it for the rest of the afternoon. I knew that Emma didn’t want to visit,
07
that she was dreading it, and I was expecting her to grasp at excuses, to 08
find a way to exempt herself from the trip. I called her and listened to
09
the phone ringing and I wondered if she might ignore it, if she might
10
ignore me to avoid my mother.
11
“What’s the plan, then?” I asked when Emma finally answered.
12
“Shall we meet at the station? Walk over from there?”
13
“Is she better, do you know? Have they said?” replied Emma.
14
“They say she’s still flu- ey, but I reckon an hour or so’ll be fine.”
15
“Oh, but if she’ s— ”
16
“Emma,” I replied. “Come on.”
17
“I don’t know, Jane,” she said, her voice exaggerated in an overstated
18
performance of concern. “If she’s not well . . . and then we turn up,
19
bringing in all these bugs . . . Should we hold off? Go next week, maybe, 20
instead?”
21
“Em, she’s our mother. And it’s Christmas.”
22
“I think I’m going to give it a miss, if it’s okay with you,” Emma said.
23
“Shall I meet you at Marnie’s? Around twoish, threeish? Will you text
24
me the address?”
25
“ Em— ”
26
“Thanks, Jane. Love you. Merry Christmas.”
27
And then she hung up.
28
I looked at the phone. I was angry but this conversation had hap-
29
pened in many different guises over very many years and so I wasn’t
30
surprised.
31S
Emma was— rightly, I felt— angry with my mother, who had pro-
32N
vided very little support in the very worst years of her life. But I was
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angry, too. And I was just as entitled to that anger, if not more so. I had 01
not only been briefly disowned, entirely abandoned, but also ignored for
02
the majority of my childhood. Emma had always been the favorite. But
03
she never thought about that; she never even tried to see it from my per-
04
spective. Emma was always anxious, always on edge, always distracted
05
by her own issues and fixated on her own feelings and that made her self-
06
ish. She could refuse to visit because she knew that I wouldn’t do that. I 07
couldn’t do it and I never did. Because that would have been cruel.
08
But what if I had opened that conversation by saying that I couldn’t
09
find the courage to go, couldn’t silence my anger for an hour, and that
10
this time it was all on her? What if I had done as she always did? What
11
if I had stopped being her strength and asked her instead to be mine?
12
I still don’t know the answers to these questions. Can someone who
13
has spent her whole life leaning on others ever support someone else?
14
I’m not convinced that they can. I think that when you willingly take
15
on that role in someone else’s life, you have to accept that they will al-16
ways put themselves first and that the structure of that relationship
17
cannot be reversed. They will let you fall before they sacrifice them-
18
selves to support you.
19
20
21
I arrived early, because the taxi driver— who was charging triple for a 22
bank holiday journey— had exceeded the speed limit at every opportu-
23
nity. I had hated it: the momentum, the vibrations, that feeling of being 24
completely contained, so completely surrendered to somebody else.
25
I walked into my mother’s room and she was sitting up in bed wearing
26
an orange T- shirt and a bright blue cardigan that was slipping from her
27
left shoulder. It had a frilly collar and pinned to one of the scallops was 28
a festive badge, a tree decorated with multicolored baubles, flashing
29
small pinks and yellows.
30
“Morning,” I said, and I grinned as I stepped through her doorway
S31
and underneath the mistletoe pinned to its frame. “How are things?”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
“Good,” she said. “I’m good.”
02
I pulled the armchair from the corner toward her bed and sat down
03
beside her. When she first moved into this facility, I hired a man with a 04
van— I found his card pinned up in the post office window— to trans-
05
port some of her things from the house. The armchair was the most
06
substantial addition. And although there were a few raised eyebrows
07
from the nurses, I insisted that it was absolutely essential. I also included 08
four of the cushions that had decorated her king- size bed at home, some 09
framed prints, a tasseled lampshade, a pile of books, and her jewelry
10
box. I eventually introduced some other small improvements: a nonslip
11
coaster stamped with a childhood photograph for her water beaker, for
12
example. A speckled gray vase for flowers— I had bought a festive bunch
13
from the florist at the train station the day before— and a tablet so that 14
she could watch films and scroll through old home videos and some-
15
times, when she was feeling able, send me an email. I was receiving
16
them less and less by then.
