by Molly Flatt
Harry sighed and rubbed his forehead. ‘I did know that you weren’t entirely happy,’ he said stiffly. ‘I suppose I felt guilty that I couldn’t seem to help you more, these past years. That I couldn’t make you happy myself. And recently, well, of course I’m in awe of all you’ve achieved.’ He paused. ‘But it seems so radical, the way you’ve transformed yourself so thoroughly to make it all happen. It rings a little hollow, to tell the truth. And I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I know there are others in your life who feel the same way.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to succeed, Alex, but I don’t understand why you have to abandon so many things that make you you, in order to do so.’
Alex didn’t want to ask, but she had to know. ‘Including us?’
‘I think,’ Harry said slowly, ‘that you’re on a particular journey at the moment, and I’m obviously getting in the way. I hope – I very much hope – you’ll find more of an equilibrium soon, but I’m not sure that a shotgun wedding is the right thing just now.’
‘Don’t buy into the bullshit, Harry,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I refuse to believe that it’s impossible for a woman to have both a brilliant career and a brilliant marriage.’
Harry refolded his napkin beside his untouched food. ‘I’m sorry if this wasn’t the conversation you were expecting, but I really think you should spend some time thinking about what I’ve said. About what you want, and about who you want to be.’ He stood up and shrugged on his jacket. ‘I’ll sort the bill on my way out.’
After he left, Alex sat alone for another half an hour, letting the tinkle of glass and the murmur of small talk wash over her jumbled thoughts. She came to when Helena Pereira led her entourage across the flagstones in a backwash of whispers, looking like a time traveller from some perfected future race. Alex was just constructing an argument about Pereira being the consummate case study of having it all – the iconic modelling career, the jewellery business, the adoring husband, the trilingual twins – when the sound of a commotion broke out from the chapel’s vestibule.
The rumble of raised voices quickly escalated into a single shout, immediately followed by a female scream. Then a cacophony of yells and the scuffle of struggling feet followed. Three men in aprons came thundering through the restaurant from the open kitchen at the back. Several diners stood up while others froze, gripping the backs of their chairs. After a moment’s silence, the room erupted into babble. Someone dropped the word ‘bomb.’ A few men got out from behind their tables and made bold yet dithery movements towards the source of the noise.
The maître d’ emerged.
‘Please,’ he called, ‘ladies and gentleman. Our apologies for the disturbance. There is nothing to worry about. We had an unfortunate incident with a lone individual who has now been delivered into the charge of the police.’ He bestowed a comradely smile on the hovering men. ‘Do resume your seats. I hope that you enjoy your evening.’
Why, Alex thought wearily as she stood up and hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, was the world full of so much spite and fear? Chloe was right: people saw life through such blinkered eyes. Alex had noticed that the more she pushed her own boundaries, the more those around her seemed to do the opposite, entrenching themselves more deeply into their narrow beliefs. Navigating your way through all their twisted versions of reality really was exhausting sometimes.
Feeling a little wobbly, Alex got the Tube to her flat. She was tempted to nip back to the office and steal a march on the next day’s work. But she knew that would have been a classic old-Alex avoidance technique. Instead she made herself a cafetière of Blue Mountain, rubbed some arnica into her bruises, sat on the sofa and did what Harry asked. She set out to think.
But as soon as she tried to review his accusations, her thoughts began to fracture and slide. Despite the expensive food she had forced down, she felt hollow. Instead of embarking on the rigorous burst of self-examination she had intended, she found her mind drifting off into a cold, windy no-man’s-land. As she sipped her coffee, it skittered between the mugging, Not John Hanley and a mess of fuzzy memories that took her dangerously close to the void.
Abruptly, Alex snagged her thoughts back onto the safe ground of the present. Perhaps, to a certain degree, Harry was right. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was time for her to stop ignoring her episodes. They were clearly a signal that, whatever Chloe said about boundless power, she needed to back off a bit with work. But then how else was she supposed to keep up the momentum when, as Ahmed liked to remind her on a regular basis, she was Eudo? It was the sort of entrepreneurial pressure that Harry would never understand, with his steady analyst’s job in a global shipping firm. Ever since he had left Durham, his days had been navigated by a constellation of reliable data, anchored by process, churned along by a thousand habits. Whereas she was having to freestyle every moment, imagine her own horizon into existence, fight for every stroke.
They had always been different, she and Harry. That’s what had made them so great together, in the past. But suddenly the differences seemed . . . different. Clashing, not complementary. Was she admitting, then, that Harry was right? After five rock-solid years, could their relationship really have crumbled in a mere six months?
Again, for some reason, she thought of Not John Hanley, sweating and shuddering in her office like an injured wolf in a glass tank. She thought of his stare, hungry and merciless.
Whatever you are.
But then an image that had been slowly but firmly taking root in Alex’s mind since she spoke to Mae reasserted itself. A vision of her life in five years’ time. It featured Harry opening a bottle of rosé in the high-ceilinged kitchen of a Highgate townhouse, while three small and unruly children chased a rescue Saluki around the patio. And it didn’t make her feel sick at all.
