red moon.

Matty.

Matty told himself that he needed the evening alone, refusing to acknowledge the exhibition as an opportunity for total masochism. Now that he’s actually here, in his shined shoes and grey coat, he feels like a banker next to the swathes of arty types in Carhartt and Aries, and it’s not only because of his conspicuous wardrobe. He’s here for nearly all the wrong reasons; he called off a date for this, which he now surmises was a deeply ironic act. Not in the funny way, either. At least the alcohol is free, and free-flowing. Copies of Joel’s book lie stacked on a long table, while the walls are hung with choice cuts - including, he notes with a sinking heart, the picture of Alma, sans face, blown up almost floor to ceiling. With her body displayed against the wall and looming over him, Matty feels like a pervert just standing there and he turns to catch one of the servers with glasses of red.

Another hand reaches for the same glass; Matty mutters an apology under his breath, before registering the person in front of him. If he wasn't painfully sober, he'd swear he's hallucinating an eery doppelganger - but it's actually her, stuttering in motion, hair half fallen into her face in shock. 

‘Oh my god.’ She draws her hand back quickly, as though she’s been stung. The colour drains from Matty’s face; she looks appalled, her gaze flickering between his face and the photograph on the wall.

The server pauses awkwardly between them. ‘Sorry, do you still want one?’

There’s a flash of eye contact; both grab brimming glasses – for courage, Matty thinks – and the server sidles away. He grips the rim sweatily, feeling himself beginning to panic. It was all very well torturing himself with this, but now he’s been caught at the scene, how can he possibly explain?

‘I’m so sorry, this is so weird… I don’t know why I came,’ he rambles. ‘I didn’t think you’d be here, I just – not that there’s anything wrong with you being here, obviously, I’m – I didn’t come here to… I think I wanted to know if you managed to, I don’t know, stop the process or something.’

Alma looks at him properly at last, and takes a deep gulp from her wine glass before she speaks, her eyes a little glazed. ‘It’s okay.’

‘No, I mean–’ Matty scrambles for a sufficient explanation, feeling increasingly desperate. ‘I’m not here for the wrong reasons. I don’t want you to think I am.’

The wrong reasons. Like he’s a losing contestant on a cheap reality show, bleating at the camera and hoping the audience at home are sympathetic. It’s all so fucking weird and coded. Her gaze slides past him and rests upon the picture again, her photographed shape taking on almost indecent proportions as they crane their necks. She smiles weakly. ‘I think I might be. Here for the wrong reasons, I mean. That’s a bit pathetic, isn’t it?’

They’re just as embarrassed as each other, he realises. Like him, Alma’s dressed for a more elegant occasion, though he notices her hair is loose and unbrushed, and there isn’t a speck of makeup on her face. It’s nice, but he can see the sleep deprivation in her sallow undereyes, and the red wine stain on her lips. Something isn’t right.

‘It doesn’t feel like me.’ She’s staring back up at the print, tucking behind her ear the same dark strands that fall across the pale shoulder on the wall. ‘I wanted to see if it would feel weird, being here.’

‘Does it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t feel much of anything.’

She’s spaced; Matty feels he should do something, enable some conversation with a touch more lucidity. ‘Do you want to get some fresh air? I’m going for a smoke.’

She nods, and he resists the urge to touch her arm as they cross the room towards the door, glancing around furtively. Outside the Barbican it’s almost dark, although you’d hardly know from the still-lit office blocks across the road and the glow of traffic. Alma accepts the cigarette Matty offers and perches unsteadily on the concrete wall, gazing somewhere into the middle distance.

‘I did see him,’ she says bluntly, as if she and Matty haven’t only just returned to talking terms. ‘We didn’t speak. Which I think is for the better.’

Matty’s curiosity finally gets the better of him. ‘You didn’t get him to take the picture out?’

‘Nope.’

‘Did you even try?’

Alma shakes her head, watching ash fall from her cigarette. ‘Do you judge me for that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replies truthfully. ‘I guess I don’t fully understand why, but I just thought you should have the chance to do something. If you wanted to.’

