Fruit Fly

Leo is on a crowded train and going through drug withdrawal. He’s determined to get sober and seek help. His thoughts are chaotic, punctuated by traumatic flashbacks. In the train’s bathroom, he washes himself with hand sanitizer and changes out of his dirty clothes into a shirt, trousers, and shoes he stole. He then goes to his parents’ home, where he’s greeted by his mother.

Mallory spends the morning cleaning the house and adding to The Air Between Us with help from an AI writing tool. She struggles to write a satisfying outline for the final third of Slay, ultimately proposing an ending in which Liam attends recovery meetings, returns to his hometown by the sea to confront his past, forgives his abuser, and opens a mental-health center with his therapist. She emails it to Stan, praying that it will be enough to secure the book deal.

Ronan returns home from his first day back at the office. He is volatile and angry, revealing that he lost a major deal. He blames it on his two-week absence while caring for Mallory. He grabs Mallory’s wrist during a tense moment just as her mother, Stacey, arrives.

Leo finds himself at a tense Monday night dinner at his parents’ house. Also present are their prying neighbors, John and Jean. Leo, in the midst of withdrawal, struggles to maintain the pretense that he’s doing well and has just come from a new marketing job. John and Jean make passive-aggressive comments about his past.

Leo experiences hallucinations, seeing a demonic face in the gravy and hearing a voice from a childhood photo of himself identifying itself as his “inner child.” Overwhelmed, he retreats to the kitchen and vomits. There, he sees his old school certificates on the fridge, which triggers a painful memory of being shamed by his peers for a poem he wrote. He finds a bottle of whiskey and begins drinking, but his father catches him. His father rejects his desperate plea for help, reveals that the family previously remortgaged their house to pay for Leo’s rehab, tells him that his mother is scared of him, and asks him to leave. Feeling like he has no other options, Leo resolves to go to Mallory’s house.

Stacey immediately adopts a posh accent and fawns over Ronan, who is charming to her. Mallory feels alienated. While hanging her mother’s coat, Mallory finds a packet of Polo mints, which triggers a memory of her difficult childhood in a Tottenham high-rise after her father abandoned the family.

Later, while Ronan is upstairs, Stacey confronts Mallory in the kitchen. She accuses Mallory of fabricating a painful past to justify her dramatic behavior and warns her to stop living in a “childish fantasy world” (247). Stacey tells Mallory that she’s lucky to have an “enviable” life with Ronan and must get herself together before she drives him away.

While hiding in the bushes in Mallory’s back garden, Leo watches the family in the kitchen. Once the house seems quiet, he climbs a drainpipe to the second floor and enters an open window, which leads to the spare room where Stacey is staying. He searches her luggage for medication but finds no benzodiazepines, only other pills such as citalopram and vitamins. He then enters the bathroom, finds Mallory’s lorazepam in a cabinet, and takes some. Upon hearing footsteps, he hides in a closet. From there, he witnesses Stacey enter the bathroom and cry. After she leaves, he sees Ronan come in, take explicit selfies, and send them to an unidentified recipient.

Mallory sits in the bathroom and reads an email from Stan. Gina rejected her proposed hopeful ending for Slay, finding it “inauthentic.” Stan has persuaded Gina to give Mallory one last chance to write a better ending, which she must submit by the next day.

Mallory hides her laptop and gets into bed with Ronan. They have sex, during which Mallory mentally relives their entire relationship, recalling his jealousy of her initial success with Shallow Embers and his gradual, controlling behavior that led to her psychiatric hospitalization seven years prior. After Ronan falls asleep, she gets out of bed.

This chapter consists of a poem written by Leo titled “THE WAVES.” In it, he describes a constant internal “hum” or “ache” that he carries inside himself. He imagines a beach where the loud, constant crashing of the waves is powerful enough to overwhelm this inner noise. For a brief moment, the thought of the waves silences the feeling inside him. The poem concludes with Leo wishing for the chaos of the waves to slam into him forever so that he can permanently quiet his internal pain.

Mallory goes to the back patio to smoke and brainstorm a new ending for Slay. Feeling hopeless and on the verge of abandoning the project, she finds a rotting tangerine in the fruit bowl, a sight that deeply unsettles her. Back inside, she finds her mother reading Shallow Embers.

Stacey confronts Mallory about a passage in the novel that she interprets as a monstrous depiction of herself. The argument escalates until Mallory admits that she has always blamed her mother for her brother Nick’s suicide. She discloses that she has long wondered whether Nick was gay and what events led to his death. The confrontation provides Mallory with an idea for a new, darker ending for Slay. She stays up all night writing it and emails the new outline to Stan.

Leo awakens in the closet. He takes more of Mallory’s lorazepam and makes his way downstairs to the kitchen. He finds Mallory’s laptop plugged in and open on the island and begins reading the manuscript of Slay and her email correspondence with Stan.

