15
and then she turned away from me.
16
I tried to hold her hand, but she snatched it away.
17
I tried to speak to her, but she began to hum very quietly, and I
18
knew that she wasn’t listening.
19
She wouldn’t look at me again after that. I stepped toward her, bent
20
my head to see into her eyes, but she gazed, unfocused, as though look-
21
ing right through me.
22
I knew that this was it, that the fungus she’d been fighting for the
23
last few years was going to sprawl unimpeded across her brain. Holding
24
on to herself had been such a battle; it required so much effort, every
25
single day. And it wasn’t going to be worth it anymore.
26
And so I left.
27
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01
02
03
04
05
Chapter Forty
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07
k
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
I have been my mother’s only family for so many years. I have been
her husband, her elder daughter, and her younger daughter, too.
And yes, I begrudged it sometimes. And yes, it was unfathomably bor-
15
ing going to see her every weekend. And yes, it was frustrating that no
16
one else felt guilty enough to do it.
17
They were all so selfish. They didn’t give a shit. They did not give a shit.
18
I shouldn’t have given a shit, either. I shouldn’t have fucking both-
19
ered; it was a waste of my time and my patience and my life, spending
20
it with her and thinking I was doing something good and being some-
21
thing better and sacrificing for her and then the fucking cheek of her
22
being unable to be there for me.
23
Oh.
24
I’m sorry.
25
Did I frighten you?
26
Please don’t cry.
27
I discovered my sister dead at the beginning of the week. And my
28
mother retreated into her dementia a few days ago. So if anyone should
29
be crying right now, I really think it should be me.
30
She couldn’t exist without her younger daughter. She couldn’t exist
31S
for me.
32N
It has been a very bad week.
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k
01
02
This morning I received a message from Marnie. She said that she was 03
very sorry but that she needed to cancel our dinner this evening, which
04
seems to be the norm nowadays. Her excuse— and there’s always a
05
good one, something that’s hard to challenge— is that Audrey has been
06
unwell and was awake all of last night with a temperature over one
07
hundred degrees.
08
I replied saying not to worry at all about me and sent love and get-
09
well wishes.
10
But I didn’t feel sympathetic. I simply felt sad. Because we weren’t
11
children with paper cups and a ball of string stretched between our
12
bedroom windows anymore. We were so far apart, so disconnected, so
13
far removed from each other’s lives.
14
Valerie had talked about a wrecking ball, as though there was some-
15
thing somewhere that would be the death of this friendship. I wanted
16
to make our walls strong, sturdy, so safe that nothing— even something
17
substantial— could shatter those bricks. I needed to reinforce our
18
friendship, to underpin it and make it something that could withstand
19
the force of the truth.
20
I was going to weave Valerie’s various findings into our conversa-
21
tions in a very nonchalant way, mentioning some noisy neighbors, that
22
the walls and floors of her building were desperately thin, that sounds
23
seemed to proliferate between the apartments. I planned to refer very
24
casually to my week in the flat— to refer to my stay in some way: the
25
creaking of the pipes at night or the ticking of the clock in her
26
bedroom— and to be shocked by her inevitable surprise.
27
“Charles never told you?” I’d say. “It was his suggestion.”
28
I would tell her about the encounter on the train. I would reveal— and
29
this bit at least would be true— that I had been followed, stalked even, by 30
that menacing journalist and ask if she thought I ought to call the police.
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01
her story would belong to me. And I’d be building her into something
02
else, into someone unreliable, into a liar.
03
But I needed to spend time with Marnie in order to do these things.
04
While I was disappointed that she had canceled, I felt sure that
05
she’d have time for me once she knew about my sister, about my mother.
06
Because while death is the ultimate divider, it also unifies. You never
07
know how loved you are until you’re at the epicenter of a grief so tall
08
and wide that you cannot see beyond its edges. Because then, very
09
quickly, faces begin to appear at the tops of those walls, passing down
10
cards and letters and flowers and food. And those people are your peo-
11
ple and they find a way to pull you out.
12
Marnie found a way to pull me out the first time.
13
I knew that she could save me again.
14
A friendship like that matters. You don’t give up on a love like that.
15
16
17
Valerie, too, seemed entirely unable to give up on a love like ours.
18
I discovered her waiting in the lobby of my building earlier today.
19
I’d been to the supermarket and I didn’t n
otice her at first, but she
20
called out to me after I’d collected my mail. She was perched on an old
21
office chair that was awaiting collection, spinning in circles and leaving 22
grubby footprints on the freshly painted walls. She had a new tattoo—
23
a small illustration of a flower— beneath her left earlobe. Her jeans
24
were loose, ripped at the knees, and she was wearing a tight black
25
jumper.
26
She stopped spinning and smiled. “Fancy seeing you here,” she said,
27
pulling her legs up to sit cross- legged on the seat. “I wanted to talk to 28
you,” she said, “about last week.”
29
“This isn’t a good time,” I replied, standing by the doors to the lift,
30
my mail gripped in front of my chest. I wasn’t surprised to see her. I
31S
should have been, really, in a space that felt so completely my own, but
32N
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something had shifted between us. I knew her a little better now— her
01
doggedness— and so she couldn’t shock me in quite the same way.
02
“It’s important,” she said. “You upset me.”
03
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. It felt lovely, a burst of relief, although 04
the grief and the guilt quickly followed. “I upset you?” I said. “Really?”
