Stacy turned to me, glowing with a dew of sweat and validation.
“Well done,” I said, trying not to lie. “Everyone loved it.”
“Thank you. You were a wonderful chair. It was so great to meet you. We should totally grab a drink or something one time.”
“That would be brilliant.”
And we never spoke again.
Gwen vibrated over, giddy with how well it had gone. “We’re ready for you,” she said, and led Stacy toward her signing table, her fans swooning as she passed. I followed reluctantly, knowing it would only be an hour more, max, of work before I could go home to Ben.
While Stacy’s queue snaked between aisles, my stand was essentially empty. Nobody seemingly in the market for a free corporate key ring. In fact, the queue contained only two people. I sat on my chair and smiled hello, nonetheless grateful to have them.
“Hello,” I said to a middle-aged woman wearing a damp navy anorak.
“Hello.” She picked up a key ring. “These are free, aren’t they?”
I’d been given literally no guidance from work, but nodded. “Yep, totally free.”
“Great.” And she shamelessly picked up ten key rings, dropped them into her pocket and wandered off without another word.
Normal, totally normal, I thought, readying myself for whoever was next. My next taker was younger, maybe twenty-one. Perfectly put-together in the current cutting-edge fashions. She picked up a key ring and giggled.
“Hi, can I help you?” I asked.
“I’m Caroline,” she said, like I should know who she is.
“Hi, Caroline...”
“I really loved your Hold On For Tomorrow project. I actually donated an entry.”
I sat up in my chair. “No way!” I smiled. “Really? What was your reason?”
She giggled again, turning the color of her purple lipstick. “I think it was number twelve thousand and eighty-three. ‘The first proper day of autumn.’”
“Oh, that was a brilliant one.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you want more than one key ring?” I asked, but she shook her head. There was nothing else to say, but Caroline lingered, apparently uninterested in joining Stacy’s anaconda queue. We smiled at each other, and I was trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on, when...
“So, actually, I was wondering if you could help me. You see, I really want to become a journalist...” Caroline launched into a preprepared monologue about her career ambitions as if this was a job interview. I blinked and smiled as she talked me through her CV, and as I tried to figure out a polite way of telling her that, no, I couldn’t get her a job at Gah!. “Yeah, so I sent Vogue the first page of my dissertation, but I never heard back. Do you have an email for them that works?”
More minutes passed as Caroline told me in detail about her work experience placement at a local newspaper, until, mercifully, a person joined the queue behind her. “So, at Gah! do you take on anyone...”
I held up my hand. “I’m so sorry, Caroline, but there’s someone waiting.”
“Oh, right.” She glanced behind her.
Now that I knew she would leave, I found space for generosity. I’d been where she’d been. Young, and hungry, and desperate to know the secret four-figure code that opens the door to your dream life. “Honestly, you’re doing all the right things,” I told her. “Be patient. It will happen. And thanks so much for coming tonight.”
“Bye then.” Caroline left without a thank-you, and I reminded myself this is what you can expect of people who fetishize the seasons, particularly autumn.
I closed my eyes to collect my remaining energy for my third and final key ring fan. I would be grateful. I would be warm. I would be patient. The evening was almost over.
“Sorry to keep you...” I said, looking up. “...oh my God. Jessica!”
And, like that, the theater wiped away, and I was a teenager again.
14
september 2000
I wiped a mascara blob off the mirror and took in the novelty of my reflection. Somehow my school uniform still fitted, which seemed impossible as I hadn’t worn it for over six months. It wasn’t even 8:00 a.m., but the late summer heat raged on outside. No breeze fluttered through my window, but I still wouldn’t be wearing my short-sleeved blouse to the first day back to school. I was calculating exactly how far I could push up my jumper cuffs before you got to the scars. Today, of all days, everyone would be looking for them.
Nausea squeezed my intestines together over my uneaten breakfast of Honey Nut Cheerios, while Mum’s nerves crackled static around my freshly washed hair.
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked again over her cup of green tea. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“Christ, Mum, I’m going to be fine.” I picked up a spoon of soggy cereal and plopped it back into the bowl. “Amy’s meeting me at the corner.”
“Why don’t I drive you both? Just in case you don’t cope.”
“Mum!”
“Not every day. Just your first day back.”
“We’re walking, it’s fine.”
“Well, excuse me for trying to do what’s best for you.”
It felt hugely surreal, reigniting the clockwork routine of getting ready to leave the house, like remembering the lines to an old play I’d once starred in. I re-trod my former footsteps, packing my JanSport rucksack, brushing my teeth, checking how much credit I had on my phone, digging out my old pencil tin filled with strawberry-scented gel Pentels, where the ink had hardened around the nibs. I’d missed the whole summer term of school. I hadn’t done this since you could buy Easter eggs in the shops, and now it was September. Mum stalked me with wide eyes, asking inane questions to satisfy her anxiety rather than mine.
“Have you topped up your phone so you can call if you need to? You can always use the school phone. Do you want a chewy bar to take in? Take a chewy bar.” She shoved one into my bag as I was hoisting it onto my shoulders. “Do you think you’re going to need to call me to come and pick you up? Because I do have a meeting, so I’d rather know now if you don’t think you’ll make it through the day.”
“Bye, Mum.”
“You can call me anytime. Anytime. Just not between ten and four.”
* * *
I had the distance between my house and the corner to feel my own anxiety rather than absorb my mother’s. I paused at the end of my road and grasped my narrowing throat as the hugeness of this day engulfed me. I panicked about how people would stare at me. I panicked at how hot I was going to be in my uniform. I panicked at the sheer impossibility of getting through a school day without panicking, let alone managing to learn anything. I panicked Kim had got her desperate, pathetic hooks into Amy and taken away my best friend. I panicked my spots still showed through my thickly applied Rimmel concealer. Then I panicked all this panic would make me numb out again, and tip me back down into the mental hellhole that I’d been so carefully scaling my way out of. Already sweating into my synthetic jumper, it became abundantly clear that living my life was a complete impossibility. Dragging myself every day across a bed of shattered glass...for what? GCSEs? Uni? A job? A life? What kind of pitiful life? A life where every day was determinedly difficult, and unrelenting, with only minor pockets of happiness to break up the misery. Surely, I thought, that’s not worth the effort? Surely I should just surrender? Tap out...? Surely oblivion was better than surviving...