The Authenticity Project Read online

  “OK. Give me half an hour. I’ll be back,” said Monica and disappeared as abruptly as she’d arrived.

  When she returned, twenty-nine minutes later, she was carrying even more stuff. She piled her bags in a corner and stood in front of them so he couldn’t see what was inside.

  “Julian, I think it’s probably best if you go out and leave me to it,” she said. “Go and sit in the café. I’ve told Benji to put whatever you want to eat or drink on the staff tab. Stay away as long as you can. I’m going to need a while.”

  Julian, who was beginning to learn that arguing with his new friend was a waste of time and energy, left, and spent a very pleasant afternoon chatting to the people coming and going in Monica’s Café.

  Benji taught him how to make a proper cappuccino, using the coffee machine that was the size of a small car, and just as complicated. Then he and Benji spent ages giggling like naughty schoolboys over Monica’s “customer notes,” and adding a few made-up ones of their own.

  He was trying very hard not to think about the devastation being wrought in his cottage.

  * * *

  • • •

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in as long as he could remember, perhaps forever, Julian knocked on his own front door. He was rather nervous about going in, and feeling like a visitor rather than the owner. After a minute or two, Monica appeared, her hair wrapped in a scarf, from which several damp tendrils had broken free. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkled, as if she’d spring-cleaned them, too. She was wearing one of Mary’s pinnies. Where on earth had she found that?

  “I’m afraid I’ve only done the sitting room and the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll come back and do the rest another day. Come in!”

  “Monica!” he said. “It’s been transformed.” And it had. Light streamed through the windows, hitting surfaces that were cleared and polished. The rugs had gone from being a collection of sludgy colors to bright and vibrant, and there wasn’t a cobweb in sight. It looked like a home again, as if Monica had washed away fifteen years, along with all the grime.

  “What can you smell?” she asked. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

  “Lemons, definitely,” he said.

  “Yup. I used lemon-scented cleaning products. What else?”

  “Strawberry jam!”

  “Right again. Simmering on the clean and shiny hob in the kitchen. We’ll need to find some jam jars. Take a seat while I finish up.”

  Monica disappeared outside and came back carrying three large bunches of roses, which she must have hidden in the courtyard. She bustled around finding vases and arranging them on various surfaces.

  “And now,” she said theatrically, “for the finishing touch!” and she produced a can of Elnett hairspray—exactly the brand Mary had used—and spritzed it around his sitting room. “Close your eyes, Julian. Now does it smell like it used to when Mary was here?”

  He leaned back in his favorite armchair (which didn’t feel greasy any longer) and inhaled. And it did. He wanted to keep his eyes closed forever, and to stay in 2003. But it needed one last thing.

  “Monica,” he said. “We have to do some painting. I’ll give you a private lesson. It’s the least I can do.”

  Julian threw open the double doors from the sitting room into his studio. He pulled out a roll of canvas, spread it out on the floor, and started to mix paint with linseed.

  “This evening, Monica, we are going to do Jackson Pollock. I’ve watched you draw. It’s all very neat and precise. You try to copy exactly what you see. But Pollock said, Painting is self-discovery. Every good painter paints what he is. He said it’s about expressing your feelings, not just illustrating. Here, take this brush.” He handed Monica a brush almost the size of her hand. “Pollock used household paints, but I don’t have any, so we’re using oils mixed with linseed and turpentine. He laid his canvas on the ground and painted in the air over it, using his whole body to do so, like a ballerina. Are you ready?”

  He suspected she wasn’t and could see that she was worried about messing up his newly restored cottage, but she nodded anyway. He went back into the sitting room, selected a vinyl album, and placed it on the turntable. There was only one man up for a task this theatrical: Freddie Mercury.

  Julian took off his shoes and slid across the now polished and shiny wood floor, back into the studio, singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” with all the gusto, if not the talent, of Freddie. He picked up a brush, dunked it in a pot of burnt sienna, and flicked it across the canvas, scattering paint into a wide arc.

