The Exclusives

by Rebecca Thornton

  ‘What a complete twat,’ she says, punching the keypad of her phone. ‘Listen to this . . .’ she says, and reads us another of his messages. I pull out my phone.

  ‘Bet I can beat you,’ I laugh and read out one of Toby’s latest.

  ‘All good here. About to go to the wilds of Afghanistan to hunt some stories. Will keep you posted. Fondest, T. I mean what’s that all about? He thinks he’s so war chic.’ I snort. Mia laughs and Jeremy lights up a cigarette. I think I’ve said just enough about Toby so that it looks like I don’t care but when Mia’s still laughing and sarcastically calling him war chic a few minutes later, I wonder if they know what I’m thinking. I laugh too, but the idea that Toby, the only person I’ve allowed into my life since Freya, has cut me out so easily, strangles me without warning. Was that how Freya felt too?

  ‘Mia, can I have a cigarette, please?’ I ask. She hands me the packet and a green lighter without looking up. I take one out and light it, sucking the smoke and the hurt right back into my lungs.

  We stop and get some beers for the evening, along with some za’atar bread and cheese to grill. We are staying in a small flat, lent to us by one of the private investors funding our dig. It’s right on the sea, near the Mövenpick Hotel. It’s quiet and clean and we sit outside, sniffing the salty sea, intermittent gusts of drainage blowing in our direction.

  I light a cigarette. My third one since Jeremy first handed me his roll-up the other day. I feel young, smoking, even though I’m aware every drag is deepening the lines on my face. We talk, all three of us, until three o’clock that morning. Mia has forgotten about her ex and me about Toby. They both ask me about my life, my school days. ‘You’re such a closed book,’ Mia laughs, loud with drink. ‘Come on, give us some stuff about yourself.’ I’m sure they’re asking so they can report back to the rest of the team, who have always been trying to glean information about me. No one can seem to accept I want to keep myself to myself. With good reason, perhaps. But then I look at them, waiting for me to talk and they both look so . . . so open, so eager, so kind, that I unwrap my arms from around my stomach, and resolve to relax.

  I mentioned Freya to them briefly, once before, never in detail. I try her name out again on them, see how it sounds, how it rests in my throat.

  ‘There’s not much to tell, really,’ I say. ‘I went to a strict boarding school. We weren’t given any freedom and I had a best friend, Freya. We were . . . our families knew each other and I used to stay with them a lot as my father was often busy at work.’ I stop to look at them, see if I’ve given anything away but neither of them move. ‘Go on,’ says Mia. ‘And well, not much else really.’ I shrug. ‘Then I got a degree and you pretty much know the rest. Very boring. And now I’m here, with you guys.’

  ‘Well, you must have something else. You’ve told us bits about Toby . . . what about your family? Parents? Siblings? What did your father do?’ Mia swigs some more beer, throwing a glowing cigarette butt across the garden.

  ‘You’d better go and stub that out,’ and then, aware I sound bossy, ‘I’m terrified of fire.’ Mia gets up, carries on talking with her back towards us.

  ‘Are they still alive? Do you get on?’ Jeremy is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

  ‘No siblings. My father still works. He’s at Number Ten. He’s very much alive. My mother, she’s . . . she’s. Yes, she’s also alive . . .’ No one has ever asked me about my family, not since school. I haven’t let any conversation get that personal and, if it has, I’ve managed to steer it back to safer ground. ‘Why are you so interested?’ I give a shrill little laugh.

  ‘Well, we do work together,’ says Jeremy. ‘Practically lived together for the last seven months. Everyone knows everything about each other on a dig, except you. Mysterious.’

  Is that what I am? ‘So,’ he continues unabated and my heart sinks. ‘What does your father do at Number Ten? And how did he meet your mum? He must have some amazing stories.’ Mia walks back to us, cupping her cigarette butt. She puts it on the table and lights another. ‘Here,’ she says, throwing me one. She catches me looking at the cigarette butt. ‘Don’t worry, it’s out,’ she says. I don’t answer her. Instead, I light my cigarette and think of Mother, how elegant I thought she was when I was young, with her black cigarette holder, cherry-red nails. And then, later on, the piles of half-empty fag packets that overflowed from her old Hermès bag; the one she always wore around her shoulder, covering her like a protective talisman. She would only ever have one or two puffs before she would extinguish the cigarette with a weak grind of her foot.

