Page 20 of I Know How This Ends

When I wake the next morning—gently covered by a duvet placed over me by now-absent friends—it feels as if the glaciers inside

me have melted, my underground reservoirs are tapped. There’s nothing trapped inside me anymore. It’s all released and finally

moving again: pure, rushing, fresh.

Stretching, I open my eyes and smile at the ceiling in surprise.

Then I get up and wander around my flat with brand-new eyes, making notes of what I want to do with it. What colors, what

shapes, what little bits of myself will I start to collect, treasure, strew around the house until it feels like somewhere

I belong? An exposed brick wall, some yellow paint. Plants. Some old rugs I’ll forage from antique shops gradually, over time;

“sentimental” nicknacks that aren’t just “collecting dust”; fairy lights I can keep up all year instead of being forced to

take them down on January 1.

This isn’t going to be like my last home, with me as a permanent guest. It’s not going to have me making myself as small as

possible so that I somehow fit. I’m not going to shrink until all I do is orbit, gray and dull and only reflecting somebody

else’s light.

Aaron even tried to turn me against my friends, planting tiny seeds and waiting for them to sprout. “ Jules thinks she’s better than everyone else. ” “ Eve is baby-obsessed, yet she calls herself a feminist. ”

“And Lily is...”

I pause. What exactly did Aaron say about Lily? “ Lily is a stuck-up cow who isn’t as hot as she thinks she is. ”

Well, there you go. Enjoy the next decade, Lily.

With a sudden grin, I sit down in front of my green screen.

All at once, I can feel my love for meteorology rushing clear and pure. I don’t want to make a video out of spite, or competition,

or out of a bitter, instinctive need to prove myself equal . I want to share the world, in all its moods and magic. I want the weather to fascinate people as it has always fascinated

me.

Clearing my throat, I breathe deeply and turn on the camera.

“Hello, meteorologists!” I beam, and for the first time in a very long time it feels like a real smile. “Margot here. I’m

back! Today we’re going to talk about rainbows , which I have a feeling we all love. How could we not? As William Wordsworth said, ‘ My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when

I shall grow old... ’”

My grandfather had this poem etched on my very first weathervane, a birthday gift when I turned eight, and I want to share

it. I think briefly about Winter, and whether she loves rainbows too.

Crystals. Maybe I’ll hang crystals in her bedroom.

“But what is a rainbow?” I hold my hand out to where I’ll edit a rainbow into the green screen behind me. “What you’re actually looking

at when you see a rainbow is falling rain at its most beautiful. So why does it happen?”

I feel all the excitement I felt when I first learned what a rainbow was.

“When the sun hits drops of falling rain, the light is bent and bounced back in the same direction. Light is made up of many

colors. This means that shorter wavelengths like blue, violet and green are bent more than longer wavelengths like red, orange

and yellow. This splits all the colors that are already in light, and spreads them out in the sky according to the lengths

of their waves. And here’s the best bit.”

I feel myself glow, just as I did when my grandfather explained it.

“Even if someone is standing right next to you, they’re seeing the light from different raindrops at a slightly different

angle. Which means that what you’re seeing is your own rainbow. Nobody has ever seen that rainbow before, and nobody will

ever see that rainbow again. That rainbow belongs entirely to you.”

I hear my burner phone ting .

Without turning off the video—I can edit it later; I may have gotten a little too gushy—I launch myself across the sofa and

grab it as fast as I can.

Hey Margot. Henry here. Hope you got a good sleep. ;)

He doesn’t seem to have taken me falling asleep mid-conversation too personally, which is a good sign.

I was just wondering: would you like to meet Friday night? And if so, would you prefer a low-key second First Date, or something

a bit more amped up?

Taking your lead on it. Xx

I think about it, briefly.

My impulse is to say: Keep it low-key. Casual. Non-scary. But:

All that jazz, please. X

Ting.

Then you shall get the whole band. :) xx

I look up to the camera again, and only then do I see my expression.

It’s bright, lit from within: my eyes are warm, my cheeks are pink. I don’t look as hollowed out as before. And it’s not Henry. Or it’s not entirely Henry, anyway. It’s more as if whatever Aaron took is starting to slowly come back, drip by drip.

“And remember,” I say, shining at the camera, “you don’t have to wait. Take a hose into the garden, put your finger over the

end and stand with the sunshine behind you. Just go ahead and make your very own rainbow.”

