Sometimes I Lie

by Alice Feeney

People are not mirrors—they don’t see you how you see yourself.

“Did you have a nice weekend?” I venture. “I’m not ready to talk to people yet,” she says. I leave her to it.

thats so real

Why a team of women who produce a show for women is managed by a man is beyond my comprehension.

“Do you need someone to take a look at your hand?” asks the doctor. What’s wrong with his hand? “No, it’s fine,” says Paul. “You’ve bruised it quite badly, are you sure? It’s no trouble.” “It looks worse than it is, but thank you. Do you know how long she’ll be like this? Nobody will give me an answer.” Paul’s voice sounds strange to me, small and strangled.

Last year at a wedding, the couple sitting next to us asked what I did. Paul answered before I had a chance to. “Nothing.” The somebody he loved became a nobody he loathed.

damn

“Yes, it was a little strange coming home to find my husband and sister enjoying a cozy night in together.”

I’m not someone who cries; I have other ways of expressing my sadness.

Nana always said that books made better friends than people anyway. Books will take you anywhere if you let them, she used to say, and I think she was right.

Lies can seem true when told often enough.

She called Taylor flat-chested, which is stupid, we’re all flat-chested—we’re ten. Everyone laughed, not because it was funny, but because they’re scared of Kelly, which is also stupid.

Nana used to say that if you didn’t let the tears out of you they can turn to poison. Mum says only babies cry and that it is a sign of weakness. I think it must depend on the type of tears because I catch her crying all the time.

“How are things with Paul?” “You tell me, you’ve spent more time with him than I have lately.”

“Morning, Amber, how are we feeling today?” Let’s see, I feel like shit, I’m covered in shit, I stink of shit.

The voices in my head are louder than the silence in the room. The loudest is my own, reminding me constantly of all the things I have said and done, all the things I haven’t, all the things I should have.

I fear one day the dark water will swallow me down for good, and I won’t always be able to resurface. Switches are either on or off. People are either up or down. When I’m down, it’s so very hard to get back up and this is the farthest I’ve ever fallen. Even if I could remember my way back to normal, I don’t think I’d recognize myself when I got there.

She needed so much of their attention and behaved in a way that demanded our lives orbit hers. Mum and Dad didn’t hear the tears I cried at night; they didn’t see me at all after that. I became the invisible daughter.

The black satin and lace feel foreign on my fingertips, the sort of thing I used to wear. A Christmas present for me perhaps. Not the sort of thing he normally buys. The bra looks a bit small and I check the label. It’s the wrong size; I hope he’s kept the receipt.

i just side eyed the invisible camera

The street is so familiar to me that I could walk from here to her front door with my eyes closed. But I don’t. My eyes are open and the first thing I see is Paul’s car.

Life is more terrifying than death in my experience.

I need to get out of this bed. I have to wake up. And then I do. I can still hear the sound of the machines that breathe for me, feed me, and drug me so that I cannot feel what I must not, but the wires are gone and the tube has been removed from my throat. I open my eyes and sit up. I have to tell somebody. I get out of the bed and run to the door, fling it open and rush through, but I fall and land hard on the ground.

wait are you actually up rn??? or are you fucking with me

For such carefully chosen words, they sounded all wrong. Empty and false. I suppose it was because I’d been caught off guard. When it comes to difficult conversations, I like to be prepared. I like to play them out in my head beforehand, consider all the possible lines that might be spoken and rehearse the answers I will give, until they are polished and learned by heart.

i resonate with that

and realize I’m smiling to myself. There is very little to smile about at the moment, so I promptly readjust my face.

“You would have done the same if it was your mother.” I wouldn’t have done the same for my mother because she would never have called me in that situation, she would have called Claire.

I play the caring wife he needs me to be and he tells me what a wonderful son he has been, which only seems to highlight his failings as a husband.

I open his text messages. The last one was over twenty-four hours ago, from me. There are no texts from his mother.

go figure

She’s been waddling back and forth to the toilets throughout the morning and is covered in sweat. She thinks it must be food poisoning. I think it is far more likely to be the laxatives I put in her coffee just before we went on air.

oh my lord

She sleeps as I drive and I decide I like her a lot better like this. Silenced. The poison is trapped inside her while she sleeps, opposed to seeping from her lips when she is awake.

My parents are dead.

?????

The dead are not so very far away when you really need them; they’re just on the other side of an invisible wall. Grief is only ever yours and so is guilt. It’s not something you can share.

