20
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m never going to be”— and she screwed
21
up her face, almost disgusted— “healthy.”
22
“ But— ”
23
“No,” she continued. “That will never be me. I haven’t been that
24
person in over a decade.” She shuffled down beneath her covers and
25
turned her head toward the window. “This is going to kill me,” she said.
26
“You know it and I know it. That’s the only way this will ever end.”
27
“Now, Emma,” I said. “Come on, now. That’s just not true. There
28
are ways to survive it. You know better than anyone. Look at you; it’s
29
what you’ve been doing all along.” And even though I knew that it
30
could be true, that it was for some, I knew that it would never be true
S31
for Emma. She was right: I knew and I had known for years.
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01
Emma had always been invincible, and yet at some point it became
02
very clear that she was broken, too, and that even the best of her would
03
never be enough. She started to exist in a peripheral space inhabited
04
only by the sick and inaccessible to everyone else. She lived with a
05
countdown, ticking in the depths of her mind, measuring the fight left
06
in her. And we all knew her fight was running thin.
07
“You can do this,” I insisted. “You’re strong.”
08
“I am,” she replied. “But I’m also sick. They aren’t mutually exclu-
09
sive. I’m not giving up and I’m no less brave for knowing that the end is 10
a real place.”
11
“I know,” I said. “I know all of that. I just— ”
12
“I’m getting worse,” she said. “You can see it, can’t you? I see it in
13
your face when you look at me. I’m not in control of it anymore; it has
14
me completely.”
15
“We can find a new normal,” I said, and I look back now and I know
16
that I was sort of begging.
17
“You don’t understand,” she said. “And it’s not your fault; I wouldn’t
18
wish that you could. But it owns me. It’s all that I am.”
19
“That’s just not true,” I said. “You are so much more than simply this.”
20
And then tears flooded the corners of her eyes and I imagined then
21
that she must have been terribly sad, but perhaps she was simply in-
22
credibly frustrated, exhausted by the myriad of people unable to un-
23
derstand her and a disease that she couldn’t understand herself.
24
“No,” she replied. “You wish that I was but I’m not. Maybe once
25
upon a time. Maybe. But not anymore. Remember what you were like
26
when you first met Jonathan?”
27
“ Emma— ”
28
“No. Stop. Let me finish. Do you remember? Because I do. You were
29
totally overwhelmed by him. He was in everything you said and did
30
and probably your every thought too. That’s what this is. It’s like being 31S
in love. It is utterly consuming. It’s unstoppable. It’s all that I am.”
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“No,” I said. “What you’re describing is horrible, miserable. Love is
01
wonderful, Em. You’ll see. One day, you’ll see.”
02
She laughed and I wanted to cry. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think
03
I’m past the big things now. Just one more at the end of the road for me.”
04
I wanted to shake her. I wanted to shake her from her stupidity and
05
I wanted to reach deep inside her and pull that demon out. I knew I
06
couldn’t save her, but I also knew that I must have been able to at some
07
point. I knew that there must have been a way to stop this before her
08
bones became brittle and her muscles started to waste away and her
09
heart began to stop. I must have failed her somewhere along the line for
10
this to be her ending.
11
We heard footsteps approaching and fell silent. A nurse appeared at
12
the end of the bed.
13
“Mrs. Black?” she said. “My name’s Lillian. We spoke earlier. Now,
14
Emma. The paperwork’s complete, so you can go home whenever you’re
15
ready.”
16
“ But— ” I began.
17
“I’ve discharged myself,” said Emma. “There’s nothing they can do
18
for me here.”
19
I tried to persuade her to stay in the hospital. She refused. I tried to
20
persuade her to spend a few weeks in a rehabilitation facility. She re-
21
fused. I tried to persuade her to live with me for a little, while she re-22
cuperated, while she recovered. She refused.
23
I took her home in a taxi and put her to bed.
24
I feared that it might be the last time I ever saw her, but I was ex-
25
hausted and overreacting and, most importantly, wrong.
26
27
28
I wish the day had ended there but, still, it didn’t.
29
My phone was beside me on my pillow, there in case she needed me
30
in the night. I was almost asleep, my mind fogging with thoughts that
S31
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
weren’t quite conscious, when it vibrated. My hand jumped immedi-
02
ately, drawn to it like the pull of a magnet.
03
It wasn’t ringing— the vibrations ceased quickly— but there was a
04
red circle suspended over the mail icon. I opened my inbox and there
05
was her name: Valerie Sands.
06
You stayed in their flat for a whole week.
07
She hadn’t written anything else, just that one sentence, and I sat
08
up, pushing my pillow against the headboard, to work through her
09
meaning.
10
She was right, of
course. She was almost always right.
11
Charles had asked me to water their plants while they went on hol-
12
iday, and I had done just that. Except I had also stayed over, without
13
invitation, living in their home for nearly a week.
14
How much of that did she already know?
15
And what was she going to do with it?
16
Here was the thing that was slowly seeping through, that was start-
17
ing to make sense. My fear manifested only when my friendship felt
18
threatened. I was less perturbed by the possibility of police and prison
19
because there was no body, no motive, no reason to doubt the reports
20
already written. But I was becoming increasingly aware that the small
21
threads protruding from my lies, if pulled, would devastate my friend-
22
ship with Marnie. The problem, it seemed, was that those were the
23
threads that most appealed to Valerie. She was determined to see us
24
unraveled.
