London Belongs to Me

by Jacquelyn Middleton

  “Or was I just feeling sorry for myself one evening? I probably pinned a bunch of cupcake recipes and Whishaw photos at the same time.”

  “Alex, don’t sell yourself short. Most people in your shoes would’ve been long gone by now, running for the hills. You’re my hero, no bullshit.”

  She grimaced.

  “You are! You’re so much stronger than you realize. You just have to recognize it, and believe in yourself. You can do this.”

  Alex smiled and leaned her forehead against Mark’s. “Great minds…you can do this—that’s what I always tell myself, too.”

  His fingers caressed her cheek. “There you go, then. Maybe the best inspirational quote is actually your own.”

  Alex rounded the corner on to Stamford Street and spotted the glowing tail lights of a dark green sports car, hugging the curb in front of the community centre. Her stomach plummeted like an elevator snapped free of its cables.

  Harry—dropping off a flawlessly presented Olivia, not fifty feet away. Her purple and red tapestry Erdem coat fluttered over a long tapered black skirt and Burberry ankle boots, a hastily opened golf umbrella shielding her from Mother Nature’s wrath. Even the downpour couldn’t dampen her aesthetic perfection.

  Alex paused beneath her bobbing brolly, hoping its fight against the elements wouldn’t register on their radar. A gaggle of teenagers piling out of a Nando’s restaurant on the main floor of the Coin Street Centre provided perfect cover from the future Mrs. Manville. Once Olivia swept indoors, Harry revved his engine and sped off, propelling a swell of dirty sludge towards the chairs stacked up outside the eatery.

  That tiny glimpse rattled Alex’s resolve. Two minutes ago, she was determined to unload to Isabella. Now she wasn’t so sure. Why did Harry have to appear today of all days? She’d spent her post-Christmas week erasing any concern of hurting him. Easy to do at a distance—it was much harder with him smiling in his Jaguar only a few feet away, giving Olivia a peck goodbye. Now he was real again, a friend who didn’t deserve to get hurt in the post-Apocalyptic fallout.

  She hurried out of the deluge and into the building. Pausing to gather herself, the elevator jerked open, revealing her three male colleagues. They held the doors, beckoning her to join them on the ascent to the third floor.

  “Happy New Year, Alex,” said the ginger one. “Could they save your laptop?”

  She fussed with her windblown hair. “Afraid not. The computer guy said he was a genius, not a miracle worker.”

  The male trio chuckled sympathetically as the doors opened on their floor. Alex walked behind, taking deep breaths to stifle the acrobatics in her gut. She passed the door to the ladies’ toilets and considered stalling in there with just her anxiety for companionship, but Mark’s words—her words—nudged her legs forward: “You can do this.”

  It wasn’t a surprise to discover Olivia sat closest to Isabella. She was welcome to that chair; bad karma had seeped into every fibre. Alex sat down next to Olivia, the only chair still available.

  Olivia leaned sideways, as if whispering to an old friend. “Oh, did I take your place?”

  “You know you did.” Alex didn’t even blink.

  Olivia responded with a snort.

  “Happy New Year, everyone,” said Isabella, unpacking a stack of folders from her satchel. “Now that the holidays are over, let’s jump into the process with both feet. We’ll be joined tonight by actresses doing a staged reading of Olivia’s suffragette play. They won’t be off-book, but seeing Olivia’s words come to life will spotlight any problems. And just a reminder, as per Olivia’s instructions, even the male characters will be portrayed by women.”

  Olivia shot to her feet. “Actually, during the holidays, I gave the text a makeover. I’ve got revised copies for everyone.”

  “You know your work better than anyone,” said Isabella. “If it needs tweaking, I’m all for it.”

  Olivia handed scripts to each person. “I’ve highlighted the changes so you can see what’s been improved and modernized. It’s more accessible now.”

  Alex flipped past the cover page, her eyes zeroing in on several yellow highlighted blobs. Her eyes widened further and further with each line skimmed. Improvements? That’s what Olivia was calling this bastardization of her story? Vandalism, more like. Jarring new dialogue on the pages interrupted her beloved characters’ conversations, and historical facts were changed. She skipped frantically ahead in the script. Names were modernized for no reason at all—Emily Davison became a trendy ‘Emi’ and Sophia Duleep Singh, the Indian princess who fought alongside her white British counterparts, was renamed ‘Sophie’.

