Page 97 of We Used To Be Magic

‘It’s not so much the brand I’m worried about,’ she continues, looking down into her cup. ‘Just that it’s going to hurt a lot of people on our team if it ever sees the light of day.’

‘What’s the publication?’ I hear myself ask, having somehow managed to keep my expression blank.

‘Just some tawdry website looking for clicks. The whole thing is totally unscrupulous.’

‘Oh. Well … maybe no one will see it.’

‘Maybe,’ she says. Then, ‘No one has reached out to you about it, have they?’

‘No,’ I say – too quickly. ‘I mean – I don’t think so.’

‘Well, that’s something.’ She smiles. ‘I’d hate to see you get dragged into something so unpleasant. And as Imogene will tell you, it’s always a bad idea to engage with these kinds of people. I’d hate to see you accidentally hurt your prospects.’

She meets my eye as she says that. And while we’re looking at each other, I reallylook.I see the tightness of her smile. Thedetermined set of her jaw. The coolness of her gaze. And acid rises in my throat.

She knows, I realise. She knows who Julian is, and she knows what he’s done. It’s why I’m here and Marika isn’t – why she’s plied me with kind words and sweet things and dangled an even bigger campaign in front of me. It was all in the hope of shutting me up before I could say anything they’d regret.

‘Thank you for the advice,’ I say stiltedly. ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything that might hurt my career.’

Miranda visibly relaxes, at that.

‘That’s admirable,’ she replies. ‘Ambition. Focus.’

And I nod, but all I can think is,How long have you known? How long have you protected him?

All of the fear inside of me is hardening now. I can feel it, settling into the shape of something new.

EZRA

I’M INTHE MIDDLEOF SOMERANDOMDOWNTOWN BODEGAWHENI finally decide to turn my phone off. The steadily mounting stream of messages from Romy and Caroline is starting to make me feel edgy – I have no idea how many shifts I’ve missed, but I don’t really feel like being officially fired on top of everything else. I’ve missed some calls from Mac, too. Maggie messaged once. Nothing from Edie. Or Audrey, of course.

I yawn as I slip it back into my pocket, picking up a can of ginger beer. The evening bodega run is to stave off the mounting claustrophobia – I’ve spent the bulk of the past twenty-four hours watchingTVon the sofa, occasionally getting up to eat a handful of cereal or mix another drink. I’m sure I must have slept, but it doesn’t feel that way. My eyes are painfully dry, my tongue thick and sour in my mouth.

I pay for my ginger beer with a crumpled note. There’s already a water bottle half-filled with whisky in my coat pocket, and once I’m outside I take it out, topping it up with the soda as best I can. My best is bad, it turns out, and I wipe my now-sticky hands on my jumper and toss the can in a nearby dumpster with more force than necessary. Then I start to walk. It’s a nice evening, the darkening sky streaked with pink and gold. The familiar impulse to take a picture tugs at my brain, but I don’t have my camera. Besides, I don’t want to remember any of this.

It isn’t long before I realise that I’m heading towards the Village. It’s weird – I usually avoid it, subconsciously or otherwise, but when I start recognising buildings, I realise thatthe route to our old street is still etched into my brain.Why not, I think gaily. I haven’t been back there since I first left for school. I was too angry with Dad for selling it, too hurt that I didn’t get to say goodbye, too fuckingsad. Only I don’t feel much of anything tonight. Ever since Audrey left, I’ve been observing my life fall apart with the cool detachment of someone watching a natural disaster on the news.

But then I reach our house, and—

Not our house, I remind myself. Whatusedto be our house, only it all looks exactly how I remember it – jarringly so. Black door, stone steps, chrysanthemums in the window boxes – Mum planted those, I’m almost sure. And the lights are on. Another family is probably inside, but I’m gripped with the impulse to knock on the door anyway, just in case she answers.

Instead, I cross the street and sit heavily on the shallow kerb, taking a swig of my drink. I feel a bit nauseous, struck by the sudden conviction that our furniture is still in there. None of it ever materialised in Dad’s new apartment – nothing did. Even the really mundane shit like bedding and cutlery was new, and sometimes I picture the old stuff in its own private landfill, a monument to that life. It can’t be gone. Not Mum’s things, at least not her books and her notepads, her mountains of folders. He wouldn’t have gotten rid of her battered wooden hairbrush, or the chewed-up looking Hush Puppies that she wore year-round. And someone must have kept the photo albums, meticulously chronologised and lined neatly on the shelf above her desk. She liked to keep them in her eyeline, she told me once, but never explained why.

I would have kept it all. The stuff, the house – I lost my shit when Dad wrote to tell me it’d been sold, just days before I was set to fly back for Christmas. To top it off, that Christmas itself was excruciating. Dad was trying so fucking hard to keep things festive, apparently unaware his forced enthusiasm only madeeverything feel bleaker. He’d even bought a tree for the new apartment, and they’d all waited until I was there to decorate it. But then Dad produced this box of decorations that I’d never seen before, and though I realise now that he probably thought it might be too painful to use the ones that Mum had so lovingly curated, I wanted them. I wanted that much if I couldn’t have her, and I briefly imagined upending the box from his hands, crushing the unfamiliar baubles underfoot, pelting them against the walls –

Instead, I left the room without a word. No one came after me, and when I reappeared for dinner, the tree had been decorated. We never spoke about it again, and we’ve gotten new decorations every year since.

Suddenly I’m on the verge of tears – I roughly paw at my eyes, embarrassed. This is exactly why I don’t like to think about this shit.

‘Hi there.’

I start, glancing upwards. There’s a woman looking down at me with obvious concern, a little kid with fluffy hair and a solemn expression clinging to her hand.

‘Are you all right?’ she asks gently.

‘Yep,’ I say quickly, getting to my feet. ‘Fine. Thank you.’

And then I’m striding away, hands tucked into my pockets, abandoning my bottle on the kerb. I don’t deserve pity, especially not from a stranger. What’s more, it’s jarringly familiar. Mum would have done the same thing, because that’s the kind of person she was – interested in everything, kind to everyone. And I don’t exactly remember when things started to get really bad, but that was part of it. The shape of her days didn’t change but it was almost as though there was less of her, somehow – I saw that, but I never tried to talk to her about it. I’ve always been a shitty son, apparently. I don’t even know where her grave is. I’ve never visited.

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