Extract from Sabrina

Alex Blank

Sabrina knows things.

She knows that she likes the Chiswick Caffe Nero, where she can go upstairs, sit by the window and look at the view. She knows the cakes at Nikki’s Bakery are not very good, but they have nice coffee and pretty mugs. She knows Ole & Steen feels clinical but has surprisingly good avocado sourdough. She knows that the High Road Costa is for hiding out in cosy darkness. She knows Torthai is empty at midday and has delicious Pad Thai. She knows Heisenberg’s hot chocolate is mediocre, but she still loves it because she was in love when she drank it. She knows the Waft Coffee cinnamon pretzel looks divine but is, in fact, nauseating. She knows she loves the Gourmet Burger Kitchen’s pesto chicken burger, but she only orders it takeaway. She knows Byron makes good burgers too, when she’s in the mood for something less opulent. She knows all of this information matters, if not deeply, then very dearly to her.

She knows other things, too. She knows the off-licence near Turnham Green station only sells the small 230g Nutella jars, as well as expired Grycan ice cream. She knows buying binge food in the large Sainsbury’s near Chiswick Park is exhausting, and the endless queue makes one rethink their life choices several times before, inevitably, one still ends up at checkout. She knows every inch of every aisle of the Tesco in Acton: she knows where her regulars are, where the treats are, she knows which prices are good for her money, which items at Reduced to Clear to trust. She knows it’s not worth it to buy binge food at any store with ‘express’ or ‘local’ next to its name, because one ends up overspending and underindulging. She knows that if she ends up going to the store two minutes away from her flat, she will only end up buying multiple jars of Nutella and tubs of ice cream, occasionally some Milka bars.

She knows the toilet in Outsider Tart. She knows the toilet in Nikki’s Bakery. She knows the toilet at Angie’s. She knows the toilet at Pizza Express. She knows the toilet at Chiswick’s Premiere Inn. She knows, very well, the toilet in her flat.

One has to take pride in something, and she chooses to take pride in this knowledge.

Sabrina has been living in Chiswick for a year now, and while tempted to systemise this useless yet vital information, she stops herself every time. It would be odd to do so, wouldn’t it? She imagines some professional hacker trying to get intel on her family through her, and instead finding lists and spreadsheets of grocery stores, prices, favourite binge food items, as well as strategic routes and visit times to avoid crowds in any of these places. She wonders what they would think of that. That’s why she doesn’t do it. She needs to trust that all of this is important enough for her brain to hold onto it for dear life. It usually does.

But all of this reminds her of the intricacies of her particular neurology, and so she grabs another jar and another spoon and she ties her hair so that she doesn’t have to worry about that later, and she taste-buds herself into distraction. 

She can forget about the time of day, the day of the week, the month, the year, she can even forget about her name, but she cannot forget about the cat. He’s used to her binges by now. When she first got him, she opened the door of her room ahead of binging episodes and pointed outside, while he stared at her and eventually left. Later on, all it took was for her to open whatever plastic packaging she had on hand, of crisps or chocolate, and he was gone by himself. His look has changed, though: he’d gone from appalled through inquisitive through worried to something else. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking now.

The cat is Sabrina’s main source of companionship these days. She’d adopted him a week after she moved here. She felt lonely, but not lonely enough, so one September afternoon she went to a cat shelter and bribed someone to let her adopt a cat on the day and not to answer any questions. She came back home with a black Cornish Rex she named Audrey Hepburn. There was something about that malnourished look of his that drew her in.

Her parents were sceptical about this decision. Sometimes she thinks they’re scared of her. When she told them she was going to defer drama school in Chiswick and strike out on her own for a year, they only asked two questions: ‘How much do you need?’, and ‘Do you want a one-bed or a two-bed?’ She chose a three-bed, with no intention of ever inviting anyone in.

One year later, with no real acting credits to her name and damaged tooth enamel, her parents give her an ultimatum: to enrol in drama school, or to find a job. 

*

She gets a call from Emily and hits ‘decline.’

Since the two of them broke up, Emily had texted Sabrina a few times: Are you okay? and Can we talk? and I worry about you. She had ignored all of them. But Emily hasn’t called until now. For a split second, Sabrina’s breath gets lost in her stomach.

She goes to a charity shop and buys an Alexander Wang dress for £40. It’s black and tight, with a cut down one knee. Then she visits the Alexander Wang website and buys another one for £795. A mini halter in faux suede. It’s baby pink and short and sleeveless, with a unique bind along the neck. She mutes her phone and breathes.

The dress arrives a few days later. In the evening, Sabrina stares at both of them, tosses a coin, and wears the black one. She goes to a nearby pub, white and modern and bordering on clinical, and she’s ready to be watched. She ignores the lights that are too bright and the sounds that are too loud, because normal people don’t think about such things. She hides her desperation as much as she can, and eventually a guy approaches her. It’s her usual pattern, and she’s already bored.

