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I think you could have guessed
•••
Ada exited the app, opened her email and started writing to Hank, swiping through the barriers at the tube station without looking up. Northern line, screeching and hot. Victoria line, sleek and empty in the middle of a work day. Overground, open and easy, like home. She got out at her station and crossed the street to sit in the park, pulling the book of theory out of her bag and failing to open it. The sky was grey and she needed the jacket that she’d left on her chair so she went home.
When she let herself in, she heard Sadie and Mel singing in the kitchen. It was The Last Five Years, the wedding song, and Mel was doing a perfect Jamie while Sadie flatly tripped over Cathy’s lines, giggling through her vocal tumbles. Ada eased off her shoes and left them in the hall, coming in to see that Sadie was assembling a vegetarian lasagne. Leeks, pumpkin. Spinach in the ricotta. She was tearing thyme then rolling it into the cheese, her hands reckless and smeared. She turned and smiled. Mel reached over to kiss Ada on the cheek and Ada climbed next to her on the bench and leaned heavily.
‘How was your friend?’ asked Sadie, her fingers covered in green and white.
‘He cancelled,’ said Ada, suddenly too tired to lie. ‘He cancelled because everyone in London is very very busy except for me.’ She started to cry and Mel instinctively pulled her in, rubbed her hair and her face while Sadie watched, holding her hands up as if to say, ‘I’d hold you too but I don’t want to get you dirty’ even though Ada felt that wasn’t true. Mel was saying the things she said when Ada cried and Ada wiped her face and said, ‘Also, I’m going to Florida to meet Gabby’s baby. In two weeks. Hank is paying,’ and Mel was saying that sounded wonderful and Ada hopped down and said, ‘I’m turning off my brain now.’ She lay on her side on their sofa watching Friends and after a few minutes Mel came in with tea and lifted Ada’s legs to sit under them.
Ada cried off and on over the next three hours, through Friends – the Brad Pitt episode was on, he was actually underrated as a comedian, she said to Mel – then more Friends on the +2 hours channel until eventually they hit the same episode. But by then the lasagne was ready and Sadie pulled their little dining table out from the wall, set it beautifully with all matching plates (which took time to find in their flat), poured out a Sancerre and asked how she was.
‘I feel OK now,’ Ada said, and she did apart from the violence of Stuart’s absence on her phone. She imagined sending him something perfect, or something naked, or writing a poem that was bad on purpose to make him laugh. She imagined telling him she’d sent Sadie away but then she looked at Sadie tossing a green salad with radishes she’d pickled the week before and couldn’t imagine actually doing it. ‘Hey, have you heard from your ex?’ she asked and Sadie didn’t look up from the salad but said, ‘Yeah, I think she wants us to be friends but I’m not sure my ego is ready for that yet,’ which surprised Ada because she had been sure that Sadie was fine.
That night when Ada came in from brushing her teeth, she found Sadie moisturising her legs. ‘I didn’t know you liked musicals. You and Mel were singing?’ and Sadie laughed and said, ‘Who doesn’t like The Last Five Years?’ and Ada said, ‘I would have guessed you didn’t like it.’ She stripped off and lay on her side with her back to Sadie and after a moment Sadie said, ‘I think … you think I’m not very fun.’ Ada rolled to face her and said, ‘You’re fun, you’re just not like … goofy. Jason Robert Brown musicals are goofy.’ Sadie smiled and put her hand on Ada’s face. ‘Do you want me to sing “The Schmuel Song”,’ and Ada felt drunk and sad and closed her eyes and that’s how they fell asleep.
Ada woke up in the dark and felt a rushing in her gut. She sat up and tried to ease out of bed but she didn’t move quickly enough and a smudge of dark blood dragged across her sheet. She grabbed a still-damp towel from the floor and waddled to the bathroom with it tucked up between her legs. She got to the toilet and sat down, moaning as her body released and clenched and released again. After a few minutes she sat up, pulled her head out of her hands and staggered to the cabinet. She grabbed a tampon and two ibuprofen, swallowed the tablets quickly and started to clean herself up.
When she returned to their room she pulled on underwear and a pad from her bedside table and then she stood, sweating, holding her stomach and staring at the dark mark on her sheet, so close to Sadie’s sleeping form. A growl emerged from somewhere in her chest and she fell against the bed, waiting for the wave to pass. Sadie opened her eyes and Ada whispered, ‘I’m sorry’ and gestured at the blood. Sadie sat up and crawled over to her, right over the bloody patch and lay her hand on Ada’s forehead.
‘Nothing to apologise for. Have you taken painkillers?’ and Ada nodded, too dragged into herself suddenly to feel embarrassed.
Some blurry time passed as Sadie helped her pull on a slip dress that covered her just enough and walked her to the living room. Sadie lay her on the couch and pulled a blanket over her and then distantly the sound of the washing machine. Her body pulsed and clenched, pulsed again, and she was hot all over and then the painkillers finally offered peace and she slept. When she woke up Sadie was reading on the floor by the couch and Ada had no new messages.