Still smiling, I stop recording.

Trying to decide what to call this video—“Hue Wants to Talk About Rainbows?”—I turn my real phone on and blink as it starts

beeping like a van reversing. What the—

Four days without turning it on, and apparently the entire world has something to say about it.

Missed calls: 28

Texts: 39

Instagram notifications: 15,589

Holy fuckballs .

Holding my left hand slightly over my eyes, I wince and click on MargotTheMeteorologist.

Scammer

You should be ashamed of yourself

Unfollowed

Unfollowed

AND YOU CLAIM TO LOVE THE ENVIRONMENT

I think the Met Office will probably have something to say about this. FRAUD.

What the hell is—

Oh no. No no no no no no—

As I quickly scroll down the thousands and thousands of comments on my last video, it becomes clear that I didn’t just “humiliate” myself with a laminated catsuit.

I also accidentally sent hundreds toward a scam account to have their information harvested.

The @thunderwarez account has been deleted, and when—in escalating panic—I search for them elsewhere, it’s all videos talking about legal action.

Why the hell didn’t I do my own research?

Was I really that desperate that I didn’t think through the consequences of what I was doing properly? I think through the

consequences of everything . It’s literally my defining characteristic. Apart from when it actually matters, apparently.

In less than a week, my count has plummeted—87k people left—and every time I refresh, it drops another hundred. More furious

comments on my page are appearing every second, and I don’t really blame them.

You will be hearing from my lawyer

In full panic, I quickly fire off a beseeching email to Rain of Terror. How exactly did I think I was going to get paid, anyway?

I normally do everything by the book—check it all carefully, arrange a payment plan, a contractual agreement—but the one time I’m too emotional and exhausted to remember, I single-handedly destroy my entire business.

What is wrong with me? My inbox is now full of potential sponsors and advertisers curtly retracting their offers.

Unsurprisingly, my email bounces straight back, undelivered.

Rain of Terror indeed.

“Fucking fucking fucking SHITBALLS,” I yell at the ceiling, glow totally gone. “Fucking fucking fucking fucking MORON , MARGOT .”

Shaking, I pace quickly—still swearing—to my empty kitchen and reach into the back of a cabinet. Fumbling, I find the little

hidden cardboard box. Statistically, each cigarette takes eleven minutes off your life, and frankly, these are minutes I would

very much like to erase if possible.

“You’re an idiot ,” I hiss at myself as I fumble at the back-door lock. “A stupid, life-destroying idiot .”

Did I do it on purpose? Did I set my entire life on fire?

Was there a part of me, having burned everything I owned, that was trying to burn down what remained of my meteorology career too?

I’d prefer to think my subconscious went full phoenix—as Jules might put it—because otherwise I am just that stupid.

“Margot the Miscreant,” I hiss as I light the cigarette and stand with it in the garden, staring at the bonfire I still haven’t

cleared up. “Margot the Malevolent. No, Margot the Megalomaniac .”

Because it was hubris that made me start my own page, wasn’t it? A need to prove myself in some way: that I was still someone , that what I said or thought mattered . That somebody—anybody—could see me . And this is the result.

“FUCK,” I yell again at nobody in particular, taking a huge puff and immediately starting to cough. “FUCKING FUCKING FUCK—”

“Um.” A calm voice from the next garden. “I’m so sorry, but do you think you could maybe... scream something else instead?”

Blinking, I turn and look over the fence.

“Fudge, maybe?” My neighbor looks incredibly uncomfortable. “Or... FRIDGE?”

Next to her are two fair-haired children—twins, about three years old—staring at me with plate-sized blue eyes. They’re sitting

on a brightly colored picnic blanket, with letter blocks laid out in front of them. One of them—clearly a genius—has just

pulled out the F and the U and laid them proudly in front of her.

“Fuck,” I say again, then wince. “Sorry.”

“It’s not that I want to control what you’re saying,” my neighbor says, clearly mortified. “At all. Curse to your heart’s

content! But I’m teaching them to spell today and they appear to be picking it up quite quickly.”

The cleverest twin has already picked up a K and is working out where to put it.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “My language is really terrible. My mother is constantly on at me about it. I’ll try to retrain my

vocabulary.”

My neighbor smiles, then looks at me with more concern.

“I didn’t realize you smoked.”

