Image: iStock.

When Ryan first brought his girlfriend of two months, Eve, to a casual gathering over a year and a half ago, my heart filled with happiness.

She was perfect. Chatty, gorgeous, down to earth and fun. As his best friend since pre-school, I’d watched Ryan get burned over and over again in relationships with women who didn’t value him. Finally, it looked as though he’d met his soulmate.

Eve didn’t seem to have a problem with Ryan having a female best friend – as so many other girlfriends had – and I loved her self-confidence.

But after the pair had been dating for almost one year, I started to sense something wasn’t quite right with the anecdotes and snippets of her life Eve was letting me in on.

The uneasy feeling crept up on me when a big group of us caught up for drinks and Eve and I fell into conversation together. Somehow the topic got onto grandparents and she spoke of how she grew up barely knowing hers as they lived in a different state. A cold shiver went down my spine as I realised what had just happened.

I recalled a conversation we’d had months earlier, a really in-depth, heartfelt conversation where Eve had recounted her emotionally abusive relationship with her grandmother who was unkind to her throughout her childhood. I was so moved by it at the time that I distinctly remembered it on this occasion. (Post continues after gallery.)

I could’ve sworn she mentioned she’d seen her grandparents a lot when we previously chatted.

A little thrown off, I decided that maybe I’d confused her story with someone else’s and pushed the uncomfortable feeling outside of my head.

Later that night, Ryan came up to me and told me he’d never been happier.

“I just feel like Eve truly gets me,” he told me after he’d had a few beers.

“She’s like no one I’ve ever met. I know it hasn’t been that long, but I’m thinking of asking her to marry me at the end of the year. What do you think?”

I beamed, it was so good to see my friend so happy.

“I think she’s lovely, Ryan, she clearly feels the same way about you, I think you should go for it,” I replied.

Instantly, I felt a knot in my stomach but tried to ignore it. My friend was happy, I wasn’t going to take that away from him because of a tiny, niggling feeling.

A month or so later, my suspicions were sadly confirmed.

I’ve been working in Public Relations since I began my career 10 years ago and had spoken to Eve before about wanting to make the move into graphic design. Eve was so supportive and told me I should go for it, she said she’d workied with a reputable creative agency in Melbourne before changing to her current career as a retail manager.

Out at an industry award event soon after, I got the chance to meet Anna, the managing director of the agency Eve said she’d been employed by.

Wanting to impress Anna, I mentioned I was friends with an old employee of hers and went on to explain the connection through Eve.

She stared at me blankly, clearly trying to wrack her brains of a time where she'd worked with Ryan’s girlfriend.

Feeling desperate, I began to dig myself a hole.

“Eve Larson? Blonde hair to about here? Would’ve been three, maybe four years ago?”

Still, she looked confused. She politely said she couldn’t remember Eve, that she must’ve slipped her radar, but I knew she was lying. Eve had never worked there, I was now sure of it.

Anna had built the (still relatively small) company from scratch and would’ve worked with every single employee there. There was no way she wouldn’t have remembered Eve.

Feeling concerned, I left the event and called Claire, a good friend of mine in our friendship circle, and confided in her. Even at this stage, I wasn’t 100 per cent sure if I was being paranoid or not, and it was all some strange misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, Claire said she’d been meaning to talk to me about Eve, but hadn’t wanted to as we seemed so close.

“I’ve noticed inconsistencies in her stories, nothing huge or that problematic, but just obvious lies and holes in her past,” Claire explained.

She was right, none of the lies Eve had doled out since I’d known her were catastrophic. Maybe she was just trying to impress Ryan’s friends so much she’d resorted to a few white lies. Maybe she craved to be closer to me, Ryan’s best friend, so she made up a lie about her Grandmother.

It’s not the worst thing someone could do? No.

But it’s not really something I want Ryan to put up with. I just don’t know how to tell him without hurting our relationship or turning him away.

Have you ever called out a friend on a lie?