Chapter Twenty-Seven
Find her before she finds you
Today’s dead American Erica Pells (from Grand Junction, Colorado), passed away peacefully aged ninety-four, and ‘made every day a good day’. I decide that this is an excellent omen, as it is my birthday. I am forty-eight. I do not look forty-eight, of course. I actually think I look younger than twenty-eight, but I’ve told a few people that’s my age now so I have to stick to it. Anyway – maybe, like the Colorado Erica, I can now make every day a good day. I’m getting there – today is certainly already a marked improvement on last year’s birthday.
I remember I had a raging Pinot Noir hangover after binge watchingTed Lassountil about two a.m. In the morning, I was trying to remove a hair on my top lip that had appeared from nowhere but was so long that if there had also been one on the other side, I could have curled both ends with wax and turned the whole thing into a rather dapper feature. I was right in the middle of this depilatory challenge when Josie came round with Héloïse carrying my favourite Ottolenghi almond cake, which would have been lovely if it wasn’t for the depressing number of candles stuck in it. And at eleven a.m. I mean, who does that? They even lit all the candles before they rang the bell, so when I opened the door Ihadto blow them out, even though I still felt sick from my hangover and all the tweezing.
Today, I don’t have to put up with such interruptions. And thankfully the positive-ageing drama seems to have calmed down a bit too. There are still a few comments on my posts, but Channing tells me to reply that ‘WULT® will make you feel positive every day!’ (link in bio to subscribe to updatesetc). Which is true. He also says that negative comments are to be expected now that I have so many followers. Apparently ‘Mother’ says the ‘haters gonna hate’, and I have a funny feeling he doesn’t mean his actual mother but in fact, and bizarrely, Taylor Swift.
Then there’s the whole Kofi thing. I feel like I’m still trying to process seeing him again after all this time. I had a really weird dream he was lying in the street and Owen was lighting tea lights on the kerb. I was trying to wake Kofi up, shouting at him, ‘Owen is here! He’s alive! It’s all going to be fine!’ What the hell does that mean? Maybe that itisall going to be fine, but it’s not like I can flick a switch and forget it all. I’ve played that horrible night over in my head so many times, and blamed myself every single one of them. The guilt has been in the background of everything I’ve done since. In fact, it’swhyI’ve done a lot of the things I’ve done since. Not just moving back to Wiltshire, but more than that, believing myself to be a bit of a crap person all round. JEEZ. I’m such an idiot. Maybe I’m not as crap as I thought. Thank god I’ve got my lovely new jawline to cheer me up.
I sit on the balcony in one of the deckchairs. They’re starting to annoy me as they’re hard to get out of. Although I wouldn’t have been able to manage it at all before the treatment. Just as I sit down, Josie sends a perfunctory ‘happy birthday’ message. Then Mother Pells calls. She says she has a present for me but that I can ‘get it when I visit’, which she hopes will be soon. I decide to test the water, as it’s my birthday, which surely means nobody can be cross with me?
‘I’m looking a bit different these days, Mum. I had a fancy beauty treatment. You know I get them for free.’
‘Anotherone, Erica?’
‘Yes. This one was really good, though.’
‘Does this mean you’ll stop wearing so much make-up?’
‘Actually, yes,’ I say, trying not to sound irritated. ‘It’s cutting-edge technology. I’m one of the first people to try it.’
‘You’re going up in the world!’
Is ‘going up in the world’ some sort of comparison to Simon? I go to snap at her but stop myself, and just say ‘Yes’. I haven’t seen her for ages, and maybe I’m reading too much into it.
‘Can you bring me some more of those lip balms when you come next?’ she says.
‘Okay, Mum.’
‘Thank you darling. I keep losing them.The Inevitable, I’m sure…’
Once I’ve said goodbye, I move onto Cassia’s Instagram feed, where she just uploaded an acai and banana overnight oats recipe reel#whatIeatinaday. Who cares what you have for breakfast, Cassia? But about two thousand people clearly do. She isn’t finished though… hold on, what’s she saying now… that there’s ‘something suspicious’ about WULT® Woman… and that she can’t understand why ‘the person in question’ always has the same background? Then she laughs and says, ‘Maybe the poor woman is being held prisoner! We should find her.’
Just as I’m about to put my phone away, I check the comments on my latest WULT® Woman reel, which was a#GRWMyesterday. They all look like the usual kind of thing, asking when the treatment will be available, saying how great I look and/or how much their husband/partner will love it (take note, Gabe)… Wait. Hold on – this one’s different. ‘Why are you always in the same room, WULT® Woman??’ I keep scrolling. There are about eight replies below this, one saying ‘Blink twice if you need help!!!’. Then another: ‘Why don’t you ever go outside – are you being kept prisoner by Yuvana Labs??’. Bloody Cassia. What has she started?
