Page 62 of None of This is True

Thursday, 18 July

Alix and the children have left for school, but Nathan is running late for work. Josie had heard him say something to Alix about a meeting in Bishopsgate at 10 a.m., not worth him heading to the office beforehand.

Just as Alix had predicted, the weather has turned from pleasant-for-mid-July to unbearably hot. Nathan sits in the garden with his laptop and a cup of coffee and, even from here, Josie can see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. It occurs to her that he sits in the garden in the mornings deliberately to avoid having to share space with her indoors. She forces a smile and slips through the gap between the sliding glass doors. She’s still wearing the clothes that Alix gave her on Saturday. She has her own clothes hanging in her room, but she no longer wants to wear them, even though they are clean. She had hoped that Alix might take pity on her seeing her descend the stairs every morning wearing the same top and trousers, that she might offer to lend her something new. But she hasn’t.

‘God,’ she says, standing a few feet from Nathan. ‘It’s boiling, and it’s not even nine o’clock!’

‘They’re saying thirty-two by lunchtime.’

‘Bloody hell.’

She allows a silence to pass before turning to him and saying, ‘Oh. By the way. Alix said you might be using the study on Saturday night? When her sister is here?’

‘Oh,’ he says, looking slightly flustered, and Josie knows immediately that he and Alix have been talking about this, secretly, privately, behind her back. ‘Well, yeah. That was the plan. But no. Apparently, they’re all sleeping over now. I think Alix was going to tell you. Both sisters and all three kids. They’re going to be using the fold-out. So …’ He clears his throat and trails off.

Lies. All of it.

‘Oh,’ says Josie. ‘That’s fine. I’ll find something. But what about you? Where will you be hiding out?’

‘Oh, I’ll probably hang out here for a bit and then head off around seven for a couple of drinks with some mates.’

‘The same mates you were with when you didn’t show up for dinner last Friday?’ She tries to inject a hint of playfulness into her words, but she fails. She’s so cross she could scream.

He throws her an uncertain look and shrugs. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure.’ Then he necks the dregs of his coffee, slaps his hands against his legs and says, ‘Well, time for me to head into work. What are you up to today?’

‘Nothing really. We’ll do some more of the podcast, then I’ll go to work. That’s it really.’

‘And what are your plans, Josie? Generally? I mean, obviously from Saturday you’ll need a plan. Won’t you?’

Josie eyes him coolly. He has gone off-script, she can tell. This is not what Alix told him to say. This is, she thinks furiously, none of his bloody business. But she manages to sound civil when she says, ‘Yes. I’ll need a plan. But what I’ve found, Nathan, is that life shows you the way when you forget to make one. So, you know, let’s wait and see.’ She shrugs and heads back into the kitchen, scoops up the dog and takes him to her room, where she waits until she hears the sound of Nathan slamming the front door behind him a few minutes later. She watches him through the small window in her bedroom, slinging his suit jacket over his shoulder, sliding his stupid sunglasses onto his stupid nose, walking down the street as if he were the king of the universe.

Alix said she was going to the shops after the school run, she said she’d be home about nine thirty. It’s 9.10 a.m. now and Josie shuts the dog in her room and tiptoes down to the next floor. Alix and Nathan’s bedroom door is wide open, which she feels is a sign of some sort that Alix isn’t precious about people seeing inside. She hasn’t properly investigated their room yet. It feels too much. Much too much. But Nathan has put her in a bad mood with all his talk of ‘plans’.

If Nathan thinks she should have a plan, she decides, then a plan she will have.

Alix and Nathan’s bed is very big. It has a bedhead made out of rattan and pale green velvet. It is unmade; huge voluminous clouds of creamy duvet are bunched up at the foot of the bed, kicked off no doubt during the encroaching heat of the previous night, with two fat pillows squashed into fortune cookies at the top end and two more kicked on to the floor on either side. The walls are hung with a mishmash of prints and paintings and photographs. A pair of milky-white lights hang from the ceiling, one on each side of the bed, instead of table lamps, Josie supposes. There’s a square bay window with a little seat built into it, overlooking the back garden. It’s scattered with discarded clothes, mostly Nathan’s, including a nasty-looking pair of threadbare socks (you’d think he could afford new ones).

Between the bedroom and the en-suite bathroom is a kind of anteroom, or dressing area, with clothes hanging on either side: Alix’s on one, Nathan’s on the other. She spends a minute or two leafing through Alix’s clothes. She rubs the fabrics between her fingers, the silks and linens and soft bamboo cottons. She pulls open the shoe drawers beneath and looks at the neat rows of golden strappy sandals and suede heeled boots and silken heels with ankle straps. She wants to take them out and try them on, admire herself in the full-length mirror. But the minutes are ticking by, so she turns to Nathan’s rail and starts feeling through his pockets. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for precisely, but she has a very strong feeling that Nathan is stupid enough and Alix is trusting enough for her to find something she will need.

She pulls out crumpled paper receipts and business cards and empty chewing-gum packages. She pulls out paperclips and sugar packets and the wrinkled paper tubes from drinking straws; boarding passes for flights to Brussels and Dublin; a comb; half a Polo mint. And then, yes. There. Right there. In the inside pocket of a blue business jacket, exactly what she was looking for. A tiny clear bag with a residue of white powder clinging to its insides. She pictures him now, in a bar, his tie slung over his shoulder, surrounded by tequila shots and baying men, snorting cocaine off a glass-topped table. Despicable, she thinks. Just despicable. With a wife and children at home. In another pocket she finds a scrap of paper napkin with an illegible number written on it. And in another a cardboard sleeve for a hotel key card – the Railings – with the room number 23 written on it.

She takes all three items and puts them in her pocket, goes back to her room and waits for Alix to come home.

Nathan wants her to have a plan.

Well, now she’s got one.

Alix returns a few minutes later. She is laden with bags from the supermarket and Josie watches her unload them on to the island in the kitchen. Melon and strawberry fruit bowl. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. A huge steak. A bag of onions. Pouches of cat food with pictures on them of a cat that looks exactly like the cloud-cat, as if Alix’s cat has had her very own personalised dinner designed for her.

‘I’ll go to my mum’s,’ Josie says to Alix. ‘On Saturday. When your sisters come.’

Alix stops what she’s doing, a cylinder of chocolate biscuits held aloft in her hand. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘OK. That’s great. What changed your mind about getting in touch with her?’

Josie shrugs and pulls out a tiny loose hair from Fred’s fur, lets it float lazily to the floor. ‘I didn’t really have a choice, I suppose. I mean, Nathan told me about your other sister coming to stay. So I know the fold-out bed will be taken. Though I thought your other sister lived in London?’

‘Yes. Yes, she does. But her kids didn’t want to miss out on the fun. They wanted to sleep over too. So yes. I’m sorry about that. A bit of a, er, last-minute thing. But I’m so glad you’re going to see your mum! I really think it’s time.’

Josie nods, as though she has given Alix’s words serious thought and now agrees with her. ‘It is what it is,’ she says. ‘But while I’m still here, we’ve got two more days, we should make the most of them.’

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