Page 25 of None of This is True

‘I’d love to talk to you one day, maybe, about the denim? Would that be OK?’

‘Yes. I think I’d like to talk about it too.’

Josie glances about Alix’s house, looking for signs of the red-haired husband, but he is not here today; the house feels silent and still. Just the two of them.

‘Husband back at work?’

‘Yes.’ Alix nods and smiles. ‘He hardly ever works from home.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a leasing agent for commercial property. Mainly in the City.’

‘Sounds stressful.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose it is in a lot of ways. Hard work.’

‘But clearly it pays off.’ Josie arcs her gaze around the open-plan kitchen.

‘Yes. Yes, it does. We’re very lucky. Most people work hard, don’t they? But not everyone gets to live in a house like this.’

‘I love this house.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Not just because it’s beautiful, which it is. But because it’s so homely. It’s not just like a house in a magazine. It’s a proper home. It’s … very you .’ Josie runs her hands over the creamy marble of the work surface as she says this. ‘My flat,’ she continues, ‘it’s never really felt like my flat. It’s always felt like Walter’s. It’s all his furniture. His things. And of course it’s council so we can’t really spend any money on it. I look around it and all I see is other people’s things. And Walter doesn’t like stuff on the walls. Or clutter. You know. It would be a dream come true to have a place like this that I could just fill with things I like.’

‘And what things do you like?’

‘Well, yes, that’s half the problem. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’ve just … lost my way. Or in fact, I’m starting to realise, I never even had a way in the first place. I handed my life over to Walter when I was a child and never gave myself the chance to find out who I really was.’

Josie pulls herself up straight when she realises she might be about to start crying. She looks up at Alix and smiles as brightly as she can.

‘It’s not too late for you to find out,’ says Alix. ‘Come on.’ She guides her towards the studio. ‘Let’s start right now.’

Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

Screen shows a re-enactment of a young woman following an older man into a large white house.

She wears a denim jacket.

The soundtrack over the images is Josie’s voice, taken from Alix Summer’s podcast. The text on screen reads:

Recording from Alix Summer’s podcast, 4 July 2019

‘He first invited me to his apartment when I was sixteen, exactly a year after our date in the pub on my fifteenth birthday. He said we’d have pizza and he’d give me my present. I’d never been there before. We always met in public. Or in his Portakabin on the estate after his team had all gone home. We just kissed. Talked. And I’d known, all along, that at some point he’d want more from me and I made it very clear that when it did happen, it had to be perfect. So he had champagne. He had music. He drew the curtains, lit a candle. He gave me an engagement ring and he asked me to marry him. I said yes. Of course. Of course I said yes. And then, roughly twelve hours after I turned sixteen years old, he took my virginity.’

Friday, 5 July

There is a young man standing on Alix’s doorstep. It takes a moment for Alix to realise who it is and then she says, ‘Oh! Harry! Hi! How are you?’

Harry is their next-door neighbour’s son. Alix has known him since he was a child, but now he’s an adult, in his last year at university, and she hasn’t seen him for a long while.

‘I’m good. How are you?’

‘Not bad. Everything OK?’

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