25
26
27
28
29
30
31S
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01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
The
10
11
Sixth Lie
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
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01
02
03
04
Chapter Thirty- One
05
k
06
07
08
09
10
11
C
12
harles had been dead for more than six months and I was sleeping
13
badly for the first time in several years. I had slept as a child— not
14
easily, but comfortably, often after reading late into the night, a flashlight 15
clasped beneath my covers— but I had struggled throughout my teenage
16
years. I had spent long nights rotating my pillow and adjusting my posi-
17
tion and refilling my water glass, which would quickly absorb the thick-
18
ness of a warm bedroom and gather a filmic, stale taste. I know that I
19
slept best with Jonathan beside me.
20
It was often difficult to believe that one simple action had been so
21
effective, that he had died so simply, that death was so attainable. I
22
found myself returning to it regularly, retelling that story, developing
23
my role, but it never frightened me. In fact, I found it strangely com-
24
forting. It was reassuring to know that I had some agency in the course
25
of my own life.
26
And I felt, again, like that might be necessary, that I needed to do
27
something in order to maintain control. I couldn’t have articulated this
28
for you then, but I had a sense that I was losing my balance. There had
29
been a temporary stability— just those few months— but things were
30
beginning to feel uneven again.
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24 4
E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
k
02
03
It was mid- April the day that Marnie went into labor, a Friday, and I 04
was exhausted. I had been interrupted by my neighbors going out the
05
previous evening at half past eleven— their incessant giggling, the clink-06
ing wine bottles, the thunderous hum of voices trying to be quiet— and
07
then returning to the flat just after three in the morning. I had hopped
08
between dreams: of Emma, of Marnie, of Charles.
09
I hadn’t dreamed about Emma’s corpse since my years at university,
10
almost a decade earlier, and yet that vision had returned and it felt more 11
frightening, more graphic, than it ever had before. It would creep into
12
an entirely unrelated narrative. I’d be in the middle of a work dream—
13
hundreds of calls simultaneously and not enough staff to answer the
14
phones, wait times reaching several hours, being summoned to that
15
windowed office on the eighth floor— or one of those traditional anxi-
16
ety dreams, in which I was standing naked in front of a crowd or my
17
teeth were falling out. And then suddenly, in the stationery cupboard
18
or at the dentist’s office, I would discover her lifeless body, simply
19
nudged into a corner, stiff limbs fixed and eyes clouded. And I would
20
wake gasping for air and sweating and trembling in cold, damp sheets.
21
It wasn’t unusual for Charles to appear unexpectedly in my dreams,
22
too. He would be there, sitting at another desk in my office, or on the
23
hygienist’s stool, either in his suit and tie or in those striped pajamas 24
and that university sweater. He rarely participated or addressed me
25
directly; he was just there, present in the corner of a nightmare, watch-
26
ing as things unfolded. I wondered if I was haunted by my actions, if his 27
presence in my dreams suggested the early symptoms of some deep-
28
rooted guilt or shame. But the truth is that I never felt disturbed by his 29
company. He was simply there, as in my real life he was simply not.
30
Marnie called me in the middle of a nightmare. I was stuck in the
31S
mirror of my wardrobe watching Emma’s dead body rot between
32N
my blankets. I could hear a lawnmower rumbling somewhere outside,
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shaking against the earth, and it continued to reverberate, its engine
01
growling, until I finally forced my eyes open.
02
My phon
e was vibrating on the bedside table beside me. It shivered
03
off the lip and clattered to the ground, still attached to its charger. I slid 04
my hand across the floor and finally found it still ringing.
05
“Hello?” I said. My voice caught in my throat and emerged in a
06
croak. I coughed to clear the phlegm that had set there overnight.
07
“Jane?”
08
It was a woman’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it. There was some-
09
thing breathless about it, something desperate.
10
My heart began to beat a little faster.
11
I knew immediately that it wasn’t Emma— I knew her too well; it
12
wasn’t her voice and she’d have filled this silence immediately— but it
13
could have been a friend of hers, or another nurse, or someone from my
14
mother’s facility.
15
“Speaking,” I said in response, and in an unnecessarily formal manner.
16
There was a sharp intake of breath. “ Just . . . one moment.” Then a
17
loud sigh. “ Okay— thank goodness— it’s done. I— ”
18
“Who is this?” I interrupted.
19
“Oh, it’s me,” said the voice. “ Sorry— not helpful at all. It’s Marnie.
20
Jane, it’s me.”
21
Which didn’t make sense. It was barely light outside.
22
“Marnie?” I asked. “ What . . . ? Why are you calling? It’s the middle
23
of the night.”
24
“It’s not the middle of the night,” she said. “It’s nearly six. I thought 25
you’d be up.”
26
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
27
We had lived together for years, so embedded in the details of each
28
other’s days that there were no secrets, no missteps, no unknowns. I
29
could easily have woken one morning and lived her day instead: drink-
30
ing her tea, going to her gym and using her shower gel, speaking in her
S31
voice, using her words— simply being her. And she could have done the
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
same for me. She knew my routines and habits. And she knew, too, that
02
not once in my entire life had I left for work before six in the morning.
03
“Now,” she began, “there’s no need to panic. I just . . . I think that
04
maybe stuff is starting to happen. You know, with the baby. And I won-
05
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 34