She laughs then, tipsy but mirthless. ‘I must seem so spineless to you.’

Matty doesn’t know how to reply to this, beyond the obvious protestations. He sits beside her on the wall, contemplating how strange it is to be suddenly cast in this supportive role with (what feels like) no lead-up. ‘No. You’re projecting. It’s not a situation with any easy answers.’

‘You would have done something about it though, if you were in my position.’

‘I don’t know, do I? I’ve never been in that position, thank god.’

Alma hums in uncertain agreement, smoking compulsively. She’s the same girl as before and yet so different, he thinks. Not deflated in the sense that she’s lacking something; if anything, she seems more strongly grounded. He might even go so far as to say authentic. 

‘Are you okay? We can go and sit somewhere for a bit.’ Matty eyes a dimly lit bar further down the street and gestures towards it. ‘Somewhere that isn’t a brick wall, anyway. And that place looks decent.’

She gets up, brushing off the back of her dress. ‘I’ve already had quite a bit to drink,’ she adds, speaking slowly.

‘I know, I’d be plastered if I were you.’ Matty reaches out to touch her elbow, half to steady her and half to reassure. He’s not sure if it comes off right – he certainly doesn’t want to imply that obliterating the mind with alcohol is the solution to tonight – but she doesn’t seem to notice.

When they get closer, the bar solidifies into a seedy cocktail joint. The sign says Mexican, the walls outside are painted an almost pornographic shade of pink, and the wooden trestle tables outside are beginning to show signs of rot. The fluorescent green cactus wall light flickers on and off; the sombrero hanging on the wall is more than enough to remove any doubt that this place isn’t run by anyone of Mexican descent. As they enter, the guy behind the bar looks momentarily confused to actually see punters. Matty can’t help but feel this is all very appropriately maudlin. Alma orders a pisco sour; he copies her, and they watch the barman shake the alcohol up with disproportionate interest.

‘Well, this is bringing back memories,’ she quips drily. Matty's heart skips a beat involuntarily at her making sudden, explicit reference to the past. It’s not the baroque romantic feeling; it’s tachycardic, jolting. Uncomfortable. 

'Good or bad ones?'

'Only the good, actually.' Alma's expression has softened - it's almost wistful. 'It was almost all good.'

'Except the very end,' Matty finishes, unable to stop himself.

‘Yes,’ she says simply, running a finger through the condensation on her glass. 'That's what scared me, when I heard you were coming to the studio.'

'Scared you?'

'Yeah, I was shitting myself. Didn’t know if you were coming to give me a piece of your mind or something. Or if the pictures had leaked.’

Matty can’t help but laugh at this - pictures of him with his hands down his pants would be the least of his problems, these days. His PR would probably thank him for the distraction. ‘God, no. I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Well, I didn't know, and I was nervous to face you. I never got to apologise properly.'

He frowns, chewing the inside of his cheek and staring resolutely into his drink. His instinct is to say you didn't need to! in a bid to reassure her. But of course, the pain is still there somewhere. He can't dismiss it entirely, though he still wants to answer gently. ‘I suppose I didn’t give you much of a chance to.’

‘Would it have changed anything?’ Alma stares at him incisively, her fingers pinning the base of the cocktail glass to the bar.

‘It’s so long ago… I can’t really imagine any other version of events now,’ Matty replies weakly. He’s painfully aware of how close their knees are beneath the bar; she’s leaning forward, as though she might identify some hidden clue about how he really feels on his face. ‘I don't want to dwell on it too much.’

‘Of course.’ If she feels any particular way about his reservations, she keeps it hidden. Not how she used to hide so much of herself - it almost feels like it’s in deference to his lead. ‘As long as you don’t still think that I… that I’d treat you like that now. Because I wouldn’t,’ she says forcefully, leaning even further towards him. Matty can see a stray eyelash on her cheek; he can feel his pulse beating in his own wrist for a moment or two.

