Page 50 of None of This is True

Josie nods. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Of course. Sorry. I’m being selfish. It’s just I’ve kept this stuff all locked up for so long now and I’m scared that if I don’t get it all out in one go, it might go back in again.’

Alix smiles. ‘We won’t let that happen, Josie. OK? Let’s take a break for today and then we have all day tomorrow. I assume you won’t be going in to work tomorrow.’

Josie nods.

‘All day tomorrow, then. OK?’

‘Yes,’ says Josie. ‘OK.’

Monday, 15 July

Josie awakes to the sounds of Alix’s family getting ready for school. For a moment the sound is reassuring, like an echo of a happy day at the beach or a childhood Christmas. For a moment she is back in the early days of parenting, when her babies were adorable and her husband was handsome and strong. It occurs to her that maybe this was never actually the case, that she is looking back through an out-of-focus lens. But it had been better, at first – it had to have been better. Otherwise, what on earth was it all for?

She gets out of bed and throws on the linen gown that Alix left for her. She picks up the dog and puts on her slip-on shoes and heads downstairs. ‘Morning,’ she says as she walks into the kitchen.

She sees the children turn and gawp at her. The sight of them in their Parkside uniforms is unnerving and she gawps back. The dog growls when he sees the cloud-cat sitting on the kitchen counter.

‘Morning, Josie!’ says Alix, who is wearing a white embroidered tunic top over yoga pants and has pulled her hair from her face with a fabric headband. She is barefoot and cutting a banana into slices directly over a toasted bagel and looks like one of her Instagram posts come to life. ‘Come in. Can I get you anything to eat?’

Josie shakes her head. ‘No. Thank you. I’ll just have a coffee. Is it OK if I use your machine?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that. Nathan will make you one. Nathan!’

Nathan appears from the terrace clutching an empty cereal bowl and a mug.

‘Can you make Josie a cappuccino?’

Josie sees a look of antipathy pass across his face, masked with a grim smile. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Sugar?’

Josie nods. ‘One please. Thank you.’

She takes a seat on one of the mismatched chairs at the table, opposite Leon, who eyes her suspiciously. ‘My children went to your school,’ she says. ‘When they were small. But they’re big now.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘Erin is staying at her friend’s house and Roxy is off travelling the world.’

‘So they’re adults?’

‘Yes. They’re adults.’ Josie feels her voice crack dangerously on the last syllable and clears her throat. ‘I hear you still have Mandy, in the office?’

Leon nods seriously. Josie lets her eyes linger on his hands, still plumped up with whatever it is that lives under the skin of young children. There’s a scab on the knuckle of his thumb and she remembers scabs. She remembers verrucas and nits and ingrown toenails and baby teeth hanging on by threads and all the other tiny, perfect defects of small children. She resists the urge to touch the scab, to give it a magic kiss. She resists the urge to say, ‘Oh no, you have an owee.’ She feels the loss of her children so viscerally and horribly that she could scream with the agony of it.

She manages a smile and says, ‘Mandy was there when my children were there.’

Leon runs his hands back and forth along the edge of the table and then looks up at Josie and says, ‘How come you’re the same age as my mum, but your children are already adults and we’re only small?’

‘Well. That’s maths really, isn’t it?’

Leon looks at her questioningly.

‘So. If I’m forty-five and my oldest daughter is twenty-three, then how old was I when I had her?’

Leon screws up his face and says, ‘Is that forty-five take away twenty-three?’

‘Yes! Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Clever boy!’

‘So that’s …’ He unpeels his fingers from his fist, one by one on the tabletop, like an unfurling blossom, as he counts it out. ‘Twenty-two?’

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