Riley was sorting through Julian’s understairs cupboard. It was like the TARDIS from Doctor Who—far bigger on the inside than you could possibly imagine from the outside. He wondered whether, when he finally reached the back of it, he’d find himself in another universe. Or Narnia perhaps. He certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it was snowing back there. It was freezing in here without a fire in the grate.
He’d spent one day last week photographing some of his discoveries and uploading them to eBay, and he’d already made more than seventy-five pounds in commission. If Julian would only let him have a rummage around in that dressing room, they could make a fortune. He’d suggested as much to Julian. “You are not selling one single sock,” Julian had growled at him. Just to make sure he’d been clear enough, he’d stood in the doorway, spreading out his gangly arms to bar entry, like a giant mutant stick insect.
Riley was surrounded by three large piles. One pile was for items he thought would sell well, one was things to throw away, and one was things to keep.
Today, he’d arrived just before ten a.m., knowing that Julian would be going out for his walk. Julian slowed the process down significantly. He would hover over Riley like a hawk, then swoop down, pulling a broken vase from the “dustbin” pile, exclaiming “Charlie gave that to me after my 1975 exhibition on New Bond Street. Sold out in two days! Princess Margaret came, you know. I think she rather fancied me.” Theatrical gaze into the distance. “Mary did not like her. Not one little bit. Filled with pink peonies, if I remember correctly! Can’t possibly let go of that one, young Riley. No, no, no. That wouldn’t do at all.”
This morning, after an hour to himself, Riley had made significant progress. As soon as Julian was back, they’d start the long and torturous negotiation process, made bearable by being interspersed with Julian’s wonderfully colorful and ribald anecdotes from the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
He would pick up one of the vinyl albums from the pile, dust it off, and place it on the old record player, regaling Riley with stories of how he’d partied with Sid Vicious and Nancy, or who he’d seduced to the soundtrack of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.” Riley wasn’t sure how much he believed. Julian seemed to have been present at every significant social event in recent history, from dinners with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies to the party where Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were arrested for possession of marijuana.
Yesterday, Julian had introduced Riley to the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. When he’d sat on the beach in Perth, imagining his trip to London, he had not thought that he’d spend his time playing air guitar while a geriatric belted out the lyrics of “Anarchy in the UK” into an empty beer bottle masquerading as a microphone. He’d realized with some alarm, as the song (if you could call it that) came to an end, that Julian’s eyes had welled up.
“Are you OK, Julian?” he’d asked.
“I’m fine,” he’d replied, flapping a hand in front of his face like a dying moth. “It’s just that when I listen to songs like this, it comes rushing back so vividly. I’m surrounded again by all those extraordinary people, my friends, in that incredible era. Then the track ends, and I remember I’m just an old man left with a dusty stylus bobbing up and down on smooth vinyl and too many regrets.” Riley hadn’t known what to say to that. What was a stylus?
Riley’s trip to London was proving to be the best of times and the worst of times. He loved the city, despite the tooth-numbing cold. He’d made some wonderful friends. The only problem was Monica. The more time Riley spent with her, the more he admired her. He loved her determination, her feistiness, and her fierce intellect. He loved the way she’d picked up Julian and so elegantly pulled him into her circle, making him feel wanted and useful, not pitied. He loved her passion for her café and its customers. Just being with Monica made him feel more brave, energetic, and adventurous.
But Riley hated the fact that their whole relationship was founded on a lie. Or, at least, a lack of truth. And the longer he left it, the harder it was to come clean. How was she going to react when she discovered that she was an ex-cokehead’s pity project? She’d be furious. Or devastated. Or humiliated. Or all three.
Riley kept trying to forget about The Authenticity Project, but the information he’d read couldn’t be unread. Usually, he’d just relax and enjoy the time he had with a potential lover, going with the flow and seeing where it led. But with Monica, he was too conscious of what she’d written in the book. He knew she wanted a long-term relationship, marriage, babies, the works, but he was just looking to have fun on his way through Europe. Wasn’t he?
The spirit of Hazard had even haunted the lovely evening he’d spent in her apartment. Remembering Hazard’s hypothesis about Monica alphabetizing her bookcase, he hadn’t been able to resist checking it out. It turned out she didn’t sort her books by alphabet; she color-coded them. More visually satisfying, she’d said.
The truth was, he had too much information, and Monica had not enough, and it was complicating everything. He couldn’t even work out how much he genuinely liked Monica, and to what extent his feelings were a result of Hazard’s matchmaking. If he’d been left to his own devices, would he have liked her less? Or perhaps more? In all likelihood, they’d never have met.
Until Riley had come across The Authenticity Project, he’d been totally authentic. Now he was a sham.
The only solution he could see was to make sure he didn’t get any more deeply involved. Then, when he moved on in a few months, Monica wouldn’t be too hurt and—crucially—she’d never find out how it’d all started. That meant no more kissing. Actually, scrap that—that (rather enjoyable) ship had already sailed—but definitely, categorically, no sex. Riley was good at treating sex casually, but he rather suspected Monica wouldn’t be.