‘Oh come on, Rose. You know why not. This is weird. Are you going to tell this woman what you know about her from your dad?’
‘Not yet.’
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. ‘You’re in her house. And you’re going to lie to her.’
‘No, I’m just not going to tell her.’
‘Won’t she see your surname and ask questions?’
‘I’m not using my real name,’ I said.
Joe put his head in his hands. ‘Oh, god. Rosie, no. This is dangerous.’
‘It’s fine. I needed – to protect myself.’
‘It’s not fine. It’s not fine at all. What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know!’ I shouted. ‘I just – I just wanted to do it, OK? I needed to do something. To change something.’
He looked at me in alarm. ‘To change something?’
I could feel tears coming. ‘Yes.’ The last thing I wanted was for him to voice the very doubts I had myself. I didn’t want someone I trusted thinking this was a bad idea, a sort of madness. ‘I just wanted to see,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘You could be arrested for this.’
‘I’m not going to be arrested.’
He sighed. ‘Well, I don’t want you to be disappointed.’
‘Trust me, Joe. When it comes to my mother I couldn’t be any more disappointed than I already am.’
He put his hand on my shoulder. It felt like a lead weight and I wanted to shake it off, but I knew that would shoot us into the next level of an argument and I couldn’t face it. ‘You might get hurt,’ he said.
‘She’s an old woman, Joe. What’s she going to do – batter me to death with her walking stick?’
‘Rosie, you know that’s not what I mean. I know I can’t ever understand what it must be like for you, to know your mum left. And to not have any answers. But I really don’t think this is a good idea.’
‘Well, I’m doing it. And you can hardly talk about good ideas.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Joe, I have supported you with your burritos and your van, and all of it, for so long.’
‘Rose, they are very different things—’
‘—And I’m asking you to support me. In this one thing. No questions asked. Just support me.’
‘OK,’ he said, but I felt it was only to defuse the situation, to draw my voice back down the vocal scale where it had been creeping up to ‘shrill’.
‘Does your dad know?’ he said.
‘No, and I don’t want him to. It’s just too complicated. This is my thing.’
‘OK,’ said Joe, looking miserable. ‘OK.’
*
That night, I texted Kel: can we have dinner? Got something to tell you.
She replied: ??? I can do Tuesday night?
I waited to see if this would actually be the case, because there would often be last-minute cancellations as she and Dan juggled childcare. We agreed to meet at our favourite place, a ramen restaurant down a tiny passage in Soho, where the windows were always steamed up and the bao were always sublime.
‘So?’ she said, sliding onto her bar stool, and breaking open a pair of chopsticks, even though we hadn’t ordered yet.
‘I’ve got a new job,’ I said.
I saw it, the moment – so brief, but so finite in her eyes – of disappointment. It pricked my heart, and I realized then how much I’d been pinning my hopes on her. But Kelly had been waiting for me to tell her that I was pregnant; that was the hope she’d been pinning on me. I just knew it. She knew my ups and downs around the issue of motherhood, and she wanted them conclusively solved. News of a baby would have brought her more joy than news of a job. My best friend, who loved her work so much, who knew how hard I was fighting to find my path.
‘Oh my god!’ she said. ‘Good on you. What is it?’
‘I’m working as an assistant to that novelist I mentioned to you.’
‘The novelist?’
I sighed inwardly. This often happened. These days, Kel would be very present in our meet-ups, enthusiastic and open – but she would not absorb all the information we exchanged, like in the old days. We used to be each other’s existential encyclopaedias, no chapter of the other not covered in notes and marginalia. But the holes in her attention had been widening since Mol was born. I didn’t usually mind; I knew it was part of our evolution, and I loved Mol, dearly. I knew we couldn’t be fourteen for ever, and I didn’t presume that the flotsam and jetsam of my life were compulsively memorable. But this oversight of hers that day bothered me. This job was really important. It signified the beginning of something new for me – a new me, potentially.
‘The novelist, Constance Holden?’ I said. She still looked blank. ‘The one that Dad says knew my mum. The lover.’
Then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, my god,’ she said. ‘Are you serious?’
I nodded.
‘Fuck. That’s pretty meta.’
‘Is it?’
She looked at me with one eyebrow firmly raised. ‘Yeah. It is. Does she know who you are?’
‘No. I’ve used an alias.’
At that point, Kelly just stared at me. ‘You’ve what?’
‘You heard me. I’ve used another name.’
I wanted Kelly to laugh at my audacity, my unwillingness to leave my past, my potential future, in the hands of someone else. I was taking destiny by the horns, something she was always telling her Instagram followers to do. But she didn’t say a bloody thing. She just carried on staring at me. The waiter came up to us and we both ordered tonkotsu.
‘Are you going to say something?’ I said.
‘I don’t know what to say. How did Joe react?’
‘He wasn’t particularly enthusiastic,’ I said. ‘I want a beer.’ I got the waiter’s attention. ‘Do you want one?’ I said. She patted her bump. ‘Oh, sorry. Course.’
‘He’s probably worried,’ said Kelly.
‘I’m just a bit bummed out that nobody seems to want to support me in this.’
‘It’s just a bit . . . it’s a bit out there, Rose. What’s the name you’re using?’
‘Laura Brown.’
She took this in. ‘Rose, isn’t this a bit of a – fantasy?’
I swallowed the urge to snap at her. ‘That’s exactly why I’m doing it. Because everything’s been too much of a fantasy. I’m trying to get to the truth.’
‘But if you’re trying to get to the truth, why don’t you just tell her who you are? You’ve waited all your life for this.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘I can’t go straight in there and tell her. My dad said she’s quite a strong personality, and from what I’ve seen of her, he’s right. I don’t know what happened between her and my mum, and apparently neither does he. If I tell her who I really am, Connie might kick me out. She might deny it. And then I’ll have lost that one link to my mum. For ever.’
‘If, indeed, she is a link,’ said Kelly gently.