The thing is, what she’s been a victim of, I have too. I knew it couldn’t be just me. That’s why this feels harder than it should. That’s why I sometimes have to block myself from oversharing, reaching out, taking her hand.
Could I have played this differently? Can I still play this completely differently? We could be there for each other. Maybe we’re two sides of the same coin. Maybe I don’t have to detonate the years of pain in her face. It could be kinder than that. I can restart things on the right foot. People change, right!?
At this point, I’m seriously thinking about coming clean about what this really is, but I want to go a little deeper before I do, see if I can’t get some honesty from her about her past first. I feel happy to share something true about me too. The pain of my childhood.
What I learn is that she sees her past as a blip, something to skip over on the way to something better.
No, Katherine Ross, it does not work that way. You should know that. You should have been living this truth for a long time by now, but you haven’t. You’ve breezed right past it.
The past lives with me every day. That’s not a choice I can make. There’s no way I can bring Ruth back to me.
Why should she be able to pretend she’s never made a mistake, never wronged another person? Her whole life is built on walking away from the hurt she’s created without even realizing.
Afterward, when she talks about the man she used and threw away, she asks me, “What, did you want to marry the first guy you shagged?” Yes, part of me did, but he ended up having a breakdown, the silly boy, so that was the end of that.
Charlie.
He was completely obsessed with me from the minute he saw me, just after I’d started at my fifth and final boarding school. Charlie’s family was very, very rich. Gem loved him, my mum said I’d “landed on my feet.” He said we could be together forever and I thought, All right, that could work. Who needed to be “in love” if I could get a nice house with him and never have to worry about money or living with Mum and Gem again.
He was encouraged to apply for a place at Oxford, but with all my moving schools and disruption, my expected results meant I was not. The way I saw it, he would have to apply to the same places I did and we’d pick somewhere together.
But he refused to ditch the Oxford application. He wouldn’t do that for me. All the love he’d professed was a lie. Then, when he got in and I knew I was heading to Leeds, he told me we could still be together, but I knew better. If I was hundreds of miles away, he’d move on. People do that. My dreams of an easier life were gone. No, it’s not right that he, the weaker party, gets all the power. I had to do something to put everything back in its right place.
In the end, I didn’t do much at all to punish him. All I did was draw the dots for him to join. It went something like this: No, I didn’t mind he was definitely smaller than the average “down there” (he was my first, so I actually hadn’t a clue!). No, it doesn’t feel less. You don’t feel less. You feel perfect for me. Let me take some pictures of you, something to really remember you by when I’m alone at night.
I didn’t actually do anything. I just left the consequences of me having the pictures hanging over him, and, of course, waiting in a draft message to the whole year’s WhatsApp group. His insecurity did the rest. I told him, “I’m not like the girls you’ll meet at Oxford. You’re more than enough for me, no matter what anyone else in the school or the rest of the world would say. I’m so proud to be your girlfriend, I want to show everyone exactly who you are. It’s not too late to say no to Oxford and come to Leeds.” Such a sensitive boy.
My therapist said the way I’d “pushed Charlie away” just before his breakdown was “a classic act of self-sabotage, most likely a symptom of my deep-seated attachment issues.” The housemistress, Mrs. Farnaby, however, saw it differently. “Your niece has cost a decent young man a place at Oxford and his mental well-being. I believe she is a danger to others. I would like you to remove her from this school at the earliest opportunity,” she told Gem in a phone call I wasn’t supposed to hear.
But I believe my therapist’s version of events. I didn’t break him, he did it to himself. Still, I do think of Charlie and all of the others who’ve made me punish them over the years. He did make it to Oxford in the end, only a year later than planned.
When I saw that on social, I was glad that, in the end, no real harm was done. Being happy for Charlie was a good feeling because it seemed like progress, like there was still a chance for me to be the type of person my mum thought I should be.
But KR didn’t think about the man she humiliated once. She didn’t think about him ever again, just redirected her life to escaping to London. So cold. No thought for the consequences. Who does that? Not even me. I think about what I’ve done all the time to try and work on myself. At least I know I need to regret Sonnet Samira, Fat Meg, Charlie. I know that’s what any normal person would expect. She has no idea what “normal” is. No true morality.
So, I stick to my original plan.
Back in a black cab to Manor House. Just like the old days, I say, like there’s a story of us. She’s so drunk and malleable, I go back to classic Lily Lunt, the one she can’t resist; I listen, I push her out, I reel her in all over again.
I get us both into the flat and put on the music I know she loves and pretend it’s my own. She believes me. Of course she does. They always do. Daub the brushstrokes, let them fill in the sky with their brightest wishes, or their worst fears.
She looks so happy she could cry. She feels so sorry for herself and so alone, more alone than me, although she’s got Iain. She turns the music up and starts to dance, unsure at first, but then she finds her rhythm. She laughs at herself, takes my hands, gets me up to dance with her. I hold back at first, but before I can stop it, I’m dancing like my life depends on it, and maybe it looks to the people below like we could be something to each other. We end up holding each other again. We watch the sun go down on the reservoir. She ends up passing out right there in my arms. She weighs so little, it’s not too hard for me to get her down to the sofa. I watch her, fast asleep. I lean down and kiss her cheek, because I can. Because I want to. Because of how much she reminds me of Ruth in that moment.
