by Naomi Joy
I dip in and out of Rick’s profile pictures as Kay investigates and find myself entranced by images of his family, especially his younger brother: a rounder, lumpier, more logo-ed version of himself. Rick stands tall, clean-cut, and good looking, clad in muted well-fitting clothes in a picture taken on New Year’s Day, his brother his embarrassing sidekick, pictured to his left, head to toe in highlighter-yellow sportswear, crooked teeth bared for the camera. It’s clear from this picture alone that Rick sees himself as superior to the world he comes from, it’s all there, in the details: the way his body doesn’t quite touch his brother’s, the uncertainty of his smile, the way he leans off to one side almost as though he wants to escape from shot. Unhappy families.
But perhaps you have to come from one to know one.
Rick
Fifteen Years Ago – 2005
I was very late getting out of bed, the weak winter sun peeking through my closed curtains. Debate club had kept me up last night and I’d been talked into buying pizza on the way home. It had only cost eight pounds, but I’d had to borrow money from my savings to pay the bill. Eight pounds was nothing to the people around me, but it was everything to me, and I tried to savour each slice as I stumbled along the pavement.
I’d checked my balance at the ATM on my way back to halls and, as the pitiful amount illuminated in front of me, I swore I would stop getting myself into these situations. I couldn’t afford to get into my overdraft before the end of my first term here. It was supposed to last three years. I needed to be sensible with my money. One day I would earn enough not to worry about these things but, until then, I had to count the pennies and try not to spend the pounds.
I thought about Tabby, thought about calling her. Since the night we met, we’d been seeing each other casually, taking it slow. The last time we went out she’d come to McDonald’s. It wasn’t the most romantic of settings but when you’re short on cash, and time, you have to make do.
‘No one’s seen me in my uniform before,’ I told her, wanting her to realise what a big deal it was to me that I’d brought her here.
She looked at me with electric-blue eyeliner and smiled. ‘You know, the moment you told me you were the heir to a confectionery company I knew you were lying.’
I gripped my forehead with my hand and cringed. I’d forgotten about that. ‘How?’
‘No one with real money ever brags about it,’ she told me. ‘They might be wearing an expensive watch, but they won’t show it off, they’ll simply wait for you to notice. This look though,’ she said, standing up, parting my arms with her hands, admiring my uniform, ‘is better than any fancy watch.’
She wrinkled her nose and I did the same back, frissons of electric energy running between us, the start of something special.
*
I could hear some of the boys playing FIFA next door – Freddie had more tech in his dorm than the Oxford GAME store – and I hurled myself out of bed, rushing my face under cold running water and combing my scruffy hair with my fingers, smoothing my fringe into place.
‘Rick!’ called Freddie, two bangs on the partition wall following shortly after. ‘Get up, boy.’
I trudged next door, the smell of aftershave and sour-cream Pringles guiding me there, and sunk my backside into the floor as the boys greeted me. Bleary-eyed, I thought it was just the usual crowd – Freddie and his mates from school in baby blue and white striped polo-shirts – but, when the controller was flung my way, it skimmed the nose of a very pretty girl, sitting cross-legged in the thick of the boys. Her hair was dark, and a shiny fringe swept gracefully across her left eye. Just like mine. Our right eyes met. Blinked.
I smiled at her, and she smiled back.
‘Saskia,’ she said, introducing herself with a delicate handshake, a European accent leaving red-stained lips.
Saskia Silvetti, a Classics student with Italian aristocrat parents and feline features, beat me at FIFA, then came back the next day to win something else. Me.
Annabella
Now
‘We’ve all heard the stories, haven’t we?’ Kay’s voice trills through the airwaves, her podcast The Cold Case of Tabitha Rice going live to an audience of thousands. I think about the listeners, like me, at the other end of Kay’s broadcast. Are they all regulars – Kay’s fanbase – or are there new ears tuning in today… potential witnesses, internet investigators fascinated by the case, a few suspects, even? I wonder if there’d be a way to find out whether Rick’s listening… not that it would prove anything.
