Chapter 2
It didn’t take long for Arnaud to establish Alyssa wasn’t ill. She did a lot of pretending to the outside world, but she drew the line at stringing her boyfriends along. Fair was fair.
‘You can’t just say you love me?’ Arnaud asked, his body slumped against the bathroom tiles, his giraffe ears once again wonky.
‘No,’ she said simply, from her spot on top of the toilet seat lid.
Her tone was gentle, but her words honest. She’d ended a good few relationships when they’d started to look too serious, but preparing to dump someone with a charming view of a Villeroy and Boch bidet was a new one.
‘And I’m sorry. It’s really not you.’ She winced at the cliché, but it was true.
‘Don’t you even have a heart?’
‘Of course I do.’
Nobody could live without such a vital organ, and she’d definitely felt it beating as she’d rushed from the crowds to lock herself in the loo.
Though she knew what he meant. Their relationship had been heading towards the commit-or-run stage – especially with her being thirty-one, and him a decade older.
And if he was suddenly becoming the commit sort, he deserved to find someone who could give him more.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, standing to straighten his costume for the very last time. ‘I’ll be out of your hair in the morning.’ She knew she had to make it easy on both of them, even though she had literally no clue where she would go.
There went the end of yet another era. Exactly how many eras was one person allowed?
Alyssa snapped a few last shots of herself with Arnaud’s big house in the background.
Not that she lived there anymore – but people didn’t need to know all of her business.
She sighed at the photos, opting for one where her choppy pink waves looked decidedly more carefree than she felt, and where enough of her gym top was showing to imply she was popping out for a bracing, New Year’s Day run.
Which she absolutely wasn’t, because real exercise was hard, sweaty work.
With a few prods, Alyssa uploaded the photo to social media, typing, ‘New Year, New Me!’ with as many joyful emojis as she could muster.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie. Things were about to change, in a huge, nose-diving-without-a-parachute kind of way.
She tried to stop her insides from plummeting.
Oh, Arnaud. He’d picked his moment to start kidding himself he was falling for her.
And whilst he’d half-heartedly said she could stay on for a few days in one of the spare rooms, she knew from past experience it wasn’t wise to stick around.
He’d only start getting sentimental again and make it even more embarrassing for them both. It was safer to get out of there.
She blinked a few times, trying to ignore the strange stinging sensation at the backs of her eyes, which was probably just the cold weather.
It was flipping freezing in London in January.
She shoved her phone into her bag and wrestled herself into her pink-and-black parka, and a black beanie hat.
She did not want to be recognised on this next, humiliating leg of her journey.
It was a side effect of her large online following that people often spotted her – and appearances were everything.
Like umbrellas on a wet day, it paid to keep them up.
Alyssa trudged along the quiet suburban streets, dragging her fake Lulu Guinness suitcase through the grey sleet.
Even though the affluent area of Chelsea was postcard perfect, fluffy white festive snow was reserved for Christmas cards and those cheesy romcoms she could no longer bear to watch.
Real life was never that glossy, even with an Instagram filter.
She kept her gaze down, not wanting to see the glowing lights from other people’s vast and beautiful homes.
At least their windows would be shut in this weather, so she didn’t have to hear jolly voices or laughter, even if most of it would surely be exaggerated.
Didn’t everyone feel a bit miserable, with another long year stretching out in front of them?
She shook her head and lifted her chin, remembering what she would say if she was coaching someone.
Reasons to be cheerful. She had seven whole days to get back on top of life, before she ran out of money and might have to start busking or selling her body to old men.
And the place she’d managed to bag at extremely short notice hadn’t actually been listed as ‘The World’s Grottiest Flat’.
There might be all sorts of reasons the rent was as cheap as itchy knock-off perfume, and the landlord had declined to share photos.
Her eyes flicked to her watch. Just a few more minutes.
A few more imposing streets. Alyssa had arranged for the Uber to pick her up somewhere other than Arnaud’s house, and to drop her off a few streets from her dreaded destination.
She didn’t want anyone putting two and two together and spreading unfortunate gossip online.
Was it too late to wish she was the sort of person who saved money instead of splurged it on things that temporarily cheered her up?
Not that she’d earned much of it lately.
As for financial planning – that was for people who thought about their future or had dependants to worry about.
She had none. Which was fine. But she was innovative, wasn’t she?
With her primal fear of commitment, she was always having to start afresh.
Sometimes with drastically different hair and a brand-new name.
Because Alyssa Heart certainly wasn’t her real one.
Spotting the Uber, she waved at the driver and when he popped the lid of the boot, she crammed her luggage in. Then she pulled her hat down as far as she could, folded herself into the back seat, and gave the man a muffled greeting.
The car reeked of stale takeaway and pine-scented Magic Tree, and it was just her luck that the driver was the sort to tape photos of his wife and kids to the dashboard, like a montage of his lovely life. She looked away.
‘Hackney, is it?’ he asked, giving her a quick glance in the mirror.
She’d already typed the exact destination into the app, hadn’t she? ‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Bit of a comedown. From here, I mean.’ The driver chuckled.
Didn’t he know it was rude to make conversation in London? That was what she liked most about this place. Not like the nosy Cotswold town where she’d been born. She managed a polite ‘mmm hmm’.
‘Been staying with family?’
She didn’t mean to grit her teeth. ‘No.’ Perhaps if she kept her answers short, he’d get the hint, as harmless as he was.
