Page 77 of We Used To Be Magic

‘The shoot is, yeah,’ she replies, tone unreadable. ‘I assume you’ve told Audrey about this?’

‘… No. Not yet.’

‘Why?’ she asks, so sharply that I almost flinch. I have this weird, irrational conviction that she’s staring right into my skull, watching the feeble machinations of my brain with steely disdain.

‘I don’t know,’ I manage.

‘You don’t know,’ Marika echoes flatly.

‘I mean – I wasn’t sure that I should,’ I add hastily, floundering. ‘She’s been kind of down recently and I didn’t want to make it worse.’

‘Implying what?’

I finally glance up, panicked.

‘Nothing,’ I say quickly, wondering when exactly this turned into an interrogation. ‘It doesn’t matter – forget I said anything.’

‘Did something happen at the party at Julian’s apartment?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I lost track of her for a bit – when I found her again, she’d been crying.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘She mentioned something about being homesick.’

‘What about at your party?’ Marika presses. I stare at her, uncomprehending.

‘Your birthday party,’ she repeats. ‘When she spent the night. She told me that she drank too much, got weepy …’

‘Yeah,’ I say, my brain offering the memory of her slumped against the bathroom wall, mascara tracks lining her pale cheeks. ‘She did. Why?’

‘She was sick, the day before,’ Marika says, absently flexing her hand. ‘She didn’t get out of bed. That was all after the test shoot.’

‘The what?’

‘A photoshoot. At Julian’s studio, ahead of the campaign.’

‘The two of you together?’

‘Separately,’ Marika says after a pause. ‘Alone.’

I briefly shut my eyes, pain lancing my skull. I wanted so badly to be wrong. For Marika to shut this entire thing down—

‘Jesus,’ Mac says, sauntering back to the table and dropping into his chair. ‘Did someone die while I was away?’

‘My patience,’ Marika says smoothly, flipping over a menu. ‘What are we having?’

‘A woman after my own heart.’ Mac smiles, turning to me. ‘You staying? I was only kidding about—’

‘I can’t,’ I say, getting to my feet and reaching for my wallet. I fish out a few crumpled bills and then I’m gone, moving for the door like there’s someone chasing me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want any of this to be true, and if it is, I don’t want to know about it. But I’m overwhelmed by an awful, crushing certainty that it’s too late – that I’ve set events in motion, triggering something I can’t even comprehend.

I quicken my pace when I’m out on the street, ducking my head. All I can think to do is get back to my apartment, turn up the volume on theTVas far as it’ll go and dive into a bottle of something stronger than sake. And yes, I probably have a fucking drinking problem, but maybe that’s what happens when a well-meaning colleague of your mother’s passes you their whisky soda during her wake because you’ve been shakinguncontrollably since the church service and doing a bad fucking job of hiding it.

I don’t think that anyone could reasonably blame me for wanting to feel less. That day and every day since.

AUDREY

‘AUDREY?’

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