive home. I wasn’t going to move
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anything or take anything or overstay my welcome.
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I certainly wasn’t planning to kill him.
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I had been planning to check the kitchen. I wanted to look in the
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fridge. I would have known then if I was welcome. If she had strawber-
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ries stored in the salad drawer, then she was expecting me. And if she
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had an unopened tub of ice cream in the freezer, then she was definitely
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on my side. She would only have bought ice cream for me. I would have
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known then that it wasn’t over, that our friendship hadn’t disintegrated
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entirely, that she wasn’t willing to let me go.
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There were photographs of us together on the mantelpiece in the