Excerpt from As If by Isabel Waidner, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I'll-go-to-the-bathroom-splash-some-water-onto-my-face-and-return-to-find-him-gone quickly then. I got up and left the room. I pulled the switch in the bathroom, the light came on. So far, so good. I looked at myself in the mirror, then at the mirror itself: it was de-silvering at an alarming rate. Back at myself: my eye was a little worse for wear. My left eyelid, it was swollen. Other than that, no different than yesterday, or the day before. I washed at the sink: hands, face. I resolved to put on a towel wash later. Personal hygiene, so important. Regular things. Normal things. I straightened my track top. Fixed the tuck: I took reassurance from that.

I remembered the day I stepped into the tracksuit. This, just over a year ago. A year and a half after I quit acting. Two years after Laurie died. That day, the bathroom mirror stopped working for me: I didn't recognise who was reflected back to me as myself. The jeans I used to wear without as much as a second thought, how I resented them. The nondescript shirt. Even the belt. Especially the belt. A redeeming fact: I had taken the trainers with the N off already. I found them repellent. Next to go was the belt. Couldn't get it off quickly enough. Down with the jeans, too. Kicked them into a corner, straight off the top of my foot. Then the shirt. Off with it. Some hesitation: could I save the vest? Any forgiving qualities? Grey, formerly white. Washed a thousand times. It felt ok? No. Down with the vest. I pulled it over my head and threw it onto the pile of rejects in the corner. I consulted the mirror again. A pale long figure in underpants and, what's that, sports socks. Off with the sports socks. Hair, this was where the pins came in. I had found hairpins in the bathroom cabinet the day before: kirby grips to be precise. The original tenant's girlfriend's, I assumed. Female company. I pulled my fringe to the side, then back. Used one pin to fix it. And another. A third and a fourth. Better. Quite good, actually. After that, I went into the bedroom. Went through the various clothes that the original tenant, or sublessor, had left in the wardrobe. I chose the cream-coloured track top as soon as I saw it. Sorry no: it chose me. The beige bottoms, not a match, but close enough: I saw a possibility to relate these disparate items. I selected the Oxfords for their soft leather, unaware of their disadvantages, including a lack of ankle support: which wasn't a then problem, but more of a now problem. Final check in the mirror: yes. A relief. I looked like someone I could bear the look of. A stranger: the best I could hope for. Long way of saying, I knew the difference a new set of clothes makes. I say this in Korine's defence.

When I returned to the living room, he was still there. Definitely, unmistakably still there. In league with the Christmas angel, heralding springtime.

2

What's your problem, Korine asks. Or, is there a problem: that.

Funny you should ask, I reply. Is there a problem: where to start.

I wasn't your typical actor, that's where. By which I mean, I come from a vastly different set of material circumstances compared to most actors I met in the industry over the decades. You'd think it doesn't matter, but it does. It means that I come at it, acting, differently. I never even thought of it as something people did until I saw Gary Oldman play Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears one night on the BBC. I was ten or eleven. I was completely arrested. I'd heard that he, Oldman, went to the same secondary school in Deptford as I did, twenty years prior, which can't have helped my subsequent overidentification with him. Seeing him on TV, I decided I would be an actor, too, but not tell anyone: growing up in New Cross, South East London, the only child to a single mother, the idea was so far removed from what was presented to me as reality it wasn't funny and was possibly punishable, Oldman, or no Oldman. I got to work straight away. You wouldn't have known it, but in my head, I was an actor twenty-four-seven and wherever I went. I'd borrow scripts from Lewisham Library, eventually all of them, alphabetically by author. I memorised lines. Absorbed language and ideas. I rehearsed entire plays in my bedroom or in front of the bathroom mirror. Neglected school homework as a result: not enough hours in the day.

Excerpted from As If by Isabel Waidner. Copyright © 2026 by Isabel Waidner. Excerpted by permission of FSG Originals. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.