Page 68 of Filter This
‘Hi.’ Ali felt instantly wrong-footed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here to say hi in person since you’ve been ignoring my texts and voicenotes and DMs.’
‘I have not.’ Ali slipped ahead of him into the kitchen to grab Liv’s consent form and shove it under a pile of magazines. ‘Tea? Coffee? I told you the signal in Kerry was shite.’
‘You’ve been back six days,’ Sam said flatly. ‘I feel like you’re avoiding me. You blocked me from your Story again. I can tell, ya know. Eamon’s girlfriend, Sarah, follows you and she let me see – you were updating last night.’
Ali put the kettle on and rummaged for biscuits.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ali really didn’t have time for this, but things with Sam had to be managed very carefully.
He had become the best thing in her life, but now that the Glossies were here, time was running out on her lies. Still, she couldn’t help but hope that she’d somehow be able to style it out. Putting on the blinkers and focusing on the now was the only way she could deal with her mounting anxiety about her various strands of deception. If her mind tried to take in the whole picture it was just too much: instant panic attack. Zoom out and her life was a blazing inferno of chaos and hashtags, but up close it seemed much more manageable somehow.
Like, right now wasn’t about trying to figure out what to tell Sam about their imaginary baby. It was about doing some glam-prep for tonight’s awards. Then she’d visit Miles and give him ice cream and try not to think too much about what was going to happen to him. Compartmentalising had become Ali’s main jam – she just needed to stay focused on the positives.
Sam sat down heavily at the table. ‘I thought things were maybe going badly with Miles but then Sarah tells me you’re all over Instagram talking about the best cat-milk serum for dry, tired skin?’
Ali squirmed. Things with Milesweregoing badly. She hadn’t missed a day with him since coming back from Kerry but it still didn’t feel like she was doing enough. ‘That’s work stuff, I have to do that. And things aren’t good with my dad right now. They really don’t …’ Ali stopped to catch her breath. ‘They really don’t think he’s got long,’ she finished quietly. ‘I actually have to go up there right now.’
Ali just didn’t have the words to talk about Miles anymore. She seized up whenever she thought too far ahead about what was coming. And Tabitha had been different the last few days, as if she somehow was privy to Miles’s fate. Yesterday Ali had arrived at Ailesend to find new chairs in the room – not hard plastic like the old chairs but big cushioned ones that reclined. Ali didn’t quite know what to make of it.
She’d sat on the edge of Miles’s bed, rubbing his forearms and staring suspiciously at the chairs. She got the feeling that she didn’t want to know why they’d been changed. When she’d got up to leave an hour later, she’d forced herself to look at Miles for a long time. Some days in that room she barely let her eyes rest on his face for more than a few seconds – it was just too hard. Now she let her eyes roam his face and shock shuddered through her. His mouth gaped, his lips were cracked and dry, his eyes no longer blinked. He wasn’t there anymore. He couldn’t be. Ali couldn’t cope with the idea that he was conscious and trapped inside this mask of a face so she had to believe that he was gone, safe somewhere with no idea of what had become of him.
‘Let me go with you then,’ Sam implored. ‘I want to help. I’m good with sad situations. I can get snacks and say inappropriate things.’
‘Like what?’ Ali couldn’t resist. If she was going to lose him, she wanted to hear him be his sweet, playful self one more time.
‘I just can’t stop thinking about the cat-milk serum. Are they milking the cats with a machine or are the scientists doing it by hand? Hand-milked sounds posher.’
Ali smiled and tears caught in her throat while regret pooled in the pit of her stomach.
He stood up and put his arms around her. Fuck. It had gone on too long with Sam. How did she let it get this far? Then she inhaled and his smell felt like home. Oh yes, she thought, that.
‘Let me come,’ he whispered.
‘You can’t.’ Ali pulled away and backed up till she was against the fridge door. She needed to put some distance between them.
‘Ali, you’re hurting. It’s so hard – he’s your dad. I’d like to meet him … before …’
Ali clenched her hands into fists. She was going to have to do it. He wasn’t going to be fobbed off. She had to finish him.
‘I’m not hurting. I just don’t want you there. And I don’t want you here. I don’t want you, Sam,’ she said, using his name like the swing of a bat. ‘You have to leave.’
He looked stunned and then utterly crushed. She pushed him into the hall towards the door. As she opened it, he seemed to come to his senses. ‘You can’t push me out of your life. That’s our baby.’ He sounded shell-shocked. He stepped outside but turned back to face her. ‘I … Ali, I love—’
‘This is not about that right now.’ She couldn’t bear to hear what she was giving up. ‘My dad is … whatever. You have to go – leave me alone. I’ll get your stuff together and you can come and grab it later. I’ll leave a key out.’
She slammed the door shut, feeling sick and off-balance. Breaking up with Sam wasn’t actually a solution in any way but she needed to buy time and come up with a plan. For what? Ali barely knew anymore, she felt like she was on a runaway train, unable to stop the momentum of her lies. After the awards are over I’ll figure it all out, she promised herself.
Ali spent the rest of the morning in the salon, Ellie’s Elysium, tensely watching the other influencers’ Stories while various beauty therapists added and subtracted hair from her face and body. She’d been late because of Sam, shoving his worn-out T-shirts and novelty boxers into a shopping bag which she’d left in the hall. She’d nearly kept one but he’d definitely notice and then he’d know she was somewhere sucking the smell of him off a grotty old T-shirt.
Ellie, the eyelash technician, chatted while she was refilling Ali’s set. ‘So, have you heard about Shelly Devine?’ Ellie loved the juice – she lived for it.
‘Yeah, I was actually there when that video was filmed,’ Ali said, trying not to move too much.
‘No!’
‘Yeah. Though actually, to be honest, whoever did make that video totally screwed her. They made it out to be way worse than it was. Her rant was actually kinda funny.’
