Chapter 2

2

To a soundtrack of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” Merritt’s video fades in on an adorable montage of moments from my idyllic childhood. Way before Dad got bored of us and left. Before Mum got a new boyfriend and ran away to join an artists’ commune in Texas. This was back when life was as close to perfect as it could be.

I drink in the clips, suddenly terrified to miss a single detail. Look how the three of us cartwheel and roly-poly through long, daisy-dotted grass, snuggle together on a Sunday morning, draw pictures of made-up sea creatures, and dance on the bed to Aretha Franklin. There’s Mum letting me try out her shiny cherry-flavoured lip gloss and laughing as I immediately lick it off and ask for more. There I am hanging out at various birthday parties, surrounded by other children, laughing, bright-eyed, cheeky-faced, and chattering nonstop. In a few of the clips, I see Gen, my childhood best friend, our arms flung around each other, the pair of us giggling naughtily at some now forgotten mischief. I look away from the screen, a flicker of shame and sadness sparking in my chest.

“My god,” Merritt says, pressing a hand to her cheek. “I thought I was a teen nerd, but you are something else! So cute.”

Celine Dion’s “All by Myself” starts to play as the video transitions into a clip of me sitting alone at the dining table of our home—the flat I still live in—in West London. I’m carefully cutting out pictures from the TV Guide magazine and arranging them into collages. At the time I thought my collages were super cool and artistic. I see now they were actually rather odd.

I have all the accoutrements of an awkward teen: the rashy face, the thick glasses, the braces, and a wad of cotton wool poking out of one ear on account of the chronic ear infections I couldn’t seem to shake off. The clips fade into each other—me at the kitchen table making my collages, drawing soap stars, wincing as I put in my eardrops, tucking myself into bed. Night after night.

“Sad.” Merritt shakes her head.

She’s right. It does look sad. It didn’t feel sad at the time, when I was drawing and collaging alone. Did it?

The video melts into my time at Bayswater High School. I shrug off the furry blanket as my entire body immediately goes hot. The back of my head starts to thump.

“Can we fast-forward this bit, please?” I ask, knowing that every single memory of that time is a bad one. Those same memories still keep me awake at night.

“ ’Fraid not,” Merritt says. “Once it’s on, it’s on.”

My chest tightens as the screen flickers onto an image of fifteen-year-old me. My skin has cleared up now. The thick jam-jar glasses have been swapped for something lighter, and the braces have successfully straightened out my wonky teeth. My wavy red hair fans out over my shoulders, pretty against the bottle green of Bayswater High’s uniform.

I’m pencil sketching in an empty classroom, occasionally taking bites of the cheese sandwich I’d made myself that morning. And then, there she is. Gen Hartley. My childhood best friend, the girl I loved the most, the primary architect of pretty much all my trauma. She slams into the classroom accompanied by her boyfriend Ryan Sweeting. It’s almost comedic how on the nose they look, Gen with her shiny curtain of golden-coloured hair, thick layers of blue mascara, tiny skirt. Ryan, handsome and tall for his age, wearing the school rugby kit, his blond hair shaved close to his scalp. If this were a teen movie you’d immediately identify them as the mean kids. Although they look smaller on the video than they did back then. Back then they seemed like giants.

“Hey, Delphie!” Gen says sweetly, wandering over to me and pressing both her hands onto my desk. Ryan follows her and swings both arms around her waist. Gen smiles at me. “Me and Ryan had a question and we were hoping you’d help us to answer it.”

“Sure,” I say eagerly, putting down my pencil and pushing my glasses up my nose with a grin. “Is it about the chemistry test? It’s gonna be a tricky one, but I’m happy to help you if you need it. Do you want to borrow my revision notes?”

Gen laughs, a bright xylophone of a laugh tinkling a melody that belies its intention. “Nah, Delphie. Our question is…why is your hair so…GROSS.” She grabs a handful of it. You can see the shock on my face. “Honestly it feels like wire wool. Don’t you even use conditioner?”