  ‘My father,’ I say, eventually, ‘yes . . . he’s pretty interesting. He’s now the Permanent Secretary.’ If either Jeremy or Mia is impressed, they don’t show it, so I carry on. ‘My mother, nothing much about her, I’m afraid. She and my father met at a party when she was about eighteen. She came from a real aristo family, so obviously my father thought he would marry well. She was beautiful and accompanied him to all his smart dinners as he worked. She tried different things – setting up different businesses but nothing really worked, and then I was born and she ended up staying home a lot more . . .’ just not with me, I wanted to add.

  ‘Ah,’ says Mia, as if this explains everything. Despite the relief of silence, I feel a prickle of irritation. I slump back, unwilling to talk much longer and reluctantly they finally get the message in my strained shoulders and accept that I’m done. Mia senses the awkwardness and starts changing the topic, telling us that she also went to a really strict school.

  ‘It was exhausting,’ she laughs. ‘Always having to be top dog. I’m pretty sure it’s going to an all-girls school, don’t you think? Jeremy? You were OK, you went mixed, didn’t you?’ Jeremy nods and both look to me.

  ‘My school,’ I say, ‘yes, it was very, very strict. Did you board, Mia?’ I’m starting to feel uncomfortable talking about my school days and hope that Mia will take up the conversation.

  ‘No. I was desperate to, but hearing you now makes me glad I didn’t. I had a very Enid Blyton impression of boarding,’ she says. I tell her it would have been nice if it had been really like that.

  ‘We did have that thing of competing all the time though,’ she says. ‘Undercurrents of it everywhere. Whether it was boys, weight, academia. And if we failed? God forbid if we failed at anything. I was lucky, I could go home and hide in my bedroom. I suppose you could never do that being a boarder, could you? It must have been like living in a constant spotlight.’ Mia’s on a roll now and totally animated in her stream of consciousness, speaking faster and faster. ‘Like, shoot me now if you screwed up an exam or did anything wrong? I mean – what happened if you had an argument with someone and wanted time out?’ I want her to stop right now, because I don’t know how to answer this one and I think of those big iron gates at the front of the school – the way they were a protection from my home life, but at the same time hemming us all in. I go quiet, thinking of what Mia has just said, and about my own failures with Freya. Mia, too, is absorbed in her own thoughts and the conversation winds down. Jeremy suggests we play charades; a game I normally hate but it’s distracting them from talking to me so I try to get into it. We pull off bits of bread, drinking beer after beer, occasionally leaning over to clink the necks of our bottles and I realise I’ve had something close to fun. We go to bed and Jeremy has already put my and Mia’s suitcases on the single beds in our shared room. He will sleep on the pull-out sofa bed in the front room. ‘So I can chase off burglars,’ he laughs as he comes to our room to say goodnight.

  ‘Oh no, don’t freak me out.’ Mia slugs back another beer and unfolds her long legs off the chair. ‘I’m off to bed now.’ She’s bra-less; shaking out her curly, auburn hair. I glance over at Jeremy, who, to my relief, is not looking.

  ‘Me too,’ I say and Jeremy looks up.

  ‘Need anything?’

  ‘I’m OK. Thanks so much.’

  I haven’t shared a
room with anyone, other than lovers, since school. Mia snorts and shuffles in her sleep and I find it oddly comforting. I can hear Jeremy clicking away on his mobile phone and I wonder who he is texting. We wake up the next morning and walk to the Dead Sea, where we have Turkish coffee and spend hours and hours floating in the dense water.

  The rest of the holiday goes by quietly and by the end of it I realise that since that first night I have only thought about Freya fleetingly. Even the darkness of the bedroom hasn’t jolted me into conjuring up her face. Her hair. I feel an emptiness when the time comes for us to go back to the city. Jeremy hoists our luggage into the car and we drive back in silence, through the desert and small villages, lit only by moon-struck houses along the road. We arrive back at the hotel and stand in the reception. Work-mode descends upon us, shoulders stooping with the effort of it all.

