by Jane Fallon
I built her up over a few days and then, when she’d flattered her way into follower number ten’s orbit, relentlessly following anything that moved in the process, I made my play. Lydia had posted a photo of a section of one of her drawings – a map of an area of the forest inhabited by gnomish creatures who live in the hollows of trees. Layers of twisted flora. Sinewy fauna. There were annotations about the habits and behaviour of her characters. It was blackly cartoonish in the best way. Black and white. I’ve seen the original and it’s gorgeous. Dark. Disturbing almost. Different every time you look because of the layers of detail. Patricia gushed.
Omg that is gorgeous. I’ve just looked at your Etsy store and I want everything. No exclamation marks. I didn’t think Patricia was an exclamation mark kind of woman. Unlike Lydia, whose motto is why use one when you could use three.
How could Lydia not bite? I waited, pacing around the kitchen half-heartedly wiping down surfaces, checking my phone every few seconds, until I remembered that Lydia was so disheartened by the lack of response to her virtual offerings that she almost never logged on. I forced myself up to my little office on the first floor. Anyone else would call it the spare bedroom – it’s still the room guests stay in when they visit – but it has a desk and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf with copies of all the Wilbur foreign editions. Nineteen different languages and counting. When we have guests I have a tendency to pile other books in front of them so as not to feel as if I’m showing off; I don’t want to look like one of those Hollywood stars who bashfully admit they keep their Oscars in the downstairs loo, as if none of us are going to realize that that’s the most likely place their guests will get a good look at them. I occupied myself with admin. There was talk of a toy company making plushy Wilburs with a line in consumables that would fit into his pouch, a query about a visit to a primary school to talk to the Reception-aged kids, a couple of bits of fan mail to be answered. I managed to occupy myself until lunchtime without looking at Twitter. When I picked up my mobile the first thing I saw was that I had a text from Lydia.
I’ve got a fan haha!!
I clicked on the message, knowing what I’d see, and there was a screen grab of Patricia’s tweet. Lydia had added smiley emojis with heart eyes.
See, I texted back. I told you!
Not that she’s bought anything! Lydia replied.
Van Gogh never sold a single painting in his lifetime, I sent, knowing it would make her laugh.
I looked at Twitter and saw that Lydia had responded to Patricia’s compliment. Thank you so much! I do commissions too!
I waited a decent amount of time until I decided Patricia might be on her lunch break and then I responded. I’ll have to wait for payday but then I’m definitely ordering something. Then I hit follow. I didn’t even think I’d really have to do anything else. Throw Lydia the odd new compliment every time she posted a picture. Hint at a purchase in the future. It was hardly going to change Lydia’s life but I felt happy knowing it had made her day.
If only things had stayed that simple.
CHAPTER 3
They do for a while. Patricia gushes. Lydia basks in her compliments. She gains a few more followers because Patricia raves about her work to anyone who’ll listen. Someone orders a card featuring an evil-looking elf. It’s Lydia’s first order. A whole £3.41. But it’s validation. Someone likes her art enough to buy it.
‘Do you think that means I can finally call myself a professional artist?’ she laughs, sipping tea in my kitchen. Lydia is a sipper. I am more of a gulper. This, I feel, is an appropriate metaphor for our lives. Did you ever see those memes that went round of a cat delicately picking its way through a series of obstacles without knocking a single one over and then a dog steaming through and scattering the lot? That’s Lydia and me. It’s not just that she’s more slightly built than me – five foot two, tiny-boned, a pale angular face with high cheekbones, huge, shockingly blue eyes (made all the huger by the fact she is bordering on too thin at the moment and her love for Charlotte Tilbury eyeliner), dark, almost black hair. Whereas I am more robust, much taller. Also blue-eyed and pale-skinned, although not as blue or as pale. Also dark-haired, although not as dark. The budget version; the one that’s been through the wash a few times. If you had to pick an adjective to describe each of us, I’d probably get ‘strapping’ or, on a good day, ‘sporty’, whereas she’d get something far more interesting like ‘waif-like’ or ‘gamine’. She’s more cautious, careful. She takes her time and gets things right. She’s meticulous in everything she does. She loves working through a magnifying glass, scratching tiny particulars into her drawings that probably no one will ever even notice. It’s why her work takes so long but is so satisfying to look at. You’ll always find something you missed the first time. I scrawl a dozy-looking marsupial in twelve strokes of the pen and I’m the one who ends up with all the attention. I can see why it stings.