  Giving the characters a sugarcoated Hollywood overhaul tore their authenticity to shreds. She turned more pages, shaking her head at the ridiculous updates, oblivious to the troop of actresses assembling in the middle of the U of desks.

  Olivia’s haughty tone snapped her back into the room.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Isabella. I’m having a difficult time picturing Emi.” Olivia crossed her arms. “Can we swap out actresses? No offence, darling, but you’re a bit too…plus sized. Emi’s the heroine of this story and would be slimmer, you know?”

  Alex’s jaw dropped. Two of the men shared a did-I-just-hear-that look, while the third stifled a snicker. The so-called plus sized actress, no bigger than an American size ten and hardly chubby, turned scarlet, her shoulders slumping under the weight of the room’s scrutinizing gaze.

  Isabella swallowed hard. “Olivia, we don’t have time to shuffle roles and the suffragettes weren’t striving to be beauty queens, you know that. If your play moves forward into actual performance—and that’s a big if—you can make your casting preferences known then. Ladies, please continue, top of page eight …”

  The brunette frowned and fanned herself with the script.

  The actresses read on. Alex watched as Olivia pinched her lips together whenever the size ten actress spoke. She noticed how Isabella leaned forward, studying every word, every nuance of the read-through. More than once, she was certain that she’d seen Isabella frown at some of Olivia’s attempts to modernize dialogue, or alter characters, scribbling red notes on the margins of her manuscript.

  Alex returned her attention to the actresses reading the now clunky lines. At the end of the first act, they reached a poignant scene—she could remember sweating over every line of the original, playing the roles out in her head a hundred times. Olivia’s reimagining of the scene unfolded. ‘Sophie’ was married to a new character called ‘Kale’.

  Alex winced. Naming characters from the early 1900s after today’s trendy veg? She glanced down at the page. ‘Kale’ wasn’t the worst of it. She gasped in horror at the new notes accompanying the scene—Olivia had even changed ‘Sophie’s’ ethnicity. She was no longer an Indian princess. She was now a white socialite from Chelsea.

  Are you fucking kidding?

  She bit her tongue and tapped her foot impatiently on the floor, watching the hands of the clock on the wall crawl towards the scheduled break, still twenty minutes away. Her temples began to throb under the strain of her now constant scowl.

  Olivia’s romcom-worthy love scene veered towards diabetes inducing. It concluded with Sophie the suffragette standing by her man and promising to scale down her efforts in order to keep him sweet.

  Alex’s chest rose and fell in quick bursts. Changing names and races of real-life people was offensive and inexcusable, and now she was changing the suffragettes’ courage and beliefs, too?!

  Olivia had poisoned Alex’s self-confidence, bullied her out of London Fields, damaged her friendship with Harry—but there was no way in hell Alex would let her degrade these women and their story in such an obnoxious manner.

  She couldn’t bear to hear another word…

  “Enough!”

  Every head in the room swiveled towards Alex.

  Thirty-Six

  The actresses froze, their wide eyes flitting between Alex and Isabella, waiting. The mal
e playwrights shifted in their chairs, unsure where to look. A flush of redness flooded Isabella’s pale cheeks while her breathing picked up pace.

  Olivia looked like she was chewing on a wasp, all bulging eyes and skewed jaw. “Alex, are you still cross with me about your laptop? You know it was an accident…if you’re trying to make me feel worse, well, you’re doing a brilliant job—”

  Alex threw her hands in the air. “I can’t stomach any more of this farce. Emi? Kale? Sophia is white now? —What the fuck?” She leaned over the table, shaking off Olivia’s shadow to address Isabella. “Sorry to interrupt, but I really need to speak to you—in private.”

  Isabella squinted back, her soft tone masking her displeasure. “Alex, it’s out of order for a student to call a halt to a workshop, and I won’t tolerate bad language.” Her stare took an upward detour to the clock. “We’re close to break, so let’s take fifteen to regroup, everyone. Alex, come here, please.”

