Chapter Thirty-Five
Three Corpse Revivers later
It’s been a week now. I’ve only got dressed twice, preferring to wear Devon’s Teletubbies onesie that I found in the back of her wardrobe.
To be honest I thought better of her, although I’m not sure why, as we’ve never met.
At around six p.m., I’m contemplating going over my overdraft limit to Deliveroo a bottle of Gavi and some Pringles, just to see me through the end of The Good Place, when the buzzer goes.
‘Erica?’ says a woman’s voice through the intercom.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Cassia, sweetie. Can I come up?’
What the hell? I assume this must be an apology. It didn’t need to be in person though. My first thought is the Teletubbies onesie but I suppose the last time we spoke I had an omelette stuck to my face so this could even be an improvement. I let her in without saying anything.
While she’s in the lift – or possibly on the stairs knowing Cassia (#everydayfitness) – I lean on the hall wall.
I can’t really be bothered with this. I don’t care whether she’s sorry or not, and if she’s come for any other reason, like to have a go at me for not being positive enough about ageing or something, then I don’t have the emotional energy.
I wish Nandy was here. She’d know what to say.
And then I see Cassia coming along the corridor, with greying hair in a ponytail, glasses, a hoodie and jeans.
She looks like any other middle-aged woman as she walks past me into the flat.
I guide her into the living room area with a wave of my hand. She doesn’t comment on my onesie, or anything else for that matter, but sits down on the ottoman, handbag on her knee. ‘Sorry to turn up unannounced, Erica.’
I nod. I’m not saying it’s okay because it’s not. ‘What the hell do you want, Cassia? You can’t just march in here like this.’
‘I want to help.’
‘Help?’ I sit down on the couch opposite her. ‘I haven’t really been getting that from you, what with starting the whole #whereswulty thing and revealing my identity to the press? And your reel the other day telling everyone what a terrible person I am?’
‘What makes you think it was me that told the press? And did you even watch my reel the other day?’
‘Well, no, but…’
‘Oh Erica.’ She shakes her head and looks around the room for the first time. ‘You really don’t think things through, do you?’
I don’t know what she means specifically, and it comes across as quite patronising, but in general, I agree. So, I nod, then realise shaking my head is the correct answer, so do that instead.
‘I didn’t go to the press. Merlyn did. And my reel was all about the pressures women face trying to look young, and how I get why you had the treatment. I mean, I also said I hoped you’d reverse it, but I was on your side. I am on your side. So is she.’
‘WHAT? Why would Merlyn go to the press? And what have you got to do with any of this anyway? The whole thing is really none of your business.’ I suddenly feel like I’m a pawn in a game of chess that I can’t even play (which I genuinely can’t – I did watch The Queen’s Gambit though and loved the costumes).
Cassia doesn’t reply but gets up and walks over to the kitchen area. ‘If you’re not going to offer me a drink, sweetie, I’ll make one,’ she says, opening Devon’s cupboards until she finds the one with alcohol in.
I hear her clattering about, and I’m about to tell her to get out of the kitchen – and indeed the flat – when I realise how much I need a drink. And to find out what’s going on, for that matter.
Cassia walks back over and hands me a cocktail glass with a pale yellow-orange liquid in. ‘Just the thing for you – a Corpse Reviver.’
I overlook the veiled insult and take a sip. It’s strong and delicious. Then I think about Merlyn, and how she didn’t look disappointed in her office that day when I told her about wanting to reverse WULT?.
‘Did Merlyn want me to get the treatment reversed?’
‘Of course,’ says Cassia.
‘Why “of course”? What the hell? I don’t get it – she was the one who suggested it to me in the first place?’
‘True, yes, she also wanted you to have the WULT? treatment, but not for the reasons you might think.’
‘What would be the other reason for having it, apart from the obvious one?’
‘She wanted you to have it, and enjoy it – then…’
‘Then what?’
Cassia sighs, as if bracing herself to deliver the words. ‘Then… regret it.’
‘Again – what?’
‘Regret it. Realise it’s not what you want at all. Not long-term, anyway. She thought if you – someone clever and relatable – went through the whole process and then decided you didn’t want it, people might pay attention. It would do a lot more than a damning review in Glowgetter.’
I take another sip of my drink. ‘I still don’t get it.’ I really, really don’t.
‘When Yuvana offered the trial, Merlyn and I were horrified at the concept, but we decided not to say anything, as we were also part of the selection process. We knew the best way to shut the whole thing down would be from the inside out. Anyway, all the usual names came up – the big influencers like me, Imani and Lily from @LuxeLooksWithLily. But Merlyn and I thought, actually, we could do some good with this. Not just hand it over for someone to make themselves even more famous. So we thought of you – someone who would ask questions, I suppose. Well, she thought of you. She always does, it seems.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
‘Erica, you’re so funny, so clever, but always so desperate to look younger. Merlyn and I talked about it a lot. I love being older – so does she. Even when I was getting trolled I was proud to be a Wise Woman. Wise Women don’t give a crap!’
She pauses and I can see she looks almost tearful. ‘We got quite emotional when we first saw you transformed on Instagram, really hoping it would make you rethink your whole obsession with youth… Break the spell, I suppose.’ She trails off.