  ‘See you tomorrow?’ Jeremy looks at me.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What time?’

  I realise I’m still his boss, yet I don’t know if he’s joking with me.

  ‘Your normal time,’ I say, realising this sounds like a dig at the fact he is always twenty minutes after everyone else. ‘I mean. Just normal time,’ I add, awkward in my attempt to be kind. Jeremy smiles and punches me on the shoulder and again, realising I’m his boss, steps back apologetically. Everything is out of sync. I know I’m not good at making these situations better so I wave goodbye to Mia, who is smirking.

  ‘See you tomorrow then.’ I turn and fish for my keys. I switch off the air conditioning in my room, which is rattling above my head, and even though I know I shouldn’t, even though I try convincing myself to just leave it alone, I can’t resist one look, preparing myself for the usual spam, the insignificant names. I coach myself into not expecting anything as my emails take ages to load, the timer dominating the screen, but finally they do, and with a sickening jolt there it is. All this time I have been longing for Freya’s reply, but now it’s here, I’m too fearful to look. My heart is twitching in my chest and my throat runs dry. But this is what you wanted, I tell myself.

  Josephine. I did get your email. I’m sorry you don’t want to meet but I think it is really important that I see you. I am willing to come to wherever you are . . . I am keeping up to date with the dig and hope it’s all going as planned. As I said, I’m on business but I can take time off and we can discuss things properly.

  That was it. At first, I am disappointed. Firstly at the brevity of her message – she hasn’t signed off and secondly because she’s called me Josephine, rather than J. When the disappointment subsides, I feel a total lack of control. Yes – I had been expecting her to reply – a friendly note, perhaps, saying she understood and that she hoped I was well. Instead, this? The Freya I knew never used to be so assertive, so bossy and, because I’m not going to see her, I’m powerless to come back at her. Her tone has only made me resolve what I had decided earlier, though. That I will never, ever, do what she wants.

  And she’s keeping up to date with the dig. How? I think. I quickly Google myself to see what’s been written and I find three new articles – two in The Times and one in the Telegraph. Then I start looking deeper.

  I Google Freya every so often and have never been able to find anything on her, no matter how hard I’ve looked. For years I would do it every day, though, recently, less. And since she’s emailed me I’ve been too overwhelmed to do an internet search for her, in case, somehow, she finds out. Rationally, I know the thought is ridiculous. But that’s what she’s done to me. I think of my mother, all huddled up and shaking whenever anyone came near her. In an effort to distract myself, I type Freya’s name into the search bar, tapping the keys really hard.

  I still can’t find anything on her, with her married or maiden name. Nothing. How can she leave so little trace? I look on Facebook, logging in with Toby’s password, and she is not there either. Nor Twitter, nor LinkedIn. I start looking up other names from the past and there’s Sally Aylsford, on Facebook, with a bottle of beer in one hand, diamond ring glinting in front of her face. ‘He finally asked!’ says the caption. I scroll down her friends’ network for any hint of Freya, any pictures or tagged posts, but she’s still not there. Verity – are you there at all? I type in her name in Sally’s network and nothing comes up either. Paranoia sets in and I wonder why they are both so inaccessible. Are you hiding from me? Even in my head I sound utterly mad and I realise it’s time, once and for all, to stop all this. I’m still overcome with fury that even now Freya thinks she has enough power over me she can tell me what to do. Is she trying to show me she’s changed? That the dynamics of our friendship no longer exist? She used to tell me she wished she was like me, not caring so much what other people thought. And now, it seems she’s trying to prove her point in her ridiculous little email. As if we are still how we were at Greenwood Hall and everything in between is just an awful dream. I set an auto-responder on my email account: This address no longer exists. I feel a mix of nostalgia and relief – Freya and I set up that email together as part of an IT project, when the internet first reached Greenwood. That part of my life, finished. Closed.

