Chapter 26
After turning the key in the door at six a.m., I doze for a few hours and it’s fitful sleep, the type where I need to keep pushing myself back down into oblivion.
Right before midday, I wake with the excitement of Christmas morning.
There’s a hangover battling around my head but nonetheless, I am buzzing with a whole new vigour.
I take a shower and I feel so sensual and horny that I masturbate quickly using the shower head.
Afterwards, I make a mental note to invite Naomi shopping.
I walk into the kitchen and Naomi is there, red-eyed and teary, with a stack of papers next to her. At first, I take it that something has happened with Stevie – perhaps they have broken up after all – but she stiffens when I open the door and say, ‘Oh, my love, what is it?’
Naomi doesn’t react, instead watching me under heavy, swollen lids as I walk into the room.
‘Nothing,’ she whispers, to herself as much as anyone else.
I turn to the coffee machine, weirded out by the crackle of energy in the air.
‘What are you doing today?’ Her voice sounds weird, as though it’s a genuine effort to stay normal.
‘Not sure yet,’ I tell her. ‘Last night was sort of full on, so maybe just some writing.’
She takes this in. ‘Cos that’s what you’re doing, right? When you’re on your cell or your laptop all night. Writing this great piece of work.’
‘I’m not sure I’d call it great,’ I say uncertainly.
Naomi’s stiffness then melts into a quiet fury. I try to read the papers, upside down. They look like screengrabs from emails, Facebook messages and Gchat conversations.
‘Do you know someone called Violet Stafford?’ she says, sounding like nothing I’ve heard from her before. Glacial. As though we’re in a courtroom.
I can feel the heat creeping up my neck, travelling towards my cheeks, making my whole head purple.
‘She’s some random teenager that friended me on Facebook a long time ago,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not sure she’s the full shilling, to be honest.’
Appearing to nod in comprehension, Naomi then puts her finger down on the thick pile of papers and peels a page from the top. She angles it away from her face and begins reading.
‘“I truly feel that if I were to meet Ted Levy, I would explode with happiness,”’ she reads, peering at me over her glasses.
She picks up another. ‘“I can’t believe it but I am actually friends with his sister now. No sign of him anywhere though unfortunately. I haven’t checked her room yet but surely there must be some sign of him there. He’s her brother after all.”’
Hearing them out loud is making me see white spots dancing in front of my eyes. ‘“I can’t wait to meet Judith …”’ Naomi begins before exploding. ‘My fucking MOM??’
I start to explain, even though I’m not fully sure exactly what I’m going to say, and she cuts me off. I can barely look at her face, which is creased with hurt. I can barely stand to see it. I’m blanketed in guilt, making this woman, who deserves none of it at all, feel like this.
Violet must have sent her screengrabs of absolutely everything.
Why? I start to seethe with indignation.
I want to contact Violet immediately, but Naomi is here in front of me, and I need to sort this first. Do I come clean and say this was an elaborate ruse to meet Ted, who I had thought of mainly as a potentially professional contact, but it somehow got out of hand?
Do I tell her that we sort-of met back in London?
Do I heap another lie on top of the rest, figuring another can hardly hurt?
Naomi is Baltic-cold, waiting for my response. I didn’t think she could even get this icy as a person. I stand there with my gums flapping, and I hate myself for it.
‘There was no baby, was there?’ she whispers as though she is afraid to hear the answer. ‘That was all made up, right?’
‘Of course there was a baby!’ I say emphatically, but something in my voice, something hesitant, seems to betray me.
‘What about Hiroshima? Was that all bullshit too?’ Her voice is low and even, as though she is dealing with a full-blown psychopath.
‘It wasn’t! I swear! Why would I—’
She processes it all, closing her eyes, disgusted.
‘The things I have told you in this house,’ she whispers.
‘All those times we talked about losing our children, my DEAD fucking children, and how we would never get over it, and you’re in my daughter’s bedroom?
And I find out that, all the time, this was about Ted?
Trying to get with my step-brother? This is beyond disgusting. ’
She rifles through the papers, finds a comment I’ve left on the Tedettes Facebook page. ‘This one was written over a year ago. So you’ve been in this group for a while. This fan thing.’
Her breathing is starting to sound agonized. ‘You don’t truly believe that my brother is going to be your … boyfriend or something?’ she spits. Seeing her look at me anew is a special kind of agony. But also, I don’t like what I’m hearing, either.
‘You say that like I wouldn’t stand a chance with someone like him,’ I snap back, the words forming out of nowhere.
She barks an incredulous laugh. ‘Have you seen his girlfriend? The actual, literal supermodel? Sorry, that guy is as shallow as they come, always has been. He only ever goes for Size Two hotties. Size Two hotties THAT AREN’T FUCKING INSANE.’
I’m torn between wanting to stand my ground, but also salvaging all of this.
How do I get her back on side and convince her I am not insane, but just a woman who genuinely feels that Ted and I would be a good fit, and I’m just trying to make that happen?
Will Naomi and I look back on this moment in years to come and laugh?
About how I met her brother, how attracted to him I initially was, and how I admired him so much from afar that I went to extraordinary lengths to try and become his lover?
Lengths that required, sure, a bit of deception and cunning in the moment, but were genius nonetheless?
Naomi starts pacing. ‘What have I done?’ she says to herself. ‘I’ve invited a psycho in here.’
At this, something in me boils up and over.
‘You invited a “psycho” into your house because you needed a drinking buddy! You’re a total pisshead, and it suited you completely fine to have someone to drink with here, night after night.
You also got a free live-in therapist into the bargain.
