I get to the pub early.
Poppy is still going to the childminder until I figure out what the hell is going on with work; until I’m out of this limbo. Then Ed took her straight from Ronnie’s to Liam’s house so she can play with her cousins.
I check the clock above the bar. Most likely Ed is watching Poppy create a crime scene from a bowl of pasta about now. I smile thinking of her with tomato sauce smeared around her soft mouth, then take out my phone to scroll through pictures and distract myself. This time, I stay away from wine and order strong coffee.
I rip the top off a sachet of sugar and see that my fingers are shaking. I’m not sure they have stopped since I met Ollie. This has to be it, surely.
I try to decant half of the sugar sachet and then think of all the ways my life is now out of control and so I pour the lot in, adding a second.
Things used to be measured, I think, so recently.
Oily fish on allocated days and takeaways reserved for weekends. Now they are so out of control, so unordered, it is impossible to imagine getting back on course.
When Mitch walks in, I see him instantly. He is still large, though now it’s a largeness that speaks of pints and chips for dinner, and having not seen a vegetable for a long time. Before it was a largeness that spoke of whole afternoons in the gym and protein for breakfast at a time when the rest of us thought health food was a sugary cereal bar.
‘Mitch.’
He looks weathered, Mitch. Old. Like the DJ’s packed up and the bar has closed but he’s still at the party, telling twenty-two-year-olds that they are lame for going home; that it wasn’t like this in his day. To stay! Stay! Have one more! Let’s do pills!
‘All right,’ he says awkwardly and I’m surprised by how clearly I remember his Manchester accent, strong even for someone who had lived in the city their whole life like me. ‘Drink?’
I shake my head and Mitch heads straight to the bar, while I sit and wait.
He comes back and plonks himself in the chair with a bottle of beer like a thirteen-year-old who’s just been picked up from a party earlier than they wanted to be. I stare at him. Confronted by the man who I am sure ruined my life, I am struggling to keep calm.
He looks up at me, raises an eyebrow.
‘So then?’ He smiles. ‘What’s this about?’
I would never have struggled with this confrontation before; would have been powered through it with rage. Now though, I am dealing with the maternity leave confidence crisis. Too much time in my comfort zone; too much time in pyjamas.
I hide my hands under the table, so that Mitch does not see them vibrate.
‘I’m not sure how well you remember me,’ I begin.
‘Yeah sure.’ He grins, amiable. ‘We hung out a lot, back in the day.’
We did, from a distance. In a wider circle, often at the same parties or the same nights out. It was only that one night though that we moved in closer.
My nails are out from under the table and in my mouth. I long for something stronger in my coffee. I am remembering, and I am angry with younger me for having sex with this man for performance not pleasure. For doing it when what she actually craved was a hot water bottle.
I hate that I was playing a part. Party girl, boundary pusher, fun girlfriend and, mostly, non-mum. It hurts that I did that to myself.
‘Yeah, so,’ I say, trying to get it together. Wishing for a friend to squeeze my hand. Wishing for kind eyes to meet mine and tell me I am safe. Wishing for Ed, on some level. ‘A video has been posted of me, you and Ollie and sent to my friends.’
Please don’t make me explain, I think but when I look up, I know I don’t need to.
‘Of me, you and Ollie …?’
‘Yeah. My boyfriend. I mean my boyfriend then. Yeah.’
I only get one second to do this so I need to do it right. I stare at him, analysing his face and trying to work out if it was him. I look at his clothes, try to decipher if he’s short of cash; if that could be the reason he’s done this.
I have been thinking about this more and more – if at some point something worse will be threatened and I will be blackmailed, and that’s where this is going.
My stomach dives. I know what it is I’m thinking about; the thing I fear being revealed. The story Ed can never, ever know.
Mitch may know it. It’s possible.
I look again. His clothes are nice, new. I look at his face. Try to work out in that second if he’s an attention-seeker, or stalker. If he’s cruel, or odd, or both.
But all he seems is normal.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. Did Ollie post it?’
‘No,’ I say, oddly defensive of Ollie now. Ollie at least cared about me. ‘Ollie wouldn’t do that.’
But I had thought it. I had thought Ollie could. And now he wasn’t in front of me, I wondered it again. It doesn’t take long for human beings to become theoretical when you can’t see their eyes.
‘Sure?’ he asks.
‘Sure,’ I say, unsure.
‘So who?’
There’s a beat when he gets it but I spell it out anyway.
‘You, maybe,’ I say, with a tremble in my voice. ‘I thought maybe you.’
His eyebrows shoot up. ‘You serious, Scarlett?’ he says.
I nod.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.’
He sighs.
‘Look, I don’t mean this to sound rude, honestly I don’t but …’ he says. ‘Well, I must have slept with fifty people since you. What happened between us, it wasn’t that big a deal to me to be thinking about it or … posting it, all these years
