Seven Lies (ARC)
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“You left him dead in my hallway. Is that what she’s saying? Turned
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up, killed him, and then left? And then what? Popped back a few hours
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later just to watch me find him? There is something seriously wrong
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with that woman.”
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She couldn’t stop herself and I couldn’t stop her, either. She went on
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and on, listing the many ways in which it didn’t make sense, couldn’t be
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true, was utterly impossible, and I listened as she reeled off examples of 07
how I could have— but also couldn’t have— murdered her husband.
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The articles had opened these questions within her, and I didn’t know
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how to close them. I tried to steer her in other directions, but she kept 10
falling back into her interrogation, and I felt as though my ribs were too 11
small for my lungs— the flesh pressing into the bone— and I wondered
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if I could keep my face static if she reached the right conclusion.
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“We were madly in love. That’s what she says, isn’t it? You and me?
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And so we killed your husband. Of course. Because that makes sense.
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And then I fell in love with Charles.” A small sob broke through her
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anger. “And then you killed him so as to keep me for yourself? Is that
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it? Is that what happened?”
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I expected her to keep going, to keep ranting, to continue trying to
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unravel her confusion aloud. And that would have been alarming
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enough. But she didn’t. She stopped. She stared at me.
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“Is that what happened?” she repeated, her eyes wide and her chin
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jutted forward, her lips trembling. “That’s what she says, isn’t it?”
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I shook my head— feigning bemusement, horror, repugnance— and
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she stayed quiet and so I reached into the conversation and I tried des-
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perately to end it.
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“Imagine,” I said, and I raised my eyebrows and I tried to laugh. “Just
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imagine.”
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I wondered what she could see: if my cheeks were pink, my eyes
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frightened, my breath frozen; if the truth was written there on my face,
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as eager as her tears.
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“Imagine,” she repeated, quietly.
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“I know,” I said. “It’s impossible. As if I could do something like that.
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I would never do something like that.”
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That was the fifth lie I told Marnie. I told her that I could never do
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something that I’d already done. I told her that I could never hurt her
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when I already had. And, as I sat there deceiving her with my entire
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body, I trusted that she would continue to believe me. And she did. She
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shook her head slowly and sighed, leaning back against the cushions and
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scraping her fingers through her hair.
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I don’t think that she was really interrogating me. She wasn’t asking
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a question and expecting an answer. But the sound of her doubt—
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however vague— was unnerving. I felt the truth like a small bone in my
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throat, aching to be released. It brought a small part of me to the fore
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that wanted to be acknowledged, that was tempted to say, Yes. That’s
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what happened, to say, Yes. And I did it for you.
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But I knew, too, that I would lie again and again to protect what
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we had.
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“We need to decide what we’re going to do,” I said eventually.
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She wiped beneath her eyes and dried her fingers on her pajamas.
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Her top had curled around her waist and she pulled it back down.
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“There’s nothing we can do,” she said, standing and moving into the
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kitchen, calmer now, contained. “It’s published. And trust me, Jane,” she 21
continued. “You don’t want to have this out with her. She’ll just publish 22
more crap online and we know the truth, and our friends and family do,
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too, and really, isn’t that what matters most? I’m not saying it’s fair. Be-24
cause I’m cross, too, Jane. Really, I am. And I hate that she’s going to get 25
away with just saying whatever the hell she wants without a thought for
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the people at the end of her lies. But I need this to go away.”
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“Okay,” I replied. “Then let’s just wait it out.”
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The adrenaline slowly started to dissolve, and I finally exhaled in
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full and I thought I might faint because she’d been— hadn’t she been?—
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so very, very close.
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k
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Do you want to know something? That fifth lie scared me. I realized 04
then the risk that I’d taken— inadvertently, yes, but taken all the
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same— and how that decision would affect my life going forward. I
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needed to be careful, to stay in control.
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I read the newspapers in the days that followed. They were full of it
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again: opinion pieces and pretend news and anonymous sources. But it
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did ease eventually— another political scandal stole the headlines and
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rolled on and on into months of coverage.
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I kept the pages about us in a shoe box beneath my bed. They re-
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minded me that I wasn’t invincible. They reminded me to keep looking
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over my shoulder. They reminded me to keep lying.
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Chapter Twenty- Six
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I
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think that some women are made for motherhood and others sim-
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ply aren’t. That’s controversial, I know. And something I probably
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shouldn’t be saying to you, of all people. But I think it deserves a
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mention.
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I always dreamed of being a mother. As a child, I cradled my plastic
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dolls and I bathed them, and I pushed them around in a pastel pram
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with a thin pink fabric seat that turned in on itself like a hammock. And 18
I lined them up in rows and changed their nappies one by one and
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dressed them in patterned cotton onesies, pinching the snaps between
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their legs. They were all much the same— hard round bellies and rosy
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pink paint on their cheeks and bright blue eyes that blinked— but my
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favorite was Abigail. She was bald and her limbs were fixed. One of her
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eyes blinked open and closed, but the other was sticky, its plastic lashes 24
glued together. It opened and then refused to shut, staring straight ahead 25
while the other one winked threateningly. I loved her nonetheless.
