Book Read Free

Seven Lies (ARC)

Page 24

by Elizabeth Kay


  eye of the hurricane, the reality of her situation spiraling around her

  22

  while she stood trapped in the center, waiting to be whipped up and

  23

  spat out.

  24

  For those first few weeks, she abandoned the internet entirely, mut-

  25

  ing her notifications and ignoring any messages that seeped through

  26

  that barrier. She had tried to reply to everyone in the first day or two—

  27

  to the heartbroken and the concerned and the suspicious— and it had

  28

  all been too much. There were too many voices and not enough time.

  29

  She disconnected not only from her work and from the world within

  30

  her phone, but from the greater world around us. She simply sat and

  31S

  stared, as though waiting for instructions. She hadn’t left the flat in two 32N

  weeks; her first outing was the funeral.

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 168

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  S E V E N L I E S

  16 9

  I recognized most of the guests there from the wedding, but there

  01

  were a few who were unfamiliar. I found myself drawn to a woman,

  02

  probably my age, in dark trousers and heeled boots and a smart navy

  03

  jumper. She was tall and slim, like a mannequin, so still that she was

  04

  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

  06

  small symbol, like a musical note, tattooed at the top of her spine. She

  07

  seemed to be there alone. She stood at the back during the ceremony

  08

  and at the back throughout the burial and, again, at the back during the

  09

  reception. She had a black leather bag hanging from a strap over her

  10

  shoulder and I noticed her retrieving a small red notebook and scrib-

  11

  bling in it at least twice.

  12

  “Do you know who that is?” I asked Marnie, pointing to the woman

  13

  as she ducked back into the lobby. The reception was being held in a

  14

  small room with large windows overlooking the river in what felt more

  15

  like a conference center than a private members’ club.

  16

  Marnie shook her head.

  17

  She was present only in body, swaying slightly in her too- high heels,

  18

  her eyes glazed with tears. Her mind was trapped somewhere else: in

  19

  the moments crouched over her husband’s dead body, in the minutes

  20

  that stretched and stretched as she pretended that there might still be

  21

  hope. She was like a frightened child, with trembling limbs and pursed

  22

  lips and damp cheeks.

  23

  I remember my husband’s funeral as though through a fish- eye lens.

  24

  The images are distorted in my mind, curved like a balloon, uncom-

  25

  fortably bulbous. I can see the mourners as they swam in and out of

  26

  view— their head tilts, their weak smiles, their glassy eyes— standing

  27

  far too close to my face, their warm breath, the way they all squeezed

  28

  my hands and my shoulders. I wonder what they saw when they looked

  29

  at me. Did I look as fragile then, so dazed and distracted?

  30

  The afternoon passed and Marnie and I sat together and watched as

  S31

  Charles’s school friends opened the patio doors to smoke outside and

  N32

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 168

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 169

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  170

  E L I Z A B E T H K AY

  01

  his university friends ordered an honorary round of shots and Louise

  02

  wept vigorously, her head buried against the shoulder of some distant

  03

  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

  06

  felt— I have always felt— as though I am someone to whom people say,

  07

  “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

  10

  Marnie gripped my forearm and stood up and ushered me toward the

  11

  entrance and begged me to please take her home.

  12

  We sat silent in the taxi. The sun was setting behind us, earlier now

  13

  that autumn was drawing nearer, and there was something about the

  14

  orange reflected in the side mirrors that felt profound. It was like a

  15

  farewell scene in a film, and it made me feel reassured, as though the

  16

  world was grateful for my intervention.

  17

  We arrived at my flat and I made tea in the kitchen, as Marnie

  18

  changed out of her dress and into my favorite pajamas.

  19

  “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

  21

  then, when you were feeling it, how bad it really is.”

  22

  “You did everything you could,” I said, pouring the boiling water

  23

  into two mugs. “And anyway— ”

  24

  “I didn’t,” she said. “Thank you for saying that. But we both know

  25

  that I didn’t.”

  26

  I placed a cup of milky tea on the counter in front of her. “Drink

  27

  this,” I said. “It’ll help.”

  28

  She nodded and wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic mug.

  29

  I wondered— before Jonathan died— if a person who suffers a great

  30

  loss inevitably became more compassionate. Now that I have experi-

  31S

  enced my own great tragedy, I feel quite sure that— if this is possible—

  32N

  the answer is both absolutely yes and definitely not. I have a greater 9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 170

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  S E V E N L I E S

  171

  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.

