I flush red. I’m in ballet pumps and cropped jeans. My dark brown hair, hacked bluntly at the nape of my neck, has lost its gloss and is in a tiny ponytail. My bag is tan and large and designer and contains nappies. I clutch it close to me like a child and colour again.
Most of these women he sleeps with are younger than me, probably. Hotter. I no longer sparkle. So why would he target me? Because I’m rich now? Because Cheshire Mama has made me visible? Because visible and exposed and rich is a tempting combination?
‘But it has to be you,’ I say. ‘You were filming.
He sighs, infuriated.
‘Was I? Well, I still didn’t do it,’ says Mitch, and swigs the last of his beer.
‘Ok then, did you share it with anybody else? Send it round to your mates?’
He shakes his head.
‘Not my style. You might want to go back to Ollie about this. Maybe he was filming too. Or got hold of my phone or something. I saw him around a bit for a while. He was broken when you left him. You sure he wasn’t angry enough to take some revenge? It happens, you know. Being dumped can do bad things to a person. Maybe his life didn’t go that well. Maybe he blames you. Maybe he never got over you.’
I can’t confront him further, can’t press him, because suddenly all I can think is how I need to be home with my child.
Everything has an added layer of shame when I think of my daughter, who has a mother who did this. I’m not clean enough for her. I’m not good enough.
I run out of the pub and jump into my car as Mitch – who sounds genuinely concerned as he shouts after me to ask if I am okay, if I am safe to drive – tries to catch up with me.
In the car park, I put my head on the steering wheel and turn up the Noughties house music that’s been the soundtrack to my life, in secret the last few years, replaced in public with more middle-of-the-road music, news headlines or even – Ed’s preference – a little afternoon play on Radio 4, like we are sixty-five and slowing into our retirement.
But now, what’s the point in turning it down? Turn the real me up; blast her out.
If Ollie didn’t do it, and Mitch didn’t do it, I think, then who the hell did?
Suddenly there is a knock next to me on the window and I leap. Mitch indicates to me to wind my window down. He leans on it. I turn the music down.
‘Just one thing,’ he says, palms up in a gesture that tells me he means no harm. ‘When you got in touch, I googled you. You’re very out there online now with that blog and the kind of numbers you have and it doesn’t take much of a glance at the pictures of your house and clothes and whatever to see that you’re pretty loaded. Maybe someone worth blackmailing? That could be where this is headed.’
He shrugs. ‘Just a thought anyway,’ he says, and then he walks away, out of my life again.
And I think again of the secret I’m still keeping close and feel my whole body start to tremble, an earthquake at my core.
It’s another twenty minutes until I am capable of driving home and I spend the journey wondering if it all has to go now: Cheshire Mama, my side-hustle and the thing I have been clinging to since I walked out of work three days ago. I need to deal with that too. Answer Flick’s calls. Make some decisions. I’m drowning.
The noise hidden beneath the beat of the music, I cry so hard as I drive that it feels like my face is bruised and like my life is bruised, way beneath its skin.
Anon
She drives past me, that evening, no Poppy in the car.
Where are you going, Scarlett? She hasn’t mentioned anything in her messages and it’s a pretty big deal if one of us makes it out in the evening at the moment, with our young babies making 8 p.m. feel like midnight.
Out of her window blasts a song that is too familiar to me. My stomach lurches.
I only get a quick glance through the open window but Scarlett has bare shoulders; lipstick on. She doesn’t make that effort for many people. As I said, Scarlett prefers to be (very deliberately) ‘effortlessly’ casual.
I watch as her car moves further away, heading towards the station. Into town, most likely.
After-work drinks with old friends?
Or the other thing?
I stare after her, until her car disappears from sight.
7
Scarlett
8 May
I open my eyes at five thirty when Poppy stirs and I sense a tiny flicker of energy; a trace of fight.
I am a grown-up, I think. Grown-ups can’t quit their jobs because they feel embarrassed. This isn’t serving double vodkas on offer in a bar in my twenties. We have a child. And a horrifyingly large mortgage.
I haven’t told Ronnie anything yet, so I still have childcare.
I could just go to the office. Stand tall. Reclaim my life.
I dress plainly, in jeans and a thin grey knit. The white trainers that make my heels pinch.
Ed walks into the kitchen later and sees me wearing eyeliner; Poppy dressed.
‘You’re not going to work?’ he says, eyes wide.
‘Where else would I go?’ I say, taking a coffee pot off the hob. ‘We have bills to pay.’
I nod towards the pot.
‘Your coffee’s there when you want it,’ I say, then start sweeping up toys from the floor.
Ed stares at me but doesn’t say a word.
I drop Poppy at Ronnie’s and it’s been easier the rest of the week, in a ludicrous way, because I am too distracted by obsessing over whether the childminder, in between cutting up my daughter’s carrots for snack, has seen my sex tape, to focus on being away from Poppy. I avoid Ronnie’s eye contact.
