by Molly Flatt
Then she returned to her laptop, highlighted all the text and pressed backspace.
Director MacBrian, I am proceeding with my research with the utmost discretion and all possible speed. Yours, Alex Moore.
14
‘Alex Moore. You are a terrible person.’
‘I . . .’
‘I’m joking!’ Mae laughed. ‘I just meant you never called.’
Oh God. She had to tell her. She couldn’t hide from Mae.
‘Al?’
Weaving between the early-evening revellers on Dean Street, Alex tried to imagine what Mae would say. But Mae was firmly on the non-fiction-and-documentary end of the imagination scale. She would insist on getting health services involved, in seeking out ‘practical help’ that would be anything but. And knowing, even if she didn’t believe it, might put her in danger – whatever Taran had said. Alex wouldn’t put anything past Iain’s ‘scrupulous security’, especially with MacBrian calling the shots. Perhaps literally. She glanced around her, but there were too many black-haired people, too many pale complexions, too many watchful pairs of eyes.
‘Alex? I was joking. Are you there? Are you okay?’
More pretending, then. Ignore the ache in your head and the shake in your hands and the terrible weight in your heart. As Chloe would say, act like the person you want to be. Act like someone for whom consciousness is nothing but a fuzzy psychological concept. Breathe deep. Smile.
‘Sorry, sorry, yes. My signal cut out.’
‘Good. I thought you’d hung up on me for a moment there.’ A pause. ‘Well, I’ve just got my impossible son to bed and poured myself an enormous glass of wine. How are you?’
Alex imagined Bo in his cot, fat cheek squashed against the mattress, and Mae, curled on her toy-strewn sofa, downing Merlot. No. Stop. Breathe deep. Smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I had to go away, to collaborate on a research project. Last-minute thing.’
‘Yes, Harry told me. Guernsey, was it?’
‘Harry? Why were you talking to Harry?’
‘Oh, he – he wanted to know if I’d heard from you. To be honest, I think he was on one of his, um, jealousy crusades. He said you weren’t answering any of his calls.’ A pause. ‘So . . .’
‘So what?’
‘So did you?’
‘Did I what?’ She clipped shoulders with a woman talking on a mobile.
‘Hook up with someone out there?’
Alex ground to a halt. The plea in Finn MacEgan’s voice when he’d told her not to trust MacBrian. The desperation on his face as Iain had wrestled him back through the door. Had he really wanted to hurt her, or simply to scare her into telling him why she had done what she had done? Wouldn’t she shoot someone without a second thought, if she found out they had hurt her dad?
A young couple split around her. Alex started moving again. ‘Of course not. My phone broke, that’s all. To tell you the truth, most of them were pretty hostile.’
‘Ah, well. Dickheads. Their loss.’ Another pause. ‘You haven’t seen him yet, then?’
‘Who?
‘Harry.’
‘No. I’m seeing him tomorrow for dinner. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. No reason. I’m just – I’m glad to hear from you.’ Another pause. ‘I was a bit worried about you, after our last conversation, Al. You seemed . . . not quite yourself.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I mean, I’m not. Or, rather, I am, but I’m really not sure I know who that is. Was. Any more.’
Without warning, her face began to crumple. She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve, accidentally elbowing a man in a leather jumpsuit. The man whirled round with a moue of outrage. SORRY, Alex mouthed. SORRY, SORRY, SORRY.
‘Oh, Al. This has been such a crazy time for you. It’s natural that it would take you a while to catch up with all the change. I’m relieved, really. It was getting a bit weird for a moment there. That whole old-Alex-new-Alex shtick.’
‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about.’ Alex did a side-shuffle dance with an Indian guy carrying a box of oranges. ‘Hang on.’ She slipped into a doorway and lowered her voice. ‘Mae. If you had to summarize my character – I mean my character before all the Eudo stuff kicked off – what would you say?’
Mae laughed. ‘What a question! Um, okay, how about Alex Moore: queen of navy jumpers? Embarrassing Bryan Adams fan? Arch-enemy of coriander?’
‘No, seriously. What would you say was my overriding self-belief? Before everything – before I – changed?’
‘Oh. Is this a Chloe thing? Some kind of exercise?’
‘Would you say I suffered from a fear of failure?’
On the other end of the phone, Mae paused.
‘I did wonder that, once or twice,’ Mae said carefully. ‘You’re so damn smart, Al, you could have made a success of any of your big ideas, if you’d really decided to give them a go. They always started off so well. That cupcake thing. The film blog. The marathons. But every time, just as something looked promising, you’d suddenly freak out. You’d stop making an effort, decide it wasn’t . . . you. It was like you were holding yourself back for some reason. Like you just couldn’t . . . let go.’
‘Let go? Let what go?’
‘I don’t know, Al. Whatever you were holding onto so tightly inside.’
‘Like a fear of failure?’
A sigh. ‘Maybe. But, you know, that doesn’t totally add up. Look at uni. You could’ve easily got a first – you know you could. But it was, like, whenever you started getting As, you’d slack off, miss lectures, spend your afternoons mooching around in the common room. It was kind of annoying, actually. I had to work my ass off to get a two-two, and yours was like some kind of self-inflicted booby prize.’ Another pause. ‘Now I sound like I’m getting at you. I don’t mean to. We’re all afraid of failure, aren’t we? You were still amazing back then, Al. You were just a normal human being, hang-ups and all.’
‘Meaning what? That I’m not normal now?’
‘Well, no, to be honest, you’re not. Look at all you’ve achieved since February. You’re a bloody Superwoman.’
You’re extraordinary, Alex, Taran had said – although inside her head his earnest voice had turned into a mocking singsong. More extraordinary than you know.
Alex gripped the phone. ‘Do you remember that job Dom offered me, our first summer after uni? The agency gig in New York?’
‘Uh, yeah. Of course.’ A pause. ‘Is that what this is about? You think you squandered the opportunity? But surely that doesn’t matter now. You’ve got Eudo. You’re virtually famous. And Harry . . . well, I know for sure that Harry loves you. Aren’t you getting the life you always wanted?’
Alex stared out at the people streaming past. That manic-looking woman marching past, both arms laden with shopping bags: was a Storyline about the right wardrobe will make me happy dominating her life, because her Story couldn’t surface in Alex’s Stack? That man standing on the corner of Old Compton Street, shouting puce-faced down the phone: was he getting stuck in the rut of his habitual anger, as the Library inexorably slowed down?
‘. . . come and see you?’ Mae was saying. ‘It’s a nursery day tomorrow. I could get Mum to do the pick-up, jump on a train.’
‘No.’ If she was face-to-face with Mae, there was no way she would be able to keep up the charade. ‘No, honestly. I’m fine.’
‘Please. I’m worried. I don’t know what’s happened to you this week, but—’ Three police cars whooped past. When the sirens died down, Mae was saying ‘. . . practical help.’
‘No, really, I don’t need it. Honestly. Look, I have to go. Give Bo a kiss from me. Tell him—’
But she had no idea what to tell Bo, and when an ambulance followed the police cars, she took the opportunity to kill the call.
The bored blonde behind the desk couldn’t find Alex on the guest register, until Alex thought to ask for Dorothy. Dom had always refused to accept her new name. Every time she’d tried to insist, ove
r the past nineteen years, he’d simply smiled and said, ‘But Dorothy Parker, dear.’
She spotted him as soon as she reached the top of the stairs, ensconced on a velvet sofa, jabbing with his forefinger at a smartphone.
‘Well, well, well!’ Dom hauled himself up as Alex wove between a table of people in heavy-rimmed glasses conferring around a laptop, and a trio of armchairs exhibiting three surreally good-looking men. As she leaned in for a kiss, Dom grabbed her by the shoulders. His smile switched to a frown. ‘Dorothy. Are you ill?’
‘Just tired,’ she said, summoning a smile. ‘Hello, Dom.’
‘Well, no wonder you’re tired, now that you appear to have become some sort of media mogul.’ He gestured for her to sit on the sofa opposite. ‘I assume you’ve come to tell me that you want to write a bestseller? One of those awful Americanized business books, with case studies about coffee shops and exercises to fill in?’ He waved at a passing waiter. ‘What’ll it be? Sparkling or still?’
‘Actually, I think I need a proper drink.’
Dom’s pale eyebrows swept up his forehead. ‘Goodness. All change, indeed. I bet your father’s pleased.’ He lifted a tumbler from the low table between the sofas. ‘Whisky?’
Alex swallowed. ‘No. I’ll . . . maybe just one G&T?’
It must have been at least eight years since she’d last seen Dom. The fat that had aged him then seemed to have preserved him now, like a giant potted shrimp topped with a slick of grey-blond hair. As she snuck glances at him, moments from her childhood burst inside her brain like the liquid-centred sweets he used to bring her in paper bags. She remembered Dom carrying her around literary festivals on his massive shoulders, stopping to greet someone every second stride; Dom sitting beside her in a corner at a book-signing, showing her how to make origami cranes; Dom and her father having one of their arguments about grammar over the dinner table – until her father started to throw full stops at him, otherwise known as peas.
But the juice they gave out was flavourless, and her recollections of Dom’s more sporadic visits throughout her teenage years evoked no more emotion than a stranger’s holiday snapshots. As the dizziness rose, she sat abruptly on the sofa. She was afraid, for a horrible moment, she might throw up.
Dom was watching her. ‘It is very lovely to see you,’ he said, irony shunting abruptly into earnestness. ‘What little of you there is left. How are you really, my dear?’
Alex, still breathing her way out of the episode, met his gaze for less than a second. ‘I’m fine.’
‘More than fine, from what your father tells me. Not that either of us have any real idea what it is that you’re doing. I fear the world is becoming increasingly nonsensical to me. How precisely does this Eudomonia affair make money?’
‘Investment. Sponsorships.’
‘Oh, well. Maybe you could sponsor your father to finish his damn second novel.’
The waiter brought Alex’s drink. She downed half of it in one gulp and said, ‘Dom. You’ve known me my whole life.’
Dom settled back into the cushions. ‘I remember the day I met you. Five months old and in the arms of your dear mother, who smiled at me like Julie Christie, then grilled me like David Frost.’
‘I’m participating in this research project, you see, about entrepreneurs. They’ve asked me to interview the people who know me best. To try and get an objective picture of how I became who I am now.’ After the calls to Mae and her father, Alex had realized she needed to come up with a smoother explanation for her questions. She’d been practising all the way to the club. ‘They’re most interested in the struggles. The hurdles I’ve had to overcome. The self-beliefs I’ve had to let go.’
‘Ugh!’ Dom put an olive in his mouth. ‘Self-helpease? And this from the girl who used to be the clammiest of clams? But it’s in vogue, of course. Are they paying you?’
‘Not exactly. But they think it might help others like me, people who wasted half their life before they were able to release their true potential.’
‘You sound like a mortgage advert, Dorothy.’
‘Dom!’ Alex drowned the wobble in her voice with gin. The waiter caught her eye. She nodded for another.
‘Sorry. Of course I’ll help if I can. Go on.’
‘You remember the job offer you got me? With the new office in New York?’
‘I do.’
‘What exactly did I say, when I turned it down? Did I tell you why?’
Dom smoothed one of his eyebrows with his thumb. ‘I believe the essence of it was that you didn’t want to let the people at your current company down. You said that they’d taken a chance on you when you were young, provided training and so forth. You said that you felt it would be selfish to leave them in the lurch. I remember that word specifically. Selfish.’ He took another olive. ‘It was all quite bizarre.’
The waiter handed Alex her second drink. She took a long draught, feeling the alcohol roll the tide of nausea another inch or two away. ‘So would you say I was afraid of failure? Or was it more of a people-pleasing thing? Would you say I believed something like: I will be sad if I don’t make others happy? Or was it more a lack of self-esteem, like: I must be grateful for whatever I can get?’
‘Dorothy. My dear. What in the name of Christ are you talking about?’
‘I just need you to tell me one thing, Dom. Please.’ She gulped another mouthful. ‘Be as brutal as you can. What would you say has been my main driver, as a person? Historically? How would you sum up the narrative I tell myself about who I am?’
Dom rolled his eyes.
‘Dom!’
‘Fine.’ He picked up his whisky and took a slow sip. He regarded her levelly over the rim of his glass. ‘Well, it all depends who you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Because there have really been three of you so far, haven’t there?’
Alex’s breath caught in her throat. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, first there was happy young Dorothy, bright as a grasshopper, mouth like a motor, heart on her sleeve. My little chum. Then, shortly after she hit double figures, we got clammed-up Alex, the teenage mutant ninja turtle with a shell that no jokes or bribes could penetrate. My little chum seemed to disappear overnight, like a butterfly popping back into her chrysalis. And if we’re being brutally honest, dear, it was quite obvious that her replacement desired to neither see nor hear me. It was probably inevitable, considering the influx of oestrogen, but it did rather bruise my squidgy old heart. And we now appear to be on Ms Moore number three, don’t we, my skinny, press-ready media mogulette?’ He put his glass down on the table. ‘I rejoiced in the first Dorothy. I was sad about the second. But I must admit, although she at least seems to tolerate my presence, I’m most worried of all about the third.’
‘Don’t, Dom.’ Alex stared at her clasped hands. ‘I’m trying my best.’
‘But what if we don’t want your best, my dear? What if we just want you?’
‘But that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Who me is.’
‘Figuring’s no good, dear. It’s quite simple. We are what we do.’
‘But that’s exactly the problem.’
Alex heard the squeak of springs. One of Dom’s large, clammy hands closed around her own. ‘Dorothy, what do you think you have done?’
‘I hurt someone,’ she said, still staring at her lap. ‘I hurt someone badly.’
‘Your chap?’
She shook her head.
‘Are you talking about now, or back then? B.A.?’
‘B what?’
‘Before Alex?’
Alex looked up. ‘Why do you say that?’
Dom gave her hand a little pat. He looked at the wall, where three pencil drawings of vaginas hung in a row. ‘I always wondered if there was something more to your volte-face back then. Something less obvious than hormones and performance anxiety at your fancy new school. It was the suddenness of it all.’ He looked back at her. ‘Did something happen to you?’
Alex wrap
ped her arms around her chest. ‘I can’t remember. I think it might have. He suggested – the Head of Scholarship at the—’
‘OI! YOU!’ There was a shout from behind. Alex swung round to see a skeletal man in a slogan T-shirt – Love Will Save the World – waving an empty martini glass at a waitress.
Dom sighed. ‘Look, Dorothy, I’d be wary of suggestion, if I were you. Of trying to rewrite your childhood. I’m always on the lookout for a juicy mystery, an unexpected plot twist. But unfortunately in life the most obvious explanation is usually the one that fits.’
He crossed his arms across his straining shirt front. ‘Of course, if you really wanted me to, I could enumerate potential issues, like the best pseudo-Freud. None of us would deny, for example, that your father’s a melancholic. It has been truly hard for him over the years, watching the young guns fire off their debuts, as the gigs slowly dry up. But that’s the nature of the industry, and most of my clients would kill to have had Tom’s one scorching moment in the sun. And it would be wrong to underestimate him. It takes enormous guts, exposing yourself like that on the page. Drained him to the dregs, quite literally, and now it looks like the grand follow-up might never quite force its way out. But you know, dear, part of me still thinks, after all this time, that one day he’s going to surprise us all.
‘And then your mother . . .’ Dom shook his head. ‘Well, your mother’s a force of nature. I can imagine that, to a young girl, she might have seemed – how do I put this? A touch domineering? Oh, undoubtedly Liz must always be in control, Liz must always know best. But then again, that’s because she generally is, and she generally does.
‘And together? Well, I’ve envied their relationship my whole life. Even when the fuss around Tom was at its height, when he was winning awards left, right and centre, it was your mother’s opinion that still mattered to him most. And he has remained her shining knight, whether he’s the voice of his generation or a washed-up columnist for a Sunday rag. And you’ve always been right at the heart of it, my dear, positively swaddled in love. Which is much, much more than most of us can say.’ Dom reached again for the olives. ‘So whatever you’re trying to dig up at the moment, I suggest you’d be much better off doing the opposite. My advice is to simply let it go.’