The Mirror World of Melody Black

by Gavin Extence

  This was a very simple and achievable condition in his mind: increase your income, increase your happiness. But I didn’t feel like arguing the point. I downed the rest of my second vodka and told him I was going for a smoke.

  ‘If you need to order while I’m gone’ – I jabbed at the menu – ‘get me the braised saddle of lamb with the carrot reduction.’

  I had no idea what a carrot reduction was.

  I’d miscalculated – badly, stupidly. I’d thought that I’d at least be able to achieve some respite from the torture with three or four tactically placed cigarette breaks, before and between courses. I’d been counting on it when I agreed to this meal; it was one of the few occasions when the indoor smoking ban seemed a blessing rather than a curse. Whatever tumult I had to endure inside, I’d still have this handful of moments, oases of calm in which to relax and regroup.

  But Marie Martin was a model. She was French. Of course she smoked. I couldn’t believe how dense I’d been not even to have considered this. But reality registered the moment I saw her stepping out of the doorway to join me in the street. She had a pack of Gitanes, the cigarette equivalent of a double espresso. Reluctantly, I handed her my lighter. She made a thank you smile, and I did my don’t mention it shrug. Neither of us said anything for a while. A man in skinny jeans and a leather jacket passed between us, got about six paces down the road, glanced back at Marie, and walked into a bin.

  I gestured with my cigarette. ‘I suppose that sort of thing happens to you a lot.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Causing men to walk into bins, or lampposts, or out into traffic. That sort of thing.’

  She gave a modest nod. ‘It happens sometimes.’

  ‘One of the hazards of beauty.’

  ‘It’s something I try to ignore.’ She took a deep drag on her cigarette and let the smoke trickle out of her nostrils. ‘It’s not nice to be judged always on your looks, you know.’

  I snorted. ‘You may have chosen the wrong profession.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. I was very young when I started. Sixteen. It was exciting at that age. But modelling is like being a football player. There is no career past thirty. Thirty-five if you’re very lucky.’

  She looked at me for a bit, as if studying one of the abstract paintings inside. ‘I read your articles,’ she told me. ‘Both of them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. The articles were online. She probably had a Google alert set up on her name, or something like that.

  ‘What did you think?’ I asked.

  ‘They were . . . interesting. I liked the Yeats very much. It was beautiful. It made me feel warm and sad at the same time.’

  Fine. So she could appreciate Yeats. She obviously understood Yeats (even though she pronounced it ‘yeets’, to rhyme with teats and Keats). It didn’t mean a damn thing. ‘If you like Yeats, I doubt things are going to work out with my father,’ I told her. ‘He’s not a sensitive man.’

  Marie took another drag on her cigarette and didn’t say anything. The silence felt vaguely accusatory, enough that I wanted it to stop.

  ‘How did he take it?’ I asked. ‘My father?’

  Marie shook her head. ‘He hasn’t read it.’

  ‘What, he chose not to?’

  ‘I didn’t show it to him. I didn’t think it would be kind.’

  Terrific. A lecture on kindness from my father’s thirty-year-old model girlfriend. I didn’t know whether to scream, laugh or cry, but the second seemed the least of the three evils.

  ‘You’re pretty when you laugh,’ Marie told me.

  ‘Right. But not walk-into-a-bin pretty.’

  ‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Just pretty.’ She managed, somehow, to sound weirdly envious.

  I thought it must be a front, some sort of mind game.

  ‘I enjoyed our talk,’ she told me. Then she crushed her Gitane under one of her two-inch heels and went back inside.

  I lit another shaky Marlboro. Simon had given me a taste for them.

  I was determined to get my five minutes of calm.

  When I returned to our table, Beck and my father and Marie seemed to be sharing a joke. I thought it really would have been better if I wasn’t there. Then everyone could go on having a good time.

  ‘Well, you and Daddy certainly seemed to be getting on,’ I said to Beck as we waited for a taxi to take us home. I didn’t even try to keep the reprimand out of my voice.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Abby!’