The next morning, Mallory hears a news report about a man’s body found in Regent’s Canal and fears that it’s Leo. Ronan comes downstairs in a good mood, but their peaceful morning is shattered when he finds her hidden birth-control pills. In the front hall, he confronts her, calling her a manipulative “narcissist.” After Ronan leaves, Mallory finds her phone in his wardrobe. She discovers that he has changed the passcode, has deleted Leo’s contact information, and has been impersonating her in text messages to her friend Joanie to isolate her. Panicked, she looks for her laptop, only to discover that it’s missing.

Writing as @Alias22, Leo composes a short poem titled “HEAVEN—A BALLAD” (285). He reflects on a recent kiss that was deeply different from any other he has had. Leo expresses his belief that he won’t go to heaven because of his sexuality. However, he felt an overwhelming kindness from the boy he kissed, describing that kindness as a heaven in itself. This powerful experience made him feel like he wanted to stay on earth.

Mallory spends the day fruitlessly searching for her missing laptop. When Joanie arrives at the door with a jar of jam, they have a tense, awkward conversation. Mallory attempts to tell her that Ronan has taken her phone, but Ronan appears and takes control of the interaction, further painting Mallory as mentally unwell and isolating her from her friend.

That evening, the family has a tense dinner. Stacey produces Mallory’s laptop, making her wonder if her mother hid it. Ronan goads Mallory into reading a passage from her fake romance novel, The Air Between Us, openly mocking its poor quality in front of her mother. 

After dinner, the family gathers to watch a dark television drama that Ronan produced. When they turn on the TV, a news report reveals that the body found in the canal has been identified as Monty “Mo” Jackson and that the police are looking for a young man who was with him that night. Mallory realizes that Leo isn’t dead but is someone the police wish to trace in connection with Mo’s death.

This chapter is a poem titled “THE LIFE OF AN ORANGE—A BALLAD” (297), written by Leo under the username @Alias22. Leo describes himself with the metaphor of a rotting orange, describing how its skin decays to reveal that the once-sweet interior has gone black. The poem concludes by imagining that an observer will poke the rotten fruit out of curiosity to know what the decay feels like.

After the show, Stacey challenges Ronan by asking whether he would ever adapt Mallory’s book into a show “since [he] love[s] it so much” (299), which visibly annoys him. He suggests that it would be best for Mallory if her mother moved to a hotel. After Ronan goes to bed, Stacey asks Mallory where her phone is, indicating her concern for her daughter. Unsure how to respond, Mallory says it’s upstairs.

When Mallory enters the kitchen, she finds Leo waiting for her. He’s holding her laptop and a kitchen knife. He’s drunk and furious, having spent the day in the shed reading the Slay manuscript and all her emails. He reveals an email from Stan congratulating her on her £100,000 advance for the book.

He confronts Mallory for stealing and twisting his life into a marketable tragedy. He mocks her for the manuscript’s inaccuracies, revealing that his mother is alive and that he was never abused by his parents. When she asks him if he killed Mo, Leo denies this. He explains that he talked Mo into coming to the bridge, saw him slip and fall into the river, and didn’t call for help or try to aid him. When Ronan enters the kitchen, Leo turns his attention to him.

In a short, reflective piece of writing, Mallory reveals that she carries an inner child with her constantly. She characterizes this presence as a child who’s frozen in time, invisible and unknowable to others, who moves within her shadow. Mallory explains that this part of her has always wanted one thing: to be close enough to someone to feel safe. The piece is signed with her handle, @Malmaddoxwriter.

The confrontation in the kitchen escalates. Leo, calling himself “Liam,” forces Ronan to sit down and stages a “book club.” Leo demands a share of the money that Mallory made on Slay. He mocks the contents of the manuscript and calls Ronan a liar, alluding to the explicit selfies he witnessed Ronan send from the bathroom. Stacey enters, and Leo forces her to stay and listen as he deconstructs the commercially driven, tragic narrative that Mallory has created for him. He describes the book’s proposed ending, in which Liam dies by suicide, and questions if this is what Mallory and the publisher believe is required for a successful story. While holding the knife to his own stomach, he threatens to act out the ending for them.

This chapter is formatted as an email from Mallory to Stan. She has attached the final ending to Slay and states that the ending is non-negotiable and truthful to the characters.

The attached scene picks up with Liam holding the knife to himself. Mandy de-escalates the situation, telling him that they’re the same. Liam then exposes the husband, Richard, for sending explicit selfies to another person. As Richard lunges at Liam, he seizes Liam’s hand and forces the knife into Liam’s stomach. Richard then brutally beats the wounded Liam. Mandy’s mother intervenes by smashing a fruit bowl over Richard’s head, knocking him unconscious. As Mandy tries to stop Liam’s bleeding, he tells her that he never wanted to die. Mandy has a deep realization that their connection, and the connection between all people, is the true meaning of love and peace.