  “Go, Monica, go!” he cried. “Use your whole arm. Feel it from your stomach. Let it out!”

  She started off small at first, but he watched her as she started to laugh, to loosen up, hurling paint over her head, like a tennis player serving from the baseline, scattering drops of cadmium red in her hair as she did so.

  Julian slid the whole length of the canvas in a wide plié, showering paint as he went with sharp flicks of the wrist. “Will you, Monica? Will you do the fandango? What is a fandango, anyhow? And who the hell is Scaramouche?” And they both collapsed, exhausted and laughing, on the floor next to their wonderful riot of color. The smell of fresh paint hung in the air above them, mingling with the scent of roses, lemons, jam, and Ellnet.

  “Did Mary die at home, Julian?” Monica asked when they’d calmed down and were breathing normally again. “I do know how it feels, you know . . .”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind,” Julian said, cutting her off abruptly. Then he felt awful. It had sounded like she wanted to tell him something. Thankfully, she changed the subject.

  “Didn’t you and Mary ever have children?” Monica asked. Christ, this topic was hardly any better.

  “We tried,” replied Julian. “But after a series of ghastly miscarriages we decided it wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t an easy time.” This was a bit of an understatement.

  “And you didn’t want to adopt?” asked Monica, like his dog, Keith, refusing to give up a bone.

  “No,” he said, which wasn’t really the truth. Mary had been desperate to adopt, but he’d vetoed the idea. He hadn’t seen the point of children if he couldn’t pass on his own genes. Imagine scrutinizing your own child’s face forever, wondering where it had come from. He suspected that this explanation wouldn’t make him sound very sympathetic. People were strangely sentimental about babies.

  “Do you have any other family? Siblings? Nephews and nieces?” Monica asked.

  “My brother died in his forties—multiple sclerosis, horrible disease,” Julian replied. “I wasn’t as much help as I should have been. I’m not at all good with physical imperfections. One of my many failings. He didn’t have children. My sister, Grace, emigrated to Canada back in the seventies. She hasn’t been back for more than a decade. Too old to do the journey, she says. She has two children, but I haven’t seen them since they were babies, except on Facebook. Marvelous invention, that. Although I’m glad it wasn’t around when I was still beautiful. I may have become obsessed.” He realized he was gabbling.

  “So who are you planning to spend Christmas with?” asked Monica. Julian pretended to think very hard. “Gosh, I’ve so many options, I haven’t been able to decide yet,” he said. Was she going to invite him to something? He tried not to get overexcited in case she was simply being curious.

  “Well,” Monica plowed on through the awkward silence, “my dad and Bernadette are going on a cruise. To the Caribbean. It’s their fifth wedding anniversary, which means that I’m on my own. So is Riley, since his family are on the other side of the world. So we thought we might do Christmas lunch in the café. Would you like to join us?”

  “I can’t think of anything I’d like more,” replied Julian, feeling positively giddy. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how pleased I am that it was you who found my little book, Monica.”

  “I�
�m very happy I found it too,” she replied, putting her hand over his. He realized how unaccustomed he’d become to physical contact. The only person who touched him regularly was his barber.

  “Julian, you should paint Riley!” said Monica. “He’d be a wonderful model.”

  “Mmm,” said Julian, thinking that he wouldn’t need many layers. He chided himself. That was not a charitable thought, and he was not that mean-spirited person any longer.

  “Talking of Riley,” said Julian, trying hard to sound casual, “I suspect he might be the teensiest little bit in love with you.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Monica, looking ever so slightly sad. “I’m not at all sure.”

  “Did you write in the book too?” he asked, moving on in case he’d made Monica feel uncomfortable. He imagined that this is how a father would feel—wanting to show interest, but wary of overstepping the line. If that Riley upset her, he’d have Julian to deal with.

