Nathan texts Alix at 6.30 p.m.:
I’m just having a quick one with Gio. Should be back before 7.30. Need me to pick anything up?
Alix sighs heavily, her thumb over the keyboard, thinking of and discarding a dozen ripe responses, before simply typing OK , turning off the screen and putting the phone down. She returns to the onion she’d been slicing for the dish she’s cooking for Josie and Walter, turns it round to dice it, then slides it into the casserole dish, where it sizzles in a pool of melted butter.
Eliza is at her friend’s house for a sleepover. Leon is watching TV in the living room. Alix thinks about the half-open bottle of wine in the fridge, thinks about pouring herself a large glass right now and glugging it. But she mustn’t. She has to hold it together. She slices chicken breasts into strips and adds them to the frying onions.
Nathan is still not home at seven thirty. She stares at her phone desperately, even though she knows there won’t be anything there. She sends a prayer out to the universe that Josie and Walter will be late, but at seven thirty-two the doorbell rings and she dries her hands, tidies her hair and heads to the front door.
‘Hi!’
Josie stands on the top step in one of the dresses they’d chosen together at the boutique, her hair held back in a French braid on one side of her head, clutching a bunch of pink roses and a bottle of expensive champagne. She beams at Alix brightly and slightly unnervingly; Josie does not usually beam. And then she leans into her and kisses her firmly on both cheeks. ‘Hi! You look lovely!’
Then Josie turns and pulls Walter to her gently by his elbow. ‘Alix, this is Walter. Walter, this is Alix.’
Walter smiles shyly at Alix and gives her his hand to shake. He has had a brutal haircut since the last time Alix saw him and is wearing brand-new clothes with sharp crease marks down the legs and sleeves. Alix feels a stab of tenderness towards him, but then remembers that he is not the innocent old man that he appears to be.
‘Come in! Come in! I’m afraid Nathan isn’t back from work yet. But he should be here any minute.’
She takes the pink roses from Josie and thanks her profusely. Then she puts the room-temperature champagne in the fridge and offers them drinks, seats them on stools at the kitchen island, pushes bowls of crisps and nuts and dips towards them and checks on the pasta sauce.
‘You have a very nice home,’ says Walter, his fingers wrapped around the bottle of Peroni Alix has just passed to him.
‘Thank you!’
‘How long have you lived here?’
Walter has a monotone voice which makes him sound as if he’s being sarcastic.
‘Oh,’ she replies. ‘About ten years. We were in a flat in Kensal Rise before that.’
‘Is that where you come from? Kensal Rise?’
‘No. I was brought up in Paddington, actually. Nathan and I moved here after we got married. And talking of Nathan’ – she locates her phone and touches the screen – ‘let me just see if he’s sent an update.’
There is no update from Nathan and it is nearly quarter to eight. She calls him and the call goes straight through to voicemail. She smiles tightly and says, ‘Gone straight through to voicemail. He must be on the tube.’
‘After-work drinks?’ says Walter.
‘Yes. I’d imagine.’
‘What does he do, your husband?’
‘He leases high-end commercial space to big companies.’
Walter nods thoughtfully, as if considering the legitimacy of this claim, and then grabs a handful of nuts from a bowl and tips them directly from the palm of his hand into his mouth.
‘How are you, Josie?’ Alix asks, her voice sounding too high in her ears.
‘Great, thanks.’
‘I love your hair like that.’ Alix gestures at the very professional French braid. ‘Did you do it yourself?’
‘Yes. I used to do the girls’ hair like this. I was always quite good at hairstyles.’
‘I just can’t,’ says Alix. ‘It hurts my brain trying to work out how to do it!’
‘I suppose I’m what you’d call “dextrous”. Sewing, dressmaking, knitting, crochet, all that kind of thing.’
Alix sees Josie throw a quick glance at Walter, who is staring unhappily at the label on his beer bottle.
‘I’ve always been good at things like that,’ Josie says, flicking another look at her husband. ‘Haven’t I?’
Walter nods, his fingertips pulling at the beer label. ‘Yes. You have.’
Alix turns to Walter. ‘Tell me about yourself, Walter. Are you from around here originally?’
‘No. I was brought up in Essex, then my parents split up when I was fifteen and I came and lived in Kilburn with my dad.’
