Something in the tenderness of Elliott’s voice makes it feel as though the air is slowly leaving the room. ‘Just be careful there, is all I’m saying.’
On the tram back to the hotel, I wonder how this information, if indeed it’s true, evaded the Tedettes for so long. If it’s the case, I guess such situations tend to be like that: very good at getting themselves buried and hidden.
I see an Instagram DM from Alice. The dog-sitter has not returned from Brazil. My shit-scraping services are needed again. I sit on my hands and wait two stops before writing back.
‘Happy to!’ I reply, even though something shadowy passes through me the second I hit ‘send’.
It takes me all of six minutes of looking online to find a random therapist who will do an emergency Skype session this very afternoon. As I wait for the appointment to start, I push away the thought that I have no real friend to talk about with this. I once had Carrie. I once had Johnny. Ieven had Naomi for a while. But now, there’s no one. The walls of this mid-priced hotel are drawing in on me.
The image of the therapist Marla, who is reassuringly middle-aged and expensively dressed, eventually comes into view on the screen. In this moment, I know I’ve hit a whole new low.
‘I’ve just… fucked up,’ I tell her. ‘I mean, I am fucking up.’
‘That’s OK,’ she soothes. ‘Let’s just try and start at the beginning.’
‘I don’t know where to even start,’ I say. ‘This has just been a hurricane of shit for as long as I remember. I just want out of it.’
‘And that’s what we are here to try and do today, Esther,’ she coos. Her voice is all soft and milky, but far from soothing a racing mind, it’s somehow having the opposite effect on me. I see myself from the outside looking in at this scene: me, on a Skype to a completely random therapist. I don’t want to have to explain everything. Equally, I don’t want to tell her that a tiny part of me feels I can fix this if I just follow through and meet Ted and let him see me for the person I am.
I cut Marla off mid-sentence and press the red button to end the Skype call. The sound that the computer makes is a resounding full stop, leaving me feeling more in the middle of nowhere than ever before.
30
I’m not expecting Alice to be there when I let myself in the following day for Oscar’s dog walk and bowel evacuation– as it happens, I’m trying to figure out walking routes on which I am entirely positive I will not meet Naomi– but sure enough, there Alice is.
‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ I tell her, standing uncertainly in the doorway.
‘I know. I’m meant to be somewhere else, but I’m just… having a hard time leaving the house right now.’ Her eyes are red-rimmed, and she is certainly shaken.
‘I mean, I can’t even look at this thing any more.’ She half laughs, gesturing to her phone. It buzzes regularly in her hand, and she flinches. ‘I’ve turned off all notifications, but they still seem to get to me somehow.’
I feel a momentary slice of guilt, wondering if Violet and the others have become more merciless and unrelenting in their contact. It would explain all of this.
‘I know I’m not supposed to even take on board what they say, but it’s gotten pretty bad. Ted thinks someone is hacking into his cell phone. He’s kinda freaked.’
I bury the thoughts of me trying to figure out his email password.
‘We’re probably gonna take some time out of all of this,’Alice tells me. ‘He knows a guy who owns a place in Miami, so we might go hang out there for a while. Just until… I don’t know what.’
‘Well, just know that I’ll be here and able to help with Oscar,’ I say. I’m trying to keep anything too cloying out of my voice. Maybe she’ll ask me to housesit.
‘We’ll probably take him along.’ Alice sighs softly. ‘But thank you.’
‘Well, why don’t you sit tight here and I’ll get Oscar doing his cardio for the day?’
‘You’re sweet,’ Alice says, but still distracted. Oscar must sense the vibe too; he leaves with me without putting up much protest.
By the time I arrive back half an hour later, I see Ted’s form through the window. This feels almost like too big a moment to fully process now that I’ve finally arrived at it, but after a deep breath, I let myself in anyhow.
Pretending not to notice Ted, I unleash Oscar, who basically ignores him and wanders away, looking for his rightful owner. Ted doesn’t give me too much attention either.
He’s pacing in little circles, agitated. He’s being brilliantly protective. I think back to what Elliott said. Maybe he got Ted all wrong.
‘So it’s intense around here, huh?’ I say. Not looking at me, he exhales deeply, conspiratorially, not wanting to get too much into it.
It doesn’t have to be like this,I want to tell him.You and I can escape all this and start over and do things nice and low-key.Do I still want that, though? I think I do.
‘It’s just…’ he starts, then falters. ‘People are just so fucking weird, you know?’