  The award-winning playwright clenched her jaw, watching the room empty. Everyone scuttled out except for Alex and Olivia, the unsettling silence broken only by the closing metal door.

  Olivia launched upwards atop her Louboutins, her nearly six-foot frame towering over both women, her eyes wild and wide.

  “Are you going to stand for this, Isabella? What right does she have to heckle my work like some football hooligan seeing theatre for the first time? It’s inappropriate.”

  Isabella nodded. “She’s right, Alex. I can’t allow such disrespectful interruptions during sessions. I have to say, I’m disappointed in you—it’s inappropriate and unprofessional. If you have another outburst like this one, I’ll be asking you to leave. Consider this a warning.”

  Alex rose to stand, her heart hammering against her chest.

  “Inappropriate and unprofessional?” She pulled papers out of her bag and walked around Olivia to Isabella’s chair. “Well, so is stealing another writer’s work.”

  Alex handed her original manuscript with its bent pages, university date stamps, and scrawled professor remarks in red ink to Isabella. She could practically feel Olivia’s stare singe the back of her neck. She briefly looked sideways. Yep. Her nemesis quaked, ready to erupt like a volcano.

  “What’s this?” Isabella’s face tightened.

  Olivia jostled Alex out of the way. “Don’t fall for it. She has no reputation, so she’s trying to smear mine.”

  Isabella’s eyes raced over the title page and through the corresponding sheets, stopping several times to digest the text before flicking to the final pages and the attached notes. Her puzzled eyebrows leaned heavily onto her eyelids.

  “Alex…this play’s yours?”

  She nodded, holding her breath. “I wrote it in college in Atlanta. Until a few months ago, Olivia and I were flatmates. She read my play as a courtesy and then presented it as her own at the young playwrights fundraiser, the event at Bridgewater House. Where I first met you.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, she’s lying!” said Olivia.

  Isabella ignored the fretting brunette. “I knew you looked familiar at the Almeida. Why are you just telling me this now?”

  “She completely blindsided me that night. She pitched my idea to you! I was reeling, had a full blown panic attack. When I got home, I looked for this hardcopy, but it was missing. Without proof, why would you believe me? You don’t know me. I’m a nobody.”

  Alex swept her hand towards Olivia. “Look who I’m up against. She’s rich, powerful, well connected…as she’s reminded me repeatedly. Everyone adores Olivia and her fundraising for the arts—”

  “You should’ve tried me.” Isabella interrupted.

  Alex shook her head. “It’s easy to recreate someone else’s work on a computer. If I’d shown you my saved version, you wouldn’t have believed me. I needed the original hardcopy to prove that I wrote it. I found it over Christmas.”

  Olivia crossed her arms. “Okay, I know why she’s doing this to me. The truth is, I do remember Alex and I talking casually about a suffragette idea last year. That doesn’t mean I ‘stole her play’—I just sat down at my laptop and actually did something with it. And now she’s obviously getting her revenge. You can’t copyright an idea, Alex! Isabella, don’t fall for this ridiculous university manuscript rubbish. Some people will stop at nothing to discredit people with talent like you and me—”

  “Stop!” Isabella slammed her hand on the table. Her water glass skipped two inches.

  She sat back and continued to speed-read page after page, exploring the contents. The air in the room crackled with electricity, Alex and Olivia both fearful of breaking the silence…

  “Olivia, the original draft you submitted—it’s practically identical to this hardcopy. The directions about casting. The dialogue. Characters. Even the notes at the back.”

  “Of course they’re identical. I wrote it!” Olivia shouted. “She must’ve gotten into my computer somehow, copied the Word files, I don’t know—come on, Isabella. You know me…”

  Isabella pointed to the hardcopy. “Okay, let’s say this is a copy of your original work, yes? Then what about words like ‘color’ and ‘behavior’? They stuck out during my first read through—why would a British writer use American spellings? On first reading, I dismissed it as spell check failure…”

  She locked eyes with Olivia. “Plagiarized work? How could you be so stupid…”

  Olivia searched for a response, but remained silent, her eyes narrowing.