‘I don’t think that, it’s okay.’ He feels too sober, takes a large gulp of the pisco sour. ‘That was my own insecurities jumping up and making things complicated between us. I was in a fucking weird place,’ - as if you’re not now, his self-conscience retorts - ‘but I’ve grown up a bit now. You know, less tortured artist, more reflective, etcetera.’ And in the spirit of being a grownup, he shifts in his seat, re-establishing distance without so obviously leaning back from her. 

‘I know what you mean,’ Alma nods. ‘I was so caught up in my own little world – like I couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten to where I had, and was drunk on the glamour of it all.’ For the first time, her face warms into a genuine smile. ‘We were on a bit of a collision course.’

It feels good to teeter on the verge of joking about their past relationship, to make light of it, as if to say yes! We can be mature about this - we can even be friendly! Matty turns on his stool and leans back on the sticky edge of the bar, his breathing easier, his diaphragm less tense. ‘Yeah, I guess it was almost fated to go that way.’

‘I’m still glad you reached out again, though.’

‘Really? I felt quite guilty, like I was intruding on your peace or something.’

‘Oh, it was hardly peace. And I needed an intrusion. I haven’t made anything of value in the last year.’

This surprises him. 'How's work been then?'

'Shit,' Alma sighs.

'Really? I thought things were hotting up. I see your name all over the place.'

'That's success as measured by money and popularity though. And, as recently covered, I’m kind of over that as a personal metric. Success as measured by satisfaction, well… I'm not succeeding there. I haven’t felt satisfied by anything in a long, long time.’ She drains the last of her cocktail, as if to punctuate her words. ‘God, I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to turn into sympathy hour. It’s weird enough to see you on my own masochistic pilgrimage to the scene of the crime. Did you see Joel’s girlfriend?’

Matty can’t stop the expression that flits over his brow. It’s so anodyne, so quotidian. He’s no stranger to comparing himself to exes’ new partners, the guilt and projection and grief and helplessness of it all. He spent one particularly miserable evening in his early twenties drinking whiskey that he didn’t even like the flavour of – never got the taste for it, actually – simply because an ex-girlfriend had posted an anniversary dinner with her new partner in the same restaurant they’d gone to for her birthday. But despite all that, hearing it from Alma surprises him. It shouldn’t be a shock to hear normal human anxieties out of her mouth, especially not in light of the conversation they’re having, but it does. It does feel different. 

‘She was the redhead?’ He asks, glancing up at the bar-man and gesturing for another round.

‘Redhead. Great tits. She’s younger than him, obviously.’

‘Well, points for originality,’ Matty replies, unwilling to come down on either side of the fence for this one.

‘She’s not a photographer. He doesn’t date other photographers now – I heard he prefers curators. Gallery owners, too. The ones who own galleries their parents set up, and whose parents just love his work. It’s all very Sloane Square. He doesn’t even sound like a Northerner anymore.’

‘He’s a Northerner?’ Matty tries to pin his own perceptions of Northern Artistry onto Joel and finds himself disliking the man even more. 

‘Preston.’

‘No shit.’

‘I know right. Working class hero son of a councillor.’ She snorts, fingers skittering across the second glass of pisco sour. 

‘What about you, though?’ He asks it to move the conversations along, to get away from talking about Joel, more than out of curiosity. He is curious, of course, about whether Alma is dating. If he had imagined asking this question before tonight, he would not have pictured the faux-Mexican bar front for a money-laundering operation or the tipsy consolations he’s been engaged in. 

‘Me?’

‘Dating?’ He counters. 

‘Hardly. It’s not… the right time for anything. I wasn’t the right person, as you know well enough.’ She rakes her fingers through her hair.  He watches as it spills over her shoulders. 

‘It’s not like you were a bad person,’ although he had fervently told himself that, time and again after they stopped talking, ‘you were younger. I was stupider. These things happen.’ He swallows the last of his drink before speaking again. ‘Most of the time, nobody’s a massive evil psychopath. Some relationships are just fundamentally incompatible.’

Alma.

