Chapter 36
Mallory
This morning I cleaned the house within an inch of its life.
I had to move quickly, because I had a lot of writing to do.
But I can’t lie and say I didn’t love every moment of it.
Something about scrubbing dirt gives me so much pleasure.
Like I am scrubbing the inside of my mind.
The whole place smells amazing, and I am well aware you could eat a meal off the work surfaces.
The floor, too. You could eat off the kitchen floor.
Ronan will be happy. My mother will be happy.
I need these people to be happy.
After my cleaning frenzy, I ordered the Ocado delivery then blitzed through my word count for The Air Between Us, with help from Chat GPT.
(‘Write me three thousand words of two people having blissful sex’ apparently didn’t abide by the terms and conditions.
So I had to go with ‘Write me three thousand words of uplifting romantic conversation on a park bench between a desperate woman and a strong man.’ I think Ronan will buy it.) And now I sit at the kitchen island, where I have been all afternoon, attempting to construct my reply to Stanley with the outline for the final third of Slay.
But the document is currently only four sentences long:
Outline of Final Third: Slay:
Liam will make it. He will get better. He will get the help he deserves. He will find his inner strength.
This is all I have.
Isn’t it?
Where’s the plot?
What would Leo do? I need the end to be punchy and climactic. Surprising. Is this too meek? Too resolved? Or is this what would actually happen? It doesn’t feel very Liam, despite what I want to happen. Trust yourself, Mal, Stan said. Your instincts are on point.
Are they? Can I do this without Leo?
I have no choice now.
What did Gina say? I’m sure I’ll be in tears by the end.
She seemed so hopeful about this. It is an odd pressure to feel: the need to make someone cry. I hover my fingers over the keyboard and attempt to locate memories of people crying – and why they were.
I can’t remember either of my parents crying. Or Nick. I cried a lot. A lot a lot. But that didn’t make other people cry.
Ronan never cries. Tears welling up, yes. But actual crying? I have never seen.
A memory surfaces. When I was doing my counselling course, one of the modules was about psychoanalysis and childhood.
Freud and Jung. (In fact, a large portion of the course was about childhood, which I found surprising and also a little annoying, if I’m really honest. I have never been a big believer in going into the past. I was hoping I would be learning logical and practical skills to teach patients to break thought patterns, or pragmatic tools to help them regulate and see clearly in the moment.
That’s what seemed to help me when I was in hospital.
The psychologist – a lady named Jan – gave me a workbook with CBT worksheets and told me to use them whenever I got overwhelmed.
Journalling. Box breathing. Fact checking. These tools really helped me.)
Me and the other students were told we would Zoom (it was all online) and that it might be quite intense.
We should prepare a painful memory from our childhood.
I chose falling off the swing. It was basic and felt a bit like a cop out, but I knew I could hide with it.
When the Zoom started, everyone was a little tentative, but as people shared, it got incredibly emotional.
People did not talk about falling off swings – far from it.
People talked about moments they were abandoned or hurt or even abused.
And there were tears. So many tears. Not just from the people telling the stories, but from those listening.
People empathised and related. Each person’s story felt like it could have been a part of every listener’s.
What I noticed was really poignant were the moving forward segments, when despite something awful happening to someone, they had succeeded in spite of it.
That’s what the therapist who ran the Zoom told us: when people overcome their difficulties, it is very powerful.
Powerful.
The end of my book needs to be powerful.
I close my eyes for a moment, listening to my instincts. Perhaps Liam needs to revisit his past, and he works through his unresolved trauma. The abuse he suffered.
Yes.
This reflection on the past will bring tears. We will understand why he is the way he is. Empathise.
This is the way to go.
This is the way to go to make Gina cry.
I excitedly place my fingers on the keyboard, and begin to type.
Outline of Final Third: Slay:
Liam will make it. He will get better. He will get the help he deserves.
He will find his inner strength. Throughout the final third of the book, Liam continues to fight against the pull of the chem-sex world.
We see glimmers of hope as he attends twelve-step recovery meetings and develops strong relationships with healthier people.
