The Phone Swap

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Milo

‘We brought you both here,’ says Jameson, nervously. ‘Together. On purpose.’

Beside me, I feel Allie freeze. It’s like I’m suddenly next to an ice sculpture. I can feel the coldness like you do when you step outside into the snow and the cold hovers in front of your skin like a ghost.

‘This,’ says Jameson. ‘This trip. This film. We organised it.’

I stand up. A complete kneejerk reaction. ‘So, you knew Allie was here?’

Jameson nods softly, and while I want to laugh, shout something like, ‘What the hell, you crazy asshole,’ because this is crazy and I had no idea, and shouldn’t I have because this is totally Jameson?

I don’t. Because Allie, sitting down, beside me, lets out a small, but noisy breath. Her face is pale and expressionless.

‘It’s not exactly how it sounds,’ jumps in Iris.

She isn’t looking at me. Not at all. She’s looking at Allie, all wild eyes and unblinking.

She looks like a mother or something. Like a mother who’s suddenly realised her toddler’s about to either burst into tears or flip out.

‘I . . . I got an email a few months ago, from Jameson. He said he was looking to film a documentary; help a cause. And he’d been donating to us for a couple of years. ’

‘To the funding agency?’ Allie asks, all whispers.

Jameson shrugs bashfully. ‘This dude here got all dick-hard about donating to causes when he was talking to you,’ he says.

‘Told a bunch of us to put our money where our mouths were. I just happened to choose My Planet from his list. Then one day, few days before Christmas, I open a newsletter, and Iris is on it. Iris Deveaux.’

‘Recognised my name.’

‘It’s a nice one,’ Jameson grins.

‘So he emailed via My Planet,’ explains Iris, ‘and it got to me, eventually. He asked about you, Allie, and then we video-chatted.’

‘A lot like the phone swap actually,’ chuckles Jameson.

‘Video called to confirm we were who we said we were.’ He’s buzzing with this – luminous with it.

Pulsating in a cloud of crackling, golden electricity.

Fuck. This is insane. But it’s genius. It’s totally genius.

Totally Jameson Merritt. I want to bear hug him to the ground. (And kick his ass.)

‘Oh my God,’ mutters Allie next to me. ‘This is—’

‘And then we just talked,’ Iris rushes out. She’s talking like she’s against the clock – like an egg timer has been wound to sixty seconds and it’s tick-tick-ticking down. ‘At first, we talked about telling you both. Organising a meet-up . . .’

‘But then I knew I’d never get him over here.

He’s too chicken shit.’ Jameson laughs. And he’s right.

Of course, he’s right. And now I can’t stop replaying it all – every scene, like a home video in my mind, of everything leading up to this point.

I can read Jameson well; I know when he’s feeling low, or when he’s lying, but I had no idea.

He asked me to do it, he showed me the place online, he booked in our medicals, and I just obediently watched documentaries for research and bought huge, stupid neon coats.

Of course he knew he’d get away with it.

‘The other team in Skomer had just had that movie made and go wild on TikTok, Oliver was talking about something similar anyway and . . . it was like two birds and one stone. Because I just knew how much you needed this too. Even if you felt you didn’t.

’ Iris smiles, but her eyebrows knit together.

And now we’re all looking at Allie, breaths held tightly in our throats.

‘Allie?’ Iris asks, worriedly.

Allie clears her throat. ‘Sorry, I just . . . You want to make a film? About us? The whole reason this blew up like it did . . .’ She looks at me, sadly.

Her pink lips still slightly swollen from all the kissing we were doing, just moments ago.

I reach and push hair behind her ear. ‘A film just feels—’

‘No,’ jumps in Jameson. ‘Nothing has to happen without you being OK with it. Of course your work is the star. Ideally, you’d be a sort of .

. . amazing B-story. A subplot. Like – it’d be: two guys turn up to film in the arctic to shine a light on something important for the world, and all while solving a matter of the heart. ’

‘But you don’t have to do anything,’ adds Iris. ‘You’re in control.’

‘God . . .’ Allie breathes.

‘And, at first, I really didn’t think it was a good idea, either. Did I, Jameson?’

He nods.

