‘A chilling, addictive read.’

Woman & Home

‘Dark, disturbing, compulsive. I was genuinely terrified reading this.’

Adele Parks

‘An incredibly addictive thriller that examines women in the workplace, ageism, and the clash of generations.

It’s creepy and unnerving, with observations that are often dead-on. A breath-taking debut.’

Samantha Downing

‘A deliciously dark, addictive and twisted page-turner.’

Alice Feeney

‘Guaranteed to start the mother of all office fights between Generation X and millennials, Monks Takhar’s enjoyably poisonous debut updates All About Eve for our image-obsessed age.’

The Independent

‘A taut, sharply written thriller about two women and their toxic obsession with one another. Sexy, scary and satirical, [it’s] a cat-and-mouse tale on steroids.’

The Bookseller

‘What a debut! Twisty, explosive, and hugely compelling, with hints of Gone Girl … Excellent.’

Will Dean

‘A hypnotic dance of obsession, gaslighting and revenge that doesn’t let up until its final unnerving reveal.’

People

‘Monks Takhar tackles workplace dynamics, aging, feminism, mental illness, and the hotly debated generation gap, all within the framework of a tightly plotted revenge thriller. A wickedly sharp first novel.’

Kirkus starred review

‘Twisted, dark and shocking. Absolutely terrific.’

Jo Spain

‘A slick, fast paced, compelling novel that asks genuine questions. I loved it and was hooked from beginning to end.’

Kate Hamer

‘An intergenerational clash between two women, played out to a shocking finale. Nail-biting.’

Harriet Tyce

‘Audacious, dark and smart, with one of the most shocking scenes I’ve read in a while.’

Phoebe Locke

‘Supremely twisted and completely riveting.’

Katie Lowe

‘Disturbing, zeitgeisty and twisted, Precious You will make you second guess everything and change the way you look at your colleagues forever.’

Phoebe Morgan

‘A brilliant, butt-kicking romp through the Gen X/Millennial clash and the horrors of cutthroat corporate life. I couldn’t put it down.’

Alex Marwood

‘A brilliantly twisted tale. LOVED it.’

Lisa Hall

‘What a wild ride. I’m obsessed with it! I felt so seen, so many times. This book, while SO twisted and dark, will resonate with many, many women.’

Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

‘A twisty, thrilling story about two women who can’t seem to decide whether they love or hate the other. Sharply observed and wickedly fun.’

Anna Pitoniak

‘Scarily, addictively dark. My mouth was hanging open for the last third of the book. Wow – what a brilliant read!’

Cressida McLaughlin

‘If you like dark and twisted thrillers with venom in their veins, add this to your wishlist!’

Anita Frank

‘A brutal beauty – twisted, terrifying, pitch-perfect storytelling that gets under your skin. WOW.’

Miranda Dickinson

‘Deliciously dark, gorgeously written; an absolute powerhouse of a debut!’

Emma Cooper

‘OMG! Loved the twisty-turning end. I couldn’t put it down.’

Josie Lloyd

‘A thrilling, wicked, thought-provoking book every woman should read.’

Roxie Cooper

‘[A] dark and disquieting debut … Monks Takhar delivers an excruciatingly tense slow burn that’s rife with twists that shock and devastate.’

Publishers Weekly

‘Precious You promises to be one of the best!’

CrimeReads

‘Gossip Girl meets Single White Female. One to add to your reading list.’

Northern Soul

‘Messed up and BRILLIANT.’

Liz Loves Books

HELEN MONKS TAKHAR has been working as a journalist, copywriter and magazine editor since 1999, having graduated from Cambridge. She began her career in financial trade newspapers before writing for national newspapers including The Times and The Observer. Originally from Southport, Merseyside, she lives in Stoke Newington with her husband and two young children. Precious You is her first novel.

Precious You

Helen Monks Takhar

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Helen Monks Takhar 2020

Helen Monks Takhar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008340162

Version 2020-05-27

Note to Readers

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008340148

For Danny, Mohinder and Zora

Snowflake generation

noun

informal, derogatory

The generation of people who became adults in the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations.

COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY. COPYRIGHT © HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS

‘Oh, little snowflakes, when did you all become grandmothers and society matrons, clutching your pearls in horror at someone who has an opinion about something, a way of expressing themselves that’s not the mirror image of yours, you snivelling little weak-ass narcissists?’

BRET EASTON ELLIS

‘There is no one with a greater sense of entitlement than a millennial.’

WWW.DAILYMAIL.CO.UK ARTICLE, ‘MILLENNIAL FURIOUSLY RANTS ABOUT HOW MUCH EASIER LIFE WAS FOR HIS PARENTS’

‘A lot of offensive stuff is happening. Why should people not be offended? People are offended but they’re using that feeling of being offended to bring about change. Things are so dire sometimes that it’s necessary. If I want to carve out a safe space, why shouldn’t I?’

LIV LITTLE, EDITOR WWW.GAL-DEM.COM

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Katherine

Chapter 1

Lily

Chapter 2

Lily

Chapter 3

Lily

Chapter 4

Lily

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Lily

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Lily

Chapter 9

Lily

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Lily

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Lily

Chapter 14

Lily

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Lily

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Lily

Chapter 20

Lily

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Creep Feeder

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Lily

Author Note

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Katherine

I’ve lost you in the neon river of high-visibility vests and chrome helmets flying ahead of my car towards the junction. You lot all look the same. Is that what they think of us? I can hear Iain say. I fight my exhaustion, rub my gritty eyes and try to find you again.

I slept in my car last night. I had that dream again, the one I told you about, the one I’ve had every night since I laid eyes on you. I’m back at my mother’s farm. A darkness soaks into my bones; a black sky marbled with thick red veins envelopes me. Through the gloom, I see my top half is me today; a short swish of black hair, my strong arms shielded by a leather biker jacket. The bottom half is twelve-year-old me; my mother’s dirty cast-off jeans hanging off stringy legs. I’m starving. Barefoot, at first I’m treading on stubbled grass, but the terrain quickly changes; I’m stepping on burnt pasture, like a thousand tiny razors under my bony feet. My blood begins to wet the parched scrub below. Suddenly, the ground begins to separate into hundreds of deep gullies. My instinct is to freeze, but I know I must go forward; ahead of me is the gate to the far paddock and I have to reach it to end this nightmare and stop my hunger. And I can’t see her, but I know my mother is watching. She thinks I’ll never make it. She thinks me too weak; she always tried to keep me so. She’s willing me to stop, but I keep pushing forward, despite the pain, despite the hungry chasms at my feet that want to swallow me, I force myself to place one foot in front of the other to reach the gate.

I woke up aching, bent double in the backseat of my Mini. My life has come to this because of you: an existence played out slumped in Costa armchairs and the car I can’t afford to insure anymore. This morning I’d decided to drive. I didn’t know where or why until I spotted you on your bike. Then, I knew exactly what I had to do.

I stop-start, tracking you through the clog of traffic edging towards De Beauvoir and into Shoreditch, then the City. At Liverpool Street you snake your way through stationary vehicles and out of my sight. Then, the jam begins to shift, allowing me to edge forward and mark you again, keeping just a few metres behind you as the traffic pushes down Gracechurch Street.

We’re nearly there.

Five cyclists have died on the junction ahead in the past year. Five young lives, just like yours, lost.

The car in front turns to give me free passage to the edge of the advanced stop line at the junction. I’ve got you in my sights. It’s as if the world has finally decided to take my side, but no sooner than I start to move forward, cyclists flood into the void ahead. I’m surrounded once more by glinting handlebars and fluorescent young bodies.

I’m stuck.

I search desperately for you up ahead, then in my rear-view. But you’ve disappeared. You’re going to enjoy another day on this earth; another day in my job, going home to my flat, tucking yourself into the bed my partner and I chose together.

Then, there you are.

You’ve pulled up right next to my door, your eyes focused on the lights ahead. Your body, that close to me again, makes my blood rise. You’re inches from me, I could reach out, grab your arm, and beg you to tell me once and for all: Why? When I was ready to help you, why did you set out to snatch everything that was mine?

You start to move away, squeezing through the other cyclists to the very front of the pack. You flash that smile of yours. Of course, they let you pass. That devastating smile. That smile is like the warmest sun and the brightest light. That smile has undone my life.

Behind you, I move ahead too, breaching the cyclists’ zone and causing various slaps on my Mini’s roof and cries of What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you stupid cow? to erupt as I force them out of my path. You swivel round to see what’s causing the uproar, but quickly turn back towards the lights, knowing they’ll change any second. You don’t notice my car creeping up right behind you, and you don’t wait for the green light before deciding to strike out on your own; up off your seat, powerful calves bearing down onto the pedals as you begin your acceleration. But it’s time you were stopped from getting ahead of me.

Your back wheel fills my sight.

I wonder what your body will feel like under me, as your bones crunch and collapse. I can almost smell your blood, running hot in the final moments before it gushes from you, cooling as it flows out onto the tarmac to drip into the waiting drains and down to an impassive Thames.

Only when this happens can I really begin again.

The lights change to green. I slam my foot down hard on the accelerator.

Chapter 1

Katherine

Six weeks earlier

I’ll never understand why they weren’t worried, those young things I saw every day at the bus stop, stretching free of their crammed houseshares and parental buy-to-lets in my neighbourhood, at least a mile from the nearest place they would actively choose to live. Why didn’t they care we hadn’t seen a bus for twenty minutes? I made a mental note to ask Iain why no one under thirty seemed arsed about being late for work anymore, then texted my deputy, Asif. I was hoping he’d have words of reassurance, something I could use to soothe my latest work-related crisis. That Monday was the first day of a brave new world at the magazine I edited: new owners, a new publisher, a shot at a new start. I knew it was critical I made a good impression, but the world was already screwing this for me by making all the buses disappear. I messaged Asif:

No bus. Confess late now or busk it?

And got back a not particularly helpful:

Nice weekend? New publisher already here. Not sure. Good luck. xxx

I can see myself that morning, gazing in the direction of my flat, the edges of its dried-out window boxes just visible from where I stood. I wore the oversized high-collared shirt I’d bought the day before, an ankle-length pencil skirt split to the thigh and the black biker I always wore to work. I wanted to show up looking just-pressed, but edgy and not desperate to fit into the new corporate regime I was facing, even though, of course, I was.

Mondays were already hard for me, even before that day. It wasn’t just that after twenty years I seemed to be getting worse at my job, not better, nor that the youth, hope and unbounded energy of my interns shoved the frustrated promise of my own formative years right back in my face with greater force every day. No, it was the awfulness, the horrifying dread, of the interns asking me, ‘What did you do this weekend?’

Compared to when I was at the height of my potential in my twenties, I felt invisible most of the time. But on Monday mornings I felt suddenly watched. I tried, as I so often did when I was surrounded by millennials, to minimise the damage to my pride. While they recounted their energetic tales of running around London, meeting other bright young things from north, south, east and western corners, as I had once done, I sat tight. I had done next to nothing with no one but Iain, and this could be exposed at any second. I’d sometimes manage to arrange phone interviews for 9 a.m. on Mondays, so I could block out their weekend lives and avoid their social and creative endeavours showing up my dead existence. If anyone got to ask me The Monday Morning Question, I’d recently taken to out-and-out lying, telling the interns, ‘We caught up with some old friends.’

That Monday, my anxiety was soaring when I caught the glow of a taxi’s light far up the road. I watched it furtively at first, until I realised I was the only one inching towards the edge of the pavement to hail it. Of course, none of the bus stop lot had the money for a black cab. No money, but plenty of time. Their lives were rich with activities and all the time they had to do them: arts, crafts, queuing for artisan toast, curating photographic records of their fizzy lives on social media and generally being creatively incontinent. I felt the hum of self-belief and productivity whenever I was around younger adults and it left me feeling singed.

I double-checked behind me for any would-be competitors for my cab. I saw you.

You were something quite different.

You had their air of creative confidence, the one I could only assume comes from parents who cheerlead your every trifling achievement, but you seemed to carry a hunger about you too; some neediness in your eyes. Out of nowhere, I got the sense you were a young person with whom I might possibly have some common ground.

Because unlike the others, you seemed like you were bothered by being late for work. Less like them, more like me. Such an odd sense of time and age I felt you emit: undeniably as young as them, but somehow seeming older and more desperate, like me, all at once. And do you remember, you wore that tiny leather skirt? I have one just like it and I used to wear it to work too. Your skin was as pale as mine, but fully taut and shimmering, except for a dirty stripe of oil on the right side of your forehead. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were like looking into a mirror, or more like a window into a different time in my life, not long past, but just out of reach. I wanted to know more about you, to see if you really could be anything like me. When the taxi began to pull over, I began to wonder if I should invite you to share it.

I glanced back at you again. A finger on your left hand fiddled with the string tag on the yellow laptop case you held against the front of your thighs. You switched your weight from hip to hip and occasionally flicked the nails of your right thumb and index finger under your chin. I took the door handle and turned around to take you in one last time, before the ebb and flow of a London day separated our paths. A thought needled its way to the front of my mind: your face would return to me throughout the day and I’d have to exorcise you by telling Iain over dinner about The Girl I Saw at the Bus Stop Who Reminded Me of The Old Me.

