She sucked deep on the cigarette and looked around. The room she was in was a large space and apart from the table and ashtray there was no other furniture and nothing hung on the walls. Presumably, it was waiting for pictures, a bride without a groom.
In the gloom she thought she saw something move in the corner of the room, and then again, movement. She watched as a mouse ran along the floor before disappearing into the shadows.
‘Mind if I join you?’ Meredith saw Olivia standing at the doorway.
‘Sure’ – she looked around at the vacant space – ‘I think we’ve got room.’
Olivia joined her at the table and produced a packet of cigarettes from her bag. ‘Is this a piece of art?’
Meredith laughed. ‘I thought the same thing, but I don’t think so.’
Olivia lit her cigarette. ‘It’s hard to tell these days, isn’t it? Between what’s real and what’s fake. I mean this table, if someone told us it was a post-modern take on easy twenty-first century capitalism and was worth 10 million dollars we wouldn’t be too surprised, would we?’
‘I guess not,’ said Meredith. ‘How’s the party?’
Olivia shrugged and leaned back against the table in the same way that Meredith was leaning. ‘How I hate these things. I’m a natural introvert so these things bring me out in hives. Most of us are you know, introverts. The people who succeed on social media are those who traditionally would struggle in the mainstream entertainment routes to success. The internet allowed us to be extroverts in our bedrooms or on holiday with our friends and connect with other introverts… which is a long-winded way of saying “I don’t like crowds”.’
‘Me neither,’ said Meredith, although that wasn’t strictly true. What she didn’t like was tedious conversations over canapés and drunken attempts by men double her age to flirt with her. But she needed to bond with Olivia if she was ever going to be accepted into The Squad on a long-term basis.
Olivia took a few more fierce drags of her cigarette and then stubbed it out. ‘Yeah. It explains your complete lack of social media presence, well, until now. You’ve gone from zero to hero there and one of the downsides is some of the unwanted attention that comes along with having hundreds of thousands of people view your content.’
Olivia was still talking in a relaxed, conversational tone but Meredith’s stomach had contracted a little and she suddenly felt on edge.
‘Well, did you take a look at some of the comments about you on the last picture uploaded by Adam?’
She had and, frankly, they had been a joy to read. Overwhelmingly positive, congratulating The Squad on finding a long-lost member and complimenting her on her looks, make-up and clothes. There had been one or two bemoaning the lack of Amy but that was to be expected. There had been nothing that she would have deemed offensive, which was the constant fear word Adam bandied around when discussing their content. Giving offence that led to an online vendetta was one of Adam’s biggest fears in life as it could destroy The Squad’s business model in one fell swoop.
‘I saw a few, yeah. Are you referring to any in particular?’
Olivia slipped off the side of the table and stood in front of Meredith. ‘Funny you should ask as I am. Part of my remit is troll alert and clean up. We can’t have the number one comment on a Nike promotional post being about sweatshops.’ She started swiping on her phone screen.
Meredith wanted to leave the room now, but she tried focussing on appearing normal. She had spent her teenage years doing this and, although she hated it, it was a skill she had never forgotten. ‘The ones I looked at seemed good.’
Olivia didn’t look up from the screen. ‘Here we go. Take a look at this. Any idea what this is about?’ Olivia held up her phone so Meredith could see the screen. The post was from the volleyball game and showed Meredith posing with the ball whilst the sun dipped behind the Hotel Arts on the Port Olímpic.
The comment Olivia had highlighted was from a user called ‘Steel83’ and reading it caused Meredith to grip hold of the edge of the table.
Steel83: Meredith – is that you? I’ve sent you a message. Where u been?!
She knew who Steel was but she tried to compose herself. ‘No idea what that is all about. I guess you guys get this a lot of the time.’
‘It happens but normally it’s a lot darker than this and I only mention this because this Steel83 has posted the same thing on all the posts featuring you and, as we manage The Squad’s accounts, I wanted to know, do you want to read the message? We get thousands as you expect and have a bounceback standard message that goes out to the fans. It gets them to sign up to our mail list. We never miss an opportunity! So, do you want me to send you her message?’
Meredith jumped down from the table. She wanted to run from the room, go back to her old apartment, take the money she had stashed there and leave Barcelona but instead, she smiled sweetly at Olivia. ‘No, just delete it. Shall we go and rejoin the party? The art is better than this after all.’ She tapped the table.
Olivia looked at her curiously for a second and then pocketed the phone. ‘Of course. It’s what we’re here for, after all. Let’s go.’
They went back up to the gallery. Annik must have finished her speech as the podium was empty and the place seemed louder, as though the drink and drugs were beginning to kick in amongst the crowd.
Olivia spotted Dylan standing on his own holding two glasses of cava. ‘Where is Richard?’
Dylan looked as though he had been asked to solve a complex mathematical equation and his eyes rolled as he struggled to come up with an answer. ‘Well, it’s a difficult one. Last time I saw him he was near the dunnie.’
Olivia’s face flushed with anger and she stormed off towards the bathrooms.
‘What’s the matter?’ Meredith asked Dylan.