  Alex stepped closer to Isabella, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry for disrupting the session, but I couldn’t allow this charade to go on any further, regardless of the consequences. Better to be honest than secretive and scared. Even if I’m banned from this workshop, at least my conscience is clear now.”

  The door nudged ajar, the three male playwrights checking if the workshop was about to restart.

  Olivia leaned so close to Alex that she could feel the brunette’s hot breath on her face. “Oh, cry me a river, you stupid little slut. Don’t give me this ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ act. You’re the thief. You’re the liar.”

  The women’s raised voices sent the door flying shut with a metallic bang, the break extended indefinitely.

  Olivia jabbed a manicured finger at Alex. “Stop playing dumb. I’m sick of it. Tallahassee Thanksgiving 2014? Ring any bells? I saw the photos…your cozy sleepover with my Harry.”

  Alex’s eyes bulged like the secrets of the universe had been revealed.

  “Shall I refresh your memory? Harry’s plastered all over that album—laughing as he carved your turkey; smiling with a forkful of pumpkin pie…”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Alex crossed her arms. “Photos? That’s why you stole my play?”

  “…kissing whipped cream off your nose! Playing stupid American football and—I bet you remember this one—you straddling Harry in a pile of leaves. It’s photographic proof, the two of you, caught in a blatant lie. And none of the photos with Harry were tagged. Trying to hide the evidence, were you?” Olivia flailed her arms, her engagement ring sending out glinty flares with each unhinged flap.

  Alex frowned. “Tag them? What? It wasn’t important. A missing tag isn’t proof of, of…anything.”

  Olivia dropped her hands to her hips. “Photos never lie. You and Harry should’ve at least had the sense to get your stories straight—”

  “Okay, you want the true story? Yes, I’m guilty of abandoning Harry on a holiday long weekend. I’m guilty of calling him at the last minute with an invite to his first American Thanksgiving. I’m guilty of goofing around, snapping silly photos—the turkey, the whipped cream on my nose…but straddling him? That was an ill-timed football tackle. Totally harmless and PG—we were surrounded by kids! I’ve told you a million times. Nothing happened! I know what it feels like to be cheated on. I’d never do th—no. You know what, I’m over trying to explain something that never took place! Your insecurity is your problem. I’m done with you.”

  “Well,
I’ve not even started with you. You’re accusing me of plagiarism—fine! Don’t you know who my father is? We’ll sue you for defamation, libel—whatever. You’ll be tied up fighting the lawsuit for years. If you want your family to be financially ruined, keep this up. I don’t need to listen to your fairy tales.”

  Olivia straightened her skirt. “And Isabella, I respect you—you know that—but if you choose to believe her over me, well, that’s your funeral.”

  The door to the meeting room squeaked open again.

  “Guys, five more minutes!” shouted Isabella. Alex figured that some of the actresses were dying to have a front row seat to this performance.

  A familiar face appeared around the door’s edge.

  Harry.

  Both Alex and Olivia gasped as one.

  Pale and crestfallen, his hands clenched Olivia’s Swarovski bedazzled iPhone, presumably left behind in his car.

  “Is this true?”

  Olivia unleashed the waterworks. “Darling, they’re accusing me of all sorts. I’ve done nothing wrong…”

  He strode into the room towards his princess, his beige cashmere Burberry coat billowing behind him like a superhero’s cape. “Answer me. Is this true?”

  Alex stood frozen, her breathing halted.

  Harry’s fiancée clambered to his side, all pleading arms, sniveling tears, and streaky mascara. He flinched backwards, his lip curled.

  “Harry, look—she sold her play to me…for rent money. She’s always broke, you know!”

  Alex rubbed a raised eyebrow. She didn’t feel anger anymore, just…pity.

  Every time Harry stepped back, Olivia edged closer. “She wrote the original draft, but I’ve improved it so much since then, so it’s mine really…”

  Isabella exhaled and stood up. “Olivia, stop.”

  “And you still won’t tell me the truth. Me of all people.” Harry’s hands were shaking. “I heard everything. The stealing. The cheating allegations—I would never…” His voice broke as he covered his mouth with his hand. “Apparently I had more faith in you than you ever had in me…I’ve heard enough.”