The Only One Who Knows

The Only One Who Knows

Chapter 1

Here’s what the TV producers of Morning, Sunshine! want you to know about their three co-hosts:

Joy Marriot is a grandmotherly TV veteran of fifty-­seven years.

Lynny Stewart is her hooting sidekick.

Melanie (me) is the new kid on the block. The timid voice of reason to Joy’s opinions and Lynny’s nonstop shrieking.

Here’s what they don’t want you to know:

One of us tiptoes out to the staff parking lot to enjoy an early-­afternoon pounding from the sports reporter who is definitely not her husband. (Lynny.)

One of us released a Paleo cookbook three years ago and pledged 15 percent of the profits to a cancer charity. They’re still waiting for the money. (Joy.)

One of us is staring at a terrifying text from her fiancé and stuffing her palm against her mouth to hold back the screams. That one is hanging on by a f***ing thread. (Me.)

I sit stiffly on the edge of the white leather couch, angling my phone away from the bustling set designers as I read my fiancé’s text over and over. The studio lights are bright and burning hot, but I’ve never felt so cold. Somewhere in the darkness the director yells, “Showtime in five minutes, people!”

I stare at my boots, hyperventilating. I cannot sit through two entire hours of this live taping and pretend to give a damn about this morning’s news when my own life has just gone to hell in one text.

Everything is a blur of noise, color, and movement. Aqua skirt. Red hair teased to maximum height. Skin stretched so tight it looks like it hurts. Joy.

Bright pink and plunging blouse. Lemony perfume and a shrieking laugh. Lynny.

My co-­hosts sink onto the couch beside me, crossing their legs like synchronized swimmers. Their stilettos gleam under the studio lights, the heels so thin and sharp, you could use them to play darts.

My shirt is seashell white and buttoned so tightly at my throat, it hurts each time I swallow. My culottes are hideously ugly and the color of iced coffee. My suede ankle boots are blocks of concrete.

White. Camel. Neutral. That’s me. I’m the one brought in once a week to, in the producer’s words, “connect with the Gen Y crowd.”

It’s not working. The ratings are appalling, and the network has no money. I only got this job because I knew the right people, and no one else could stomach Joy’s on-­air bullying like I do. But I’m an expert at blending into the wall and the couch until the threat disappears. Survival instincts I carried over from childhood.

Underneath my neutral shirt and neutral bra is a stinging rash with raised red bumps. Hives, my doctor said. Have you been stressed lately?

Joy sips at a coffee as bitter and boiling as she is. She’s the first of us to reach for a tissue when a Z-­list reality star brims with dutiful tears. The first to pat their knee and cut to a commercial while staring grimly into the camera, only to reappear smiling three minutes later. How can you trust someone who shuts off their emotions like a light switch?

Lynny opens her cavernous mouth wide while the makeup artist applies another coat of gloss. She’s forty-­two, shrill as a whistle and easily bored, and I’m pretty sure she loves gossip and screwing the sports reporter more than her four children.

Look at them, these two brightly colored fish. Seventy years of showbiz experience between them. They gleam. They preen.

And they scheme.

You have to hand it to these pretty, dirty bitches.

“Two minutes!” someone yells out, and I jump. My co-­hosts stare at me like they’ve just remembered I’m here. That’s me. I’m so agreeable, so neutral, I might as well be the couch.

Lynny practically shoves the makeup artist away and inches over, her whole body an exclamation mark. Instinctively, I place my phone face down in my lap. My entire body trembles.

“Melanie, dear!” she yells, as if she’s surprised to see me. I’ve sat beside her once a week from 5 to 7 a.m. for nearly four months now. “And where were you this morning, missy?”

I missed the morning briefing. All of it. I stumbled into the makeup chair five minutes ago, stumbled out again, sat on the couch, and received the worst text of my life.

She doesn’t wait for me to answer, that’s how short her attention span is. “How’s that gorgeous man of yours?”

Oliver is my fiancé of three months, boyfriend of seven, a meteorologist on a rival network, one that actually has money. He proposed to me right on this couch, live on air, despite me telling him repeatedly that I hate surprises. My fiancé loves grand gestures, but it was at that moment I realized that none of them were for me.

I hesitated for long enough that Lynny cried out, “Melanie! Put the poor dear out of his misery!”

“Okay . . .” I finally stammered. “Sure.”

Oliver drove us home in steaming silence and didn’t talk to me for two days. That was not the first red flag I ignored.

“He’s good!” My voice cracks and I blurt something to cover it up. “Busy. We’re both so busy lately.”

We are indeed busy. I am, anyway. I left him again this week.

“You hold on to that one,” Lynny says, giving me a playful tap on the arm. “He’s a keeper.”

Like hell he is. But it’s one thing to want to leave. It’s another thing entirely when it’s eleven o’clock on a Friday night and your fiancé is screaming at you, again, because you looked at the Uber driver too long, and your dress is too short, and you’re suddenly, startlingly aware that your confident, assertive fiancé is actually a controlling shithead who’s stealing pieces of you little by little and you’ve allowed it.

Maybe you weren’t even fully aware. I wasn’t. But that night, I looked into my fiancé’s eyes, and I saw my father. And I stumbled outside, exhausted and desperate, because I don’t fight. I don’t flight. I just freeze, and yes, I hate myself for it. In the movies, the woman packs up her shit, leaves the house, and drains the joint account. Begins again.

But it’s been three days since I left, and all I’ve done is survive. I left in a daze and spent the last two nights in a hotel, lying on a double bed, staring at nothing. I didn’t even think to take Jessie. That’s how crazy I was. How crazy it makes you. It must have been how my mum felt. I think I finally understand how she could leave us behind. I understand now, Mum. I understand and I’m sorry.

“Thirty seconds!”

Smears of color. Hot lights. Cold hands.

All I can think about is the text I sent Oliver this morning as I sat on the edge of the hotel bed. I’m coming back to get Jessie.

And his response:

You’re not taking Jessie.

I feel like I’m choking. He bought Jessie, our golden retriever, as an engagement present. He’s walked her twice in three months and snaps at her when she gets underfoot. Poor Jessie is always flustered around him. So am I. I suspect now that Oliver just wanted the image of Jessie and of me. A compliant wife and a golden puppy for the shitty tabloid interviews he wanted us to pose for. And I wanted somebody who didn’t see my chronic people pleasing as an open door.

You’re not taking Jessie.

“Good morning, sunshines!”

Shit, we’re live. I glance into the camera, my face tight and terrified.

Joy wriggles in her seat, booming, “Some breaking news this morning . . .”

I feel like I’ve dunked my head underwater. Color, movement, lights, you’re not taking Jessie.

But then I hear something clearly, Joy reciting, “Beasts from the deep!”

I raise my head, staring at the flickering images of a grimy beach town.

My heart freezes. I know this place.

Joy booms, “A second shark has been spotted off a Victorian beach in four days. A great white shark was spotted just meters from the shore in Kangaroo Bay, a small fishing town on the East Coast.”

Lynny chimes in, “The last fatal shark attack took place off the coast of Sydney in 2021. A local man, Keith Walsh, was swimming in shallow waters when he was attacked by a great white shark . . .”

“. . . Melanie?”

The studio is silent as Joy calls my name. Her voice is round and soft, a bubble.

“What?” My voice is rough and heavy, a brick.