I Know Who You Are(68)

I never had much of a family, but I did used to have friends. There are people I could call, names in my phone that used to mean something. But if I did call, or text, they wouldn’t come for me, they would come for her. The me you become when you spend your life being someone you’re not. They would come to see her, then gossip afterwards about her with everyone they knew, while pretending to be my friend. Sadly, that’s my experience, not my paranoia speaking loud and clear inside my head. Sometimes self-preservation means staying away from the people who pretend to care about you.

I suppose family is who most people turn to when the world closes in, but I don’t have any of them left either. I went back to Ireland when I was eighteen, having never once been in contact with my father or brother since the day I ran away. I’m no longer sure what I expected or hoped to find there; I think I just wanted to visit what I had left behind. I found out that my real father had died a few years earlier; he was buried in the same plot as my mother, at the church we used to attend every Sunday. I visited their grave, unsure how to feel about it as I stared down at the overgrown plot and simple headstone. A neighbor confirmed that my brother still owned the house that we used to live in, but nobody had seen him for a while. I wrote him a letter and slid it under the front door before I left. Either he never read it or I wrote the wrong words. He never got in touch and it made me realize that sharing the same blood does not necessarily make you family.

After Maggie died, I was taken into care, although calling it that always seemed a little ironic to me, because most of them didn’t. I was sent to live with lots of foster families, but never really felt that I belonged with any of them. I think the feeling was mutual. I wasn’t a bad child, I didn’t get into trouble, and I was good at school. I was just quiet, at least on the outside; the characters I wanted to be were so noisy inside my head that, for me, it was practically deafening at all times. People don’t always trust quiet; they didn’t then and they certainly don’t now. The world we live in today is too loud, so that most people think they have to shout all the time just to fit in. I’ve never been great at fitting in, and when I look at the world around me, I’m not sure I even want to.

I think about all the years I spent believing John was dead, when he wasn’t. What if I’m wrong about Maggie too?

I’m not.

I watched her die.

But I also saw John die, or so I thought. I don’t know what to think anymore.

I wish I could erase what happened that day; the memory of it has never stopped haunting me, and I’ve felt alone in the world ever since.

Every time I film a movie or a TV show, I am surrounded by people, all of them fussing over me, and telling me what they think I want to hear. But, when filming stops, they go home to their families and I am left abandoned. That will never change now, it will always be this way. I’ll never marry again; how could I even meet someone else? I’d never know whether he was with me for me, or for her. Sometimes I hate her, the me that I have become, but without her, I am nothing. Without her, I am nobody.

Life is a game that few of us really know how to play, filled with more snakes than ladders. I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve been playing it all wrong. Perhaps, when all is said and done, and the world decides to turn against you, people are more important than parts. Somebody hated me enough to do this to me, and whoever it is is still out there. It isn’t over until I slot the pieces of the puzzle together, and I won’t be safe until I do.

I wash the remaining fear and dirt away, then step out of the shower. I wrap a thick, soft white towel around my body, and another around my wet hair, then creep out onto the landing, leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs.

“Jack?” I call.

He doesn’t answer. The house is completely silent except for the sound of the oversized metal clock ticking in the hallway. I walk down the stairs, enjoying the feeling of the carpet beneath my toes, telling myself that everything is going to be okay, because if I can make myself believe that it will be, then maybe it might.

“Jack?”

I wander through the rooms, ending at the kitchen at the back of the house, cold tiles beneath my feet now, sending a shiver all the way through me. It’s strange, walking around a house that has the exact layout as your own. I double back to the lounge and freeze when I see the coffee table. Panic paralyzes me as I stare at the items on it, as though they were dangerous. It feels as if they are.

“Jack!”

Nobody answers.

It’s happening again.

His phone and keys are here on the table, but Jack is gone.





Fifty-six


Maggie arrives early for her appointment in Harley Street.

Thanks to Aimee, she has more work than time in which to do it today, and she is not in the mood for a so-called doctor to feed her any more excuses or lies about why they need to delay her surgery. It’s her body, she should be allowed to do whatever she wants to it. She isn’t asking others to pay for her self-improvements, so why should she need their permission?

Maggie thinks the whole country has tied itself in knots with red tape, so consumed with checks and bloody balances that nothing gets done anymore. She tuts and shakes her head and only realizes that she has been muttering beneath her breath when she notices a woman in the waiting room staring at her. Maggie lifts her chin and stares back, until the woman’s eyes retreat and look down at the magazine she is pretending to read. The next person to look at Maggie the wrong way today is going to regret it.