‘No,’ she said, punching a cushion. ‘No, Harry boy. That’s what I am. That’s what we are. And I won’t let it go.’
She jumped up and paced her kitchen-lounge-diner’s ninety square feet while a distant soundtrack of electro-bhangra and backfiring mopeds floated in on the stifling breeze. It wasn’t Harry’s fault. Social Stockholm Syndrome, Chloe called it: the reluctance of people to open the door of the cage that society had shut them in. At least Alex had the advantage of half-American blood. Harry was as English as Earl Grey. Was it any wonder that, seeing the shrinking violet he had treasured for a decade suddenly shoot into a tall poppy, his instinct was to whip out the scythe?
It had been unfair of her, Alex admitted, to expect him to trust in her transformation. It was obvious to her now that all those who had known her before Eudo were struggling to come to terms with her transition. God – as she had told Harry, sometimes she barely trusted it herself. But this was no time for self-pity, old-Alex-style. She had put so much effort into her game plan for Eudo that she’d neglected to do the same for both her health and her relationships, and it was her responsibility to put that right.
Alex returned to the sofa. She picked up her iPad, opened her project management app and created a new workstream called FAMILY. Under Mission Statement, she typed: To build a satisfying, stimulating and mutually supportive family life.
It would do.
She organized the project into three colour-coded sub-streams – Harry, Children, Property. Then, in the spirit of Chloe’s principle to throw it all out there, because you never knew what might bounce back, she added Parents, Friends, Pets, Holidays, Transport, Relaxation and Fun. Then she tapped on the Harry tab and contemplated possible tasks.
Prove to Harry that I am still the woman he loves, she typed.
Accurate, but too vague.
She deleted the sentence, swallowed more coffee and closed her eyes, trying to recall the specifics of each accusation Harry had made. After a few minutes she opened her eyes and resumed typing, and moments later she had five robust tasks:
1. Put aside more time for self-reflection and meditative calm.
2. Demonstrate that I am not obsessed with
Eudomonia.
3. Provide evidence of generosity / sensitivity / spirituality / thoughtfulness.
4. Give Harry the space he needs to realize that his life is incomplete without me.
5. Courier Bo 2nd birthday gift.
Alex opened her browser and found a garden yurt suitable for twelve months and up, in a toy shop near Twickenham. Five minutes later she had spoken to the shop owner, secured the yurt and paid extra to guarantee same-day delivery. Delighted that she had already completed her first concrete action – her fingertip prodded the Bo-task tick-box so hard that it left a brief digital halo behind – Alex poured some more joe and contemplated the remaining four.
She was just wondering whether taking up Pilates might provide evidence of renewed spirituality when an order confirmation from the Twickenham toy shop popped up. She opened her mailbox, wondering whether she should forward it straight to Harry. On balance, she decided not, but then the subject of the message beneath caught her eye:
Attn Miss D.A. Moore: Invitation to Collaborate on International Research Project
Feeling particularly benevolent after her gift-buying coup, Alex decided to break her digital-bumf rules this once and double-clicked:
Dear Miss Moore
[the email began, with rare formality]
I am not sure if you have received my previous emails or telephone calls, but I hope that you will excuse my persistence in attempting to contact you on a matter of some urgency.
Here at the Global Centre for Autobiographical Studies, or GCAS (European Chapter) we are working on a unique research project in which we are very eager for you to participate. We are chronicling powerful stories of personal transformation from across Europe. Our hope is that they will become a spur for international understanding, collaboration and enlightenment for all those struggling to live lives that give back to the global community.
There were a lot of good words here, Alex thought. Very good words. She felt the beginning of a buzz that had nothing to do with caffeine.
Having recently read an article on the website of ‘Flair’
[and that’s what you get from half a million monthly uniques, Harry darling, Alex thought],
we believe that your own Story would make a central and timely contribution. Considering the many national, racial and religious conflicts dominating the news at present, we aim to complete and collate our interviews as rapidly as possible. We would therefore like to invite you to visit us at your earliest convenience, for as long as you can spare, with all travel and accommodation costs paid.
The European Chapter of GCAS is based on Iskeull, a privately owned island in the Orkney archipelago and a living embodiment of untouched native ecology. This is a rare opportunity to visit a microstate set in one of the most unspoilt landscapes on earth.
Archipelago. It practically reeked of nobility. Ancient wisdom. Dragons. Not to mention air; air and light and quiet.
It sounded like somewhere she could slow down, if only for a couple of days.
Somewhere she could breathe.
All profits from the research paper will be ploughed back into GCAS’s ongoing work, which is focused on the preservation of indigenous ecosystems and the promotion of the free flow of human thought across the world.
Please do get in touch as soon as you receive this message. We look forward to arranging your journey.
Yours sincerely, Sorcha MacBrian, S.R., Director, GCAS (European Chapter)
Alex googled Orkney.