We a see a version of the young man he could be: kind, considerate, outward-looking.
He meets a therapist in AA, who generously spends some time with him.
He becomes a little bit obsessed with her, desperate for the kindness she offers.
But she is able to recognise that his past may have a lot to do with his current behaviours.
She urges Liam to explore what has happened to him – a lot of which he has blocked out, or – as we, the readers, know – has chosen to forget.
Liam realises his need to confront this past trauma.
He decides to go back to his home town – a rundown council estate.
By the sea.
(I would never admit this to anyone, but I actually don’t know if they have council estates by the sea. But it’s great: a lovely emotive setting. Really sad. The sea can be a metaphor for Liam’s turbulent past, etc. etc.)
When Liam arrives, his dad tells him of the harm he suffered at the hands of his own mother.
The mother made Liam’s life hell. She neglected him as a child, and exposed him to physical and emotional abuse, from herself and others – and then she died, leaving Liam abandoned and stranded.
Fighting for himself from a young age. This causes Liam to understand that he has a lack of self-worth which attaches him to people who treat him badly.
He decides to confront Mark, the man who has had a hold on him for so long.
He forgives Mark for all wrongdoing, and joins forces with the therapist that has helped him.
The book will end with the two of them – together – opening a therapy centre, helping those in need.
I pause, and re-read the email.
This should make her cry. Shouldn’t it? There is the promise of hope. A glimmer of light at the end of something that has been, let’s face it, pretty brutal. This could offer a cathartic release.
Tears.
(Is a therapy centre a thing? I mean... I’m sure it can be.)
I look at the clock. 18:30. I don’t have long. This needs to be it. I swallow hard and press send, half squinting at the screen as I do. I can’t quite look at it go.
What if it’s shit?
But what if it’s not?
Tomorrow, I could hear the yes I’ve been waiting for. As Stanley said, I could hear a financial figure by the end of the day.
Six-figure book deal.
Beach-front Malibu life.
I close my emails and log out of Yahoo. I have never been someone who prays, but I catch myself looking up at the ceiling and saying, ‘Please make this work. Please, please, please, let it be enough.’ Who I am asking, I have no idea.
But I can feel the rising current of nerves pulsing somewhere inside me, making the back of my head and my neck begin to shake.
I need to calm down.
Often, when I need to calm down, I will watch The Hours.
Or at least some scenes from it. In the film, Leonard – Virginia’s husband – seems so lovely.
The actor who plays him gives him such a beautiful quality of compassion, thoughtfulness and understanding.
He seems stuck, unsure how to help his wife.
How to contain her. The scene at the train station, when Nicole Kidman cries, is my favourite.
I can recite the whole thing. It’s incredible.
Nicole Kidman is incredible. When he calls her ungrateful, her response gives me chills.
‘I am living a life I have no wish to live. How did this happen?’
I sometimes say it to myself in the mirror.
‘You cannot find peace by avoiding life.’
I open YouTube and type in train scene The Hours Nicole Kidman, but before I can press play, my heart jumps.
Keys. The door.
I look at the clock. 6 p.m. No knock. Not my mother.
Ronan.
He’s back. He will have known her train times. He will have known he would be back before her, and wanted to keep me guessing all day. I close the browser tab, pull up the document of The Air Between Us (in all its copy-and-paste Chat GPT glory) and take a sip of my herbal tea.
The door slams shut. ‘Just me!’
‘Hi, darling!’ I shout. ‘I’m in the kitchen!’
No reply.
‘She’s not here?’ he says, entering the kitchen, phone in hand, not looking up.
Something’s off.
‘No, not yet!’
He is still not looking up.
‘Is everything OK?’ I say through a yawn (a fake yawn, one that I have manufactured to appear unbothered and at ease). Why wouldn’t he be? He chews his lip, tapping intently on the screen, not answering. ‘Would you like a beer, darling?’
He keeps tapping, shaking his head at whatever it is he is reading, then places his phone, a little too hard, down on the top of the island. He rubs his eyes, as if pushing something back into himself. ‘Yes, I need one. Work has been a lot.’
A lot.