by Sophie White
After make-up, she ploughed through lunchtime traffic to get to Ailesend, voicenoting with Kate all the way. Even though, these days, Kate barely asked about Ali and seemed much more focused on Ali tagging her in selfies to boost the @ShreddingForTheWedding account, Ali was prepared to overlook whatever cynical motives Kate had for their friendship. This was mainly because, despite having close to a hundred thousand followers now, she often felt lonely in that world. At least Kate was someone real who took an interest in what she was wearing tonight and cared about what was in the swag bag. Though their bitch sessions weren’t nearly so satisfying anymore. Now that Ali had grasped that behind every dodgy bit of FaceFix was a real person, she felt guilty swapping screen-grabs and zooming in on dodgy Photoshop.
‘Did you see Crystal Doorley’s latest?’ Kate’s voicenote was scathing but Ali just felt bad for Crystal. She’d seen her at a few events and it was obvious she had serious issues with her confidence, even more than anyone else who was editing out great chunks of their bodies on Insta.
‘I’d better go – I’m just about to go in to … do a dress fitting, catch you later,’ Ali said into the phone, pulling into the nursing home car park. She grabbed her bag and, grim-faced, headed in, refusing to dwell on the fact that she herself was editing out great chunks of her life every hour of the day.
Mini was sitting beside the bed when Ali reached Miles’s room – after a quick pit stop in the courtyard to do some more glam content, breathlessly gushing about how #blessed she was to be nominated.
‘You’re road-testing the new seats, I see.’ She kissed Miles on the cheek quickly and flopped into the empty one. ‘Much comfier,’ she observed.
Mini was about to speak when Tabitha bustled in bearing a tray of tea and biscuits.
‘Taby! What the hell? Since when do you make us tea? Are those Kimberleys?’
Tabitha didn’t say a word but gave Ali a vigorous reassuring pat on the arm and slipped back out the door.
Ali raised an eyebrow. ‘Dad, have you paid her off or something?’
Mini looked pale and watchful and had yet to really acknowledge her arrival. Ali felt something was seriously off. Miles looked more or less the same as ever, though his eyes were slightly more closed than usual and his breathing seemed shallower. She glanced around and noticed a small machine grinding away on the floor by the bed. She peered closer to read the label: OdourAway. Christ. Why was there some kind of industrial air freshener here?
The tea. The biscuits. The reclining chairs. Suddenly Ali wished she hadn’t come today, as if her being there or not could affect the outcome.
‘Mum, Mum? Mum?’
Mini’s head snapped up but she appeared unfocused. ‘Ali,’ was all she said.
‘What have they said? Why is this here?’ Scowling, she kicked at the OdourAway.
‘I honestly don’t know, darling.’ Mini sounded utterly lost and Ali felt a chill grip her heart. ‘I think they think this is it.’
Her words sucked the breath right out of Ali’s body. No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. Not today. Not any day.
‘They haven’t really said. But I don’t think they can say.’ Mini was speaking carefully and deliberately. She sounded like a robot and Ali felt like shaking her.
‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ She was up and pacing but pausing between words to listen for Miles’s breath. The gaps between each one seemed interminably long.
Mini didn’t respond and Ali suddenly felt unbearably trapped in this terrible room, a room with no answers where they had been suspended in this awful limbo for so long. She found herself outside in the corridor without having even thought about taking the steps.
‘Ali?’ Tabitha looked concerned.
‘Is my dada really dying?’ Words spilled out and onto the floor.
‘Oh, Ali, Ali, Ali …’ Tabitha’s strong arms encircled her. ‘We can’t be sure. It’s probably not long now. Your daddy has suffered for a long time. And your mummy too. I’m praying for him.’
Ali buried her face in Tabitha’s chest. She felt wrung-out. She was sobbing but no tears came.
How can you know that someone is dying, watch them every day as they die a little bit more yet still be completely unprepared when it comes?
No, she couldn’t believe it. They had come close before and Miles had always rallied. This wasn’t the day, she felt certain.
Tabitha released her from the hug and went to help another resident who had stumbled out of a nearby room. ‘I’ll be right back, Ali.’
Ali turned and looked through the crack in the door to where Mini was sitting, head down, silent tears falling into her empty hands.