TEN
From: Hank Mathers
To: Ada Highfield
Dear Ada,
Just wanted to confirm that I’ve got you on a flight leaving Gatwick on 23 September. I’ve attached the ticket and all the information to this email. Your sister and I are looking forward to your arrival. My parents are going to bunk in with my brother so their house will be free for you and your parents to use. It’s right on a lake so don’t forget your bug spray! I can’t wait to meet you in person and to have our whole big family together for this joyous arrival. Please email me with any questions and let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay easier. We appreciate you taking time out of your life for us on such short notice.
All the best,
Your new big brother Hank
ELEVEN
Ada finished reading the email aloud and waited for Sadie’s response. She had spent the day on the couch with a hot water bottle under her back and Sadie had been soft with her. Plain buttered toast and a run to the shop for marshmallows and bocconcini balls and patiently looking up from her book whenever Ada saw something funny on Twitter or needed her water bottle refilled or groaned and shifted positions or read emails from her sister’s partner aloud. Sadie had rolled up her yoga mat against the wall and was using it for cushioning and she smiled at Ada now and raised her hands palms up in a gesture of surrender.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say but he sounds … nice. I mean like I’m not personally a fan of the “I’m your brother because I married your sister” thing but he’s American. They’re weird like that.’ Ada was interested because she also thought Americans were weird like that but she didn’t know how to explain what ‘that’ was so she said, ‘Weird like how?’
‘Like … the way they always act like they’re being friendly, and maybe they are, but it’s friendly in a … learned way? He “appreciates you taking time” OK doesn’t that sound like something he read on LinkedIn? But he also probably does appreciate it, he just doesn’t know how to say it in an original way. It’s like how The West Wing made everyone in America think they had to be inspirational to their colleagues or whatever, or to a reality show judge, and they’re all using that kind of stirring language, and like some of them got really, really good at it, Obama mainly, so we hear that cadence of voice and we expect to feel inspired. And you read this email from this guy and you expect to feel welcomed because he’s using like … welcoming language. But you have no idea how he actually feels … but I’m sure he is excited to meet you, god I don’t want to make it sound like he hates you or anything. Sorry, this is my shit. Playwright brain.’
Ada loved Sadie just then, she loved her. ‘You talk shit about people in the most academic way,’ she said and under those words were, ‘I love you I love you,’ and Sadie smiled and said, ‘I wouldn’t say I’m talking shit, I’m sure Hank is great,’ and under those words were, ‘I know I know,’ and Ada tried a different way in.
‘I just think he sees me as her fuck-up little sister who ran away to be famous and hasn’t made it. Last time we Skyped Gabby asked if I had any auditions coming up and I said I’m not just an auditioning actor any more, I’m mainly doing cabaret now, and she was like, “Oh, so how do you get those roles?” And I had to explain that like … I make the art, now, I don’t just wait for someone to choose me for their art and even as the words came out I was like … wow I sound fucking cooked.’ Sadie put her head to the side and looked like she might laugh but she didn’t and Ada said, ‘I do have some self-awareness even though you think I don’t. I know how I sound when I talk about this stuff but it’s what I do so … so I have to talk about it.’
And then Sadie launched a direct attack by saying, ‘Well, what are you working on right now?’ and Ada knew it was deliberate and said, ‘You shouldn’t be so rude to me when I have period pain, whatever happened to women supporting women,’ and they both laughed. Sadie said, ‘OK, I respect the confidence,’ and Ada said, ‘Most people don’t. Like all the memes tell you to have the confidence of a mediocre white man and then I do and everyone hates it.’ Sadie got up to make tea and get Ada some more painkillers, and as the water started to bubble in the next room Ada held her swollen tummy and thought of Stuart.
They had messaged each other for thirteen days and now he had cut her off for three and those numbers shouldn’t have hurt the way they did. She longed for him in a way she found grotesque and she blamed herself and she blamed her generation. In decades past he would have loved her from the audience and then never been able to find her again. Maybe they would one day have attended the same party and his throat would seize up when he saw her – that’s her, that’s the girl from Edinburgh – and he would spend all night figuring out how to talk to her. She would glow and he would shield himself, circling her, finding a safe way to get close. And she could dazzle him at this party, and when he confessed he’d seen her perform, she’d be self-deprecating but in a way that showed she loved herself enough to drag out his inadequacy. Maybe he’d get her number that night or maybe he’d keep going to parties, hoping she’d be there, lusting alone while she thrived invisibly.
But instead, he could message her, just like that, and when she felt normal, shining for no one, alone at home picking at the dead skin on her heel, he could send a perfect little joke and he had her interest. The imbalance of it all. What right did he have to admire her and then withdraw? People thought Ada was flighty and unreliable but she said what she meant, and she could have lied to Stuart but wouldn’t that have been worse? Why didn’t he see that she could have told him something so much worse?