5
The doors beeped closed seconds after Alex jumped into the carriage, breathing hard. She couldn’t believe she’d come so close to missing her train, after paying so much for a last-minute ticket. Who would have thought so many people wanted to go to Scotland at 8 a.m. on a Friday? But she had been determined not to fail at her very first goal – clean, lean, planet-friendly nourishment – hence the M&S carrier bag banging against her shins. Two boxes of organic fruit salad, three packs of free-range chicken breast strips, a bar of Fairtrade 90 per cent dark chocolate and a six-pack of Highland Spring. She was off to an excellent start.
She wobbled her way to her allocated seat and hoisted her rucksack – which she had started to think of, for the purposes of this trip, as her valise – up onto the rack. Brand new underwear, spare jeans, a couple of vests, a Breton-striped pullover and some emergency cashmere. It was the ideal capsule wardrobe for a few back-to-nature days by the sea.
The woman in the aisle seat, who had already spread a sheaf of printouts across the table, sighed and stood up to let Alex squeeze past. Thanking her with a patient smile, Alex settled into the worn upholstery. It wasn’t long, after all, since she herself had been dull-complexioned and borderline-podgy, spending her mornings doing soulless paperwork. The train was already speeding through the outskirts of London, offering up a cinemagraph of sagging washing lines and broken trampolines. Harry, Alex thought with a swell of magnanimity, had been right. She’d barely given a thought to the world outside Eudo since it all kicked off. As if on cue, the suit sitting opposite folded his Times on the table and hunkered down for a nap, knocking her ankles with his feet in a brief territorial dance.
‘Excuse me?’ Alex said. He reopened one eye. ‘Do you mind if I . . . ?’ The suit swept a permissive hand towards the paper, before tucking his hand back under his armpit.
Tingling with the thrill of the contact – they must be out of London, to transgress the privacy of public transport with such insouciance! – Alex picked up the broadsheet and shook it out. But as she flicked through the pages she found herself struggling to concentrate for more than a paragraph. Abandoning it, she turned on her phone, despite her vow to leave it off until York, just to check the time.
Seven minutes? Seven? Only . . . 253 to go.
But then as Chloe would say, Alex reminded herself sternly, the journey was the destination. When Alex had proposed her itinerary to the Director of GCAS (European Chapter) last night, the Director of GCAS (European Chapter) had tried to persuade her to take the quicker option of a flight. But Alex knew that a slow, contemplative Anna Karenina-style odyssey by rail and sea would sound far better to Harry than a business-like hop from Heathrow.
Harry. She had promised herself not to contact him until she was back, to give him the space he needs to realize that his life is incomplete without me. But it would be a shame for him not to realize the effort she was making on his – no her, no their – behalf. She thumbed open their message thread.
H. I’m off to Orkney for the wkend to collaborate on research project for international enlightenment. Going to think about what you said. A. She hesitated, then added x.
She waited for a few minutes, but there was no reply. To the irritation of the woman beside her, who was now brutalizing her printouts with great swathes of highlighter, Alex reached up for her bag to retrieve her iPad. She opened the e-book she had downloaded for her journey the night before: The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown. He was, apparently, the definitive bard of Orkney. Wishing that her father could see her, she tapped on a random hyperlink in the Contents and started to read:
Further than Hoy
the mermaids whisper
through ivory shells
a-babble with vowels
Further than history
the legends thicken
the buried broken
vases and columns
Further than fame
are fleas and visions,
the
But then it was probably unreasonable to expect her to jump straight into poetry when she hadn’t read so much as an airport thriller in months. Alex logged into the Virgin East Coast wi-fi, intending to select something a little more palatable. Surely there would be tons of trashy Tolkien-lite set in ‘one of the most unspoilt landscapes on earth’? But although her menu bar claimed to have five full bars of connection, it soon became obvious that her menu bar was full of shit.
She checked her phone. Nothing from Harry.
&nbs
p; Not to be discouraged, she opened the webpages she had cached in case of just such an emergency and began to pore over the research that she’d barely had time to skim the night before.
There wasn’t much. The GCAS website was a grey holding page with a clunkily symbolic logo – a figure-of-eight inside a circle – at the top. There was a sentence about the institute’s aim to ‘promote the free flow of human thought across the world’, then a list of its seven ‘Chapters’. Each of these linked out to a native-language microsite. When she navigated to the European one, Alex found that it was barely more helpful. It simply repeated the logo, added a border of blue runic symbols, and repurposed the copy from Sorcha MacBrian’s email – explaining that the Chapter was located on an island that was ‘a living embodiment of untouched native ecology’. At the bottom was a stern reminder, in bold caps, that:
ISKEULL IS A PRIVATELY OWNED AND FUNDED MICROSTATE, INDEPENDENT OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND UNSERVICED BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT. VISITORS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. CONTACT [email protected]
Alex skimmed through the microsites for the other Chapters, with the help of her browser’s auto-translate. The decorative borders were an international art-history tour of ancient-looking motifs. The names of the islands differed, obviously (Pasca Nui, Menikuk, Belyando, Gave, Yíngzhōu, Buyanin). As did the governments from which they declared independence (Chile, Canada, Australia, Comoros, Japan, Russia). Each Chapter also had its own email address – which appointment-only visitors were ordered, in no uncertain bold caps, to contact. Otherwise, each one replicated exactly the same minimalist template and eco-friendly blurb.
