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She sends her a message:
It was lovely talking to you earlier. Thank you so much for your time. I just listened to the recording, and I can see how this is going to take shape and I’d really like to continue with the project if you’re happy to do so? Maybe next time we could visit the estate where you grew up, where you first met Walter. What do you think?
She presses send and stares for a few minutes at her phone, looking for a sign that Josie has seen it, that she is replying. But ten minutes pass and there is nothing. She finally turns off her screen and lies herself flat, tries to lull herself into a sleep that she knows will not come for many hours.
10 p.m.
Josie rests her open book against her chest and looks at the message on her phone screen.
It’s from Alix. The sight of her words on her screen sparks something inside Josie. A kind of childish delight. Something like a crush. She opens it and reads it in a rush and then again more slowly. She pictures herself on her Kilburn estate with Alix and she feels a shiver of delight. She could introduce her to her mum, watch her mother’s face as it dawns on her that someone like Alix is interested in her daughter. She could picture the confusion followed by, yes, no doubt, a flicker of jealousy. She would think that Alix should be making a podcast about her , the legendary Pat O’Neill. And no doubt Alix would have questions for her mother, but they would be questions related only to Josie, questions to help Alix find out more about Josie, not more about Pat. Her stomach flips, pleasantly. She doesn’t reply immediately, but goes instead to her browser and googles Alix Summer, spends half an hour flicking through photos of Alix, looks at her Twitter feed, at her Facebook page, which is set to private but has a couple of posts visible, at her Instagram feed. She reads listeners’ reviews of Alix’s podcasts and sees photos of her at award ceremonies in swirling satin dresses. When Josie has had her fill of Alix Summer, she returns to the message but realises that it is gone eleven, that it is too late to politely reply. She sighs, turns off her screen and picks up her book.
From somewhere else in the flat she hears the muted sounds of her husband’s voice. She tucks in her earplugs and turns the page of her book.
Friday, 21 June
Nathan finally replies to Alix’s message at 6 a.m. She hears her phone buzz on the bedside table, yanks down her sleep mask, grabs her phone and squints at it.
Fuck. Sorry. Don’t know what happened. At Giovanni’s. Blacked out. Please don’t kill me.
She lets the phone fall back on to the bedside table and tugs her mask back down over her eyes. She has thirty minutes before her alarm goes off – she’s not wasting it. She didn’t get to sleep until after two in the end and her head is thick with tiredness and despair. She tries to claw back the stolen half-hour, but her adrenaline is pumping again; her husband went somewhere last night and has woken up in his friend’s flat and doesn’t know what happened in between. Her husband, who has a career and a mortgage and two children to think about. Her husband, who is forty-five.
A second later her phone buzzes again. She groans and picks it up.
On my way home now. Please don’t hate me. I love you. I’m sorry. I’m a dick.
Once again she puts the phone down and pulls her sleep mask over her eyes. But now there is even more adrenaline pumping through her. She is enraged. Please don’t hate me . Like a whiny little boy.
She gives up on salvaging the last half-hour of sleep and sits up in bed. She stares for a moment at the messages on her phone and wonders what to do. She decides not to reply, not yet, not until her rage has subsided. But a moment later her phone buzzes again and it’s him with a plaintive: Alix???
Her hands shake slightly with rage as she presses call on his number.
‘Hi.’ His voice is small, and it makes her even angrier.
‘I didn’t get to sleep until two a.m., Nathan. Two a.m., waiting to hear from you. Wondering where the fuck you were. And then you message me at six a.m. and wake me up, and you know my alarm goes off at six thirty yet you couldn’t even wait for half an hour because you’re too fucking selfish. So yes, thanks a lot, Nathan. I’ve had four hours’ sleep and now I have to get our kids up and get them ready for school and then do a full day’s work and you don’t even know where you’ve been.’
‘Alix, I am so sorry. It’s just—’
‘Fuck off, Nathan.’
She turns off her phone and slams it down.
Then she gets out of bed and has an extra-long shower.
By the time she gets the children to school at 8.50, she is calm again. Nathan has messaged three more times, professing his dismay at his own behaviour and promising her that it will never ever happen again. It is Friday and the weather is forecast to be beautiful this weekend and Alix is having lunch with her sisters on Sunday and she doesn’t want to hold on to the terrible dark feelings that had her in their nightmarish grip all of last night and so she forces herself to let them go.
After saying goodbye to the children at the school gates she is about to turn and leave when she remembers that she has a form that needs to be handed into the school office. She goes to the side gate of the school and rings on the bell, is buzzed in a moment later.
‘Hi, Alix!’
It’s Mandy, the office manager.
‘Hi, Mandy. This form is for the Natural History Museum trip tomorrow. I’m really sorry, it’s been in my handbag for weeks and I keep forgetting to drop it in. Sorry, it’s a bit scrunched up.’
She passes the scruffy piece of paper across the desk towards Mandy, who smiles and says, ‘No problem, lovey. I have seen worse, I can assure you.’
And as she says this, Alix looks at her and thinks, Mandy has been working here for twenty years; there was a celebration for her last year to mark the anniversary. The longest-serving member of staff.
‘Oh, Mandy. By the way. I’ve just started talking to a mum whose kids used to be at this school, a long time ago. They’re in their early twenties now. I wonder if you remember them?’
