by Holly Bourne
“How was she last night?” I interrupted. I didn’t like hearing what she was saying. I didn’t like thinking it was me she was talking about.
I was Charlotte Thomas. I was a fighter. I was strong. I didn’t take any shit…
Amber answered, her biscuit left discarded half-eaten on my duvet. “She’s okay…well…as okay as you can be, considering what we think might’ve happened. She sort of lost it a bit last night when Max turned up… Their gig slot got changed so they dropped in to say hi to Oli. I thought it was going to be a major drama. But she just, like, vanished into the loos for ten minutes, crying hysterically. Then when she came back it was like nothing was wrong. She was totally fine the rest of the night…although she did majorly keep her distance from him.” Amber looked down at her biscuit. “You’re right, by the way, about her. I think she needs to talk to someone. I just don’t know who it needs to be. Like, we don’t know her that well yet… But I think she lost a lot of friends in the break-up from Max, we might be all she has… We walked home together…”
It was Evie’s turn to interrupt. “But we’re not here to talk about that. Not right now. Lottie, we’re here to talk about you. What’s going on? Why did you get so wasted?”
I shrugged. “I’m fine. I just probably needed to eat more dinner beforehand or whatever.”
“Don’t lie to us,” Evie scolded. “It’s us, come on. What’s going on with you?”
And the sympathy and honesty in their eyes made me wilt… I flopped back onto the bed – rerunning through the whole evening, which, admittedly, didn’t take too long.
“I dunno what happened,” I said. “I guess I’m just…so tired. Of all the bad stuff I’m having to constantly monitor and call people out on, because I know everyone is just waiting for me to slip up. It’s just, like, all merging into one, you know? Don’t tell anyone, please don’t tell anyone, but I feel like I care less, rather than care more. Does that make sense? Like, I’m not angry any more, I’m just knackered and can’t be bothered.” A lone tear escaped my eye and slid down my cheek before I had time to wipe it away unseen. “And I’m fed up with everyone at college looking at me like I’m a pain in the arse, like I’m not fun any more – I’m just this angry shouty thing…” I trailed off. Feeling like the universe’s biggest traitor to feminism everywhere. But also…also…so relieved to have said it that half of my tummy relaxed.
I looked up at Evie and Amber – waiting for the judgemental looks, the disappointed drop of their bottom lips.
But I’m stupid, because they’re amazing, so of course they just looked worried and each took a hand.
Evie’s eyes were all open and earnest. “Oh, Lottie! We were researching it online this morning, what’s been going on with you. We think what you’re feeling is an actual thing.”
“What do you mean, a thing?”
Amber nodded, her bushy hair thudding side to side. “There’s a word for it. It’s called Activism Burnout. You’ve just described all the symptoms.”
I tried to understand what they were saying… It sounds up myself, but it wasn’t usually this way round with me and them. I was always the teacher… Now I felt broken and they were stepping up.
“So other people feel like this?” I asked slowly.
They both nodded. “Yes! There’s even, like, special psychotherapists who are also campaigners who treat full-time activists to stop them going cuckoo,” Evie said.
“Do you really think I’ve gone cuckoo?” I gasped.
I was fine. Totally fine.
Evie – the experienced expert in the ins and outs of “going cuckoo” – very tactfully said, “We think you may be on the edge…which is why we’ve come round.”
“To tell you that you can stop,” Amber added. “That we will still be your friends and we will still love you if you decide enough is enough and calm this project down.”
My mouth fell open in utter horror. “Stop? No, I can’t stop.”
“You can,” Evie said. “The world won’t end. I promise you. I’ve been convinced the world would end many a time, but the world has this irritating habit of continuation…”
The thought of bowing out… No no no. My brain just rejected it straight away.
“No,” I said, very determinedly. “I’m not giving up. I’m in this for the long haul.”
“Even if it’s impacting your mental health?” Amber asked.
