Time to go

It is the phenomenon somethings called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

So Joan Didion wrote that when she was 27, and just cause her editor at Vogue left her “over a weekend” to write “something on self-respect.” Cool. Clearly there’s a point to me existing, too.

#JoanDidion #playitasitlays #theselfisanillusion

WHAT YOU NEVER HAD: EXCERPT

Logline: After secretly following his teenage daughter to Mexico on the hunt for her long-lost mother, a conflict-averse spin doctor must face his own past trauma in order to stop it from repeating in his child.

FIRST 10 PAGES

CLOSE ON: PHOTOGRAPH ON THE INSIDE OF A LOCKER DOOR

We can only just make out the face of a woman in her late 20's. She wears an explorer's hat with a colourful woven textile band. Light comes in through the cracks of the locker, but the photo is mostly shrouded in darkness.

A SCHOOL BELL rings and the locker door is pulled open to reveal an ANGRY-LOOKING GIRL WITH RED HAIR (CLARA, 15).

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - MORNING

Clara grabs some books from her locker. In the light, we see the woman in the photo has the same red hair as Clara.

Clara's friend OLIVIA, 16, grabs her books from the locker next to her. Olivia wears cute, fashionable clothes. Clara wears heavy boots, leggings and an oversized t-shirt.

OLIVIA

... so I was like mum no obviously I'm not going to sleep in the same bed as him...

An obnoxious TEENAGE BOY (REECE) comes down the corridor on a kickbike. He rips the photo off Clara's locker door.

REECE

Woah! You never told us you have a hot sister, Clara!

Clara spins around.

CLARA

Give me that.

The boy nudges his FRIEND (ANDY).

REECE

Jeez. Look at those tits.

Clara motions for the photo, but Reece moves it out of her reach. While fighting off Clara, he looks at her, at the picture, and back at Clara.

REECE

I mean there's a likeness but no... this girl is WAY hotter than Ginger Minge.

ANDY

Maybe it's her girlfriend?

REECE

Woooooooah! Come to think of it, it would be pretty hot to see Ginger Minge handle those big juicy -

Clara chucks a BOOK at Reece, which hits him in the face and makes him RIP the photo. The photo sails to the ground as Reece puts a hand to his bleeding nose.

Clara picks up the blood-splattered picture. She wipes it, shoots a murderous glance at Reece and starts walking away.

MISS HEARST (O.S.)

Miss Johnson.

Clara stops. In the doorway of an adjacent classroom stands her strict-looking RELIGION TEACHER (Miss Hearst).

MISS HEARST

Head Teacher's office. Now.

Clara rolls her eyes and GROANS.

INT. HEAD TEACHER'S OFFICE

The office is nicely decorated with lots of books and photos of kids, pets and exotic holidays. The walls are lined with impressive diplomas. A woman enters the adjacent office.

MISS WALLACE (O.S.)

(to her secretary)

Clara Johnson? Already?

ASSISTANT (O.S.)

She gave Reece Withers a nosebleed.

MISS WALLACE (O.S.)

Let's face it he probably deserved it.

(realising the door's open)

Oh, shoot.

HEAD TEACHER WALLACE, a smart woman in her early 40's, enters the office. She tries to act stricter than she truly feels.

MISS WALLACE

Wow thanks, Clara. Nothing I love more than a nosebleed before my coffee.

CLARA

He asked for it.

MISS WALLACE

(playing dumb)

Really? What words did he use?

Miss Wallace sees the TORN PHOTO in Clara's hands. She sits down and turns on her computer.

MISS WALLACE

Listen, Clara. I know teenage boys can be thoughtless. Trust me, I deal with them every day. But you can't just go breaking books over their heads every time they do something you don't like.

CLARA

Why not?

Beat. Miss Wallace gives Clara a brief, playful look.

MISS WALLACE

Well. Books are expensive.

Clara smiles, briefly, against herself. But the look of the ripped photo wipes the smile right off.

Miss Wallace types in her computer password.

MISS WALLACE

Besides isn't that what your essay was all about? A non-aggressive alternative to our colonialist educational system, was it?

CLARA

You can be non-aggressive without being passive.

MISS WALLACE

Well. Maybe when it comes to Reece Withers, a bit of passivity wouldn't be so bad.

CLARA

(ignited)

Really? That's what you want to teach the young women at your school?

Miss Wallace sighs.

MISS WALLACE

Clara. You're an A* student. But if you don't do something about your impulse control, I will have to suspend you.

CLARA

So what, I should just smile and walk on by? Be a fake, like the other girls? Like my dad? Like every politician in this country?

