The Ward (30 page)

‘Uh, um. Maybe just… maybe… Can you bring some water please?’

‘Anything to drink, Mr Rosen?’ she asks, flashing me a look of concern as she does so.

‘Oh, no thanks, miss. I won’t retard you.’

‘Excuse me?’ she says.

He smiles blandly at her, and with a shrug she heads up the stairs to the fridge. ‘I can tell it’s not an optimal juncture to meet, Mr Farrell. You’re busy. I just wanted to
introduce myself. I am here to help you understand your contract and your obligations to the Mutual Medical Shortfall Insurance Donor Swap Programme.’ He pauses and smiles in a way
that’s probably intended to be reassuring. Despite my panic, it is. ‘We understand that the rehabilitation period is a difficult one and this is why we offer a lengthy interest-free
settlement period. Your contract specifies… Let me recall…’ He pages through the folder. ‘Here. You have until Thursday, your calendar, to deliver. Ample time. I am here
to serve and aid you, Mr Farrell. I will help you understand anything you need to know.’

Rosen stands up, removes his hat and smoothes his hair with his claw before pushing the green folder across to me. ‘All my contact details are in the pack, as is a copy of your signed
contract. All the terms are listed in detail there. Please peruse them and don’t waver to contact me. Once you are ready to arrange payment, I personally will facilitate your deliverance.
Have a nice day, and please, recover well.’

He turns to leave as Lizzie arrives with the water.

‘Remember, Mr Farrell,’ he says, ‘Mutual Medical Shortfall Insurance is everywhere you are.’

It’s close to seven when I finally make it home. The hallway and lounge are shadowed and gloomy. I turn on the lights.

‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Lisa?’

Nothing.

‘Lisa? You here?’

She’s probably just taking a shower, but an uneasy feeling gnaws at me. Not panic, exactly, but the sense that something is wrong. It’s too quiet.

‘Lisa?’ I call as I walk towards the bedroom. She might be sleeping. That’s it. Why not? I turn on the passage sconce and peer into the bedroom. The bed’s neatly
made.

I hear a muffled sob.

‘Lisa?’ I whisper. I turn into the room.

Katya’s crumpled in the doorway of the walk-in closet. She’s sitting with her legs folded under her, her back turned to me. All I see is her black hair cascading down over her back,
the pale points of her elbows, the soles of her feet.

‘Katya?’

She’s crying, her head bowed into her hands in front of her, a discreet shuddering you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t looking closely.

‘Kay? Is that—’

‘Uh-mm.’ A big snort, and she turns to face me. And, although I’m shunted back into the present, and while I know this is Lisa sitting in front of me, she looks so much like
Katya. The way she’s crying. The way Katya would collapse into a little ball when it got too much, the way she’d shed everything she’d learned and become a little girl again. I
will Lisa to stay sitting just like that in one of Katya’s wigs, crying, making Katya’s sounds, tears smearing Katya’s eyeliner over Katya’s face. I kneel down next to her
and hold her, smelling her familiar perfume, feeling her warm breath against my chest, the snot smearing from Katya’s nose onto my shirt.

‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

‘I can’t do it, Farrell.’

‘Call me Josh.’ I close my eyes, and I’ve time travelled. I never want to come back.

She raises her arms and wraps them tight around me. ‘I can’t do it,’ she repeats, hiding her face deeper in my shirt.

‘Can’t do what?’

‘I can never be her.’ She pulls away from me now.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She was beautiful.’ I say nothing. ‘I… I can’t even look at myself. It’s… it’s like painting a… bloody pig with lipstick. It’s
filthy. It’s disgusting. It’s not even making a monster. It’s just a stupid joke.’

‘What is?’ I know what she’s talking about, but what am I supposed to say? ‘What do you mean?’

She looks up at me. ‘Oh, come on, Farrell! Josh. Whatever. Nobody’s ever going to believe I’m a model. I’m bloody ugly.’ She plants her face back into my shirt.

Christ, this is all I need now. Lisa’s got to go with the fucking plan. There’s no way she can opt out now. If she loses focus, I’m dead.

I’ve done this countless times before in the studio, preening the egos of unconfident girls. If only Lisa knew that even the swimsuit models have doubts. The biggest doubts. And the
deepest habits to block them out.

