Page 28 of None of This is True

Midnight

Josie switches off her screen and puts down her phone. She picks up the magazine that she’d been studying before Alix’s message came through and returns to the article she’d been reading about a lakeside house near Cape Town lived in by a handsome architect, his beautiful mermaid-haired wife and a dog called Rafe with dreadlocked fur. Also to hand she has a notepad in which she is writing down the things in the magazine that she would like to buy. Her grandmother left her £3,000 in her will in May. She also has about £6,000 in savings built up over the years because she barely spends the money she earns as they mostly live on Walter’s pension. She could afford the lamp with a base in the shape of an owl, or the blue rug with textured stripes that look like ripples on the surface of the sea. She could afford a velvet bed throw the colour of overripe raspberries and the huge silky cushions printed with abstract streaks of ink blue and clotted cream. She could afford other things as well, but she doesn’t want to go crazy.

She glances across at Walter’s side of the bed. He is not there. She swallows back the dark feeling this gives her and turns her attention to the magazine. As she flicks through it, something falls out from between the pages. It’s a paper receipt. It’s dated 8 June. Her birthday. Alix’s birthday. It’s from Planet Organic, 10.48 a.m. Sunflower oil. Sourdough olive loaf. Alpro chocolate milk. Oatly milk. Organic Pinot Grigio. A 200-gram pat of unsalted butter for £3.99.

This suggestion of what Alix had been doing in the hours before they first met seems strangely magical, weighted down with some essence of fortune, of posterity. She holds it to her mouth and kisses it, then slides it back inside the pages of the magazine.

Monday, 8 July

‘So,’ says Alix, smiling at Josie across the desk in her studio. ‘Denim. Are you happy to talk about that today?’

‘Yes. Sure.’

‘So, I’ve noticed that most things you wear are made of denim and I’m curious about that. For example, today you are wearing a denim skirt, with a pale blue top and denim plimsolls. Your handbag is made of denim and your dog is in a denim dog carrier. Do you have a story, or a theory? About your love of denim?’

‘Yes. I wasn’t sure at first when you mentioned it last week. I wasn’t sure what the reason was. I think I always just thought I liked it because it’s practical, you know. Easy. But you’re right. A denim jacket is one thing – everyone has a denim jacket. But denim accessories are another thing completely and you know, in my bedroom I actually have denim curtains. So clearly there’s something going on. And I think it’s got something to do with the early days of my relationship with Walter, you know. I was wearing a denim jacket the first time I went out with him. I wore it a lot during the first couple of years we were together and it became, for me, almost a part of our love affair. Always there. On the back of a chair. Or hanging off my shoulders. He’d put it there for me, if the sun went in and I got cold, just put it there. Like I was a princess or something. And then one day he picked it up and cuddled it and sniffed it and said something really cheesy like: “This jacket is you, it’s just you.” Something to do with my essence being inside it? Something to do with the smell? And he made the jacket sound so powerful and important and it made me feel like the jacket was maybe lucky, in some way? Had brought us together? I don’t know, it all sounds so stupid when I try to explain it. But after that I think I always made sure I was wearing something denim, so that maybe the way Walter felt about me then might last forever.’

Alix leaves a stunned moment of silence, and her mind fills with the image of the old man in the window of Josie’s flat.

‘I believe you brought some photos along today, of you and Walter, when you were both younger. Shall we have a look at those now?’

Josie nods and pulls an envelope from her shoulder bag. ‘There aren’t many,’ she says. ‘Of course, this was pre-smartphones, so we only took photographs with cameras and obviously, back then, well, we were kind of still a secret, so we weren’t exactly snapping each other here, there and everywhere. But I found a couple. Here.’

She passes them across the desk to Alix. Alix looks at one and then the other. Her eyes widen. ‘Wow,’ she says. Then she laughs drily and gazes at Josie. ‘Wow! Walter was quite a hunk.’

She sees Josie flush pink. ‘He really was,’ she says.

Alix looks again, studying the two photos more carefully. In one, Josie wears a denim jacket and baggy jeans. Her chestnut hair is mid-length and clipped back on one side. She appears to be wearing lipstick. She stands a foot away from Walter, who is beaming down at her from his elevated height, wearing a hoodie and jeans and a baseball cap. In the other, Josie sits on his lap, her hair in a ponytail, her head resting back against his chest, smiling widely into the camera, which is being held aloft by Walter. His hair is thick and shiny, his skin is clear and smooth, he looks young for his age, more early thirties than early forties. His forearms are big and strong. His eyes are madly blue. Alix feels a sick swoop in her stomach as she acknowledges that if she were to bump into forty-something-year-old Walter today, she would be attracted to him. And she gets it. She gets it. And the fact that she gets it sickens her. Because Josie was a child, and he was a grown man, and he may not have looked like a paedophile then, but he looks like one now, and whether he looks like one or not, he was, and he is.

‘You look so young,’ she says, handing the photos back to Josie. ‘So very young.’

‘Well,’ she replies. ‘I was. I was young. I was … It’s crazy, when you think about it.’

‘So, if you could go back to thirteen-year-old Josie, just before she met Walter, what would you say to her?’

She watches Josie’s face. She sees it fall slightly before lifting again, almost with an effort. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, her voice tight with emotion. ‘I really don’t know. Because in some ways, being with Walter all these years has been the making of me, you know. Having the babies young. Having something solid in my life. Having something real, when other girls my age were running round being fake and ridiculous, searching for things. But on the other hand’ – Josie looks up at her with glassy eyes – ‘on the other hand, I do wonder, I wonder quite a lot, especially now that the girls are grown, especially now I’m middle-aged and Walter is getting old and …’ Josie pauses and sighs. Then she looks straight at Alix, something sharp and clear suddenly shining from her nearly black eyes, and she says, ‘I wonder what it was all for, you know? I wonder what else might have been. And actually, all things considered, I’d probably tell thirteen-year-old me to run for the hills and not look back.’

11 a.m.

‘What’s your cat called?’ asks Josie as they pass back through the kitchen an hour later.

‘Skye.’

‘Skye. That’s a beautiful name. Are you still looking for a puppy?’

‘Hm. Not really. It seems a lot right now, you know? I have other issues that seem more pressing than house-training and sleepless nights.’

‘What sort of issues?’

‘Oh. Just …’ Alix pauses and gazes at the floor for a moment. She hasn’t told anyone about Nathan’s recent behaviour, not even her sisters. They would judge him, and they would judge her for putting up with him. They would tell her to fix it, to deal with it, to do something. She thinks of all that Josie has shared with her these past few days and finds herself saying, ‘Nathan. You know – he’s amazing. Obviously, he’s amazing. But he has … he has a drink problem.’

She sees Josie flinch.

‘Like, not all the time. Most of the time, he’s fine. But when he’s not fine, he’s really not fine. He goes on benders. Doesn’t come home.’

Benders.

It sounds like such an old-fashioned word. It must surely have been superseded by now by something more modern? But it’s the only word Alix can find to explain what her husband does. What he did on Saturday after Giovanni’s dinner party. What it now seems he will keep doing from here on in unless she starts issuing ultimatums and threats.

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