The Lying Game

“[…] what if I ended up split down the middle when the train divided, living two lives, each diverging from the other all the time, growing further and further apart from the me I should have become?” 

On her first trip to Salten House as a new student, Isa’s imagining foreshadows her incomplete sense of self as an adult. Part of Isa remains 15, playing a new role as “someone completely different” (54), while the adult Isa plays a safe role and lives a lie. 

“As I picked up my case and followed Thea’s retreating back, I had no idea that that one simple action had changed my life forever.” 

The choice to become friends with Thea and Kate informs the rest of Isa’s life. She becomes irrevocably bound to the girls through both love and guilt, to exclusion of other relationships.

“But this is the person I’ve become since having her. All my fears—the ones that used to flit between dividing trains, and lift doors, and strange taxi drivers, and talking to people I didn’t know—all those anxieties have settled to roost on Freya.” 

Isa uses Freya as a coping mechanism for her feelings of guilt. She projects her fears onto the baby and uses the busy tasks of motherhood to avoid introspection. As more information comes out about Ambrose, and Isa’s emotional state grows more brittle, her irrational fears for and possessiveness of Freya increase. 

“I sit, and for a moment I am nothing but her mother, and there is no one in the world except the two of us in this pool of sunshine and love.” 

This quote shows the depth of love and complete devotion that Isa feels towards her child. Having Freya shifts Isa’s primary allegiance from her friends to her baby. A text from one of her friends quickly interrupts this moment, however, revealing that Isa’s past lies continue to intrude on and sour her present happiness.

“That was the most important rule of the Lying Game. Lie to everyone else—yes. But to each other—never.” 

Isa breaks this cardinal rule both as a young girl and as an adult. Isa’s lies to her friends, and herself, implicate her as a false narrator. Kate also breaks this rule, but her motive is less to protect herself and more to protect Luc, her father, and her friends.

“But here […] here I was someone else […] someone new.” 

Being friends with Thea, Kate, and Fatima allows Isa the chance to play a new role, other than the good student and dutiful daughter. The new Isa comes of age at Salten and explores a new identity. Her choice gives Isa lifelong friendships, but it also has negative consequences.

“But the memory remains—a body, stretched out on the rug, four shocked white faces, stained with tears […]” 

The image of the body overwrites Isa’s vision of her friends as young girls; much as the guilt Isa feels permanently clouds her life after her happy days at Tide Mill. Isa’s memory is the first significant confirmation that the women have something to do with the bones found on the beach. 

“[…] for Ambrose was so alive—always working, laughing, loving […] his hands never still, always rolling a cigarette, or sketching a drawing, or throwing back a glass of the harsh red wine he kept in two-liter bottles under the sink at the Mill—too rough for anyone else to drink.” 

Isa’s memory of Ambrose foreshadows both the rumors that Ambrose was sexually abusing Kate and possibly the girls, and his death by drinking heroin-laced wine. Isa’s description of Ambrose’s charisma and the desire she felt when she met his eyes adds additional fuel to this misdirection.

“And we never minded. Though maybe we should have.” 

As teenagers, the girls are too selfish and immature to know that Ambrose’s naked drawings of them would have future ramifications. Hindsight being 20-20, Isa wonders if they should have refused Ambrose’s requests to draw them. The pictures return to haunt them. 

“Then I turn on the cold tap and I sluice away every trace of the note, every fiber, every fleck of accusation until it’s as if it never existed.” 

Isa obsessively washes away the threatening note found with the bloody sheep. Although she destroys the physical evidence, her action does not alter the situation or erase her guilt. Here, water is symbolically concealing and cleansing. 

“They know. Someone knows.” 

The note inside the dead sheep reveals that someone else knows about or suspects their crime. Luc is initially Isa’s prime suspect, but Mary Wren is the blackmailer and sheep killer.

“We were pleased with ourselves, and we had no need for others, except as targets for our jokes and games.” 

The Lying Game unites and empowers the four girls: They become bullies. Isa knows they in fact unjustly targeted other girls. Their game and exclusive friendship alienate them from others.

“The school washed its hands of us long ago—and Salten, if you are rejected by both town and gown, can be a very hostile place indeed.” 

The villagers and Isa’s schoolmates harbor animosity towards Isa’s clique. Neither social group trusts the girls. This lack of trust returns to hurt them as adults. Luc is in a similarly socially isolated position: As a young teen, he attends the public school, but the town boys don’t accept him because he hangs out with the four Salten girls.  

“When you define yourself by walls, who’s in, who’s out. The people on the other side of the wall become, not just them, but them. The outsiders. The opposition. the enemy.” 

Isa learns that by excluding other people, she turns them into potential adversaries. At the alumnae dinner, the women understand how their actions alienated and angered others when they discover they are the subject of rumors and gossip. Isa worries that these enemies have the power to discover the truth behind her lies.

“She whistles, and you come running, all of you, like dogs.” 

Luc’s comment reveals his jealousy of the women’s relationship and the love between them. Kate withdrew her love and friendship from Luc as punishment for killing her father. Owen echoes this quote when Isa drops everything and runs back to Kate. Owen is also jealous. He values his relationship with Isa and wishes she valued him more than she does Kate.  

“And the feeling that I was with the only people who could fill the gaping hole that had opened up inside me, that I was home.” 

Isa shows the depth of her attachment to her friends when they attend her mother’s funeral. Isa feels that the four together are a family, embodying the qualities of a home: safety, security, and love. 

“Because I can never be his alone. I will always be nine-tenths Freya’s, and what little there is left over, I need for myself, and for Fatima, Thea, and Kate.” 

Adult Isa devotes herself to her child, putting her first in her priorities: a change from her teenage priorities. Next comes herself and her friends. This quote suggests that Isa does not value her role as partner as highly as she does her role of mother and friend.

“There’s nothing like being in the wrong to make you fight back.”

Isa weaponizes her lies, turning Owen’s comments against him. Her irritability and anger are signs of her tense emotional state, and a defense against her feelings of guilt.

“Why didn’t I realize that a lie can outlast any truth, and that in this place people remember?” 

Isa refers to the lie about Mark Wren that is still visible in the women’s bathroom in the pub, but also speaks to the power of lies. People are willing to believe what they hear—one reason their Lying Game worked so well on others. However, the effect of lies also haunts the tellers: The girls’ past lies color how people in Salten see them in the present, regardless of what they have become in their lives. 

“I’m not having children. I don’t want to bring a child into a world like this.” 

Despite having a natural talent with children, Luc never wants to be a father. Because of his history of abuse, he believes nothing about himself is worth passing on to a child. Luc views the world as cruel and does not want an innocent child to suffer in it, as he did.

“[…] I feel no guilt at all.” 

Outside the Tide Mill, Isa rebuffed Luc’s kiss, but inside the Mill, Isa is ready to give in to her long-held desire for him. Isa feels blameless because Isa mentally and emotionally steps back into the past of her memories. 

“What matters is that part of the bedrock of my life has cracked and broken, and I feel the foundations I’ve built my adult self on shifting and creaking.” 

Isa has such a strong connection with Kate and the other women that she lacks a sense of individuation. She builds her self-knowledge on the bond of love and lies she shares with her friends. When she discovers Kate’s duplicity and apparent guilt, Isa loses her sense of self and will need to reconstruct it.

“But I meet her gaze, and for the first time since I came back to Salten I am without guilt. I am without fear. And I know the truth.” 

The women realize they did not cause Ambrose’s death and did nothing wrong. This knowledge liberates them from their guilt and years of worry. They can now look Mary Wren in the eye without feeling ashamed.