no sound. She crawled wearily back to bed, turned the light off, praying for a deadening sleep.
But the thoughts crowding into her brain danced there all night. She should have realized that those scenes would go through her head again, that she would dream about it all again. Back when she was starting her life as a grown-up, they all were. Look how it had turned out. She’d told Zoe, she never thought about it, she’d practically forgotten everything.
But that was a lie. Although she didn’t want it to be, it was imprinted on her brain, for always. How could it not be? And the dreams always ended the same way, with Kate realizing what, deep-down, she carried around with her every single day in New York. That she shouldn’t be here. She didn’t deserve to be here. That was why she didn’t let herself remember.
October 1999
‘Hey. New girl. I’m going to Anita’s for lunch. Do you want to come?’
Kate blinked up at the vision before her, and pushed her tortoiseshell glasses slightly further up her nose.
‘Er, yes, please,’ she said, shocked. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m going now,’ the vision said. ‘I’m bloody bored, and Catherine and Sue are going to be gone for fucking ages on that conference meeting thing. Let’s get out of here.’
Nearly three weeks into her exciting new job at Woman’s World, and Kate had yet to have lunch with anyone; she was too terrified. She sat on a bench by Lincoln’s Inn each day at lunchtime, eating her sandwich and hiding behind a book if she saw anyone from the magazine. The offices were near Holborn, a big glass building housing all the magazines in the stable of Broadgate UK, and every morning the revolving doors sucked in these tall, gorgeous, glamorous stick-girls who strode past Kate, hair flowing in the breeze, expressionless and cool, and every evening it spewed them out again, as she flattened herself against the wall, trying not to get in their way. She spoke to her boss Sue, to Gary, the postroom boy, with whom she was insanely jolly and chatty, the way new people always are with the photocopying man, the postroom boy, the security guards. They’re men, they’re not bitchy, they don’t ignore new people as a point of principle.
To everyone else, however, she felt miserably that she might as well be invisible. If by chance one of the tall goddesses who hustled and bustled around Catherine Baldwin, the fearsome editor, should be forced to address her with some features-related query which only she could answer, Kate heard herself replying to their careless questions in a voice rusty with lack of use, and a tone hopelessly fulsome and inane.
‘Hi!’ she’d squeak. ‘Hi, there! No, Sue’s not here! She’s still out at lunch! Sorry, sorry,’ she would say, practically bowing, as Georgina or Jo or Sophie looked bored and not a little contemptuously down at her.
Because it was now October, the whole new job thing had a curious resemblance to going back to school, or university. The days still dry and relatively warm, the leaves dusty and crunchy on the trees, the streets of town suddenly busy again after the dog days of August and September. They were still playing ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’ and ‘Livin La Vida Loca’ on the radio, but they sounded flimsy, summery, silly, out of kilter. The Argos Christmas adverts had started appearing on TV, even. As Kate and her new flatmate Sean walked to Rotherhithe station in the mornings, the still rising sun would hit them in the eyes, and in the evenings though they tried to deny it, it was too cold to sit outside at the pub.
Kate and Sean had been friends at university, but they were more friends-in-a-group than friends who went out for drinks on their own together. Tall, laconic, with a Texan drawl, Sean was Steve’s best friend. Steve was a good friend of Kate’s too. In the Easter term of their first year at university, Kate had introduced Steve to her best friend Zoe, and Steve and Zoe had been going out ever since. So Kate and Sean had spent a lot of time together in the past few years.
Still, though, Kate was still fairly surprised to find herself sharing a flat with Sean, but then lots about her life now surprised her – the fact that she was south of the river, for starters, was a shocker, as was the fact that she didn’t like alcopops any more – she preferred a glass of Chardonnay. She’d been to TopShop and bought a black and grey checked miniskirt, which she wore with a black polo-neck and black tights, mistakenly in the warm, dry weather of September, but it made her feel super-mature. She did her own shopping at the supermarket, picking out Things to Cook from her new Jamie Oliver cookbook. She bought the Evening Standard on her way home each night and felt super-grown-up, reading it with a concentrated expression on her face on the Tube.
Three weeks into her new living arrangement and all was going swimmingly – too swimmingly, in fact, because Kate had started to dread saying goodbye to Sean each morning. He sometimes perplexed her with his constantly flirty ways and optimistic, can-do attitude, as well as intimidated her since he was, without doubt, usually the best-looking man in the room. Now, he was the friendliest face Kate saw most days and she would cling to him at the ticket barriers.
‘I don’t want to go to work today,’ she’d say, clutching his arm.
‘Hey now. Don’t be silly,’ Sean would say, gently prising her off him with a giant, paw-like hand. ‘It’s only been ten days. You’ll soon make friends, Katy. You’re shy, that’s all.’
‘They’re horrible,’ Kate would mutter, biting her lip. ‘Don’t like it. Don’t want to go to work and be grown-up.’
It was true, in its way. Part of her wished this wasn’t happening, that she was back at home with her father, cheerfully cooking stew, throwing insults at each other, listening to music. Warm, exotic – but a little bit safe, boring. Wouldn’t it be easier if she just moved back in with her dad again? And never left the house, faced the real world, with all its terrifying complications that she wasn’t at all good at? Yesterday, she had spilled coffee over one of the girls at work – George. George had given her what Kate could only identify now as a death stare and said, ‘That fucking top was new,’ even though it was only a tear-drop-sized spot of coffee. Kate was thinking of having plastic surgery to change her appearance.
‘Look,’ Sean would say, punching her playfully on the arm. ‘You’re Kate Miller, aren’t you? All you ever wanted to do since I’ve known you was work in magazines. Didn’t you?’
‘I’m not right for them. I don’t fit in.’
‘You got a First in English from Oxford, Kate,’ Sean would say. ‘You’re right for anyone. You gotta see that. You’re young, you’re cool! Man. They’re lucky to have you, OK?’
Kate would rather die than use her university education to impress people, and she refrained from pointing out that at college she’d done nothing but work, while everyone else was off having fun, drinking, putting on plays, drinking, sleeping with each other, going to balls, going to silly parties, drinking and sleeping with each other. She wasn’t cool, she was the opposite of cool, she was … lukewarm. She was destined for the shadows, watching from the sidelines, not centre stage. Ugh. But Sean, whose nature was as sunny as his hair colour, couldn’t see that about her, and it annoyed her.
‘You’ll find some friends,’ he said, one Thursday, nearly three weeks after she’d started there. He patted her on the shoulder, moving her away from the ticket barriers. ‘You’ll love it there soon. This is your time! You’re in the big wide world now, and you’re gonna find your niche. I promise.’
