Fairhaven Chapter 9

Outreach

Read Chapter 8 here

10.00 pm, Friday, January 28, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – 8 Gurney Drive
Global average temperature: 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels

Two years after she moved in, very little in Grace’s room could attest to its being lived in. A neat bed, a small table with a lamp, a desk, and a chest of drawers in the corner made up the complete set of furniture; a monk’s cell would have more personality. 

The spareness of her room reflected the spareness of her life. She spent her days on the Fairhaven site, or at the client’s offices, in meeting rooms giving endless status updates. Her evening meals were either a quick bowl of noodles at a shop, or fast food in a shopping mall. Once a month, she and Hans met the other anxious people whose emotions were brought to a standstill by climate change. She spent her weekends at the old Penang Public Library on Jalan Scotland, writing out stories to distract herself. 

Her little collection of ‘alternate history’ stories was growing. They were a little old-fashioned, in the sense that every story she wrote had a moral and a happy ending. However, she didn’t know how to publicise the stories. The idea of exposing her innermost thoughts in public was horrifying. Yet she yearned to share them with the world, to give people the feeling that society might not be doomed, after all, that ingenuity and action could save things. Hans was an enthusiastic reader, but he knew nothing of the publishing world. 

Grace rolled over on her empty bed and opened her phone. She had seen on LinkedIn that Nant was now based in London full time, and had something to do with books or magazines. Maybe her old flatmate would have advice. 

Nant was using the new social platform, Orac. Grace opened a chat window. 

‘Are you up for a virtual coffee later next Friday?’ she typed. She waited, and then a little icon of a keyboard flashed.

8.00 pm, Friday, February 4, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – 8 Gurney Drive 

A week later, Grace wandered to the communal kitchen to pour herself a mixed drink. Living with her aunties, she would never have dared, but her easy-going colleagues had taught her the appeal of a cocktail to end the working week. She brought it onto her balcony, leaned back in the chair, and opened the laptop. As Nant’s image appeared on the screen, adjusting her earphones, she laughed to see that the other woman was sitting in a cafe, holding a tall glass filled with an amber liquid, foamy at the top. 

‘Look at you, Nant! I thought it was lunchtime over there. Has living in the UK made a day drinker of you?’

Nant shrilled with laughter. ‘I could say the same about you! I bet you anything that your glass has more than a Fanta in it.’

‘Guilty! That’s what comes of leaving the family compound for good. So, how have you been? That’s an extraordinary hat you’re wearing, by the way.’

‘Busy, busy, busy. You’re letting your hair grow out! It looks brilliant. You’re still working at Fairhaven; the vengeful fishermen haven’t got you yet?’

‘Who? Oh, the fishermen! No, there’s a new offshore project that is providing jobs for them.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ replied Nant. ‘I was worried about you, but I also always felt a little guilty about those men losing their jobs.’

‘Speaking of jobs: remind me what it is you do now. Didn’t you study fashion design?’

‘I started out at one of the women’s magazines here, but, you know, the whole media business is dying, so that magazine closed down, but my boss’s boss liked what I’d been doing, so she asked me to stay on at one of the company’s other divisions. By the way – are you on a balcony?’

‘Oh, you didn’t know! I moved into this new penthouse apartment with a bunch of guys from work. It’s incredible! Let me show you.’ She turned the computer around, giving Nant a full view of the lights scattered over mud flats that would one day become a new city. ‘I’ll bring you inside for a minute. Here’s my room.’

‘Did you just move in? There’s nothing in there.’

‘I spend a lot of time at work,’ Grace replied defensively. ‘We have six bedrooms, and mine has its own bathroom. We all share the communal space. Zygmunt is the one who uses the kitchen most of the time, though – that’s him, right there; say hello! – because he’s the only one of us who knows how to cook.’

Zygmunt came out, with two Ziploc bags in hand. ‘I’m marinating the tofu first. Did you know you can fasten two of these together by turning one upside down? Then you have a double-sided bag.’ Grace smiled at the trick – another of Zygmunt’s perpetual life hacks – and continued Nant’s tour.

‘And this is the living room. Hans and Ivan use the TV to play games. Ivan is the little one. And that’s Hans, with the beer. Johnnie is always travelling, so he’s never here. And Scott keeps this weird schedule where he gets up before dawn to work out and goes to bed before anyone else is home in the evening. But I guess he’s doing something right. The other day when his phone fell underneath the sofa, he lifted the end of the sofa with one arm like he was the Incredible Hulk.’