“I don’t.” I try to inhale again and begin coughing. “I just... thought it might help and it doesn’t.”

“Bad day?”

“It started well.” I grimace, stubbing out the cigarette on the ground. “Then it fell off the top of a mountain.”

“You’re Margot the Meteorologist, right?” My neighbor is looking at me more carefully. “My kids love your page. We watch every

video together.”

I wince again: yup, add Destroyer of Children to the list.

“I am so, so sorry about that.” I try to smile at them over the fence. “Hi! How are you? They’re very nice... bricks you

have there.”

Aaron was right. I really don’t know how to talk to kids.

They both stare blankly back at me.

“I’m Polly,” my neighbor says, holding out an elegant, fine-boned hand across our garden fence. She’s tall, naturally white-blonde,

beautiful, even in leggings and a T-shirt. “I don’t think we’ve met properly yet. I was going to introduce myself earlier,

but you seemed a little... focused. And I didn’t want you to think I was just, you know. Into the celebrity thing.”

A little focused. That’s a very nice way of saying bitchy and distant .

“I’m not a celebrity,” I say quickly. “I just make content in my living room. About things I already know. It’s nothing to

be impressed by. And it looks like it’s a short-lived experience anyway.”

You know what? Maybe the total destruction of my entire meteorology career is the perfect ending to the last decade.

“Is it...” Polly frowns and clears her throat. “Are you stressed about that last video you posted? Because we saw it and

it didn’t seem... very Margot.” She looks alarmed. “Not that I know you! Sorry. Just... it didn’t seem on-brand.”

“I don’t have a brand,” I admit bluntly. “I was too busy having some kind of mental breakdown.” I wave vaguely in the direction of my bonfire. “Which I think you caught a glimpse of, actually.”

“I did wonder.” She nods. “I’m not sure saucepans are really built to burn.”

The cardboard box of “KITCHEN SHIT” has eroded away and now it’s just a charred pile of Aaron’s cooking equipment: none of

which he needed, apparently, because “Lily has her own branded line.”

“I’m all over the place,” I admit. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

How do I explain that I haven’t known what I’m doing for so long, I can’t remember what it even feels like to know ?

“Actually,” Polly says thoughtfully, “I’m looking for work.”

I stare at her: weird segue.

“Oh!” I try to smile. “Cool! Well, good luck with that.”

“No, I mean—” She laughs. “I think I might be able to help you. That’s what I used to do, before the kids came along. Brand

management. But I stopped when Posy went to school, and then Perry and Paige came along and...”

I blink. Polly, Posy, Perry and Paige? Blimey.

“Oh, I know.” She smiles, embarrassed. “The names were my husband’s idea. Peter. He thought it made us a cute set , so I reluctantly went with it . He works a lot. Comes home very late, normally when they’ve gone to bed. And we can’t afford childcare. So I can’t really

go anywhere until they’ve started school too.”

I blink in surprise: husband? I have never seen a man in their garden.

In fairness, I only normally come outside to burn things in the middle of the night or swear into the sky, so I wasn’t paying

a lot of attention. Add that to the list of things right in front of me that I don’t notice.

“Right.” I’m thinking about it. “You think there’s anything you can do?”

“I could try.” She nods. “And we could delay payment until you get back on your feet? I’d be sad to see Margot the Meteorologist disappear. The kids look forward to your videos before bathtime every night. It really is such a lovely page.”

At the word page , the child I assume is Paige looks up hopefully.

“Not you, darling,” Polly says, stroking her head affectionately. “Go back to spelling FUDGE. There’s no J. That’s your first

clue.”

I pretend to think about it for a few seconds, but there’s really nothing to think about. If nothing else, it might at least

make me feel slightly less alone and encourage me to improve my posture.

“Yes,” I say before she changes her mind. “ Please. ”

“Great. It’s a deal.”

Polly grins at me confidently and I feel instantly reassured. She is poised, calm. Completely invincible.

“Is tomorrow too soon?” I wince slightly at my desperation. “Obviously, if it is, then that’s fine, but I’m just asking because—”

I nod to where my work phone is beeping incessantly in the house.

“I’ll come to yours first thing tomorrow.” Polly smiles, unruffled.

I feel her serenity seep over the fence toward me. I nod gratefully, wondering when the last time a cigarette saved lives.

And I didn’t even smoke it.

I may have just found my very own rainbow.