dered if you might be able to come over. I wanted to catch you before
06
you left for work, you see. There’s still time, I’m sure. But I’m getting 07
these quite overwhelming twinges. I’ve been up since around three.
08
They come and go, you know, as they’re supposed to, but I just couldn’t
09
get back to sleep. And I’ve been waiting to call you and— as I said— I
10
thought you might be up by now.”
11
“When do you need me?” I asked.
12
There was a long silence.
13
“Shall I come over now?” I asked. “I can bring a few bits with me; I
14
can shower at yours instead.”
15
“Yes,” replied Marnie. “Please. If that’s okay.”
16
She told me that she loved me, really loved me, which was very un-
17
usual and, truthfully, entirely out of character. We didn’t have— have
18
never had— that sort of friendship. We don’t profess love a heartfelt
19
way or make promises of forever. Perhaps that has been our undoing.
20
But, regardless, it revealed to me that she really was very frightened,
21
that she really did need me.
22
I liked it, that feeling of being needed. And being needed by Marnie
23
specifically. I felt that I was sliding backward along the thread of a spi-24
derweb, toward the place we used to be, when it was just us, and we
25
were friends, and there was nothing to complicate that simple fact.
26
I pulled on my jeans and a jumper, yanking my charger from the
27
socket and throwing it into my leather holdall. I had bought it for Jona-
28
than as a Christmas gift the year before he died. I took a few things
29
from the pile of clean clothing on the chair in the corner of my room—
30
underwear, a spare T- shirt, a small towel— and packed them as well. I
31S
grabbed my washbag from the bathroom. I tucked my toothbrush into
32N
the front pouch and found all manner of other products there, too—
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shampoo samples and a comb with missing teeth and an array of tam-
01
pons in colorful plastic packaging and mascara with black paste crusted
02
around the seal— and I zipped it up and threw it all into the bag as well.
03
I darted down the stairs— two at a time, smelling my stale breath as
04
my breathing came quicker— and I arrived at Marnie’s in less than half
05
an hour, shiny with sweat and pink- cheeked, but delighted to see relief 06
spreading across her face as she opened the door.
07
A man walked past us in a suit and an animal- print tie, his hair still
08
damp and a briefcase swinging from his fist. He must have seen me,
09
marathon red and panting heavily, and Marnie, heavily pregnant and
10
standing in the doorway in a calf- length peach nightdress. He turned
11
his head away quickly. “Morning,” he muttered.
12
“Morning,” sang Marnie.
13
As he disappeared around the corner, Marnie’s hands shot out to the
14
side and grabbed the door frame.
15
“Oh, not again,” she murmured.
16
She stepped backward, cradling her stomach in her arms.
17
The flat fell into chaos around her. I could see the TV screen danc-
18
ing in the living room, and the radio in the kitchen was turned up and
19
music was filtering down the stairs. The hallway was littered with
20
clothing: cardigans over the banister and scarves piled in a corner and
21
the pegs on the wall overflowing with jackets and coats. There were
22
endless trails of things in all directions: tea- stained mugs and empty
23
water glasses heading toward the kitchen, and half- eaten biscuits and
24
sweet wrappers and unopened crisp packets through to the living room,
25
and muslins and onesies and miniature socks scattered on the stairs.
26
I contorted my shock into a huge grin.
27
“It’s happening,” I said in a sort of singsong way and I did an awk-
28
ward jig, shifting my weight between my two feet and clapping my
29
hands together without ever really separating them.
30
Marnie groaned.
S31
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. You’re having a contraction.”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
“No shit,” she hissed, waddling back toward the lounge.
02
I watched her walk away, her feet turned outward, her hands pressed
03
into her lower back, and I felt immediately overwhelmed. I tried to re-
04
mind myself that this was all entirely normal and that women did this
05
every day, all over the world and at all hours. But it felt far from ordi-06
nary. We had first known each other as children, and then as young
07
women, and as wives, but with her as a mother? The magnitude of that
08
felt impossible.
09
Marnie yelped.
10
I rushed after her.
11
She was lowering herself onto a gigantic blue inflatable ball.
12
“Right,” I said. “Of course. Yes. Deep breathing. That’s the way. In.
13
Out. In. And then— ”
14
“Are you joking?” she said. “Stop that. Shut up.”
15
“Okay. Yes.” I said. “I’ll just wait here.”
16
I perched on the edge of the sofa, holding my leather bag between
17
my legs. She bounced vigorously, up and down, fiercely blowing air
18
through her pursed lips. Eventually, she leaned backward, stretching
19
her chest and stomach up and out, and then she sighed. She began gen-
20
tly bouncing, lifting and lowering her considerable weight.
21
“Should we be going to— ”
22
“The hospital?” she said. “No, not yet. But they are getting longer.”
23
“How are you doing, anyway? Sorry about that. And for getting you up
24
so early. Just”—
she waved her arm at the surrounding
madness—
25
“everything’s got
a bit out of hand.”
26
Marnie abhors mess; she categorically cannot stand it. This, curi-
27
ously, is one of the very few things on which we absolutely agree. We
28
work in very different ways. We are our bests in very different situa-
29
tions. I like silence or just the quiet murmur of voices. She likes the
30
radio or music or the television, preferably all three. I am introverted: 31S
I need my own space and my own company and to be alone. And she
32N
is a textbook extrovert, confident and outgoing and thriving off other
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people’s conversations and opinions and those interactions that drain
01
me so quickly.
02
I’ve said it already, haven’t I? She is light and I am dark. But untidi-
03
ness made us both useless.