‘We’ve heard them a hundred times – the high-school sweetheart horror stories – but Rick and Tabby’s relationship was… different. It wasn’t a sweetheart romance, not even at the very beginning. While researching for this podcast, I got in touch with a number of old boys from Rick’s college at Oxford University. Now, none of them would refer to Rick as a “friend”, which is our first red flag, but, more than that, none of them were aware he’d even dated a girl called Tabby at university.’
What?
‘I decided to dig deeper into the social archives to find out. And that was where I found her: Saskia Silvetti. Rick had a girlfriend at university all right, but it wasn’t Tabby. Tabby was his bit on the side, the one he’d spend most of his time with but never introduce to his friends.’
Did Tabby know that?
‘Saskia is yet to respond to my requests for interview so, more on that story as I get it.’
I dig out my laptop and start searching for Saskia.
‘Allow me to fast forward. Somehow, somewhere along the line, Rick and Tabby got back together and the pair moved to London. A reliable source – a close friend of Tabitha’s’ – I blush, knowing she’s speaking about me – ‘told me that Rick had someone to hide at the time of Tabby’s disappearance, too. Another woman.’ Kay pauses. ‘Again. Did Rick’s history repeat itself?’
My heart speeds as she plants the seed for her listeners.
‘We don’t know who she was yet, but we’re working to find out.’ I press my headphones into my ears, taking it all in. Was it Mandy? How long has she been in Rick’s picture?
‘But it doesn’t take a genius to see the patterns emerging: disloyalty, secrecy, silenced women.’
Kay pauses.
‘Today, Rick’s with Mandy Evans. An actress who’s currently in hospital with a severe head injury after an alleged break-in. And, you guessed it, she can’t talk either. Another hidden woman. Another suspicious event. And what have we heard from Rick?’
She stops to let the question hang. ‘Let’s go through his short statement to the media, shall we?’
She ruffles a few papers and affects an accent, mimicking him. ‘My partner, Mandy Evans, was attacked in our home this evening in the latest of a number of events that have threatened our safety. I was asleep at the time of the break-in and, to those corners of the press who wish to blame me for this vile act, I implore you: this vilification of my character has to stop.’
Kay clears her throat. ‘So, let me get this straight,’ she begins. ‘Rick’s girlfriend has just suffered a head injury and yet… his concern is with how he’s being portrayed?’ She guffaws down the microphone. ‘The two sentences he’s decided to give on the matter, the first a replay of the facts, the second a thinly-veiled excuse to make it all about him. What about her? Where’s his concern for Mandy? Why do we always hear from Mr Priestley after-the-fact? He leaves his female victims silenced in his wake and uses their suffering to talk about himself. As the mother of a teenage daughter, I find it completely terrifying.’
She breathes heavily, sucking me in, riling me up. ‘So, listen up, Rick Priestley, I’m onto you and this podcast has one aim: to give these women the voice you took away.’
Tabby
Five Years Ago
Bella and I were already similar before I started talking to Alex, but now I find myself studying her movements so I can copy them. When I watch her work, I take in every micro-adjustment that she makes: twirling h
er hair behind her ear, rubbing her lips together as she concentrates, creasing her forehead as she worries about a speck of dirt on her uniform. I’ve even started colouring my hair to look like her, changing the clothes I wear to align us closer still.
I feel terrible for cancelling our dinner the other night in favour of Alex. I feel terrible for treating her like Rick. So, I have done the right thing: I’ve re-arranged our reservation at the Mexican place in Soho.
We sit at a table overlooking the bustling street below. I look down at the people milling under the florescent lights – men wearing dog collars rubbing shoulders with corporate office workers, scantily clad women asking passers-by if they want to spend the night, giggling eighteen-year-olds swirling between the crowds, buzzed off pink-coloured cocktails.
Bella nibbles at our plate of tortilla chips and we joke about how we’ve turned up tonight in the same top – a black off-the-shoulder we’d both seen on offer. I watch Bella hold her water glass up to the light, checking for lip marks – the first sign of a poorly performing dishwasher. Though I like clean, Bella is pedantic about it.