My eyes fill with tears as Ryan comes around to the other side of the desk and musses his hand roughly through my hair. “You’re right!” he grunts, wiping his hands on his jeans like they’re covered in dirt. “It’s like pubes.”

Gen shrieks with mirth. I jump up from the desk, the motion making my drawing slide onto the floor. I hurry to pick it up, but Ryan gets there before me. He glances at the picture, his mouth curling up into a nasty grin. “Oh. My. God.”

“Give that back to me.” I reach out to snatch it back, but Ryan dangles it in the air.

Gen gasps, grabbing it from Ryan. “Is that Mr. Taylor?” she squeals. “You’ve drawn Mr. Taylor? Do you fancy him?”

I remember wishing at the time that I was a better liar, but my red cheeks gave it away. Of course I fancied our art teacher. All the girls did. He was gorgeous with his bright blue eyes and spiky hair the colour of toffee. He was kind too, never too busy to talk to me about composition and light and the importance of daily creative practice—a concept I’d never heard of before.

“She does! She’s gone beetroot red. She wants to fuck Mr. Taylor. She wants to fuck him and then afterwards she’ll draw him naked with his willy flopping out.”

I watch from Merritt’s desk chair, my heart pounding thickly the exact same way it had then.

“Ha! No-one will ever fuck Delphie,” Ryan snickers. “Jesus, they’d have to be desperate.”

“Yeah, she’ll probably be a virgin forever,” Gen adds.

“Can…can I have my drawing back now?”

“You can have it back tomorrow,” Gen says as she and Ryan saunter out of the room.

“Please don’t show it to anyone!” I call after her as she leaves, the tears in my eyes now plopping onto my cheeks.

“Promise I won’t!” she singsongs, folding up the paper so that there would be a crease right across Mr. Taylor’s forehead.

Merritt gasps and presses pause on the tape.

“Oh no. She totally showed everyone, didn’t she?”

I nod, the memory of my Mr. Taylor drawing photocopied and plastered all over the school halls. The shame of everyone laughing at me. Sadness that the whole thing had made Mr. Taylor so uncomfortable that, beyond what was in the curriculum, he’d stopped talking to me about art at all.

“What a piece of shit,” Merritt gasps before eagerly pressing play again, like this is just some TV drama she’s binge-watching.

The video blurs into even more clips of Gen and Ryan—who had started to become known across the school as The Sweethearts—tormenting me with increasing regularity: pressing chewing gum into my hair, calling me a suck-up, getting the other students to turn their backs on me whenever I walked by. Making sure that everyone knew that being friends with me was pretty much a death knell for their future popularity.

There’s me, hiding in the top-floor bathroom, munching on an apple and staring at the door, alert for the sound of anyone approaching. I swallow hard. “I’ve seen enough,” I say firmly. “Turn it off.” I’ve not cried since the age of sixteen, and I don’t intend to start now. “Seriously. I’ve had enough. Turn it fucking off.”

“Surely it gets better?” Merritt asks gently. “There’s only a few minutes left!”

I chew on my lip as I watch myself become an adult, the video swimming into a loop of days working quietly at the pharmacy and nights watching television or surfing the internet from my sofa. Each day looks so alike that soon enough you can’t tell the difference between one month and the next. The video ends with a highly unflattering jump scare in which I’m opening my mouth extra wide to take a bite of the murderous burger.

“Yikes,” Merritt mutters, flicking off the TV and rolling the trolley back into the cupboard. “Reader, it did not get better. All your days looked exactly the same as each other. You were so alone.”

I lift my chin. “Well. That was out of choice. I was alone, yeah, but not lonely. Not at all. I’m like a great panda. We thrive alone.”

“Oh, that didn’t look like thriving, doll.”

“And you didn’t even show Mr. Yoon on that video,” I protest. “I see him practically every day for breakfast. He might not have ever spoken to me out loud, but that’s only because he literally cannot speak out loud. Sometimes he writes me notes, though, so…”

Merritt takes a seat behind her desk, steepling her fingers beneath her chin thoughtfully. “We didn’t see a boyfriend or a girlfriend in there, Delphie. Or even a brief dalliance of any kind? Did you never…?” She trails off and raises an eyebrow.

