Page 59 of None of This is True

Alix watches Josie’s face as she reaches for a reply.

‘No,’ she says after a pause. ‘No. She wouldn’t have known. They had that big fall out. It was all over between them. Completely.’

Alix raises an eyebrow coolly, finding it virtually impossible to cover her feelings.

‘How would you feel,’ she says, ‘about me getting in touch with Brooke? Getting her side of things? For the podcast?’

‘No.’

It’s as immediate and definite as a slammed door.

‘Why not?’

‘Because … just, no. It’s too much. I’m telling you what I want to tell you. What I need to tell you. I have to live my life on the other side of this podcast. You know? Show my face in the world. And if you get her involved …’ She stops and inhales.

Alix waits.

‘I just don’t trust her. That’s all.’

‘You must wonder, though? What happened to her?’

‘Of course I do. I wonder all the time. About Roxy. And about Brooke. All the time. It’s like my life … it’s like it ended that day. You know. Like all the good things stopped.’

‘But Erin,’ Alix says. ‘What about Erin?’

‘What about Erin?’

‘I mean, she must bring you happiness. Surely? What was it like for her when Roxy left? You barely talk about Erin.’

Josie shrugs. ‘There’s not much to say.’

‘Well, shall we just try?’

Josie nods.

Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

The screen shows a dramatic re-enactment of a woman sitting on a sofa in an apartment, staring through the window as a bus goes past.

The text below reads:

Recording from Alix Summer’s podcast, 17 July 2019

‘After the Brooke thing, my relationship with Walter became a game of chess. It was like I was a pawn, being pushed about by some huge invisible finger from square to square with no thought of my needs and wants. Walter was the king, of course, and everything in the home was done to protect him. I’d created a kind of invisible barrier around my family, behind the door of our flat. I’d been doing it for years, of course, all throughout the fourteen years of the children being at school, with the mums and the teachers and the social workers and my work colleagues and the next-door and upstairs neighbours; I kept people away. But that was when nobody had really done anything wrong. When all I was worried about was being judged for having badly behaved children, a violent husband. But now I was in danger of being judged for having a husband who seduced teenage girls and slept with them in his own home and yes, I did go on to his laptop and yes, he had been looking at things that were illegal and disgusting and actually very upsetting and yes, Walter is a pervert and a criminal, disgusting, repellent, a man that I would never touch again, not in that way. And I told him as much. Told him that that side of our marriage was over. So I cooked and cleaned and worked and smiled at people I trusted, kept my head down around people I didn’t, and then two years ago I told Walter I wanted a dog because I was sick of not having anything to love and he said if we were going to get a dog, then he wanted an Akita or a Dobermann or something he could feel proud of walking down the road and I said, “ No , this dog is for me and I want a dog I can carry like a baby, because you ruined my babies, you ruined them.”

‘Because, by then, not only had Roxy gone, but Walter had started abusing Erin.’

The screen fades and the credits roll.

***

2.30 p.m.

‘Abusing? What do you mean?’

Josie tips her head back slightly and rolls her eyes to the ceiling. Alix waits with her breath caught painfully at the back of her throat. She feels as if she’d known this all along, somehow, like this had been a terrible hum in the background of everything right from the very start.

---