But you were watching me.

As you looked over, you bit your bottom lip, painted hot orange like the sunrise in summertime, and flicked your nails against your skin again before moving your black eyes off me to the non-existent bus on the horizon.

I could let you in to my cab, but I wondered what we would possibly talk about. Or maybe you’d just sink into your phone, like people your age do, and I wouldn’t get to talk to you at all. And how would you pay your way? People like you never have cash on them, so would I give you my bank details so you could transfer your share of the fare? Was that wise? Was that cool? Wasn’t there an app for that, one I’d be embarrassed to say I haven’t downloaded or even heard of yet? Or would you ask to meet me somewhere at lunchtime to give me my twenty quid? Would we then end up having a burger? Find ourselves talking for ages?

Go on, girl, you show ’em what us old ravers are made of, I could hear Iain say.

No.

No, I should leave it.

I didn’t need to over-complicate what was already shaping up to be another day I’d want to forget. I opened the taxi door and readied myself to leave you on the pavement, but suddenly you were there, right behind me.

You made me jump.

‘Hi there, you must be heading south? Mind if I get in?’ When you spoke to me, your mouth split to reveal the most fantastic teeth.

‘Yes. I mean, I’m heading to Borough, but—’

‘Perfect. Me too. Wait a sec, sorry, I’ve just realised, I literally don’t have any cash.’

Behind you I saw the bearded and big-haired gaggle were agog that you’d thought of hitching a ride and they hadn’t. If I refused you, I feared a group of them would initiate some kind of collective action, gathering their grubby coins together in a bid to get in.

‘It’s fine, just get in.’ One of you had to be better than three or four.

‘Is that alright? You’re absolutely sure?’

You gained and double-checked my consent. It was a technique you would use again and again on me when I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to. One of your many gifts.

‘Sure.’

I obediently slid over to the far seat to make room for you. You bent low to get in, your head suddenly so close to mine I could smell you’d just washed your hair. It was still wet at the roots, cooling the blood in your scalp. I was about to tell the cabbie where to go, but your youthful scent made me falter.

‘Borough, please. I’d avoid Old Street if I were you. Dalston then Gracechurch?’ you said. Smiling, you waved your phone in my direction. ‘Good for you? I’ve just seen there’s a burst water main near City Road. I mean, if you’d rather go your way?’

I saw your screen was blank.

I looked to the driver for some response, but was distracted by the faint reflection on the glass screen in front of me: a decidedly middle-aged woman, short ink-black hair framing a smudgy face. I was struggling to recognise myself again. I hadn’t admitted to Iain yet, but in the build-up to that day, I could feel my illness creeping back with its full force, exactly how it had when the last crash happened fifteen months ago.

An extended Christmas break, followed by six weeks pockmarked by regular sick days, followed by my GP signing me off work as a beige cloud surrounded me, washing the colour out of everything. Recently, that familiar filter of dread which had only recently lifted felt like it was on the descent again. If I went back to my GP, I suspected he’d want to put me back on my antidepressants again. But Citalopram had given me weeks of terrible side effects so that I suddenly needed help to achieve even the basic requirements of life: eating, concentrating, remembering both what had happened that day and things I’d done years ago. I felt sleepy constantly, primally drawn to dark rooms, my bed or under a blanket on my sofa, like an old animal looking for a quiet place to die. Eventually, getting to work became impossible and the pills made all of it worse, with a mouth like cotton wool and a supressed sex drive to boot. My GP said I’d only need to take it for a few months to ‘jump start myself again’. My former masters at work were understanding, and anyway, they were too distracted by finding a buyer for the struggling business at that point. I doubted whether the new owners would be so sympathetic, or their attentions as diverted.

When Christmas rolled around again last year, I’d been off for nearly ten months. I knew I had to bed myself back in before the new team took over. I had to persuade them and anyone else who was looking that I was back to ‘normal’. By January I’d come off my pills and was back at work, but in my heart, I knew I hadn’t been ‘fixed’. The beige cloud was lying in wait to blow in again; I could see the faint shape of it growing larger on the horizon the day I met you.

Lily, when you came along you were like a flash of hot pink, cleaving through the paper bag tone threatening to take over my world again. I think this is why it was so easy for you to do what you did. If you ever flattered yourself by thinking for one moment you’d sent me to rock bottom all by yourself, you really have no idea what state my life was already in.

I knew the route to Borough you’d suggested would add at least ten minutes to my journey to work, meaning I had no chance of making my first meeting with the new publisher, Gemma Lunt, on time. She’d know I was missing in action for the greater part of last year and why. I was sure she’d be looking for signs of weakness.

‘We’ll go your way.’

When these words left my mouth, it was my very first act of knowing submission to your will. This was the precise moment my life, such as it was, started to end.

We didn’t talk at first. I looked out of the window on your side and waited for you to thank me, as you had to, surely. You couldn’t have failed to notice the banks of increasingly forlorn faces on the 141’s route up to De Beauvoir. But you were silent, holding your laptop case on your legs in what I’d soon recognise as the buttoned-up, butter-wouldn’t-melt way you choose to hold yourself. I said nothing, waiting for you to speak. But my curiosity finally got the better of me. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you at the bus stop before,’ I said. ‘You just moved here?’

‘Yeah, but with any luck, I’ll just be passing through.’

You must have seen the flicker of offence on my face, ‘Not that Manor House isn’t awesome. I mean, it’s so super-easy to get everywhere. I cycle mostly.’ You turned your head away again to watch the world from your window as we crawled up Kingsland Road.

‘Well, if you’re not wild about Manor House now, you should have seen it round here twenty-odd years ago. The whole place was a red-light area. Hard to imagine now.’

‘That sounds pretty dark.’ You didn’t seem to think very much of my corner of the capital. It seemed that just like the constantly-changing bus stop crew, you’d use Manor House as a stepping stone; once you started earning more than me, as you all seemed destined to, you too would be off to a more desirable postcode than mine.

It struck me that your poise and your choice of words added to the sense that you were some kind of chimera; stilted mannerisms that tried to convey control and maturity, but then you’d defaulted to a childish Americanism: ‘awesome’. Young and old at the same time, just as I’d guessed by looking at you. Your accent was unanchored too, a southern clip with northern vowels.

‘Are you a native Londoner?’

‘So, I was born here, but I grew up all over the show. Some time here, on and off. Right now, my mum has a little bolthole and she wanted me to move in with her, but I told her it’s time I took responsibility for myself, because that’s important, isn’t it? You should take ownership of your life, don’t you think?’

‘I think that is important.’ I was thrown by the sudden panorama of your sentence, but I liked how you now seemed to want to share your thoughts with me.

‘Well, anyway, for now I’m on my own in one of those vile, gentrifying Woodberry Downs high-rises – right behind the bus stop – you probably totally hate.’ You turned to look me up and down. ‘You look like you’ve probably got a beautiful Victorian house, tonnes of character, lots of beautiful things. My place is kind of a nowhere place.’

I was taken aback by your flattery. It was the nicest thing anyone had said about me for a long time, besides Iain, of course. An unexpected compliment. How good that had felt. As your eyes moved urgently over my face to assess my reaction, I suddenly got the notion you were lonely in that newbuild tower of yours. Maybe you needed a friendly neighbour. I wanted to think this because, Lily, I was so lonely too.

I considered admitting I had a Victorian flat, not a house, but you didn’t need to know the limits of my success. Not yet. I wanted more from you before I let you go at Borough. I pointed to the dirty stripe on your face, ‘I think you’ve got oil on your—’

‘Oh god – puncture. Trust that for a Monday.’ You lifted the back of your hand to the opposite side of your forehead to the smudge.

‘Other side. Here.’ My fingertips reached the skin on your face.

I didn’t mean to touch you, but it happened. My blood seemed to surge towards the surface and I know I felt yours too, coming forward to meet mine, like iron filings to a magnet. You blinked and pushed yourself back into your seat, saying, ‘Thanks, I think I’ve got it.’

The cab was suddenly hot and small. I thought about texting Iain, but it was way too early in the day for that, so I cracked open the window and tried to move the conversation on.

‘What is it you do?’

‘I’m a journalist?’

Not Training to be, or Hoping to be, but I’m a journalist, already, though no one had probably paid you a penny for a single word yet. People your age are incredible. I didn’t tell anyone I was a journalist until my second promotion, when I’d just about stopped living in fear of someone telling me I wasn’t good enough to be there. We didn’t have ‘Fake it ’til you make it’ in the nineties. Neither did we have parents who had us believe we were the centre of the universe and that universe was rightfully ours.

‘Who do you write for?’

‘Myself mostly, I guess. I blog.’

‘What about?’

‘You know. This and that. My life…What I see.’

I thought and I waited. I enjoyed that moment before I said what I said to you next, ‘I edit a well-thought-of trade title. We’re always looking for interns if you’re in the market for the next move.’ I anticipated your breathlessness, the sound of your body turning towards me to give me your full and urgent attention. But it didn’t happen, so I kept talking, ‘I usually have between four and six interns working for me – one on design, another on picture research and at least two writers.’

Nothing.

‘I’ve seen people your age really learn their trade working in a professional environment, so, have a think, maybe. Opportunities can be hard to come by. Maybe this is fate?’ I tried to laugh, but it didn’t come. I sounded so old, so seasoned. I was forty-one, but I wanted to feel fresh and relevant, not like someone who says things like Your age and Learn your trade. I still felt young inside, but then thought, Isn’t that what old people say?

You looked at the road ahead and muttered, ‘I’m actually starting at a trade today. Interning.’ I noticed your fingers were gripping your laptop case. Clearly, you’d have liked it if I’d just stopped talking. You made me feel something I was suddenly aware I’d been closing in on without being able to badge it: you made me feel like an old fool. You continued, ‘It’s about management and stuff. Interviews with businesspeople. Things bosses care about. It’s called Leadership?’ You didn’t look at me as your voice inflected upwards again at the end of a sentence in a way that made you sound unambiguously young and annoying.

The next words formed in my mind, but they seemed to lose their power as soon as I went to say them. The offhand way you described the magazine told me you wouldn’t be deeply impressed by what I was about to say. And if I didn’t find myself remotely impressive anymore, why should anyone else, least of all you?

‘I edit Leadership,’ I said quietly.

You looked right at me, ‘Oh. That’s literally where I’m heading right now.’

‘That’s a bit fucking mad, isn’t it?’ I said. I didn’t register it then, but would learn later that you winced whenever I swore.

‘Wow. I guess it is.’

But it couldn’t have been that exciting, because you already sounded bored. It was the tone of a cooler person you meet at a party who spots someone more interesting over your shoulder and grabs a superlative out of the air as a sign off. I used to do that, but now it’s people like you who do it to me, young people who use my magazine as a mere departure lounge that allows them to soar somewhere brighter and better, me existing only to on-board the next batch of interns who would leapfrog my life.

‘Do you know who’ll you be reporting to? I wasn’t expecting a new intern today.’

‘Gemma Lunt, the publisher. It’s her first day too.’

‘Right, well, don’t worry, I’ll explain why we’re late. Stick with me, and my deputy Asif. You’ll be fine.’

‘Should I be worried?’

‘No. Not really. Just keep your head down. You’ll probably be set up in my team.’

You nodded. ‘Sounds great. I’m super-focused on what I need to do, like you say, being somewhere I can learn from older people?’

A spike. The sense of the smooth, hard finger of youth prodding my loosening life. Subtle, and few would deny the barb if they heard it themselves. But I would learn very quickly that every single person in my world would take your side first, always give you the benefit of the doubt before they would me. A privilege given to the young and beautiful, a privilege I didn’t know I had until I lost it.

I watched you for a moment from the corner of my eye as the first inkling there was something less than innocent about you prickled my stomach. I didn’t yet know if it was just paranoia; a wild idea sprouting from an already unreliable mind. I never fully realised how much danger a person is in when the individual they trust least is themselves. After you, Lily, I’ll never ignore my first instincts again.

‘It’s great you’re so ready to learn…I’m Katherine, by the way.’

‘Lily.’

You offered me your narrow palm, but gave no indication you knew exactly who I was.

The minutes dragged as we passed Liverpool Street. It had gone nine. I was supposed to be in Gemma Lunt’s office in fifteen minutes. I’d only agreed to the early slot so I could avoid the usual Monday morning social interrogation. I thought about dropping her a line to manage expectations, then decided I’d chance getting there on-the-knuckle and avoid my first communication with her being about something I’d failed to execute effectively.

The cab suddenly picked up speed and we caught a couple of green lights. For a moment, it seemed possible I might just be OK.

You leant forward to speak to the driver, ‘Hi, could you pull in here, up on the left?’ and we swerved into a side street. Turning to me, ‘I have to pick up something from my mum? I’ll be so quick.’

‘But I’m already late, couldn’t you—’

‘It’s OK. I can square it with Gem, promise.’