‘But, amigo, I’ve told you for forever that I wanted this for you. Closure of some sort. For you to work through it. For both of you to. I knew you wouldn’t ever do this if it wasn’t about your work, which I love about you.’

‘Same,’ Jameson smiles at Milo.

‘And I know you’re happy here,’ carries on Iris, ‘but – you miss Bermuda.’

Allie looks up at Iris then, with huge blue eyes, and those eyes say so much, are full of words. Reams of them, unravelling into the room. I want to take Lars’ boat over to Bermuda for her with nothing but a jet-skiing licence and my own idiocy.

‘And when Jameson told me that Milo hadn’t been the same since you, Allie, and I knew that the hows and whys keep nagging at you both, I just thought .

. . we could use the awareness for this place.

And Allie could use this. Needs it, even.

And maybe we can even solve it all, together. Find out what really happened.’

I’m relieved when Allie smiles slowly. The air in the room calms a little, like dust suddenly kicked up in a beam of sunlight and settling.

I know now, how tough this must be for her; how much strength it’s taken her to hold just a little trust after everything.

I now can’t believe I ever thought it was her.

‘When you say solve it,’ mulls Allie, slowly, quietly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’ve been starting to reach out to people.

To see if they might talk to me,’ Jameson is all arm gestures and enthusiasm.

How has he kept all this shit from me? I’m filled to the brim with held-back happy, delirious, jackass laughter.

‘I’ve heard back from someone at Verified Insider, for example.

Someone there says a journalist gave them the tip – that the leaked messages were on the forum.

No money exchanged hands. I’ve reached out to some people in Romania, from the crew on the Sharp Hearts movie, too.

Oh, and Iris has been talking to Sian.’ At that, Allie’s chest caves.

A breath held, released. ‘We want to build a picture of how it happened. So you can both move on. Properly. Be happy again. Because I feel like you were happiest in those days before the leak, mate. Allie made you happy. And clearly, it’s no longer past tense. Seeing you both together . . .’

‘I feel the same,’ Iris says quietly.

Allie says nothing. And if she wasn’t looking so terrified, I’d be launching myself onto Jameson right now, hugging his gangly-ass body.

This is a stone-cold act of love from them both.

But Allie looks shell-shocked again. It’s the film.

I could see how she felt about the photo on the screen earlier.

Both of us up there ‘in lights’, multiple faces turned towards it.

I wonder with Allie, how much of this has to go back to her Dad.

I know it still plagues her – being seen.

The way they had to move away without telling him.

Lay low. Of course this is hard for her.

‘Guys,’ I say, standing. ‘This is – this is amazing. I . . . I’m speechless.’

‘Allie?’ presses Iris.

‘Do you want to take five?’ I ask her. ‘We can leave. Or we can talk. Or I can leave and leave you two to talk—’

‘I’m OK,’ she wobbles, looking up to meet Iris’s eyes. ‘Just . . . the Sian thing threw me.’

‘I know. But she wants to help,’ says Iris and I can tell that means something huge to Allie.

She brightens. Then she gives a laugh, that seems to relax all of us in the room.

‘This is just . . . slightly insane. You . . . you were shocked when I woke you up, Iris. When they first landed and I woke you up, you were so shocked Milo and Jameson were here.’ And now it’s like she’s processing it all slowly, in a classic aligned, organised Allie way.

‘I was,’ Iris laughs. ‘They were meant to come the following morning! I went to bed because I was a nervous wreck and kept feeling guilty looking at you. Then they decided to land early and shit me right up. Originally Polly was meant to bring them to Cote Rock. Just for like, a day or two.’

‘It wasn’t our fault!’

‘Polly knew?’ Allie exclaims.

‘To be honest, I was pumped that I got to use my new am-dram skills.’

And now we’re all laughing and, somehow, hugging, and I feel so deeply happy. Can it really just end like this? Can we really just reunite, put out a movie, questions (hopefully) answered, and just – be?

Jameson clicks through some emails, shows us one from the Verified Insider contact, another from someone who might know someone who worked for them two years ago, another from someone at the airline we flew with.

‘Whoa,’ I keep saying. ‘Seriously, J. Wow.’