MISS WALLACE

There's a difference between being civil and being "a fake", Clara.

CLARA

Not if you're pissed off. Then they're exactly the same thing.

Miss Wallace turns back to the computer. Starts opening programmes, her standard morning procedure.

MISS WALLACE

I'm gonna let you off with a warning. And silently pray that Camp America will get it out of your system.

CLARA

(frowning)

Huh?

Miss Wallace starts reading emails.

MISS WALLACE

And tell your father we need his signature by tomorrow, or they'll give the space to someone else. Well, they won't. But they'll bug me about it.

CLARA

Wait. I won the essay competition?

Now Miss Wallace looks at Clara.

MISS WALLACE

But of course you did. See Clara, our educational system is like any abused being. Tell it what's wrong with it, it'll love you forever!

Not understanding, Clara frowns.

MISS WALLACE

I digress. Anyway, as I told your father - oh wait. No, not your father. He was out. I spoke to, um, what's his assistant's name...

She searches for it...

MISS WALLACE CLARA

(pleased to have found it) (through clenched teeth)

Greg! Greg.

EXT. CLARA'S HOUSE - AFTERNOON

Clara angrily walks into an exclusive West London apartment building.

DOORMAN

Good afternoon, Miss Johnson.

Clara shoots him an unhappy look.

INT. CLARA'S HALL - AFTERNOON

Clara closes the front door behind her. Several distant voices can be heard. More of an office than home vibe.

SIMON (O.S.)

(ingratiating)

Right. But of course. No problem.

CLARA

Hello?

A SNOOTY MAN (GREG, 40's) with a bluetooth headset walks past the doorway in the next room. He stops, casts a disapproving glance at Clara's DIRTY BOOTS, and continues.

GREG (O.S.)

Wonderful, Steven. Tell the mayor we appreciate it.

Clara gives Greg a disgusted look and walks into the next room.

INT. SIMON'S STUDY - MOMENTS LATER

A HANDSOME MAN IN HIS EARLY FORTIES sits at a desk with a phone to his ear. This is Clara's dad SIMON. He's charming, but a bit too keen to please. He nervously chews on a pen.

SIMON (O.S.)

(fake enthusiastic)

Oh, he did not say that! Piers, you're killing me.

(he holds the phone out and unhappily mouths to Clara)

"It's your mother's father."

CLARA

(deadpan)

You hate him.

Simon slams a hand over the phone and hushes Clara.

CLARA

Don't worry. He knows.

She grabs a MINT out of a bowl and turns to leave the room.

SIMON

(still covering the microphone)

Honey?

He pulls out his wallet and gives Clara a CREDIT CARD.

SIMON

Order us some dinner, will you? Anything you like. I'll be done by six thirty. Seven, latest.

He takes his hand off the phone.

SIMON

No problem, Piers. None at all. You'll have 'em by end of play. No, no. Happy to!

Clara GROANS and stomps off.

INT. CLARA'S BEDROOM

Clara sinks down on the floor of her bedroom and leans against the door. On the inside of her door is another photo of the woman from her locker, this time smiling next to an INDIGENOUS WOMAN of Latin American heritage.

Clara looks around the room. It is decorated with endless pictures of Latin America along with several

EXOTIC TRINKETS (bead necklaces, handmade feather fans, masks, small statues etc). On a wall hangs an old-fashioned HIKING BACKPACK.

There are various photos of her and Simon, and of the locker woman and Simon. (If you haven't yet got it, she's Clara's mum.) In the photos, her parents are happy, hiking, swimming.

Clara pulls out the ripped photo from the locker. A small speck of blood is still on it. Clara licks her finger and rubs it out.

She repairs it with some cello tape from her desk drawer. Next to the tape in the drawer is her PASSPORT.

She slides the repaired locker picture inside a SHOE BOX labelled BOX OF MUM. In the background, we catch a NEWSPAPER CLIPPING: BRITISH WOMAN, 26, DISAPPEARS IN MEXICO.

INT. LIVING ROOM - EVENING

The clock shows 7:48 PM as Clara finishes her takeout in front of a documentary about the Maya people. Next to her is her dad's unopened takeout carton.

In the far distance, his voice can be heard, still on the phone. In the background, we hear the DOCUMENTARY PRESENTER.

MAYA DOCUMENTARY PRESENTER:

To this day, descendants of the Maya populate Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

Simon enters.

SIMON

Whew. What a day.

He plants a kiss on Clara's cheek. She wipes it.

SIMON

Sorry I'm late, doll. We're hiring a new girl and she's a little slow on the uptake.

Simon opens his takeout carton and sniffs it, contentedly.

CLARA

Age?