‘You want to know what I see?’ I say, using the speech I’ve used a thousand times before. ‘I see a beautiful, sad woman. A woman who needs to look at herself and see what
the world sees.’ I gently detach her arms and try to swivel her round to face the mirror set into the far side of the closet behind her. Lisa’s found the light switch that illuminates
it. Katya used to spend hours there, polishing away every blemish, smoothing herself to perfection. ‘Take a look, Lisa. Really look.’

She resists, I try to push harder, and she fights like a cat being forced into water. I let her go and she jumps up out of my grip with a feral squeal. She stands over me, her long legs planted
into the floor, her back resolutely towards the mirror. She’s wearing a green T-shirt of mine and a pair of Katya’s baggy pink satin pyjama shorts. It’s a fucking awful
ensemble.

‘That’s all I’ve been doing since I got here. I’ve been standing here, looking at myself in the mirror’ – she pulls a bundle of silk from a shelf and throws
it at me – ‘tearing your beautiful girlfriend’s beautiful clothes.’

‘Hang on—’

‘Don’t you get it, Farrell? I’m a
Fat
.
Ugly
.
Pig
. What the…
fuck
… are you doing with me?’

I’ve never seen Lisa this worked up, but anger really suits her. It makes her taller, tauter, sexier somehow. I was right all along. There’s something to work with here.

I stand up. ‘It’s your turn to listen to me, Lisa.’ I grab her shoulders, spin her to face the mirror, then clamp her around the chest with my arm. She’s writhing and
thrashing her head around as if I’m trying to force poison down her throat.

‘What do you see?’ I demand. ‘
What do you see?
’

She realises that I’m not going to release her and stops struggling. In the mirror, I see her open her eyes. She looks at us for a moment, expressionless. Then she closes her eyes again
and goes limp and cold. I let her go. Without a word, she turns and leaves the closet. She pulls some tracksuit pants and a sweater out of my chest of drawers, runs into the bathroom and slams the
door behind her. I hear the shower spurting.

Fuck. She’s insane; she’s never going to believe the truth.

But the fact remains, I
can’t
have her drifting around in baggies. She’s
got
to be Katya, until Katya leaves for South America. If she doesn’t get her shit
together, I’m finished. We’re supposed to be having dinner with Glenn in two days. If she acts like this, it’s over.

I stand there for a moment and look at myself in the mirror. I look okay, better than most, I’d say. I’m toned, I keep my skin healthy. I trim my nails and cut my hair. I know my
failings too. But I have a realistic picture of myself.

And no matter how messed up the girls at work are, whatever the reasons, they
always come back to work
. Lisa has
got
to come back to work.

I follow her into the bathroom. She can’t see me through the cubicle glass but I let her know I’m there. ‘Lisa,’ I say.

Nothing.

‘Lisa.’

‘Farrell? Please get out.’ Her voice is tense.

‘No.’ A moment more, then the water goes off. Her dark-blonde hair trails down heat-pink skin. She plucks the towel from the top of the shower door and wraps herself in it. Finally
she steps out of the shower. Her face is rigid as she grabs another towel from the rail, turns her back and winds her hair into it.

‘Will you let me get dressed?’ she asks in a horrible, toneless voice.

I do the only thing I can. I pull her towards me and kiss her on the mouth. I expect her to flinch away, but I’m surprised at how her body relaxes. Her tongue tentatively slips inside my
mouth. Then she stops herself, goes rigid, and I draw her closer and move my hands over her back and sides. A brief hesitation, but soon her hands follow as if she’s learning from me.

I open my eyes for a second and see Lisa gazing into the mirror over my shoulder with a look of surprise in her eyes. She doesn’t look away.

The towel drops to the floor and she wraps one of her legs around my back and sinks back against the shower stall.

That’s the spirit, Lisa.

An endless line of rush-hour traffic stretches in front of us, and we’re forced to crawl along bumper to bumper. I relax my grip on the present on my lap. My sweaty palms
have left blotch marks on the wrapping paper, and it’s beginning to look tatty and crumpled.

I just want this evening to be over. The dread is making me feel physically sick, and Farrell’s not doing much better. He’s clutching the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles
shine white, and dark circles bruise the skin around his eyes. Neither of us got much sleep last night. After we’d made love, we both lay staring at the ceiling, lost in our own thoughts, and
instead of spooning his body against mine like he did the night before, he turned away from me and curled into himself.

