I look at him.
‘Is that different?’ I ask, frowning.
‘Of course it’s different, Scarlett,’ he mutters.
It was okay when he thought it was something a seventeen-year-old boy might fantasise about. But when the picture’s less socially acceptable, I’m slut-shamed by my husband.
My sobs come harder.
‘How am I going to go back to work?’ I cry. ‘My colleagues have seen it.’
His phone beeps and he reads the message.
He slams his hand on the kitchen table.
‘What now?’
‘My parents,’ he says, bleak. ‘My parents have been sent the video too.’
His phone starts to ring.
He punches the wall this time, just to the left of our large framed wedding picture.
‘And by the looks of that call, Liam too.’
His older brother. I cry harder then, because the breadth of this is unbearable. How can this be happening to me? I’m not a celebrity – not unless you count a very low level of attention that I get from Cheshire Mama and I don’t – and not a controversial figure.
My skin is smarting in desperation of how much I long for my husband to hug me but I know he won’t. He’s not in a hugging kind of mood. Ed gets like this sometimes, when he’s focused on something practical. He can’t step outside it to the emotional.
I look at him, and suspect that however I get over this, I will have to get over it by myself.
‘I’ll go and get Poppy,’ he says.
And it’s only then that I think about Ronnie, my daughter’s childminder, and if she has been included in this circle around my life that has seen the video. How can I ever ask, as babies roam around and Peppa Pig toys go flying and the picture is such innocence?
I nod.
Even though it is too early for pick-up and Ronnie will ask questions, I let Ed walk away because I know he needs to move, away from me. And because I do not want to have to beg him to come back.
Anon
She’s alpha.
That’s the first thing I think when I meet Scarlett.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought before about the definition of an alpha person but when she stands in front of me, rubbing that baby bump, it is the only word in my mind and it shouts itself, loud.
Alpha.
Alpha.
Alpha.
Scarlett is not necessarily the loudest in the room, but she is the most comfortable in her own skin. Sitting back. Appraising the situation. Cringing, ever so slightly, when you say something she deems stupid before swooping in to put you right.
Tall but not the sort of tall that means older relatives suggest she wears flats to make men feel more at ease.
‘Good tall,’ people say, nodding approvingly.
The victim bit? Give me a break. It’s hard to swallow when you’ve seen the way Scarlett walks into a room, presuming all eyes are on her and very happy with that.
When Scarlett’s daughter was born and she went on maternity leave, she wanted to keep herself busy so instead of eating fifteen biscuits at a time in front of bad daytime TV, she started Cheshire Mama, a painfully smug parenting blog. She uses any window she can to shoehorn a mention of Cheshire Mama because her blog makes her feel special; a local celebrity. Scarlett likes that.
Even though there are thousands of parenting blogs already, millions, Cheshire Mama is successful. It would be; Scarlett’s kid’s cute and her mum will happily flog those pudgy legs and hair that looks like it was cut in a pixie for a free designer changing bag. Often her husband features too. Beautiful, over six foot and positioned with the kid next to a pumpkin, a Christmas tree, a baby lamb, a swimming pool; insert as appropriate for the season.
It’s unbearable.
Scarlett’s child has the coolest buggy, and her shoulder has the coolest bag, and her kitchen has the coolest coffee machine. It sits right there, see, on top of the coolest kitchen island. They plant vegetables together in their wellies, the Salloways, but only so they can pose for the picture, a snap for a thousand hashtags.
I see her smugness when I stand with Scarlett in her kitchen. As I watch her, she is barefoot, pink toenails, picking up the coffee cup and flicking on the radio.
I smile at her, tell her I love this song.
Scarlett is pretty. Slim. God, she even has this thick, glossy hair when everyone else’s is falling out like it does after you have a baby. If she’s casual – often, actually – it’s in a way that doesn’t apologise for itself. When it rains on her dark brown bob she shoves it in an up-do that looks good without a slide or even a mirror.
It’s not that she is the fanciest – that’s sort of the point. She’s just … well, alpha.
Scarlett moved round here a few years ago, relocating from central Manchester. When you need a restaurant recommendation in the city, Scarlett knows the only three places you should go this year. Watch out if you suggest somewhere else; that face she pulls will make you want to drown yourself in her turmeric bloody latte.
We all know that Scarlett thinks she’s better than people without even having to try, and that irks. It irritates. It enrages.
4
Scarlett
5 May
The next day Poppy is with Ronnie, and Ed and I are in the waiting room of a lawyer’s office in central Manchester. My phone beeps.
How’s work going? asks Asha on our group chat. Sending loads of positive vibes.
They don’t know.
The only people close to me that haven’t been sent the video, as far as I can tell, are my mum friends.
Maybe they are new enough in my life that whoever did this doesn’t know about our closeness; doesn’t know they are part of my inner circle. Maybe there’s one area of my life in which I can take a break from this.
