Page 33 of Wish You Were Her

She went to her room. Not her room, really; George’s spare bedroom. The room she was currently sleeping in. It would go back to being spare when she returned to the city.

It was not her home. She did not belong there. The little world of sanctuary she had come looking for was no longer there, in Lake Pristine.

It had been a silly dream, she thought. Silly to want a world to yourself when the world had decided that it owned you.

Jonah walked home in the early morning daylight. He turned his phone on and it was instantly ringing. His mother.

“Hey,” he said on picking up.

“I’m still with Aunt Shosh but she saw something online and then we turned on the breakfast show—”

“So, you’ve seen the pictures,” he said, his voice flat and without feeling.

“Yes! Jonah, are you all right? Is Allegra all right?”

“I’m okay.” Jonah felt a lump in his throat, at both her kindness and her refreshing lack of judgment. “Allegra’s… not.”

Allegra had gone to her room and when Jonah had knocked, she had pleaded with him to leave.

He felt completely disassembled. He knew what images like that meant for a young woman and he hated himself for not protecting her.

He hated that she was distraught. He hated that she didn’t think he was the person that could make it all go away.

And he couldn’t stop thinking of how she had declared there to be no relationship, how adamant she had been about it.

He had taken a work number and an email address from Natalie, determined to put the whole thing right somehow.

“I’m scared for you, honey. Aunt Shosh is driving me back to Lake Pristine right now.”

“Okay,” Jonah said, on autopilot. “I need some sleep.”

“Yes, get some rest. I’m so sorry, but we will fix this.”

He hung up as he arrived at his family’s bakery. It was shut but there were a few people lingering on the curb.

“Are you Jonah Thorne?” a woman in a transparent raincoat asked. “Can we have a comment from you about Allegra Brooks?”

He said nothing, letting himself into the apartment without even acknowledging her. He jogged up the stairs to their front door, let himself inside and went straight to his bedroom. He collapsed onto the double bed and finally started to check his messages.

A voice note from Kerrie: “Wow, Jonah, just wow. Couldn’t wait five minutes. Screw you. Or not. Whatever.”

A few more reassuring messages of support from both his mother and Aunt Shosh.

Some gross texts of feigned sympathy from people he hadn’t spoken to since leaving school, followed up by invasive questions from them as they nosily pressed their faces up against the window of his life.

Plus a few random journalists, sending almost identical requests for comment. One voicemail from a woman with a very toffee-nosed voice.

“Hello, Jonah, Julie M. Atkins here, celebrity journalist. I wondered if I could get a quote from you about the young madam that is Allegra—”

He deleted everything.

As if under a strange spell, he opened YouTube.

He started to type her name, but the algorithm had already anticipated his interest. There was a video from the official channel of a morning talk show called Morning Tea .

The video had only thirty thousand views, but it was climbing rapidly.

Allegra’s full name was in the video title.

There were four women around a table, in front of a live television audience. There was a huge screen behind them, which showed the picture of Jonah kissing Allegra from behind.

“Can we even show this on morning TV?” asked the blondest of the three blonde women at the table, laughing loudly but with nothing behind her eyes.

“As a massive Court of Bystanders fan,” another woman said, “we haven’t seen this girl for months, then all of a sudden we get this? Good on you, girl, go get yours.”

“I don’t know,” the only brunette interrupted, looking serious. “I feel bad for her.”

“You feel bad for her?” shrieked the first woman. “Estelle, she’s debasing herself for the whole world to see—”

“She’s been photographed without her consent in what looks like a private residence,” the brunette said, with enough force to stop the audience from laughing at the exaggerated outrage from the first woman. “She’s not ‘debasing herself,’ LeeAnn. She’s with—probably with her boyfriend.”

“Then who was the guy she was with just hours before those pictures were taken?” the final blonde woman asked. “I’m barely following this drama.”

“We have a statement from her team about that,” Estelle said, lifting a small cue card from the table.

She read from it, seemingly verbatim. “Allegra Brooks would like her privacy to be respected at this time. A member of the public took an unwanted photograph of an unwanted kiss from a work colleague and Miss Brooks would like to put the entire ordeal behind her.”

Jonah stared at the screen. He hadn’t even been mentioned.

The statement was deliberately vague. Natalie had kept him out of it completely.

He should have felt relieved. Instead he felt dejected, useless.

He wanted to claim the pictures. He wanted to be unapologetic.

Proud, even. He wanted to take care of Allegra and physically fight anyone who had something nasty or self-righteous to say.

But he had been erased.

“We have a journalist on the phone,” Estelle said, turning to look into another camera. “Julie M. Atkins, you’ve interviewed Allegra Brooks before, you are her most recent interviewer. What were your impressions of her?”

Jonah frowned, recognizing the name from the voicemail on his phone. He glowered as the same snobbish, disembodied voice began to speak.

“She’s a real struggle to interview, I’ll say that much,” Julie said, sounding utterly delighted to be on the air. “She gives herself airs, so it’s actually quite fabulous to see her being humbled like this.”

“She’s a kid,” Estelle said, quietly and with a look of distaste, but Julie barrelled on.

“To be perfectly honest though, when I met her, I found her to be a tad… off. A bit of a cold fish. So these pictures were a surprise.”

“What was ‘off’ about her?” asked LeAnn.

“Can’t put my finger on it. Just something.”

“She was Little Miss Squeaky Clean before this,” LeeAnn added smugly. “Not much of a role model anymore, is she? And those lakehouse pictures were no unwanted kiss. That was far too steamy.”

“No, the kiss with…” Estelle checked her notes, “… Simon Hannigan was unwanted. Not sure about the dark-haired one.”

Jonah rolled his eyes. It was surreal to hear Simon’s name on television.

“She’s eighteen years old,” Estelle went on, eyeing her colleagues with a steely look.

“She’s a baby. She’s doing what millions of other young adults are doing, all over the world, except she has eyes on her at all times.

People should leave her alone. If this were my daughter, I would be fighting all of you. ”

“Your daughter would not do this, Estelle.”

“My daughter has done this, LeeAnn. Everyone at this table has. It just hasn’t ended up in the tabloids. Let’s move on.”

Jonah threw his phone across the room and swore. He buried his head in his hands. He wanted to take the last few hours and fight them but he couldn’t. A reputation was a fragile thing that could not be handled or grasped or even rescued.

He pulled his ancient laptop toward him and he started to write, what he always did when he had too many feelings to process and the air wouldn’t come. He wrote his friend an email. He poured out everything he felt. Everything that he knew was inevitable.

But for some reason, he didn’t release it. His finger hovered over the “send” button but he could not bring himself to do it. He saved it to his drafts and fell into a tormented sleep instead.