‘Ah, well, you see Olivia, she worries too much that someone will pap Richard or me having a bit of fun.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Not good for the sponsors, you know, hypocritical bastards.’
Meredith went after Olivia and caught her at the entrance to the hombres.
‘If Richard is doing coke, do you care?’
Olivia spun round. ‘I don’t give a shit. He can shove half of Bolivia up his nostril as far as I care but brands, they do care and one photo could destroy all of us.’
A man exited the bathroom and pushed past them.
‘Listen, Nancy, you go in there and get him out. I’ll stand guard here and won’t let anyone else in. I’ll say something about your period: that normally shuts them up.’
Meredith didn’t hesitate. She needed Olivia onside. She pushed open the door and peeked inside. There was no one by the urinals so she quickly stepped in and shut the door behind her.
‘Richard?’
She thought she heard a low groan come from one of the stalls at the end. It was locked. ‘Richard?’
Again, a low groan.
She went into the unoccupied cubicle next door, climbed on the toilet seat and looked down to see Richard curled up in a foetal position on the floor.
‘Richard, are you okay?’
He looked up, his skin was pale and clammy, his eyes glazed and there was vomit on his chin.
‘Jesus,’ she said and then pushed herself up and over the cubicle wall and slid down into his cubicle.
‘Hello, Nancy,’ he said.
There was vomit in the toilet and splattered about the floor of the cubicle.
‘Oh Christ, Richard, are you all right?’
‘Just had a dicky stomach. Dicky had a dicky stomach, ha!’
Meredith remembered when she had first arrived thinking how slim Richard was compared to when she had known him in Thailand. Social media was an unforgiving place for people who did not fit the regulation body size requirements of thin and fit.
Meredith helped Richard stand up. ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’ She spooled off reams of toilet paper and handed it to him so he could wipe himself down and then she opened the cubicle door.
‘Oh fuck, she knows, fuck, fuck, fuck.’
‘How long have you been doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Oh, please Richard, the bulimia thing.’
He ran the tap and threw water on his face. ‘About ten years. You can’t tell Olivia. I know what she will do. She will make me post about it. Mental illness is so in fashion. I just fucking know it. I don’t want people knowing everything.’
Meredith put an arm around Richard. ‘Don’t worry I won’t say anything. Let’s take a look at you.’ He still looked ghastly but the vomit was gone and in the dim lighting of the gallery he would just pass for another guest who had drunk a little too much cava. ‘Okay, you’ll pass. Let’s go.’
They left the bathroom together. Olivia was remonstrating with an elderly Spanish man who was swearing at her in words that made it better that Olivia did not understand Spanish.
On seeing them Olivia let the man pass. He pushed past them.
Olivia looked Richard up and down. ‘What have I told you about taking coke whilst we are at sponsor functions? For fuck’s sake, you know you could ruin us all.’ She pulled back. ‘Jesus, you smell awful.’
‘He wasn’t taking coke. He was puking up. I reckon it’s those prawn canapés, I had one and feel really bad too.’
Olivia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘Well let’s get back to it, hey. We are here to mingle and to be photographed, so let’s do it, yeah?’
They both agreed and together headed back into the throng.
Meredith found the rest of the evening a struggle and it took her a huge effort to perform the social niceties that seemed to come so easily to others.
She was relieved when, after what felt like an age of repeating the same banal phrases over and over again, Olivia and Adam signalled that it was time to leave and as a group they headed for the stairs.
As they were leaving Meredith felt a hand on her arm and turned to see Annik.
‘We didn’t get time to finish our conversation. Here, let me give you my number. This may seem presumptuous but I return to Morocco tomorrow and I wondered whether you wanted to come back to my hotel and perhaps get a drink.’
She looked directly at Meredith with no embarrassment.
Meredith sensed the others looking at them. She couldn’t see what this would gain her at this point, although she was tempted. She leaned in closer to Annik and said, ‘I have a boyfriend and I never cheat, but the future isn’t mapped out so I will take your number if you want to give it to me.’
Annik pulled out a pen from her bag and then picked up a drinks mat from one of the nearby tables. She tore the printed front from it and on the cardboard underneath she wrote down a number and then handed the mat to Meredith.
‘Call me,’ she said, maintaining eye contact with Meredith.
When she caught up with The Squad, Adam asked her what Annik had wanted and Meredith had said she wanted advice on her social media presences and had asked for their details. Adam seemed pleased with this, but Olivia gave her a look that Meredith did not like at all. Not at all.
16
Meredith had never been on a protest march before. She had never had enough passion to make her waste time on what she rather thought was an exercise of posturing for the benefit of attracting mates.
And yet here she was with Edu, Amy and Ferran, and to her mind, it rather proved her point. At the head of a crowd of around three or four hundred, Amy, with Catalan flags painted on both her cheeks, looked as though she may burst with sexual excitement at the frenzy and repressed violence.
Ferran, a veteran of protests, even seemed to have a protest outfit, which was all black, naturally. Meredith had noticed that the labels on his jeans and T-shirt were designer and he wore a grey check Burberry scarf around his neck. Every now and then, he checked himself out as they passed a shop window as they made their way down Via Laietana, one of the busiest, and now blocked to traffic, thoroughfares of central Barcelona.
