CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Twelve

MELISSA

I stood staring at her; at Dahlia.

The potential that had existed for this thing to go either way; for the decision to fall in favour of either future path... It had existed as some magical, writhing creature all summer, escalating in tension as the stakes of our physical transformations had risen. There had been the tiniest smidgeon of it that first time she had asked to swap places, back at Summertop: the possibility of a real and total trade of places. On the side of the Dorset Way in the thunderstorm, when I had been contemplating ending it all and Dahlia had appeared like magic through the curtain of rain to offer a different possibility; it had been even more possible. Each day; each week; each month that had passed since then, had made the unreal potential of her really wanting to go all the way with this seem first plausible, despite its foolishness, and then seem actually likely.

Despite her waverings and doubts since our arrival in Greece, I had allowed myself to think it could really happen; to coax her toward it, to push myself harder than I had ever pushed myself in my life; to even plan and book the facial reconstruction procedures, the plane tickets, the hotel rooms.

It hadn’t been a done deal – of course I’d known that – but my confidence had grown anyway. I’d let myself believe it out of a necessity and desperation to have something to cling on to, and I realised now why that was.

Because if Dahlia were to refuse then all power would be taken away from me.

The potential had flicked back and forth between the different possibilities, driving me to frenzy – I hadn’t realised how enveloped in stress I had been and all the more over these last weeks.

Because suddenly that whip-snapping alternation of potential was gone – the decision had been made – and it was suddenly blindingly clear to me how little power or control I had ever had over this.

I thought I had. I thought when she relinquishes her name and handed it to me along with her purse and pin codes, that I was truly becoming the dominant one. I had set up the awful circumstances for her here at the Castle Hotel. I had refused to allow her to move over to a cushier life at my hotel. I had insisted on her learning the intricacies of my history and on lowering her standards and self-image so as to take her place within this iniquitous pit of cleaners and abuse cooks.

I had become slim and beautiful like a princess in a fairytale, able to get... almost any man I desired.

But here, finally, it turned out that I had no say in the matter whatsoever; not really.

I wanted to go to Thailand and change our faces; really become one another. I had done everything; given... my soul to this; and now, with a few words she had shut that down forever with her smug, implacable, sad-faced conclusion.

I had faced all my demons. I had accepted that I was wrong to be trying to take her life but I had pushed forward anyway, really damaging my heart in the process; accepting that lesser image of myself and embracing it; that corruption. Now, with her whim, she had made that sacrifice meaningless. She had cost me my soul for nothing in return.

Everything I had done had been a waste, as her, now, she had simply snuffed it out. I had never had anything more than an illusion of power. All of this had been the playing out of this ridiculous rich woman’s fantasies and nothing more. Now that she had had enough, it was over. My feelings didn’t matter one whit.

She stood there, looking at me and what was that in her tired, muddled, inebriated face? What quality was framed at last, in this moment when the potential of that fabulous future life was being ripped away from me?

Her body was still but there was a quivering of energy beneath the surface of her face as though she were readying herself to speak further or show some sign of... something. My own gaze flicked from one element of her facial features to the next, waiting to catch the clues of what that would be. It was coming now. The moments of stunned silence were coming to an end. Yes. There.

Her cheeks shifted; the line of her mouth the curvature of her eyes; and she took on a cast of... sadness... apology... and pity. Pity for me. For me! Who had had it all just seconds ago!

I had been Dahlia Western with all the potential to remain that way forever; a rich, retired model living in a palatial home; beautiful, slender, perfect. And maybe I could have even gone back there to England and restarted that career, become the celebrity that she had been so afraid of becoming again. Maybe I could have gotten acting parts; starred in movies and really done anything I had ever desired.

And now, instead, I had nothing. That potential had been whipped away from me by her whimsy; her stupid, pathetic, fucked-in-the-head, on-again/off-again fantasies; and all she could do; all she could give me back; was a slow look of condescending pity.

