by Chris Killen
The sister climbs off the bed and walks over to the wardrobe. She’s naked.
‘What?’ says Helen, pulling the duvet back up over her damp chilly shoulder.
‘Come here,’ the sister says again.
Helen throws off the covers and gets out of bed, still in her coat and boots, her hair starting to frizz and a tiny drop of cold water sliding down her heart. She goes over to the sister. The sister opens the wardrobe and they look in at Helen’s clothes. The sister goes through them, picking out a top, a skirt. She goes over to the dresser, opens a drawer and takes out underwear.
‘Are you watching?’ the sister says.
‘Yep,’ Helen says.
The sister puts on the clothes, slowly, one by one, almost sarcastically.
‘Okay,’ the sister says, once the clothes are on, spinning round on her toes and mimicking a fashion model. ‘Who am I?’
Helen doesn’t want to speak. She keeps her mouth glued shut.
‘Come on. Who am I?’
Helen looks at her. There’s nothing else to say.
‘You’re Helen,’ she says.
‘That’s right,’ says the sister. ‘Good work. A-star. And who does that make you?’
‘I’m Helen, too,’ Helen says, knowing how pathetic it sounds.
‘You can’t have two Helens,’ says the sister.
‘No,’ Helen says, slowly, looking down at her hand, at a small white chink developing in the black nail varnish of her left index finger. ‘I suppose not.’
‘So?’ says the sister.
‘I’m an actress,’ says Helen. ‘I can be whoever I want to be.’
‘You’re Clair,’ says the sister.
‘I could be Amanda, Angela or Alice if I wanted,’ says Helen. ‘Kate, Chloe or Camille.’
‘You’re Clair,’ the sister says, and Clair nods her head.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Alright. I’m Clair.’
They sit down on the end of the bed. They have a hug. This is not goodbye. They arrange to keep in touch. ‘Put these on,’ the sister says, indicating the clothes in the carrier bag.
Clair takes off her black boots and coat and skirt and top and underwear, and puts on the clothes from the future. She goes over to the long mirror and looks at herself in them.
‘You look good,’ says the sister.
‘I do,’ says Clair. It’s true.
She goes over to the coat. She gets the envelope out and opens it. Inside is five hundred pounds in big red fifty-pound notes. She takes out three hundred, rolls it up and sticks the wad in her hip pocket. She gives the rest to the sister.
‘This is for Corrine,’ she says. ‘For rent.’
‘Okay,’ says the sister. ‘What will you do?’
It’s three-something in the morning. Corrine is still out at the casino. Her shift finishes in about an hour.
‘I’ll be alright,’ says Clair. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Clair stands outside the house in a borrowed coat of Corrine’s, an oversized parka with a furry hood and cuffs. She takes out her mobile, looks at it and doesn’t want to call anyone. She puts it back in her pocket.
It would take about half an hour to walk to her mum’s house.
It would take about an hour and a half to walk to William’s house.
It would take about six days to walk to that farm with the sheep.
Something is tingling in her stomach; a feeling that things will happen, that things will finally happen to her. There’s a smell of small, put-out bonfires in the air and the sound of a cat falling off a fence. Things are shining and visible in the sky. She steps out into the street, turns very definitely and starts to walk.
Acknowledgements
Very special thanks to: Charlene Sawit, Steven Hall,
Francis Bickmore, Jamie Byng and everyone else at
Canongate, my mum and dad, friends, family, and
anyone who read an early draft of this novel.
For an even longer thanks list, and other things, please visit:
www.thebirdroom.org.uk
IN REAL LIFE
CHRIS KILLEN
STILL FRIENDS A DECADE ON? WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?
For a while, Ian, Lauren and Paul shared the same friends, the same university, the same dreams and the same potential. Ten years on they are worlds apart. Call centres, charity shops and bedrooms that smell like cabbage were never part of the plan. The real world doesn't look quite like any of them imagined. But when Lauren, in a moment of nostalgia, cracks open a long-forgotten Hotmail account, she comes face to face with the people these three friends used to be . . .
For two of them it will mean a new beginning to an old love story.
Hilarious and heart-breaking, In Real Life paints a searingly honest portrait of a generation and captures a world where human connection is easier than ever before but where relationships remain just as tricky.
‘Very funny and wonderfully charming. Chris Killen writes with an understated beauty about things like Tesco Meal Deals and the internet and hospitals and Babybels and the distance between people . . . full of truth and tenderness’
MATT HAIG, author of The Humans
‘Brilliantly insightful, funny, sad, brave and true - this book will make you laugh even in the face of your own (offline) mortality. Better yet, it will make you want to leave Facebook. Again’
EMMA JANE UNSWORTH, author of Animals
‘In Real Life is brilliantly observed, deftly written, wonderful, sad, funny and totally real’
JOSIE LONG
Available from Canongate Books
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2009
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition published in 2009
by Canongate Books Ltd
Copyright © Chris Killen, 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The epigraph is from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima, published by Secker & Warburg. Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 84767 451 7
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