I put my pajamas on and settle at the other end of the sofa to let the drunkenness take me to sleep, and find myself thinking of the sound of Ruth’s duvet swishing against the shared thin wall of our old house as she turned in her sleep, before she turned her back on me to rest. Before I let myself fall asleep, I watch KR breathing softly. She sleeps so peacefully. Seems ignorance is bliss. Ignoring the things staring her in the face is how she lives, how she sleeps at night.
When I wake, she’s already let herself out.
Asif’s been texting me all day. He’s so desperate, but I’m too hungover to go out with him as I’d promised. I tell him to come over instead.
Picking off KR’s lieutenant: tick.
I flew down the service stairs and barely dodged the traffic as I ran desperately to my side of Green Lanes. Once on my street, the panic began to subside. I watched the river of traffic now separating us, calming down a little more. As I turned away and walked up the road to my flat, I vowed there and then that no matter what spell you put on me, I would never let myself invite you into my home.
“Hey, love,” Iain shouted from the kitchen when I got in, a sickening waft of rich, meaty fumes hitting me.
“One minute!” I shouted, shooting into the bathroom.
I hovered over the loo and made the vomit come.
“I was wondering where you’d got to…You OK?” he called from behind the door.
“I will be in a minute.” I used the back of my hand to move my hair from my eyes.
When I looked in the mirror, I was a disgrace. My skin was gray again, my eyes, slits in a bland, creased triangle of a face, sick on my chin and
something else.
Orange lipstick.
Next to a smear of sick, your orange on the side of my mouth.
What had you done to me?
“Can I get you anything?”
“I might just have a shower and go to bed. Don’t bother cooking me anything. Just sort yourself out.”
“Oh, OK, love.”
I took off my shirt, remembering the undone buttons. I checked my neck and my chest for lipstick. I didn’t think I saw anything, but I couldn’t be sure. I got into the shower and tried to let the water blast any trace of you off me. I felt skinless again. Exposed by you. I wished I could turn back time to ten that morning. I would have said no to your massages, to your “writing exercise,” to going to your flat. We should have gone to the business center at the Rosewood and you should have been the excruciating work-Snowflake version of you, all “fair challenges” and “I hear yous” and “Yeah sures” and dumb inflections. You’d lied about your name. What else had you lied about?
When I got to the kitchen, Iain was spooning the dark brown contents of a large pan into a tub. “I’m really sorry. That looks so good.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’ll keep. What happened to you? What did she do to you?!”
What to tell him. I didn’t know what he could already see, or what he was choosing to ignore about you. I needed to keep him on my side and avoid anything that would make him worry I was getting properly ill again.
“We ended up blowing out copy camp, her idea of course, getting a massage and then getting hideously pissed. I think I blacked out at hers, or I slept, at least. I think I actually feel worse for it.”
“You seem a bit rattled? You OK?”
“I’m fine, really. A bit drunk-slash-hungover. I suppose we did do a bit of writing. Maybe that’s it too.”
“That sounds positive.”
“We were already three sheets and she suddenly decides we should write about the worst day of our lives for five minutes. I ended up writing about something I’d not thought about forever. I don’t know why. I think she’s some kind of witch. She just keeps on getting stuff out of me.”
He peered at me, intrigued, suddenly coming alive through his usual evening pissedness. “I felt something like it too. In the pub. I felt like she’d made me spill my guts out. I don’t even know if that’s a good or bad thing.” He laughed without mirth. “I keep thinking about it. It’s like she stirs up the sediment in my head, these old, compacted feelings. Deep down stuff.” He was staring into the middle distance, probably conjuring your face, then finally looked at me as if he was surprised I was still there.
“Me too,” I said, because it was true.
“You remember it’s her creative writing thing tomorrow. I was still planning on going. Would that be all right?”
The vomit rose into my gullet again.
I wanted desperately to tell him that Lunt wasn’t your real name, I wanted to extract him from your gravitational pull. But I knew I needed to build the case against you first. I had to stand up my story, or risk sounding paranoid or worse to Iain. I needed to look strong to him. The real me.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
The next morning, Gemma summoned you and me to her office for a copy camp debrief. I was late again, so had to walk straight in there with my jacket on. I regretted not calling you the night before to get our story straight about what we’d done at the Rosewood. But I couldn’t face it.
“So, you two, how do you think it went yesterday?” Gemma asked.
“I actually think I learned a lot,” I told her, hoping you’d take your cue.
“Yeah, me too. I think Katherine had some really fair challenges, but I think we reached some consensus on where we need to be going forward?”
Bravo, Lily. A lie with just enough credible features, but very high level and with “going forward” you’d appealed to Gemma’s love of corporate guff. You’d done that before, hadn’t you? I always suspected you were a great liar. You kept proving me right.