  ‘What? It’s good that one of us enjoyed dinner.’

  ‘I can’t believe you sometimes. Do you actually expect me to turn up to your family meal and spend the whole time being hostile to your family?’

  He made it sound so unreasonable.

  ‘I’m just asking for a bit of support. Is that so much to ask? I’m not saying that you have to be actively hostile to my father, but you don’t have to nod and agree with every idiotic remark he makes. It undermines me.’

  ‘I undermine you? Not the other way round – like when you told me to put my wallet away because I was “being ridiculous”. You know, it’s normal to offer to split the bill. It’s the polite thing to do.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a man! It was ridiculous. How could we afford to split the bill? Anyway, Daddy had already made it clear that he was paying. You do understand that he earns four or five times our combined income?’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate. He doesn’t earn anything like that amount, not after tax.’

  I laughed, and it was a genuine laugh. ‘Really, Beck! You’re so naïve. Daddy doesn’t pay tax. It’s one of the few things he has a strong moral objection to. He pays his accountant instead. He has more money going offshore than either of us will earn in the rest of the decade.’

  Beck scowled. ‘Fine. Next time I won’t bother coming at all. You can sit there and be miserable on your own.’

  The awful thing, of course, was that I knew I was being ridiculous and unfair. I was being a complete bitch. But somehow I couldn’t stop myself. Seeing my father brought out the absolute worst in me.

  I knew I should apologize. I knew I should tell Beck that I did appreciate his being there, that it made such a difference to me, even if I acted completely to the contrary. But I thought that if I tried to say any of this, I’d just break down crying, and then we’d have to have yet another earnest conversation about my mood. I couldn’t handle that at the moment. I’d had too much vodka; it was fogging my mind and making me depressed. And the thought of getting in a taxi and going home made me feel even worse. Our flat was not a good flat to argue in, and it was not a good place for tense silences. It was too much of a pressure cooker. There was nowhere to stomp off to, nowhere to cool down.

  I needed to stay out for a bit. More specifically, what I really needed was that special clarity, that feeling of absolute tranquillity that only ecstasy can provide. This was the best solution I could see to our current situation. It would offer us a short cut to reconciliation, without the need for words or compromise or all those raw, dangerous emotions.

  Beck, however, was resistant – even though he must have been as fed up of arguing as I was.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ he told me. ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘It’s a great idea. We need to have some fun, forget the past week. I can’t face the thought of going home right now, not like this.’

  ‘We’ll still have to go home,’ Beck pointed out. ‘We’ll have to go home to get the stuff.’

  ‘No, I have the stuff in my bag,’ I told him. We were calling it ‘the stuff’ because we were still in the street, and there was a certain amount of pedestrian traffic. Not that I thought anyone would care. Plus ‘stuff’ wasn’t exactly the Enigma Code.

  ‘It’s in your bag?’ Beck repeated, after a small, faintly pointed hesitation.

  ‘Well, you know . . . dinner with Daddy. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. I thought we might need it.’ />
  He still looked far from convinced.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘How about we just go and find somewhere to have a drink? A soft drink – I realize I’ve had quite enough alcohol.’

  This last was very true, but I also said it knowing it might placate him a bit. It was almost an apology.

  ‘One drink?’ Beck asked.

  ‘Yes. One drink. If you still want to go home after that, we’ll go home.’ We weren’t going home. ‘Either way, I think it will do us some good.’

  Beck weighed this proposition for a few moments. I could see the cogs turning. Going for a drink was obviously a more attractive proposition than going home in a huffy silence, but I still had to play this carefully, find the right balance of carrot and stick. I placed a hand on his arm and gave him a soft, tentative smile. Slightly manipulative, but never mind.

  ‘Please? I just need to wind down. It’s been a really difficult evening for me.’

  A vacant taxi had finally emerged from around the corner. Beck looked at it for a moment, dropped his hand, and let it pass.