‘Definitely. You’ll need to file a tax return.’
She gives me a grin. ‘I might have to move to the Isle of Man.’
It takes me a moment to get what she means. ‘I think there are nicer tax havens. Less rainy.’
She knocks back the last of her tea. ‘I have to go. I have a date tonight.’
‘What? Wait. Who—’
She shrugs. ‘Just some bloke I met through work. He got us tickets for Hamilton. He seems like a nice guy but I’m not really interested …’
Lydia has been single forever. She has left a field hospital of broken men in her wake. I’ve never known anyone have so many suitors. So many proposals of marriage, come to that (I have had precisely one in my whole life. Nick, on one knee in the park with a hastily plucked half-dead daffodil between his teeth and me laughing uncontrollably at the ridiculousness of it). She’s just not that bothered, not unless the perfect man suddenly comes along. ‘Anything less is doing myself a disservice. I deserve better,’ she said to me once when I queried why she’d walked away from another budding relationship. ‘I’m fine on my own.’ And I believe she really is. I’ve always envied how self-contained she is.
‘Still, Hamilton though …’
‘Exactly,’ she says, shrugging her arms into her cardigan. I would rather be doing literally anything other than going out. It’s dark already at four o’clock. Grey, with sludgy half-snow. Damp frozen drizzle in the air. I have wine and Netflix and a log burner. Nick is at Morrisons right now, filling the boot with bags of chopped wood. In an ideal world I think he pictures himself in the forest, axe in hand, not pushing a trolley filled with the other haphazard items I shouted at him as he left: Quorn mince! Toothpaste! Miso paste! Lemons! A leek! It’s like that game where you keep adding random products and the other person has to remember them all in order. ‘Fizzy water!’ I yelled as the front door shut. I have no idea whether he heard me.
‘Have fun,’ I say, giving her a hug. ‘Let him down gently.’
‘I already have,’ she says, hugging me back.
That’s the thing. Lydia’s not a user, luring unsuspecting hopefuls into her net just to fleece them for their Hamilton tickets. She’s always upfront. Honest. She tells them in advance that this is it, a companionable visit to the theatre or an art gallery or a restaurant. Just friends. Nothing else. But still half of them end up lovestruck and wounded. Retreating, confused, to nurse their injuries.
While I wait for Nick to get back, I call Joe. When the twins were babies Nick and I used to have a running joke about how we couldn’t tell them apart. ‘Which one is that?’ I’d say when he appeared with a freshly woken infant on his hip. ‘The needy one,’ he’d say. ‘The one who takes after you.’ Or he’d come in when I was feeding them both at the same time and do an exaggerated double take. ‘There are two of them? I thought we just had one who ate a lot.’ The truth is they have always been different: not just in the obvious way that they’re a boy and a girl, but their temperaments are polar opposite. Edie breezes through life with an enviable confidence that she must have inheri
ted from some ancient ancestor neither of us remembers. She has a wide circle of friends, both at home and at uni in Bath. She fits in effortlessly wherever she goes. Her life is full of colour: pink hair, blue nail varnish, violet lipstick. She can go days without calling and it never worries me. It just means she’s off having a good time somewhere. Joe is far less self-assured. His twin has always been his security blanket – someone he could hide behind at parties – and it took him longer to settle into life in Brighton. There was a moment a few weeks ago when I worried he wasn’t even going to go back for his second term, but then he sat us down on Christmas Eve – Edie was at the pub with her school friends – and told us he had something to say to us: that he was gay. I think our underwhelmed reaction must have confused him; afterwards Nick said to me, ‘We’ve known for years, haven’t we?’ and I’d felt terrible that yes, we had, but maybe we’d never communicated that adequately to Joe. It had seemed like one of those things we all just knew and no one batted an eyelid about, but clearly our son hadn’t picked up on our vibes. ‘Does that make us awful parents?’ I’d said. ‘Should we have talked to him about it before?’