‘Gem?’ You knew my new boss. How?

I tried to remember what I’d only that hour told you about my work. When I struggled, a fresh anxiety rose in my chest. Another symptom of the beige cloud: forgetfulness followed by panic about what might have happened in the gaps.

Before I could say anything else, you were out of the taxi, running through a carved stone archway. When you clearly thought I couldn’t see you anymore, you stopped running and instead walked slowly towards a heavy lacquered door. You pressed on a buzzer and spoke sullenly into an intercom, all urgency gone. In my head, I begged you to yank the door towards you and race through it like your life depended on it, but instead you pulled it carefully and stepped gently into the building.

9.03.

9.05.

At 9.07 I drafted an email to Gemma, trying to convey confidence, a lack of guilt, but also some necessary undertones of contrition. I noticed your laptop case next to me.

9.12.

I wanted to know what the hell you were doing. I thought about telling the driver to get going, but you were apparently on intimate terms with ‘Gem’, the very woman who’d masterminded the buyout of Leadership. I couldn’t leave you there, even if I wanted to. The day had felt like a huge test I needed to pass. You were making me fail it.

When it got to 9.17, the meter bust forty-five quid and I was getting seriously pissed off. Not only because I’d lost all hope of not being late, but also because once it got past £60, I’d have to submit a ‘business case’ with the receipt under the new staff code of conduct.

I looked at your laptop case again. The driver thumbed his phone. The courtyard was empty. I let my hand inch over to the far side of the back seat. Your case was made of suede, soft as butter. It felt expensive. The closing mechanism was a string and leather tag wrapped around two buttons. Anyone wanting to sneak a peek would have to remember exactly which direction you’d tied the figure of eight around the buttons. They would have to be quick about it.

Before I could stop myself, my fingers had unspun the twine and flapped the case open. Your phone number and your name in sensible black ink capitals:

LILY LUNT

So, you were some relation to Gemma Lunt.

Well, wasn’t that a neat detail you’d chosen to keep to yourself. I wondered what else you might be opting to not tell me and what you would divulge to Gemma from the information you’d gleaned from me so far.

The driver stirred, saying something like, Here we go. I looked up to see you sweeping out of the door and into the courtyard. My fingers were suddenly sodden. Was the string wrapped round the top button first or second? From the left or the right? I tried one way, it didn’t look right. I tried another, it still looked wrong. I quickly glanced up again. You were still a few seconds away, but on seeing me, broke into a quick jog, a wholly fake display that you gave a shit over how late you were making me. I fumbled desperately. You were at the other door and your perfect little figure of eight had been replaced by a damp, slack tangle. You climbed in, and if the mangled thread didn’t tell you I’d been tampering with your things, then my sweaty guilt surely would. I’d have to distract you and hope against hope you wouldn’t notice. So although you should have been apologising to me for royally fucking-up my morning, instead, I found myself over-brightly asking you, ‘Everything alright?’

‘Yes, good thanks. Hi, we can go?’ you said to the driver.

Your eyes rested on your case.

You knew.

You were carrying a black cube with the words Caran d’Ache embossed in silver. I didn’t know they were a luxury pen maker until I googled it later. This, the family business and a mother working in the City? You had to be made of money.

‘Something for Gemma?’

You pulled your eyes off the dirtied twine and breathed as if you were saying Look, Katherine, without actually saying it.

‘I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want to make things, like, at all awkward. So, Gem is my aunt. I know a bit about optimising content, that sort of thing, with the magazine and the website, I guess it seemed a bit of a no-brainer, me helping out? Gem and my mum, they haven’t always been best buds.’ You tapped the box with an alabaster finger. ‘Sorry. Family stuff. Look, I’ll explain to Gem it was me. I made you late. My bad, honest,’ and your dark eyes flickered down onto your laptop case again before returning to my face.

Optimising content. We used to call it ‘good writing’, and once upon a time some, just a few of us got our jobs on merit, not because of the luck of birth. Now I was going to end up walking in with you, like I was in on it. My team were going to disrespect me even more than they already did.

‘Don’t worry about it. Really. How about we start again from the beginning?’

You smiled: surprisingly wide and meaningful, some strange energy coming off you as your sunny lips stretched over tombstone teeth, eyes darting across my face again. My anger started to recede. That smile of yours. Another one of your gifts.

‘You got it. Let’s start again.’

A minute later in Monument, the traffic was dire. My stomach turned with dread. I couldn’t afford to feel this way. I summoned what Iain would have said to me: It’s not so bad, is it, girl? Let’s get a bit of perspective, will we?

OK.

Maybe I wouldn’t have made it on time anyway, and now I’d rescued the boss’s niece from a puncture and missing buses. Perhaps this was a good start after all? Maybe I was actually winning.

Come on, it’s a good day, no?

We reached the open air of London Bridge and I let the thin March sun reflecting off the river lift me. I nearly loved London again in moments like that, when your eyes sweep left and right over the Thames and it feels like the Southbank, Big Ben, Tower Bridge and good old HMS Belfast exist just to make you feel it’s good to be alive. Today will be a good day.

‘So, have you been editor for very long?’ you asked from nowhere.

‘Some might say too long,’ I replied before I could stop myself.

‘Would they?’

‘I’ve been there about twenty years now … I still love my job.’ The sound of ‘twenty years’ in my mouth felt like a great stone I wanted to spit out. I thought, for the thousandth time, about how it had got to such a vast amount of time. Thankfully, you seemed to have lost interest before I’d even finished faking the joy of my two decades at the same place.

We crossed the river and pulled up outside the office. I needed to pay by card. You sat forward on the edge of the back seat, your legs pointing in the direction of the door.

‘You go ahead while I sort this out,’ I felt obliged to say, as I tried to add a tip in a way that made mathematical sense and didn’t look tight, but still kept the total south of £60.

‘Thank you. Is that OK? You’re sure?’

‘Out you go.’

‘I’ll be super-quick with Gem.’

‘That’s not—’ I said, pressing the button that added 15 per cent on top of £57.50 in my distraction.

‘Thank you, Katherine.’

The first time you said my name.

You gave me a thousand-watt smile which I returned in a kind of wonder.

‘That’s fine,’ I said to the air as I watched you skip towards the revolving doors of my office building.

Out on the pavement, as I stuffed my card back in my purse and tried to regroup before heading in, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

‘Thought you could do with this today.’ Asif handed me a tall black coffee. He smelt of a recent spritz of his beloved cologne, Fierce by Abercrombie & Fitch, his forehead glistening in the strengthening sunlight, hazel eyes gleaming under dark, soft curls that made all the interns swoon. At least I had him in my corner.

‘My god, you fucking star.’ I took a sip that burnt my tongue. ‘You been in yet?’

‘I have.’

We went through the doors, swiped our passes and started to mount the marble stairs to our floor side-by-side. ‘And?’

‘And it was fine, she’s fine. A bit … you’ll see, I don’t know. We should be alright.’

He seemed to be holding back, trying to protect me.

‘Emphatic stuff. Have you met the niece yet?’

‘Niece? Not another hopeless bloody intern? Not yet. When did you?’

‘It’s kind of an unfunny story.’

Asif and I walked in as you emerged from a hug with Gemma, a woman with hen-brown curls pinned into an insubstantial French twist. Like me, she was in her early forties, but with her corporate skirt suit and sensible hairdo, she seemed so much older than me. I’d heard she had built and sold many businesses, and that she’d bought Leadership practically on a whim once she’d identified ‘the brand’s multi-platform potential,’ whatever that meant. She had no kids and a fancy duplex in Marylebone, a house in Norfolk and some kind of Alpine ski chalet. Imagine.

I watched you and her inside the recently-constructed glass office she’d commissioned for herself. They were actually on the verge of building me my own office, just as things started to turn at Leadership. The end of year accounts came out and the directors suddenly went from signing off my every request to stalling on my requirements, then actively sidestepping contact with me so they could dodge admitting the perilous state of Leadership’s balance sheet to ‘their girl’, the junior reporter they’d ‘groomed for greatness’ and then appointed youngest-ever editor nearly twenty years earlier.

In that office, which in a better world would have been mine, Gemma grasped your shoulders with both hands. I could see you were staring at the floor as she tried to force you to look her in the eyes. You wouldn’t meet them. She gave up and scanned the office over your head, drew you close to give you a quick kiss on the head before finally letting you go. You kept gazing down before visibly gathering yourself and flouncing out of her office and into the open floor. It took just a couple of strides to get you to your assigned desk space, diagonally opposite mine. She wanted to keep you close to her, and close to me. And even then the reporter in me was asking why. What are you?

As you moved, I saw Asif take in every centimetre of you and your legs – solid stripes of muscle tense under black opaques, disappearing at the very last moment into a pelmet of leather. Asif, my one-time intern, my protégé who’d even chosen his login to please me when he’d first joined (StephenPatrick59, in honour of my love of Morrissey), someone who stood by me during the worst of it. He had seen me at my very best, just before my illness, before anyone understood the old company’s catastrophic finances, when it seemed me and my merry band could go on writing away, propped up by a semi-loyal base of subscribers and a modest advertising revenue, forever. These were the days before the first ‘tough conversation’ with the old directors on the ‘hard realities’ we couldn’t run away from anymore: the world had moved on and we hadn’t. Shortly after came the first redundancies, when we said goodbye to senior reporters who’d come up the ranks like me and who we couldn’t afford anymore, then the second round, where we lost our grizzled sub-editors, the connective tissue that always held the bones of Leadership together.

But even in those changing times, I’d been able to lobby for us to switch off below-the-line comments to encourage an elevated debate at real-life events where we’d document the outcomes. But that period, when people couldn’t hide behind their keyboards and usernames, was gone. Comments were now activated and often spilled over into the, at turns banal and cowardly, Twittersphere. Integrity and discipline were wholly lost in this modern world where people like you and, worse than that, those my age, feel it’s somehow both appropriate and interesting to share the first thing that comes into their heads. And as I watched Asif drink you in, something else I once understood was altering before my very eyes. I suppose you know, when you walk into a room, something in the air changes. I used to be capable of doing that.

‘She’s ready for you,’ you said as you passed by me, then, ‘Just be yourself, Katherine.’ I felt your breath on my ear, smelt your clean, warm scalp again. I shuddered.

‘Hi, come in, come in. Wonderful to be able to put a face to the name, finally. I’m sorry it’s taken this long to meet, I’ve been neck deep in the strategy, the financials and so on, but I know all about you.’ Gemma gestured towards a swivel chair I knew to be broken, though she didn’t. I nodded and perched on the crap chair without letting my weight bear down.

‘Likewise.’

‘We’re a bit late, so I’ll cut straight to it.’

My stomach fell. I knew she and her new board had been discussing ‘my future’.

‘Nothing formal or anything. No need to look so worried!’

‘I’m not, I’m just … Sorry, I had a bit of a nightmare this morning. I hate it when one of my team shows up late and goes on about the failures of the Jubilee Line, or whatever,’ I tried to smile over the familiar thrust of cortisol in my veins.

‘Lily explained. Did she tell you much about her background on the way in?’

‘That she’s your niece?’ And as I thought about it, I realised we’d been together in that taxi for almost an hour and all I knew was that you blogged. (Who doesn’t? Besides me, of course.) I should have asked you a million questions, but there I was, armed only with a scrap of information on your relationship with Gemma.

‘That’s right. She’s also very bright and very young, but I wonder, could I ask you, in confidence, to keep an eye on her? Asif says you’re much stronger than you seem on paper.’

I was confused. Damning me with such faint praise didn’t sound like the Asif I knew. I looked over at him, walking towards the space behind your chair, then placing his hands squarely on the back of it, right above your shoulders.

‘Right. Thanks. I am really strong,’ I flustered.

‘You probably understand it was a bit of a tussle with the new board to keep you on, but I won and I’m really glad I did.’

‘No. No, I don’t, exactly. A tussle? Could you … what does that mean?’

‘Oh, Lord, I assumed they’d kept you quite close to the process … Well, it was the board’s preferred option that we maybe start afresh. New look, new management, new editor. But I thought it right and proper you got to be part of the new now, so here we are.’ She smiled, as if she expected me to thank her for letting me keep my post at a magazine I’d lived and breathed since I was almost a girl, a title I’d shaped. I had no choice but to play along. I needed my job, my second home in the world, so I couldn’t get as angry as I was entitled to.

‘OK, well, thank you, Gemma. You can count on me to … I’ll always keep going,’ I garbled. My once-familiar territory as unstable as the broken chair trembling beneath me. Gemma began speaking again, talking at me like she’d made index cards beforehand. I knew if I could muster the energy, I’d already despise her.

‘They tell me you’ve put a huge amount of effort into the first new-look issue. I can’t wait to read it all tomorrow, I’m so glad to hear you’ve committed so much to what I really hope is going to be an exciting new chapter for all of us.’