SIMON

Oh, I don't know. 23, 24?

CLARA

Then she's not a girl, dad. She's a woman.

Simon lifts some cabbage out of his carton with his chopsticks.

SIMON

Yuck. I hate cabbage.

He puts his cabbage in Clara's carton and looks at the TV.

SIMON

Indians again?

Clara pauses the documentary.

CLARA

Did Greg tell you I won the competition?

SIMON

What competition?

CLARA

Camp America. The essay I wrote?

(then)

About a non-oppressive alternative to our colonialist educational -

SIMON

Right. Yeah, he might have mentioned something.

He shoves some more food into his mouth. Chews. Clara waits.

SIMON

Well, obviously you're not going.

CLARA

Why not?

SIMON

Send you off to America with a bunch of sixteen year old boys for six weeks? Ha. No thanks. No, gracias. I know what I was like at that age.

Clara's rage rises. She clenches her jaw, fists, whole body.

SIMON

But speaking of calls from school, Greg said your principal called again about your impulse con -

Clara SNAPS her chop sticks in half and emits a TEENAGED ROAR. Simon stops talking and stops chewing.

CLARA

This is oppression!

SIMON

No, Clara. It's parenting.

CLARA

I can't do ANYTHING! What, just because -

Her eyes stop at her parents' WEDDING PHOTO on the wall.

Simon follows her line of vision. A tense beat.

CLARA

She would've wanted me to go.

SIMON

Right. Cause you knew her so well.

Clara is stunned. Simon stops chewing. A moment between them. Then Clara stands up and swats her takeout carton onto the floor. It lands on the carpet, immediately staining.

SIMON

Hey!

CLARA

You know what? I may not have known mum. But I know you. And that's enough to see why she fucking left!

Clara storms out of the room. A door SLAMS. Simon looks at the stained carpet and sighs.

Very calmly, he wipes his mouth, grabs the remote and changes the channel to golf.

INT. CLARA'S BEDROOM - MOMENTS LATER

Clara sinks down onto the floor, shaking with anger.

Her eyes catch on the BOX OF MUM, still on her desk. Next to it is her dad's credit card. An IDEA hits.

She gets up.

INT. LIVING ROOM - EVENING

Simon is SNORING on the sofa. On the TV, sports have given way to a talk show. A MALE HOST interviews a FEMALE AUTHOR.

FEMALE AUTHOR

... well it makes sense if you think about. Excessive restriction has lead to rebellion in all known cultures on Earth, so why would teenagers be any different?

Simon wakes up with a start. Looks at the clock on the wall: 9:15 PM. He blinks a few times and looks at the TV.

MALE HOST

So you're saying, no rules is the best rule when it comes to raising teenagers?

FEMALE AUTHOR

I'm saying that unless children are allowed to explore their own boundaries, we cannot expect them to develop judgment. And trust me - nothing is more dangerous than a teen who can't tell arbitrary custom from genuine peril.

MALE HOST

Thank you Suzanne Pritchard, author of No More I Hate You's - the Alternative Guide to Raising Teens. Next with us tonight...

Simon looks from the Chinese food on the carpet, to the wedding photo on the wall. He sighs and gets up.

INT. HALL OUTSIDE CLARA'S BEDROOM

Simon KNOCKS on Clara's door.

SIMON

Clara?

(then)

Can I come in?

He pushes down the handle.

INT. CLARA'S BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS

SIMON

So I was thinking, and maybe Camp America isn't such a -

He stops. Clara's room is empty.

SIMON

Hello?

On Clara's desk the BOX OF MUM is open - and empty. Also open is the drawer that had cello tape and a passport in it. Now it has no passport in it. The hiking backpack is gone, too.

THE CHANGING OF THE SEASONS: EXCERPT

The breakfast room at Hotel Krabbklon had only just started to fill with the smell of fresh rolls when Fru Gyllenhammar walked in and stopped all conversation. Granted, not much conversation had been going on between the four young seasonal workers that, at seven thirty in the morning, made up the room’s full populace– they had all stayed up enjoying their staff discounts the night before, and only two of them had had time to brush their teeth – but what little dialogue there had been was brought to a halt at the appearance of their manager’s wife and two small daughters. It was the first time anybody had seen Fru Gyllenhammar before noon, discounting the time when, three years earlier, she had silently observed her father-in-law’s burial from behind large, black sunglasses.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Fredrik, the only returner among the staff, as he reported at Fru Gyllenhammar’s habitual beach-facing table. ‘All set for tonight, are we?’