Edu had been full of speeches about safety and how he would be there to look after her if things became dangerous. His act of being her great defender she had found slightly nauseating. She had smiled sweetly as she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of Amy and Ferran although the younger, vainer man did defer to Edu.
On the march she had noticed many of the other protestors greeted both Ferran and Edu but it was Edu they kept their eyes on.
It had been Amy’s idea to attend the demonstration. It was a warm-up before the main event of the Diada exactly three weeks later. The protest was against the Spanish cabinet’s decision to meet in Barcelona. They did this in cities across Spain, but to many this was seen as deliberately provocative so close to the Diada.
They had all stayed at Ferran’s apartment the night before. Meredith had spent the day shooting content with The Squad. Then she told them she was going to see Amy and that she thought that one more push may get Amy across the line and back to The Squad. What she wanted was to keep Amy in the bosom of the independence movement and keep her enthusiasm levels high.
Her own ‘likes’ were getting higher every day and if she could approach the levels of the rest of The Squad, and even, in time, hit Amy levels, then they would surely have to keep her as a member. The key was to make sure her likes kept rising and for that she needed time. Time was dependent on Amy not returning for a little while longer.
At Ferran’s flat, they had relaxed over Jané Ventura Cava, bellota ham and cheeses. Amy, who had previously made a big deal about being vegan online, seemed to be quite comfortable eating the ham and cheese, Meredith had noticed, although she hadn’t said anything. Perhaps this is part of the attraction of her new identity, the meaner side of Meredith thought.
Edu and Ferran had talked war stories about previous marches and how they fought the fascists and they had all got a little drunk. If this was revolution then Meredith was all for it.
But today, today was different.
‘This is amazing isn’t it?’ said Amy, with whom she had linked arms as they marched.
Meredith could smell the rank body odour of the overweight man directly in front of her and it was so hot that she was sweating heavily, as was Amy, and their sweat mingled on their intertwined arms. ‘Yeah, it’s really great. It kinda makes you realise what’s important in life.’
She was thinking about the pool at Soho House which was only 500 or so yards away from where they currently were. It was funny, but if Adam and Olivia decided to leave their air-conditioned rooms they could have come down and talked directly to Amy. Not that it would have made any difference to Amy.
Edu, who had been discussing tactics with another demonstrator further back in the crowd, appeared at Meredith’s elbow. ‘Are you chicas okay?’
Meredith and Amy exchanged an amused look. ‘We are, Edu, but thanks for checking on us. It all seems fun but I only know the Catalan national anthem so I don’t understand all the chants,’ said Amy.
Edu grinned widely. ‘It’s a good job you don’t speak Catalan as most of them are very profane.’
‘Those are the ones we want to sing,’ said Amy.
He grinned and put his arm around both of them.
Meredith noticed that they were starting to move more slowly and she could see why. Ahead of them, blocking the government building at the bottom of the street, which was their target, was a line of armoured police officers.
She was used to seeing the Mossos dressed in their fatigues and carrying weapons for sure, but now they were sporting black Kevlar armour and helmets that made them look like stormtroopers. They were carrying shields and batons and suddenly the atmosphere changed from one of joyous, almost juvenile rebellion, to something altogether more serious.
Behind the line of the Mossos was another crowd of demonstrators, maybe one hundred in number, and in contrast to the yellow colours worn by the independentistas, these counter de
monstrators were wearing the red colours of the Ciudadanos party, the unionists.
Slowly the independentistas ground to a halt a yard or so in front of the ranks of Mossos.
‘What now?’ asked Amy of Ferran.
‘Now? Now we show them why we came. Here…’ He held up his mobile phone and took a selfie of him and Amy. Amy held up her fingers in a V for victory symbol.
He held up his phone again to take a picture of Edu and Meredith.
Edu held up his hand in a mock attempt to stop Ferran taking the picture. But Meredith wasn’t so sure it was in jest, though she did wonder what the use would be, given that she could see a police cameraman taking pictures of the demonstrators.
At that moment the crowd broke into a rendition of the Catalan national anthem, The Reapers. Meredith watched a little in admiration as Amy joined in, appearing to know all the words to the rousing, bloodthirsty hymn.
‘Impressive,’ said Meredith.
Amy smiled sheepishly. ‘I learnt it from YouTube.’
‘What now?’ said Meredith to Edu.
He looked a little surprised by the question as though he was disappointed that Meredith didn’t think this was enough. ‘We sing, we protest, we let the cabróns in that building know that we are here.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then we go home and drink and make love.’ He was trying to be romantic and dangerous, and maybe he was, but Meredith winced inwardly. Perhaps it was cultural: the southern Mediterranean cliché rubbing up against her northern Californian Baptist upbringing, but she found it faintly ridiculous so she didn’t reply, but instead she hugged him so he couldn’t see her expression.
Nothing much happened for the next half an hour as both sides sang and threw insults at each other whilst the cops looked bored and occasionally one of the stormtroopers would nip off for a cigarette. Amongst the independentistas there was a party atmosphere, and beer, joints, ham and cheese were passed back and forth.
How to Kill Your Friends Page 12