‘You should see the little hole I’m in. It’s one step away from coal stoves and cholera in the drains. So you live with a bunch of guys?’

‘It took a lot of convincing to explain it to my aunties, but they came around in the end.’

‘Is any of them more than a friend? What about that tall one, the blond guy with the beer? He was cute.’

Grace felt herself blushing. ‘Hans? On the record, we’re colleagues, and I can’t date someone I work with. Off the record, we’ve been … baking a lot of sourdough bread together.’ 

Nant shrieked with delight. ‘I knew it! And don’t let the colleague thing get in the way. You yourself said that you spend all your time at work. So it’s not like you’re going to date anyone else.’

‘Hey, I didn’t call you to be interrogated. What about you, anyway? Where’s your husband and your 1.5 children?’

‘Children? I wouldn’t dare! London will be underwater by the time they’re out of secondary school.’

‘No kidding. Wait, I left my drink on the balcony. Let’s go back out there.’

‘Suits me. In reality, I’m still sitting here at a cafe in Shoreditch waiting for a screenwriter to come and pitch me.’

Grace frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound like magazines.’

‘Streamberry. I’m a talent agent now. I acquire rights to stories from glamorous and famous people, and get them to sign away their lives. It’s terribly dull.’

‘That sounds like the perfect job for you,’ Grace said. ‘I mean, except for the part about asking them to sign away their lives. You’ve always been such a fashionista; I bet the glamorous people look at you and know they’ll be in glamorous company.’

‘The main problem is that it’s hard to know who your true friends are. So tell me the truth: you didn’t get in touch because you have a screenplay to flog? If you didn’t, that would be a first! Everyone we ever knew in secondary school has contacted me because they have got the perfect new series for Streamberry.’

Grace reddened again, this time with real embarrassment. ‘In a certain way, yes. But not like that.’

Nant sighed. ‘That’s what they all say, darling. Well, go ahead. What have you got for me?’

‘I remembered you had something to do with magazines and thought you might be able to give me advice. I’m not trying to sell a new series to Streamberry. I’ve just written a series of short stories, and I was wondering …’ she trailed off. What did she want? To be published in an erudite literary magazine? No. She wanted everyone to see her stories. She wanted them to change the world. 

Nant spoke gently. ‘Darling, that’s not how it works now. People don’t get rich and famous by writing short stories and selling them. They already are rich, or famous, or both, and that’s why their stories sell.’

‘So what do the rest of us do? Those who are neither?’

‘Keep writing. Get better at it. Send me your stories, just in case. And try to build up your own audience online. Orac offers a lot of tools to make it easier nowadays. And I’m not saying that because they’re our new parent company.’

It was good advice, although not what she wanted to hear. ‘Thanks, Nant. And I did want to know how you were.’

‘Of course you did!’

‘Is there any chance of you ever coming back to Penang?’

‘What, to that awful construction site you call a city? No thank you! Call me again when you’ve closed the locks.’

Grace smiled. ‘I don’t suppose you want to watch a show with me, the way we used to? We could each get snacks, and you and I could stream it at the same time. No,’ she realised, snapping out of the fantasy, ‘it doesn’t make sense. It’s the middle of your working day, and I’m sure you spend all of your time overwhelmed with video content as it is.’

‘Darling, I would absolutely love to do that, and I’m not kidding at all. I can’t today, but maybe another time? In the meantime, here’s a tip for you: assuming you have a Streamberry account, you should watch this new show that launched last week. It’s one of the ones I scored.’ Nant typed the name into the chat window. 

‘Thanks for the tip! Okay, have a great afternoon. Let’s talk soon.’ Grace ended the call on more of an abrupt note than she intended, and felt a twinge of sadness in her certainty that it would be years before they spoke again.

Empty glass in hand, she wandered into the living room, where Hans and Ivan were wrapping up a game. ‘Okay if I watch TV for a while?’

‘Sure!’ replied Hans, tossing her the remote and getting up. ‘We just finished.’

Grace navigated to ‘New Releases’, where the Orac algorithm had pre-selected a group of ‘Suggestions for You’. To her surprise, the series Nant recommended was already at the top of the list. ‘I swear that thing listens to my conversations!’ she chuckled. As the opening scenes played, Hans returned with a beer and sat back down next to her.

Ivan stayed in a half-standing, half-sitting position in the easy chair, ready to move if the show was boring, ready to watch if it had promise.

Read Chapter 10 here