Clean
Page 27
I think I could have a wine or a beer though. Out here, there’s nothing to escape from, I’m not trying to block anyone, or anything, out. I don’t need to hit the big red button any more.
It stops feeling like a holiday after a few weeks. Nikolai and Tabby fly out to make sure I’m OK. They spend a week with us on the ranch before flying down to the West Coast for a road trip. Nik brought me the best housewarming gift: a television. Thank god. The cable is being installed next week.
One night Nik and I had a fag on the porch, listening to coyotes howl. ‘Lexi, this is like being in a cowboy movie. How are you here?’
‘I know, right?’
‘You gonna stay?’
‘Dunno.’
‘What about Mum and Dad?’
I thought about it for a second. ‘I’m not sure we owe them anything.’
He was about to say something, but then he just nodded. ‘You’ve changed.’
‘I needed to.’
‘Don’t change too much. I’d miss my sister if she went completely.’
I grinned at my brother. ‘No danger of that, cunt.’
At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.
I’m reading Madame Bovary in the coffee shop in New Castle. I’m curled up on a battered leather armchair, looking out over the main street. While the coffee is passable, the pecan pie is extraordinary.
I stop reading, put an old Oyster card – a little memento of London – in the book to mark my place and rest it on my lap, suddenly convinced I’ve forgotten something. Did I leave something on back at the ranch? No, I don’t think so. Have I missed a deadline or forgotten someone’s birthday? No.
I wonder if the weird sensation is that, for the first time, I have nothing to worry about. I’m happy. A beautiful novel, good coffee, great pie.
‘Can I get a refill please?’ I ask the waitress as her ponytail swishes past my table. They don’t know who I am here. I’m just ‘Brady’s English Girlfriend’ and that’s fine by me.
While I was finishing at the clinic, Brady threw himself into a project. Out here, developers are trying to bulldoze through land belonging to a Native American tribe. Gas pipes or something. After moving back, he lent his family name to drum up publicity, but felt it wasn’t enough. He now spends some of his time either protesting on the reservation, or ferrying supplies to those who are peacefully occupying the land. I think it’s been good for him. I know it has.
While I was in therapy, I thought that I was doing all that shit because I wanted to damage myself, but now I think it was chasing bliss. All those mock-highs I chased. It turns out the bliss I was looking for existed in books, coffee shops and pecan pie. And Brady, I expect.
Who knew?
I rest my head back into the armchair and, through the window, feel the kind sun on my face.
Time passes and it’s Autumn. It can get brutally cold up here in the mountains, so most nights Brady and I build a big fire in the lounge. I enjoy nothing more than perving over Brady as he chops logs with an axe in the yard, chest and arms glistening with sweat. There’s a great big sofa, but we rarely sit on it, preferring instead to lie on the shaggy rug, watch a movie, or Netflix, or sometimes just watch the fire burn out, as weird as that sounds. We talk and talk.
‘I’m freaking out,’ he said a couple of weeks ago.
‘About us?’
‘Yeah.’ A slight frown. ‘A little.’
I was nestled between his legs on the rug. ‘How bad?’
‘I think I can handle it, I just wanted you to know.’
‘Do you want me to go away for a while?’ I don’t want to, but I’ve learned not to corner him.
‘No. No, I don’t think so. Just telling you feels better.’
And I knew that. I know he doesn’t want me to go away, but I don’t want him – or me – to feel trapped. We’re together, but free. ‘Cool. If you need me to, I can.’
‘That means a lot, Lex. Love you.’
‘I know.’
As fun as playing house with Brady is, I need to use my brain again. It turns out with a recommendation letter from Roehampton, I can apply to American colleges. I shop around and decide to enrol at Colorado State University.
‘They have a pretty good Liberal Arts programme and I can study English Literature and Creative Writing,’ I tell Brady over dinner, tonight – good old-fashioned steak and French fries. There’s a great big dining room, but we tend to eat in the kitchen or on the porch where it’s cosier.
‘Cool,’ he says. ‘It’s about a four-hour drive down the freeway if you miss traffic.’
I quite fancy the college-dorm experience, as absurd as that sounds. I’m hardly sorority material (they’re definitely on Kendall’s Periodic Table of Basic), but I’ll stay on campus during the weeks and come back to the ranch on weekends. ‘I’ll need to learn to drive first. I tell you what, I never thought the thing I’d miss most about London is Uber.’
‘I can teach you. It’ll be fun.’
‘Oh yeah, it’ll be hilarious when I drive us off a cliff.’
‘Can you apply for next fall?’
‘Yeah. I have to write a short story for them.’
‘What on?’
I grimace. ‘It’s called What Made Me. Pretty hideous, right?’
‘You’ll figure it out.’
The next day, while Brady runs errand in New Castle, I sit down with a pad of paper and a pen. The ranch has a gorgeous study that smells of decades-old cigars and whiskey, like they’re engrained in the wood. I swivel around in the big leather desk chair. How did I go from hotel heiress to where I am now? I chew my pen.
What made me me?
My name is Lexi Volkov, heiress to the V Hotel Group fortune.
No.
My grandfather, Vladimir Volkov, was just a young man when Stalin seized power in Russia.
No.
That is not What Made Me.
God, this is impossible. I run my hands through my hair. They want a story. A beginning, middle and an end. But I don’t know the end. I don’t want to know it.
I think.
I remember.
Mummy and Daddy. Nik. Antonella. Kurt and my friends – old and new. Dr Isaac Goldstein. Lady Denhulme. Brady Ardito Jr. And heroin, and me.
We’re a collage.
I once thought I was the star around which these satellites revolved, but no more. We were all stars, colliding.
I tear the top sheet of paper off the pad and start again.
CLEAN
By Alexandria Volkova
Face-down on leather. New car smell. Pine Fresh.
I can’t move.
I’m being kidnapped . . .
Support
Clean is a work of fiction. Lexi is fictional, but many young people struggle with addiction – their own and that of their parents, siblings, friends or carers. Help is out there.
For more information on where to find support, you could consider the following sources:
Childline: Freephone 0800 1111
Frank: talktofrank.com
NHS: nhs.uk/livewell/drugs
Narcotics Anonymous: ukna.org
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the people who anonymously spoke to me about their experiences of addiction, recovery and sobriety. Your selfless candour is so important in removing the shame and stigma from mental illness and addiction.
Thank you to my wonderful agent Sallyanne Sweeney and all
at MMB Creative for guiding me through a new phase in my career. Similarly, it’s lovely to have found a new home at Quercus, a home that wasn’t afraid to take on a novel as challenging as Clean. Thank you to Sarah Lambert, Kate Agar and the whole big Hachette Children’s team!
Huge thanks to Samar Hammam for working tirelessly to take Clean global. It blows my mind that Lexi’s story is being told so widely. Thanks also to Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Delyth Scudmore at Blueprint for seeing the potential for her story on television, and Anya Reiss for taking on the adaptation.
Lastly, as ever, thanks for my friends and family for putting up with me when I’m as obnoxious as Lexi.
QUERCUS CHILDREN’S BOOKS
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Hodder and Stoughton
This ebook edition published in 2018 by Hodder and Stoughton
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Text copyright © Juno Dawson, 2018
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