“Well, I had a couple of hours free this evening and thought it might be nice to catch up,” I say. “A couple of hours? Is that all I’m getting?” he says, passing me my glass. “No, I’ve only got ten minutes to spare with you, then I’ve got another date with some cool people.” He smiles, a fraction too late. “Another date?” he asks. I blush. “I see. Well, I had better make the most of the time I have with you then. Cheers.”

shouldve married this one

For a moment I think it might not be a bad thing to die now, to just slip away. For a moment I don’t want to wake up. Nobody would really miss me if I was gone, they’d probably be better off for it.

“What’s going on?” I ask nobody in particular. “Madeline’s mic was still on. They did a guest in the studio, then went back to her. Everything she just said went out live on national television.” I do my very best to look surprised.

You said last night that you were coming here for your Christmas lunch today.” Did I?

not true

“I had a meeting down the road and when I spotted you in the window, I had an impulse to say hi.” I don’t believe him. I notice that he hasn’t shaved. A dark shadow of stubble has grown over his tanned chin and he is wearing exactly the same clothes as yesterday, his white shirt visible beneath the long woolen coat. He waits for me to say something and when I don’t he tries again. “I’m lying. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t do that. You see straight through me anyway, you always did. There was no meeting. I remembered you were coming here and I just had to find a way to see you again.…”

:|

I wake up with a pounding headache and can’t understand where I am or what has happened to me. The last thing I remember was chatting with Edward in the pub. I sit up. The sudden movement makes the room sway as though I’m on a tiny boat in rough seas, but I’m not on a boat, I’m on a bed. The room I’m in is dark, the curtains closed. The dimly lit sight and smell of the place are foreign to me, a mix of stale belongings and sweat. I still don’t know where I am but I soon realize that I’m naked.

omg he drugged her

I notice the two large corkboards on the walls and I recognize them instantly. He had them in his room at university. They were covered in photos of the two of us back then and they still are, but more recent pictures have been added to the collage now too, this time just of me. Me outside work, me reading a newspaper on the tube, me sipping coffee at a café down the road from my home less than a week ago; I recognize my new coat. There must be over a hundred photos and my face stares out from every one.

They can’t even look after me properly, so it doesn’t make any sense at all for them to have another child.

“I charged Amber’s phone, but there was no contact number for anyone called Jo.” “That’s strange.” “I called her boss, thinking he’d be able to give me her number. He was very nice at first, but then got all agitated and said he couldn’t give it to me, because he doesn’t know anyone called Jo.”

what ???

“I’ve been lying to you,” he says. He still doesn’t look at me, just stares at a spot on the floor. “What about?” “I wasn’t at Mum’s yesterday. I was before that, she did have a fall, but when I left yesterday morning that wasn’t where I was going.”

obviously

But then I remember something I cannot forget. “There was underwear in your wardrobe. Now it’s gone.” “What?” “You bought lacy underwear for someone else. I found it. It wasn’t my size.” For a moment I can’t tell whether he is angry or amused by what I have said. “I bought underwear for you. It was the wrong size, yes. So I took it back. If you go upstairs right now you’ll find the same bag containing what I thought I’d picked up the first time, hidden in the same place. Or at least it was supposed to be hidden until Christmas. You didn’t really think I was having an affair, did you?” I start to cry. I can’t help it.

the crying is so real

“No harm done there, then. Getting yourself all worked up over nothing as usual. I’m only telling you in case you happen to ‘bump’ into him again. I wouldn’t advise it.” “Why?” I ask, fearing I already know the answer. “Because I think I might have said the letters were from you.”

she's the real villain here

“I’ve done what you asked,” I say. She puts her glass down. “Madeline?” “Yes.”

oh wow

I didn’t like the sound of Jo much at all actually, until Taylor told me that she wasn’t real, she was an imaginary friend.

She said I could borrow Jo when I moved if I wanted, that Jo would keep me company when I was scared or lonely and that I’d always have a friend wherever I went.

I’m going to put it right here, where nobody will notice. It’s activated by movement, so if you get up and start dancing in the night, I’ll be able to see you on the laptop at home. I know that you’re in there, Amber. They don’t believe me, but I know. You just have to hold on, I’ll find a way to get you out.”

History is a mirror and we’re all just older versions of ourselves; children disguised as adults.

“You were begging for it,” Edward says, standing right in front of me now. “Begging me to fill up every one of your dirty little holes.”

WHAT ayo those words dont belong here

“I found something else in the attic, when I got the decorations down.” I hold my hand up to the wood. Imagining his hand on the other side, wishing I could hold it. “Not another wasp nest?” “Not this time. I found a box of old notebooks.” I’m quite sure I stop

oouuu

We are all just ghosts of the people we hoped that we were and counterfeit replicas of the people we wanted to be.

“We don’t. They’re not my secrets. The diaries belong to Claire.”

WHAT