‘Well, I am,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said and refused a menu held out by the stocky young man, ‘but these two have all of ten hours to catch more cuts, bites and bone-breaking blows than they ever dreamed of.’ She looked at the older of the two girls, distinguishable as such not so much by her size as by her hair, into which she had accepted the application of two strawberry-shaped hairclips. Her sister, whose hair was more like that of a troll doll, had agreed to no such inanity. ‘In fact this one,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said and stroked the shiny blonde hair of her firstborn, ‘has already caught herself a nasty cold. Haven’t you, dear?’

‘Hmph,’ Line said and snivelled, ‘why else would I be here?’

‘That’s true,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said and withdrew her hand. For a moment her face wavered, but she quickly regained composure and looked back at Fredrik. ‘She was supposed to go with her father to fetch the oysters,’ she said and rolled her eyes. Done with this, she tried to catch her daughter’s gaze, but was beaten to it by a salt shaker. Still, she put on a nursery teacher’s exaggerated inflection as she continued. ‘But sun and wind and salty sprays,’ she said to the girl’s downturned eyes, ‘is no recipe for recuperation, now is it?’

‘That’ll be two bowls of porridge, then,’ Fredrik said and tried not to look at the two buttons left unbuttoned on Fru Gyllenhammar’s dress. He looked instead at the redundant menus in his hands. ‘Am I correct?’

‘That’s right,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said and smiled, the sweet, reserved smile she used towards all her husband’s staff.

‘Very good, ma’am,’ Fredrik said and looked at the redhead’s pretty face, until he realised she’d only put mascara on the lashes of her left eye. He gave a quick bow and left the table.

‘Those ferries better be as crowded as your father thinks they’ll be,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said as Fredrik disappeared into the kitchen. She looked out across the empty dining room. ‘Or there will be an awful lot of oysters for us to finish.’

‘Of course they will,’ the older girl said and sighed. ‘You said the same thing last year, and just about a billion people turned up. In fact you say the same thing every year.’

The woman smiled, but did not take her eyes off the empty chairs around them. She did not speak as Fredrik came with the children’s porridge bowls, and Fredrik – unlike the children – knew better than to ask again a Fru Gyllenhammar before midday if indeed she did not want another look at the menu. And so they sat, Line in her hairclips eating the porridge and Grete with her troll hair moving it around in the bowl, until the first guest showed up at the breakfast buffet and Fru Gyllenhammar finally sat back in her chair. She looked at her daughters.

‘Why are you not eating, Grete,’ she asked and frowned at the smaller girl. Her tone made it clear this was a reprimand, not a question.

‘She doesn’t like porridge,’ Line replied.

Fru Gyllenhammar looked at Grete, her face a blend of disappointment and surprise. Grete looked at the porridge. ‘Well it’s good for you,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said after a couple of seconds. ‘There is no alternative on the card. You’ll learn to like it in time.’

‘Daddy lets me eat cereal,’ Grete said without looking up from the sticky spoon in her hand, going round and round. ‘Ouch,’ she said then, feeling her sister’s sandal hit her shin.

‘Oh does he,’ replied her mother and raised a theatrical eyebrow. Keeping her eyes on the face of her youngest daughter, she seemed to be considering this new piece of intelligence. ‘Well,’ she said then, ‘you won’t be eating from that buffet so long as I’m in the room. People grab those bread rolls with their fingers.’

‘Can I go then,’ prompted Grete.

‘Not until you’ve finished. As you would have,’ Fru Gyllenhammar said and reached a long, slim arm across the table to loosen a linen napkin, once eggshell and now covered in blue and green crayon, from underneath Grete’s elbow , ‘if you hadn’t spent your time converting your father’s investment into, now what is this, a… cow?’

‘It’s uncle Klas’s motor-bike.’

‘Where’s the sketchbook I gave you?’ Fru Gyllenhammar asked, a wrinkle appearing between her two shapely eyebrows.

‘In our room.’

‘Well you better hurry back and put this in with the others,’ she said and nodded to the napkin between her thumb and forefinger. ‘You know you’ll never make it through first grade unless you become more organized.’

Without a word, Grete snatched the napkin back from her mother. She put it on top of the clear plastic crayon suitcase next to her bowl, and carefully folded it to the same shape and size. Then she pulled her legs out from beneath her scrawny body, grabbed her artist’s materials, and left the table.