I was glad she’d noticed. I’d gathered enough resolve to make sure we’d come out of the blocks under the new owners with a strong issue, getting the interns to set up most of the interviews, do the background research and fact-checks, but writing the lion’s share of the features and profiles myself. My picture byline would be all over the magazine and website by the following day. I can’t say my heart and soul went into those pieces, but sweat and elbow grease certainly had. I am a fighter by nature, Lily. As soon as I feel my back on the wall, my fists go up. My primal instinct.

‘Thank you, Gemma.’

‘Now, was there anything you wanted to discuss?’

‘No, not really,’ I said, but then you waltzed by outside the glass and I swear you winked at me. Behind you, Asif’s eyes followed your arse until it disappeared into the kitchen area. ‘But I suppose it’d be good to know if there’s anything else I should know about Lily?’ My opening move.

‘Well now, perhaps there is. It’s actually down to Lily we’re here. When she read Leadership was in trouble, she thought it had huge potential. She was excited. It was wonderful to see. I was looking for a new project, she was living with me at the time – I’m really her second mum, if you must know – she could see what it could be and brought me right into her vision. So there you are.’ Gemma beamed at the memory, and I imagined the two of you holed-up together in some palatial slice of prime central London real estate, plotting how to give old lady Leadership some commercial CPR, rescuing her from the demise of which I was the figurehead.

‘So your buyout, it was all her idea. That’s quite a vision for someone so young. Young people are so different now to how I was, how things used to be.’ I was unsettled, almost sure you’d given no indication whatsoever that you were in the driving seat of the buyout. And wouldn’t this mean you’d have known who I was when you muscled your way into my cab? Because for more than twenty years, up until that day, I was Leadership. Perhaps you were embarrassed, too modest to draw attention to your ability to see the latent opportunities in my ailing empire.

But then I watched you again through the glass.

You’d returned to your seat and Asif had come round to lean at the same level as your screen. While you spoke, pausing occasionally to gesture towards the images, he nodded in the general direction of your sideboob. You clocked him doing so and flicked your fingernails to your throat to maintain his attention.

‘Now, I’m glad you’ve mentioned how things used to be, Katherine.’

‘Yes,’ I said, without really listening, as I watched you call my picture research intern over to you. She obeyed and was soon nodding along with you and Asif.

‘I’ve had a bit of feedback from your team. There’s clearly a lot of admiration there for you.’

‘OK.’ I finally had to look away from you as you corralled my team around you, doing what, I didn’t know yet, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it.

‘An appreciation you come from a tradition of journalism that has some really excellent traits, one of those being a certain resilience. But certain elements, it might be that some of them are a bit of a hangover, you might say.’

‘A hangover from what?’

‘From maybe the atmosphere of an old-school newsroom. A bit of banter with the interns? Fine, of course, but it may be we need to think about …toning it down a bit.’

‘Toning down what?’

‘I think it’s probably a vocabulary issue as much as anything. One of your team said you’d called them “soft” when they’d been nervous about calling a consultant who’d just lost their business; another individual said you liked nothing more than to refer to them as precious “Snowflakes”?’

‘Who said that?’ Really, it could have been any one of the current crop of interns and I wasn’t surprised they’d swooped on the opportunity to plead their case to Gemma. I was more alarmed the Snowflakes had found such a ready advocate in a woman of my generation. But of course, this conversation, all of it, was about you, not them. Gemma wanted to arrange the world so it worked better for you, matched more closely with your lofty expectations, where any challenge to your status quo was banned. Five minutes in and you were already well into the process of reshaping my office into something closer to your liking. I looked over again to see the picture researcher offer you a palm to high five. You slapped it meekly, smiling at your feet.

‘I’m not going to get into who said what, but let’s take this as an opportunity to think again about the kind of place we all want to work. It should feel inclusive. It should feel safe. I know you’ll want to get on board with that.’

‘Of course, yes.’ I was hobbled, but I needed to keep fighting somehow. ‘Is there anything else I should know? Anything more on what the interns fed back?’ I paused. ‘Or anything else about Lily?’

The corner of Gemma’s lip twitched. ‘No. Nothing else that springs to mind.’

‘Well, OK then.’ I didn’t move towards the door yet. I wanted her to know I didn’t feel this conversation was really over. You see, I could tell your aunt was hiding something. People like you and me, Lily, we’re excellent liars, aren’t we? People like Gemma? Not so convincing.

‘Oh, one more thing, Katherine. Sorry, I forgot to ask … How are you? Would you say you’re feeling well?’

‘I’d say I was stronger than ever.’

‘Great, well, just to let you know, I’m going to have to keep asking you. It’s part of our new Wellness Policy.’

‘Good to know the new team are committed to caring.’

She nodded and gave me a squishy smile. She believed me. Excellent liar, see?

I got back to my desk, avoiding the eyes of my team, and you. But as I booted up my machine, I heard you say, ‘How did that go, then?’ Casually, as if you’d known me for years; more than that, as if you were my peer. You didn’t even look away from your screen, which you already seemed to be filling with prodigious amounts of copy. Who did you think you were? You thought you’d saved my sorry arse from unemployment. You thought my world was your empire because you were the niece of a chequebook publisher. Lily, there are some postcodes you can’t just buy into.

‘You didn’t say how lovely your aunt is,’ I said loudly enough for the other interns to hear. ‘Let me get organised and we’ll talk about some background research you can help Asif with.’

You moved your hair behind your ears with your fingers.

‘Oh. Should I clear this first?’

I thought I heard a stifled snort from the IT intern in the far corner of our bank of desks. I couldn’t let on I didn’t know what ‘this’ was.

‘Go for it.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yep.’

‘I mean, Gemma wanted me to focus on writing this curtain-raising piece for the awards, but I can prioritise your work if you’d rather—’

A request for consent twice. Signature play. Inserting yourself into the most visible and important areas of my work, also what I’d soon identify as a classic move.

The Leadership awards were the biggest night of our year, our shop window and a rallying cry for readers and advertisers to stick with us for another twelve months. You were already worming your way to the front and centre of it. As I hadn’t been well enough to attend, let alone lead on last year’s awards, this year’s would be my chance to reassert my authority, reinstating my reputation by showing everyone I was alive and kicking, on the outside at least.

You turned back to your screen and started typing again without waiting to hear my mumbled, No.

‘Oh, I should probably also flag, I was just introducing myself to the team and got brought into a little pow-wow about the cover for the reprint of the mag for awards night? I have a couple of ideas on tightening up the cover lines, maybe going for a sharper image. I mean, it’s practically the same, just a teensy bit more contemporary. I’m sure you’re going to love it, but they’re only ideas. Feel free to push back.’

Those dark eyes danced below raised eyebrows, a certain mischief on that smooth pale forehead, your orange lips, perfectly arranged into the faintest of smiles. Well, what have you got for me?

‘I’m sure I don’t have a choice,’ I said quietly to the air.

‘Katherine. You’re so funny,’ you said without a hint of laughter.

That afternoon, when Gemma headed to a board meeting, I watched you brazenly go into her office, close the door behind you and start rifling through her in-tray. You opened a stiff brown envelope, removed what looked distinctively like a corporate credit card, and slipped it into your pocket. I was outraged, not just because of the lunacy of giving an intern her own card on account of being the pretend daughter of the boss, but because I’d been waiting weeks for the replacement one I’d been promised by the new owners.

When you walked out you went directly to Asif’s desk. Whatever you said made him jump out of his seat, pull on his corduroy blazer and accompany you towards the double doors out of the office. It was nearly 3 p.m., the time I’d normally go for a coffee with him. It seemed we wouldn’t be heading out together that day. Neither would I go for coffee with him the next day, nor the day after that.

After watching you disappear with my only remaining ally at work, I dialled a department recently created under the new management.

‘Is this Talent and People? Katherine Ross here. I’ve got a new intern, started today. Trying to work out how best to use her, could you ping over her CV?’

If I was going to get one step ahead of you, I needed to get to know you better.

Lily

5th March – The First Day

I so love the ritual of writing this at the end of my day. The stiff cover, the rustle of real paper, a safe space for me to unload and observe, and so much more intimate than my MacBook. Vintage, like a proper diary, one I can’t delete or undo. This notebook is perfect.

I should have been long gone by the time Katherine Ross showed up at the bus stop. It was so weird. She kept turning around, blatantly staring, which got me thinking. Why don’t I blag my way into the woman’s cab? So I do. Easily done.

At first, all I get from her is the generalisable hate she has for people my age. It was radiating off her, the way she looked at everyone at the bus stop. Total disdain. But then she lets herself talk and the hate starts to lift. She likes chatting to me, I can tell. What’s more surprising is how much I enjoy talking to her, watching her speak. It’s like there’s a whisper of something warm, and I get the feeling she’s throwing me a rope she wants me to grab onto. I’ve only felt it once before in my life. When I realise it’s happening again, and with KR of all people, I have to stop myself from massively over-sharing.

Don’t ask me how, but at one point she ends up stroking my face. Now that, I was not expecting! It feels pretty intense when I have to keep my head straight. I also need to make my life easy wherever I can, so I decide to pick up Mum’s gift for Gem as I’d promised. I have it that we swing by one of the offices she cleans on Mondays. God knows how many fat cats’ bins she had to empty to pay for that pen, but Gem will, and I guess that’s the point – to make Gem feel crappy on a day she should be feeling good, guilting her out about how much Mum would have toiled to buy something Gemma could pick up with the change in her Smythson purse.

When I get back to the cab, I can tell KR had been looking at my MacBook. For about a second, I brick it, but she looks so guilty, I know she’d not got very far. I kind of feel sorry for her.

Gem gives me The Talk the second I walk in. I make all the right noises, of course. When it comes to telling people what they want to hear, I am, of course, something of an expert.

KR is scared of Gem. When it’s her turn to go into Gem’s office for the first time, she looks petrified, so I see an opportunity. I do what any supportive subordinate would when their boss has an important meeting, I give her a bit of friendly encouragement that might help keep her on her toes. Isn’t that what ‘normal’ female friendships are all about? Show me even the best of friends who don’t have to watch what they say, bend over backwards to keep everything on an even keel, all the while trying to make the whole thing look like it’s not really hard work.

I also make a point of showing KR I’m onto way better things than the grunt work she’d inevitably give me, the freshest of the fresh interns, the lowest of the low. I get a couple of pieces published, make them change the front cover of the awards reprint.

I invite the right-hand man Asif out for coffee. He jumps at the chance. Too easy.

She’s made sure everyone knows I’m there because I’m The Niece. She didn’t tell them I wasn’t being paid though did she. Gem tells me I need to be seen to ‘earn my stripes’ first and wait for an opening. The ground is already shifting, even if she, and KR, can’t feel it yet.

Chapter 2

Katherine

When I got home from the gym that night I looked at my flat again with new eyes: your eyes. Every inch of our 730 square feet had been maximised. When we planned to sell up, I’d encouraged an old mate to do a piece on the place for ‘Homes & Property’ in the Evening Standard. The headline: ‘The next big thing’, the sell: ‘How one budding novelist styled the life into her conversion in up-and-coming N4’. The piece detailed how I’d turned walls into bookcases, high ceilings into display mezzanines, bedroom stairs into storage, with feature walls created not by wallpaper but oversized Damien Hirst prints. With that article, I felt like I’d really done it. I’d left the old me at my mother’s farm where she belonged. I was no longer insignificant, no longer provincial. I was urbane. Successful. Someone you wanted to be. Someone you wanted to know. Now I barely remember being that person.

We paid for doing up the place with the rent from Iain’s flat in Holloway, which he owned outright, having the foresight to buy it practically on his credit card back in 1990. My friend had written that I was a journalist and ‘writer-in-waiting’ and it was almost true. Two literary agents had asked for the rest of my latest manuscript and only one had passed by the time of the interview. Iain, meanwhile, was still flying high as a senior copywriter for ad agencies and was about to land a gig on the writing team of a sitcom pilot. It seemed we were approaching some terrific threshold: the tantalising possibility of unqualified London success, so close we could taste it in the air and on each other. Our many and varied friends pumped us up.

We’d sell my place, use the equity to shoot for a four-bed fixer-upper on the edges of Highbury and use the Holloway rent to help pay for the works. Iain was in his mid-thirties by then, I was about twenty-six. Life was so good, we just didn’t realise it yet.

‘So, how was it, then? I’ve been waiting for the call all day!’ Iain shouted at me from the kitchen. It was just Iain and me, as you know. We were getting on for twenty years together when I met you. Those years, all the times we’d relished together, all those we’d survived as a couple, had stitched us into each other. That’s how it felt. Not every woman would let Iain be who he was, live the life he enjoyed, and not every man would fit to me. For one thing, I had always been adamant that I never wanted children. I suppose you could say I was a victim of neglect as a child. Iain was the first person I wanted to tell. I also told him I couldn’t risk putting someone else through anything like the experiences I’d gone through. It was too terrifying and, anyway, Iain knew we didn’t want sober lives where we’d have to lock down at six o’clock. Us with kids, who would we be? Not us at all. We agreed early on to leave the breeding to people less interesting than us and focus instead on having a fantastic life together, one that would allow our creative selves to thrive. I believed the narrative was holding.