  “Yes, but I’m rather embarrassed about what I wrote now. Although, remember you said maybe telling that story will change your life? Well, I think just writing it down created some sort of magic, because my life has really changed since then. Everything seems to be coming together. At least, I’d thought it was. I left the book in a wine bar, weeks ago.”

  “I wonder who found it. Remember what I wrote next? Or the life of someone you’ve not yet met.”

  “Well,” said Monica, “it’s achieved quite a lot already, don’t you think?” And she smiled at him, the friend he’d known for a short time that somehow felt like forever.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Riley

  Riley was sitting on his narrow single bed with a laptop—borrowed from Brett, one of his roommates—on his knees. He could feel one of the mattress springs, hard and lumpy, under his right thigh, so he shifted slightly to the left, readjusting the keyboard on his lap. He was drinking tea without milk, since someone had finished the pint he’d bought only yesterday. His six-pack of lagers was now a four-pack, and his cheddar cheese was missing a sizable corner and had gained a set of tooth marks. He’d resorted to putting labels on all his remaining stuff, but he resented his roommates turning him into that kind of guy. He was not a territorial labeler.

  The room was lit by the tepid December sun, trying valiantly to penetrate the grime coating Riley’s windows, accumulated from the exhausts of thousands of cars thundering up the Warwick Road, twenty-four hours a day. Riley was feeling like an etiolated plant—weak, yellow, and spindly through lack of sunshine and fresh air. His naturally dark skin had taken on a jaundiced hue and his white-blond hair was getting darker. Soon, he thought, his hair and skin would end up the same shade.

  For the first time since he’d arrived in London, Riley felt an almost unbearable longing for Perth, for his days spent in the sunshine, feeding, watering, weeding, and pruning other people’s gardens. He looked at the pinboard by his bed, at his montage of photos from home. Him as a teenager with his dad and two brothers, all surfing the same wave. They were grinning at his mum, who was taking the photograph. As always, she’d messed up the framing so there was far too much sky. His mum holding him as a baby on a trip back to see her family in Bali. A group of his friends, raising bottles of beer to the camera, at the barbecue party they’d thrown to see him off on his grand tour. Why had he swapped a life surrounded by gloriously verdant nature for one hemmed in by concrete, inhaling pollution with every breath?

  Riley was checking the progress of his various lots on eBay. Julian’s (barely worn) beekeeping outfit had gone for a small song. Who knew there were so many amateur beekeepers around? And the Tiffany lamp, which he’d described honestly as “not functioning” and “needing some restoration,” was attracting new bids every few minutes. Best of all, Julian’s ancient mobile phone was looking to sell at a higher price than the latest iPhone. Riley blew a corkscrew curl of hair out of his eyes as he scrolled down.

  The only furniture in Riley’s room was a chest of drawers, a clothes rail with a few wire hangers dangling from it, and a slightly lopsided bookcase that looked as if someone had had a few too many drinks when following the IKEA instruction sheet. Out of the corner of his eye, Riley could see Julian’s notebook poking out from between his dog-eared novels and travel guides, goading him.

  Riley felt like he was sinking ever deeper into quicksand. He remembered the sick feeling in his stomach when he’d seen the postcard of that beach on Monica’s pinboard, and how he’d hoped it was just a coincidence. The minute Monica had mentioned the name Hazard, he should have come clean. He could have said, Oh yes, that’s the guy I met in Thailand, just before coming here. He gave me a notebook, which is how I found you. Would that have been so very hard? But he’d flunked it. Even worse, he’d done a runner, leaving Monica just standing there holding the postcard looking bemused. And now he was drowning in deceit. He’d never be able to claim that the right moment hadn’t come up, that he hadn’t had the opportunity to confess. Nor could he argue that he thought it was from a different Hazard. If only he’d been called something normal, like James or Sam or Riley. You couldn’t go wrong with a name like Riley.