Down in the harbor a few more people had woken up, but Grete paid no mind to the bath-robed couples having coffee on the decks of their sailing boats who, at the sudden sound of footsteps, turned their sleepy heads to look at the barefooted girl as she thundered down the jetty. Grete really did make an awful lot of sound for a girl of such slight build, never having learned to run as graciously as her sister or the other girls at gymnastics, but she couldn’t care about grace when the fishing boats would be tying up any minute. In fact, she noticed as she turned the corner behind the last of the rust-red fishermen’s huts, they had already come in. Her mother had kept her past seven-fifteen. She stopped in her tracks, wild-eyedly scanning the tall figures unloading cages and untangling nets around her. He wasn’t there. She took a deep breath, and was just about to ask Jörgen, who had a glass eye, when something big and cold nudged her from behind. She spun around to find an empty red wheelbarrow, wheeled by a pale-faced boy of slim build, a good six feet, twenty-and-some years and spectacularly bad posture. Grete broke out into a wide grin, unashamedly displaying the gap left by her recently fallen-out left canine tooth.

‘So what did you think?’ she asked enthusiastically.

The boy glanced over at Jörgen, who was combing through a piece of sun-bleached-green net. ‘You shouldn’t have come to my house,’ he said lowly. ‘I’ve told you that already.’

Grete turned her head to the fishing-boat on her right and lowered her eyes. ‘Nobody saw me,’ she said flatly.

‘That’s not the point,’ said the boy and stepped from the jetty into the turquoise-bottomed boat. He grabbed the sides of a tank no bigger than an average suitcase, and began edging it out from a row of four identical containers. Some water splashed over the edges, and he bit his lower, already chafed lip. Then, in a feat that seemed to require the boyish frame’s maximum strength, he hoisted the tank onto his knee and wobbled it onto the jetty.

Grete stared down into the dark clouds of claws and antennae that scraped about the bottom of the tank. Her eyes widened. ‘There’s a crab in there with just one claw,’ she said and squinted at Nikolai’s flushed face. ‘You have to take it out, or it won’t get any mussel when you feed them.’

‘I’ll make sure to tell Jörgen,’ Nikolai said and wiped his brow with the back of a surprisingly large hand. He let it drop to his side and looked at the child in front of him. Grete was watching him intently, albeit with one eye only, the other shut to prevent sneezing from morning sun. When no command came, she dug her hand into the belly pocket of the red-and-white cotton dress her mother had sewn for her first day of school, and which she was intent on wearing every day until then. Tenderly she took out a small packet wrapped in the crayoned napkin. She looked at it for a second, a bit like one would look at a hamster before passing it to the vet, then held it out towards Nikolai.

The boy looked at the packet, not taking his hands off his sides. ‘What’s this?’

‘Open it,’ prompted Grete.

‘It better not be pancakes again.’

Grete said nothing. The boy sighed loudly, and it was with considerable grudge – facial, if not vocal – that he took the packet off the girl’s hands. But he took it nonetheless, and his face softened a fair bit as he unfolded the moist pieces of cloth. He looked at the limp yellowy slabs, and then he looked at the blue and green lines surrounding it.

Grete, noticing immediately the shift of focus, quickly snatched the napkin back. The pancakes flopped onto the wooden planks below. ‘It’s not finished yet.’

‘Easy,’ Nikolai hissed, realizing too late the sharpness of his tone. Grete looked down at her feet. For a moment the boy said nothing, looking at the sun-burnt line that zigzagged through Grete’s white-blonde hair and thinking of a way to repair the damage. He crouched down to attain a matching height. ‘Hey,’ he said softly, putting a finger underneath Grete’s chin. He began pushing it upwards, seeking the eyes of the child. ‘Oh don’t cry now,’ he said as he saw Grete’s tearing eyes. ‘I’m not angry. See?’ He stretched the corners of his mouth as wide as he could. ‘See that? I’m happy.’

Grete closed her eyes and sniveled loudly. ‘I’m not crying.’

‘Oh no?’

‘I don’t mean to be so ag-‘ – she gasped, not very successfully, for air – ‘a-gu-gu…’ The girl paused, swallowed loudly, and used her final bit of air to get the end of the word out: ‘guh-ressive.’

A little uncertainly, Nikolai looked around the jetty. The other fishermen were still going about their business, taking no interest in the little girl who had come down to greet the boats every morning for more than two months. He turned back to the girl. She was looking pointedly away, breath held and lower lip out. The lip, however, was not moving. Gingerly, Nikolai reached out and tugged at the hem of the red-and-white dress. Having regained the child’s attention, he dug his hand into the freezing water of the tank and snatched out the one-clawed crab. He held it in front of Grete just long enough so she could recognise the cripple, and then, with a Frisbee-thrower’s flick of the wrist, tossed it across the jetty and into the glittering water.

‘Well come on, then,’ he said to the breathless and, by now, certainly snivel-less child as he got to his feet. ‘This won’t wheel itself to the fish-shop. You gonna be any help this morning or what?’