‘Hello, gorgeous.’ I kissed Iain’s cheek, damp with steam from the pan he was hanging over.

‘Hello, you.’

He and I still looked broadly the same as we did in the pictures for the Evening Standard spread. I’ve always looked after myself. I run. I go to the gym. I run to the gym. I don’t wear leggings unless I’m at the gym. And it is only relatively recently I seem to have found myself in that specific category of invisible I didn’t really understand existed until, one day just before I got ill, I realised I hadn’t told a single slowing van driver to fuck off when I ran to the gym. I could now run all the way down Green Lanes wholly untroubled. Not a single beep. At first it felt liberating, this mid-life cloak of invisibility, for that purpose at least. But I suppose I never thought it would sweep over people like me, and so emphatically, especially when I wasn’t even old yet. Or perhaps I was.

A couple of weeks before I met you, I’d pulled out some short shorts I’d not worn since I was thirty-odd. I ran and waited for the cat calls, but nothing. It seemed white van men were able to age a woman by her calves and thighs alone, but what exactly was old about mine? I hated that I cared. Women like me were supposed to be better than this.

‘How was it?’ I repeated Iain’s question back to him. I’d been wondering what to tell him. I wanted to talk about you, but I also knew if I said what was really on my mind, I’d sound completely neurotic. But I did need to confide in him. Because he and I were best friends. Each other’s only friends.

We’d had many lives together. The one shortly after the Evening Standard spread is where our luck started to turn. London itself seemed to move against us. Iain’s pilot got pushed to midnight, the series dying quietly at birth. My latest manuscript, my final attempt at writing sustained prose in my own voice, was rejected by the second agent and then it seemed like I’d run out of things to say.

‘I’m wai-ting,’ Iain sang, his fingers squeezing the black plastic valve of boxed red he would have started on a couple of hours earlier, sending a drink for me gushing loudly into an expectant tumbler.

Soon after the sitcom was canned, he was made redundant. There was no justice in it, but as he passed forty, Iain was ageing into a professional leprosy. He could only get bits and bobs of freelance work. We started to lose a bit of confidence. By the time I’d been at Leadership for the best part of ten years, I was being paid an editor’s salary, but the fixer-upper crept up to £400,000, then £450,000, then suddenly £700,000 and after that, we stopped looking. We upped the rent on Iain’s place and decided to stay put at mine until the bubble burst. That first day I met you, we were still waiting for the pop.

‘Well, I’d say today certainly feels like the start of “An Exciting New Chapter”.’ I repeated the subject line of Gemma’s first all-staff email (and in gauche title case too) as I hung my jacket up. My eyes caught the poster that darkened my hall, hovering over our lives for the last five years. It was the real reason why I still lived in what should have been my bachelorette flat.

It was a one-off poster of The Film. The Film was supposed to be the start of An Exciting New Chapter for me and Iain. Perhaps Iain would tell you one version of the story, but let me tell you mine from where I think it starts.

As my father had the temerity to die on my mother when I was nine, it had been instilled in me at an early age that no one can save you from yourself, especially not a man. My mother spoke to me only when she sought to remind me that we are all truly alone and no white knight will come to your rescue. This is the one thing my mother and I agreed on. I had looked to my writing to save me, but as I got past thirty, something changed. I lost the will to write for myself. I thought about writing all the time, but the memory of my second manuscript being rejected for the final time, when I felt I’d so nearly become published, hurt too much to put myself through the process again.

The ideas didn’t come. I started a couple of drafts, but somewhere I’d lost whatever it is you inherently have, what I had for a short window in my twenties: the innate belief in what you say and the expectation your words will always find a willing audience. Because that’s how people like you carry yourself about the world, isn’t it? You think someone should always be primed, waiting to listen to you. Maybe not being able to write for myself was the very earliest sign of the beige clouds swirling. While my creative life was in stasis, Iain was still trying to make his happen. Then a way for me to ride his wave came along; a chance for him to save me from myself.

He invited me and most of our old mates to go in on a film he would write and produce. It didn’t take much for us to put our money in; we were all going to be Executive Producers. It proved irresistible to me and everyone else whose dreams had faltered as their fortieth years approached. We put our faith in Iain’s ability, some of us, admittedly, with fingers crossed behind our backs. Because it wasn’t necessarily that we believed Iain was a born auteur. Ultimately, the film fulfilled the belief there had to be something that would provide a final chance to make good on our lives, to snatch victory from the jaws of middle-aged defeatism.

All my savings for the fixer-upper went into the film, and when more money was needed, I wanted to believe remortgaging my Manor House flat to the hilt and adding Iain to the deeds to extract even more from the lender would be the penultimate paragraph on a story that ended marvellously, historically, for him and for me. But no matter what you said about the film, it was not good. It was appalling. It did not rescue us. It died a death and killed our friendships with all those who’d let themselves believe Iain would produce a work of excellence that would generate life-changing money for all investors. Iain said sorry over and over, but there was nothing to say sorry for, not really. He’d made no promises, but he had tried, hadn’t he? We had tried. The one thing your generation excels at is making stuff with your iPhones, pouring your innermost thoughts into your tweets and your blogs until you get better at it and/or something finally sticks. For people like us, things aren’t so easy; and they certainly didn’t come as cheap.

But I admit, I made a mistake. I looked outside of myself for salvation.

It got so that our friends stopped calling us. Part of me was relieved because whenever I saw them, at some point the conversation always turned to The Film. What might have been. What was lost. We had to find new bodies to come back to ours, buying the last round and plenty of coke for those who would venture to Manor House. But soon enough, we found ourselves going home alone together, and at some point a couple of years ago or so, we stopped going out much at all. Then, when we weren’t really looking, we became truly middle-aged.

You don’t need a specific reason to suffer from a mental malaise but I know your lot, always seeking a ‘trigger’ to understand my illness, so, take your pick for mine: the fact I could no longer deny the London life I’d built wasn’t strong enough to save me. It would not put a clear blue ocean of money and creative success between me and the desperate child on a farm in Derbyshire. Nor would it solve the problem of the management consultants circling the magazine, or the failure to move house, or my body starting to do dreadful middle-aged things; chronically dry skin on my shins no moisturiser could address, robust whiskers on my chin I had to pluck away every single day, the first grey pube, then another, and another. I felt so let down by my body, but more by my pathetic attitude to it.

Altogether, things big and small made me feel as if I was breaking down until eventually I was a broken thing. And let me tell you something, Lily, you really learn who your friends are when you become needy and unglamorous. It turns out none of my old girlfriends wanted to know the ill version of me when I tentatively reached out to them again. On a good day, I told myself it might have been different if they hadn’t invested in the film, or if the film had provided them with the stellar returns we’d all hoped were possible. On a bad day, I knew they only loved me when I was flying high. How could I find fault with them when I felt broadly the same?

Iain always smiled as he stirred whatever he was cooking for me. When I was ill, he’d cooked me back to life. It wasn’t that nothing tasted good, it was that everything tasted of nothing: no texture or depth. Iain had to keep me alive like the pathetic rejected lambs my mother forced me to bottle-feed as a child. He couldn’t get out of the habit of hand-rearing me; cooking elaborate, time-consuming, fattening meals; boiling vats of bones all day long, as if he could borrow the distilled marrow of dead animals to give the essence of life back to me in a bowl. That’s what you think we do to your generation, isn’t it, Lily? Steal your young lives for our own self-serving ends?

Iain stirred his stew so vigorously, I noticed while his arms were getting thinner, his stomach trembled above his belt. Mouse-coloured hair, now silvering. But he was still attractive, with well-set grey eyes, a wide symmetrical smile, and a liking for looking at me a little longer than he needed to; he made me feel truly seen. Did you feel that way too when you first met him? What did you really think of him, of us, in those early days?

‘I know what’ll cheer you up,’ my Iain said.

‘Who says I need cheering up?’

‘Some Hungarian New Wave. There’s nothing a little Béla Tarr can’t solve. A spot of Damnation will put it all in perspective.’ He squeezed the last drops of the wine out, having liberated the silver bag from its box, holding it between his torso and underarm like a bagpipe. My partner was what your lot might call ‘an alcoholic’, but you figured that out soon enough, didn’t you? What you’ll never understand is how this wasn’t an issue before you. Perhaps one day your generation will grow to see how life doesn’t cleave along binary lines: hopeless addict/functioning citizen; mentally well/mentally ill; good person/bad person.

‘Well, why ever not?’ I looked into my glass.

‘What’s Gemma really like then?’

I turned on my stool, my back to Iain and the breakfast bar that divided the tiny open kitchen from the living space in my flat. Some instinct made me think twice about introducing you to the conversation, to say your name in my home, to let you invade my domestic space, but still, I felt compelled to speak of you.

‘Oh, she’s alright. Earnest, in an HR-sanctioned way … But she’s landed me with her jumped-up niece.’

‘Another intern is it? How many’s that now?’

‘Six? Seven? I can’t keep track anymore. Anyway, she flounced into my cab this morning. The 141 decided to take the day off and I managed to flag a cab and this millennial jumps in and eventually tells me she happens to be the boss’s niece. What she doesn’t tell me is that she’s the one who gave Gemma Lunt the bright idea of buying out Leadership. She definitely would have known all about me, but played dumb and let me rabbit on about my job before the big reveal. Creepy or what?’

‘Maybe she didn’t recognise you.’ Iain, already on your side. I glowered at him. ‘Well, anyway, is she any good? Going to make your life easier? Worse? Too soon to say?’

I breathed, ‘Well, she’s clearly privileged. Imagine me at her age having a maiden aunt who could go out and pick up a magazine for me to write for? She’s walked in off the street, jangling her family’s money, fresh out of uni, with the cheek to demand we change the front cover. And she starts writing a piece on the awards off-the-bat. Just like that.’

‘How very dare she, and at a magazine too.’

‘Oh shut up, you know what I mean.’

‘Not really,’ he laughed.

‘When I did work experience, you just assumed you’d be making coffee, doing the photocopying, dodging the boss’s busy hands. Or not, depending on who the boss was.’

‘And when you started out, they still called it “work experience,” it lasted two weeks before you were made “senior reporter” and people still used photocopiers … and sent faxes.’

‘That was probably before she was even born. Fuck, she didn’t even exist when I was at peak possibility.’

‘Hey. You. You’re not even close to that yet. Not even close,’ his mouth slopped around on the last ‘s’ sound, but he meant it. He still believed in me.

‘And young people knew their place. Fuck, we’re old.’

‘We are that. And aren’t you just a wee bit glad about it?’ He took another gulp from his glass, then watched me swinging around on my bar stool.

‘Go on. What’s really pissing you off about this girl? Is she fit?’

I shook my head. ‘No. She’s not fit … She’s an absolute knockout.’

‘OK, so let’s see now: she’s got youth, beauty, privilege and nepotism going for her. No wonder she’s writing the cover story on day one.’

I said nothing.

‘And no wonder you’re jealous.’

‘I am not,’ I lied. ‘Come on, let’s not let her ruin our evening. Where’s my Damnation?’

I pretended to look about the flat and again thought of how you would see it. There were indeed all the beautiful things you’d imagined surrounded me: Provençal pots, Ashanti masks, Balinese ceramics, all evidence of a life lived wide and well. Once. I viewed them each afresh with your eyes and saw far too many things. Items fighting for space on bookshelves and display mezzanines I couldn’t face dusting anymore, the cleaner long sacked. A collection of dull silver trays clustered above the door. There was hardly a square inch of wall that didn’t have something on it. No cupboard door sat flush. So many things seemed like they were trying to burst out; I bruised my hips on the corners of overstuffed drawers poking out; I had to duck for cover every time I opened a cupboard, knowing some plate or culinary gadget of Iain’s might fall and hit me. The whole place looked and felt like a life double-backed on itself, looped over and over. Sun-faded Hirst prints. Dusty Moti tapestries from India. Iain’s old gig photography. There was no space anymore. No space for more stuff, no space for new thoughts, no space to create; no real space for the future at all.

I seemed to have collected masks from every corner of the world without ever intending to. So many masks. My own face, now a mask. An exhausted skin caught over a mind struggling to accept it was no longer young. I was beginning to realise something I should have looked hard in the face, then warned you and all women like you about: there’s a big secret only revealed when it’s too late: how you feel in your twenties is an illusion. That unique flavour of power and self-knowledge, you’d never know it at the time, but it dissolves. I should have told you from the off to prepare to save yourself from being caught unawares by the passage of time as I had been. When age moves against you, make sure you’ve built your self-worth around what you’re capable of doing, not the beauty of your youth. And if I’d have done that, who knows, maybe then you wouldn’t have changed my life like you did.

I’d forwarded your CV to my personal email and read it on the bus home. It showed an urbane life. A long list of posh schools, a year out before English Lit at Leeds and what looked like more time out, (travelling on ‘Gem’s’ generosity, no doubt), making you twenty-four to my forty-one. Obscene. The charmed life of a graduate, and a hugely privileged one at that, brazenly stretching ahead of you; a long corridor lined with doors blown wide open by your confidence and your utter gorgeousness. That used to be me, I thought, now it’s other people; now it’s you.