As he starts to talk about himself, she thinks about Emily. Her red lipstick always clashed with her tomboyish wardrobe, which made her look ridiculous and sexy. The fact that she could stay calm in any situation made Sabrina resent her, which made her resent herself, and that always kept her on familiar edge. Losing control around Emily felt like a challenge. What was it that Sabrina could do or say to finally cross her threshold, to put her on edge?

Sabrina never told her that she did this. But she didn’t see it as cheating. She’s not attracted to men, never has been, but she likes to know if they’re attracted to her. So she’d had routinely bought another dress and gone to another pub, and waited for a guy to approach her. When her and Emily had started dating she stopped doing that, but a couple of months in Emily had stayed over and Sabrina watched her sleep and she knew she was getting attached, so a few days later she found herself talking to some wannabe lawyer in a suit with cheap plastic buttons and then escaping when she knew she’d had his interest. 

And now she’s back in again. This time the guy is a CEO of a start-up, with too much gel in his hair and a shadow of a lisp. 

These interactions never fail to make her uncomfortable. Having to look them in the eye, say all the right and charming things, remain at ease at all times. Then there’s the business of subtlety, where one makes them believe that everything the game had led up to was their idea in the first place. It’s all about flirting between the lines.

But she can’t do it tonight. She can’t do anything. As she tries to move closer to the guy, something stops her. There seems to be a psychic barrier between them, or within her. She finds the dress itchy and too tight, and begins to worry that her face is oily or that she looks fat. But she feels so hungry, she might faint if she stands up, so she’s trapped. 

At this moment, all she wants to do is curl under the blanket with Audrey Hepburn. But she knows that if she goes back home, she will feel it again. The burning in the stomach, on the tongue. She won’t be able to stop herself.

 ‘I need to go to the loo, excuse me,’ she finds herself saying, and she walks out of the bar when he isn’t looking.

*

Sabrina lives in the middle of Abinger Road, in a building with a balcony on the first floor. The bedrooms are upstairs but sometimes going up feels like too much so she sleeps on the sofa, Audrey Hepburn curled up between her legs.

There are many places she’s gone too but hasn’t seen. She hasn’t seen the swans in Chiswick House & Gardens. She hasn’t seen the skeleton-like branches in the darkness of Acton Green. She hasn’t seen the rainbow-coloured chairs by the river on Strand-on-the-Green. She has smelled Italian food from that unassuming place one passes when walking down Chiswick Mall and kept her head down.

When she walks, it’s with her eyes down and with a purpose. There are many places she hasn’t seen because she’s not looking.

Looking is a tricky business. Looking, staring, watching, gazing. Unlike flirting, the earnestness of all of those takes courage. Sabrina is very aware of the power of eye contact, and so she saves up her energy for when she needs it most. For that reason, she doesn’t know what it’s like for the gaze to be an end in itself. 

Maybe it’s impossible to know how to look when one is too preoccupied with being looked at. Maybe being looked at is a curse and no one knows. Maybe the reason Sabrina fell in love with acting is because that made it seem like being looked at was her choice.

But really, it all started with clothes.

Sabrina keeps the second bedroom in the flat for her clothes. She doesn’t like throwing anything away. She tries to make herself believe it’s in the name of her loyalty to fashion, but a part of her knows it’s out of loyalty to—perhaps loyalty itself. When one tends to run away from things, it’s a natural instinct to stay desperately loyal towards something.

There is something here besides style, though. Something about pushing through the discomfort, because no fabric or piece of clothing ever feels comfortable, about the agency of mixing and matching, about having the control to change one’s aesthetic on a daily basis. It’s also what she loves about acting.

When Sabrina was a kid, she had gone through phases, and the clothing and acting went hand in hand. There was a period where she’d only dressed in cheetah-print clothing; it was also the time she was obsessed with re-enacting Barbie films. There was the now painful to recall fascination with yellow; that one went along with stealing Shakespeare plays from her mother’s bookcase, ones she did not understand but loved to memorise and act out.

She also remembers the day she couldn’t fit into her favourite dress anymore, which made her stop acting for months.

When enacting a carefully constructed persona is much more important to someone than stumbling in the dark to find their ‘real self,’ then acting on stage certainly feels like more of a home than anything else. Being looked at stops being a punishment then; it becomes proof that one’s disguise is working.

Sabrina’s mother had started to call acting her ‘autistic special interest,’ allegedly trying to connect with her, but she remains convinced that her mother only wanted to assert dominance in the knowledge of what drove her daughter’s actions, as if she was not a person but a specimen. A wax work with a flat affect, the only expression being one of melting. Sabrina had seen an old film about it once. There was a scene where all the wax works burned and melted, showing their inherent falsity and deformity within. When she watched it, she felt scared. 

