Page 4 of Unapologetic Love Story

THE DISABILITY TRACK EPISODE #3

Special Interests

RAINA: We’re discussing all things special and interesting on today’s episode. My current special interests are obscure Saturday Night Live sketches, Marilyn Monroe, humpback whales and, as ever, mermaids. Because I, a watery autistic, identified with the moment in Splash when Daryl Hannah is hunched over in the tank. That’s kind of what it feels like to be an autistic woman. That and Ariel, the little mermaid who saved every rock she’d ever seen.

Across town, Tom Branimir woke to the sound of his landline shrilly ringing next to his head. It was his own fault for being a pretentious arse and insisting on having a retro-style telephone, one that most people didn’t bother to call. However, when they did, it would shriek and shriek until its needs were met.

‘Hello?’ Tom croaked into the phone, pressing a palm against his bleary eyes. He’d fallen asleep in front of his laptop again and his neck felt as if someone had been jumping up and down on it.

‘Oh, Tom, please tell me I didn’t wake you.’

His agent. She got up at five every day for a jog and fifty brisk lengths of the pool. He was in awe of her for it. ‘You woke me, Tori.’

‘Well,’ she sighed, and he could hear her grappling to turn his horrific sleep schedule into a positive. ‘You have to be up late tonight anyway, so better that you slept until’—he could hear her checking the time—‘noon.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not going out tonight.’

‘Yes, you are, Tom!’

‘No, Tori,’ he said, while glugging some lukewarm water. ‘I’m writing.’

‘You’re a non-fiction writer, Tom. You need to go out. Fiction writers are allowed to hole themselves away and hibernate or go on retreats to the Highlands where they can undergo a vow of silence for a few weeks, but you’re not a fiction writer. You write about real people. So, you need to go and meet real people.’

Tom glanced up at his work board. He sometimes thought it looked like a prop from a detective show. Something a conspiracy theorist might obsess over. Too many Post-it notes and scribbled ideas. A picture of his family pinned to the very top, reminding him why he wrote the stories that he did.

‘I write about people’s fuck-ups,’ he corrected quietly.

‘Tom!’

‘Tori!’

‘I don’t want to make this a contract thing.’

‘I don’t want you to do that either.’

‘But the publishers aren’t happy with rerunning the articles and the pieces. They want new material, remember?’

‘They’re getting new material!’

‘Exclusive material.’

Tom pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘What will that involve, then?’

‘Find one subject to write about who can be a completely new case. Brand-new.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Well, it would be easier if you went to the gala tonight.’

The Hathaway Dinner was an annual literary event held at the V&A. Tom liked to avoid it, knowing all the good stories would find their way to his desk anyway, but perhaps Tori was right.

Tom wrote about people who lied to their followers. His past cases had included the dishonest head of a pyramid scheme; a vlogger who’d pretended to live in a van while failing to disclose his six-bedroom mansion; a dog owner with a prize-winning poodle that didn’t exist.

A woman who’d promised her followers a guaranteed cure for cancer.

He was the writer that no influencer wanted in their mentions. If they were trying to sell some kind of dangerous weight-loss tea without transparency, he would call them out. If they were spouting political dogma without any interrogation or connection, he would call them out. If they told people ‘good vibes’ were more important than modern medicine, he would not only call them out, he would bury them in rebuttal.

Tom’s eyes landed on his family’s picture once more. His mother was blinking in the photo, which he’d always found so sweet.