05
“On the train,” she replied. “When you said all that about me being
06
jealous.”
07
“Aren’t you?” I asked.
08
“No, I am,” she replied. “But that isn’t the point.”
09
There was something childlike in her sincerity, in her presence there,
10
in the simplicity of what she was saying. In the preceding weeks, I’d
11
tracked her through the internet, following her from her school days—
12
she’d written a piece on pond life at sixteen that featured on the school’s 13
website— and to university, where she’d edited the campus newspaper.
14
I found her early social media platforms: her top friends and her inter-
15
ests and the list of people she’d like to meet. I traced her change in hob-16
bies and homes and habits. She had taken up outdoor swimming in her
17
twenty- ninth year. She went at least once a week. She had moved to
18
Elephant and Castle at thirty after her marriage had ended. She’d had a
19
new tattoo inked on her skin every birthday since; the one at the back of 20
her neck had been her first.
21
But what was perhaps most striking— it’s something that didn’t reg-
22
ister until that moment— was that every single one of her top- ranked
23
friends, recorded as such at seventeen, had been absent ever since. They
24
didn’t feature on Instagram. They weren’t following her on Twitter.
25
“Just answer me this and then I’ll let myself out,” she continued.
26
“How are you still such good friends?”
27
I didn’t reply.
28
“Come on,” she said. “This is it. The last question I’ll ask you. Be-
29
cause it doesn’t make sense to me. To have a best friend. At our age. It’s 30
a bit infantile, isn’t it?”
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“I think it’s quite special,” I said.
02
“That isn’t what I think,” she began. “Because it isn’t real, it— ”
03
“Don’t you have any old friends?” I asked. “Who are so much a part
04
of you that you can’t remember your life without them in it?”
05
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
06
“That sounds very lonely,” I replied.
07
She shrugged and uncrossed her legs, dropping her feet back onto
08
the floor.
09
“I think,” she tried to continue, “ that— ”
10
“Not even one?” I asked.
11
“I want to talk about you,” she said. “I’m interested in you.”
12
“But I’m not interested in you,” I replied, holding my mail out in
13
front of me, trying to seem indifferent. There was a letter from the
14
bank, another from my university. There was a scrawled note from a
15
resident who lived on the ground floor of the building insisting that we
16
all take more care to close the front door properly.
17
I looked back at her and she was grinning. “And yet you’re asking me
18
plenty of questions,” she said. “I know you, Jane. You wish that I didn’t.”
19
“You don’t know me at all,” I said, but I could feel the balance of the
20
conversation slipping, she taking control, pulling at my strings.
21
She shrugged. “You’re lonely. Has she canceled your plans for this
22
evening? I wonder if she knows how upset it makes you. I don’t expect
23
she does. She doesn’t know you like I do, you see. And— ”
24
“I need to go,” I said. I turned toward the lifts and I pressed the
25
button.
26
She laughed. “If you say so. But if I know you— and I think that I
27
do— then there’s nowhere that you need to be.”
28
“Are you done?” I asked, as one of the lifts creaked down through
29
the shaft, inching toward us.
30
“Not yet,” she said. “I came here to tell you something else. Don’t
31S
you want to know what it is?”
32N
“No.” I pressed the button again.
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“That’s a lie. I know that you do.”
01
“Go on, then,” I said.
02
I could pretend to myself— and to you— that this was a ploy. I could
03
say that I encouraged her purely to accelerate the conversation, simply
04
to give her the space to say her bit in the hope that she might then leave.
05
But she was right, of course; I wanted to know.
06
“I’m done following you.” She paused and looked at me. “That doesn’t
07
even get a smile?”
08
“I don’t care.�
�
09
“You do. You’re relieved. Well, that’s it. What I wanted to say. It
10
isn’t that this investigation is finished. It isn’t. I still want to make sure 11
that Marnie discovers the truth. Because it’s so much more than what
12
was in my first message, isn’t it? There’s so much that she doesn’t know.
13
But I’m not in a rush anymore.”
14
“ Valerie— ”
15
“You’re going to tear this thing down all by yourself.”
16
“Oh, for— ”
17
“I’ll write about it then.”
18
The lift juddered into position and the doors cranked open. I
19
stepped inside.
20
“Call me when it’s over,” she whispered.
21
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23
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Chapter Forty- One
06
07
k
08
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11
12
13
14
I haven’t been to work this week. Duncan sent me an angry email
about neglecting my responsibilities. I received a concerned text
from Peter. I didn’t reply to either.
15
I have, I suppose, been feeling very sorry for myself and today has
16
been the worst, the culmination of so much bad news.
17
But then, unexpectedly, things started to look a little brighter. Just
18
as I was beginning to feel hungry, starting to think about dinner, I re-
19
ceived a phone call from Marnie. She was frantic, flustered, flapping, as 20
she so often is, unable to hold a calm and measured conversation. She
21
said that Audrey’s temperature had shot up again, that they’d managed
22
to get a last- minute appointment with their doctor— who was really
23
very good, always willing to bend the rules for a baby— and that he’d
24
diagnosed an ear infection and she had a printout of the prescription,
25
but they’d also sent a copy to the pharmacy. Would I mind, she said,
26
because it was a pharmacy between our flats, open for a little longer
27
still, and would that be okay?
28
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
29
I pulled on my old jeans and this sweater and my dark brown boots,
Seven Lies (ARC) Page 42