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“You’re always having the worst week of your life. You can’tjust turn on the waterworks to avoid confrontation, Reeva. Say what you mean for once.”
“Fine,” cried Reeva. “Fine! I think you should learn to keep your legs closed. You think you’ve fallen for Lee, but you obviously haven’t. You’ve hated him for years. You’re just... I don’t know, bored. This is what you do. You sleep with people like it’s all a game, and you use everyone. You’re selfish, and you’re a bad friend!”
Lakshmi stared at Reeva, speechless. As her eyes bore into her, Reeva felt her stomach shift uncomfortably. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. She had to get out of there. Before Lakshmi replied. She ran into the hallway, shame rising inside her, and found FP sniffing her bags. Reeva felt a pang of guilt for leaving her yet again, but then she remembered the image of FP sleeping in bed with Lakshmi and Lee like a big happy family. Her lonely heart hardened, and she walked out of her flat with her suitcase and shame in hand, letting the door slam behind her.
—
Reeva sat onthe edge of the bed in the middle of her hotel room, taking in the cheap wooden furniture and officelike gray carpet. The sheets looked clean, and the bed was a decent size, but the decor was depressing. She had no idea why she hadn’t just found a nicer hotel. There were plenty nearby. But when she’d walked out of her flat, she hadn’t felt worthy of a room at the Dorchester. Or even the Marriott. She’d found the nearest Travelodge and now here she was, surrounded by unattractive furniture in what was essentially a large, dark cubicle. The only window was thin, narrow, and purposely frosted over so no one could seeinto the room—which also meant no one could see out of the room. The whole thing perfectly matched Reeva’s mood.
In less than twenty-four hours, she’d managed to have huge arguments with both her sisters and her best friend. Even her cat was pissed off at her. Reeva didn’t understand how this had happened. All she’d tried to do was speak her truth for the first time in her life. It wasn’t her fault she seemed to be the only one who thought her dad killing her cat was a big deal. And Lakshmi was the one who’d betrayed her by lying to her for an entire year. So how had Reeva managed to come across as the one in the wrong?
She was aware that she hadn’t exactly said the nicest things to Lakshmi. Accusing her of doing well at work just because of her relationship with Lee was unacceptable. As was telling her to keep her legs closed. It was sexist. And mean. But what Lakshmi had done wasn’t great either. Her sexual appetite always led her into messy situations that Reeva inevitably had to help her fix, and sleeping with her boss was the epitome of a messy situation. Reeva knew it wouldn’t be long before the whole thing spiraled out of control and affected her work life too.
Besides, Lakshmi had called her a sanctimonious bitch. Just after Reeva had uncovered a major traumatic revelation from her past, which she hadn’t even been able totellher about because she’d been too busy sleeping with their boss. Not to mention the fact that she now had three more bald patches on her head that Lakshmi didn’t even know about. She collapsed onto the bed. It was all so painful. She was just trying to do the right thing and stand up for herself like everyone had always told her to. But it seemed to be making everything so much worse.
Reeva pulled out her phone and mindlessly scrolled downWhatsApp. She had no new messages, but she kept going down the list of conversations. There wasn’t really any point in it; it just made her feel marginally less lonely. After a while she moved on to Instagram. There was a photo of Jaya lying on a beach looking unbearably sexy. One she’d obviously taken months earlier but was only posting now. Reeva’s finger hovered over the like button—it could be her attempt to put out an olive branch?—then remembered Jaya saying she didn’t like who Reeva had become right now. She kept scrolling. She wished Nick had social media accounts she could stalk so that she could feel closer to him, but he was firmly against them. Maybe she could google him instead; there might be more news articles about his clients or presence at awards shows she knew nothing about. Reeva typed his name into the search bar and clicked on the “News” icon to see if anything came up. Then she cried out.
