Seven Lies Read online

  I always wanted to go out for dinner. I wanted it to be just the two of us again. But she needed to be in the kitchen, she said; it was how she paid her half of the mortgage. Charles was desperate to have a little woman, a little wife, someone he could own. But I knew she didn’t want that for herself, and I didn’t want it for her, either.

  From the hallway I would overhear her saying, “And that was exactly the moment I was hoping that Jane would arrive.”

  I’d close the door behind me, quietly, and pause to listen.

  “Because I could dart off for just a second and I knew nothing would overflow or burn and that I wouldn’t come back to scorched pans and stodgy sauces.”

  I would hear her tinkering in the kitchen for a moment or two—a spoon circling a pot, or the crackle of oil in a frying pan, or an ensemble piece with drawers and cupboards opening and closing—and then, eventually, she would say the line that I was listening for, waiting to hear. It was always something like this:

  “But you remember what I always say, don’t you? Jane is basically family to me. So I know that she’s out there now hanging up her coat or taking off her shoes or whatever and she’s fine to fetch herself a drink or open a bottle—mi casa es su casa and all that. If your guests are more demanding, then I would suggest scheduling their arrival for the end of the next stage when you can take a proper break and really be the hostess with the mostess.”

  I was alone in the hallway in those moments, yes, but it felt so very different. There were lights on, lights everywhere, bulbs hanging overhead and side lamps shining in corners. There were scented candles running along the radiator covers, the mantelpiece, the coffee table, flickering on every surface. I could always hear Marnie, chattering to herself, to her audience, to her ever-growing following. There was the hum of the oven and the French doors would always be open, leading onto the balcony, and I would hear the whistle of the wind and the purring of cars and drivers sounding their horns on the street below.

  But that night it was lightless, scentless, silent.

  I liked it, the sense that the flat was unencumbered by any other presence; it felt unowned and sort of hollow.

  It took me a while to find the watering can (beneath the bathroom sink) and the key to the balcony (in the drawer beside the teaspoons). It was nearly dark by the time I made it outside but I could see spiderwebs threaded between the leaves of the plants, stretching from the stems to the metal railings, glistening in the evening light. There was one visible spider, small and brown, centered in a web. I lifted the spout above it and watched as the wall of water sent everything—it and its web, too—tumbling toward the patio.

  By the time I arrived home it was nearly nine o’clock.

  The following morning, I packed a small suitcase with enough clothing and toiletries to last until the end of the week. I even brought my own bedding. They had asked for a visitor, a guest, someone who would show up intermittently, half an hour each day, simply to water their plants. Instead, I became a lodger of sorts.

  I didn’t think they’d mind particularly, but I wasn’t going to tell them.

  I let myself into their flat that evening and stood again in the dark hallway. This would be my home now—just for the week—but my home nonetheless. I turned on all the lights—exactly how Marnie liked it—and made up their bed with my own sheets and pillowcases. I unpacked my food into their fridge, into their cupboards, turned on their radio, looked through their bookcases. It was easy to work out which titles belonged to Marnie and which to Charles; most of his had dark spines, bold gold titles, whereas hers were in pastel tones, pinks and yellows primarily, and with intricate handwritten type.

  I returned from work each evening and embedded myself in the folds of their cushions, the thin layer of grime crawling up their shower tiles, the lip balm stains tarnishing their glasses.

  There is something very odd and also rather comfortable about being alone in someone else’s home. I recall feeling distinctly aware of their presence, even though they were hours away—continents, even—on the other side of the world. I felt like I was seeing them—the real version of them as a couple—for the very first time. I found myself rifling through their cabinets, keen to discover their favorite herbs and those with the foil lid still stuck in place. I went through their drawers and was astonished to discover that Marnie had become the sort of woman who bothered with matching underwear. I looked through their medicine cabinet—an endless array of painkillers and cough drops and Band-Aids and a thermometer still in its blister pack—and felt that I knew them a little better afterward than I had before.

  Marnie’s bedside table housed an array of knickknacks, nothing significant: packs of tissues, samples from beauty counters, inkless pens, old birthday cards, empty pill packets, a pair of old sunglasses, a string bracelet from a trip we’d taken to Greece while at university. I discovered, in Charles’s, three magazines, two bookmarks, four flash drives, some Polaroid photos from a friend’s wedding—one with Marnie in a blue silk dress that I’d helped her to choose—and, wrapped in a brown paper bag at the very back, a red velvet box.

  So I knew what was coming; I’d had time to prepare.

  * * *

  It was Sunday afternoon and I was still lying in bed when I received a second phone call from Marnie. I held my phone above my face and looked at her name written in block capitals on my screen, the photograph taken in her kitchen, apron strings knotted around her waist, red hair scraped away from her face, when I’d upgraded to a smartphone two years earlier.

  I took a deep breath and I answered.

  “Jane?” she shouted. “Jane. Can you hear me?” She was giddy, wild with excitement.

  “Of course,” I said. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  And I knew what it was and that nothing was the matter and yet we plodded through the charade regardless.

