I Know Who You Are. Alice Feeney
rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Twenty-One
London, 2017
I’m that girl you think you know, but you can’t remember where from.
Lying is what I do for a living. It’s what I’m best at: becoming somebody else. The eyes are the only part of me I still recognise in the mirror, staring out beneath the made-up face of a made-up person. Another character, another story, another lie. I look away, ready to leave her behind for the night, stopping briefly to stare at what is written on the dressing-room door:
AIMEE SINCLAIR
My name, not his. I never changed it.
Perhaps because, deep down, I always knew that our marriage would only last until life did us part. I remind myself that my name only defines me if I allow it to. It is merely a collection of letters, arranged in a certain order; little more than a parent’s wish, a label, a lie. Sometimes I long to rearrange those letters into something else. Someone else. A new name for a new me. The me I became when nobody else was looking.
Knowing a person’s name is not the same as knowing a person.
I think we broke us last night.
Sometimes it’s the people who love us the most that hurt us the hardest, because they can.
He hurt me.
We’ve made a bad habit of hurting each other; things have to be broken in order to fix them.