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They end the call and Alix slowly places the phone on her bedside table. She is about to pick up her book when the scream of a fox disturbs her. She gets out of bed and walks to the window seat overlooking the garden. Here she pulls her feet up under her and watches for a while as two foxes play in the garden in the warm moonlight. She and Nathan have sat here together before, watching foxes through the window, and she feels the echoes of those moments running through her, from her head to her feet. Nathan in boxers, a toothbrush in his mouth, coming over to sit next to her, the smell of him – what was it? A sort of solid smell, like cars, like books, like trees. And the sheen of the skin on his back. And the reassuring feel of his weight next to hers in the bed, which even though she always fantasised about having her own room, she always appreciated. And then she remembers a moment a few weeks ago, in the recording studio with Josie, when Josie had been telling her the untrue story of how she and Walter had got together and she remembers Josie saying, ‘Well, as we’re birthday twins, it’s only fair that you should tell me about when you met Nathan. What was it like? Where did you meet him?’
Alix quickly pulls on her dressing gown and heads quietly through the house and out into the garden, where the foxes stare at her boldly for a moment before disappearing into the foliage. She unlocks the doors to her recording studio and puts on her headphones, searches through the recordings until she finds the one she’s looking for. And there is Josie’s voice, that odd, hollow voice with no inflection and emotion, asking Alix, ‘Where did you meet him?’ and Alix’s reply follows.
Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
The camera pans back from the burnt white of the sun and on to drone footage of the calm rippling waters of Lake Windermere.
The drone drifts slowly down the length of the lake as Alix’s voice carries over the film.
The text below reads:
Recording from Alix Summer’s podcast, June 2019
‘I was almost thirty when we met. I was starting to worry that I was never going to meet anyone. I was working in publishing at the time, it’s a notoriously girl-heavy industry, the chances of meeting anyone were slim to zero. I was living with my sister Zoe. We were perennially single. Zoe was two years older than me and had already given up. But I still felt like he was out there. You know? I could smell him, almost, hear him coming. So I just kept putting myself out there. Time after time after time. But nothing. No one.’
Josie’s voice interjects: ‘I can’t believe that. A beautiful woman like you.’
Alix says: ‘Ha. That’s not how it works. Trust me, it isn’t. And then, one night, just before my thirtieth birthday, I was on my way home, and I was drunk, and I remembered that I had something to collect from the dry cleaner’s. I’d been meaning to pick it up for weeks, but for some reason I chose nine o’clock on a Tuesday night when I’d just had half a bottle of wine and a gin and tonic to do it. And there was this guy in front of me, collecting shirts, bright red hair, taller than me, nice shirt, nice body. But it was the voice. That was the first thing. This voice. So confident. But not arrogant. Just a really good voice. And then when he’d paid, he turned round and I saw this face. I can’t explain it. I saw this face and I thought: It’s you. It’s you. Like I’d already met him? Like someone had already told me about him? But of course, nobody had. Nobody had told me. I just knew. I said something cringey like that’s a lot of shirts and he stopped and looked at me and I was drunk and he was sober and I think he just thought he’d play with me a bit and he said, “Yes. I eat a lot of shirts.” And then I said, “Sorry, I’m a bit drunk,” and he said, “Yes, I know.’ And he just looked at me and his eyes were this colour, I don’t even know if there’s a word for it. Just the most incredible shade of nothing. And I got my dry cleaning, and he took me to the pub. And that was that. Two years later we were married. A year after that I was pregnant with Eliza.’
The soft drone footage stops abruptly.
The scene changes to a shot of the inside of an empty recording studio.
Josie’s voice plays on the audio.
‘Do you still love him?’
‘Of course. Yes.’
‘But, like, really love him. Like you did back then, in the dry cleaner’s? When you didn’t know anything about him.’
‘It’s a different kind of love. But yes, I do.’
‘You don’t ever think that your life would be better if you were on your own?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘And yet you call yourself a feminist.’
‘Yes. I do. And I am. You can be happily married and a feminist.’
‘I don’t think so. I think that you can only be a feminist if you’re single.’
‘Oh. That’s an interesting counterpoint. Can you elaborate?’
‘I shouldn’t need to, Alix. You should understand what I’m saying.’
A short pause follows.
Then Josie says , ‘You have to be free in order to be in control, Alix. You have to be free. No baggage. A clean break. Like your friend Mari le Jeune said, the one from your podcast. Remember what she said, about clean breaks. Remember?’
The audio fast-forwards and rewinds briefly, before another voice plays over the video.
The text on the screen says:
This is the voice of Mari le Jeune, the subject of one of Alix Summer’s previous podcasts from her series All Woman .