  Riley did a deal with himself. He would tell Monica the whole story and face the consequences. If she never wanted to see him again, then so be it. Perhaps it was time for him to be moving on anyway. But she might take it on the chin—find it an amusing anecdote she could repeat to her friends as the story of how they’d met. Surely, she’d see that although Hazard had engineered their meeting, what had happened after that was because he genuinely liked her. More than liked her, he realized, surprising himself.

  It was only a week before Christmas, and Riley didn’t want to risk ruining Monica’s carefully laid plans. He knew how excited she was about catering Christmas lunch in the café. He’d seen all the lists on the coffee table in her apartment: the shopping list, the minute-by-minute plan for the cooking, the present list (she’d hidden that one before he could see what she was giving him). She’d tried to engage him in a conversation about Jamie Oliver versus Nigella, but had obviously clocked his blank expression and had given up.

  Monica had invited the whole art class to drop in for prelunch drinks, before going on to their own family celebrations. Most of them were going to be out of town, but Betty and Baz were planning to drop in. Benji was coming for lunch as he’d decided to join his family in Scotland for Hogmanay instead of Christmas.

  He would, he decided, tell her after Christmas, but definitely before New Year.

  Having made that promise to himself, the weight of Riley’s deception felt a little lighter. He looked over at the notebook. He wanted to get rid of it. Now he’d decided what to do, he wanted to forget about The Authenticity Project for the next week or so—but that was impossible to do with the book sitting there.

  He thought about just throwing it away, but he didn’t want to be the one to break the chain. It felt like terribly bad karma, destroying people’s carefully written, heartfelt stories. Perhaps he should pass it on, as Monica and Hazard had done. Maybe it would bring someone luck—it had, after all, introduced him to Monica and a whole group of friends. It had even found him employment, if you could describe Julian’s eBay project as such. He was sure the next recipient wouldn’t be as stupid as he’d been, would remember that the whole idea was about authenticity, not lies.

  A rhythmic banging noise, interspersed with some overly theatrical moaning, started up from the room next door. The walls of this badly converted apartment were so thin that Riley could hear a subtly delivered fart two rooms away, and he was way more acquainted than he’d like to be with Brett’s rather active love life. Brett’s current girlfriend was, he’d concluded, faking it. No one could be having that much fun with his Neanderthal roommate.

  Riley took the book off the bookcase, searched through the side pocket of his rucksack for a pen, and started to write.

  * * *

  •
• •

  BY THE TIME Riley had finished, it was dark outside. He felt like a weight had lifted from his shoulders and been transferred on to the page. It was all going to be OK. He walked over to the window, and as he went to close the rather inadequate curtains he spotted something extraordinary. He had to tell Monica.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Monica

  Monica was just turning the sign on the door from Open to Closed when Riley appeared, looking as if he’d run all the way from Earl’s Court. If she hadn’t opened the door, he would have barreled right into it.

  “Monica, look!” he shouted. “It’s SNOWING!” He shook his head, scattering droplets of water everywhere, like an enthusiastic retriever after a swim.

  “I know,” she replied, “although I doubt it will stick. It hardly ever does.” She could tell that this was not the response Riley had been hoping for. “Riley, have you never seen snow before?”

  “Well, of course I have, in movies and on YouTube and stuff, but not actually falling from the sky, like that,” he replied, pointing at some rather desultory flakes. Monica looked at him with amazement, bordering on alarm. “Well,” he said, sounding slightly indignant, “have you ever seen a desert storm or a wildfire in the outback?” She shook her head. “I thought not. Anyhow, we have to go out! There’s a skating rink down by the National History Museum. Let’s go!”

  “Natural History Museum,” corrected Monica. “And I can’t go out just like that. I have to clear up here, do the till, prepare everything for tomorrow. Sorry.” Had he forgotten that the last time she’d seen him, he’d just walked out on her midsentence?

  “Monica,” said Riley, “you have to live a little. All that stuff can wait. Seize the moment. Stop worrying about the future and have some fun. You’re only young once.” Monica winced at the clichés he was churning out like the script of a bad Hollywood movie.