  “Charles proposed,” she squealed. “He’s asked me to marry him.” She was entirely unable to control the volume or the speed of her words. “I’m sending you a photo of the ring,” she said. I heard her fingertips tapping against the handset. She lifted the phone back to her cheek. “Has it arrived?” she asked.

  My phone vibrated against my ear. I already knew, of course, what this image would show. I didn’t feel ready to see that ring snug on her finger, nestled against her fair skin, binding her to a very specific future.

  “Not yet,” I replied. “I’m sure it’ll come through shortly.”

  I was going to look at it, but later. I was planning to put a bottle of wine in the fridge and tidy the flat and go for a walk and then, hours later, when it was quiet and dark outside, I would open the message and I would look at it then.

  “And you’ll be there, won’t you?” she asked. “Of course you will. At the wedding? We might do it abroad, maybe, we’ll see, we’re not sure. And you’ll help me decide what to wear?”

  “Of course,” I replied. I wasn’t convinced that I sounded quite enthusiastic enough. “Of course,” I said again, hoping that mindless repetitions would create the illusion of excitement when in fact I felt rather nauseated.

  “And you’ll be my maid of honor,” she said. “You will, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Of course I will.”

  “Okay, then, I have to go—we’re heading home now, and I need to make a few more phone calls and, oh, Jane, isn’t this just the most exciting thing? I really can’t believe it; I really can’t. Will you let me know when the photo arrives? Or I can send it again. It’s really something, really special. You’ll like it, I think. Or at least say you do. But I’m sure you will really as well. Okay, I’m blathering and Charles is rolling his eyes—yes, yes, I’m coming—so let’s talk later and I’ll see you on Friday if not before and—yes, okay—love you!”

  She hung up.

  Chapter Eight

  I went to bed early that night. I sat there p
ropped against my pillows, sweating in flannel pajamas, staring at the photo on the screen of my phone. It showed her hand, the gold band neatly circling her ring finger. It was a very beautiful ring, but I couldn’t help envisaging it made of rope, as a noose that could suffocate, the end of something rather than a beginning. The hand—while obviously Marnie’s, with her slender, elegant fingers and neat, painted nails—felt somehow other, like its own individual being, quite separate from her as a whole.

  I woke abruptly—ten past two in the morning—drenched in sweat and shivering and with the absolute certainty that I’d forgotten to do something of incredible importance. It was then that I realized that Marnie had called me from the car again—not only the first phone call, but the second one, too. There had been that same sound of traffic and the reverberation of shuddery wheels at speed. And she’d said, hadn’t she, that they were traveling, that they were on their way home.

  I was entirely sure that Charles would not have—would never have—proposed in a car. That wasn’t his style at all. He’d have wanted flowers and champagne and violinists and probably moonlight, too. I felt a little surprised that she hadn’t called me earlier.

  * * *

  When Marnie was sixteen years old, she fell in love with a boy called Thomas. He was seventeen and six foot four and played rugby for the county. She loved his chiseled jaw and firm abs and broad shoulders and strong arms. I couldn’t stop staring at his bizarrely large forehead. But he was utterly charming and I say that as someone not easily softened by good manners and charisma and a slightly crooked smile.

  I didn’t hate him, but I should have. I didn’t kill him, but I wish that I had.

  Stop it. Don’t look at me like that.

  Stop being so judgmental and listen to the story.

  I liked the way that their relationship worked. He was hoping to be offered a sports scholarship at a top university and so much of his time was spent training or competing. Most evenings, in fact, and always a match on weekends. They saw little of each other and their romance thrived instead on notes passed in corridors and threads of texts and winks across the cafeteria.

  The summer arrived with its eager mornings and long, humid afternoons. I didn’t notice that Marnie was still wearing sweatshirts until she absentmindedly rolled up her sleeves one lunchtime and I spotted four equal bruises crowded above her elbow. She saw me staring and garbled some nonsense about a bump against a bed frame.

  I don’t know how I’d missed it. She was secretive with her phone, where once she’d read her messages aloud and together we’d crafted replies. She was quick to anger, quick to bite, restless and skittish and I hadn’t noticed any of it.

  I knew what was happening. And I knew that I could stop it.

  There was a trellis tangled with wisteria that scrambled up from the backyard of her parents’ house to her bedroom window. I climbed it. I opened her wardrobe. I stepped inside and I sat cross-legged, cushioned by a mound of clothing.

  I waited.

  I knew that he was playing rugby that afternoon. She was watching the match and I knew that they would return to her room afterward because her parents were at her brother’s music recital and, at that time in our lives, an empty house was too tantalizing to ignore.

  I heard the key in the lock, their voices on the front step, the tap running in the kitchen, a cupboard opening, a glass clinking against the marble worktop. I heard their feet on the stairs, the bedroom door smoothing the carpet, the springs of the bed.

  I took my phone from my pocket and I turned on the microphone and I held it at the gap between the two doors where the light seeped in. I still have the recording:

  “Can we maybe . . .” she says. “Maybe just not today?”

