Seven Lies (ARC)
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eye of the hurricane, the reality of her situation spiraling around her
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while she stood trapped in the center, waiting to be whipped up and
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spat out.
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For those first few weeks, she abandoned the internet entirely, mut-
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ing her notifications and ignoring any messages that seeped through
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that barrier. She had tried to reply to everyone in the first day or two—
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to the heartbroken and the concerned and the suspicious— and it had
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all been too much. There were too many voices and not enough time.
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She disconnected not only from her work and from the world within
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her phone, but from the greater world around us. She simply sat and
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stared, as though waiting for instructions. She hadn’t left the flat in two 32N
weeks; her first outing was the funeral.
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I recognized most of the guests there from the wedding, but there
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were a few who were unfamiliar. I found myself drawn to a woman,
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probably my age, in dark trousers and heeled boots and a smart navy
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jumper. She was tall and slim, like a mannequin, so still that she was
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almost invisible. She had very short hair, blue- black, and the sharpest 05
green eyes. Her fingers were heaped with silver rings and she had a
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small symbol, like a musical note, tattooed at the top of her spine. She
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seemed to be there alone. She stood at the back during the ceremony
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and at the back throughout the burial and, again, at the back during the
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reception. She had a black leather bag hanging from a strap over her
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shoulder and I noticed her retrieving a small red notebook and scrib-
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bling in it at least twice.
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“Do you know who that is?” I asked Marnie, pointing to the woman
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as she ducked back into the lobby. The reception was being held in a
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small room with large windows overlooking the river in what felt more
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like a conference center than a private members’ club.
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Marnie shook her head.
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She was present only in body, swaying slightly in her too- high heels,
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her eyes glazed with tears. Her mind was trapped somewhere else: in
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the moments crouched over her husband’s dead body, in the minutes
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that stretched and stretched as she pretended that there might still be
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hope. She was like a frightened child, with trembling limbs and pursed
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lips and damp cheeks.
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I remember my husband’s funeral as though through a fish- eye lens.
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The images are distorted in my mind, curved like a balloon, uncom-
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fortably bulbous. I can see the mourners as they swam in and out of
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view— their head tilts, their weak smiles, their glassy eyes— standing
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far too close to my face, their warm breath, the way they all squeezed
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my hands and my shoulders. I wonder what they saw when they looked
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at me. Did I look as fragile then, so dazed and distracted?
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The afternoon passed and Marnie and I sat together and watched as
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Charles’s school friends opened the patio doors to smoke outside and
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his university friends ordered an honorary round of shots and Louise
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wept vigorously, her head buried against the shoulder of some distant
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relative. I had tried to be sociable, to rekindle conversations with those 04
I’d met earlier in the year, to offer condolences and share memories, but 05
I sensed that all of them would rather be talking to somebody else. I
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felt— I have always felt— as though I am someone to whom people say,
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“It’s been lovely, but I must go and find my friend,” or “It’s been great to 08
catch up, but I’m just going to pop to the bar for another drink,” or “Oh, 09
I’ve just spotted Rebecca. Will you excuse me?” So I was relieved when
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Marnie gripped my forearm and stood up and ushered me toward the
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entrance and begged me to please take her home.
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We sat silent in the taxi. The sun was setting behind us, earlier now
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that autumn was drawing nearer, and there was something about the
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orange reflected in the side mirrors that felt profound. It was like a
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farewell scene in a film, and it made me feel reassured, as though the
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world was grateful for my intervention.
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We arrived at my flat and I made tea in the kitchen, as Marnie
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changed out of her dress and into my favorite pajamas.
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“I didn’t know,” she said, coming back in and perching on a stool in
20
front of the breakfast bar. “I didn’t know how bad it was. I didn’t know
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then, when you were feeling it, how bad it really is.”
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“You did everything you could,” I said, pouring the boiling water
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into two mugs. “And anyway— ”
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“I didn’t,” she said. “Thank you for saying that. But we both know
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that I didn’t.”
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I placed a cup of milky tea on the counter in front of her. “Drink
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this,” I said. “It’ll help.”
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She nodded and wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic mug.
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I wondered— before Jonathan died— if a person who suffers a great
30
loss inevitably became more compassionate. Now that I have experi-
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enced my own great tragedy, I feel quite sure that— if this is possible—
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capacity for compassion, but I am less empathetic. I understood almost
01
intimately the burden of Marnie’s grief, but I felt very little sympathy
02
toward Louise, with her pouting and her hysteria and her general non-
03
sense.
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And I suppose my sympathy slackened slightly for Marnie, too,
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when she compared our respective losses. I knew that she was experi
-
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encing a genuine, agonizing, devastating grief. But it is one thing to lose 07
a husband who is good and kind and loving, and it is quite another to
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lose someone who was never good enough at all.
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Chapter Twenty- Two
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I want to tell you about the weeks after my husband died. They were
without doubt the very worst of my life and the words to represent
them feel achingly incompetent. There is no language sufficient for the
15
tremors that shake through you in the aftermath of an incredible loss.
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There is the death itself, which is everywhere, all the time, in every
17
memory and in every moment that you wish you were with them. But
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that is only one pillar of grief. In its entirety, it is much more than the 19
loss of a person; it is the loss of a life.