You got plenty out of this, and you know it. ’
The way she looks at me feels as though someone has taken a samurai sword and split me evenly down the middle.
‘You need to pack your shit in the next hour,’ Naomi is close to growling.
‘You don’t pack anything in this house that belongs to me or my family.
’ She moves to the door, breathing shakily as I trail along behind hopelessly.
‘I have booked a one-way flight to London for you and it leaves tonight,’ she says in a low, even voice.
‘We are going to drive to the airport together. Don’t see this as an act of generosity or friendship.
I am going to walk you to the security gates, to make sure, beyond a doubt, that you are going to be out of my life, and my step-brother’s life, and you’re going to stay out of it.
And once that happens, I will not call the cops.
I will not press charges. If I hear so much as your name mentioned in passing around here, I will change my mind on all of that. ’
Something in me breaks. I don’t want to fight for any of this. It feels over, and I deserve for it to be over. I nod my assent and turn to leave.
‘There really was a baby, you know,’ I tell her. ‘I wouldn’t dream of lying about something like that.’
But Naomi doesn’t want to know. ‘Your flight’s at seven. I want to be on the road by three.’
It takes no time at all to pack as I dump clothes into the suitcase without folding them.
Bottles are thrown in askew. It feels almost calming to be doing this, like being caught out and being moved on unceremoniously to a new phase is a relief.
I momentarily consider taking something, anything, even a spoon from the kitchen that she wouldn’t miss.
But something in Naomi’s voice, the hurt and anger, stops me.
Naomi takes my suitcase down the driveway and throws it into the back of her car in one quick motion. Being this angry has given her a kind of superstrength. I’m aflame with shame as a neighbour across the street, washing his car, watches this all unfold as he sponges his windscreen uncertainly.
In the car to the airport, we are utterly wordless.
It is like being in a taxi driven by a stranger, although it’s slightly worse because Naomi was at least once a friend.
Despite the heat around us, she is stony-faced, looking nowhere but straight ahead.
Talking about what has just happened will likely only serve to make things worse.
‘I might try and eat in the food court, if I have the time,’ I say breezily as though we’ve been chatting for the whole car journey. ‘Depends on what’s going on in security, I suppose.’
Naomi’s eyes fall into a heavy blink but aside from that, she doesn’t bother with a response. She doesn’t care if I eat or starve.
Naomi parks at the British Airways terminal and gets out of the car, waiting for me around the back like I’m a tardy schoolchild. As soon as I have my suitcase and bags, she walks in front of me, urging me to keep up with her pace.
Checking in and dropping my suitcase takes a lifetime, and Naomi doesn’t drop her coldness, keeping her eyes on the face of the person checking passengers in.
All around me I can feel the weight of people watching, wondering who this woman is next to me, not letting me out of her sight, but also as hostile as a prison guard.
She’s like someone official from immigration; in a weird way this feels as if I am being deported.
We move in silence to the security gate, Naomi walking as briskly as her pinned, scarred leg will allow her.
‘Are you going to tell Ted about any of this?’ My voice is small in the asking.
She gawps at me, incredulous. ‘I’m hoping that I will never have to utter your name for as long as I live.’
Naomi stands back, not moving her eyes from me as I walk to the security gate.
I keep stealing glances at her, but she is motionless, arms tightly folded.
I think of her getting back into her car, and back to her life, to Stevie and Ted and Alice and the big kitchen island.
I get through the security, wondering if my nuclear shame will set the X-ray alarm off.
I take my handbag from the tray and keep walking until she is no longer in my eyeline.
All around me, people march in great strides, excited to get to their next destination.
I wait in front of the board, seeing that the London flight leaves from Gate 23.
What’s going to meet me in London? I can’t bear the idea of calling Carrie or even Brigitte.
Even the thoughts of seeing Johnny make me feel as though I’m being asked to ride into hell on horseback.
I pull out my phone and write an email to Violet. ‘You complete fucking bitch. What the hell did you go and do that for? Naomi is in pieces now.’
She could have really screwed things up for me back there, I hear my internal voice enunciate. I detect something in there as I keep walking through the airport, something resembling hope, and it feels counterintuitive.
Or, at the very least, I detect a lack of total resignation. My feet start to slow, and a new possibility, a thrilling one, forms in my mind. At first I try to bat it away, but tentatively, it grows.
Perhaps this can all be salvaged.
Maybe even without Naomi in the picture, I can impress Ted. Perhaps, in time, Naomi will thaw out if she sees we are a really good fit for each other and Ted is happy.
I reach the duty-free section, where I’m startled to see Alice’s face staring blankly at me from the MAC cosmetic stand. Seeing this makes something erupt in me. She just cannot have him.
I’m thrilled and sickened in equal measure as I hear myself ask a staffer for the exit. He looks at me quizzically, as though people don’t ever want to leave an airport from the way they came.
‘I left my wallet in my friend’s car. She’s pulling up in a few minutes.’ I show him the London ticket, hoping it’s enough to assure him that I’m in fact leaving.
‘You’ll have to go through security all over again, ma’am,’ he warns. ‘Do you have enough time to do that before your flight?’
‘I absolutely do,’ I assure him. He guides me through a series of corridors until I see the main arrivals concourse. It’s a very different feeling to the moment I walked through the airport with Jodie only a few months ago. Keeping an eye out for Naomi, I head straight to the taxi rank.
‘Can you take me to any mid-priced hotel that’s near the Bathurst Street area?’ I ask the driver. From the back of the car, I google ‘how to retrieve a suitcase if you don’t get on an international flight’.