‘How’s Rick doing?’ she asks, putting the glass down, picking up mine to do the same.
I sigh. ‘Worse and worse,’ I reply.
Now that I analyse my relationship with Rick, it’s clear we’ve been sleepwalking into a crisis. Sat smugly under different jars for the past few years, shouting what we want from the other into the glass that surrounds us, only hearing our own dissatisfactions echo back, never hearing the other person’s.
‘Don’t judge when I say this. Promise me.’ I look up at Bella.
‘Go on,’ she encourages. ‘What have you done?’
‘Promise me.’
She looks at me askew. ‘That bad?’
I nod, then plunge my pink-manicured hand into my bag.
‘I promise,’ she says.
‘I took Rick’s phone.’
‘Really?’
‘Read this,’ I say, downcast, though my heart is racing because I know that this is the excuse I need to leave him.
She takes the phone in her hands and reads.
I want to start a life with you, Rick.
I want that too, my love. Soon. Be patient.
‘Oh, God,’ Bella begins. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I just want to run,’ I tell her and then an idea bobs into my head. She could come. ‘Do you ever feel like that?’ I ask.
‘I guess I know what you mean,’ she replies. ‘But you know me, creature of habit, woman of routine,’ she laughs, looking at her watch. ‘Talking of which, we should order.’
*
After dinner, Annabella and I go our separate ways. I hadn’t plucked up the courage to ask her about Turkey, and it was a dream, anyway, it wasn’t real. I watch as she paces back to her sanctuary, then I turn to walk with renewed irritation towards the unhappy home I share with my unhappy husband.
‘Rick?’ I ask, calling his name as I brush off the drizzle from my coat and close the front door.
No answer.
I breathe deeply with relief.
Knowing he’s not here gives me time. I stalk upstairs, change into my pyjamas and slip into bed. I write him a message.
Can you talk? x
Twenty minutes later and the room is dark, the day extinguished, all light turned dark except for the glow of my phone. Rick still isn’t here – he’s probably with her – and I stare at the screen, waiting.
What if he’s changed his mind about me? What if the way I’d brushed off his suggestion at first, slightly spooked at the thought of meeting him, had made him think I wasn’t serious? My teeth draw blood from my bottom lip, a metallic taste pooling on my tongue as I curl it inwards. I re-trace some of our older messages.
Who was your first crush? he’d asked a few months ago.
A doctor, I’d said – a white lie. Sad as it sounds, my first proper crush had been Rick. When we’d first met, I’d been sure I’d found the love of my life, he was everything I’d ever wanted: funny and down-to-earth, dark and attractive. I’d spent weeks pinching myself, shocked that I’d met him so quickly, so easily, that the other half of me had simply walked into my life just after my eighteenth birthday. I remember smiling a big-girl grin the morning after the night we’d met, pushing pink arms into the university hoodie that he’d given me to keep warm as we’d said goodbye. The main colour had been navy-blue, white motifs down the side, royal letters spelling out OUDS on the front. I probably still had it somewhere. I recall the smell of it that morning, fresh aftershave stuck tight to its fibres, the faint whiff of something manly behind it, and I shrug my shoulders to my ears replaying wearing it for the first time, of feeling, like I do now, that I was falling in love.
*
The clock ticks eleven-fifteen and I worry Alex is going to stand me up, so I put down my phone and relax into my pillows. In the quiet of the house, I find myself thinking about Rick, about whether he’s done the same to me: looked through my phone to find evidence that justifies his affair. I’ve been much more careful than him, though, so I deduce he can’t know, and it saddens me – even though I’m not really in love with him anymore – that he’d made his affair real long before mine.
Tabby cat, you there?
All thoughts of Rick vanish and I sit upright, back like a ruler, my heart racing. At last.
I’m here.
I feel like a schoolgirl, embarrassed at how excited I am that he’s back.
I thought you might have fallen asleep already, thanks for waiting up.
That’s OK.
Have you thought about my offer?