‘Now remember,’ he says, as a minibus taxi that’s been haring along the hard shoulder cuts in front of us, ‘the sister, Marina, is the smartest of the lot of them and
she’s always been jealous of you – of Katya – so just watch yourself around her. I’ll try to keep the conversation neutral. Katya wasn’t one for small talk
anyway.’

‘What does she look like? Marina, I mean.’

‘God. She’s a dog. Nothing like Kay. Kay got all the looks. And Clive, her husband, is a complete prick.’

‘What does Marina do for a living?’

Farrell shrugs. ‘They’re both in investment banking or some shit. And June’s mother will probably also be there. They all call her Gran-Gran. You don’t have to worry
about her. She’s senile. They wheel her out of hospital every now and then on special occasions.’

For the thousandth time I wish we could have come up with an excuse. But Farrell’s adamant that it would look weird if we didn’t show up.

My stomach cramps. ‘God, Farrell. I don’t think I can do this.’

He slaps the steering wheel. ‘How many more times? Call me Josh.’

‘Sorry.’

He glances at me, smiles apologetically, leans over and squeezes my knee. ‘No,
I’m
sorry, Lisa.’ I smile back at him. I’m always expecting him to slip up and call
me Katya. But apart from that one time when he caught me crying he hasn’t, and little by little I’ve started to convince myself that it’s me he sees when he’s touching me
late at night, and not her. He’s been patient with me. Caring and gentle. Nothing like the controlling man Noli described when she came to the apartment. She was probably just jealous.
Probably wants Farrell for herself.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Farrell says. ‘I told Glenn you’re still feeling weak. Not yourself. We’ll show our faces and get out of there asap. And just think, after
this is over, we can…’

‘We can what?’

‘We’ll be fine. It’s almost over.’

He hasn’t mentioned his plan of shipping me – Katya – off to a shoot in South America again. I can’t squash the hope that he’ll let me stay. That he wants me to
stay.

I pull down the sun visor and check my make-up and the dressing over my right cheek. It’s smaller than the one Farrell applied when Katya’s parents came to see me – her –
on Monday. ‘Do I look okay?’

‘You look fine.’

Farrell insisted I wear one of Katya’s long, floaty summer dresses and a pair of strappy high heels. The dress is slightly too tight around the chest, which doesn’t help my nervous
nausea, but with a long-sleeved cardigan covering my fake-tanned arms it should be good enough.

Farrell indicates, turns and draws to a stop at an intersection. A guy in a cabriolet next to us ogles me. Colour floods into my cheeks. I still can’t get used to being stared at.
Yesterday’s trip to the Highgate Mall was an absolute nightmare. It was the first time I’d been out of the house and I didn’t realise just how much attention my new face would
attract. It was like being under a microscope; strangers’ eyes tracking my every move. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. The relentless assessing looks – some pervy and
greedy, but most jealous and bitter – sapped my strength and I had to slip into the ladies and lock myself into a stall to stifle a panic attack. I don’t know how I’m ever going
to get used to it.

You made your bed, Lisa. You made your choice.

I’m getting better at smothering the Dr Meka voice and I push it out of my head. I don’t need that right now.

‘You think the present is okay?’ It had taken me ages to find something suitable, before I finally settled on a blue silk Christian Dior scarf that I thought would match June’s
eyes.

‘I’m sure it’s perfect,’ Farrell says. We cruise into a wide, sloping road, leaving the clogged traffic behind. We pass a townhouse estate flanked by towering columns, a
massive building that resembles the Parthenon and, next to a bright-orange hacienda house, the shell of a half-built townhouse, weeds forcing their fingers into the crumbling brickwork.

Farrell draws up to a colossal pair of copper gates embedded in a massive wall topped by a nine-strand electric fence. A security guard with angry eyes emerges from his wooden booth and finally
acknowledges us. The gates slide open, revealing a curving driveway leading up to an enormous Tuscan-style mansion surrounded by a manicured, emeraldgreen lawn. As we glide towards the house I
catch the wink of blue from a swimming pool partially hidden behind the silhouettes of statues and towering palm trees. I picture Katya lounging by that pool; I imagine her perfect body sliding
through that water.

I’m totally out of my depth, and I fight to hold back the tears. How would it look if I arrived with mascara dribbling down my cheeks?