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In those first few months, I was grieving in a brutal, ruthless way for
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moments that hadn’t happened, for things that now never would. If
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over one shoulder were my memories of the past— how we met, our
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wedding, our honeymoon— then over the other were the memories we
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hadn’t yet made, the things we’d expected for our life together: the
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children we were going to have, and the houses we might live in, and
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the places we would travel. I was caught between a past that felt too
27
full of feeling and a future that seemed bereft of it.
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I was restless with the scale of it, unable to position myself within
29
my own life, fighting within my own mind to find any kind of quiet. I
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couldn’t sit and remember him and mourn him. I couldn’t focus on any
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one moment, because there were too many things that felt insurmount-
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able. I was flighty and erratic, and I struggle now to recount this in any 01
accurate way, because I was barely there at all.
02
But those few weeks are important. In some ways, they are where
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this all began.
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05
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That night, just after he’d died, I went to the Vauxhall flat. I discov-07
ered things that weren’t mine in my old room: clothing folded on the
08
chair in the corner, jeans that clearly belonged to a man and three shirts 09
on hangers. I climbed into Marnie’s bed instead.
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I could taste salt on my cracked lips. My throat was dry, and my
11
brain pulsed within my skull, the sockets of my eyes throbbing and
12
pounding and jarring against my cheekbones. My face felt swollen, my
13
skin too tight. I stared at the ceiling, the patterns of light cast by the 14
blinds and the streetlamps outside, and I willed myself empty, my mind
15
quiet, my body still. I tried to imagine myself somewhere else but there
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was nowhere to go, nowhere that he wasn’t.
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I woke to the sound of voices in the hallway, then the key in the
18
lock, laughter and footsteps against the plastic wood- effect flooring. I 19
recognized Marnie’s giggle immediately, but the other voice belonged
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to a man, its pitch lower, resonating and vibrating within a broader
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chest.
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They went into the kitchen. I could hear the steady hum of their
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conversation. Then the front door opened and closed again and the
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radio was turned on and I went into the kitchen and I saw Marnie bent
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over a cardboard box, folding bubble wrap around champagne flutes.
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“That was quick,” she said, standing and turning around. “Oh,” she
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said. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong? Hey. What is it? What’s
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happened?”
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Charles returned to the flat half an hour later. “I’ve got more boxes,”
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he called from the hallway. “Another six. Do you think that’ll be
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enough? I could have got more, but I wasn’t sure and I also wondered
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if— ” He stopped in the doorway and simply said, “Oh.”
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Marnie and I were wrapped together on the sofa. I don’t think I
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could have told you where one of us ended and the other began. My
05
head was against her chest, her arm draped across my back, and our legs
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were tangled like tentacles.
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That was the first time I saw him. He was smart and tall and hand-
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some. He had broad shoulders and an ironed shirt, thin pink stripes
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against white, tucked into his jeans. His top button was undone and I
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could see the hairs of his chest reaching up toward the base of his neck.
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He had a strong jaw and a narrow nose and his eyebrows seemed almost
12
black, his hair a very dark brown and salted at the sides by strands
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of gray.
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“One minute,” she whispered into my hair and then she was gone.
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There were murmurs in the hallway and then the front door opened
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and closed again and then she returned.
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I didn’t see him again for a while; I suppose I don’t remember leav-
18
ing the flat for several weeks. But Marnie was keen that I got out, that I 19
didn’t spend all day every day lying in the same filthy bedding, sweating 20
and crying and torturing myself, and so she eventually started to send
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me on menial errands. She needed butter to bake a cake, more
milk for
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her cereal, a notepad, please, from the corner shop just down the road.
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I returned from the supermarket perhaps a month later and he was
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standing in the hallway of the flat, just about to leave. He was wearing
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a suit with a purple silk tie.
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“Afternoon,” he said, holding open the door. “You must be Jane,
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right? Well, I must be going. Nice to meet you. And sorry— you know—
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about everything.”
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He stepped around me and disappeared down the hallway.
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I caught the front door seconds before it slammed shut.
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He started appearing more regularly after that, popping by on
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weekday evenings, just to drop something off, a package that had been
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delivered to him, or to collect something— his stuff was everywhere:
01
neat piles of jumpers and rows of his shoes and his watches lined up on
02
the windowsill. Sometimes he stayed over. She had mentioned— a cou-
03
ple of months earlier, I think, when I was still living in Islington— that 04
she was seeing somebody. But back then Marnie was always seeing
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somebody. She was always going on dates and sending me messages
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about new men and becoming instantly infatuated and then very
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quickly indifferent.
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But soon he was with us more often than he wasn’t and one night I
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heard him and Marnie arguing in shouted whispers because they had
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their new apartment, dammit, he said, and when she’d suggested they
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buy somewhere together, he hadn’t envisaged living there alone and
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how long was this going to last, really, what was the plan?
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That was the first time I felt anything other than indifference to-
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ward Charles.
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His presence up until that point had barely registered. I had noticed
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him in the flat, of course, but I was broadly oblivious to everything
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other than my grief.
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But that moment changed things; it changed everything. It lit a fire
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within me. Suddenly, I had a hatred that overwhelmed my grief. The
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anger felt fresh and exciting: I felt powerful and charged in a way that I 21
hadn’t for weeks. I couldn’t believe that a man— an adult man— could
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be so terribly insensitive. I couldn’t believe that he would make his liv-23
ing arrangements a priority over my grief, over my dead husband. I