‘In the flat where you live now?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘And you raised your family there too?’
‘Yes. Erin and Roxy.’
‘And what’s Erin up to tonight?’
‘Oh, she’ll just be in. Gaming.’
‘Oh! She’s a gamer?’
‘Yes. Hardcore.’ He laughs drily and Alix sees a strange look pass across Josie’s face. Why hasn’t Josie mentioned this aspect of Erin’s existence to her? she wonders. She glances at the kitchen clock and sees that it is nearly eight o’clock. She apologises to Josie and Walter and calls Nathan again. This time it doesn’t go through to voicemail, it rings out, and she feels a surge of hope that maybe he is, right now, halfway down the street, his tie loosened, his mood softened by a couple of pints, ready to bring fresh energy to this strange gathering of people. More than anything in the world she wishes Nathan was here – Nathan with his loud voice and high-octane ways. She doesn’t care how drunk he is, she just wants him here.
‘So,’ Walter says. ‘You and Josie. That’s an odd thing, isn’t it?’
‘What, you mean …?’ She gestures at herself and then Josie.
‘Your friendship. Yes.’
‘Friendship?’ Alix replies. ‘I thought you meant the podcast.’
‘Podcast?’ he says. ‘What podcast?’
‘Oh, come on, Walter,’ says Josie. ‘I told you. I told you this.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I told you that Alix does podcasts.’
‘Well, you might have mentioned it, but you didn’t say she was doing one about you.’
‘Oh, it’s not about me. It’s about us being birthday twins. Me and Alix.’
Alix feels an awkward cloud of dishonesty pass through the room. She’d been surprised by the fact that Walter had agreed to come along and essentially make himself a part of the project and thought that maybe he was more evolved than Josie had made him sound. But no, this was, Alix realised, a classic Josie manoeuvre, like buying a Pomchi without checking that it really was a Pomchi, or allowing herself to be groomed into a lifelong relationship by a man old enough to be her own father: a sort of blundering, thoughtless, aimless approach to life. A ‘do the thing and worry about it later’ approach. And so now Alix has to go along with the subterfuge.
She clears her throat and smiles. ‘Can I top you up?’ she asks brightly, before excusing herself to get something from the larder. When she comes back, Walter and Josie are sitting in silence, chewing crisps. Alix looks at the time. It’s been ten minutes since she tried calling Nathan and he should be home by now. She calls him again. It goes to voicemail. She sighs and brings up Giovanni’s number. She wouldn’t normally, but she cannot do this by herself. She simply cannot.
‘Oh, Gio! Hi! It’s Alix. I’m sorry to bother you, but are you still with Nathan?’
The background of the call is frenetic with the sounds of laughter and music.
‘Oh, hi, Al! Yeah. Hold on. Here he is.’
A moment later Nathan is on the line. ‘Fuck,’ he says, drawling already, and it’s not even eight thirty. ‘Fuck. Alix. Fuck. I’m leaving. Right now. Literally leaving right this second. I’ll get a cab, OK? I’m so sorry. I’ll see you in … half an hour . Start eating without me, though, if you need to.’
Alix forces a stiff smile as she ends the call.
‘Everything OK?’ asks Josie.
‘Yeah, he’s on his way. Lost track of time. Said to start without him. So I’ll get this pasta on now, shall I?’
‘I’m sorry, Alix, but I think that’s disgusting.’
Alix stops halfway to the tap with the pasta pan and turns back to Josie. ‘I—’
‘Seriously. I’m sorry. But I could hear him, on the phone, slurring. And here you are, slaving over a nice meal for him, entertaining guests, looking so nice. Who does he think he is?’
Alix feels her breath catch in the back of her throat. Suddenly, she feels threatened. It’s the deathly tone of Josie’s voice, the otherness of her, Walter by her side breathing so heavily through his nose that Alix can hear it. She thinks of Leon next door in his big headphones, his legs tucked up under him on the sofa that still makes him look tiny even now he’s getting big and she wonders what she has done. She thinks of Josie on her doorstep, rifling through her recycling box, taking home the old magazine. She thinks of Walter keeping Josie locked up at home as a young woman without a key, waiting for him to get home from work. And then she thinks of Josie’s daughters with the dead eyes and she suddenly wants to scrap the whole thing; get the champagne out of the fridge and hand it back to them, hustle them down the hallway, out of the front door and forget that she had ever allowed Josie Fair into her life.