In that case, anything could be a special interest. Breathing could be a special interest. Eating could be one. In Sabrina’s case, the latter is true, but the point still stands.

But the walking, or lack thereof, can be explained. 

A week or so after she moved in, Sabrina went for a stroll around the town. High on chocolate and weightless from money spent, she needed to do something, walk somewhere, so she went by the river, to a park, had a Ferrero Rocher crepe for lunch, and then she walked more until her legs broke yet she kept on walking.

Coming back, past the treed avenues and treed high streets and underground passages and into the hall, up the stairs, to the room, to the—

where were her sunglasses? They were not hanging on her shirt, which was where she’d put them when the sun began to disappear. 

Where were the sunglasses? Where were the shades? The thing that allowed her to walk, but no one knew that, and pretend not to be seen, but she didn’t tell anyone that, and pretend she was not there, and look without looking and see without having to see.

Acting on the street is not the same. Acting on the street has no script. Acting on stage has a safety net: the curtain, the contrast of darkness and light, the audience to ignore or jump at or imagine in their underwear, or the backstage, or the flowers and applause, or the dreary disappointment of the inherent solitude of every performer, or

Somehow she found herself rocking back and forth. How did she get on the bed? She realised she was completely and utterly blind without her sunglasses.

They were fancy ones, too. Before moving to Chiswick, she’d gone to change the lenses and the person behind the counter cleverly convinced her to upgrade, to buy some special lenses that made things look clearer and eyes shinier, though she never actually noticed any difference when wearing them. She paid a lot of money for that. And now she would need new glasses. She wouldn’t survive without shade, without glass, to break her down, expose her to the sun that knows.

And what about when the sun is gone? In the winter months, glasses won’t save her. Surely, she knew that.

She then realised how weak she was. The wearing of the sunglasses on all occasions, in all places, even the tube, even cafes, was weak. She tried to convince herself it was trendy and cool and mysterious and rich, that the glasses made her something, someone, somewhere. But really she was only a scared little girl, and she loathed that. So she decided she would never wear sunglasses ever again.

Nowadays, she occasionally walks up to the door, puts her hand on the handle, thinks Maybe today, maybe it’ll be okay, but withdraws. She doesn’t go on walks and she sees nothing.

*

Sabrina used to invite men over, but not anymore.

The first time, the guy was an almost-famous thriller writer and seemed more interested in her flat than in her.

‘That’s such a funny cat,’ he said. ‘What’s its name?’

‘Audrey Hepburn.’

‘Well, Audrey’s beautiful.’

‘It’s Audrey Hepburn.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, she’s beautiful.’

‘It’s a he.’

He looked at her as if she was an idiot. Maybe he’d use it for one of his books someday.

Another guy stole her jewellery.

Then there was the one who stumbled upon a stack of unopened mail, and therefore her surname.

‘Wait, is your mother Maria xxx?’

She didn’t answer, and then he said: ‘I can see the resemblance, actually,’ suddenly much more interested.

Since then, she’d never invited anyone over. 

Her mother, the famous theatre actress. According to her philosophy, theatre is the only proper place to act, it is purer than cinema.

She rose to fame through her performance of My Fair Lady. ‘The elegance of Audrey Hepburn with the sharpness, charisma and confidence perfectly suited to the stage,’ critics had said.

Her mother told her so many times that meeting Audrey Hepburn had been the best moment of her life. Not giving birth to Sabrina; not getting married; it was talking to her idol for no more than five minutes. That was why she’d named her daughter Sabrina, of course.

When Sabrina had been diagnosed with autism, her mother did what she always did: she used it as an opportunity. But for what? Maybe for her own psychic advancement of sorts. ‘You’re so special,’ she used to tell her, ‘you sucked it out of my blood.’ Sabrina’s brain became her biggest asset, even though her mother ended up picking it apart and plucking out only the elements that she liked. That’s how Sabrina began to hate her brain.

To her mother, everything was a performance. Even the way Sabrina’s parents met felt like one. A soon-to-be rich man infatuated with the lead actress on a London stage. He showered her with flowers and attention, and the rest was history. But Sabrina never fully believed it. It felt too much like a movie. Maybe her father was not the viscount, maybe he was the phantom in the gruff basement of the opera. Or maybe her mother had to make ends meet and worked as a sex worker, and that was where they met. Sabrina still imagines all the possible scenarios with a bitter satisfaction, incapable of believing in a happy story of their relationship.