‘What’s her name? Just so I can really get on board when you’re bitching about her.’

I turned my head towards the ceiling, the only clear white space in my whole flat.

‘Her name is Lily.’

‘Lily. They’re always called something like Poppy, or Daisy or Lily. She sounds like a proper Snowflake, love. You might need to watch yourself.’

Damnation is a tale of desire, betrayal and despair. I’d agreed to watch it only to humour Iain really, doing a bit of work on the side. But while he was out-cold after the first twenty minutes, I watched to the bitter end. It spoke to me.

When it was over, I shut my laptop and watched him asleep, or unconscious, his mouth agape in a classic grandad-after-Christmas-lunch way. And I loved him.

‘Iain. Iain? Come to bed,’ I shook his shoulder and touched his face, trying to wake him in the same way I did every night. But he never stirred when he was like that. He’d come round in a couple of hours and throw himself down on our bed. So, as usual, I left him, crept to the bathroom, locked the door and inserted two fingers into the back of my throat, letting go of all the fat and sugar Iain had put in me.

You see, Iain needed to feel he was doing something, anything, to contribute to our life and my happiness. Food was his medium. In the day, I retained the foods I’d chosen for myself. Come the night, I had to let my partner fulfil his role, but I couldn’t have his food pillowing me out into full-frontal middle age. You wouldn’t understand, but this purging ritual was an act of love. It was one of the many secrets of our long and happy relationship.

When I slept that night, I had the dream where I tried to reach the paddock gate for the first time. I cried out for the child in me; the dreadful sense of my mother’s hate relived for the first time in years.

Lily

5th March – The First Day, continued

Stay late in the office. Get a couple of stories up online. Think twice about the picture byline, but I’m actually really proud of what I’ve produced, so I go for it. Asif assumes it’s Gem’s idea, she assumes it’s his. No one tries to stop me.

I get inside my building as I always try to – without the concierge seeing me.

When I came down to London with Gem, I was desperate to avoid staying with her or Mum. They want too much from me, from what my life could be, or maybe now, what it could have been. Everything they say wears me down to less than I am. Especially Gem. She’s so over-invested, there’s no way she could ever get a decent return. She always demands the best by reminding me of the worst, ‘You can do better. You can be better.’ It’s too much to keep up with being the version of me Gem expects at work and at home.

It started the very first day we moved in with her.

We’d celebrated my eighth birthday by getting evicted. Mum had been late again with the rent, the landlord wanted us out and was keeping the deposit. We packed our things and schlepped from where we were in Newham to Gem’s place in Marylebone. I’d been there before and other people will say it was a completely gorgeous place. Huge. But to me it was like travelling to another planet. All I wanted to do was go back to our old flat and my old school where everyone knew me. When we’d visited the Marylebone place before, it seemed like there was too much space. I never felt comfortable. From the moment we had to live there, I knew I was never going to fill the place. I also knew from the off that was the one thing Gem expected. I was there to plug the gaps in her life.

Gem’s challenge was that investing in a relationship to produce children was too high risk for her. The chances of getting what she wanted out of it were too open. Owning a child ready-made by someone else took away that risk factor. Enter me.

I remember us turning up with our backpacks and carrier bags of my cuddly toys. Gem opened the door and scooped me off her step and swung me into her hallway, triumphant. My mum had conceded: she needed Gem’s help to raise me and I was now in her home indefinitely. She would get to be a parent.

‘Welcome home, my darling. I’m so happy you’re here. Now, how about you and I make a deal. You know what a deal is, don’t you, Lily?’

‘I think so.’ Gem, always with the ‘deals’ and ‘negotiations’, every bit of her life, even the most personal, based on a hustle rigged so she walks away with more than she deserves.

‘I’ll be the best aunt in the whole wide world, I will make sure you always have a home with me if you can promise to be the best Lily you can be. Can you do that for me?’

I nodded. I could feel the weight loaded into the words. I’ve always felt in deficit with Mum, like I owed her a favour and now I guessed Gem was doing the same. I wanted to ask her what I had to do to make things OK, but I could feel the sobs trying to tear their way out of my lungs and I didn’t want to lose it, I guess because I already had an idea that wouldn’t be what ‘best Lily’ would do.

To my mum, Gem said nothing. She held the door and watched her sister walk in. There was nothing to say. Gem and Mum’s parents were apparently dirt poor, but Gem had ‘pulled herself up by the bootstraps’. My mum, on the other hand, had continued the family traditional of bad jobs and bad housing. She never understood Gem’s belief that stacks of cash were all anyone could desire. All Mum wanted was a simple life – husband, kids, little house, little job, which drove Gem mad; she hated Mum’s life choices. ‘Elaine, your problem is you aim so low. There’s so little margin for error, one tiny wobble puts you on your knees,’ I heard Gem say once, with relish. The final eviction had proved Gem right: my mum couldn’t even do the basics. There she was, homeless and alone with one child she’d apparently ‘waited a long time for’ but whose existence she blamed for pushing my dad out the door.

Mum and I climbed up the staircase that smelt like a church to our rooms. When we got to my room, my mum told me, ‘Don’t listen to what she says. You don’t belong to her.’

I told my mum, ‘I don’t belong to anyone. Not you either,’ because I don’t. I was right and she knew it.

From nowhere, she said, ‘I do my best, Lily. I know that’s not good enough for you, it wasn’t enough your father.’

Dad the Disappeared. The taboo I was never allowed to speak of, but she could lob at me whenever it suited. I wanted to make her pay for saying his name and for putting me in that big stupid flat and the dumb new school I knew I’d be dragged to soon enough.

‘But you can’t look after me. That’s why we’ve had to move in with Gem, isn’t it?’

‘Listen to me. She is not your mother. I am, for my sins.’

I looked at her right in the eyes and asked, ‘What’s a sin, Elaine?’

She was quiet for what felt like a long time, her rough fingers gripping legs covered by a cheap denim skirt. ‘Come down when you’ve unpacked your things and washed your hands.’

So, from that day, I knew it was going to be a case of one of them thinking, ‘If I press this button, will she come closer to me than to her?’ or, ‘If I dangle this carrot, promise her this, will she bend my way?’ Gem wanted her trophy ‘daughter’ and Mum wanted to keep control over the one thing she had and Gem didn’t. That’s not love, is it? People assume because I had not one but two maternal figures, I grew up in a kind of paradise. But I was not nurtured, I was experimented on as they tried to beat each other using me. The only way I was going to survive was by pitting the two of them against each other.

This rule applied for years, all the way up to Gem buying Leadership. I’d planted the idea of Gem thinking about her legacy. What was she working towards? What was she leaving behind and who to? I carefully led talk of ‘legacy’ towards the idea of ‘dynasty’. ‘Gem, don’t you think it would be incredible to find something we could both take a role in growing, not just to sell it on, but to become our family business? For me, then maybe even for my children, your grandchildren …? I’ve read about this magazine that’s in trouble but has massive potential.’

Mum could see what was happening and didn’t like it one bit. ‘School fees are one thing, Gemma, but buying a company so she can have a go at playing journalist? Isn’t that a bit much, even for you?’ To which Gem said, ‘At least my hard work has bought her an education and more. How have you ever helped her? How were you planning to get her out of the mess she’s in?’ (Once it was done, Gem never discussed what happened to me at uni in terms that actually described the events. Always ‘the mess’, ‘the problems.’) Mum said, ‘How dare you say I don’t work hard? And if she’s got into a mess, it’s trying to be someone like you who’d flog their grandma for a quid.’

When we knew the Leadership buyout was definitely happening, I let both of them know I needed to move. My mother had only just managed to get away from Gem by moving to a miniscule rented flat in Mile End. She didn’t want me staying with Gem anymore, but she didn’t want me living with her either, not really, although she told me I could ‘have the living room’ at her place if I ‘really wanted it’. She made a seriously half-baked attempt to look like she actually cared where I lived, ‘Get your own place, keep on with Gemma, it’s your choice, but do not make out you couldn’t have stayed with me if you wanted to, Lily.’ Ok, Mum, you can say you tried to help me now.

I told Gem I didn’t think it was a great idea if I lived with her once we started working together. ‘It’s going to look so much more professional for us if we don’t introduce ourselves to the business as a “mother and daughter act”, but two individuals serious about making the magazine a success.’ She didn’t quite buy this, telling me, ‘Do let me know when you’ve touched down in the real world. I’ll keep your room made up in Marylebone.’

Of course, there was no way I could afford anywhere on the meagre allowance she gives me to keep me from ‘working in jobs like your mother’s.’ But I had to show her she wasn’t right about everything. So, I am now fully immersed in the real world, thanks Gem.

I knew I had to be away from both of them and somewhere I could focus on what I need to do, but I was about two minutes into my search when I realised rent, even in unsexy Zone 3 North East London, is completely insane. I mean, I couldn’t even afford to live in one of those places where you’re the one sleeping in the living room, let alone somewhere with a real room of my own and a proper space where I could eat a meal with a flatmate, sit on a sofa and talk, maybe even make a friend. Today, living rooms are another basic that’s become a luxury for my age group. Why aren’t we rioting, people?

I googled ‘Rent-free accommodation N4’ in an act of hopeful desperation, as I’m sure hundreds of others like me must have done before. I saw this:

Sympathetic homeless female 18-24 req. for discrete rent-free use of mod high-rise apartment N4. Apply w/ photo.

I went to see the place, to see the concierge who’d posted the ad. He is in his forties and completely repulsive. I negotiated the ‘erotic arrangement’ with him down to one hour every Wednesday in exchange for the use of the flat and the promise to keep it quiet from the absent owner, a Singaporean, he tells me. The time with him seems to come around so fast. Sometimes it feels like a week of Wednesdays.

When he’s sweating on top of me, behind my eyelids I imagine a map of London with tiny little flashing red lights for every one of us swapping the use of our bodies for the use of a home. Were all of them damaged like me? Or were some of them normal, with friends who worried about them, mates who would eventually say, ‘That’s enough. You need to come and crash with me’? Maybe they would one day find themselves somewhere warm and not toxic, protected from it all – dysfunctional parents, exploitative rent and ‘erotic arrangements’. Was it ever possible that one day we would all find ourselves safe, in jobs that pay us money, with the possibility of a real future?

I honestly don’t know why more people my age aren’t more like me. Why aren’t they angrier? We’re not much more than playthings to those older than us, to people exactly like KR. Her so-called Generation X are the worst. KR and her contemporaries think it’s their right to take us for everything we have, everything they think they can get away with, then minimise our pain and undermine us for our choices over the few things we can control.

Each week, when the concierge goes after his hour, I swallow my tears down like a meal, something to make me stronger. Afterwards, when I take my shower and scrub my body down with salt and honey, it’s very hard not to give in and cry. But I never do.

I’ve just pulled over the deadbolt and safety chain and put some soup on, my mum’s words ringing in my ears, a last-minute plea to create the impression she really did want me to stay with her: ‘You’ll never manage on your own. You can’t even boil an egg.’ To which I reminded her, ‘I don’t eat eggs.’

I log on and start to type, only remembering the soup when I smell the pan burning dry. I just hate it when the adults are right.

Time to show one of them how wrong they can be. In the morning, I’ll pop my head into Gem’s office and tell her I’ve thought of a great way to help Katherine Ross get back to her best, like she and I talked about.

I know I’m paying a high price to stay in this flat. But I can see KR’s place from here. I’m less than 100 metres away but from the darkened glass of the tenth floor, I am invisible to her.

For four weeks now, I’ve got to see her spill out onto her front steps every morning. I know what times she comes and goes. I know how weak she’s feeling before she puts on her daily ‘I’m doing fine!’ mask for the rest of the world as she drags herself to the end of her road and across Green Lanes to the bus stop at the foot of my block. I know on Sundays she tears around the park like something is chasing her, and in the afternoon strides to the pub with The Partner like they’re late for an important appointment.

All this insight makes the price for this apartment worth paying.

Chapter 3

Katherine

This is how catastrophic change begins. Small disturbances at the surface, the first suggestion of the sinkhole opening beneath; the moment in the horror movie the protagonist sees something out of the corner of her eye and dismisses it witlessly. I used to love horror movies. I can’t bear them now.

Even though I felt uneasy about you, I couldn’t wait to see you that second morning. I couldn’t give what I felt a name. I still can’t. The best I can do is say it felt like a kind of imprinting. I’d been let down by my life and orphaned by my friends. I hadn’t talked properly to anyone who wasn’t my partner in so long, it was as if I had an overflowing store of friendship backed-up in me. You. Yes, Lily, even though I wasn’t sure about you, I was that pathetic; I was ready to bury my doubts. This is who you become when no one returns your calls, and the only people troubling your mobile are your GP, your partner, or Vodafone.

On Tuesday morning I spent ages choosing an outfit that might make me look fresh and relevant and not mutton dressed as lamb. I hopelessly tried to do my makeup to achieve a dewy sheen. I wondered if the time was coming when I should let my natural colour come through, or dye my hair something other than black, which seemed suddenly blocky and incongruous against my dulling face. I desperately wanted to collapse the years between someone like you and someone like me.