The hangxiety the next morning is bad. Not only because of Alma’s brief, immature display of jealousy, but also because her past actions still loom large in her mind every time she looks at Matty. It doesn’t matter how gentle and amicable he was yesterday evening; the image of his face in anger is still seared on her retinas. Did you see Joel’s girlfriend? She hadn’t even been sure if it was his girlfriend. Realistically, though, she recognised the way he looked at her.

She had lied to Matty. They did speak, if only briefly, and it was a strange fallacy of a conversation. A mutual friend from St Martin’s recognised her, yanked her into their conversation before Joel joined the group to thank them for coming; he stood right next to her, his brown cow eyes blinking with surprise, the dark lashes that ringed them ridiculous as ever. There was only so much that could be said whilst other people were within earshot.

‘Wow. Hi.’

‘Hey.’ If only he looked more like a villain. His very humanity was disconcerting, the cartoonish image of him that lived in her long term memory evaporating suddenly in place of the real man.

‘You look well.’

What was she meant to say to this? It was either a blatant lie, or he just expected that she frequently knocked about looking like a drunk maiden aunt. Either way, it was enough to reactivate the old resentments.

‘So… a retrospective? Are you retiring or something?’

Joel laughed lightly. ‘Does it seem a bit egotistical?’

Alma paused at this, choosing to let his question hang in the air pointedly. ‘I didn’t say that. You did.’

His gaze flickered across her face; he looked at her as though she amused him. ‘You haven’t changed much.’

Her expression twisted with distaste; she hated his presumption, the way he thought he could tell, after just a few seconds. But before she could make a retort, someone cut across her to speak to him, and she needed a drink, so it had been far easier to simply dissolve into the crowd and slink away. As she stared up at the photograph, momentarily alone, she remembered how she hated his gaze on her at all towards the end, without really realising. To be looked upon by him now felt like a fresh violation (never mind the image on the wall, which had passed unacknowledged).

Alma’s curiosity about Joel’s perception of her had been rooted purely in detached egoism, but Matty’s opinion is now acutely important, and the true cause of her lingering nausea at the memory of last night. Still lying in bed, she wonders if there’s anything left to salvage, now that he’s seen her at her most pathetic. The thought of getting up and trying to find distraction from these anxieties seems like a gargantuan task, but after ten minutes of talking herself into it, she finally manages to get up.

The house is deathly quiet - it always has been. After three years of living here, she’s beginning to tire of it. It has a way of muffling the outside world that probably isn’t helping her mental state, making it all too easy to fall into isolation. Coffee in hand, she descends the steps to the old garage studio, now a graveyard for all her old work and equipment that she no longer uses. She can still remember how it sounded when people walked across the concrete floor in their shoes - anything with a hard heel or expensive leather sole made a tasteful flat click. The room smells of dust motes and ink; she'll never take a photograph here again.

***

Alma calls Ruth one afternoon a few days later. The studio in Rotherhithe is becoming cluttered as she begins to dissect years' worth of work, trying to trace a line of creative identity through it. Her rationale is that if such a line exists, she can follow it and come to a logical next step. But the further back she goes, the more apparent it is that all roads lead to the sacred time she spent with Ruth as a teenager, taking pictures without pretension or any illusions of grandeur. She hasn't spoken to Ruth in eight years. They drifted apart once Alma became more deeply entrenched in art school and stopped going home in the holidays. Ruth went to Norwich, opting to stay near her family, which was an impulse Alma could never fathom, despite their teenage bond and implicit understanding of one another. When they had discussed their hopes and ambitions, it seemed so abstract; the desire to escape their insular existence had never been quantified. Ruth did visit her once or twice in London, but she seemed cowed by the city. It wasn't just a great leap, it was a behemoth, unconquerable. They felt like the rulers of their watery domain on the edge of the Fens, and the city was an exhausting, endless jostling for success that was never certain. Alma sometimes wonders if that uncertainty was Ruth’s undoing; with a cool, sharp lick of shame, she realises that she never really knew what Ruth’s idea of success was, in the end. Ruth, who had been perennially in front of her lens, who chose to study history in a large old town and - if all’s well and good - is still dating the guy she met in freshers week. From what Alma could remember, Ruth’s own dreams were shifting, vague. She felt no rush to visualise her life or idealise her future. She seemed happy to let it play out in front of her, and make decisions only when they materialised as necessary.