‘God, no,’ Nick said. ‘He’d have been horrified if we’d brought it up, wouldn’t he?’
‘That’s what I always thought. I mean, I just thought he knew we knew …’
They really should hand you a set of rules when you have a child.
Anyway, long story short, Joe went back to uni last weekend a much more confident, easy version of himself and is currently having a blast. But he’s still the one I worry about the most. Still the one who never likes to go too long without checking in.
He answers on the second ring. ‘Ma!’ he says in an exaggerated EastEnders accent, one the four of us used to use to make each other laugh when the kids were younger.
I settle back on the sofa. ‘All right, son?’ I say in a voice so gruff I make myself cough.
Later, once Nick and I are slouched in front of the TV for the evening, glasses of wine on the go, one episode of Ozark down, I half-heartedly check Twitter. I haven’t even looked at it since yesterday. Now that Lydia is a bit happier and she has a few genuine followers who like her work – even if most of them seem to be other artists also looking for validation rather than potential customers – my job is pretty much done. It’s then that I see the DM. The private message Lyds has sent to Patricia. I know I shouldn’t open it. I know that Patricia should just recede into the background now and let Lydia’s community grow organically, however slowly, but I’m torn. Will she be slighted if Patricia ignores her? Suspicious even? It can’t hurt to at least see what it says.
Apologies for the DM! I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you supporting my work. I was about to give up when I got your first message!
I decide that a short acknowledgement is all that’s needed. Patricia would politely respond, but I don’t have to open up a whole dialogue.
Gosh
I have no idea where that came from. I have never said gosh in my life. Patricia, though, is definitely a woman of the gosh, darn, fudge variety. Nicely brought up.
Gosh, not at all. I meant it when I said your work was wonderful. Never give up.
Send.
And then I turn back to my husband, the TV and the wine, and forget all about it. Oblivious to what I have set in motion.
CHAPTER 4
Like most couples Nick and I have couple friends and, like most couples, in most cases we infinitely prefer one half of those duos to the other. His brother Phil and his ‘I’m so quirky!’ wife Lianne, my school-gate buddy Kim and her ‘I think you’ll find you should do it like this’ husband Dean, our neighbour Mart and his ‘Have you seen my new bag, it’s Louis Vuitton. Three thousand pounds’ partner Alana. When we got friendly with our then-neighbours Harry and Anne Marie about ten years ago, and realized we both liked both of them equally, we clung on for dear life, so precious a commodity were they, so rare. Thankfully they seem to feel the same way – we have all told each other this at the end of drunken evenings in the throes of a soppy group hug – and so we spend at least one evening together most weeks. At ours, at theirs or – when we can be bothered – at a restaurant. Anne Marie has become one of my closest buddies, my default choice for a quick coffee or a walk in the park. We still live within five minutes of each other and her flat is almost as familiar to me as my own house. She’s one of the most straightforward, straight-up people I know. She’s the living definition of ‘what you see is what you get’.
Tonight it’s our turn to host. By turn I mean they walk over to us rather than the other way round. And by host I mean there is no other effort involved on anyone’s part beyond calling out for Deliveroo and making sure there’s wine in the fridge. We’ve long since got beyond the need to impress each other with cooking.
By seven the living room has had the quickest of once-overs, there are plates stacked in the kitchen and I’ve had a shower before dressing in something that closely resembles pyjamas but can officially get away with being described as yoga wear if pushed. Not that I think either Harry or Anne Marie would care if I was in a nightie and slippers so long as there was takeout and alcohol.
