LITMIR.BIZ

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success between me and the desperate child on a farm in Derbyshire. Nor would it solve the problem of the management consultants circling the magazine, or the failure to move house, or my body starting to do dreadful middle-aged things; chronically dry skin on my shins no moisturiser could address, robust whiskers on my chin I had to pluck away every single day, the first grey pube, then another, and another. I felt so let down by my body, but more by my pathetic attitude to it.

      Altogether, things big and small made me feel as if I was breaking down until eventually I was a broken thing. And let me tell you something, Lily, you really learn who your friends are when you become needy and unglamorous. It turns out none of my old girlfriends wanted to know the ill version of me when I tentatively reached out to them again. On a good day, I told myself it might have been different if they hadn’t invested in the film, or if the film had provided them with the stellar returns we’d all hoped were possible. On a bad day, I knew they only loved me when I was flying high. How could I find fault with them when I felt broadly the same?

      Iain always smiled as he stirred whatever he was cooking for me. When I was ill, he’d cooked me back to life. It wasn’t that nothing tasted good, it was that everything tasted of nothing: no texture or depth. Iain had to keep me alive like the pathetic rejected lambs my mother forced me to bottle-feed as a child. He couldn’t get out of the habit of hand-rearing me; cooking elaborate, time-consuming, fattening meals; boiling vats of bones all day long, as if he could borrow the distilled marrow of dead animals to give the essence of life back to me in a bowl. That’s what you think we do to your generation, isn’t it, Lily? Steal your young lives for our own self-serving ends?

      Iain stirred his stew so vigorously, I noticed while his arms were getting thinner, his stomach trembled above his belt. Mouse-coloured hair, now silvering. But he was still attractive, with well-set grey eyes, a wide symmetrical smile, and a liking for looking at me a little longer than he needed to; he made me feel truly seen. Did you feel that way too when you first met him? What did you really think of him, of us, in those early days?

      ‘I know what’ll cheer you up,’ my Iain said.

      ‘Who says I need cheering up?’

      ‘Some Hungarian New Wave. There’s nothing a little Béla Tarr can’t solve. A spot of Damnation will put it all in perspective.’ He squeezed the last drops of the wine out, having liberated the silver bag from its box, holding it between his torso and underarm like a bagpipe. My partner was what your lot might call ‘an alcoholic’, but you figured that out soon enough, didn’t you? What you’ll never understand is how this wasn’t an issue before you. Perhaps one day your generation will grow to see how life doesn’t cleave along binary lines: hopeless addict/functioning citizen; mentally well/mentally ill; good person/bad person.

      ‘Well, why ever not?’ I looked into my glass.

      ‘What’s Gemma really like then?’

      I turned on my stool, my back to Iain and the breakfast bar that divided the tiny open kitchen from the living space in my flat. Some instinct made me think twice about introducing you to the conversation, to say your name in my home, to let you invade my domestic space, but still, I felt compelled to speak of you.

      ‘Oh, she’s alright. Earnest, in an HR-sanctioned way … But she’s landed me with her jumped-up niece.’

      ‘Another intern is it? How many’s that now?’

      ‘Six? Seven? I can’t keep track anymore. Anyway, she flounced into my cab this morning. The 141 decided to take the day off and I managed to flag a cab and this millennial jumps in and eventually tells me she happens to be the boss’s niece. What she doesn’t tell me is that she’s the one who gave Gemma Lunt the bright idea of buying out Leadership. She definitely would have known all about me, but played dumb and let me rabbit on about my job before the big reveal. Creepy or what?’

      ‘Maybe she didn’t recognise you.’ Iain, already on your side. I glowered at him. ‘Well, anyway, is she any good? Going to make your life easier? Worse? Too soon to say?’

      I breathed, ‘Well, she’s clearly privileged. Imagine me at her age having a maiden aunt who could go out and pick up a magazine for me to write for? She’s walked in off the street, jangling her family’s money, fresh out of uni, with the cheek to demand we change the front cover. And she starts writing a piece on the awards off-the-bat. Just like that.’

      ‘How very dare she, and at a magazine too.’

      ‘Oh shut up, you know what I mean.’

      ‘Not really,’ he laughed.

      ‘When I did work experience, you just assumed you’d be making coffee, doing the photocopying, dodging the boss’s busy hands. Or not, depending on who the boss was.’

      ‘And when you started out, they still called it “work experience,” it lasted two weeks before you were made “senior reporter” and people still used photocopiers … and sent faxes.’

      ‘That was probably before she was even born. Fuck, she didn’t even exist when I was at peak possibility.’

      ‘Hey. You. You’re not even close to that yet. Not even close,’ his mouth slopped around on the last ‘s’ sound, but he meant it. He still believed in me.

      ‘And young people knew their place. Fuck, we’re old.’

      ‘We are that. And aren’t you just a wee bit glad about it?’ He took another gulp from his glass, then watched me swinging around on my bar stool.

      ‘Go on. What’s really pissing you off about this girl? Is she fit?’

      I shook my head. ‘No. She’s not fit … She’s an absolute knockout.’

      ‘OK, so let’s see now: she’s got youth, beauty, privilege and nepotism going for her. No wonder she’s writing the cover story on day one.’

      I said nothing.

      ‘And no wonder you’re jealous.’

      ‘I am not,’ I lied. ‘Come on, let’s not let her ruin our evening. Where’s my Damnation?’

      I pretended to look about the flat and again thought of how you would see it. There were indeed all the beautiful things you’d imagined surrounded me: Provençal pots, Ashanti masks, Balinese ceramics, all evidence of a life lived wide and well. Once. I viewed them each afresh with your eyes and saw far too many things. Items fighting for space on bookshelves and display mezzanines I couldn’t face dusting anymore, the cleaner long sacked. A collection of dull silver trays clustered above the door. There was hardly a square inch of wall that didn’t have something on it. No cupboard door sat flush. So many things seemed like they were trying to burst out; I bruised my hips on the corners of overstuffed drawers poking out; I had to duck for cover every time I opened a cupboard, knowing some plate or culinary gadget of Iain’s might fall and hit me. The whole place looked and felt like a life double-backed on itself, looped over and over. Sun-faded Hirst prints. Dusty Moti tapestries from India. Iain’s old gig photography. There was no space anymore. No space for more stuff, no space for new thoughts, no space to create; no real space for the future at all.

      I seemed to have collected masks from every corner of the world without ever intending to. So many masks. My own face, now a mask. An exhausted skin caught over a mind struggling to accept it was no longer young. I was beginning to realise something I should have looked hard in the face, then warned you and all women like you about: there’s a big secret only revealed when it’s too late: how you feel in your twenties is an illusion. That unique flavour of power and self-knowledge, you’d never know it at the time, but it dissolves. I should have told you from the off to prepare to save yourself from being caught unawares by the passage of time as I had been. When age moves against you, make sure you’ve built your self-worth around what you’re capable of doing, not the beauty of your youth. And if I’d have done that, who knows, maybe then you wouldn’t have changed my life like you did.

      I’d forwarded your CV to my

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