Part of me was glad when you weren’t at the bus stop. I was disturbed by the horrid dream I was struggling to shake off, but buoyed by the fact my articles would be live on the website and in the shiny new editions on everyone’s desks by the time I got in. You may have changed the cover for the issues they’d distribute at the awards, but this edition would be all mine.

I got to my desk. Still no you. And no coffee from Asif either. I turned to find the two of you nestled next to each other on the old sub editors’ desks, huddled around what looked like proofs of the most recent issue.

‘Good morning. Time for a quick catch up? Katherine?’ Gemma tried to get my attention from the doorway of her office.

‘Be right there,’ I said distractedly, watching Asif run his fingers over his beard as you looked to gauge his reaction to something you’d just said. I watched until I couldn’t anymore, closing Gemma’s office door slowly on the sight of you throwing your head back in glee. Asif looked as if he could just climb right inside you there and then.

‘Congratulations on this.’ She threw a fresh copy of Leadership towards me over her desk. ‘Some great foundations we can really build on.’

‘Thank you.’ Is that it? For 12,000 words from your most senior writer? Patronising.

‘What I want to talk to you about, today, is how we’re going to achieve that.’

‘Yes?’

‘I hope you’ll take what I’m about to say in the spirit in which it is intended … I’d like us to talk about reorganizing our content, making a few tweaks to your writing. So, to that end, I’ve asked Lily to look at what’s working and not working on the website. I should probably tell you, early indications on the two articles she posted—’

‘Two articles? I didn’t see any copy from her.’

‘Asif edited them yesterday evening. Well, they’ve already had more click-throughs and longer combined viewing times than all of your content in the last four weeks put together.’ I watched you through the glass. You were now flicking your fingernails under your chin, before biting your bottom lip as you started to type. I was ready to assume it was your picture byline driving your traffic. ‘She’s young, but she’s a quick learner and she knows how to give online readers in particular what they want, so I’ve booked some time away from the office for you and her. She’s going to help you look again at your writing. There’s no shame in needing to re-boot. You could find this is the best thing to happen at this stage of your career. Details to follow. Now, are you up for the challenge?’

What a slap in the face. The humiliation. You were going to teach me. I didn’t yet know you would teach me the lesson of my life.

I had no choice but to say, ‘Of course I’m up for it.’

You kept trying to talk to me all day, but I gave you the brush off. I needed more of an idea of what I was dealing with before I let you know anything else about me.

I read your pieces. A horrifying truth dawned. You were actually pretty good at this. A natural attention-grabber. Your headlines were nearly as enticing as your picture byline; your copy was as taut as mine was saggy. When I re-read my features, they felt in the reading how they’d felt in the writing: hard work. I was angry, I thought it was at you and Gemma, but it was really at me, for being so tired of it all.

But what had Asif been thinking, putting up two pieces from a day-old intern like that? He sent the odd smile over from his side, but knew me well enough to give me some space. It wasn’t until gone seven when the office had emptied that I heard him come up behind me to say goodnight.

I looked about. You weren’t at your desk, but your machine was still on, so if you were going to file any more sparkling ‘content’, it would have to go through me.

‘Late night at the office, K? Kind of reminds me of old times.’ Asif, hands in his pockets, took a step closer. I guessed he was trying to get back into my good books and it was only to make him feel better that I told him, ‘Ah, the days of yore. I miss them too. But you know me, Mr Khan, there will always be a part of me that’s down with the brown.’ I smiled and turned in my seat to face him.

And I don’t know how, but there you were, right behind him; a millennial spectre clutching an orange Bobble water bottle, complete with a luminous shard of cucumber glowing within. You looked flustered, maybe because you were appalled at the idea of Asif’s buff twenty-six-year-old body against my creaking bones as they had been once. I noted to one day tell you that just because you’d turned his head, you couldn’t undo history. Not even you.

‘Sorry, I thought I’d get a head start transcribing my—I can’t concentrate in my flat.’ You turned to Asif who was by then smirking at his shoes.

‘Don’t worry. I’m off. I’ll bid you ladies goodnight. Don’t work too hard.’

We both started typing and a difficult silence settled.

‘Would you like me to pretend I didn’t hear that?’ you said eventually.

When did young people get so prissy, so unable to take, give, or hear flirting? I had seen this attitude in so many of my interns in recent years. The rebuffed compliment, the blatant distaste when I’ve said something, anything, even faintly sexual. This wasn’t the first time I’d wondered exactly when and why a whole generation became so joyless, so sexless. Then I wondered if your indignation was fired because you’d heard I had a serious partner and believed there was only one way to do that right.

A pause.

‘Shall I tell you something? My partner and I have a code,’ I began. I wanted to shock you now, I had you on the ropes and this would be my one-two jab, to show you up for the wrong-headed innocent you were, give you something else to chew on. ‘There are rules. I meet someone I’d like to have sex with, we discuss our feelings and he signs it off, or he doesn’t. If he comes across someone he’d like to have sex with, I say yes, or I say no. My partner signed off on Asif, once or twice, but then we agreed I should stop. You see, we’re a couple who are first and foremost for each other. That never changes. But if we’re lucky, Lily, we’re a long time alive, and a long time together. People my age are capable of believing there’s more than one way of doing something. My advice to you? Don’t judge what you haven’t tried.’

Suddenly, displaying the full peacock tail of my sexuality, I felt restored; the real me rising from the ashes of the day. But this wasn’t my one-two jab, it was your rope-a-dope: the art of taking blows, letting the other fighter expend themselves before going in for the kill.

‘I wasn’t talking about that, whatever you’re talking about.’ Your face was flushed with righteousness. ‘Racist language in the workplace? It’s a sackable offence.’

You should be careful. How right Iain had been.

And in that moment, I thought I knew what you were. You were here to get me sacked. Plain and simple. Gemma could be the acceptable face of sisters sticking together, middle-aged women doing it for ourselves, but you, her, the faceless head honchos now making up the new board, you all wanted me out.

If only it had just been this.

‘I don’t think I understand, Lily? Exactly what racist language did I use?’

‘I, literally, don’t even want to say it out loud.’

‘Say what?’

‘That racist phrase you just said to Asif.’

‘You have to be kidding.’

You began typing again in silence.

‘Language, between friends, old friends. It’s complicated. Nuanced. Coded. Sometimes, Lily, it’s perfectly possible you might not understand what you’re actually hearing.’

You took a sip of your cucumber water then typed some more. I started to pack my bag as if I was leaving work as normal, trying to act like someone who was definitely not at any risk of being sacked for being racist.

‘There’s a code of conduct?’ you said eventually, voice sweeping up at the end.

‘What, so, we can all work in a “safe space”? There’s a lot more to feeling safe at work than bleeding the joy out of every exchange between grown adults. Trust me.’

A pause.

‘I guess I heard about your time off. I just thought you might need to possibly be a bit more careful?’

‘I wasn’t on holiday. And I was led to believe confidentiality was enshrined in the new Code of Conduct.’

‘I’m sorry. I must have heard Asif or one of the interns say something.’ You tucked your hair behind your ears and looked back at your screen before deciding to power down. I logged off too, watching for a second as the light drained away from my machine, mesmerised by the little white dot in front of me, feeling the exhaustion in my bones, my brain. A sensation rushed in around me with sickening familiarity: the compulsion to lie down and never get up again. I didn’t even notice you’d come to stand by my chair, so when I turned to leave, your body blocked my path. I gasped. Awake again.

‘Katherine. Would you consider going for a drink with me? Tonight? Now? Give me a chance to clear the air? I’m sorry, I think I’ve really overstepped the mark. I’m still feeling my way with this place. With Gem.’

Your black eyes seemed to plead with me. And I thought I saw it again, that loneliness. Your need to connect with another person. Perhaps we would end up getting a burger and talking like we’d known each other forever after all?

‘Alright. OK,’ I said, nodding dumbly, taken aback by the glint of a feeling shared.

You handed me my leather from the nearby coat stand.

‘Shall we?’ you said, smiling.

‘Give me one second.’

I nipped to the loo to text Iain:

Snowflake wants to go for a drink. Don’t worry about dinner. See you later xx

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sent a ‘Going for a drink, be home late’ text over some spontaneous invitation, maybe one of the girls finding themselves on the Southbank or London Bridge and thinking Sod it, let’s see if Rossy’s up for a drink. Iain knew how good it would have felt for me to be able to say I wasn’t coming home yet. He texted back:

That’s fab. Enjoy xxxx

You and I left the office, and that’s when we really started to talk.

I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you laugh, but you’re very beautiful when you smile. I remember thinking that you smiled a lot that night and how good that made me feel about myself. You were enjoying my company, my stories. You weren’t watching the clock, not like my old mates towards the end. And unlike them, with you, there was no sense of you waiting for the moment when you might, in not so many words, suggest I ‘pull myself together,’ or inevitably get to asking if there was any way whatsoever it would be possible to get some money back after The Film. Talking without these things hanging over the conversation made me feel more like me again. And you asked so many questions that let me hear something of my old voice again. You knew how we all love a great listener, didn’t you?

Looking back, I can see there was a tinge of something pre-rehearsed about some of your questions, and somewhere I clocked you’d all but had a personality transplant since your almost total indifference to me in the cab on Monday. But I jumped clean over my doubts and right into telling you my life story.

Chatting to another woman again about my career, my reflections on life so far, was like slipping into a warm bath. How I wanted to soak away the aches and the pains of the last few years. The imprinting process in full swing as I tried to forget all the friends who’d abandoned me. First, the ones who had babies left me, though I could understand why. I was terrible around children. Who would want the scary lady in the leather jacket who never smiled near their kids? Then, The Film did for some of the women I’d cared about most. That hurt, a specific pain I’d not known before. I suppose it was like being dumped, but I didn’t know because I’d never been dumped. My luck had run clean out. My girls, my main girls were ‘pressing pause’ on me, that’s what they said. But they never came back. Finally, there were a couple of remaining second circle friends who hadn’t invested in The Film. But they didn’t know what to do with me when the beige began to blow in. They left me too. Soon enough, the only things left standing were my work and my Iain.

‘So, where did it all start for you, being a journalist? I’d love to know. I’m so early in my journey, I know how much I need to learn!’

‘Well, I came down to London late nineties, worked in a pub for a bit, this was in the days when you could rent a room in Walthamstow for forty quid a week. I know, fucking ridiculous, right? I applied for work experience at every local paper all over London, but with no training, no degree and no connections, no one would look at me. Then one night, I was out seeing some mates in Islington and I saw these two guys start on some bloke. They had baseball bats. It was … ugly. My mates ran off home, fair enough, but I watched from across the way, got out my notepad and started getting down the details. Someone called the police and an ambulance. I managed to get some other eyewitness quotes and something from the police too. I told them and everyone else I was a reporter from the Islington Gazette. Then, I scooted back up the Victoria Line to my room, begged one of my housemates to borrow his PC, and filed the story to the Gazette. Just 250 words, but it was enough to persuade them I could come and do work experience. Pretty cool, eh?’

‘My god, yes! Amazing! Then what?’

‘I got there, loved it, worked my tits off, got on staff. The money was shit though. I knew I’d earn more on a trade mag. Junior news and features writer on Leadership was the first thing I applied for.’

‘And you got it.’

‘And I got it.’

‘And quickly became indispensable, then the youngest editor in the title’s history.’

‘Yes … Yes, that’s me. How did you—’

‘I’ve been proofing biographies for the awards supplement?’

I nodded. It sounded feasible.

‘I want you to know, I have, like, so much respect for your experience and how you’ve come up the ranks. It’s inspiring. I also really want you to know, I’m so embarrassed about the Gem-making-us-do-copy-camp-thing. I basically begged her not to make us do it. But she’s got her “own ideas” about how she’s going to run things, even though she has basically zero experience in journalism. But who are we to talk her down?’

We.

I liked how that sounded, so much. Too much. It resonated around my loneliness, arousing something deep and dormant. You and me: friends. The cub reporter and the grizzled editor, an alliance across generations against ‘the man’, or woman, in this case.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I said, swallowing the end of my second gin.

‘But I really do. I’m such a worry-wort. Are you a worrier? Sorry, I’m not talking about, you know, your time off or anything.’

‘My beige period?’ I tried to laugh.

‘Could I ask … was there a trigger for what happened to you?’

I sighed and looked at you side on, my head cocked to show you I was trying to decide whether to share my private thoughts with you or not. But at that point, it was just that: a show. The sad fact was, I was dying to tell you everything about me. While I was still, apparently, thinking about it, you added, ‘You don’t need to worry about me. You can trust me.’ And I wanted to believe you. I wanted to forget about the taxi ride and your holding back the truth about how you came to my magazine. I wanted to put all that to one side, chalk it up to coincidences and let myself believe the only thing for me to worry about was my failing talent. I wanted to let you convince me this was the case and at times like those, you were so dreadfully convincing.