We flop on the sofas – automatically gravitating to the same seats, that’s how long we’ve been friends. Nick and I sit in our usual places, Anne Marie opposite me and Harry opposite Nick. We all know it’s ridiculous but we feel somehow powerless to change it. One evening, feeling rebellious, I flopped into Harry’s spot and it almost caused a collective meltdown. So now we just accept it. We’re all in a rut but we’re in it together and it makes us happy.
Tonight, because it’s icy outside, we have the fire lit and orange-scented candles lining the mantelpiece. Our living room is all throws and cushions, the epitome of hygge. Comfort. Home. I think – not for the first time – how incredibly lucky I am to live here. Our house isn’t grand, don’t get me wrong. When the twins were still at home it felt as if we were all tripping over each other. In fact, we didn’t just feel it, we actually were, once they sprouted both their father’s and my long limbs seemingly overnight. It was always a given that Nick and I would sire giraffes. I used to lie awake at night worrying that they would be subjected to the same name-calling at school that I had been, thanks to my height, but the fact that there were two of them, and that they were easy in their own skins, thankfully meant they were spared that particular horror. Or maybe kids just pick on different things these days. The house is a terrace, but not one of those grand mansion-sized ones they specialize in round here. Three bedrooms. Kitchen in the basement. Tiny office. Tiny garden. But it’s in one of London’s prettiest areas. I never would have thought we’d be able to afford to buy a place anywhere near here when we were renting round the corner, pre Wilbur. Harry and Anne Marie still live in the flat a couple of doors down from the one that used to be ours. If they’re envious they’ve never let it show. They’re that rare breed: friends who are genuinely happy when things go well for you.
‘How’s work?’ This to Anne Marie. She pulls a face.
‘Same.’ Anne Marie loves what she does but hates her job. She’s a music teacher in a school where the majority of the staff and parents consider music a complete waste of time and money. The school my twins attended for five years. She seems to spend most of her time battling budget cuts and the threat of her role being axed altogether. ‘You?’
‘Wilbur bought a hammer,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘I’m thinking about revealing he’s a serial killer in book seven.’ Nick always tells me off for downplaying my success to our friends. Or not so much downplaying it as avoiding talking about it if I can.
‘It’s not as if you were handed anything on a plate. You should be proud of it,’ he said once after I’d failed to mention the fact that one of my books had finally found an American publisher when Anne Marie asked me how things were going shortly after. The advance was quite hefty and pretty much all I’d had to do for it was change the word courgette to zucchini.
And then think of something to rhyme with it, obviously, so suddenly Wilbur was sporting a rather risqué bikini. I have an all-expenses-paid trip coming up to promote it when it comes out in the summer, by the way. Not as glamorous as it sounds. No five-star hotels and dinners in my honour. A short book tour of strategic cities, staying in motels and appearing in shops to an audience of probably five kids and their parents in each, if I’m lucky. A long train ride in between. If I’m honest I’m beside myself with excitement, something that I’ve shared with Anne Marie although not with Lydia. With Lydia I’ve played it down (‘It’ll be miserable, just me and some PR person I don’t even know in a grotty motel. No one will turn up …’). All of this is probably true but I couldn’t care less. It’s a dream. An adventure of a lifetime. I can’t wait.
‘I am,’ I’d said. ‘Of course I am. But I’m hardly going to drone on about how brilliantly my career is going while she’s struggling to keep her incredibly pressurized and underpaid job.’
‘It’s not just with them. You do it all the time.’
I’d shrugged, not wanting a row. We were clearing up after an evening at ours. Stacking plates and glasses into the dishwasher. ‘What can I say? I’m saintly in my modesty.’
Nick wasn’t having it. ‘I’m just saying don’t sell yourself short. I’m proud of you. You should be proud of yourself.’
‘I am,’ I said, looping my arms round his waist from behind and resting my forehead on his broad back. ‘It’s just … you know …’
He turned round and enveloped me in a hug. ‘And, I mean, if you ever get bored of drawing Wilbur, Anne Marie could probably ask some of the year sevens …’
I shoved him away, laughing. ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.’