“That’s excellent, exactly what we need. I look forward to reading your next outputs, Katherine.” (Outputs. Outputs? How about, oh, I don’t know, articles?) “Lily, you can go. Katherine, thought we might have a think about your awards speech while the iron’s hot.”
“Sure.” I swallowed the taste of my own vile mouth and clawed around my barren brain for any ideas on what I was planning to say. It wasn’t long now and the draft document I’d opened two weeks ago was stubbornly empty. The idea of getting up in front of those people, having them judge every bit of me as I made my grand return, especially after the shitty below-the-line comments readers kept leaving, turned my stomach. “I’ve had some ideas on themes I wanted to discuss with you, actually, but what’s in your head?”
“My one hope is that it will be truly inspiring: a statement of intent, a clear departure from the past. I think that’s a theme that works for you, personally, given you had to stay away from the awards last year, I’m correct in thinking?”
“Yes. That’s right. I had to stay away,” I said quietly, repeating her phrasing, which made it sound like I’d been carrying some kind of contagion that forced me to quarantine myself out of public-spiritedness.
“I know you’ll want to make your comeback really strong. So, let’s hear those thoughts on how you’ll open.”
It’s my dearest wish to get through the first thirty seconds without falling over. “I should think I’ll probably begin with some niceties before launching into the main speech, you know: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to start proceedings by paying tribute to the new management, ably headed by Gemma Lunt.” Gemma seemed to tighten. Her face went rigid and she tried to smile over how deeply unimpressed she clearly was. Your aunt was looking for my “best self” and I didn’t have one to give her. It was time for a new tactic to get out of there unscathed.
“Lunt. Now I say it out loud, it’s an unusual name, isn’t it? Did your sister want to keep her maiden name? Pass it on?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well, Lunt, it’s obviously the maternal name, so that must mean your sister decided to keep it and give it to Lily, otherwise she’d be—” I said, but Gemma shut me down. She was in on the lie about your name at least. She’d have to be.
“Well, we’re a very female-centric family.” Lips pursing, shifting toward the left of her face. “Now, I wouldn’t necessarily start on the new management. Start on your vision for Leadership. Where are we taking readers next? Play in all that great stuff you picked up from your hard work with Lily yesterday. That’s sure to make things really pop.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Gemma knew your real surname, but she didn’t really know you at all, did she?
When I returned to my desk, there you were, typing away, smug as usual and distinctly sober-looking. You didn’t look like someone who’d crossed the line with her boss. The other interns were going for coffee. I asked them to get me one too. (Why didn’t the little shits ask me? I was their fucking boss. They should have been asking me what I wanted every day, twice a day. I should not have to get them to turn around just as they were about to leave each and every day to take my order and my pound coins when I had them.) I could see Asif was now in with Gemma. We were almost alone. Time to press your buttons.
“Did you actually drink anything yesterday?”
“I was completely hammered. You couldn’t tell?”
I shook my head vaguely. “I don’t even remember crashing.”
“That’s OK. I think you were really tired.”
Patronizing comment followed by serene typing. Classic you.
“When I got home, I was really sick, but I could have sworn…did I borrow your lipstick or something? I had orange on my…” I touched my face.
You shook your head. “Not unless you snuck it out of my bag when I was out of the
room.” Pushing your chin out to me, you smiled and blinked slowly. All right then.
“I’ve been thinking about what you wrote. Was it about being sent to boarding school? You were a boarder weren’t you?”
“Yes. I think you already knew that?” You cocked your head a little to the other side. Cat turned mouse.
“Did you have to lug that trunk I saw back and forth everywhere to—where did you say you’d gone to school?” Your CV. Of course. There it was, in my in-box already. Waiting silently for me to look again when I’d started to put the other pieces of the jigsaw together.
“I don’t think we talked about it.” You were flustered. “My trunk? You saw that?”
“It was there, in your hallway. I passed it on my way out.”
“I should really throw that thing out. Don’t know why I can’t.” You tried to laugh, but I was getting somewhere now. Or perhaps I would let you go for the sport of it.
“It’s not always easy to let go of our pasts, even when they really hurt us.” I sent a sympathetic expression your way, squishing my mouth to a line and tilting my head in the pastiche of maternal concern Gemma had perfected. You knew I was faking it too, just like Gemma.
“Sure…Well, I guess I’d better head out. I’m due at The Dorchester. Gem’s made me the lead coordinator on awards night?”
You couldn’t pack away your laptop into that silly yellow case quick enough. You all but sprinted to the door to escape the conversation. I was on to you and you knew it.
* * *
—
IT WAS BARELY FIVE when the office cleared. Gemma left early for “the Norfolk house” and the interns excused themselves shortly after, confirming my suspicions they were wholly unafraid of me. I wanted to get out of there quickly too, I had to shag Iain before he saw you in a pub this time around. But once the coast was clear, I couldn’t resist reopening your CV again, then googling one of your old schools, then another and another, cutting and pasting the years you’d attended and the contact numbers into an email I sent to my personal address.
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