Ali pulled back abruptly; she could feel the dark swell of panic spreading under her skin and filling her insides. Everything around her felt overwhelming and ominous. The beep of medical machinery, the clatter of the ward kitchen down the hall, it was all suddenly roaring at full volume.
She found herself drawn away from Miles’s room. A small part of her was screaming, telling her to go back, but she needed to get out. She couldn’t breathe. He won’t die. He won’t die. She pushed through the doors to the ward, through reception and out to her car on autopilot. She would go and get some things from home and then come back. She had time. They had time. Out here in the sunlight, it was easier to believe that he would be fine. Her phone started ringing – ‘Mini calling’. She ended the call immediately and squeezed her eyes shut. She just needed a couple of hours. She’d go home, get herself sorted and be back. It would all be fine – she quickly texted as much to Mini and got into the car. The phone started up again. This time it was Liv. Ali bit her lip and hesitated before hitting Accept.
‘Ali? Sam called me. He’s really worried. Are you OK?’
‘Kind of.’ Ali started the engine and began to back out of the car park.
‘Kind of? Is it Miles? I can be there in an hour – I just need to swing home, drop the thesis to Emer’s office and then I can be right there.’
‘I think it’s OK.’ Ali tried to sound calm. ‘We have some time – I spoke to Tabitha. I’m heading home myself for a bit and I’m coming back later. I just want to grab a couple of things.’
Liv didn’t speak for a few moments and Ali barely noticed. She was absorbed in pulling out onto the main road. She felt numb, like she was wading through a dream.
‘Are you sure about going home?’ Liv sounded baffled. ‘Maybe you should stay. I’ll bring up whatever you need.’
‘It’s cool,’ Ali murmured. ‘I’ll be back.’ She ended the call and joined the afternoon traffic heading across town, trying to ignore the mounting dread building in her chest.
Ali walked in to the house and felt like she’d been gone for years. Everything seemed normal yet strange somehow. The shower was going down the hall in Liv’s en suite; the brown carpet was still an assault on the senses; the orange lino glowed from the kitchen. Going by her Instagram, she lived in an airy New York-style loft – it was all marble effect and strategic detail shots. Not a scrap of this place made it to her page – too grim for the ’gram. She flashed on the OdourAway air freshener – my whole life is too grim for the ’gram.
She moved through to the living room where the sight of Sam hit her like a blast of heat from a fire on a winter’s day. Forgetting her cold behaviour that morning, she rushed towards him.
‘Sam, thank god you’re …’ She abandoned the last of this sentence, hushed by his strange expression. She froze an arm’s reach from him. She’d never seen this look before, and she struggled to compute what his narrowed eyes and hardened sneer meant until her eyes fell on what he was holding. The thesis.
Ali stopped dead. ‘I—’
‘Don’t,’ he snapped.
‘I can explain.’
Sam laughed a long, cruel, hollow laugh. ‘Can you? Can you really?’
Ali’s hands knotted together and she felt winded. Can I? Of course I can’t. It was as though the true magnitude of her lie was only no
w being revealed to her. Under the scrutiny of Sam’s glare, the idea that she’d done this was alien. What the actual fuck had she been thinking?
Sam was shaking his head and leafing through the pages. He stopped at a picture she’d posted of the two of them together at the Daddy Bears’ Picnic. ‘This is sick, Ali. You’re sick.’
‘I’m not,’ Ali whispered. ‘I’m just sad.’ As the words dropped, heavy like stones in a well, she knew they were true.
Sam put the thesis down gently on the coffee table. ‘I was in love with you. I thought I’d never met a girl like you before in my life.’ To her deep, deep shame she could see he was blinking away tears. ‘You let me believe we were going to have a family.’ He shook his head. ‘I never really had a family, Ali. After Mum died. Not a proper one.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t fucking say that! This is not an “I’m sorry” moment, Ali. This is so beyond that. You need fucking help,’ he spat.
He started towards the door. As he passed her, she tried to reach out to him but he shrugged her off and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him, just as Liv rushed out of her room in a towel.
‘What’s happened? Was that Sam?’
‘Your thesis happened,’ Ali said simply. She couldn’t even find the will to be angry.
