Page 65 of None of This is True

Saturday, 20 July

Josie wakes early. It’s her last morning waking up in Alix’s house. Her last morning opening up the curtains and seeing the view of Queen’s Park from the small window, instead of the grey staring faces of people on the bus from her old bedroom. It’s the last morning of wearing Alix’s pyjamas and showering in Alix’s designer bathroom and drinking coffee from Alix’s shiny coffee machine. There had been a takeaway curry the night before. Josie had attempted to contribute some money towards it, but Alix had refused to accept it. ‘It’s your last night,’ she said, her hand gently touching the top of Josie’s hand. ‘It’s our treat.’ There’d been wine from a huge glass and a TV show with surround-sound audio booming through the house and Leon curled so that his toes were gently buried under Josie’s leg. Then the creak and bang and babble of a family putting itself to bed: hushed whispers, the click of light switches, the cloud-cat meowing gently from the darkened hallway as if to ask where everyone had gone.

It was, in some ways, the most perfect night of Josie’s life.

Josie sighs heavily. The air is limpid and sticky. Her phone tells her that it is already twenty-one degrees, and it is only seven thirty. The one time, Josie thinks, that she could really do with a disappointing English summer, and the weather gods deliver an almighty heatwave.

She glances at the dress and cardigan that she was wearing when she arrived here a week ago. She pulls the dress to her nose and sniffs it. It smells of Alix’s detergent. It smells of Alix’s house. She showers, using Alix’s spicy-smelling shower gel, and washes her hair using Alix’s herby-smelling shampoo, and she wraps herself in Alix’s thick, thick towels and sits on the side of Alix’s squashy bed and for a moment she feels a wash of sadness pass through her. But then she thinks of what she has planned next, and the sadness quickly fades.

‘Oh!’ says Alix when Josie walks into the kitchen a few minutes later. ‘You’re back in your own clothes!’

‘Yes. Well, of course.’ She holds the worn clothes and the pyjamas in one hand, the dog in the other. ‘Where shall I put these?’ she asks about the clothes.

‘Oh, just give them to me. Here.’

She hands them to Alix, who takes them through to the laundry room.

‘Thank you!’ Josie calls after her. ‘Thank you so much.’ Then she asks, ‘What time are your sisters arriving?’

‘Oh, five-ish, I think. So you don’t need to rush. Just take your time.’ She throws Josie one of her golden smiles and then tears open a packet of croissants. ‘Want one?’ she asks and Josie nods.

Nathan comes downstairs an hour later, Leon trailing behind him in his pyjamas. Nathan eyes Josie up and down and says, ‘Pretty dress, Josie.’

‘Thank you,’ she says, feeling simultaneously flattered and repulsed.

Eliza comes in a few minutes later and starts to cry about something mean someone had said to her on Snapchat and that is when Josie knows that it is time for her to go. She puts Fred into his carrier and slings her handbag over her shoulder.

She sees Alix eyeing her worriedly. ‘I can drive you?’ she says. ‘It’s quite a long walk, especially in this heat?’

Josie shakes her head. ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll walk in the shade. I’m not in any rush.’

‘And your mum knows you’re coming?’

‘Yes. She knows.’

Alix brings Josie into her arms then, and for once Josie lets herself be held.

When they come apart, Alix is looking directly into Josie’s eyes. ‘Please stay in touch, Josie. Won’t you? Get the help you need and stay in touch.’

And then the milky-blue door is between them, Alix and her world on one side, Josie on the other.

Around the corner, Josie opens her handbag to check that it is there, the money she has been collecting all week from the various cashpoint machines between Alix’s house and her job, the thick reassuring weight and shape of it, held together with one of Eliza’s pink glitter hairbands she’d found on the staircase earlier. Then she takes out the sunglasses she found under a chair in the garden this morning – a large pair with forest-green frames – places them on her face and starts walking.

The sun beats down from a heartless sky as she heads towards the next place.

Part Three

Saturday, 20 July

The house feels different immediately. It feels lighter and softer, and it feels, at long last, normal again. Alix stands for a moment in the hallway and absorbs the change in the energy. The cat sashays down the hall towards her and throws itself around Alix’s legs celebratorily, as if she too knows that her territory is returned to her. Alix gathers her into her arms, carries her into the kitchen and puts her up on the work surface near her food bowl.

‘Gone?’ says Nathan, peering up at her over his reading glasses.

‘Gone.’

‘Are you sure? Have you checked?’

‘No, I haven’t checked. But I know she has.’

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