  Next I create a new email address: Earthseaproject@googlemail.com – a reference to my favourite book trilogy. I store a few of my most important contacts there – my father, his secretary, Amy, Toby and one or two of my old friends from previous digs, who might come in handy. I wonder who else I would have had on my list ten years ago. Not many more, that’s for sure.

  Dear All, I type, blind copying everyone into the email.

  My old email is no longer in use. Please contact me here. I would be incredibly grateful if you didn’t pass this email on to anyone that may ask for it.

  I stop typing here and wonder if I am sounding crazy then realise I don’t care – the thought of Freya finding out where I am is worse.

  I then write to all my colleagues from my work email address and tell them that it is no longer in use either, and that I’d be emailing a new work contact out later that week. Next, I email Amy and ask her to start the ball rolling to get my English mobile number changed. You know all my details, I write. Please go as far as you can and if you need me to finish or sign anything, just email me or ring me on my Jordanian number. Thanks Amy, J.

  I feel much, much better and I start to shut my computer when I hear another email pinging into my inbox. It’s from Anne, my mother’s carer. It reads:

  Hello my dear Josephine,

  I’ve been trying to get hold of you on your mobile for a few days. Please could you ring me, your mother is very sick. I’m so sorry. I know you don’t like being disturbed when you are away but I’ve spoken to the doctors who all agree that you need to come back. To say goodbye. I’m so, so sorry to write this on the computer. No voicemail on your telephone. She finally got her own way, she was desperate to go this time. Once again, I’m so sorry for the shock.

  God bless.

  Anne xxx

  I’m waiting to be flooded with grief, or something, but nothing happens. All I get is my mother’s voice telling me she wants to cut my hair. The most random of things, and I can’t work it out. The voice repeats itself over and over – when I was little, about six or so, she would snake her cold, white hands around the back of my neck, whilst holding a pair of blunt scissors. As I’m trying to rationalise and process my thoughts, I’m struck by a series of insignificant details. How noisy the air conditioning is in my room. How the brown curtains have a weird stain on them just to the left of the wall. How the light fitting in the ceiling is slightly off-centre. Odd. And then I start to shiver. I try to switch on my phone but the battery is dead. Jeremy, I think. His room is on the other side of the hotel, so I run to reception and ask them to ring up.

  ‘You alright?’ He appears three minutes later, in nothing but a towel and flip-flops.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You what?’ He looks amused, then worried.

  ‘It’s my mother.’

  ‘Your m
other?’ He frowns.

  ‘She’s very ill. Not sure what’s wrong.’ There’s a silence. I’m sure he’s wondering why I’ve called him and I barely know myself and I find that all the efficiency has gone and shock has set in and I am talking very, very fast and I need a drink of water.

  ‘Sorry, I . . . I just . . . I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t suppose you have any water to hand, do you?’

  ‘No. No need for sorry. Give me the company credit card, or tell me where it is. I’m going to book you a flight today – back to London, is it?’

  I nod. ‘That would be great. Thanks so much, Jeremy. I normally do this kind of thing myself, it’s just my phone . . .’ I hold out my old mobile to show him the blank screen.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you don’t need to explain. Come here.’ He takes me by the arm and orders me a hot chocolate at the hotel bar. ‘Stay there,’ he says, squeezing my shoulder. I sit down and wonder if my mother is aware of what is happening. If Father is with her. If she’s scared. She never seemed scared, all that time, even when she first went away. Just looked back at us, hissing and spitting at Father and calling him the devil and pointing at the sky, jabbing at the clouds with her fingers, seeing shapes within them that I couldn’t possibly imagine. And then Father’s voice comes to me – ‘You look just like her’ – and my mouth goes dry again. I’ve managed to keep myself sane all these years. During school, after school. Busy, successful and sane, and I wonder if this is it . . . that when Mother dies, whether it will be my turn. And then the fear really kicks in.

  Jeremy’s back in half an hour, with a printout, a wallet and my passport, which is kept in the safety deposit box.

  ‘Josephine? Are you OK? You look dreadful. I mean, I guess that’s no surprise given what you’ve just heard but . . .’

  I gesture at the passport. ‘Thank you.’