  ‘One drink,’ he said.

  We found a club that was playing non-stop classic trance until 6 a.m. and stayed until it closed. When we got home, an hour later, we each had another pill, then had sex on the floor while listening to Blondie’s Greatest Hits. It was languorous, and meltingly soft.

  Halfway through, I started thinking about Marie Martin and began to giggle.

  ‘What?’ Beck asked.

  ‘Marie Martin thinks I’m pretty when I laugh.’

  ‘You are pretty.’

  ‘Prettier than her?’

  ‘Yes. Much, much prettier.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t think many men would agree.’

  ‘No, I’m sure they wouldn’t. That doesn’t matter. You’re much more of a niche market – darker, quirkier.’

  ‘Good. I want to be a niche market.’

  ‘You are. They don’t come any nicher.’

  He ran his fingers through my hair. Debbie Harry was singing ‘Sunday Girl’.

  ‘What about Debbie Harry? 1977 Debbie Harry. Am I prettier than her?’

  ‘Of course. No competition.’

  I could feel tears starting to well in my eyes. I wrapped my legs tightly around Beck’s waist and buried my face in his shoulder.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I’m so fucking happy.’

  7

  LAUNDRY

  The problem with drugs, of course, is that they work too well.

  The comedown began on Monday morning. I awoke at nine to discover that Beck had left without disturbing me. I’d finally got to sleep around 3.30 a.m. At that point, I’d reached the hallucination stage of ecstasy sleep deprivation. My last memory was of lying in the darkness with my fingers almost paired, as if around an invisible Tesla Ball. Except I didn’t need a Tesla Ball. Fine veins of electric-blue fire were sizzling between my splayed fingertips. I must have watched them for hours while Beck slept beside me. I listened to all of The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld in my earphones, my finger-lightning dancing in time with the music.

  The world I awoke to was a dull and washed-out version of what it should have been. I didn’t feel much like getting up. I wanted to bury myself under the duvet and hide until it was dark again. But I knew this was probably the worst thing to do. Anyway, I had the vague notion that if I could get through the day on just my five-and-a-bit hours’ sleep, it might finally reset my body clock, help me sleep through a whole night without waking.

  I got up.

  Beck had stuck a note to the coffee machine. It read: You’re a thousand times prettier than Marie Martin and 1977 Debbie Harry combined. Be kind to yourself today. X

  It was a sweet thing to do, but it didn’t make me feel much better. I knew I didn’t really deserve it. I folded the note to the size of a postage stamp and squirrelled it away in my purse.

  In the living room, my dress and heels were posed in the middle of the floor like a still life. The shoes were standing side by side, as if in a shop window, and the dress was in a crumpled heap behind them. The effect was quite dramatic. It looked as if the occupant of those clothes had simply vanished, like Murakami’s elephant, leaving the shoes in situ while the dress fell artlessly to the floor. I didn’t move them yet. I sat on the sofa, smoked a cigarette, and tried to think about the things I should do to get through the day. It seemed a monumental task.

  It sounds crazy, but in the end I had to imagine that my body was some kind of pet – a small, delicate animal that had been delivered into my care for the next ten hours. This allowed me to make a simple to-do list:

  Feed the animal.

  Give the animal a wash.

  Take her for a walk.

  Clean her cage.

  Give her some treats.

  I knew that number three was especially important, since I wanted nothing more than to stay in the flat in my dressing gown all day. As for the others, well, I hadn’t eaten a bite since the restaurant, and I hadn’t showered either. I had no idea what the treats would be yet, but I thought that I ought to reward myself for the other achievements on the list. Beck had said I should be kind to myself.

  Food had to come first, otherwise there was a reasonable chance I’d fall over in the shower. I needed sugar and protein and carbohydrate, so I fed myself a bowl of muesli with yoghurt and honey. Then I carried the laundry basket through to the shower room and dumped its contents in the washing machine.