17
I look back now at the version of me that spent so much time caring
18
for and— maybe this isn’t the right word but— mothering her. And I’m
19
surprised by my own dedication. I fought as a child to be recognized: I
20
did incredibly well academically, winning prizes and accolades from my
21
teachers; I was helpful, almost obsequiously, around the house— laying
22
the table and emptying the dishwasher and changing the bedding; I
23
tried to be lively and entertaining, a positive influence within our home.
24
Those things— the ornaments and the weekly visits— were simply more
25
recent examples of the many ways in which I’d danced for her attention.
26
I lifted her cardigan back over her shoulder and she glared at me, her
27
pupils wide. I could tell that she’d been given
something— perhaps for
28
her cold, perhaps simply to keep her calm— and thankfully the drugs
29
seemed to be obscuring Emma’s absence. It slipped past entirely un-
30
noticed. And yet, despite the medication, she was astute in many ways
31S
that day, grilling me for details of my journey and demanding to know
32N
my plans for the afternoon.
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“You’ll be with Marnie and Charles?” she asked.
01
“Just Marnie,” I replied.
02
“Not Charles?” she asked, and her brows furrowed at the center of
03
her forehead.
04
“No,” I said, and I dropped my head to one side and her face shifted
05
from confusion to concern because that movement has only ever pre-
06
ceded bad news. “I’ve told you this before. Do you remember?” I sighed.
07
“Charles is dead.”
08
“He died?” She was horrified, her voice high and her face ugly with
09
disbelief, as she was every time she received this news. “When?”
10
“A few months ago.”
11
“How?”
12
“He fell down the stairs. You know this already. You just don’t want
13
to remember it.”
14
“Well, no,” she said. “I wouldn’t. It’s awful.”
15
“I know,” I said. “I was there.” And I don’t know why I did this be-
16
cause I hadn’t shared any of these details with her before, but I think I 17
wanted her to acknowledge that this grief wasn’t hers to appropriate.
18
“Marnie and I found him sprawled at the foot of the stairs. We saw him.”
19
“Dead?” she said.
20
“Yes,” I said.
21
“He died alone.” She looked sad as she said it, as though this in par-
22
ticular was something unbearable. I realized then that we had never
23
discussed death, not in any depth, never further than its simple fact, a
24
simple loss. “What a thing,” she said.
25
“I’m afraid,” I said, “that I might have been outside their apartment
26
when it happened. I was waiting for Marnie to come home. She was at
27
the library. And I was there for an hour, just sitting there, reading and 28
waiting.”
29
“Afraid that you might have been able to do something,” she said,
30
and it was part question, part statement.
S31
“Perhaps,” I said. “If I’d heard something. If I’d had a key.”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
I don’t know why I did this. Except, at the same time, I think I do. I
02
wanted her to protect me, to look inside me and see that something was
03
broken, and I wanted her to mend it. Isn’t that what a mother does?
04
And, if she couldn’t do that, if she couldn’t see or fix the fractures, then 05
I wanted her to think that I was the sort of person who could save a life 06
and not the sort of person who could take one. I wanted her to think
07
that if I could have done something, I would have, that if I could be a
08
better version of myself, then I would be.
09
“A key,” she said.
10
“I used to have one,” I said. “I watered their plants when they went
11
on holiday. But I don’t have it now, not anymore. I returned it.”
12
She nodded.
13
“Do you remember David?” I asked “He lived next door. He used to
14
water yours when we went away.”