She doesn’t know how she had ended up following in her mother’s footsteps. The acting, the infatuation with Audrey Hepburn - but that is different, her mother admires her while Sabrina loves her - her tendency to perform, to mask. Mask, what does that even mean? In autism-speak, it is term used to denominate the self-preservation behaviours autistics use to pass as neurotypical. Well, okay, maybe that is what she’s doing. But maybe not. Maybe she’s not trying to pass as anything; maybe, instead, she’s trying to fail as something else. Something perhaps wrongly assigned to her in the first place. Something she doesn’t deserve. Something she doesn’t want.

But maybe it was the masking that did it, too. Maybe she was too busy doing that to notice she was becoming so much like her mother. And now she finds herself looking through her balcony door but staying inside because it’s always too cold, in her silk pyjamas, standing there, like a statue, wishing someone could see her. At this moment, she’s so still and so beautiful, and no one will ever see that. She will be beautiful again and again and again, until she will have been beautiful again and again and again, but all these moments of beauty come and go, and she, and no one, will ever catch them all, they will always escape. Beauty is moody like that. Beauty is moody like a cat.

And then she feels Audrey Hepburn rubbing himself on her legs, as if sensing she needs the acknowledgement. But this is not enough for her, she knows. 

The wind outside blows in rhythm with her fear, inviting her to go outside, to rise, to fly along with it, to escape herself—but she stays indoors.

*

‘It’s so great to see you,’ Rebecca says and gives her a hug. She is Sabrina’s oldest friend, and she makes sure to organise their monthly meetups because she knows Sabrina cares more about routine and regularity than she’d ever care to admit. Rebecca might be the only one who truly knows how to navigate her blasé exterior.

 ‘Thanks for meeting me here,’ Sabrina says, as she flicks her hair to the right and plays with it. ‘I’ve been so busy, I thought it’d be easiest to meet in the flat.’ It’s a game they play: Rebecca knows when Sabrina lies but she never mentions it.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I like coming here anyway. It’s a great flat.’

 ‘If you ever need a place to crash,’ Sabrina begins and doesn’t finish the sentence. It feels soothing, not to have to pretend to know where her sentences are going.

 ‘I know. Thank you.’ Rebecca lives with three flatmates in a southeast London flat that always smells of cigarettes. Sabrina never asked if she’d like to move in with her, though she has implied it, but Rebecca had never even stayed the night.

The two of them met in the primary school they both went to near Hampstead Heath. Rebecca was already training to be a ballerina, which was what had initially bonded them. They spent their lunch breaks dreaming about performing on different stages for different audiences, and they had both clearly wanted it for different reasons.

Until Rebecca’s father was caught with something, Sabrina was never sure what, and he ended up in prison. Sabrina was left alone, while Rebecca and her mother moved to a different part of the city, and she went to state school. 

Somehow they had still stayed in touch, though their dreams hadn’t. Rebecca is studying law and hating every minute of it. ‘Wouldn’t you rather quit?’ Sabrina used to tell her. ‘It’s not worth it.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Rebecca always said, quietly. ‘Let’s not talk about this anymore.’

Sabrina still doesn’t know why Rebecca sticks by her. She stopped being a good friend years ago, yet Rebecca always makes an effort. She was the one who stayed with Sabrina when she landed in the hospital. Her mother had refused to at first because, as she claimed, Sabrina was only crying for attention and she wouldn’t give it to her. ‘I starved myself several times to fit into a costume,’ she said, ‘and I never ended up in a hospital because of it.’ But Rebecca was always there, even if no one else was.

‘How’s drama school?’ Rebecca asks. Even she doesn’t know everything

‘It’s fine,’ Sabrina says, without looking at her. ‘You know, lots of going inwards, learning how to embody ashtrays, endless eye contact.’

‘Seems like the perfect place for you.’

‘It sure is.’

‘Will second year be more rigorous than first year?’

‘Not really,’ she says, and continues: ‘I mean, kind of. There’s more actual acting,’ she says, without knowing what it means. She vaguely recalls talking to a drama student once, about how first year is mostly movement and tapping into your creativity. ‘Still takes up a lot of time.’ Now that she’s about to start first year, she doesn’t know how she will be able to pull the lies off. But she didn’t want to worry Rebecca at the time, she wanted to make her feel as if she was doing something real with her life, so she didn’t tell her she’d be deferring. 

‘But it’s good, right? To keep busy?’

‘I guess so. How’s your course?’ Sabrina asks, knowing what the answer would be.

‘It sucks,’ Rebecca replies with a smile. ‘But I’m hanging in there.’

‘You’re the most positive person I know.’

‘You don’t know many positive people.’

‘True.’

            Rebecca looks around the room, and then asks: ‘How’s the cat?’

‘He’s a very positive presence.’

‘At least you’ve still got a sense of humour.’