But it is too late now. They are here, on her kitchen stools, eating sweet chilli flavour Kettle Chips, waiting for her chicken, bacon and spinach alfredo, insulting her husband. She can feel Josie’s eyes boring into her and she brings the stiff smile back to her face and says, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal. Friday night, you know. I’m sure he’s not the only man out there losing track of time. Anyway, what else can I get you? Another beer, Walter?’
He nods and thanks her and she passes him a cold beer. Then Josie says, ‘Why don’t you show Walter your amazing recording studio, Alix. He loves stuff like that.’
Alix throws Walter an uncertain glance. But he nods at her and says, ‘Yeah. I’d like that. If it’s all right with you?’
‘Yes. Absolutely. You coming, Josie?’
Josie smiles. ‘No,’ she says. ‘That’s OK. You go. I’ve already seen it.’
Alix leads Walter through the garden, which is all lit up with solar lamps and fairy lights. She unlocks the studio door and flicks on the switches.
‘Wow,’ says Walter. ‘This is pretty cool.’ He eyes every detail of the room and asks her questions about the wiring and the electrics which she cannot possibly answer.
‘You’d have to ask Nathan,’ she says. ‘He was the one who had it all done for me.’
They share a dry exchange about the general lack of Nathan and then, finally, Alix finds the impetus to ask Walter the question she’s wanted to ask him since the day she met Josie.
‘May I ask you, about you and Josie? About how you met?’
She sees Walter blanch slightly, before recovering himself and taking a slow sip from his beer bottle. ‘Depends what she’s told you, really.’
‘Well, I’d really like to just hear it from your side.’
He shrugs and sighs. ‘I knew Jojo from when she was a kid. I was friends with her mum at first. Then Jojo and I started hanging out a bit. She was too mature for people her age, you know? Found them tedious. Comes from being an only child, I think. I was the same. Always preferred the company of grown-ups. And yeah, one thing led to another, and it turned out that somewhere along the line we’d fallen for each other. And I suppose it must look weird to some people, me being so much older than her. But it’s never felt weird to us. Not once.’
Alix nods, slowly, hypnotised slightly by the bass monotone of Walter’s voice, the way he makes opinion sound like fact, the lack of nuance, space, dichotomy in the way he speaks. Yes, she thinks, yes. I can see that. I can see how that might happen between two people. But then she snaps out of it, remembers that this man bought a fifteen-year-old girl a gold bracelet for her birthday, took her to the pub and poured vodka in her lemonade. All while married to somebody else.
‘And your ex-wife,’ she continues. ‘Was she much younger than you?’
‘No. Not really. She was ten years younger than me.’
‘And how old were you when you met her?’
‘Oh, God.’ He scratches at the back of his neck and screws up his eyes. ‘I must have been late twenties, I suppose.’
Alix lets the maths of this pronouncement float between them, unremarked upon.
‘You know,’ Walter says, thoughtfully, peering at Alix through narrowed eyes, ‘she’s a tricky one, my Jojo. She gives this impression, doesn’t she … of being … simple.’
‘Simple?’
‘Yes. You know. Like there’s not much going on in her head. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about her over the years it’s that there is actually too much going on in her head. She’s not who she makes out to be. Not at all.’
His words sit there, like ticking bombs. Alix nods and says, ‘Yes. I think there is more to her than meets the eye.’
‘That’s putting it mildly,’ he says.
‘Would you …’ Alix begins, uncertainly. ‘How would you feel about talking to me a little? For my podcast?’
‘This birthday twins one?’
‘Yes.’ Alix pinches her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger and eyes him anxiously.
‘But what would it have to do with me? I’m not your birthday twin.’
‘Well, no. You’re not. But you’re married to one. And you’ve shared most of her life journey with her. It’d be great to get a few nuggets of insight from you. Just for context.’
She watches him for a reaction. It comes slowly, as a shake of the head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I think not. But for what it’s worth from my side – Jojo’s got what you might call an elastic relationship with the truth.’
‘Elastic?’ she repeats.
