Man on the Hill

I hate the dentist. No. Hate is too weak a word. I loathe the dentist. Loathe it with every trembling tooth in my head, and every twitching nerve ending quaking beneath my gums. It’s been years since I’ve stepped foot in one of these antiseptic-scented chambers of quiet judgement. Four, maybe more. Time becomes abstract when you’re actively avoiding something. Like taxes. Or ex-best friends who clean plaque for a living. Because that’s the thing — I had a dentist. NHS. Reliable. Affordable. Unfortunately staffed by someone who once knew my secrets, my heartbreaks, my worst decisions at 2am, my emotional crimes, and, more critically, the exact condition of my molars. “Yeah… can you remove me from your books, please?” I remember saying, with the forced breeziness of someone pretending not to set fire to their own safety net. A pause. “… are you sure?” “Never been surer in my life.” Reader, I was not sure. So here I am. The waiting room. Four years of avoidance compressed into one aggressively mint-green holding pen for the doomed. The chairs are uncomfortable in a way that feels deliberate — engineered, almost. Punitive. Each faint squeak sends a fresh ripple of horror skittering down my spine. My body has turned to jelly. Not the fun, wobbly kind — more the cold, quivering kind you’d find abandoned at the back of the fridge, quietly losing the will to hold itself together. Mum sits beside me, radiating a kind of calm that feels both supportive and deeply unhelpful. “They might have to take a few out,” she says casually, like she’s suggesting we pop to Tesco afterwards. I blink. “Right. Lovely. Cheers for that.” “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I add quickly, to no one in particular, least of all myself. On the wall-mounted TV, a news bulletin flickers between dental hygiene tips and a headline about Eminem releasing a new album. Man on the Hill. And for reasons that defy logic, reason, and every ounce of my lived experience — bypass them entirely, in fact — I know, with absolute certainty, that it’s about me. “… How could he do this to me?” I gasp, clutching my handbag like it contains answers. Mum turns slowly, the way one does when confronted with a pigeon that’s learned to speak. “You never went out with that man.” I stare at her. “You don’t know everything, Mum.” “I would remember if you’d dated an international rapper.” “Well, clearly not,” I mutter, already spiralling. “He’s airing our history. Publicly. Weaponising it. Monetising my trauma. It’s humiliating.” And yes, I am aware that I am a postie from a small town in Somerset and not, historically, linked to global hip-hop icons — but emotions are famously uninterested in evidence. “Amanda.” The voice cuts through me. Husky. Final. Oh God. It’s time. I stand on legs that don’t quite trust the ground beneath them. Every step towards the dental room feels like one step closer to losing full control. The dentist is… profoundly unsettling. A portly man with the energy of someone who could just as easily dismember a cow as fill a cavity. There is blood on his apron. Not a concerning amount. A deeply concerning amount. “Oh, apologies for the blood,” he says cheerfully. “Things got a bit scary.” Oh good to hear. Very reassuring. I consider fleeing. I do not flee. “Sit,” he demands, with the authority of a man who owns several sharp utensils and zero empathy. The chair groans as he pumps a pedal like he’s inflating a bicycle tyre from hell. “Open wide.” There’s a poster on the ceiling. Tropical. Sea, sand, serenity. I latch onto it like a lifeline, like belief alone might physically relocate me. Suddenly, I’m there — lying in a hammock, pina colada in hand, the breeze kissing my skin. I am peace. I am calm. I am — “Mrs Lyle.” I snap back. Reality rushes in like cold water. “Your teeth are fine,” he says. I blink. “What?” “Fine.” “No fillings? No extractions?” He throws his head back and laughs. It echoes. It lingers. “Nope. You’re good.” Relief floods me so quickly I nearly leave my body and become light. I unclench muscles I didn’t know I’d been clenching — in ways that feel deeply personal, vaguely spiritual, and slightly concerning from an existential standpoint. I have survived. “But,” he adds, casually wiping something