AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Josie opens her mouth, words waiting on the tip of her tongue but not being spoken. Then she smiles, tightly, and says, ‘Nothing! Nothing.’ She places her bag on the floor, pulls her headphones towards her and says, ‘Shall we start?’
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
Screen shows a pink wooden chair with a heart shape cut out of the back.
The chair has been modified with straps and belts.
It stands in an empty room, lit by rays of daylight shining through grubby windows.
The text under the shot reads:
Recording from Alix Summer’s podcast, 11 July 2019
Josie’s voice begins.
‘Walter couldn’t cope with them. He was away a lot. He’d been made redundant by the company he’d been working for in London and ended up getting a much better job with an electrical company that worked mainly out of Scotland and the Northeast. So he’d be away for days on end, just back for the weekends. I have to say, I liked it. For so many years I’d existed only as half of a couple and as a mother. I had never been alone, not really. You know, before the girls were born, I didn’t even have a key to our flat. I just used to have to wait in for him to get home from work. Just wait in, all day … so I liked those years when Walter worked away during the week, when it was just me and the girls. We were happy. We were free. I let the girls be themselves, gave them room to breathe. But then Walter would get back at the weekends and, well, everything would change. And not in a good way.’
The shot of the pink chair with the leather straps fades away.
The screen goes black.
***
11 a.m.
Walter has been to the barber’s and, to Josie’s great disappointment, looks almost exactly the same. She masks her dismay and thanks him for making the effort. He grunts in response, and she knows that she’s pushing him very close to the precipice of his own tolerance of her.
Their marriage sometimes feels like a huge ship that left harbour facing one way and has slowly, lugubriously, turned 180 degrees, headed off in the wrong direction and then stalled. Somehow, Josie had taken control of the deck, but it had turned out that she was as bad at steering the ship as Walter had been, and ever since, they’d been going round and round in circles, staring disconsolately into the middle distance, waiting to be rescued.
Until Alix.
Josie takes three jars of baby food from the cupboard and heats them up for Erin. She places them on a tray with a spoon and a pouch of Ella’s Kitchen pureed mango and apple. She leaves the tray outside Erin’s room. She kisses her fingertips, puts them to the door and then goes to her bedroom to get ready for work.
When Josie gets back from work, Walter has been clothes shopping. He doesn’t do her a fashion parade. He merely cocks his head at the Primark bags and says, ‘Go on, then. Have a look.’
He’s done quite well. A nice navy-blue casual long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of camel-coloured chinos. He’s even got some new socks.
‘Good,’ she says to him, with a nod. ‘Very nice.’
He grunts. She can sense him shutting down.
She gets started on a shepherd’s pie. It’s Walter’s favourite of her small repertoire of dishes, and even though she’s trying to be more experimental with food these days (yesterday she made a dish with couscous, halloumi and chickpeas), today Walter deserves something he likes. Then she takes the dog for a walk around the block. She thinks she sees Roxy three times in the ten minutes she’s out of the house and the second she gets home she opens up her laptop and searches for her in the places she always searches for her on the internet. But, as always, she is not there.
Normally Josie doesn’t talk to Walter about Roxy; they never talk about the girls at all, it’s just made everything easier, somehow. But later on, as they sit side by side on the sofa eating the shepherd’s pie, Josie turns to Walter and says, ‘Do you ever think you see her? Roxy?’
He throws her a look. She knows he’d planned not to talk to her tonight; he’s still smarting from how horrible she’s been to him the last few days. But this isn’t the sort of question you can ignore because you’re in a huff, and she sees his guard fall, and then another take its place. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, when you’re out. Do you see someone on the street and think it’s her, for a minute? And then realise it’s not?’
He’s silent for a second before nodding. ‘Yeah. Sometimes.’
‘Do you ever wonder if she’s dead?’
‘Course I do. All the time.’
They fall silent for a moment and eat their food, but the air is filled with things they both want to say, and Josie gets in first.