I bite my lip a little harder, thinking about Rick, about the messages on his phone, and decide.
Yes, I want to meet.
There’s a slight delay and I imagine his face breaking with a broad smile, thick fingers clenching to a fist, pumping the air with happiness. I type out another message.
When?
Next week. But I’m working dayshifts at the clinic so it will have to be at night. Is that all right?
My skin bristles.
Yes, of course.
For a few seconds there is silence, then:
I’m so excited to meet you. It’s been too long.
Me too. I’d better get some sleep. Sweet dreams, doctor.
Sweet dreams, Tabby cat.
I sign off with a flurry of love hearts and flop back into bed, the mattress springing with my weight. I’m going to meet him! This is actually going to happen! But, even as I smile, wider than I have for weeks, a bubble of doubt floats: What if he’s disappointed when he finds out who I really am? What if I am not enough?
Annabella
Now
I often think about Tabby when I’m at work but, as I walk there this morning, her image loops my brain and memories of us nipping and tucking together replay more vividly than usual. I recall one evening – stuck in the surgery till 8 p.m. on the after-work shift – where we’d shared secrets. Hers was a confession: she’d once swapped her foster mother’s shampoo for hair remover, forcing her into wearing a wig for the better part of a year. Trust me, she deserved it, Tabby had said with a smile. I try to shake her away as the snow-white exterior of the surgery comes into view. Pure You in black signage on the window. Why not get a manicure with your fillers; a back massage after your IPL? Double up for double discounts! I smile to myself at how Tabby’s legacy has lived on.
I push open the front door and wave to the silicon-chested woman on reception. She’s nice but she’s no Tabby.
‘Caroline wants to see you this morning,’ the receptionist announces before the door has time to shut behind me.
Caroline’s our big boss and, though her visits are infrequent, she usually does us the courtesy of getting in touch to let us know if she’s popping in. An unannounced visit can only be cause for alarm.
‘Should I go up?’ I ask.
‘She said to wait down here.’
I nod an
d take a seat in the waiting area, my right foot bouncing in nervous anticipation. Caroline’s been spending most of her time in LA recently and she loves to let everyone know how difficult that arduous task is for her. ‘You know, as soon as I’m in London I’m like “trash, sidewalk, elevator”, then I go to LA and turn into Mary Poppins like “war-ter, coriander, aubergine”… they all look at me like I’m insane! Like, clinically insane! Isn’t that just so, so funny?!’
I always have to remember to set my smile to manual when I’m with Caroline; her anecdotes leave a lot to be desired but demand appreciation.
I hear her before I see her, first the strike of her stilettos, then her reedy voice.
‘Annabella,’ she says. ‘How are you doing, darling? I just need a moment, if you don’t mind.’
I rise to greet her, and she kisses the air either side of my cheeks with glossy lips, then motions for me to follow. I walk behind, watching her navigate the staircase up to her office in stilettos and flared suit trousers. I notice she’s changed her hair since I last saw her, her poker-straight tresses replaced with a tumble of thick curls.
She pulls wide the door to her office and lets me in. I’m hit immediately by the smell of Chanel No.5, then the little details of the room itself: plants hanging from baskets, a sculpture of a couple intertwined in the centre, certificates behind her desk, a cafetière steaming atop the polished black surface. I feel as though I’ve stepped into a 3D Instagram picture and a few appropriate hashtags spring to mind. Office goals, mainly. She keeps this place locked when she’s not in town. I wonder how she keeps the plants alive? Perhaps they’re fake; we do specialise in that.
‘You’re in luck,’ her excitable voice tells me as she closes the door. ‘Pure You London is expanding faster than I can keep up with and you, lovely Annabella—’ she smiles at me then, her cheeks bunching at the sides to make way for her grin ‘—are our most accomplished team member. I want to offer you a promotion: clinic manager. I need to transfer full-time to LA this year – the market is so much more competitive out there – so, over here, where things are pretty easy, I need someone to fill my shoes.’ She glances quickly at the sensible plimsolls on my feet. ‘… So to speak.’