The very thought of it turned my stomach. I imagined you in front of a flip chart, puncturing the air with a chunky red marker every time you wanted to really drive a point into my rotting brain.
“Give me that.” I signed my name against two “x’s” on the form. “You’d better be able to square this.”
“Trust me, there’s nothing I can’t get away with,” you said, lips separating to show me those teeth of yours, eyes so bright, and it was so deeply plausible. You were too convincing for us all: me, Iain, Gemma, Asif.
“Come on. Let’s do this.” You nestled into my side and I let you lead me toward a dark corridor.
We entered the quiet dim of the spa together. You winked at the receptionist, who pointed you toward a row of plush chairs. We sat next to each other. I didn’t feel I had anything to say to you; to say to anyone.
“How’s Iain doing?”
“Fine. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. God, you’re tightly wound today! You definitely need some TLC.”
Zeroing in on us, on him, on me. I was starting to see it all, Lily. I felt you studying me, then, the oddest thing: some unquestionable real-life genuine warmth coming off you.
“Hey, how about this: We just pretend like you and I just happened to meet in a cab that morning and we ended up being friends? For this next hour, we’re not colleagues. You’re not my boss, I’m not your boss’s niece, we’re not here for ‘copy camp,’ we’re just girlfriends. That’s what we are, really, at the heart of it, aren’t we? That’s what we would be, in another universe? That’s what I think anyway. And if you don’t agree then I’ve, like, completely embarrassed myself.”
Oh, Lily, you were so good when you wanted to be. You knew exactly what to offer me on a plate. Knowing how obvious my desperate need for a new friend was, was probably one of the most degrading elements of what happened between us. You see, there’s a specific humiliation that develops when you are lonely. Shame collects in every crevice of your character; pretending you haven’t gone another weekend where the only person you spoke to was your partner; fake nonchalance after crashing and burning when you’ve tried to start a conversation with the woman on the next treadmill at the gym; masking the temporary jolt of joy you feel when the phone rings before realizing it’s another spam call. Carrying myself in the world like a person who wasn’t really lonely took a particular toll on me. My solitude had eroded the confidence that had once made me popular. The promise of restoring it with you was tantalizing. “I suppose it’s possible.” Maybe you could fill the gaping friend-shaped void in my life. There was no one else lining up to accept the post.
The door on the treatment room opened suddenly, making me jump.
“Katherine and Lily?” A masseuse poked her head out of the door.
“That’ll be us!” you told her.
“Would you like to come with me?”
“You can go first. I don’t mind waiting out here,” I said.
“We’re going in at the same time.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I thought it would be fun. Bonding?” I saw that mischief flutter just below the surface of your smile again, a knowingness. I went to say that simultaneous massage with female interns I’ve known for five minutes wasn’t really my cup of tea, but how old, how prudish would that make me sound? I’m neither of those things.
I mumbled “OK,” rose from my chair, and went into the room obediently, a vision of Iain messing around with my laptop flashing into my eyes from nowhere. What had he been doing? Wandering into that black room, I didn’t understand why everything in the entire world was changing. Except me.
The woman led us into a velveteen den with two massage beds. At the foot of one, another masseuse waited for us. They introduced themselves and then stepped outside while we got ourselves ready. You immediately kicked off your ankle boots and lifted your pink cashmere sweater off your white ribs. Your bra surprised me in how plain it was. It was the lingerie equivalent of a humblebrag because your perfect tits didn’t need anything more than plain white cotton. My own breasts aren’t bad now. They used to be amazing, before twenty-five years of running and two-odd years of barely eating emptied them. I snatched glances of you as I took off my skinny gray jeans and unbuttoned my shirt. Your stomach wasn’t naturally hard like mine, but soft and rounded. Each bit of you glowed in the muted light. Then, you were just there in your very sensible, mismatched knickers.
“Cool bra,” you said. And it was. A melon and mint number from Agent Provocateur. I used to spend a lot of money on my underwear. But like my disposable income and the brand, this bra had faded, having had its real moment in the sun in the noughties. Thank God it was dark in there, you couldn’t see how sad my once-flash bra was; how, like me, up-close it was just another shade of gray.
Fuck you. Fuck you for bringing me here. Fuck you for grinding me down like this. Screw your incredible tits, pointing right at me as you went to fold your clothes and place them carefully on a stool.
I hitched down my matching, discolored thong that had cost me £65 ten years ago, and tossed it next to my pile of other fading things. You looked shocked at my full nakedness, but immediately tried to mask it. “Katherine! You’re such a free spirit.”
“Is that what I am?”
“Yes. You’ve got that, I don’t know, that confidence.”
“And you don’t?”
“No. Not like you.”
A knock at the door and we both climbed onto our tables, towels draped awkwardly across our arses.
