Page 91 of If I Never Met You

Emily dropped on to the L-shaped sofa and covered her face with her hands.

‘The worst thing he’s right. He’s right.’

‘What? How?’

‘I am a fake.’

‘In what way are you fake?’

‘What’s not fake about me? This isn’t my hair colour,’ Emily yanked at a hank of what Laurie had learned was called balayage. ‘These aren’t my nails!’ she waved Shellacs the colourof blood at her. On her pale small hands, they looked to Laurie like the Snow White spinning wheel pin-prick.

‘And this?’ Laurie said, gesturing at their grand surroundings. ‘A figment?’

‘I’ve got a mortgage larger than the moon, Laurie, you know that. You are looking at debt. Debt with Hague Blue walls.’

‘You have a big mortgage because you have an even bigger salary because you are CEO of your own very successful business.’

‘Yeah and there’s not a day that goes by I don’t think it might topple over.’

‘That’s why you work so hard. That’s why you’re so good. You don’t take anything for granted.’

‘I’m right not to. Lost two accounts last week.’ Emily put bare feet on the edge of her coffee table and flexed her matching red toes. She was still every bit the overcaffeinated waif who buzzed around Laurie’s halls bedroom. Laurie hated her seeming so world weary. Brought low by a total tosser.

‘That’s work. That’s life. You’ll win three next week.’

‘It’s not only that though, Loz! You think I’m thin because I’m thin, right? Maybe I was, once. Now, if I’m not eating with clients or eating with you or whatever, I skip meals.’ She gestured over at a spotless kitchen. ‘It’s never seen a chopped onion. I’m not saying I have an eating disorder. I’m saying I’m thin because I work very hard at being thin and deprive myself and then pretend I don’t have to work at it. Even to you. I don’t know why. Why don’t I say, “I am thin becauseI try very hard to be”? Because my world runs on envy, you need to incite envy. Because I’mfake.’

‘You’re not fake!’ Laurie said, wilting a little in sympathy.

She sat down beside Emily and put her arm around her. Emily had the musky odour of the night before and it occurred to Laurie there were very few friends you could call before the shower.

‘I wouldn’t get too close, I smell like a monkey’s handbag,’ Emily said with a sniff.

‘Aye yeah you do.’ They both did the kind of weak stomach-laughing that sits right on the border with tears.

‘You’re very real, Emily. You’re dynamic and clever as hell and you never complain. Just because you don’t discuss the effort it takes, doesn’t make you fake. Would a man do that? What would yourtwin brotherdo?’

Emily smiled, wanly, at mention of an old catchphrase. At university, discussing with righteous fervour at the different treatment meted out to men, they always put it to this test – the hypothetical male twin in this man’s world, who had all the masculine advantages.

‘People will always need lawyers,’ Emily continued, voice tremulous. ‘They won’t always need what I sell. Or they won’t want it from some craggy fifty-something still cramming herself into her skinny jeans.’

‘Right, stop. What does bar man do?’

‘… Work in a bar?’

‘Right, work in a bar. There’s nothing wrong with that. But he’s what, thirty?’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘You are four years older than him, Emily, you live here and you are a boss, and you depend on no one. Have you got any idea how threatening that is to the male ego, for women not to need them? Do you think it came from nowhere, Rob the thirty-two-year-old barman’s need to put you down, to break you in some way, to humiliate you?’

Laurie thought about her own working week. You were equal with these men so long as you didn’t make them feel unequal, lesser, challenged. If you stayed in your lane.

‘This is pure misogyny. Those tomatoes are highly relevant to his therapist’s notes, not yours.’

Emily nodded.

‘Then there’s the sex. What am I doing? The people I sleep with, we all have the same problem. The moment we find something is there for the taking, we don’t want it anymore. How fucked up is that?’

---