Liv’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my god, no. Holy fuck! I’m so sorry, Ali. I put it down for, like, five minutes while I jumped in the shower. Ali, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’m so sorry.’
‘You really shouldn’t be. It’s my fault. The whole lot of it. He fucking hates me. He’s right too. It doesn’t matter now anyway …’ Ali dragged in a gulp of air. ‘Miles is really bad, Liv. I’m scared.’
Liv stepped forward and held her firmly in her arms. They stood in silence and Ali held on to her friend with everything she had.
‘He’s going to die and I can’t take it.’
Liv started to cry and Ali felt strangely envious. She longed to cry – big, violent, wrenching sobs – to get some kind of release from this paralysing pain. But nothing was coming. She felt like all this was happening to someone else. The many elements of her world had suddenly skipped out of their orbit. It was any old Thursday in the rest of the world, but here in her little sliver of a life everything was spinning out of control. Sam’s rage, Liv’s tears, the phone buzzing with notifications about the Glossies, Mini’s flat, lifeless voice and, beneath it all, Miles’s quiet, shallow breaths counting down the minutes, leading her to a precipice, one she couldn’t even imagine.
She knew what she had to do.
‘This towel reeks.’ She unravelled from the embrace and stepped back.
‘All towels reek,’ Liv said, adopting faux gravitas. ‘It’s one of life’s tragic certainties. Like death and taxes.’ She smiled weakly, her cheeks wet with tears. ‘He was the best.’
Was.
‘I have to get ready.’ Ali moved away towards her room, where she had everything she needed laid out.
Liv looked confused. ‘Ready?’ She wheeled around and followed Ali down the hall. ‘You’re not … you’re not going to the bloody Glossies, are you?’
‘Welcome to the third annual Glossies brought to you by Glossie Life magazine in association with lip artists Filler Fabulosity and Brown Thomas. How are we all doing tonight?’ Blake Jordan was wearing a leopard-print tux and pink dress shirt. His veneers were particularly blinding as he stalked the front of the stage giving shout-outs to the various bloggers and Insta-stars in the front row. ‘Look, it’s Insta-mum Holistic Hazel, everyone. You’ve managed to unsuckle the litter and get out on the town.’
Hazel waved her arms in the air and whooped ‘Mama is out-out’ to a sea of iPhones pointed in her direction.
‘And …’ said Blake, moving along, ‘we’ve got my fave gal, Crystal Doorley, nominated in the Best Natural Tan category. Don’t worry, love, we all need a little help in that department, don’t we?’ Crystal looked unabashed despite her recent shaming; there wasn’t a natural tan in the entire room, never mind that category.
‘And here’s the amazing Norah Darcy.’ Blake had switched to his solemn voice. ‘Norah is being honoured in our Best Mental Health Journey category, a new and hugely important category this year. Because, as we all know, it’s important to be real sometimes too. Social media isn’t this big toxic thing – it’s making a difference to people’s lives. Well done, Norah – bualadh bos, everyone.’ Blake clapped reverentially and everyone joined in.
‘Now who’s this hot bish?’ Blake had swung back to bubbly-host mode. ‘It’s Jess Hamilton, of course. The ridiest ride we’ve got and nominated tonight for Best Facial Work, a category sponsored by the good people at Filler Fabulosity. Show us those trouty beauties, hun.’
‘Not today, Satan!’ Liv shouted. Keeping one eye on the road, she slapped the phone out of Ali’s hand, interrupting the #Glossies Instagram Stories.
‘I’m in distress. Insta is soothing me,’ Ali argued as she retrieved the phone, and Liv sighed.
‘We’re going nowhere fast, anyway – these bloody roadworks.’ The car inched forward and she craned to see beyond the snaking line of traffic, leading to Ailesend. ‘Three lanes all trying to merge into one. Bloody ridic.’
Ali reinstated the Insta-live, capturing every moment of the awards she’d thought were so important.
Blake Jordan had turned serious once more. ‘We do have an important announcement to make before we can commence honouring the women in this room, women of integrity and values. It has come to light that one of tonight’s nominees has been less than honest on her Instagram and has been excommunicated from the awards.’ As the shot panned the room, the whole crowd appeared to shift awkwardly.
‘Uh oh.’ Liv had come to a stop and leaned in to check the screen. ‘They couldn’t be talking about you, could they?’