  “Ah, come on,” he replies.

  “No,” she says. “I’m being serious. Can you just . . .”

  “But you said,” he says. “You said today. And what? You’ve changed your mind?”

  “Next time,” she says. “I promise. But my parents. They’ll be back any minute.”

  “You’re doing it with someone else, aren’t you?” he says, unprovoked.

  “I’m not,” she replies. “I promise, I’m not.”

  “You’re a fucking slut, that’s what you are.”

  “I’m not! I promise I’m not,” she says. “There’s no one else. I promise.”

  “You know that if I wanted to, I could, right? You know that, yeah?”

  “Please, Tom. Let’s not—”

  “I can do whatever I want. You know that.”

  “Stop it,” she says. “Come on, now. Don’t threaten me.”

  “You think that’s a threat? It’s a fucking promise.”

  She starts to cry.

  “My parents are away next weekend,” he says, and he stands up—the creak of the mattress—and he opens the door—the bristle of the weight of the wood on the carpet—and then he leaves.

  I stopped recording but I stayed crouched inside the wardrobe.

  Marnie went to the bathroom a few minutes later and I crept back out of the window and down the trellis. I sent the recording to his rugby coach with an accompanying email from an anonymous address and Thomas was quietly dismissed from the team. He sent some abusive messages to Marnie, but we read them together and she never saw him again after that. She invited me to take some self-defense classes with her, some sort of martial arts medley, and it was—it still is—rewarding to know that my actions have made us stronger, tougher, less vulnerable.

  I think that she knew it was me who recorded him and sent that email. But she never said anything. And I think that if she thought I’d overstepped, she would have done. Still, in the months that followed she would occasionally turn to me, as though about to speak, and then change her mind and close her mouth.

  Now, I suppose, I hope that she knew. I hope that, in that moment, she realized that our roots were so tightly locked together—the thicker, barkier skin so eroded at the tightest junctures, flesh on flesh—that we were entirely inseparable. I hope that she knew that we were both all in, at all costs, for always and forever.

  * * *

  The wedding was due to take place eight months after Charles’s proposal, on the first Saturday in August. I had wondered if their engagement would change things, but thankfully the steady rhythm of our everyday seemed unaffected. The intervening months passed without issue. Marnie and I still talked to each other regularly, sometimes several times a week. We still had dinner together every Friday evening and while, admittedly, our conversations often turned to floral arrangements, I had expected far worse. And so I had been relieved to discover that we were still very much the same people we had always been.

  At the beginning of her last unmarried weekend, on that Friday evening, Marnie and I were sitting together on the floor of her flat, stringing silver name tags to small boxes of sugared almonds. The many lists of things to do had dwindled over the previous weeks until there were just these few final details, the last of the legwork that needed completing.

  “When’s Charles’s mother arriving?” I asked. “Is she staying here?” It was a struggle to negotiate the thin silver thread through the small paper hole, and that kind of meticulous, detailed work had never been my strength.

  “Eileen?” said Marnie. “Oh. I don’t know. I don’t think so. But then . . . I don’t know where else she’d be staying. Hang on.” She went into the kitchen and returned with her laptop. She sat down on the sofa and lifted the screen. “I don’t know,” she said again. “I hope she isn’t staying here. I’d have to make up the bed and everything.”

  “I can help you,” I said. And then we moved on to the menus, all of which needed hole punching at the top and ribbon looping through the punctures to be tied in a bow.

  Charles arrived home an hour or so later. It must have been nearly nine o’clock. We knew that he was in a foul
mood from the slam of the door behind him, the crack of his briefcase on the wooden floor, the grunt as he hung his jacket over the banister.

  “I’ll check on him,” whispered Marnie.

  I heard her voice in the hallway, a soft buoyant murmuring, with its own tune, almost a song. And his replies, short and sharp and snapped. And initially it was just the unpacking of a day, the unraveling of a rage, but then her voice began to shift, too, undulating, and instead of her calming him, he was riling her.

  “I’ve literally just walked through the door,” he said, and his voice was loud now, carrying in that way that a proud man’s can. “And you’re asking me about wedding things. And I don’t have a clue, Marnie. I couldn’t tell you anything about anything to do with the wedding.”

  “I asked about your mother,” she said. “She’s your mother.”

  “It’s in hand.”

  “She’s on the table plan.”

  “Well, why is she on the table plan?” he replied.

  “Because she’s your mother,” insisted Marnie. And then quieter, kinder: “Isn’t she coming? We haven’t seen her in ages and—”

  “I’m going to have a shower,” he said, and he marched up the stairs and she groaned and walked into the kitchen.

  I heard the tap running and the clicking of the hob and her speaking into the camera, melodic again. I continued cutting, threading, tying ribbon, and piling the finished menus into boxes.

  Charles came into the living room about ten minutes later, wearing jeans now, his hair damp, and he slumped onto the sofa beside me. He was so big, so tall, over six foot and with broad shoulders and the sort of physique that men hone simply because they want to seem strong.