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