And when Alma moved to London, the friendships she made were, for the most part, superficial. Then there was Molly… and then there was Joel. And after that, just Molly, plus a revolving cast of people who were nice and probably quite good and decent, but who were as caught up in rat races of their own creation as Alma was. And then, auspiciously, there was Matty. The list of people who have truly gotten to the core of her is short; Joel's place is discarded, but Molly is as dear to her as ever, even if they lived counties apart now. Now that she has a chance to salvage something amicable with Matty, she feels like she needs to speak to someone who knew her before she became the worst version of herself.

‘Hey! Alma?’

When Ruth picks up, it's with a weightless, genuine warmth that immediately dissolves Alma's paranoias (that she might hate her for being so shit at keeping in contact; that she might resent Alma for choosing a different path; that Alma had fucked up in some other, unspecified way and remained offensively clueless, etcetera). She still has her number, too.

‘Hi!’ It doesn’t come out right the first time, her voice croaky - it’s early in the morning. ‘Hey, Ruthie.’

‘This is such a nice surprise! Oh my god, I’m so glad you’ve called.’

Alma cycles through the small talk, though it doesn’t feel small - it’s loaded with so much she wishes she could expand on. And besides, she doesn’t want to be the subject of this conversation. She wants to know what Ruth’s life is like. She hears how Ruth is still in Norwich, how she’s been helping people with their interior decor, putting together a proper portfolio and getting registered with Companies House, with the support of Harry, a lovely-sounding partner (and definitely not the freshers’ week squeeze). Alma tries to imagine this faceless man, so in love with her oldest friend and knowing her just as well, but from an entirely opposite end of their lives. Ruth sounds so mature and self-assured.

Apart from an affectionate exclamation that ‘it’s been forever!’, neither of them mention or discuss how they fell out of touch. ‘Do you ever come back to visit?’ Ruth asks.

‘Never,’ Alma admits. ‘I actually haven’t been back since I was nineteen. You know what things were like with my mum,’ she pauses. ‘She’s moved back to Munich.’ Alma knows this because of the email she received from her mother the previous year, disclosing a new address and politely congratulating her on her public successes.

‘I remember your mum. She was a bit… difficult, wasn’t she?’

‘Yeah. And yet she made it quite simple in the end.’ Minimal words, minimal emotion. Alma has always suspected that to her mother, she was too much like her father; that lofty arrogance, impulsive and swept up in daydreams. But it was her mother’s tendencies that she most resented in herself - the coldness, the resistance to letting others in or revealing vulnerabilities. In the end, they both seemed happy enough to divest from parental duties once Alma was at St Martin’s, and with her mother back in Germany and her father settled somewhere near King’s Lynn with a new wife and multiple dogs, she feels more strongly than ever that to be dogged by their inconvenient characteristics is a strange kind of cruelty delivered by the universe.

‘So you’ll come back now?’ Ruth asks gently. ‘Well, not now. But soon?’

‘Yeah, I will,’ Alma smiles. She even lets herself feel excited at the prospect. ‘Soon.’

Matty.

Everyone keeps telling Matty to take it easy. To him this seems counterproductive, since there’s so much pressure on this record, if the tour is to be adequately funded and if the label is to stay solvent. George, at least, doesn’t echo this sentiment, probably because he knows it’s better if Matty is occupied and not looking for distraction elsewhere. But it’s a sorry state of affairs if he can’t find a healthy alternative to either. When Alma messages to ask if he wants to get lunch then, it's the excuse he needs to finally shave off the pathetic stubble dusting his cheeks and try to function socially again. Lunch. He can already tell that this is coming from a different place to the maudlin encounter they had at the Barbican; even the tone of her message is brighter. If this is her pushing for a new and improved friendship, Matty's relieved. It's what he wants, but he needs it to come from her.

let’s go to polpo! i read a grace dent review lol

you like italian right? I think we only ever went for japanese before…

Who DOESN’T

How about 1pm?