‘Yeah. She, er … how can I put it? When she doesn’t like the reality of things, she finds a reality she prefers.’
‘You mean, everything she’s been telling me about herself, about her life, is untrue?’
‘Well. No. I wouldn’t go that far. But you can’t believe everything she says. Just keep your wits about you.’
Alix narrows her eyes at Walter, assessing how much he is trying to manipulate her. She says, ‘Ah. OK. I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘Probably best not to say anything to Jojo. About this conversation. You know?’
‘Why not say anything to Josie?’
‘Just …’ He pauses. ‘Josie just likes to control things. You know? If she knew that I’d been talking to you, she would feel like she was losing control of you.’
‘Of me?’
‘Yes. Of you and the whole situation.’ He sighs. ‘Believe me, I know Josie better than anyone, and she’s a control freak. And you don’t even realise you’re being controlled until it’s too late.’
Alix stares at Walter for a moment. Once again, she is struck by the sheer blandness of him, the impenetrable wall of nothingness between his physical being and the rest of the world. Yet he is clearly a master gaslighter. Behind the dead eyes lies the soul of a groomer and a liar and an abuser. She feels a bolt of ice shoot through her core and shivers slightly.
She serves the pasta half an hour later at the kitchen table. Nathan has still not returned. The conversation limps on. They discuss the primary school that they have in common, working out which teachers are still there, and which have left. They discuss the state of the world, in a stolid, one-dimensional way. Leon walks in at one point, and Alix is able to leave the table for a couple of minutes to get him a snack and a drink, and to locate a charging cable for him. They discuss how delicious the food is and Alix manages to stretch out the description of the recipe into a five-minute spiel.
‘Anyway,’ says Josie, after a somewhat painful silence. ‘Where’s that husband of yours? Maybe you should give him another call?’
‘Yes,’ says Alix. ‘Maybe. I’ll give him another ten minutes.’
‘Hardly worth him coming back now,’ Josie says. ‘I mean, dinner’s over.’ Josie shakes her head sadly and tuts under her breath. ‘Terrible,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry, Alix. You poor thing.’
Alix feels herself tense up with a weird, defensive anger. ‘I’m not a poor thing,’ she replies tersely. ‘I really am not.’ She gets to her feet, the chair scraping noisily against the floor tiles, then collects the plates together loudly. She drops them on the counter above the dishwasher with a clatter and then goes into the hallway and yells, ‘Bedtime! Now!’ to a startled-looking Leon.
When she comes back to the kitchen, Josie and Walter are collecting themselves together and the atmosphere between them is horrendous.
‘Well,’ says Josie. ‘Thank you so much for a lovely evening. The food was delicious. But I think we’d best let you get on now.’
Alix drops her head into her chest. She sighs loudly and says, ‘I am so sorry. So, so sorry. But yes. And thank you for coming.’
Walter brings his empty beer bottle and places it gently on the counter. He looks like he’s about to say something, but then the moment passes, and he turns to leave. She sees them to the door and Josie pats her arm and gives her a strange hug.
‘Men,’ she whispers into Alix’s ear. ‘Fucking men .’
Alix cleans the kitchen after they leave. Then she sits and finishes the third of a bottle of wine that was left of the one she’d been sharing with Josie. When the kitchen is dark and the dishwasher is running and she feels drunk enough, she gets to her feet and goes to the living room where Leon is still sitting in the dark, curled into the big sofa, the cat at his side, staring at the TV screen with wide, exhausted eyes.
She sits down next to him and gently pulls his headphones away from his head. ‘It’s late, baby. We both need to go to bed now.’
‘Can I have five more minutes?’ he asks sweetly.
The sofa feels nice. The cat is purring. She nods and says, ‘OK. I’ll put my timer on.’ She sets the timer on her phone to go off in five minutes and leans back into the sofa, pulling her son’s feet on to her lap.
‘Why were those people here?’ Leon asks after a moment.
‘Oh,’ she replies, rubbing his toes absent-mindedly. ‘I’m interviewing them. For a podcast.’
He nods. Then he turns to look at her and says, ‘Why was the lady standing outside your studio?’
‘The lady who was here?’