I tut. This woman is really starting to get on my nerves.

“If you mean did I have sex? Then no. No I didn’t. People can have fulfilling lives without sex.” I cross my arms. Yes, my life didn’t look very fulfilling on that video, but it was clearly a bad edit. They missed out all my nice times with Mr. Yoon, and my solo trip to Greece, which was truly delightful. They completely neglected to include how gorgeous the view is from my living-room window, the joy I feel looking out of it and watching the seasons change.

“I wouldn’t have a clue what the satisfaction levels of a sexless person would be because I was a huge slut while alive. It was glorious. I’m sad for you.”

The spark of irritation I often feel when encountering other humans flames into a quick blaze of anger. “I don’t need your pity. Certainly not for that reason.”

Merritt stands up and comes round to sit on the edge of her desk so that our knees are almost touching.

“Have you ever even kissed anyone before?”

“Yes. Course I have! At uni. I kissed a guy called Jonny Terry.”

What I neglect to say out loud is that it was an absolutely horrendous kiss. It was sloppy and awkward, our teeth clashed, and he breathed noisily through his nose the whole time. Then afterwards he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his woolly jumper. Funnily enough I’ve not been keen to repeat the experience.

“So…you’re a virgin,” Merritt says almost to herself. “At the age of twenty-seven. Niche. Oh, wait…Oh my god, Delphie, you’re a virgin…” She gapes down at her clipboard. “Who can’t drive. Literally a virgin who can’t drive. Like in the seminal teen romance movie Clueless!”

It seems bonkers that I’m about to say these words, but I really feel like I have no choice at this point because this is just highly inappropriate. “Can I speak to a manager?”

Merritt grimaces. “Eek, yeah, the Higher-Ups have said I should try to work on my tact. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Manager,” I repeat.

“Oh, you really don’t want me to get Eric. He’s the colleague who’s subbing in while my actual manager is on vacation. He’s awful, trust me. A full-scale prick. Hot as hell too, which makes it all the more annoying, but I promise you, I’ll get him and you will regret it and wish you had stuck with me.” She lowers her voice. “You know, I once heard him say he didn’t like bread.”

I pull a face. This Eric does sound like a moron.

“Look, I’m sorry for upsetting you, okay? I’ll try to do better. I’m a little out of practice, you know? But I promise I’m way, way better than Eric. Do you want a cookie? To say sorry.”

I sigh. Of course I want a cookie. And I would rather avoid having to meet a whole new person.

Merritt pulls open her desk drawer and hands me a foil-wrapped cookie. I unwrap it and take a bite. She has one too, shoving the whole thing in her mouth so that her cheeks are all puffed up like a squirrel.

“Okay,” she says when she’s eventually finished crunching. “Would you be open to meeting someone at our in-house dating service? I’ll be honest, it’s still in beta so it’s a leeetle glitchy, but I’m one of the team behind it so I’d be happy to get you in there. We could do with a few more willing participants. It’s called Eternity 4U. Isn’t that cute?”

I swallow my cookie. “The afterlife has a dating service?”

“Dead people gotta get laid too. And, hey, maybe we can get to work on showing you what you’ve been missing. So can I sign you up? What’s your type? Tall, piercing blue eyes—like Mr. Taylor the art teacher, right?”

I think it’s the nonchalance with which she says dead people.

I’m dead.

I’m dead?

I’m stuck here? With this woman and her energy? Eternity 4 me?

My body starts to tremble again.

Nope.

All the way nope.

I have to get out of here. This is a mistake. I can’t stay in this place. I can’t do this!

Heartbeat pulsing in my cheeks, I jump out of the chair and run towards the door of Merritt’s office. There has to be someone else I can talk to. Someone normal. Someone who can actually help me figure out what’s going on right now.

“Delphie, wait! Don’t go! Ah jeez, not again.”

I heave open the door and run out into the psychotic launderette waiting room, crashing immediately into the solid chest of a beautiful stranger.