  Our washing machine lived in the shower room. This wasn’t our innovation: it lived there when we moved in. There wasn’t enough room for a bath because the room was an irregular L-shape, but the washing machine just about fitted in one corner; and since there was no place for it in the kitchen, this wasn’t such a stupid arrangement, although it did make sitting on the toilet quite claustrophobic. The only real advantage to the washing machine’s location was that you could strip in the shower room and throw your clothes directly into the cylinder. We only needed a very small laundry basket.

  I like my showers scalding hot so that they seem to burn off the dirt like a chemical peel. But there seemed to be some sort of problem with the water pressure today. The weak trickle that dripped from the hose was barely lukewarm. I emerged from the shower feeing not much cleaner than when I’d stepped in.

  Once I started tidying the flat, I couldn’t stop. I cleaned manically, like a 1950s housewife. I had it in my head that if I managed to get everything spotless, it would be like resetting the clock, creating a blank canvas for the rest of the working week. And Beck would be pleased with me. He’d get home and see that I hadn’t wasted my day crying on the sofa.

  I needed music while I worked, to fill the empty space. A broad mixture of dance, rock and pop confronted me – two collections that had merged when Beck and I moved in together to create one sprawling entity with multiple personalities. Today, my eyes were inevitably drawn to the darker and more despondent of those personalities – Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Radiohead’s Kid A, the Cure, Morrissey, Nick Cave – but I resisted the temptation to wallow. At the same time, I couldn’t cope with anything too positive or energetic, which would have felt like a bitter sham. Instead, I compromised, and picked out a handful of albums that straddled the upbeat/downbeat divide: PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, Moby’s 18, Infected Mushroom’s Vicious Delicious.

  I mopped and hoovered, wiped the surfaces in the kitchen, cleaned the hob, emptied the bins and ashtray, hung out the laundry on the airer, scrubbed the shower, lit a couple of scented candles to make the place smell nice.

  By lunchtime, I’d run out of obvious things to do, so I started on the less obvious. I polished the mirrors, descaled the kettle, cleaned the tops of the kitchen cabinets. Then I decided that I’d wash all our bedding – duvet, pillows, mattress protector, the works. This was perfect because I couldn’t do it in the flat. I’d have to go to the la
underette down the road, which would also get me out in the fresh air for a bit. I thought that I would take the bedding to the launderette, load it into the washer, walk to the Co-op to buy some cottage cheese – for the tryptophan – return to the flat to get my laptop, go back to the launderette to transfer the washing to the dryer, go to the coffee shop for a double espresso and a piece of cake (my treat), then spend an hour people-watching and checking my emails until the dryer had finished its cycle. Then I’d only have to kill a couple more hours until Beck got home, and the day would almost be done.

  Someone was following me. I knew it before I’d got fifty metres down the road. The sensation of being watched, of being stalked, was overwhelming. The problem was there was no way I could confirm what I knew, not with the sort of irrefutable evidence that would convince anyone else. Both my arms were bear-hugging the black bin bag that held our duvet and pillows. I had poor peripheral vision and couldn’t turn round fast enough to catch my pursuer in the act. All I got was the occasional glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a figure in grey. I couldn’t even work out what sex it was.

  I thought my best bet would be to pretend I hadn’t noticed anything, to act like nothing was wrong. Then when I got to the launderette, I could set the bin bag down on one of the machines, turn straight back out the door, and confront whoever it was in the safety of the busy street.

  This I attempted to do.

  When I stepped out of the door, there was no one there – or no one doing anything remotely out of the ordinary. A mother pushing a buggy, people at the bus stop, the usual shoppers and workers on their lunch breaks.

  I felt ridiculous.

  I went back inside and started loading my bedding into one of the machines.

  Checking my emails turned out to be a surprisingly nervy exercise. Buried amid the usual junk – Viagra and phishing scams and penis extensions – was an email from Miranda Frost, and another from Jess at the Observer. I clicked on the former with some trepidation.

  To: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk