by Molly Flatt
‘Let it go?’ Alex blundered to her feet. ‘Well, yes, everyone’s very eager to give me that particular piece of advice, Dom. But how exactly does that work? What exactly am I supposed to bloody do to let this damn thing go?’
‘Dorothy—’
Alex heard Dom struggle up out of the sofa behind her, but she didn’t look back. Ignoring the stares, she thundered across the floorboards and squeezed against the upcoming traffic, down four flights of stairs.
Outside, Soho was sticky and burning with lights. People were pouring out of the Palace Theatre opposite, spilling across the pavement, swilling down interval drinks and using their programmes as fans. Alex forced her way through them and out onto Cambridge Circus. A tuk-tuk laboured past, pop song pumping, cutting up a black cab, which blared its horn. A group of young girls staggered across the junction, giggling, the smell of fried onions mingling with the maple-syrup stench of overheating cars. Two women in burkhas glided past, one of them posting Alex a piercing blue look through the letter-box around her eyes.
Alex ducked her head and strode off up Charing Cross Road, eyes on her feet.
No tears, you selfish, self-pitying freakshow. Don’t you dare cry.
15
‘Five.’
She had pleaded tiredness.
‘Four.’
She had pleaded illness. She had begged Lenni to reschedule. And Lenni had told her, with a core of Nordic ice in his voice, that rescheduling thirty minutes before they were due to arrive was 100 per cent not going to work.
Three was silent, as the floor manager flashed a Brownie salute in the air.
Five in the morning! The morning! Once Alex had left Dom the night before, she’d bought a bottle of wine from a mini-supermarket and caught a night bus back to her flat. Shocked to find that she didn’t have a single print copy of her father’s book on her shelves, she’d downloaded the twentieth-anniversary-edition e-book of Tom R. Moore’s The Switch. She’d read until two, until the wine was finished and her eyes were so gritty she couldn’t keep them open. One and a half hours after that, she’d woken from a nightmare to the unfamiliar ring of her new mobile. In her dream, the half-completed statue of Egan MacCalum had been chasing her through a jungle filled with gripping indigo vines. It took her several disoriented seconds to understand that the call was from the driver that Gemma had so thoughtfully pre-booked, saying that he was outside. Once Alex had phoned Lenni and made her fruitless entreaties, she had barely had time to shower and pull on her dirty jeans before sprinting out the door.
Two: the peace sign.
She felt like her own waxwork. The thick make-up was itchy under the lights, her hair crispy with spray. They’d snipped off the blue thong, without asking, and her wrist felt bare. Beside her the presenter, Corinne, thinner and older than she looked on TV, stopped fiddling with her top button and turned to the autocue.
The floor manager’s forefinger sliced towards the camera: one.
‘Welcome back!’ Corinne chirruped in her Northern Irish twang. ‘Now, today’s Superwoman is a real personal treat. As you all know, I’m a big fan of self-improvement, and a month ago a friend of mine got me hooked on this new well-being community she’d found online. Well, now everyone’s talking about Eudomonia, so I’m delighted to have with me on the sofa this morning Alex Moore, Eudo’s amazing Founder-CEO.’ She turned to Alex with a sisterly smile. ‘So, Alex! It’s time to confess.’
Alex stared back, rigid. Corinne laughed and pointed downwards, while the cameraman tilted his lens down to zoom in on Alex’s feet. ‘Come on, now. Where did you get those killer heels?’
Alex looked down at the five-inch courts Gemma had brought to the studio, along with the too-tight digital-pattern body-con dress. ‘Um,’ she said. ‘Um . . .’
Corinne laughed and patted her knee. ‘You’re right. We probably shouldn’t start off with fashion. Because Eudo is about much more than the latest labels, isn’t it, Alex? I believe you describe it as a community for those who want to be their best self?’
Alex cleared her throat. She tried to remember the prompts Gemma had typed out for her to read during make-up. Warm, that was one. Feelings-focused, that was another. Relatable. Human.
‘Yes.’ Alex gave what she hoped was a feelings-focused smile. ‘Yes, Corinne, exactly.’
Corinne nodded encouragingly, eyebrows arched.
Alex cleared her throat again. ‘Well, Corinne, personally I don’t see there’s any contradiction between loving a great midi-skirt and wanting to improve your neuroplasticity.’ As long as she didn’t let her brain intervene, she would get through. She was probably still drunk, which helped. Next was . . . next was . . . ‘The media put women in such a box, you see.’
Corinne’s head took on a slant of sadness, a slow beat of solidarity.
‘We’re either damsels or ball-breakers, airheads or blue-stockings. With Eudo, I wanted to break the paradigm.’ It was all coming back to her, from somewhere deep in her linguistic muscle-memory. ‘I wanted to be something other than what society told me I had to be. To finally let my true potential detonate. I suspected that many others—’
Jesus! Let her true potential detonate? She imagined the Library Board watching her, huddled in front of black-and-white TVs in remote Outside outposts across the world. No doubt rapidly revising their opinion of her semi-innocence.
Corinne looked pained. ‘That’s definitely something I can relate to,’ she said. ‘And we know there are many others who feel the same. Because six months on, you’re growing fast. Eudo now has several million monthly users, and interest from international investors. So how do you combine being a woman with being a business owner, Alex? Have you struggled to balance your home life with the responsibilities of leadership?’
Alex looked at her fingernails, freshly painted scarlet. Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to ignore all of MacBrian’s calls. But the thought of having to report her as-yet-total failure to either figure out the meaning of her Storyline, or uncover its surge-enabled root Memory, made her feel even sicker than usual.
‘Alex?’
‘Sorry?’
Corinne laughed again, more sharply. ‘Seems you’re still a little dazed by your own success. Now I understand you have a fiancé, Harry Fyfield, a shipping analyst. I’ve seen a picture, and I must say you’re a lucky woman! I’m sure that Harry is a big support?’
He had sent her a text at 6 a.m., checking that she was still coming for dinner. How right he had been, at that lunch in the fancy chapel – more right than he knew. She certainly wasn’t the Alex he had met five years ago. How appalled he would be if he knew, if he could comprehend, the full truth about the woman he no longer recognized.
‘No-go area?’ Corinne smiled brightly. ‘Fair enough. But I am hoping that you’ll give us the skinny on your father.’ She leaned forward and picked up a hardback from the coffee table. ‘Now, book-loving viewers will know that our current Book Club Pick is The Screaming Girl, the debut novel from Adam Hussein. Adam won a place on Novus’s Young Novelists to Watch list earlier this month. It’s a rare honour, as the list is only released once every ten years. And our viewers may be surprised to learn that you are in fact the daughter of Tom R. Moore, who featured on Novus’s first-ever list, back in 1985 – for his widely acclaimed debut novel The Switch. Now, unfortunately I couldn’t find a copy, and your dad has somewhat dropped out of the limelight. But The Switch was a phenomenon in its time, and it was famously written in just five months, straight after you were born. It must have had an impact on you, Alex. Did your father encourage the daughter who inspired his masterpiece to reach for the stars herself?’
Dom’s wry voice drifted back through Alex’s mind. It was the suddenness of it all . . . My little chum seemed to disappear overnight . . . clammed-up Alex, the teenage mutant ninja turtle . . . He had been spot-on, give or take a ninja turtle. Everything he had said backed up Taran’s hypothesis.
She looked up. The floor manager was rotating
his arm clockwise above his head.
‘Okaaaaay . . .’ Corinne gave a strained smile. ‘So, returning to Eudo itself. Every week, on the Founder’s Blog, you discuss your own favourite pieces of content on the site. Why don’t you tell us about the most powerful stories you’ve recently shared?’
‘Um, I . . . I don’t think I’ve . . .’
Corinne reached for a clipboard on the coffee table. ‘Well, for example, I believe that yesterday you blogged about how Hillary Gibson’s low-sugar programme has given you real clarity of mind? And on Sunday I see that you described how Flaural, a company that creates soundscapes from the cycles of blossoming plants, has helped bring a sense of the interconnection of the planet to your urban lifestyle?’
‘I did?’ Alex gazed hopelessly beyond the camera. Gemma, standing behind the cameraman, holding a coffee and a pastry, was nodding vigorously. Beside her, Lenni was mouthing something. Alex squinted. WARM, he silently bellowed. WARM!
The floor manager’s arm had turned into a windmill in a gale.
‘And what about the future?’ Corinne asked. ‘I understand that you’ve recently been working on a collaboration with a prestigious institute up in the Ork—’
‘NO!’ Alex bellowed. She looked wildly from Corinne, whose smile had frozen, to Lenni and Gemma, whose pain-aux-raisins was arrested halfway to her mouth. ‘I mean—’ She tried a laugh, but it came out all wrong. ‘I mean, it’s just a personal project. Nothing worth sharing at all.’ She tried another laugh, which was even worse. She swallowed. ‘You have to understand, all I ever wanted to do was help people.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You see, I . . . Everyone has to understand that they have the power to change. We can all face up to our Storylines – I mean, no, sorry, I mean our narratives, our limiting narratives about ourselves, and we all have the power to break free of them, all by ourselves, even if we can’t be Read . . . I mean, um, helped.’ She sniffed. ‘I mean obviously, a Library – that is, a community – can be a great source of support. But no-one should rely on there being someone there to Read . . . or, no, I mean . . .’ She rubbed at her eyes. ‘All I’m trying to say, the message I’m trying to send out to the world, is that people simply have to take matters into their own hands, if they want to be – to be their best . . . their best . . . their best . . .’
And then they came, finally – the tears that had been waiting to fall ever since Finn MacEgan had slammed into her, seven days ago, on De Beauvoir Road. Alex stared helplessly into the camera as water streamed silently down her face, snot bubbled out of her nose, and the unctuous mixture dribbled into the rictus of her smile.
The floor manager made a vicious grabbing motion with his hand and balled it into a fist.
‘And that’s all we have time for,’ Corinne said smoothly. ‘Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starving. Anjit, what have you been concocting for us today?’
The floor manager made a slashing motion across his throat. Corinne pulled off her microphone and stalked away, leaving Alex stranded on the sofa. ‘Christ,’ Alex heard her mutter to a researcher as she stepped off the living-room set, ‘where do you find these psychopaths?’
The row of bay windows overlooking Arundel Gardens was wide open, gasping for breeze. As Alex clacked unsteadily past each cream villa she was granted a blast of expensive noise: the squawk of a learner violin, the drill of builders renovating a basement, the chatter of Czech nannies on a play date. At number 119 she climbed up to the shady portico and pressed the buzzer for the top-floor flat. She pressed it twice more before she heard a crackle, and a breathy pan-European accent came through the grille.
‘Sorry, wrong number!’
‘No, Chloe, it’s me, Alex. Alex Moore.’
‘Alex? Wait, I . . . I think there’s been a mix-up? Hold on, I’m coming down.’
Chloe opened the door, her slim sienna body robed in a white maxi-dress. ‘Alex! Namaste!’ She wrapped her arms lightly around Alex in a waft of coconut. ‘Oh, Alex, did you think you had an appointment? I’ve taken today off!’
‘No, no, I just hoped you might have time for a quick chat. It’s really important, and I couldn’t get through on the phone.’
Chloe leaned close. ‘That’s because I spent last night with Mother Ayahuasca,’ she whispered. ‘Amazing! But the thing is, the shamans ask that we spend some time alone afterwards to fully process the journey.’
‘Could I come in for a minute?’
Chloe looked at the stairs that rose into the gloom behind her. She turned back. ‘The thing is, Alex, between you and me, one of the shamans is actually helping me process it right now.’
‘Can I take you out, then? Buy you lunch? Please, Chloe. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’
Chloe half-turned to the stairs, looked back at Alex’s face, then sighed. ‘Let me get my keys. But I’ll have to charge full price, okay?’
Chloe led her round the corner onto Westbourne Grove and into a farm-shop cafe. They sat at a corner table beneath a tower of knobbly vegetables. Chloe ordered the chilled raw cashew soup, then tutted when Alex pushed the menu away.
‘You’re looking thin, Alex. Is this a new look? Very . . . glamorous. Although you’ve got a bit . . .’ Chloe tapped under her eyes. ‘Just a bit of slippage.’
Alex touched her cheek. In her rush to get out of the studio, she had neglected either to change or wash, and her make-up had a clotted, tacky feel where it had mixed with the snot and the tears. Well, fuck it. At least she finally looked how she felt.
‘Chloe,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘I have to ask you about our first meeting, back in February. The evening of the seventeenth. Do you remember what happened?’
‘Of course. It was an incredibly powerful session, am I right?’
‘Well, yes. I Read . . . I mean, I know that I spent the whole time crying, but the problem is: I can’t remember why.’
Chloe nodded and sipped from her elderflower pressé. ‘You chose not to vocalize what you were feeling, Alex, and frankly I thought that was a very good decision at the time. You’re someone who naturally gets very attached to language, to logic, to labels. But in that session you simply unleashed your emotions. It was very pure. Very raw. I’m not going to deny it, you were a tough nut at first. Very defensive, very closed. But once you broke through, well. Kaboom. There was a lifetime of pent-up anger in the room, Alex. A lifetime of fear.’
Kaboom. Alex gripped her teaspoon. ‘But why? What was I angry about? What was I frightened of?’
Chloe wrapped a cold hand round Alex’s. ‘The why doesn’t matter, Alex. What matters is how you’ve used that power since. How you’re going to use it today. This hour. Now.’
‘But . . . but you made me look at all those pictures, do those word-association tests. You must have had some kind of instinct, Chloe, even if I didn’t say anything outright. Would you say I was suffering from a fear of failure? Body issues? Low self-esteem?’
Chloe sat back, shaking her head. ‘Labels, Alex. Labels and words. This sounds suspiciously like your cognitive dissonance at work, trying to rationalize. Trying to separate you from the emotional immediacy of your experience.’
‘So you can’t give me a single clue as to what my . . . er, my personal narrative could have been? Or what events in my past it might have grown out of?’
Chloe sighed again and sipped at her soup. ‘Well, I did ask if your reaction concerned your family, because emotional blocks so often do. You didn’t reply; you were still deep in the sub-vocal stage of your transition at that point. However, I do remember picking up on some body language that suggested I was right.’
‘My family?’ Alex thought, again, of Dom. ‘But my parents are rock-solid. I can’t think of anything in our family that would have made me . . . unleash my . . .’ She stopped. She imagined her Storyline, lassoed around Egan MacCalum’s wrists, getting slower and denser until it suddenly whoomphed out in a white-hot nuclear blast. Chloe was doing her drawing-out-with-silence rout
ine, her face beatific. Alex felt the urge to hit her, then noticed the impulse and felt even more sick.
‘Why are you raking all this up now, Alex?’ Chloe said eventually. ‘You know I’m not a fan of traditional psychoanalysis. I don’t believe you should fetishize the past. You haven’t felt the need to trawl through the whys in our sessions, you’ve been focused on the future – and look at what’s happened. You’ve freed yourself. You’re forging a positive, resourceful path.’
Alex put her head in her hands and stared at the spirals in the grain of the wooden tabletop. ‘Chloe,’ she said, weakly. ‘Do you believe there is more to the world than we realize?’
‘Oh, Alex.’ A fluting laugh. ‘Do you really need to ask me that question?’
Alex looked up. ‘What would you say if I told you there was a Library of human consciousness, then? A place where the Stories we create about ourselves are alive?’
Chloe placed her hands over her heart. ‘I’d say that was beautiful, Alex. Really beautiful.’
‘No, I don’t mean like Paulo Coelho. I mean a real place. Real-real. A place I have actually gone inside.’
Chloe nodded. ‘You have, Alex, you have gone inside. And I’m so proud of you.’
‘No, a physical location. On the map. With coordinates.’
‘And once you have those coordinates, Alex, you never lose them. It will only get—’
That was it then, Alex thought, tuning Chloe out. Another dead end. And if someone like Chloe wouldn’t believe her, who would? For the first time since she’d left the TV studio, she reached into her bag and took out her continually vibrating phone.
‘I think this is a really important conversation, Alex,’ said Chloe.
Alex had twenty-six missed calls, several of them from an unknown landline. She checked her emails and there it was, flagged with another red exclamation mark. Sender: [email protected]. Subject line: Urgent Development.