I feel a rising anger. How dare they? I’m not their pet project. I don’t need fixing. Although this does explain why I was picked over the heavyweight influencers. I never could work that out.
‘That was a risky thing to do,’ I say. ‘I mean… how did you and Merlyn know I would even want to reverse the treatment?’
‘We didn’t. And at the end of the day, it was up to you. Nobody forced you into it. But we had faith in you.’ She winks like she does on her reels and takes a gulp of her cocktail. ‘My reels and the press thing were just to move it all along a bit more quickly, what with Devon coming back.’
I drain my drink, put the glass on the coffee table and stand up, looking around the room as if the answers are hanging from the walls.
It’s a lot to take in. Merlyn has always looked after me, but this is next level, life changing, fairy godmother stuff.
The ball I’m going to… or trying to go to at least, could be a happier life.
And that would be quite the party – if I can get there, that is.
Now the tears come – and come, and come, and drip down onto my onesie.
I make a big snorting snivelling noise. ‘JEEZ, Cassia. What am I supposed to do now? This has really backfired. I need to go and visit my mum, she’s ill in hospital and doesn’t recognise me like this.
It’s not just that either. My friendships are in tatters, and to top it all, Dr Marcus has gone missing, so I don’t even know if they are going to be able to reverse it. What if I’m stuck like this?’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry, sweetie. This is why I came over, to see how you are.
And see if I can help.’ She stands up and puts her hands on my arms, as though holding me up.
It’s a bit weird. I haven’t been this close to her in a long time.
I look at her face. She’s really different to how she seems in her reels, much more…
human, I suppose. I suddenly don’t hate her as much as I thought.
‘Cassia,’ I say, feeling like this is the moment to finally get it off my chest. ‘I was really hurt when you got the assistant editor job at Beautique. I wanted it so much. But I know how you got it, about the whole Egon thing. It’s okay.’
‘The whole Egon thing?’
‘Yeah, Egon, from the board. I mean, your dad was friends with him, right?’
‘Erm… yes. But that’s not why I got the promotion.’
‘What?’
‘I got it because of the “pro-ageing” issue I mocked up for the interview.’
I must be staring open-mouthed because she goes on. ‘It had Joanna Lumley on the cover, and the headline “Grand Old Age”. I was really pleased with it. What did you do for yours?’
I think about my stick-on eye serum sample and ‘Young Ho!’ headline and cringe so much about my obsession with youth that I almost shudder.
‘Oh… it doesn’t matter now.’ I sniff and try a smile, glad of her half-hug. I’m getting bored of asking myself how I could have been such an idiot. So I change the subject. ‘Did you say you were trolled?’
‘Oh yes, relentlessly. For my hairy chin, my grey hair, turkey neck, you name it. So I thought, you know what, I’m just going to go completely grey, wear specs, stop getting my lips done – embrace it all.
It’s better than the alternative.’ She releases her grip on me and walks back over to the kitchen.
I think about poor Erica Pells from Ava, Missouri, and nod, picking up my drink and draining the last of it. It’s making my cheeks pink.
‘D’you want another?’ says Cassia, already pouring things into the cocktail shaker.
‘I thought you were only allowed one. You know, hashtag mindfuldrinking?’
‘Don’t believe everything you see on social media.’
This is what Father Pells would have called ‘a turn up for the books’.
Three Corpse Revivers later and Cassia and I are sitting in the deckchairs on the balcony.
‘It’s so noisy here,’ says Cassia as a siren blares in the street below.
‘I know. I actually hate it now. But I can’t go back home. I’m stuck.’
‘There’s always hope, Erica. Come on. We’re Wise Women. Let’s go and make a plan.’ She pulls herself up, staggers, then turns round and holds out her hands, pulling me up too.
Back inside, we get out my laptop, which we can’t open to start with and dissolve into laughter.
I mean, we’re drunk – but let’s be clear, I’m not suddenly best mates with Cassia.
Nobody was holding out for that plot twist. Her incessant use of the word ‘sweetie’ really grates as does the fact that she talks about being ‘decadent’, which I’m fairly sure nobody who is actually decadent says.
‘Give it here,’ says Cassia. ‘I’m an influencer. I know how to work Google.’
More laughing, and replenished Corpse Revivers, and Cassia is suddenly concentrating hard on reading something on a website.
‘I think the problem here, sweetie, is that you have been looking for the wrong person.’
‘What d’you mean? It’s Dr Marcus we need. Or Marcus, should I say.’
‘Yes, but if he’s hiding, we’re never going to find him. However, d’you know who is not hiding?’
‘No – who?’
‘Professor Brandt. Dr Marcus’s former partner. She’ll know how to reverse WULT?. In fact I think she had more of a hand in its creation than that phoney doctor did.’
I thought Professor Brandt was a man. Which doesn’t reflect that well on me… But that’s probably why I’ve never been able to find out much about her online.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Rosamund.’ She points at the screen. ‘That’s her.’
I peer at the laptop, swaying slightly, and can see a woman in her fifties, with a half-smile and neat, shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, wearing medical scrubs. ‘Oh well done. So where is she?’
‘Geneva. She works for Médecins Sans Limites now. We need to get to her.’
I might be full of vintage cocktail, but the name Médecins Sans Limites rings a very loud bell. Then I remember – Laure. That’s who Laure works for. Maybe there is a chance after all.