The masseuses slid around the tables in sync, drenching our backs, our shoulders, our legs and feet with essential oils. Your head was angled toward me, but I turned away from you and let myself drift off. I don’t know how long I was asleep before the dream with the desperate child me came. This time, it played out at slow motion, my dirty toes teetering on the edge of every crevice I needed to clear in order to reach the gate. But this time, I was closer than ever, my fingers in the air above the familiar splintered wood. My unseen mother’s eyes burning fury onto me for my show of strength. I placed both palms on the gate, ready to drag it toward me. Wetness suddenly. Blood gushes from my hands.
A moan. A noise, from my core, something primal, woke me.
I found myself somewhere dark, hot, not remembering where I was or how I got there. For a moment, I really felt I was at my mother’s farm, in that black place, so utterly alone. I clambered to get myself upright. My skin boiled, my hair drenched in sweat. I panted. I looked about and I saw you, watching me with probably the worst sentiment of all you could send my way: pity.
I managed to get the towel around me. One of the masseuses handed me a tiny cone of warmish water, but didn’t look me in the face.
“Sorry, I had a dream…A nightmare. Sorry.”
My words fuddled out of me in a way I could hardly hear. I didn’t know if anyone else would hear me either. Under a dull tide. Alone. Drowning.
“It’s OK, you’re safe. Just a bad dream.” I heard your voice through the fug.
“Such a bad dream,” I whispered, viewing my veiny hands as if I was seeing them for the first time. Hands that didn’t belong to me. My mother’s hands. Rough, ugly, broad palms, with short fingers. Built for labor, not for tapping elegantly at a keyboard to fill a clean white screen with words; not for artistic gesticulation; my mother’s hands, created only to grind away bitterly.
“Why don’t you tell me all about it over coffee?” You reached over from your table, took my shoulder in your hand, and then let your fingers run down my oiled biceps, sweeping all the way to my forearm and my wrist. And I felt it again, and, I know, so did you: iron filings to a magnet.
“Can you leave her alone for a minute please?” you told the masseuses.
“Thank you, Lily.” This simple kindness, you protecting me, and that feeling again too: you
liked me even though you didn’t want to.
I took myself away for a cold shower, trying to wash away the dream and the blood and the sense of my mother. I viewed my flushed face in the mirror. I could see lines suddenly so deep in my forehead, great crevices I’d hadn’t registered until that point. I saw my crow’s-feet. I noticed two curving channels running like a pair of brackets around my thinning mouth. My voice in brackets. A body, a life now in parentheses. I looked hard at myself. I reapplied my makeup, slicking on the MAC Russian Red lipstick I usually saved for after dark. You texted me to say you were in the Mirror Room.
I joined you at a table in front of a wall of fragmented reflections of you.
You looked breathtaking. No makeup besides your orange lips; that and an ostentatiously healthy, post-massage flush. The whole room seemed rigged to make you look stunning.
“How are you doing? I think you look…rejuvenated,” you said.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Eleven, I guess?”
Screw it, I thought, and grabbed a passing waiter. “Hi, can we get a bottle of champagne and two glasses please.” I viewed the disorienting room around us again. “Fuck, I wish I still smoked. I wish you could still smoke in bars. Have you ever smoked?” You went to speak. “Don’t bother answering that.” You were taken aback. You weren’t expecting me to come out of that room match fit. You’d expected I would come to you tenderized, all softened up for the mind games you’d planned, hadn’t you?
“I have actually. I smoked something like twenty a day?”
“As many as that.”
“A pack a day’s loads.”
“Depends how long your day is. Fuck, I need a drink. Here we go.” The waiter appeared with a bottle. “It’s all right, I’ve got this,” I said, grabbing it and popping the cork myself. I poured a tall measure for me and decided at the last second to pour less than an inch in your glass. I know you noticed and that you’d also decided not to rise to the bait.
“When I was your age, I’d chug through forty, sixty maybe between Friday night and Saturday morning.”
“Right.”
“I’m not saying that’s the greatest thing. I’m just giving you a bit of context.” I sipped. “What made you give up, then?”
“It was easy. I hated it. I smoked twenty a day for a week for my student newspaper.”
“Get many bylines?”
“I guess. For a while.”
“What happened then? Fell out with the editor? Had a few too many bright ideas?”
“Oh, you know. I might tell you after a few of these.” You finished your drip of bubbles.
“Thought you hardly drank?”
“People change?” Voice sweeping up like a question.
“Do they?” I topped up your glass to brim level, unseemly anywhere, but especially at the Rosewood. You looked at me and breathed, smiling as if to say, Oh, Katherine, without actually saying it.
“I was worried about you back there.” You smiled at me, pity scratching under the surface of your expression again.
“Don’t you worry about me.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” You sat forward. “Because we do have a connection, don’t we?”
“What kind of connection is that then, Lily? Really, what do you think it is?”
You went to say something when a waiter swooped in and placed two small square cakes on delicate white plates in front of us. They were white with multicolored discs. You sat back in your velvet chair before looking at me hopefully.
“I think you mentioned you liked Damien Hirst?”
“Is that what this is supposed to be?”
“Yeah, like a tribute, I guess?”
“Fuck me.” I pushed the plate away and took a glug from my flute instead.
“What’s wrong?”