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I eventually grew out of dolls and into babies. I peered into prams as
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I passed them in the streets, leaning over to look inside in cafés and
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making the obligatory cooing noises and asking the requisite questions—
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how sweet and how old and how lovely. I participated in this rhythm of
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adulthood quite willingly and I saw a version of my life in which I
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would one day push the pram and another woman’s coos would cascade
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over me.
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And then, at some point— in the aftermath of Jonathan’s death— I
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began to question that imaginary future. Did I want a pram? Did I want
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the clucking and questions and judgments and a bit of my heart to for-
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ever live outside of my body? To do what parents do and feed and heal
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and nurture?
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No. I didn’t. Not without him.
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If you wanted me to, I could write a list of all the women in my life
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and I could draw a straight line across that piece of paper dividing those 11
who were made for motherhood and those who simply weren’t. Emma
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and I would be on one side. Marnie would be on the other.
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The promise of peace had a positive impact on Marnie’s overall out-16
look. She was less angry, less flighty, less afraid of the something and
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nothing that exists in the aftermath of loss. We found a way to coex-
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ist that felt comfortable and peaceful. She cried— often— but she also
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laughed and cooked and even wrote a few short pieces for her favorite
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editors. She redirected her mail to my flat, which was oddly comfort-
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ing; I liked seeing her name beside mine in our postbox every day.
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And when her main sponsor sent her a pink ceramic gift set, part of
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their most recent cookware collection, she even managed to film a few
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videos.
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Occasionally she would turn to me— normally over breakfast or
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while we sat on the sofa in our pajamas late in the evening avoiding
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sleep— and say:
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“Death really lasts a long time, doesn’t it?”
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“Oh, yes,” I would say. “The longest.”
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“Because it’s been a month”— or six weeks, or two months, she
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would say— “and I just can’t quite fathom that this is my life now. I can’t 32N
bring myself to believe that no matter how many more months I live,
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no matter how many years, or decades even, he will be dead in every
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single one.”
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I felt like an expert. And for a while my tutelage seemed to be work-
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ing. It was such a delight to have her back in my life. And we were good
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together, really good. We knew each other intricately, intimately, all of 05
the history, all of the detail. We bemoaned our parents— who left, and
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fell sick, and ignored us. We laughed at our siblings— one of whom was
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entirely dependent and the other entirely absent. We reminisced about
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the adventures that had defined our teenage years— the firsts, and the
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lasts, and the never agains. We were two people who had shared so
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much that we were almost only one again.
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I watched as she recovered; not entirely, of course, not at all, but in
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small, significant ways. It was a thrill to see her cooking again. She
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painted her nails and complained when they chipped the following
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morning. She looked at her hair in the mirror one afternoon and lifted
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some strands in her hands and then frowned. That evening, she re-
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turned with the ends neatly trimmed. She listened to music. She
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watched the news. She cried regularly— all the time— but the moments
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of overwhelming sadness were set against something better.
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And then things changed. Marnie regressed, reverting to the chaos
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of the very first weeks. She stopped sleeping. She was exhausted. She
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fell ill. She stopped eating. When she did manage something— even
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just the smallest of meals; some toast, some fruit— she was overcome
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by such violent spells of vomiting that I stopped buying food to keep in
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the flat simply to save us both the horror. The hunger was intense. The
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fatigue was far worse. And with neither nourishment nor rest, she was
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entirely unable to shake her strange sickness.
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Or so we thought at the time.
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It was early in the evening— we’d just opened the blinds again; there
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were fireworks outside and we wanted to watch them— and Marnie and
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I were sitting together at the breakfast bar. We were eating plain rice—
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br /> a sachet of boil in the bag each; quick and easy— and our silence was
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effortless. We were once again used to dining together, our worlds en-
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twined, no longer intermittent guests in each other’s lives but a curious 03
sort of couple.
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“I haven’t had a period,” she said, laying her fork down beside her
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bowl. “I thought it was just stress, you know, with everything. But it’s
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been three months.”
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“Well, of course it’s the stress,” I said. “And the bug. You’re losing
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weight— look at you— and with all the vomiting— Oh.”
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“I need to take a test,” she said.
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I cleared my throat, dislodging the clump of grains that had con-
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gealed there, and stood up from the table. I went into the hallway and
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collected my handbag from the peg. I walked from the front door, into
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the lift, and out into the street. I walked along the road— cold without 14
my coat— to the corner shop.
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I returned with the test less than ten minutes later.
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Marnie was sitting exactly as I’d left her, her elbows either side of
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her bowl, her head supported between them.
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“Here,” I said. “Do it now.”
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She silently took it and went into the bathroom, the plastic bag
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hanging limply from her wrist.
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I don’t need to tell you that it was positive.
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I got drunk. I drank tequila straight from the bottle and lined up
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shots of rum from a bottle so old that the liquid inside tasted of nothing 24
but stickiness. Marnie— already a mother in so many ways— poured
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apple juice into plastic shot glasses and drowned her fear and panic in a 26
more abstemious way. At two in the morning we climbed into the bath-
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tub, wearing our swimsuits in the steaming water in a strange and un-
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necessary display of modesty. We smeared honey onto toast at three
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and worked our way through an entire loaf. And then we lost ourselves
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somewhere between grief and shock and hysteria, and sobbed and
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laughed until we fell asleep, which didn’t last long, and then we both
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spent the best part of the following morning with our faces resting