‘Friends?’
Alyssa felt herself bristle. She had plenty of them, of course she did. It was just they were all online, and she’d never met most of them. That was perfectly normal these days. Real-life friends, like men, could trash your heart, if you let them.
‘No,’ she concluded. He didn’t need the full story.
He paused for a second, eyeing her in the mirror again. When was he going to start this forest-smelling car?
‘Do I know you?’
Used to people sort of recognising her, she was running out of patience. ‘I’m kind of late, so …’
‘Right, yes.’ He started the engine. ‘Let’s get you home.’
‘It’s not my …’ Her voice trailed off. Because it was about to become the closest thing she had.
If she didn’t know better, she might wonder if that weird, hollow feeling in her chest was because no one was expecting her.
She’d made a quick bank transfer for a week’s rent, and there would be a key shoved under the doormat.
No one would care what time she arrived, or even if she didn’t.
But smiley taxi driver and his two-dimensional, slightly fading family didn’t have to know that.
Alyssa must have fallen asleep on the journey, which was probably just as well.
She didn’t need to dwell on what she was leaving behind, nor where exactly she’d be landing.
Anyway, Hackney definitely had its desirable parts, even if World’s Grottiest Flat might not be one of them.
Having waved her driver off with a tip she couldn’t really afford, to account for her bad mood and exhausted snoring, she dragged her stuff up the sticky-carpeted flights of stairs and arrived at her new front door.
One hundred and thirteen. It was a myth that numbers could be unlucky.
‘Right, well. Let’s crack on.’
There was only herself to hear – which was probably for the best. In fact, the whole tower block had seemed deserted, like one of those vacated places, earmarked for destruction.
As long as the wrecking ball didn’t arrive too soon, what could go wrong?
Like a person who’d resolved to tear off a plaster, she whipped the key from under the mat, turned it in the lock and stepped inside.
‘Urgh.’ Her hand flew to cover her nose and mouth, wishing for the simpler times when her senses were being assaulted by pine fresh. What was that stench? Was her landlord harbouring dead people?
She grabbed some spray from her bag and moved around, throwing windows open and performing a vanilla-scented fumigation.
At least she didn’t have a year-start hangover, or she would have felt even more nauseous.
She was now strictly a one-drink kind of girl, because too much wine time could lead to utter humiliation.
Although maybe New Year’s Eve would have gone quicker with a wine glass stem to strangle.
How could you be in a room packed with people and feel completely alone?
She’d been doing much the same for at least a decade, albeit different partners, different parties.
Though perhaps the loneliness was to be expected when she only chose men who were unlikely to get emotionally attached, and she swiftly moved on if they did.
They were always decent guys, and definitely not married.
She had morals. But she opted for men who were too busy focusing on other things to dote on her, like Boardroom Bradley, who’d relished a good meeting and had rarely been home before nine p.m. Or Vincenzo with the nice holiday villa, who travelled a lot to see family so didn’t get under her feet.
Or were divorced and done, like laid-back Lionel, who had no desire for further romantic gestures, wedding bells or bearing crotch fruit.
She sighed. Much like the state of this flat, Arnaud had finally seen the cracks she couldn’t paper over.
Alyssa reached up and swiped a cobweb, grateful at least that it didn’t have a spider attached to it.
This place wasn’t completely terrible, was it?
She took a moment to look around her. OK, so the flat was a bit pongy, and the furniture had seen better days – but she was the queen of plastering on a smile and pretending everything was bloody brilliant.
There was a cupboard full of cleaning stuff, and she could leg it to a launderette with the bedding.
There probably wouldn’t be rats, even if she had seen some traps and a scribbled note saying: ‘Kill the vermin. They’re anyone’s for a piece of cheese’.
This was just a stopgap until … well, something.
But what? It had been far too long since she’d had a paying coaching client.
No income. Zero enquiries. That was a problem she’d now be forced to stop ignoring.
She had a talent agent who was meant to bring her PR and media gigs to boost her visibility and income, but lately, Rufus had been worse than useless.
Perhaps she hadn’t been pushing herself either.
Had she got complacent, living with Arnaud and not needing to contribute much?
Or, more worryingly, was she becoming jaded when it came to her unlikely, love-themed career?
Was she giving off some kind of bad-luck energy?
She used to find it a breeze to help couples to stay together and put on an affectionate show, even though she’d never believed in the ‘L’ word.
Her no-nonsense, dispassionate outlook had been what set her apart.
But as time moved on, she was finding it hard to be bothered about other people’s relationships – or her own.
Why was that? She had avoided anything ‘meaningful’ since she’d fled to London twelve years ago.
It had been easier to pick someone ‘reasonable’ and play her superficial, non-heart-wrenching part.
And now it was time to play a new one. This wasn’t exactly how she would have chosen to embark on a journey of change.
In fairness, nobody liked change, but when it was flung at them like a wet sponge, they had no option but to duck or fight.
Which would she choose? And who did she even have to talk it through with?
She dropped onto the single bed, with its flowery sheets that looked like they belonged in the Eighties, feeling worn out again.
Her hand twitched to her phone. She had at least a hundred and twenty thousand followers.
She only had to post a pic of her toenail polish or an uplifting quote about something or other, and she’d have an onslaught of people to chat to, even if it was trivial natter.
As she went to click onto social media, she froze. There was something small and furry in the corner of the room – and it was staring at her. If there had been anyone around to listen, she might have screamed.