  04

  And I suppose my sympathy slackened slightly for Marnie, too,

  05

  when she compared our respective losses. I knew that she was experi
-

  06

  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

  08

  lose someone who was never good enough at all.

  09

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  S31

  N32

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 170

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 171

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  01

  02

  03

  04

  05

  Chapter Twenty- Two

  06

  07

  k

  08

  09

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  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.

  16

  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

  18

  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.

  20

  In those first few months, I was grieving in a brutal, ruthless way for

  21

  moments that hadn’t happened, for things that now never would. If

  22

  over one shoulder were my memories of the past— how we met, our

  23

  wedding, our honeymoon— then over the other were the memories we

  24

  hadn’t yet made, the things we’d expected for our life together: the

  25

  children we were going to have, and the houses we might live in, and

  26

  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.

  28

  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

  30

  couldn’t sit and remember him and mourn him. I couldn’t focus on any

  31S

  one moment, because there were too many things that felt insurmount-

  32N

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 172

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  S E V E N L I E S

  173

  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

  03

  this all began.

  04

  05

  06

  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.

  10

  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

  16

  was nowhere to go, nowhere that he wasn’t.

  17

  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

  20

  to a man, its pitch lower, resonating and vibrating within a broader

  21

  chest.

  22

  They went into the kitchen. I could hear the steady hum of their

  23

  conversation. Then the front door opened and closed again and the

  24

  radio was turned on and I went into the kitchen and I saw Marnie bent

  25

  over a cardboard box, folding bubble wrap around champagne flutes.

  26

  “That was quick,” she said, standing and turning around. “Oh,” she

  27

  said. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong? Hey. What is it? What’s

  28

  happened?”

  29

  Charles returned to the flat half an hour later. “I’ve got more boxes,”

  30

  he called from the hallway. “Another six. Do you think that’ll be

  S31

  N32

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 172

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 173

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  174

  E L I Z A B E T H K AY

  01

  enough? I could have got more, but I wasn’t sure and I also wondered

  02

  if— ” He stopped in the doorway and simply said, “Oh.”

  03

  Marnie and I were wrapped together on the sofa. I don’t think I

  04

  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

  06

  were tangled like tentacles.

  07

  That was the first time I saw him. He was smart and tall and hand-

  08

  some. He had broad shoulders and an ironed shirt, thin pink stripes

  09

  against white, tucked into his jeans. His top button was undone and I

  10

  could see the hairs of his chest reaching up toward the base of his neck.

  11

  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

  13

  of gray.

  14

  “One minute,” she whispered into my hair and then she was gone.

  15

  There were murmurs in the hallway and then the front door opened

  16

  and closed again and then she returned.

  17

  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

  21

  me on menial errands. She needed butter to bake a cake, more
milk for

  22

  her cereal, a notepad, please, from the corner shop just down the road.

  23

  I returned from the supermarket perhaps a month later and he was

  24

  standing in the hallway of the flat, just about to leave. He was wearing

  25

  a suit with a purple silk tie.

  26

  “Afternoon,” he said, holding open the door. “You must be Jane,

  27

  right? Well, I must be going. Nice to meet you. And sorry— you know—

  28

  about everything.”

  29

  He stepped around me and disappeared down the hallway.

  30

  I caught the front door seconds before it slammed shut.

  31S

  He started appearing more regularly after that, popping by on

  32N

  weekday evenings, just to drop something off, a package that had been

  9781984879714_SevenLies_TX.indd 174

  11/6/19 4:33 PM

  S E V E N L I E S

  175

  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

  05

  somebody. She was always going on dates and sending me messages

  06

  about new men and becoming instantly infatuated and then very

  07

  quickly indifferent.

  08

  But soon he was with us more often than he wasn’t and one night I

  09

  heard him and Marnie arguing in shouted whispers because they had

  10

  their new apartment, dammit, he said, and when she’d suggested they

  11

  buy somewhere together, he hadn’t envisaged living there alone and

  12

  how long was this going to last, really, what was the plan?

  13

  That was the first time I felt anything other than indifference to-

  14

  ward Charles.

  15

  His presence up until that point had barely registered. I had noticed

  16

  him in the flat, of course, but I was broadly oblivious to everything

  17

  other than my grief.

  18

  But that moment changed things; it changed everything. It lit a fire

  19

  within me. Suddenly, I had a hatred that overwhelmed my grief. The

  20

  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

  22

  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

 

‹ Prev