It wasn’t. Well, it was. But it wasn’t.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. Which wasn’t true but it wasn’t untrue. If I couldn’t last for two more weeks, what did that say about me? Especially about everything I wanted to do with my life, everything I needed to change. I could not be one of those people who break quickly. I couldn’t, I couldn’t. “Look, I know I’m not acting fine, and maybe I’m not TOTALLY fine – but who is? Yes, okay, so I’m tired and scared and angry, but at least I’m doing something about it. I was tired and scared and angry before I started this thing – that was why I started it. It’s hard – it’s been much harder than I thought, and I’m terrified that we’re only halfway through – but I’ll be fine. This is like my salvation, you know?” I smiled. “Caring too much is what’s breaking me, but it’s also what’s mending me, if that makes any sense?”
Both of them were smiling – maybe I’d convinced them. Maybe I’d even convinced myself.
“Good,” Amber said. “But if you have a wobble like last night, ANY wobbles at all, you are to call us, okay? We are here for you…especially now…” She turned to Evie. “Shall we show her?” she asked.
I lurched forward. “Show me what?”
Evie nodded, a grim look on her face, though with hints of a smile underneath. Something was up – but what was it? Evie reached into her coat pocket and got out her phone.
“What is it?” I pressed.
“It’s your video channel,” she said… She pulled up the channel homepage on her screen. “It’s umm…taken off… I think the newspaper story has spread.”
She turned her phone to me and I took it with shaky hands. I blinked. I blinked again.
“Umm, girls?” I said. “Since when did this have over one hundred thousand views?”
Amber was wringing her hands. “Since yesterday. Have you turned on your phone yet? I think you’ll have some missed calls. It’s…well…this thing. It’s all over the internet.”
I dived for my phone on my bedside table. The battery had gone, so I plugged it in, waiting for it to load. The moment I pushed the on button, it lit up like a pinball machine – buzzing crazily in my hands.
Missed call. Voicemail. Missed call. Message. Missed call.
“Guys, my phone is possessed.” I looked at it in horror.
“Yes, well, some of those missed calls are from us – asking how the hell you are,” Evie said. “Thanks for turning your phone off.”
“The battery died,” I answered, dialling my voicemail. “Who are all these from anyway?” I pressed #1 for loudspeaker and we all put our heads together to listen.
“Hi, is this Charlotte Thomas’s number?” A sharp voice cut through the stifled air of my bedroom. “My name’s Clare, I’m a reporter for The Guardian. It would be great if you could ring me when you get this message…”
“Oh my God!” I dropped my phone onto the duvet. “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.” But I had no time to properly react before my phone clicked onto another message.
“Hello, Charlotte Thomas? This is Stanley calling from The Mirror. We would love to talk to your about your project, give me a call back on…”
“Hello? Charlotte? Jack here, from The Sun. Do give us a call back. We can pay you.”
“Hello? Charlotte Thomas? My name’s Nora from the BBC…”
Evie, Amber and I just looked at each other – not saying anything – our eyes all bulgy.
“Have you looked on your Twitter?” Evie eventually said.
“No.” I grabbed my phone again and pulled it up. My notifications showed over a hund
red messages. Never in my life had my notifications been even in double digits. I only ever really got replies from Evie and Lottie and the rest of FemSoc – usually with links to sleepy pandas or whatever. Apart from that one time when Caitlin Moran replied to me and we’d all run around Evie’s bedroom screaming.
All of them were basically the same thing.
@LottieIsAlwaysRight Hey, can you follow me back please? I’m a reporter and would love to DM you about your project.
“Guys?” I looked up at my friends. “What’s happening?”
Evie took my phone, staring at it like she’d never seen Twitter in her entire life.
“Lottie?” she said. “Are you sure you’re not burning out? Because I think you’ve just set a lot of things on fire.”
WEEK THREE
thirty-five
We were on a train to London.