Hot Lips Pictured Leaving Agent’s Flat at 4 a.m. in a Trench Coat with Nothing Underneath!read the headline. It had already been reproduced by several international websites with variations of the same words. Reeva clicked on the article, sitting up straight, her heart thumping. There was a photograph of the singer looking impossibly beautiful in a light tan coat. The headline was right; there was no way she was wearing a bra underneath it, but—Reeva zoomed in and scrutinized the photo—shecouldbe wearing knickers. Unless the editors had other, more explicit pictures they couldn’t publish.
Reeva tried to ignore the twisted-up knot in her stomach and began reading. The general gist of the article was that Hot Lips had left Nick’s luxurious Airbnb in the early hours of dawn in her sexy getup. The journalist had somehow managed to squeeze eight hundred words out of this by including information aboutforty-five-year-old Nick Trippier’s career, twenty-seven-year-old Hot Lips’s love life, and recent photographs of them at the BRITs. Said photographs were reproduced in the article in all their glory—Nick smiling and laughing, Hot Lips gazing up at him seductively.
Reeva felt sick. She exited the article and sat on the bed shaking. It was happening again. She was being cheated on. A tiny voice in her head suggested things might not be what they seemed. There could be a rational explanation for this. It wasn’t like the photographer had caught them naked in bed together. But Reeva knew this hopeful voice was her old naivete resurfacing. The truth was obvious, and if she believed anything else, she’d be lying to herself. Nick had told her that he’d dated a singer, and now here he was, getting cozy with her. Again. And why not? Hot Lips was a hundred times more attractive than Reeva,andshe had all her hair.
Reeva felt tears collect in her eyes. She’d thought that Nick could be the one, that after years of bad dates, she’d finally found someone she could settle down with who could make her as happy as Rakesh had. She’d been too scared to admit that to anyone, sometimes even to herself, but it was true. And now he was leaving her. For a singer called Hot Lips. Reeva sobbed out loud. It was too painful. Everything in her life was falling apart, and now she was losing the last good thing left—her orange.
Her phone rang, interrupting her sobs. It was Nick. She froze. Part of her was desperate to hear from him, to have him reassure her that it was just a misunderstanding. That he had photos of Hot Lips and loads of other guests inside his flat from that very night; they hadn’t been alone together. But the other part of her—the intuitive part—knew that if she believed this, she’d be lying to herself. Because Reeva had already worked out that thephotos had been takenbeforeshe’d spoken to Nick after the funeral. Not only had he failed to mention his late-night guest, but it also meant that he’d been with her while his girlfriend was at her father’s funeral.
Even if, in some miraculous turn of events, he hadn’t had sex with Hot Lips, Reeva still couldn’t handle it. She’d been broken too badly in the past. She needed a nice, stable UCB—not an lcb who hung out with half-naked singers. She couldn’t cope with the anxiety, the jealousy, and the insecurity that came with dating Nick. Maybe she was better off with someone less interesting than him; someone who would help her feel safer.
Reeva started sobbing again. She was so desperate to feel safe. She always had been. But, as always, she was left with safety’s antithesis: fear. A cold, gray feeling that pinned her entire body immobile and then settled hard and heavy in her abdomen. She’d felt it as a child waiting for her mum who’d failed to show up to her flute recital, her birthdays, and parents’ evenings. She’d felt it as an adult when Rakesh had left her. She’d relived it in her past with the cat nightmares. And she felt it again now. There was absolutely nobody she could rely on. Everything was out of control. Her hair was even falling out faster than ever. For all she knew, there were more new bald patches at the back of her head. Reeva ran wildly to the mirror. She parted her hair and studied her baldness in the rectangular mirror. In the harsh yellow light of the room, she looked even worse. Like a Cabbage Patch doll. The grim reality of her ugly baldness made her tears dry up. It was too shocking to cry over it. She grabbed her ruler. She’d last measured her patch that very morning, but she had a feeling it had already gotten worse. With trembling fingers, she placed the ruler diagonally across the circle of hairless scalp: 10.8 centimeters. It had already grown by almost half a centimeter.
A cool numbness spread through her. She’d expected to feel hysterical, but instead she felt eerily calm. Because suddenly she knew what to do.
