Chapter 16
Ore
Ore stood in front of the mirror and tried reciting her affirmations.I am enough, I am capable, I am loved, I deserve to be here. I am enough, I am capable, I am loved, I deserve to be here. I am enough, I am capable, I am loved, I deserve to be here.
Eventually, theyou’re an impostorvoice recoiled back into the subconscious lair it had crawled from, and Ore’s rational brain took over the reins. It had been a while since she’d had a bout of such overwhelming self-doubt.
There really is no harder thing than conquering one’s own mind; that’s what Kyle, her therapist, had told her. But there would come a time when what felt like the burdensome beating down of her unhelpful thoughts would happen pre-emptively, seamlessly, effortlessly.
This particular episodehadfelt pretty burdensome, but maybe it was the unfamiliar environment wearing down her resilience. For a moment she felt her mind wander, considering how much more overwhelmed she’d be at theNew York Herald, scratching at the scab of inadequacy. She managed to pull herself back into the present before she went down that thankless path.
Instead she thought about hertoolbox of strategies, as Kylecalled it. When she was in the depths ofthis, back at the end of her first year at Columbia, she had found when she was stuck on a story or assignment it was freeing to do the most terrifying thing she could imagine, going back to the start. Retracing her steps but trying to follow them slower than she had laid them. That’s when she would find the golden nugget of the story. It was in her nature to run towards things, but turning back would serve her well, he’d insisted.
What a difference it made.
That first year when her grades were coming back average, and her classmates seemed to be drifting through the course effortlessly as she slogged through eighteen-hour days, half studying, the other half bartending to pay her rent, she had drafted several emails to the dean to tell him she was dropping out – but she had never sent them. The voice had been the loudest it had ever been, telling her she wasn’t good enough to be here, day in and day out.
She had collapsed in the library, and when she woke up in the campus infirmary they told her it was ‘exhaustion’. She had been embarrassed, convinced it only confirmed that she wasn’t cut out for this, that her admission had been a terrible mistake. Then she met Kyle, and he would turn out to be the first man in her life who would ever truly know her.
‘Many overachieving children find themselves lost as they get into their twenties. For a long time they rely on validation from teachers and parents to build their sense of self-worth, and then once they end up in a milieu with equally high-performing peers, they no longer know how to understand their own value.’ He had said it as though it was a throwaway observation, but Ore had felt seen, uncomfortably so.
She hadn’t gone back for three weeks, and then one night after getting back from a particularly chaotic shift at the bar, she’d opened an email from Gail Fairweather, informing her that her latest assignment had been ‘a disappointing read’. There had been tears, panic and shame in abundance. She booked an emergency next-day session with Kyle while crouched inside her wardrobe. Since she was little she’d sought out tight, dark corners whenever things felt like too much.
Over the next six months Kyle encouraged her to cut her hours, apply for more financial support and slow down. Whenever things got on top of her she was supposed to stop, not run faster – turn around and face the monster chasing her. Most of the time, it turned out, it was just a bogeyman, a figment of her overactive imagination.
What would Kyle say to me right now?She had the urge to call him, but she knew she shouldn’t. Firstly because of the time zones they were respectively in, and secondly because he wouldn’t answer. After the way they’d left it, it would be unwise for him to.
Slow down, take a step back, turn around, what have you missed while you were too busy steaming ahead?
Ore took a deep breath.I am enough, I am capable, I am loved, I deserve to be here.And then she added,and I look hot,because she did. Sometimes it soothed her to worry more about what she looked like, how others perceived her, than how she felt. That was something she had, counter-intuitively, always felt more in control of. She smiled at herself brightly in the mirror and marvelled at how convincing it looked.
Ever the master of fake it till you make it –another of Kyle’s observations.
She laid out her pitiful notebook, with its half page of illegible scrawlings, on the small desk in the room. She found her other notebook sandwiched in between layers of clothing in her suitcase and then opened her laptop.
Methodically, she started at the beginning, with what she had found out about Chuck’s childhood before she’d spoken to him. Not much, it turned out. He must have used his connections to scrub himself from the internet he so loved, she thought.
But there was a line in the student paper she’d come across, scanned into the MIT online archives that mentioned a boarding school in Europe. She had forgotten about that. On his Wikipedia page there was no mention of it and that morning he had only talked about his ‘run-down shack of a schoolhouse’ in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Clicking through her folder of annotated articles, she landed on another obscure find. In one of the very few interviews he had done early on in his career he listedfluent Flemishas his ‘surprise secret talent’. In the note she’d made, she’d written,he’s boring then …
Now she tore out a page and sketched out a timeline. She wrote:Born, 1982, Oklahoma, school approx. 1988–2006, some of that in Belgium? Some of that in Stillwater? MIT 2007–2012, Pagonis founded 2014–now.
It wasn’t much, but already she felt calmer. She had located at least one mystery to solve, and it was a bit of direction if nothing else.
From her interview with Vicky, she had almost nothing apart from the comment about Chuck being a bit of an arsehole boss, which even Daniel had alluded to, and she had basicallyfigured out herself.Chuck not a nice guy?she wrote underneath the timeline, and then she wroteboundariesandinvestorsand underlined both.
For good measure she decided to look up the majority investors in Pagonis and listed their names down the side of the page. If Chuck was in the habit of inviting them on board, she might even have a run-in with some of them and she wanted to know who she was dealing with.
Next she made a list of the crew she knew about and placed check boxes next to each name. Her goal was to talk to at least half the staff, across a range of roles. Maybe the younger, greener crew would be more loose-lipped.
Finally she was left with Mel and Agatha. The former she had decided she wouldn’t talk to. It would be unethical to take advantage of a teenager’s ire towards her parents just to get a scoop, even if she had to admit it was tempting. For Agatha, her plan was to try and catch her ‘off duty’. Maybe a glass of wine would soften her hard edges.
She was lost in thought and scheming when she heard the walls begin to rattle, the abstract seascape above the desk thrumming in its frame. The vibrations became more intense and Ore felt a rising sense of panic, mixed with a tinge of nausea.
As the noise settled into a louder whirring, her brain settled on the conclusion that it must be a helicopter arriving.
She checked her watch: 15.06. Damn she was late again. She gathered her spillage of notes into a pile, splashed some water on her face, spritzed on her perfume, pulled on a cardigan and headed up to the deck to track down Daniel. She needed to get her head in the game. Her next interview would be better; it had to be.