‘I’m not worried about you.’ Probably the greatest lie I told myself about you, worse than convincing myself you were a friend-in-waiting.

‘Because I think you’ll find I could be very good for you. If you give me a chance.’

And your smile shone at me again as you moved one hand out across the table in my direction, reminding me of my young self again, that combination of steel and softness.

It’s then I saw it clearly: I could mentor you. We could go through the whole copy camp charade, but I’d bring you round to my way of doing things, share with you everything I knew. I would mentor you and in return you could teach me the ways of your digital world. We’d be unstoppable. We’d propel the magazine and website into the stratosphere. More readers, more advertisers, more sponsors, more everything. I would initiate our partnership by conceding to your absurd millennial vocabulary.

‘Triggers for my illness … Well, I would say it wasn’t just one thing and I’m not sure I wholly believe in triggers, not for me anyway. I’d had hard times before and they hadn’t got me down, not down-down. If anything, the dark days got me up, off my feet. Then when I got ill, it was just … total. I felt flattened, the world didn’t look like the world anymore. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t think it was just a case of, “Oh my god, we’re broke,” or “Oh my god, am I really celebrating my fortieth birthday at Leadership?” or any one thing that pushed me over the edge. It was nothing and everything.’ I shrugged, as if I was talking about some mysterious thing that had happened to me a very long time ago. You changed tack.

‘Wow. So from the late nineties to now, that’s like, a whole bunch of time. Leadership must be like a home-away-from-home.’

‘It is, or it was, before everything changed.’

‘Maybe it can be again?’ you said softly and I had to look away so you couldn’t see how much you’d moved me.

‘Sometimes I … I feel as if I’ve let Leadership down. I’ve let myself down. I know we’re going to be OK; I know we can survive using a rolling buffet of interns to keep the lights on and sponsored content to pay me.’ You visibly bristled at this, I ignored it. ‘But I can still see it, we’re slipping behind editorially. Readers, they’re so fickle these days. I’ve seen the data. They skip through a story that took a week to put together for the magazine in fifteen fucking seconds on the website and I don’t know why. You know, I did see the digital revolution coming? I thought I could ignore it, but it got bigger and bigger, so much bigger than I thought it ever would, until it changed fucking everything and it feels like I don’t get anything anymore.’ I saw some bubbles of spit land on my sleeve on the ‘m’ of ‘more’. I was literally, as you would say (correctly for once), frothing at the mouth. ‘Sorry. I—’ I began and you rubbed my forearm. ‘I don’t usually spill my guts like this.’

‘Well, get used to it, boss. OK? Shall we get a bottle of something red and warming?’

‘Yes! Allow me. Fuck it all, right?’

I noticed you recoiled slightly whenever I swore. I suppose I naturally swear a lot, but I’d always thought most journalists were prone to sweariness, whatever their age. As much as I believe people like you need to toughen-up, I didn’t like the faint tell as the skin under your eyes tightened at each curse. Before too long into our night, I stopped the ‘fucks’ and ‘cunts’ and even the ‘arseholes’. I started to feel less angry in doing so. You helped me soothe myself. Maybe you millennials were actually onto something.

It began to feel, as we sat there in the corner of The George that night, when tourists and beery workmates came and went around us unnoticed, that you and I were really communicating. I felt the warmth of a couple of gins and a bottle of Rioja and the full flush of releasing all the conversation I had pent up in me. And it was thrilling to observe your pristine complexion up-close, the swell of your cheeks, the way you tapped the white triangle of skin above your tangerine v-neck from time to time. My skin once glowed like yours.

We both looked at our glasses, only a drip in each of them. You poured the remainder of the bottle into my glass. I sensed our evening drawing to a close. I didn’t want it over yet.

‘Writing was a real escape for me. Not just journalism, writing my own stuff too. I wrote my first manuscript, just for me, to get my head together about … childhood stuff, I suppose. Does your blog help you get your head straight?’

‘I guess. That and my diary. I try to work out my future by processing the past and reporting on the present there.’

‘I used to keep my notepad with me at all times in case I ran into a story, but also if I had a thought about something or other I wanted to get down. Iain used to call it my “little book of lottery tickets”. One of them had the winning line on it, the one that would help me write the next manuscript. The One. The one that would save me, get me out of Leadership and put my life where it deserved to be …’

‘Wow. It sounds like, what did you say your husband’s called again, Iain? He sounds super-supportive.’

‘Iain. My partner, not my husband.’

You’d invited him into the conversation and then I really let myself go, encouraging you to excavate me, draw things to the surface. Because when I spoke about Iain, it felt so good to share all the gestures, big and small, that made him so wonderful. When our relationship seemed of interest to you, he and I became my proudest achievement. I seemed to be educating you about proper, grown-up partnerships. You asked me more and more questions.

‘How did you know Iain was right for you?’

‘I suppose I fell for him, hard. I sort of realised when I met him, I thought I’d been walking forward into my life. I mean, I had, but I’d been limping on one leg, because now I felt complete, balanced, a left leg to the right.’

And then I started telling you how Iain and I had come to sleep with other people, figuring I could educate you about the world, how things could be. ‘We were at a party and I had this thought that we shouldn’t deny ourselves, even though we knew we were going to be together for a long time, maybe forever. He knew exactly what I meant. That’s why we work, Lily. We have rules, like I said. We talked about everyone before and after.’

‘Who were the other guys you were with?’

‘God, all sorts really. Contacts. Friends. Friends of friends. A good many colleagues. Interns. Lots of interns.’ I immediately regretted saying this as your face twitched when I said ‘interns’ and I instantly tried to cover my tracks. In truth, there had been fewer takers over recent years, which couldn’t have helped me much. It suggested either that I wasn’t as attractive as I was when I was younger and/or most of the millennial generation were as ridiculously puritanical about sex in the workplace as I suspected. It’s hard to say which I found intuitively more disappointing. ‘I mean, yes, interns, but not for a while. Mostly when I was closer to their age. The thing with Asif? We have a bit more of a connection than interns from back in the day. He’s like my work-husband. We don’t play that way anymore, by the way. My idea.’

‘Sure,’ you nodded, giving nothing away. ‘So, what’s Iain’s type?’

‘Well, he doesn’t do wallflowers. He likes the firecrackers. Women who aren’t backwards in coming forwards, if you know what I mean.’

I liked talking about the women of yesteryear, who I really was and how I played things before living made me sick. It was all so amazingly sexy then. Until it wasn’t. Until it started to feel like an effort, like every other plate I had to keep spinning in my life. Even before I got properly ill, I’d barely looked at another man for months. Iain had calmed right down too. We’d fallen into a slower rhythm. Gone was the bed-hopping high summer, and in came a calmer September which risked heading to the freezing dead of winter if I wasn’t careful. And I wasn’t careful enough in the end, because of you.

‘What about you? Is there anyone special in your life?’

‘No, not at the moment. Hey, I’d love to meet Iain one day.’

And I let you leave it there. Because I immediately had an image of the three of us together: sat around a table, wine and conversation flying between us. We’d laugh; I’d catch Iain’s eye and he’d send me a smile that told me he was glad I’d met you, happy I had someone new to share my thoughts with, enlivened by the idea you’d be good for me, and therefore, for both of us.

‘What are you doing this weekend? Why don’t the three of us have lunch?’

‘Hey, that’d be perfect.’

We swapped numbers.

You made me take a selfie with you. It felt stupid and foreign, holding my phone on high in an unpractised way. You corrected the angle of my arm at first, your thin fingers grasping the muscles on the inside of my upper arm. I could smell all of you.

‘No, higher up. You never done this before?’

‘Erm, yeah, not as much as you lot …’ Then, in friendly frustration, you took my phone off me before scrunching into my side and miraculously working out how to put on the flash and some kind of flattering filter before handing my phone back. I loved how good we both looked in that picture. How close. In age. In comradery. In friendship. You were giving me a direct line to who I used to be: young and fun, someone you would fight to be friends with, not avoid.

I’ve looked at that picture you took of us a million times. It was far enough away that you can’t see my pissed redness, my dark circles, my desperation. Nor could I see the black energy hiding behind your eyes. Like our selfie, I vowed that at our planned Sunday lunch with Iain you would see the very best of me again.

It got to chucking-out time and you said you needed to get your bike from the yard behind the office. As we started to leave, I was overwhelmed by the idea of hugging you. I felt like we’d breached something, moved somewhere together. I stood up woozily. I remember you holding my forearm to steady me and that somehow becoming a prolonged embrace. I could feel something between us, something powerful. I didn’t want the night to end. We finally pulled away from each other.

‘You going to be OK, cycling half-cut? You could leave it overnight; I could pick up a couple of bottles along the way. We could keep talking.’

‘Think I’ll sit the next dance out, thanks all the same. I’m not actually that much of a drinker?’

I faltered for a second and clawed back an image of a finger of wine untouched in the bottom of your glass.

I was mortified.

I’d drunk and blathered on about myself and my life, while you’d listened on soberly, watching as I gulped down the booze, telling you another one of my difficult little secrets, throwing in a good amount of intimate and revealing details about Iain for good measure. You’d topped me up again and again, but you hadn’t refilled your own glass once. Was it because you were one of those oh-so-serious twenty-odd-year-olds who barely drinks, needing to wake up with a clear head in order to optimise their days? Or perhaps you felt bad because you hadn’t money to pay for any of the drinks? Or was it more deliberate than this? Paranoid anxiety needled me. But I didn’t know who I should trust less, myself, or you. And I desperately didn’t want to take the sheen off those moments where we seemed to connect.

Yet dread still rose to the surface of my uncertainty and embarrassment: the sense of you wanting me malleable, that you set out to expose me and you’d succeeded. I had the idea you somehow knew the ways to see me for what I really was. And once again, I’d spent time alone with you and discovered almost nothing about you in return.

I didn’t say much else before I sloped off into the night, moving with the drinkers spilling out of Borough Market pubs in the direction of London Bridge, pissed and alone. I know you watched me as I walked away, waiting a minute or so before turning in the opposite direction. I felt it.

Lily, I knew somewhere you were no good for me, that I was unravelling again and you were tugging hard at the threads. But whatever your interest in me, you were interested.

I had been seen.

I wasn’t invisible.

I had someone new to talk to, someone I could see on the weekend, someone who had some insight into my most ancient pains. So if it seemed to me you’d barged your way into my life and under my skin, I was ready to plough right back into yours. You can’t unlearn how to fight.

And there was something else. Somewhere, I had the idea that you liked me even though you didn’t want to.

Lily

6th March – Time for a Drink?

Down with the brown. Down. With. The. Brown. Seriously? This woman gets more and more clueless. She’s talking about ‘coded language’ when we know this is code for, ‘I’m not being racist but …’ or worse, that jokey kind of racism people her age are prone to, which they think is funny and ironic but everyone with half a soul knows is just good old-fashioned racism.

But I can’t stop looking at her, into those bright blue eyes. She can tell. She likes how it feels.

I ask her to come for a drink with me and, my god, she can unload: on The Partner, on her career, her depression, the lot. This crazy monologue she has to get out with only the smallest little nudge from me to keep it coming. Gotta admit, it’s pretty fascinating, being this close to those eyes as they dance round her memories while she sweeps her fingers through that extreme black wave of hair over and over. She doesn’t know she’s still beautiful.

I liked listening to her, even with all the appalling things she said, the most disgustingly least self-aware ideas she thinks are absolutely fine: ‘a rolling buffet of interns to keep the lights on and sponsored content to pay me.’ She thinks she’s doing us some kind of favour. Offensive in the extreme but because she’s so completely othered young adults, in her eyes it doesn’t matter what she does or takes from us.

But still, sometimes her words fall out of her studded with tiny gems of something that feels like truth, like little pomegranate pips in a bowl of bitter leaves.

I needed to keep my usual guard up, but it was hard. I haven’t found it this difficult since Ruth. That was the first, and until now, the last time I let myself open up. I wanted to be honest with Ruth about what Mum and Gem did to me and what I’ve done to other people. Ruth wanted to hear me and I wanted to tell her about everything that’s inside me.

With KR, I feel like I want to tell her things about me too. Real things. And I find myself wanting to learn more about her. That’s when I pour her another drink.

It was the plan to see her inebriated, get a view of what’s behind the leather armour. I make sure she’s fully drunk, so much so that when we leave the pub, she’s all over the show. I actually have to stop her from hitting the deck. I grab her before she drops to the cobbles. I could have let her fall, I should have let her fall, but I can’t believe it was actually my first instinct to save her.

I rescue her, despite all the times I’ve been allowed to fall and break into pieces by people like her, despite how many injustices and abuses people like me suffer at the hands of people on her level, casually using young people in their workplaces and their beds. Her bed. But even after she admits that’s exactly what she thinks is her right, to have sex with unpaid graduates in a clear abuse of power that she can’t see, I still want to help her. It’s weird.

Eventually, she’s off home, but not before she’s tried to extend the night. Way too soon for that. She’s stomping off to the bus stop in that way that’s so her. I wait and watch and I’m thinking how KR always strides or stomps everywhere when she should be treading carefully.

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