Chapter 6 #2
‘The amazing thing,’ begins Rose, as she marches back into the garden and sits down at the table, ‘is that you really thought Stephen was going to give you a column in the first place. Because from where I’m standing, sorry sitting, you don’t seem capable of expressing an opinion publicly.
What were you going to write this column about?
How nice the Princess of Wales is? How wonderful the prime minister’s new policies are?
How we can all put our warring beliefs aside and be there for one another in Kumbaya bullshit happy land?
How you’re sure that the Israelis and the Palestinians can get together and put all their differences to one side?
Hate to break it to you, Olivia, but being a national newspaper columnist means developing beliefs, making judgements, and then having the courage of your convictions when everyone on social media calls you a bigoted arsehole or a left-wing arse-wipe.
I reckon you’d faint if someone so much as criticized your parking. ’
‘I’m not sure that’s fair—’
‘I haven’t finished, Olivia,’ says Rose, holding up a commanding hand. How is she so self-assured so young? When Olivia was this age, she could barely choose an outfit to wear to work without first canvassing fifteen different people’s opinions.
‘You’re so desperate to make other people happy that you’ve forgotten what it is to be anything other than sad.
Let’s take that loser Stephen. You’ve spent a decade or so doing everything he asks of you, simply because he’s said he might one day give you a half-decent writing job.
Stephen tells you he wants you to one day be a columnist, and you tell him you’re dedicated to The Morning, and you all keep living in cloud cuckoo land until the sad day that one of you shatters the illusion.
And the key, Olivia, is to be the one who shatters the illusion.
But sadly, you haven’t had the guts to, so here we are, sitting in a pub garden in Stoke Newington, as you try to come to terms with the fact that you’ve not just been working with a bunch of arseholes for your entire adult life, but that you’ve actually been colluding with them.
And what’s incredible is that instead of being fucking furious with him, or fucking furious with yourself, frankly, for being naive enough to believe him, you turn your anger on Nina.
Nina, who has done nothing wrong. It’s the oldest trick in the patriarchal book. ’
Not for the first time in her life, or even today, Olivia feels a hot stab of shame in her stomach.
‘You’re so scared of upsetting people you can’t even decide on a hair colour. Do you actually pay someone to dye your hair that specific shade of mousy blonde?’
‘It’s caramel!’ exclaims Olivia.
‘It’s a cop-out is what it is,’ says Rose.
‘It’s neither one thing nor the other. You’re so desperate for other people’s validation that you appear to have lost the capacity for independent thought.
And the most tragic thing of all, is that you’re better than this.
’ Rose takes Olivia by the shoulders and stares deeply into her eyes.
‘You’re so much better than this. You are capable of so much more than being a dreary old people pleaser. ’
‘I don’t see what’s so wrong with wanting to make other people happy.’ Olivia thinks she might cry. She feels a tear prickling her cornea. ‘It’s better than inviting someone for a drink and then spending the evening insulting them.’
Rose, still gripping her left shoulder with one hand now, says more gently, ‘Am I insulting you, though, Olivia? Or just speaking some truths you need to hear? Honestly, the time has come for you to step into your own power, babe. To realize that you’re the boss of your life.
Own your sovereignty. Be the awesome human the universe knows you can be, not the cut-price version knobs like Stephen want you to be.
If you knew your unique and immeasurable value to the world, you’d never have ended up in this situation in the first place. ’
Olivia’s mouth drops open in shock. Nobody has ever bothered to speak to her like this, never taken her aside and given her a pep talk about what she might be capable of.
She heard plenty from her mother about what she should be capable of – in her exams, in her romantic life, in her career.
She feels some tectonic plates she didn’t even know were inside her begin to shift.
The wind has been knocked out of her, and put back in, all at the same time.
Under the table, Olivia feels Rose hand her something that has the texture of a wine gum. She looks down and sees a blue sweet, shaped like a football.
‘It’s an edible,’ says Rose into her ear.
Olivia continues to look blankly at the sweet.
‘Shit-strong drugs in delicious sweet form,’ explains Rose, patiently.
‘I don’t do drugs,’ says Olivia, in a tone which suggests that while she can take a character assassination, she draws the line at any suggestion she might partake in illegal substances.
‘Of course you don’t,’ sighs Rose. ‘Anyway, we call that one the Erling Haaland, because it’s so damn good at what it does.’
‘Did you say Erling Haaland?’ asks Olivia, just as she realizes, with a surprise, that she is putting the football-shaped gummy in her mouth.
‘Yep,’ smiles Rose. ‘Are you a fan?’