“I can’t believe I’m missing another day of college,” I said, as we whooshed past fields full of cows. “I’ve got a Cambridge interview prep session tomorrow and I’ve not done any of the reading.”
Amber stretched back and put her legs up on the empty chair opposite. “You are almost as relaxed about Cambridge as Evie and I are about university. Which would be fine, except IT’S CAMBRIDGE.”
“I’m not relaxed, I’m just distracted,” I argued. “And you guys are allowed to be relaxed. Your applications aren’t due till after Christmas. I guess, if I don’t get in, I’ll hopefully get into one of my backup options. Maybe…” Or maybe I’ll mess up my exams so much I won’t get in anywhere.
None of us spoke about uni much – I think all of us were a little bit in denial about being separated. Well, I was the most in denial. Amber and Evie were both staying local – Amber planned to do her art foundation year, and Evie wanted to stay at home and commute to the nearby university Dad worked at “just in case of a relapse”. I was the only one being separated really, and the thought made me almost hope I messed up my interview so I wouldn’t have to leave them.
“I’m nervous,” I told the girls…plus Will, who was reading the newspaper. “Evie. Please tell me the story of you and Oli getting together again to take my mind off it.”
Evie raised an eyebrow. “Again? Seriously?”
“Yes please. I need happiness to hold onto, to help me forget the fact that I’m about to humiliate myself in front of the whole country.”
Amber tried to help me breathe. I hadn’t even realized my hand was flapping until she caught it.
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “You’re Lottie. You’re frustratingly charismatic, even on no sleep. Everyone will love you.”
I looked right into Will’s ever-present lens. He’d closed his paper and started filming again. “What do you think?” I asked him, through the eye of the camera.
The camera wobbled in a nod. “You’re going to be fine. You’ve totally got this.”
My tummy wasn’t just in knots, it was in those kinds of never-ending knots you get when all your necklaces decide to orgy in your make-up bag during a flight to a holiday somewhere. Sweat dripped off me, despite it being, like, minus two outside. The cows in the fields flashing past us were so cold they were huddled together like penguins, and yet the sweat still came. My heart felt like it was everywhere else in my body apart from where your heart is supposed to be.
“Evie!” I demanded. “Take it from the top!”
She sighed and started telling the story again. I relaxed as I let the now-familiar words roll over me and started to smile, watching the countryside roll on by in a blur as we chugged our way towards the capital.
After Amber and Evie told me that Operation Vagilante had exploded, we’d spent a good hour panicking about what to do. We’d then rung Will, who’d run over in Sunday jogging bottoms and made me confused by how good he looked all sweaty. Will had been amazing. Within twenty minutes he’d worked through all the calls, telling me which ones were and weren’t good opportunities. “Don’t ring back that one, they’ll just want you to take your clothes off.”
“What, even with my hairy legs and moustache?”
“Umm…actually…”
He came more alive than I’d ever seen him. There was this manic energy to him – rather than the sloth-like arrogant judginess of a demeanour I was used to. It suited him. Plus, he’d wasted no time in making Evie and Amber wet themselves by recollecting how I’d run away from him (“like some pissed-up feminist gingerbread man”) the night before. After another hour, and many, many phone calls, I had a “publicity schedule” for the following day. We’d picked one pre-recorded TV slot that would go out that evening, one “major broadsheet” and one “tabloid with a heart”. “Let the others fight over the scraps,” Will had said, like that made any sense. When he’d eventually left – leaving me quivering with dread, nerves, enthusiasm and lust – the three of us were able to catch up on normal girl things. Like Evie and Oli FINALLY getting together!
Evie not-very-reluctantly told the story again to us and some nosy people in our carriage. Almost as soon as we’d arrived at the party (and I’d already been decanted to the storeroom to eat crisps and sober up), Oli had taken her by the hand, led her away just the two of them and said, “I don’t want to ruin my night by spending all of it kicking myself for not having the courage to do this,” and THEN HE’D JUST KISSED HER. Like a fucking movie star! Now they were instantly together. Because, well, we’d all known they’d been effectively together the past year, since she’d got better (and he’d got better too). And they’d finally allowed themselves to embrace the inevitable.