15
16
17
I arrived at Marnie’s just after two o’clock. Her flat was full of far too 18
many people and it exuded an unlikely medley of cheer and sorrow and
19
pretense. There was a tree in the hallway adorned with silver orna-
20
ments, a glittering angel sitting at the top. There were decorations scat-21
tered artfully up the stairs and a plate piled high with tiny mince pies.
22
Merry jingles were filtering through the speakers and Marnie was wear-
23
ing a ribbon of tinsel around her neck.
24
I sort of wanted to strangle her with it.
25
“Jane!” Marnie called when she saw me hovering by the open front
26
door. “You’re earlier than I expected. How was your mother? Come in.
27
Come in. What can I get you? A drink? Wine? A sherry, perhaps?”
28
I handed over a small gift bag. I’d struggled to find a present that
29
was both sentimental and yet understated, too; respectful, I suppose.
30
I’d opted eventually for a set of cookie cutters— they seemed ridicu-
31S
lously expensive to me— that she’d pointed out years earlier in a shop
32N
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said. They were shaped into pairs of breasts, all shapes and sizes, with
01
separate cutters for all manner of nipples. I hadn’t quite understood the 02
appeal.
03
“Thank you,” she said, leaving it wrapped on the floor by the radia-
04
tor beside a few other gift and bottle bags. “Come on through. Emma’s
05
here already. I think she’s in the kitchen. She’s a bit . . . When did you 06
last see her? Wine, did you say?”
07
“Who are all these people?” I asked. I didn’t recognize anyone and
08
yet there were at least twenty— maybe thirty— others crammed into
09
the flat.
10
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Marnie replied. “They’re a fascinating bunch.
11
That’s Derek.” She pointed at a middle- aged man wearing a checked
12
shirt and a reindeer tie. “He lives three doors down. Wife died earlier
13
this year. Cancer. So we’ve a lot in common. And that’s Mary and Ian.”
14
She pointed at a couple who were both at least ninety. He was trying to
15
eat a mince pie but most of the pastry was crumbled down his jacket.
16
And she had the most exquisite gray hair pinned beautifully so that it
17
&n
bsp; fell down one side of her neck. “They live on the ground floor. I met
18
them in the lobby yesterday and invited them along. Over there is
19
Jenna. She does my nails. And that’s Isobel. She cleans the flat. You’ve
20
probably met her before. She’s separated from her husband and she was
21
going to spend the day alone and I just thought, no, that’s not right at
22
all, and so I told her to pop in. Isn’t it lovely?”
23
“It is, Marnie. Absolutely. But are you sure . . . How are you feeling?
24
What can I do?”
25
“Everything’s under control. I have two turkeys in the oven. Can
26
you smell them? It’s good, right? And lots of nibbles out already. Have
27
you got your phone? Maybe take some photos? I’m going to do a big
28
post on how to host an ‘everyone welcome’ Christmas.”
29
“And the baby? Are you resting enough?”
30
“I’m really starting to show now, can you see”— she turned to one
S31
side— “can you believe it?”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
“Jane!” Emma grabbed hold of my arm and then enveloped me in a
02
hug. “Merry Christmas! How are you?”
03
She pulled back and I held on a moment longer, just to be sure that
04
I really could reach both arms around her waist and touch my palms to
05
my opposite elbow. She was so much worse than she’d been in years. I
06
stepped back and glanced at her face. Her cheeks were hollow, so
07
sunken that I could almost see the shape of her teeth through her skin.
08
Her spindly wrists poked from an oversized jumper and her tight jeans
09
were loose around her thighs.
10
“That man,” she continued. “Do you see? In the salmon pink shirt?
11
He’s been talking to me for about twenty minutes and I’ve only just
12
managed to escape. No offense, Marn, I’m sure he’s a great friend or
13
whatever, but— ”
14
“In the red cords?” Marnie asked.
15
Emma nodded. “And the paper cracker hat.”
16
“I’ve no idea who he is. Did he say anything about— Give me a min-
17
ute,” she said, and she waded across the kitchen to introduce herself.
18
“Mince pie?” I held out the plate.
19
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 30