There are people who know Emma better than we do. We only met her – and each other – fourteen months ago. But time scales alter when you’ve crossed to a new life plane.
I watch Asha place a sleeping Ananya like a glass vase into her pram and ruffle Seth’s hair as she sits down. As Poppy wakes up, I hand Seth over to Asha and pick up my girl and it’s Cora’s turn – her daughter Penelope still asleep – to feed me a giant chunk of that blueberry muffin. On the one hand, it exacerbates the nausea that’s constant for me at the moment. On the other, I need the sugar to ease my trembling. Also constant.
Out of nowhere, Poppy brings up a bit of milk and I don’t have a cloth. Three muslins appear in my line of vision, along with wet wipes and antibacterial gel from Emma, now back from the toilet.
We’ve just sat back down when Cora starts looking twitchy.
‘Can I tell you a secret?’ she says suddenly, like it’s bursting out of her.
She leans in, conspiratorially. Emma follows. Asha next. We meet in the middle like the hokey cokey.
‘Is it that you don’t really make your cupcakes?’ I whisper, hammy, about her bakery business. I have never seen Cora and those nails stray near a mixing bowl. I’m fairly sure there are zero-hours workers in her outbuilding currently shoving chocolate buttons in icing.
‘Don’t worry,’ I carry on, deadpan. ‘I won’t expose you to the Cheshire Mama crowd. It’ll be just between us.’
I often promote Cora’s Cupcakes on my Instagram. She does the same for Cheshire Mama on hers.
Cora gives me a death stare. Then smirks.
‘Actually,’ she says. ‘I’m sleeping with someone else.’
If the look that would normally accompany this revelation would be guilty, Cora’s face with its extra long eyelashes and its possible fillers and definite Botox bucks the trend. She is kind of … proud.
I glance at Emma. Did she know? She and Cora have been friends for a long time, way before NCT, so she must know Cora’s husband. But Emma may look the most shocked.
‘Seriously?’ says Asha.
‘Who?’ I ask.
Cora’s smile fades; she looks taken aback at the question. She rallies quickly.
‘He’s the teacher at hot yoga,’ she says, speaking the way she pours champagne, quickly, spilling over. ‘Hunter. Utterly dreamy. Exceptionally bendy.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Asha. ‘I was not expecting that. How long for?’
‘Since Penelope was four months old.’ Cora laughs. ‘I know, it sounds crazy.’
‘How could you be bothered?’ I ask. ‘When Pen was that young and you were so knackered.’
Cora shrugs. ‘Gave me something to make an effort for. I was sick of the leggings. Sick of the giant pants.’
We all nod in recognition. New mum life is the opposite of an illicit affair.
There are gags, then, about Cora’s downward dog and we annoy the book club with shrieks of dirty laughter.
‘Come on then,’ Cora says. ‘That’s my biggest secret out. We’ve known each other long enough now. Anyone else got any? The babies are nearly one. Time to liven up this mum chat.’
My heart begins to smash into my chest.
Poppy’s tights are damp where my palms touch her.
And it’s on the tip of my tongue, then, burning like hot coffee.
Could I tell them? Now?
It would be a relief, to have it out there. It would be awful, knowing that they know.
Asha. Emma. Cora.
I look at them.
Is it possible to keep it from them anyway, now it’s out? Is it better for it to come from me?
It rewrote everything, becoming a parent, and friendships were one of the areas that had the strongest edit.
I thought I had to accumulate mum friends when I had a child so my real friendships could still be sexy on the other side, with their Pinot Noirs and their gossip, and without everyone thinking, Yeah but remember that voice she sings ‘Wind The Bobbin Up’ in, as I danced at a grown-up party in my mini dress.
But that wasn’t what happened.
Instead, those ‘real friendships’ faded away, their place usurped by my mum friends, and there are no women I am closer to than Asha, Emma and Cora, even though we’re chips-and-salad different.
And yet, I haven’t told them about this thing that consumes me.
About the sex tape that almost everyone in my life was sent just over a few weeks ago.
I saw it, first, in the boardroom at work on my first day back from maternity leave.
The film played, bad quality from a second in time just before the world was viewed through flattering filters and cute effects.
I stared at the screen.
A woman; two men.
My ex, Ollie.
A friend of a friend of ours, Mitch.
The woman: unmistakably me, albeit a different me.
In that room in central Manchester, I looked down at myself: cobalt blue midi, large diamond on my ring finger, nails painted carefully in two layers of black. In the mirror opposite, long legs crossed, bright white trainers. The resting bitch face I’m told intimidates people. Big brown eyes, hard eyes.
I looked back at the screen.
The me on there wasn’t the one that commuted in from the countryside with bags under her eyes. Not the one that buys gender-neutral, organic brands for her baby girl. Not the one who puts the broadsheets in the recycling bin and runs 10k for fun at the weekends.
But the old one.
Party Scarlett, who if she by some miracle had money in her bank account, spent it all on drugs. Harder drugs, more drugs. Party Scarlett didn’t feel fear; there was nothing to be scared for.
Party Scarlett flitted between jobs in pubs and got sacked for not turning up. She spent summers working in clubs in Ibiza. She slept all day and eye-rolled about fidelity and marriage and people who had sensible jobs because none of that was fun. She stayed out later than you, partied harder than you, was more, more, more than you, but felt less than you really, so much