Evie couldn’t stop smiling and it took me away from my insane fear and insane jealousy. Her phone also wouldn’t stop going off – with sweet messages from him. The retelling of their romantic bliss took most of the forty-minute journey to London Victoria. Megan messaged, to ask how it was going. We’d invited her along but she had a presentation she had to do for sociology and promised to try and cover for us attendance-wise. Amber was on the thinnest of margins still, and I knew I’d struggle to catch up on yet another day’s missed work. Cambridge and the interview was just this blob of hardness in my guts that I kept trying to pretend wasn’t there. But I had a training session the next day with Mr Packson to help me prepare, and I hoped that would be enough to pull me up to speed.
“Hoped” isn’t a strong enough word sometimes…
When the train eventually groaned itself in, we collected up all the mess we’d made and emerged out of the ticket barriers into the packed arrivals hall. The others ushered me to the Tube, a coat pulled up around my head like I was a celebrity. “Just keep your eyes on the ground,” Will instructed. “There are too many armed anti-terrorist police around for you to go berserk with a horn right now.”
When we got to the Tube, the police presence decreased and I abandoned my coat enclosure. According to the electronic sign, there was only one minute until the next train. I looked down the stretch of Tube platform. Advertising billboards were everywhere.
“Amber,” I said urgently. “Sharpie.”
After a quick rummage in her bag, a pen was in my hand.
“Just keep it casual,” I said to them. “We don’t want the cameras to pick up on what we’re doing.”
A distant rumble signalled the train arriving, so I worked fast. A weight-loss advert for Christmas got a scribble of You’re lovely the way you are. A poster for a new Christmas film called Miss Claus – depicting some blonde Photoshopped actress leaning over in a tight sexy Santa suit, with loads of minimally dressed female elves behind her – well, that got a scribble too. I drew a messy speech bubble coming out of Miss Claus’s mouth that said, “All I want for Christmas is equal pay for female actresses in Hollywood.”
“Voilà,” I said, just as the rumble of the train turned into a roar.
Evie and Amber applauded politely, while Will got some quick close-ups of my handiwork. The Tube doors opened and people poured out onto us. We waited till it had emptied somewhat and clambered
on.
“Where are we going?” I asked, as we sat down on the brightly patterned seats.
“Umm, Oxford Circus, I think.” Will strained his neck to look at the sign.
At Green Park, some guy got into our carriage and sat next to Evie, even though there was lots of room elsewhere. He was chewing gum, wearing some shiny suit, and without even clocking our existence, he stretched his legs right out – like he was sacrificing his crotch to the gods or something. Evie’s legs instantly squished against mine as she readjusted to make room.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
I turned to Will.
“Your camera on?”
He nodded, that same hint of a smile on his face that I’d interpreted to mean he was resenting my awesome.
I got up and lost my footing a bit as the Tube jolted. Then I walked past Evie and sat on the other side of shiny-suit man.
I yawned, all dramatically, and aggressively opened my legs as wide as my skinny jeans allowed. My legs were so wide my hip joints actually cried out in a Lottie, we don’t bend that far way. I had the force of momentum on my side and knocked his leg out of the way, like we were playing French Bowls or something. Just to up the ante a bit, I let out a huge manly groan – all primal.
Shiny Suit looked at my incoming legs in utter shock – his eyebrows drawing up into his gelled hair, his bottom lip falling ever so slightly open.
I bet no girl had ever fought him for leg-space in his life.
We caught eyes and I nodded at him. But not normally. All lad-like, we’re all blokes here. A macho nod.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” I grunted. “Feeling like you deserve all this space?”
I could feel the seats shaking with the girls’ muffled laughter.
