Sometimes I Lie

by Alice Feeney

A lot of people would think I have a dream job, but nightmares are dreams too.

I can play all the parts life has cast me in, I know all my lines; I’ve been rehearsing for a very long time.

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

What has happened to me?

I can’t remember what happened to me, but I know, with unwavering certainty, that this man, my husband, had something to do with it.

Lies can seem true when told often enough.

I don’t want to be afraid of my husband, but he’s not himself and I don’t know this version.

I’m sorry about what happened. It’s only because I love you. It feels like my whole body ices over. I hear a beep. Message deleted. You have no new messages.

“In case you’re confused in there by anything you’ve heard, this wasn’t an accident.” His finger slides down the side of my face and rests on my lips. “You did this to yourself.”

Practice doesn’t make me perfect, but people are more likely to believe me when I have.

The mind is a powerful tool, it can create entire worlds and it’s certainly more than capable of playing a few tricks in order to aid self-preservation.

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.

I don’t avoid broken people because I think I’m better than them, I just don’t like looking at my own reflection.

“It was a girl.” The four words stab me in the stomach and punch a hole in the muted existence we’ve become accustomed to. It was a girl. I was pregnant.

“Look! Her hand, she’s pointing her finger.” “Amber, can you hear me?” “What does it mean?” “It means she’s still here.”

The man keeping me here is Edward. I know that now. I just don’t know why.

“I’ve made mistakes and now I’m paying for them.”

“Because I think I might have said the letters were from you.”

I’ve always known where I stood with Claire. She doesn’t pretend to be someone she’s not with me. She knows what I know and it never seems to bother her.

“We had an agreement,” I say. “If people knew what you…” Claire reaches across the table and takes my hand. Her grip is so tight that it hurts. “Just be careful, Amber.”

“I suppose the real question is who have you really been with when you’ve been telling Paul you’re with Jo?”

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

“I thought we didn’t have any secrets?” he says. “We don’t. They’re not my secrets. The diaries belong to Claire.”

She said she killed them for me. She said she thought it was what I wanted, so that we could stay together, so that she could keep me safe. I’ve spent my life since wondering what it takes for a person to do something like that.

People say there’s nothing like a mother’s love—take that away and you’ll find there is nothing like a daughter’s hate.

I can remember the night of the accident. I can remember it all. I know what happened now. It wasn’t me driving on Christmas Day and it wasn’t an accident at all. I’ve been away. I don’t know how long for, but I’m back now and I remember everything.

She won’t let anyone take me away from her, she never has. She’s done terrible things to people over the years—friends, colleagues, lovers, none of them good enough for me, in her estimation. She thought I needed saving from every single one. I thought once the twins were born, once she had a family of her own, things might change, but they didn’t, she held on more tightly than ever before. I think she was even a little bit pleased when I couldn’t get pregnant, worried that my love for a child would somehow diminish my love for her. It was different with Paul, the celebrity author. She decided he was good for me and she was delighted when he was happy to live less than a mile away. It was like a test—he passed because he didn’t try to take me away from her. But now he’s failed.

“I never was fond of gas,” I say, before leaving the room.

People think that good and bad are opposites but they’re wrong, they’re just a mirror image of each other in broken glass.

MADELINE FROST’S MURDER TRIAL BEGINS.

I’m transfixed by the thin bracelet on the tray, small enough for a child’s wrist. It’s held together with an old, slightly rusty safety pin and my date of birth is engraved on the gold.