‘Yes. The lady who was here. She was standing outside your studio, when you were in there with that old man, like she was listening. I saw her. Through those doors. She looked really cross. Really, really cross.’
Josie and Walter walk home in silence. Josie feels sick. All the rich food (she’d expected something more sophisticated from Alix than stodgy pasta and can’t help feeling a bit short-changed) and all the wine. She’s cross that her expensive champagne never made it out of the fridge, and cross with the way that Alix just dumped her roses in a cheap-looking vase and didn’t trim the stems or fluff them out at all. They weren’t the cheap ones; they cost twelve pounds. They deserved better.
And the whole night, of course, was completely ruined by Nathan doing what he’d done. Alix had been distracted and sharp. She had not been a good host and it had not been a good evening.
Once home, Josie opens the front door and calls out into the darkness of their flat, ‘Fred! Mummy’s home!’
The dog comes hurtling towards her and jumps into her arms.
She takes the dog out for a wee and then brings him back in again.
She notices that Walter has discarded his new Primark outfit and is back in joggers and a baggy T-shirt, the smart shirt and trousers left pooled on the floor by the linen basket like a silent two fingers up at her.
She passes Erin’s room and puts her ear to the door, listens to the sound of her gaming chair squeaking. She thinks of the little boy in the pyjamas on the sofa at Alix’s house, with the huge headphones on, staring blankly at the screen for hours and hours, totally ignored and neglected, and thinks, really, what’s the difference? Is she really such a bad parent? Who’s to know how he’ll end up ten, twenty years from now?
She watches Walter take a beer from the fridge, open it and go to the table in the bay window. He clears his throat and lifts the lid of his laptop. They have still not spoken to each other. The atmosphere between them is worse than it’s ever been in all the time they’ve been together.
‘You were an embarrassment tonight,’ she says to Walter.
He ignores her. She hears him sigh heavily through his nose.
‘The whole thing, Walter. I wanted to die.’
‘Mm-hm ,’ he intones, his gaze on his laptop, his fingertips clicking the keys.
‘Walter,’ she shouts, ‘I’m talking to you.’
‘Yes. I can hear that.’
‘So talk to me!’
‘Talk to you about what, exactly?’
‘About tonight. About how you embarrassed me.’
Finally, his fingertips stop clicking off the keys and he turns and looks at her. He looks so tired and so old that it startles her for a moment. ‘In what way’, he says, ‘did I embarrass you?’
‘Just – just by being you .’
‘That’s nice, Jojo.’
‘I’m not trying to be nice. The whole evening was a disaster. I’d been so looking forward to it and it was horrible. And you, you just sat there with your stupid beer looking like everything was beneath you. You made no effort at all. I had to do all the work.’
‘All the work? What work? Listen, I really don’t know what’s going on between you and that woman, but I can tell you something for certain. She’s no “friend” of yours. She doesn’t even like you.’
Josie feels the breath inside her lungs freeze and stop. ‘Of course she does.’
‘No, Josie. She doesn’t. She’s just trying to get inside that tiny, weird brain of yours and work out what makes you tick.’
For a moment it feels to Josie that she is in the eye of a storm, that the universe has fragmented into a million tiny pieces and is swirling and whirling around her, that she is all that is still in the world. She closes her eyes, but the feeling grows stronger.
‘Stop. Calling. Me. Weird.’
‘Well, stop being weird.’
‘Stop it!’
‘I’m not sure I can do this any more.’
‘Do what?’
‘You, Jojo. I can’t do you .’
‘And what do you think it’s like for me? Walter? Living with you . Living like this .’ She gestures around the room. ‘I can’t do this any more either. I’m at the end of my tether. I can’t keep it all locked inside. It’s killing me, Walter. It’s killing me. I need someone to know. I have to tell Alix!’
Walter stares at her through tired, disappointed eyes, and he says, slowly and coldly, ‘You really are stupid, aren’t you? Stupid as they get.’
At the sound of these words, Josie feels the swirling fragments of the universe slow down and thicken and then clear and all that is left is red-hot fury that feels as if it’s burning her from the inside out. She thinks of the things she heard Walter saying to Alix in the recording studio, poisoning her with his vile lies, and she knows that it is here, at last, the moment she has been waiting for; she feels certainty rip through her like a cyclone.