By the time Zoe comes round for her usual cup of tea and chat after her lectures, I already have a hashtag:#whereswulty. I message Channing who tells me to ‘touch grass’. I manage to ask Zoe what this means without blowing my cover and, apparently, it’s ‘come offline’ and not as I had previously thought (and indeed hoped), smoke some weed, which I haven’t done since I was last with Nandy.
Zoe sees a birthday card lying on the balcony table. It’s the only one that came today and is from Merlyn and Channing, the oddest co-signers of a card one could possibly imagine. The card itself is just as odd. It has a picture of Keanu Reeves on the front with the words ‘Keanu believe it’s your birthday’, which presumably they think is a good pun. I’m sure more cards will come, they just take longer when they’re redirected.
‘Is it your birthday today?’ Zoe laughs. Sometimes it’s annoying that she giggles so much, sometimes I quite like how happy it sounds. Today, it’s annoying. She asks if I’d like to come to the pub later – I think she feels sorry for me, which she shouldn’t. I didn’t think she ever went to the pub, so this is a pleasing development, as is the fact that she mentions Kai will be there. Maybe my first birthday as ‘new me’ will see me getting some action for the first time in… well, I’m too embarrassed to say how long, and I don’t think Gabe kissing me really counts. I’m pretty sure it’s not referred to as ‘action’ anymore, either.
The Mariner’s Arms looks like a regular London pub. But instead of having the usual mix of ages, and the obligatory old men sitting at the bar, it’s almost entirely full of young people. Maybe it’s now hip – or hip-hop – to go to traditional pubs. When I was in my twenties, we only went to bars with names like ‘NebulaYard’ or ‘Infinity 2000’, which invariably had exposed pipes on the ceiling, blue glass vases on the tables and served snacks, which were almost entirely based on sun-dried tomatoes.
Zoe and her friends have taken over an alcove with taxidermy birds and fish in cases on the walls. The table is sticky and littered with pints of either lager or cider, or – disturbingly for someone who generally only drinks wine or Aperol (and the occasional Bloody Mary) – a combination of both, with a dash of blackcurrant. I vaguely remember this drink from the Nineties but it was quite grungy, and I wasn’t, so I can’t remember what it’s called. I’m fairly confident it’s a ‘Blacksnake’. I attempt to surreptitiously google it but the girl next to me with a Peppa Pig tattoo on her arm and lots of star-shaped spot patches on her face (what ‘Core’ is that – Shambles Core?) keeps looking at my phone. I hope she didn’t see me checking the comments on my latest WULT® Woman reel, which incidentally was a#GRWMbefore I left to come out, using my new VolumeFlow Vortex Hairstyler (#gifted).
I’m just wondering if I can get away with asking for a wine list – and come to the conclusion that I cannot – when Kai, after trying to catch my eye ever since I arrived, offers to buy me the lager/cider/blackcurrant thing, even though he doesn’t appear to be drinking himself. He’s sweet, I like his nose ring, and under his curtains of hair, his eyes are a very clear blue.
I tuck into my drink and chat to Kai about when he got his nose pierced and if it hurt. I’m feeling pretty pleased with my birthday self – maybe this is my new crowd. Maybe I’m starting to fit in. It might just be the drink talking, but apart from accidentally saying ‘Many hands make light work!’ when we all helped the barman clear empties off the table, I feel like I’m holding my own as a bona fide Gen Z. I knew I’d get there in the end.
The conversation turns to families, and a guy wearing a woolly hat and glasses last seen on Timmy Mallett asks me why I’m not with mine on my birthday. I tell them my dad is dead, which seems to shock everyone – I hadn’t considered how unusual that would be in a group of twenty-somethings, so allow myself to enjoy the sympathy for a few minutes. The Peppa Pig girl even puts her arm around me but I’m fairly sure she’s just trying to get another look at my phone.
Then it gets weird. I make a couple of vague comments about how my mum is more interested in my brother than me, and Aimee, who has a zig-zag parting and pink tinted sunglasses on, mentions just as casually that she’s cut her mum off completely. She’s even blocked her number and email address. The woolly hat guy says he’s considering doing the same with both his parents, and says he’s ‘following his truth’. I smile and nod to start with, just trying to fit in, saying yeah, I’m thinking of doing that too.
But then I remember what Kofi said. My parents did look out for me and Simon, in their own way. They weren’t around as much as I would have liked, but maybe they were just working hard. For us. And he was right, we did have some brilliant holidays… One year we went on a Hoseasons boating trip around the Norfolk Broads, and a couple of years running we camped in the Forest of Dean. Once, when Father Pells got a bonus, we got the ferry to Holland to see the windmills and I broughtstroopwaffelsback for my classmates. I was very popular at school for at least a fortnight.
It all starts to feel a bit… wrong, agreeing with this. So, I take a big gulp of my horrible drink, and I say, quite loudly, ‘No.’
