Chapter Two #2
Shaking her head ruefully, Alice buries her face deeper inside the pillow while Timira prattles on.
‘In any case, I’m just glad it’s over. And I’m fine, you know. You can tell, right?’
Alice doesn’t respond.
‘Alice, Ally, Aloo. Look at me, hey!’ Timira pokes her index finger into the nape of Alice’s neck and proceeds to tickle. Wriggling away from her finger and giggling, Alice lifts her head up from the pillow and throws it back.
‘What? What do you want?’
‘Look at me, noooo! I look fine, right? I don’t look sad and mopey, do I?’
Alice takes a long, hard look at her nutty friend’s face—her overgrown bangs, the dark circles around her eyes and her sunken cheeks that don’t break into dimples as often anymore—and smiles.
‘You are right. No one can tell. You look great!’
‘Hah, I knew it! I’ve had to work very hard these past couple of weeks so Mum and Dad wouldn’t find out. You know what that’d mean, right? Oh, God! Just the thought of it …’
Timira mock shudders and turns her face away to look out of the window overlooking the pool.
Oh, you nutcase. I’m glad you think you have everyone fooled.
Turning back to face Alice, Timira continues, ‘I could be an actor, you know? I’m a natural, I think.’
She slides her hand underneath her chin and pouts a little.
Alice laughs and recalls all the day-drinking and weeping courtesy of Timira at her place since they’d come back from holiday and the concerned, worried-sick calls from Timira’s mother about her child indulging in bizarre activities like clearing off the pantry overnight, buying boxing equipment and punching the sandbag through the night, talking to herself and weeping behind closed doors, throwing away many of her belongings.
A great actor indeed … Alice smiles indulgently, lovingly.
‘Oh, by the way. Have I told you how happy Ma has looked of late?’
‘Huh, what?’
Alice is taken aback by Timira’s sudden change of topic.
‘Ma. My mum, your gossip partner, teehee!’
Alice gulps. She shares a close relationship with Timira’s mother—a fact she knows Timira loves and abhors equally.
She will have my head if she finds out we’ve been talking. Right, I just need to play dumb here. Argh, when will this end? Did we pay for such a long session?
‘You’ve not come home in a while so you’ve not seen it. There’s a glow to her face. Of course, it has dulled since I told her about quitting work but …’
Timira’s words trail off as, out of the blue, she recalls the incident with the AirPods and remembers the wicked smile on her mother’s face. The one that had made her suspicious about what her mother might have known.
Attempting to make her voice sound as snarky as she possibly could, she takes off from where she had left off.
‘Now that I think about it, it’s as though she were thrilled about my break-up. Makes me wonder if she had known about me and Rod all along…’
‘C’mon, now. I’m sure you’re only imagining this. Nobody knows about you and Rod,’ Alice mutters through the straw she is now sipping coconut water from.
Liar , thinks Timira, but she doesn’t say a word, only smiles a knowing smile. ‘Yeah? Yeah, you might be right. She didn’t seem to notice when we were dating. I clearly hid it well!’
‘And you are proud of it?’
Alice realizes after she’s said it that her words have come out sounding nastier than she had intended.
Timira, smarting from the sudden attack, recoils and replies in a small voice, ‘Well, no, not proud. I mean, she didn’t seem interested all this while …’
‘Of course she didn’t. You are a fantastic actor! You should defo be proud!’
Sensing an opportunity, Timira goes for the kill. ‘You and I both. Such great actors!’
Alice chokes on the coconut water she has been sipping and has to cough. So forcefully that her sheet mask comes undone.
Timira knows , Alice is sure.
Alice knows that I know. Timira flashes a victorious grin.
When Alice turns her face towards Timira, the mask is hanging precariously from one eyebrow.
Timira bursts out laughing, forgetting she was snarky, scathing and quizzical only a minute back.
Alice is thankful that she is amused and seems to have left her anger behind.
This isn’t one of her best moments and she does not want her best friend to dwell too long on her traitorous behaviour.
Trying to keep Timira distracted, Alice quickly goes back to the original topic of why Tim had quit her job in a huff.
‘How many times are you going to ask me the same question, Ally? You’ve been asking me to do my own thing for so long, anyway, aren’t you happy that I can now finally do it?’
‘Sure, but you did not quit with a plan. You quit just because.’
‘Well, what’s done is done. Oh, wait, did I tell you I scratched his car?’
‘Whaaaaaat?!’ Alice is mortified. ‘What if you’d been caught?’
‘No, silly. I’m smart. I did a stealth-mode recce. You should’ve seen me, dude. Like a secret agent!’
‘You fool! What if you got caught on CCTV?’
This thought hadn’t occurred to Timira, obviously.
Oh, shit.
She’s about to get anxious but then she imagines the look on Rod’s face upon seeing the scratch and decides against freaking out.
‘Whatever, bro. It was either that or kicking him in the nuts. Can you imagine what’d have happened then?
Dekh , I’d have had to see his face if I carried on at Marbella and I really don’t wish to see him ever again.
Not to mention all the gossip I’d have been the subject of.
Nahin chahiye drama, chingu-ya . I’ve had enough with that drama queen masquerading as a hot footballer! ’
Alice doesn’t press any further. She is, in fact, a little proud of the wisdom coming out of her nutty friend’s mouth.
‘Oh, f**k! My purse isn’t here,’ Timira announces out of the blue.
She wants to show her new ‘freelancer’ visiting card to Alice, but can’t seem to find her purse. Rushing out of the spa, they make a dash for her room—the purse is missing.
Alice suggests they trace her steps from her room to the spa, and Timira finally finds it at the hotel reception. She checks its contents and finds nothing missing.
Caught up in expressing gratitude to the universe for her purse finding its way back to her, she doesn’t notice one less business card in the stack.
Elsewhere, in the middle of a meeting, Baek Haneul is absent-mindedly turning a visiting card between his fingers before placing it on the table and staring long and hard at the name printed across it in pearl-white chancery font on a black body.
Timira Leia Marak
Independent PR and Image Consultant