Reeva reached over to the phone and dialed zero for reception, looking resolutely at her watery brown eyes in the mirror. It was time for her to do a Britney.
CHAPTER 18
Day 10
Reeva woke, bleary-eyed.She yawned and reached for her phone to check the time: 10:30 a.m. She’d slept for more than twelve hours! And for the first time in the last ten days, she hadn’t had a single nightmare. Her dreams had been completely cat-free. Reeva sank back into the bed and stretched out happily. Who could have predicted that she’d have one of the best night’s sleep of her life in a dated Travelodge? It had helped her relax more than any five-star resort she’d ever visited. She never needed to go abroad again; she could just vacation in this sad little hotel room where no one knew where she was, no one could bother her, and if she turned her phone off, no one would ever find out.
Her phone. Reeva could have sworn she’d seen a notification with Nick’s name on it. She grabbed it and saw six missed callsandthree messages from Nick Hinge. She’d never gotten around to changing his name after meeting him on the dating app, and maybe now she never would.
Hey Reeva, please call me when you get this. I don’t know if you’ve seen the headlines about me, but I need to explain either way. I hope you’re okay x.
I’m guessing you’re asleep now but please call when you wake up. Don’t worry about the time difference; I’ll be up xx.
I’m scared you’re avoiding me on purpose. Let me explain? Please? Nick xxx.
Reeva exhaled deeply. Even just a day before, she would have been thrilled to see six missed calls from Nick and three texts begging to speak with a total of six kisses. But today she couldn’t deal with it. It was all too much. She was so tired of the anxiety and stress. She wanted to pretend Nick didn’t exist and go back to being the Reeva Mehta of three months ago—a Reeva who was peacefully single, happy in her career, busy with her friends, not speaking to her sisters, unaware she had a father, and having a full head of hair. Reeva sat up straight. The alopecia. It had started almost three months ago. Just after she’d started dating Nick.
How had she never realized this before? It couldn’t be a coincidence. The stress of dating must have triggered her alopecia. And it made sense. She’d been overthinking things with Nick ever since she’d swiped right on him. Unlike all the other guys she’d met online, he’d seemed genuinely interesting. Different. Confident, not arrogant. His messages to her were heartfelt rather than witty and clever. Then he’d taken her to a ridiculously cool private members’ bar she’d never heard of for their first date. Reeva had been impressed. After endless dates with men she was—quite frankly—so much better than, she’d metsomeone on her level. It hadn’t taken her long to fall for him. But the more that happened, the more she’d abandoned her true self. Instead she’d tried to be the cool, smart, funny girl she thought he’d like, holding back her crazy and showing him just how chilled she was. When all the time, she’d been feeling more and more anxious. This business with Hot Lips had been the final trigger; it had taken Reeva straight back to the worst moment of her life with Rakesh and Jaya.
Reeva wondered if her alopecia was a sign from her body. Her intuition talking to her. Something within her knowing that Nick wasn’t right for her. It had known from the start that he’d do a Rakesh and shake Reeva’s fragile world apart. But she didn’t have to stay here. They didn’t have nine years of history like she’d had with Rakesh. This had been only three months and a week. She could take Satya Auntie’s advice and choose the easy path instead of the hard path. She didn’thaveto continue dating Nick and battle the feeling of not being good enough. She could go back to the safety of single life instead—and maybe one day she’d find someone who wanted to be a UCB from the offset and didn’t trigger her insecurity. Even if Nick hadn’t cheated on her with Hot Lips and there was some miraculous proof, Reeva knew she’d be plagued by doubts from now on. Unless she simply left the relationship and went back to the calm, quiet life she’d had before Nick. She wouldn’t have to stress about the BRIT awards ever again—she wouldn’t even know they’d happened—nor would she ever have to compare herself to a twenty-seven-year-old singer. She’d just go back to a time when she didn’t speak to her sisters butdidspeak to her best friend. A time where she had all her hair.
Her hair. Hadn’t she... No... Reeva turned, fast, to face her reflection in the mirror.
She screamed.