off a tool that I refuse to identify, “Eminem did you dirty, girl. You should listen to that album.” I freeze. “How did you—“ “Reception will take payment.” £500. For a check-up. I tap my card in stunned silence, half-expecting it to decline out of principle. Outside, reality continues to unravel. I suddenly remember — I have a daughter. No. Not Phoebe. Another one. Surprise child. Fully formed. No backstory. She appears beside me, clutching a football kit and looking at me like I’ve always been responsible for her. “We’re late,” she says. “Of course we are,” I reply, because at this point, why question anything? She turns to me. “I need money to play.” “I’ve just spent five hundred pounds on someone telling me I’m fine,” I hiss. She looks up at me with enormous brown eyes. Damn it. “How much?” “… Three pence,” she says, like she’s asking for a kidney. I stare. “Three pence.” She nods. And here’s the thing — you can judge me if you like — but I do not have three pence. I don’t carry coins. I live a contactless life. Like royalty. Like an idiot. So when we pass a busker, I do the unthinkable. A swift, shameful swoop — stealthy as a magpie — a handful of pennies. “Great song,” I say, avoiding eye contact. “One of my favourites.” They nod. Of course they know. I hand the coins to the girl and she beams. And I tell myself — it’s okay to be bad if it does good. (It is not okay. But it is convenient.) Inside, the corridor is lined with plants. Lush. Thriving. Obnoxiously alive. A man tends to them gently. “My plants keep dying,” I confess. “I lost Cendrik last week. He still stalks my dreams.” The joke lands like mist. “You can’t save them all,” he says kindly. “But with water and love, most will grow.” I nod, as though this is about plants. (It is not about plants. It has never been about plants.) My daughter — who is not my daughter — stares at the coins. “I don’t want to use this,” she says quietly. “You stole it.” A mum nearby narrows her eyes at me. “I’ll pay it back,” I say quickly. “Tenfold.” I will not. She knows I will not. “I want to return it,” she says. “Fine,” I snap. “Lovely outing. Really worth it.” She smiles anyway and takes my hand. Back outside, the world has shifted. There are banners everywhere. Eminem towers above the street, his face stretched across buildings, across buses, my sense of self. Man on the Hill. People chant his name. Someone spits at me, with unsettling accuracy. “Bitch.” I wipe it off, burning with a shame I cannot place. They don’t know me. Do they? The crowd thickens. Presses. Breath on my neck. Eyes everywhere. And then — Music. The busker. We’ve found him again. My daughter steps forwards, placing the coins gently back into his case. “I’m sorry,” she says. He looks up. And smiles. It’s him. Not a resemblance. Not a trick of the light. Not even my imagination stretching too far this time. It’s him. Eminem. In worn clothes. Guitar in hand. Eyes locked on mine. “I wondered how long it’d take you,” he says. My stomach drops. “… What?” “The teeth. The guilt. The running.” I laugh nervously. “This is ridiculous. I don’t even know you.” He tilts his head. “No?” The crowd goes quiet. Too quiet. “You keep thinking I wrote the album about you,” he says. “But you’ve got it backwards.” My mouth goes dry. “Backwards how?” He leans forwards, voice low. “You wrote me.” Everything stutters. The crowd. The banners. The girl beside me. Glitching. Flickering. “This—” he gestures around us, “—is all yours. Every fear. Every lie. Every unpaid debt.” I look at my hands. They don’t feel like mine. “Then… none of this is real?” He smiles again. “Oh, it’s real,” he says. “It’s just not happening now.” A pause. The kind that stretches too long. “Open wide, Amanda.” The world snaps. The light above me burns white. The tropical poster trembles overhead. And I realise — I’m still in the chair. Mouth open. Unable to move. The dentist leans over me. Apron still stained. Eyes sharper now. “You’ve been under a while,” he says softly. I try to speak. I can’t. “And we did have to take a few out in the end.” My heart slams against my ribs. No. No, he said I was fine— He smiles. Not kindly. “Turns out,” he says, picking up a tray of teeth that look far too familiar— “you can’t keep things buried forever.”