“This. This is wrong.”
“I thought you’d like it,” you said calmly.
“But why? Hirst’s dot paintings, they’re like the nineties on a page. Hirst said they were about pinning down the joy of color. But this is what they do now. Take away the joy of color, the joy of my youth. They think you can reduce what we were to a fucking cupcake.”
You checked the room to see if anyone had heard me dressing you down, before rearranging yourself into a soft defiance.
“Katherine, all I was trying to do was—”
“To what?”
“To put a smile on your face,” you said without smiling.
“Why? Why were you following me? Why are you buying me Damien Hirst fucking cakes? Coffee. Weird coffee that’s got something wrong with it.”
“I always choose organic fair-trade blends. You might find it’s a stronger—” you began to answer, quietly, before I cut you off.
“And how do you know I like Damien Hirst anyway? Can you see into my flat? Are you still watching me? Are you still doing it now? Monitoring me when I’m leaving my house each and every day?”
“No! No. You’ve told me all sorts of things you like and you don’t like when we’ve been talking. You just…I don’t know…”
“Know what?”
“Ever since you’ve come into my life, I’ve asked myself, I wonder if this person could be important to me?”
“Come into your life? No, Lily. You’ve put yourself slap bang in the middle of mine.”
“I think it’s probably one and the same, but that doesn’t matter, I guess, I’d just like us to get on, despite Gem making us do days like today.”
I sighed and shook my head, not looking at you. You sensed my exhaustion.
“How about we drink to being two friendless fuckers drinking the morning away? Katherine?”
I knocked mine back while looking you in the eye. You fixed me right back.
And there it was.
A silent understanding we were playing a game.
We would be friends, but only under conditions that would ask more of me than I wanted to give. We could play together, but in the way that the cat plays with the mouse.
“And you’ve started to swear.”
You took the bottle and poured me a glass, before saying again in a voice that remained perfectly level, “People change.”
MARCH 16—COPY CAMP DAY
Over the years I’ve learned all it takes sometimes is to paint someone an outline of what they can already see in front of their eyes. That’s really all I’ve ever done, splotch out the dots for people to make the connections and let them see clearly for themselves what they already know in their hearts to be true. I’ve seen it so many times. You can give someone a way in, or a way back to the truth; then they do the rest themselves.
Taking control, shaping and melding a situation to come out winning, is something that’s hard-coded into me. I had to get very good at it very quickly. What I learned from trying to stay alive between Mum and Gem is that the most powerful weapon is truth.
Take someone like Meg back in school number four. All it took for her was a few hints. She did the rest all on her own. Meg, bless her, had realized her weight issues were getting out of control so spent the summer holiday between years eight and nine eating an apple a day, nothing else. That was the rumor. When I saw her that first day back at school, you could see she wanted everyone to think she’d nailed it. In control on the outside, in control on the inside. But I knew better than that. I also knew it wasn’t the natural order of things for her to be getting more attention than me. Everyone was so wowed. Girls wanted to hang out with her, boys suddenly couldn’t get enough of her. Six weeks of starvation and there was a new pretty girl in town. That used to be me, but for real. In the last term of year eight, I was genuinely new and genuinely pretty. That was my thing. Meg had changed, temporarily, on the outside, but inside she was still the old her. I had to put her back where she should be. Me above her, my r
ightful position as someone who is fundamentally way hotter and far more interesting.
After the summer, no one called her Fat Meg anymore, no one thought she was Fat Meg anymore, except for Meg. That’s why all it took was a hint and a nudge and a bit of temptation for her to destroy the new fake her and get back to who she really was. Thinking about it, all I ever probably said was something like, “You look pretty much the same,” “They say you’re still fat? Who cares?” and “If you’ll always be ‘Fat Meg,’ maybe you should just be Fat Meg.” I mean, it’s no more than twenty-six words, said maybe three or four times, that and the gifting of my lunch every day to a friend in need. Twenty-six words and I’m the one who gets excluded. Again.
Meg did it to herself, and she needed to be put in her place.
Just like KR.
All it takes to get to her at the Rosewood is the odd whisper in her ear, a hint here and there that her world isn’t what she thinks it is. Add to this the idea that she can get close to another human being who isn’t her partner. But the rest is all down to her and the life she’s already had. All the times she’s taken something that didn’t belong to her. It’s backing up behind her, catching up with her, like a massive black wave, one I’m leading to the shore to finally break.
We’d nearly finished the first bottle of champagne when you said, “Tell me what you were dreaming about. You seemed super-upset.”
Of course I knew you didn’t deserve to know, that telling you would expose me again, but there was that pull once more. Lily, I was lost at sea, dehydrated, dying. You were the saltwater that desperation makes you drink.
For the time being I managed to say nothing and looked at my almost-empty glass.
“You might feel better if you talked about it. How about if you tell me, I’ll tell you something secret about me.”
I looked up at you. “Would that secret be my choice, my question?”
“Sure. Shoot. What could I have to hide from you?” Mischief dancing around the muscles in your mouth.
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