The Japanese say everyone has three faces; there is the one you show to the world, the one you show only to close friends and family, and a third that you never show to anyone!
I love this idea, but I would go even further and say we actually have many more versions of ourselves than just those three. What about your dating profile, how does he/she measure up to your true self? How does that person differ from the version of yourself your boss gets to see, and what about your parents, how much of you are they genuinely allowed?
In fact, we get a unique opportunity to reinvent ourselves everytime we meet someone new, to be the person we wished we were, to live a fantasy version of ourselves, and I think we are all guilty of a little personal tweaking to make ourselves appear more desirable to a new audience, whoever that might be.
The idea of identity and the hats we wear fascinates me so much that I couldn’t wait to explore it more deeply, and the character I had created in that early writing exercise seemed the perfect candidate for it.
When Alice meets Jonny she grabs that golden opportunity with both hands and slips out of Alice’s dissatisfactory married-with-two-kids life and Susanna drags her towards a life of excitement, and Jonny!
Of course, when so much of you is fake, it’s only a matter of time before your lies start unraveling. What starts as a bit of fun quickly turns sour as she realises what exactly it means to cheat on Mr Mundane!