‘At first, we thought we might only be able to get you both to drop your pistols on each other by finding out what happened,’ says Jameson.

‘But I still think we need to know. Or at least, try? Like, can you imagine how impactful that could be, getting the answers? And if – and only if, Allie – you guys were OK with us weaving in your story, I’ve got visions of it being like Catfish.

You know, the original doc? You think it’s about one thing, but it’s about so much more? ’

Catfish. He’s mentioned that more than once since we got here. Now I know why . . .

Allie’s eyes slide over to me, definitely still at least half-terror, but her mouth quirks a tiny, tiny smile. My heart – it feels weightless. For everything these two people, our friends, have tried to do for us.

Jameson’s email bleeps – the sound for a new email.

He’s in his full creative zone now, all shining-eyes and energy.

‘Holy shit,’ says Jameson. ‘Julia – remember Julia, from Sharp Hearts?’

‘Julia Noto?’

‘Yeah! I reached out to her.’

‘Why?’

I hate even thinking back to Sharp Hearts and Romania.

The shame about that time is still there.

I thought I was healing, really recovering – new phone, new number, new project, four months out of rehab – but I wasn’t.

Not at all. The only good and pure thing about that time was Allie.

Everything else – I was a slow-burning trainwreck.

I was clean off the benzos, but had started on wine watered down with tonic water, as if that meant anything like recovery.

I was still lost. Even J didn’t know the extent of it at the time.

He was the only one I’ve ever said it aloud to.

Nobody else knows about the addiction that seeped in after Day Falls, slowly during Romania, so slowly that it looked like progress – one or two drinks that turned down the volume in my brain, that slowly turned into more, and even more after the leak.

But I haven’t known how to say it aloud to Allie.

I don’t want her to see me as anything other than what she does now.

‘Well, we thought it would be cool to talk to people who were around back then,’ says Jameson, standing but hunched over the computer.

He taps away. A heater rumbles into life on the wall.

‘Who remember what you guys were like, you know? The whole phone swap thing. Julia knew everything about you two.’

Allie’s eyes slide over to me. She knew Jameson and Ben knew about the phone swap, but we agreed we’d keep it to us, keep the circle small and tight.

I did talk about her, though. A lot, and to .

. . more people than I should’ve. Breached that trust – acting before thinking, even when totally lucid and sober.

Tried not to, but I can never keep my mouth shut.

I don’t know why. Wanted people to know, I guess.

Fill my stupid, hollow, wounded self-esteem cup with temporary admiration.

This cool, amazing woman likes me. We’re going to meet.

Look how completely wholesome and good we are.

Tell me you believe I’m a good person. I wouldn’t have this woman to talk about if I wasn’t, right?

I owe her an apology for that. ‘Iris even got hold of some dude named Clive,’ Jameson carries on. ‘Oh, hold on. Julia’s sent a video!’

Then it all happens in slow motion.

Jameson’s email account appears on the big screen. Julia’s name in bold.

Hey! So, I’ve attached a complete buttload of photos and videos of the mountains if that’s of any use.

And then there’s also some videos of the party after.

Good times (and wild times I’d probably choose not to regale my eventual grandbabies with!

! LOL). I hope I’ve helped in some way. It all sounds so romantic, Jameson.

Saving the planet. Saving broken hearts!

I’m excited for you – and for M! And always kind of wondered what happened with them, in the end.

He seemed so sweet on her. He’d show us her messages and we were hooked!

Like we were alllll jealous!! A few of us donated that night too. Had us over a barrel! Ha.

Julia

Shit. Sort of wish she hadn’t mentioned the showing messages thing.

Jameson is grinning, clicking on photos.

Dense, thick forest we filmed in. Dim, fuzzy, out-of-focus trailers, Julia and I hugging in full 1940s costume, both our faces stretched into mocking grins.

Me bleeding fake blood from my throat. I remember that night.

We were bone-tired. Freezing. I’d been trying to stop myself from texting Allie, I could feel I was getting in deeper and I knew, somewhere inside, I was falling – no, plunging.

And then Jameson clicks. The video starts playing. And I know, no matter how unfamiliar the scene is to me, or how much like a lost, years-old bad dream it looks, that everything is about to change.