I had never liked any of my employers. They had always made me feel like a second class citizen; like they were supposed to be better than me, even though they weren’t, just by virtue of their wealth or position. I had resented Dahlia in just the same way. Of course I had, with her beautiful house and perfect figure; her beauty that I couldn’t possess and her wealth and fame. But things were different now. When she had wanted to swap places I had looked down on her and begrudged the ridiculousness of it all. I had scorned her unenviable descent into madness and alcoholism, even though it mirrored my own.

But she had made me believe I could have this life. She had all but offered it to me. For that I hated her. I loathed her. Right now I wanted nothing more than to roar with pain and anger and drive her backwards through the very wall to plummet to her death. If there had been a balcony I might actually have done it.

I. Might. Actually. Have done it.

Thinking that now made my hands quiver and close into fists at my hips. It made the world contract about me until all I could feel was the burning rush of real rage in my head and shoulders – the rest of my body was ethereal – stabbing daggers of fury pressing through each of my eyes from behind, and the terrible vision of her crumpling face, looking at me as though she truly understood what her decision meant to me.

She couldn’t understand, though I bet she thought she did. I bet she thought she knew exactly how hard it would be for me to step down from the plinth of her life and go back to mine. She had walked in my shoes all summer. I bet she thought she was a fricking expert!

But it wasn’t about being fat. It wasn’t about being a cleaner, or poor, or ridiculed by those around me, or having no friends, or sinking deeper and deeper into vice and despair.

It was about the total lack of potential – that was what becoming Melissa would be like for me again. To have had every possibility and then have it removed just because this debutante felt like it; as though my life meant nothing.

Behind those sad eyes, was she justifying it all right now? Was she thinking, Hey, it’s okay! Melissa got to have an all-expenses paid long summer holiday. She got to lose all that weight. She got to see how the other half lives.

And now she gets to go back to that loving husband of hers.

That loving, fucking husband, Robert.

Oh, how I had laughed about the lies I spewed her regarding him; at the misty looks she got to imagine having someone so wonderful to look after her. And now who was the fucking joke on? Who was doomed to go back to that; top live with him and return to the selfsame abuse that had dogged me all my adult life?

Certainly not her. Not fucking Dahlia.

Me. Only me.

She could justify things as much as she wanted but we both knew my life was over now. I might as well have ended it in the Spring; walking out onto the dual-carriageway into the path of a truck.

It didn’t matter what I’d achieved; the weight I’d lost. There was no way I would be able to maintain that when we went back; no way I would manage to cling on to any of the so-called advantages I’d achieved.

The despair would return – it already was returning – and I would submit to it fully; I knew that. How could I not? I had no real strength of my own. I never had. I was a pathetic fake who had survived in Dahlia’s lie only by virtue of its fantasy nature. Once the real world smacked me back down I would crumble instantly. I would fall into the cogs of the humdrum world and be every bit as crushed as ever I was. The drinking would return. The self-loathing would return. The overeating and everything that entailed would return.

Dahlia, in her well-meaning, utterly selfish fancies had lifted me up from the brink of ruin only to dash me back down again.

I hadn’t been happy when we had started the swaps but I had been existing. How quickly had these games pushed me to realise that I couldn’t live my life anymore? Why would my future be any different now?

And maybe it was lucky there wasn’t a balcony after all, because now it felt like it wouldn’t be her going over it, clawed beneath my rage. It would be me; stumbling into wilful oblivion as the truth of my wasted potential overcame me.

And then suddenly Dahlia spoke and even in this she had the power to strip away this space I’d claimed for my emotions to run riot. Of course she did. She controlled everything. She always had.

She fixed me in her gaze and locked me there and the sides of her mouth turned up, even has her brow crinkled inward and her eyes took on a mockery of sadness and empathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. But it has to be this way. You understand, don’t you?”

And she looked at me, expecting some platitudinal answer; something glib that exonerated her of any blame in the terrible ruin she was about to make of my life again, and I thought to myself, You fucking bitch. You fucking bitch to do this and then honestly think it’s okay; that I might make you feel better when all you’re doing is stabbing me in the back.

And then I replied and there was venom like battery acid in my voice that made that dopey, sad-sack expression of hers flinch right off her face.

“No,” I said. “I don’t fucking understand, you nasty, stupid little shit. I don’t fucking understand at all.”