04
I think she could probably have handled the pain and the discomfort
05
and the fear of labor itself— I wonder now if she really needed me there 06
for those things— but she simply couldn’t function amid that much
07
disarray.
08
“I can see that,” I said. “What happened?”
09
“I know,” she said. “The place is a state. I was trying to go with the
10
flow, eat what I needed, and focus only on the contraction, and then I
11
thought I might just tidy up a bit, just to get ready, you know, and then 12
everything got a bit intense, and, well”— she circled her hand over her
13
head again— “it all looks like this now.”
14
“Right,” I said.
15
I knew what she wanted from me. I knew what she needed. I always
16
had. And she had always known that I would deliver it, whatever it was
17
that she wanted: without question, without complaint.
18
“How about you stay there,” I said. “And I’ll do just a quick tidy- up?”
19
Marnie smiled, and it felt nice that at this precipice, at the begin-
20
ning of yet another stage of our lives, it was time again for “just a quick 21
tidy- up.” I think it reassured me— wrongly, as it happens— that things 22
weren’t going to change, that there was no reason to feel overwhelmed
23
by the significance of this moment, that everything would be fine.
24
Marnie bounced on her ball and I flitted between the rooms, gather-
25
ing and rehoming clothing, clearing litter into the bins, and folding the 26
strangest, smallest, freshest- smelling blankets. I opened the windows.
27
It was one of the first bright days of the year— I hadn’t needed a coat—
28
and the breeze through the flat felt refreshing. When the apartment
29
was spotless, I had a quick shower and then made us cups of tea— hers
30
with plenty of milk, mine with just a thimbleful— and sat down on the
S31
sofa to watch the twenty- four- hour news channel and hold her hand.
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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“Will you call my mum?” she asked.
02
I hadn’t expected that. “What?” I replied. “Why?”
03
“Perhaps she’ll want to be there? She might at least want to know
04
what’s going on.”
05
“Okay,” I said. “Are you sure?”
06
She nodded.
07
“Well, all right, then.” I went into the hallway and I hovered there,
08
and I neatened the coats on the pegs and kicked a feather into a gap
09
beneath the skirting board and I called her mother and I felt relieved
10
when she didn’t answer. I left a brief, mumbling message that probably
11
wasn’t particularly clear and returned to Marnie a few minutes later.
12
13
14
By the early afternoon, Marnie’s contractions were three minutes
15
apart and I called for a taxi to take us to the hospital. She changed into 16
a light summer dress. She said that she was too hot and uncomfortable
17
for anything else. We sat together in the back and she grunted as we
18
went over the bumps, her eyes closed as though the darkness made the
19
pain bearable.
20
We arrived at the hospital and she shuffled through the main recep-
21
tion to the elevator and I was surprised when we arrived at the mater-
22
nity ward. It had all the trimmings of a normal hospital— the pale walls 23
and a tiled floor and that smell of disinfectant— but something was
24
different. Perhaps it was the lighting or the smiles on the faces of the
25
staff or the pastel uniforms, but it didn’t feel quite so threatening.
26
We’d passed so many sick people on our way through the corridors;
27
ghoulish elderly women being transported along hallways in beds that
28
made them look tiny. And yet here the patients were all swollen and
29
sweating and bursting— literally— with life.
30
A smiling midwife in a blue and white tunic led us to a side room.
31S
“Here you go, pet,” she said. “Get yourself comfy and I’ll be back to
32N
check on you in five.”
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Marnie held on to the bed frame and swayed from side to side, her
01
cheeks puffed out, her eyes again closed.
02
“Will you stay?” she whispered. “For it all? Until the baby gets here?”
03
“Of course,” I said. “Of course I’ll stay.”
04
Because where else would I have been?
05
06
07
Audrey Gregory- Smith was born at ten past seven in the evening on 08
the twenty- fourth of April. She was small and angry and her face was
09
red and her eyes were squeezed firmly shut, closed almost as tightly as
10
her fists. She had thin tufts of fair hair on her scalp, wrinkles across her 11
knees and elbows and knuckles, and pink pouting rosebud lips.
12
Marnie clutched her little girl to her chest, caught between joy and
13
panic, insisting simultaneously that she might be sick and that she
14
might drop the baby and then suddenly shouting, “Who’s in charge
15
here?” to a bustling room.
16
I reached over to place my hand on top of hers. “You.” I didn’t want
17
to frighten her, but wasn’t that the truth? “You’re in charge now.”
18
“Oh, fuck,” she replied and then grinned manically. “Well, that’s a
19
worry, isn’t it?” And then she began to sob.
20
I shushed her and stroked her hair away from her face.
21
“Where’s my mum?” she asked. “Is she on her way?” She looked
22
up at me.
23
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t think that her mother deserved to be
24
there for a moment that important.
25
“You did call her, didn’t you?” she asked.
26
“Yes,” I replied.
27
“Yes?” she repeated.
28
“Definitely,” I said.
29
“And she said she’d come?”
30
“Not exactly,” I said. “She didn’t answer. I left a message. I guess
S31
she’s probably listened to it by now. I didn’t want to worry you. I thought N32
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
01
that she’d come to the hospital. But I suppose . . . Shall I call her now?
02
Let her know the good news?”
03
“No,” said Marnie. “I don’t think so.”
04
Which was exactly what I’d hoped she would say. Because this was
05
a moment for the most important people in that child’s life.
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31S
32N
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01
02
03
04
Chapter Thirty- Two
05
k
06
07
08
09
10
M
11
arnie was staying in the hospital overnight, and so I traveled
12
home by myself. I was thinking, in the taxi, as we slipped
13
through the backstreets of the city, how much had changed in the
14
course of that one day. And how world- altering days must happen to
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 35