Ali felt lightheaded. ‘I haven’t been on much today,’ she said slowly. ‘But no one told me I was disqualified.’ She X’d out of Insta and checked her emails.
‘Oh fuck.’ The inbox was rammed with brand new unreads, all sent in the last half-hour or so.
‘Notice of disqualification’ read the subject line of one from the Glossie Life magazine editor. ‘Termination of contract, effective immediately’ said one from Baby Bella Boo Boo Buggies. And on and on.
‘Oh, shite.’ Liv stared horrified as Ali scrolled. Some subject lines just said ‘You’re SICK, you fucking BITCH’ while others seemed to be dubious offers of help – ‘Re your recent nervous breakdown, heal yourself with the power of juicing’.
A beep from the car behind gave them both a jolt.
‘OK, OK, I’m going,’ Liv muttered. ‘We’re only after moving two feet – are ya happy?’ She gave the finger in the rear-view as Ali flicked back to the Glossies’ Insta-live, where Blake Jordan was clearly struggling to be heard over the crowd, who were abuzz.
‘The Glossies do not in any way condone or endorse behaviour of this kind.’ The Story zoomed in on the circular tables around which nearly every woman held a phone to her ear, many covering their mouths in shock while others were wiping their eyes from laughing so hard.
The person filming the Insta-live could be heard laughing and chatting to someone off-camera. ‘I know! What a crazy bitch. OMG, how pathetic can you actually be?’
‘We will not be revealing the identity of the person in question,’ concluded Blake Jordan.
‘As if that matters,’ Ali wailed. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ‘How do they know?’
Liv came to a stop once more, looking stricken. ‘You know it’s not me, right? What are they listening to?’
Ali shook her head. At the top of her screen, Instagram notifications were dropping in at a ferocious rate. The comment previews were appearing too fast to read fully but the general gist was clear.
Pathetic.
Dumb cunt.
Fucked up.
Poor guy or was he in on it?
Loser.
Bitch.
Stupid ugly lying bitch.
Kill yourself cos we’ll never forget this.
Liv grabbed her phone. Ali was numb. Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t take a full breath.
‘I’m pulling over.’
‘Don’t, please, we’re nearly there. I have to get to Miles.’
‘Just please delete Insta, Ali. You can’t look at that.’
Without a word of protest, Ali obeyed. She deleted the app from her phone and the violent buzzing quieted. Ali’s ragged breathing was the only sound in the car. She felt like she was drowning, fighting for air, her body flooded with dread. Deleting the app didn’t really matter – wherever she was, they’d find her. The internet was everywhere.
Her phone buzzed and she squeezed her eyes shut. Please don’t be Mini to say I’m too late.
She looked. ‘Kate’s calling.’
‘Don’t answer. Look, we’re nearly there – this traffic is easing. You can’t think about this now. We’ll deal with it after.’
We, thought Ali. She still had Liv, even after everything.
A WhatsApp from Kate dropped in and then a voice recording.
‘Ali, I don’t really know what to say. If this is true, this is completely fucked up. If it’s not, you should know what’s going around. What everyone’s saying. I deserve to know the truth too.’
Ali glanced up – still a few minutes before the turn for Ailesend. What did it matter if she listened now or later? Miles was going to die either way.
‘Kate’s sent a voicenote that’s been going around.’ Ali hit Play.
A girl’s voice, she sounded young:
‘OK so I have something major. I was gonna send it to BU but then the voicenote thing is such craic right now, I figured I’d do it this way! Anyway, here goes – ya know Eamon’s friend Sam? So he’s been seeing this girl from Tinder for the last, I dunno, couple of months and he was bet into her. And Eamon and all the lads were a bit iffy because she’d told Sam that he’d got her preggers even though they’d only done it one time. Anyway, Sam was crazy about her and now it turns out that she made the whole pregnancy up – like, completely – but you wanna know the best bit? She’s a mother-fucking influencer! She’s that new one who’s been coining it with sponcon, the Glossies wild-card girl, Ali Jones! Can you believe it? And this isn’t some high-profile-politician-on-Tinder fake gossip. This is fact. Sam told Eamon, like, two minutes ago. He’s devo obvs—’