I Know Who You Are(42)

When Maggie unwrapped her present, I didn’t know what it was. It’s called a Deep Fat Fryer. I don’t know why I think that’s a funny name, but every time John calls it that, I giggle. Maggie asked if he got it off the back of a lorry, and that seems like a strange place to buy presents to me. John ignored her and said that the Deep Fat Fryer would change our lives. I didn’t believe him at first, but he was right. We always ate everything on toast before, but now we eat everything with chips instead. It’s wonderful! Maggie has only had the Deep Fat Fryer for one day, but already we’ve had eggs and chips for lunch and burgers and chips for dinner!

It works like magic. Maggie peels potatoes, chops them into chip shapes, then throws them into the machine. When it beeps, it means that the potatoes have magically turned into chips! I’m not allowed to touch the Deep Fat Fryer. It has oil inside that gets very hot, so hot that Maggie burned her finger badly the first time she used it. John offered to kiss it better, but she pushed him away. It made me think that maybe sometimes kissing something better is really kissing something worse.

We’re having a special dessert tonight for my birthday, and Maggie says it is a surprise. I hope it is one of her nice ones. She makes me sit in the front room on the sofa beside the electric fire. The lights go out, but it’s because John has turned them off, not because the meter needs feeding. Maggie comes into the room carrying a cake with candles on it, then puts it down on the coffee table where we only drink tea. I’ve never had a birthday cake before. She tells me to make a wish and blow out all the candles, so I do, and John takes a picture of me on his Polaroid camera. There were seven candles, but I know I’m only six, so I don’t know whether my wish will still come true.

After we have all eaten two slices of chocolate cake, John stands up and walks over to the mantelpiece. He takes the picture of the other little girl; she is blowing out candles on a birthday cake too, but I only count six. He opens the frame and starts to put her photo in his pocket, but Maggie says no, so he puts it back and slides the new photo of me over the top. It’s strange seeing a photo of myself in the frame. The other little girl is tucked just behind me, I can’t see her anymore, but I know that she’s still there.





Thirty-four


London, 2017

I sit on the Central Line, trying but failing to read the book I bought earlier. It’s an old story, but it’s putting new thoughts in my head that I don’t currently have room for. Books can be mirrors, too, offering a reflection of our worst selves for appraisal; lessons tucked between pages, just waiting to be learned. I put the book back in my bag and drink in the faces of my fellow travelers instead, wondering who the people wearing them really are.

Ben and I used to play a game on the tube. We would pick a couple of people talking in the distance, and we’d take it in turns to speak when they spoke, making up silly voices and amusing dialogues that didn’t fit the faces we saw, finding ourselves hilarious. We were fun back then. It was good. The memory makes me smile, but then I realize I am grinning at strangers and a past I can never get back. It’s rude of me to stare like this, but nobody says anything, people don’t even see me doing it. They’re all far too busy staring at their phones, partaking in the daily withdrawal from wonder and the world around them. We’ve all got so busy staring down at our screens that we’ve forgotten to look up at the stars.

I think it can be dangerous to spend too long watching the lives of others; you might run out of time to live your own. Technology is devolving the human race. Eating up our emotional intelligence, spitting out any remnants of privacy it can’t quite swallow. The world will keep on spinning and the stars will always shine, regardless of whether anyone is looking.

Sometimes I think that every person might be his or her own star, shining at the center of his or her own solar system. I observe the changing expressions of my fellow commuters and am certain I witness an occasional flare on their surfaces, as they contemplate their past or worry about their future. Each walking, talking, thinking, feeling human star has its own planets revolving around it: parents, children, friends, lovers. Sometimes stars get too big, too hot, too dangerous, and the planets closest to them burn to oblivion. As I sit and stare at the galaxy of faces, trying to get from one place to another, I understand that it doesn’t matter who we are or what we do; we’re all the same. We are all just stars trying to shine in the darkness.

I get off the tube at Notting Hill and walk towards home, my neck seeming to hold my head a little higher than it has recently. I experience a trampoline of emotions with every step, bouncing from high to low then back again, before the mixed bag of feelings seems to collapse in an exhausted state inside my tired mind. I have an audition with one of my all-time-favorite directors, my agent is not dumping me, and despite all the problems in my personal life, there is a lot to be grateful for. This misunderstanding with Ben will get all cleared up. He’s trying to hurt me, but he can’t vanish forever, and I can’t be accused of a crime that never happened.

I turn the corner onto my street, feeling as if everything might just be okay after all.

The feeling doesn’t last long.

The two police vans that were sitting outside the house this morning are still there, but now they are empty. My front door is wide open. There is a steady stream of police officers going in and out of the building, and blue-and-white police tape forms a cordon between it and the rest of the street. I guess Detective Croft got her warrant.