‘You believe him?’ I hear him consult his notes.
‘He was pretty convincing,’ I say. ‘But who knows. I’ve lost all perspective.’
‘Keep going,’ he says. ‘Figuring out who did it is the key. You’ll find them. No one can hide in this day and age.’
I hang up on Jonathan with a sigh at how little this has moved on in the week since I first saw the video. Poppy’s still sleeping. Now what?
I click onto my Cheshire Mama Instagram.
With more suspiciously scented pyjamas than dreamy family outings, I am doing a lot of motivational quotes and throwbacks. I fling myself into replying and commenting on other influencers’ posts and liking, liking, liking. How okay I sound, I think. How fine.
Lots to like online, not a lot to like off it.
I sit back against the cushions on the bed. Sigh.
I need structure in this new life of mine.
This morning – a lot of mornings lately – feels too close to the old life without order. Pasta was served with potatoes after Mum died because Dad was too sad to consider a balanced plate. Washing wasn’t divided into colours because grief trumped white washes. Sometimes you were allowed TV before dinner; sometimes you weren’t. Depended how the day had gone. Rules ebbed and flowed.
And we all know that a lot of my twenties didn’t follow much of a routine either.
But my thirties? So far they’ve thrived on systems.
I run a bath and lie in the last of a jar of expensive bubbles, still scrolling social media, when I see a post by Josephine.
I had been blocking out how weird it was that I hadn’t spoken to her since the video, but seeing my dad has brought it to the forefront of my mind. I can’t put it off forever. Even if a little sister and a sex tape is another level of shame.
How’s wedmin going? I message.
I reach over the side of the bath for a glass of water but even that turns my stomach.
I have to do it.
You’ve seen it, haven’t you? I write while she is still typing her response to my other message.
There’s a pause.
Yes, it was sent to me, I’m sorry, she says. You poor thing. I didn’t know whether to get in touch. Dad said you and Ed were dealing with it privately. That you didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I didn’t want to be an extra person for you to deal with, someone else phoning. I also didn’t want to freak you out that I’d seen it too but I can’t lie to you xxx
It’s horrific, even if it’s not surprising.
I think of her watching me having sex with those men and my skin flames.
Josephine as a little girl would come into my teenage bedroom to ask me to play with her dollies or tell her why elephants were called elephants.
Little sisters aren’t far behind dads and husbands in the list of worst people to see your sex tape. I shudder, despite being in a bath so hot it had made me gasp on entry. That had felt oddly like what I needed.
Dad and Faye had Josephine when I was nine, Faye pregnant soon after they got married.
He told me I was getting a half-brother or sister in a pub over burgers, with a tiny bit of ketchup on his chin. It made me laugh because getting tomato sauce on your face didn’t seem like something that would happen to a grown-up.
‘Scarl, I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said, hand playing with my ponytail as the two of us, on a rare excursion alone, sat side by side.
‘Faye is going to have a baby,’ he said gently and I knew suddenly why he had made the effort to make this one happen, where so many other dad-daughter days had fallen by the wayside.
I stopped laughing.
It was like the future was about to rewrite our history with my mum, and I felt unanchored.
Josephine arrived and I did anything to avoid this new family that had sprung up and usurped mine. It felt like a small price to pay.
‘Why don’t you play ball with the baby?’ Faye would ask and I would roll my eyes and stomp out of the door, no idea where I was going other than away, away, to somewhere where the hurt I didn’t understand eased enough to bear.
As she grew up, it got worse. I hated my dad going to Josephine’s sports days. I hated her calling him ‘dad’. And oh God, I hated her having a mum.
Technically, what I had looked like a family. People were relieved. A sister, too! But somehow, Dad and my weird double carb unit of grief and tenacity had felt more like home.
Now I saw my one-man family share himself with a new crew. If other teenagers were pining for boys in their maths class, it was my dad I was heartbroken over. My dad who had, it felt like, abandoned me.
No one noticed that I wasn’t doing my homework; no one cared enough that my grades were dropping.
I became a teenager and looked older than I was and I got into clubs with even older boys who didn’t ask much in return for the help with the fake ID but in retrospect they asked a lot with those kisses that hurt a bit and hands that strayed unwanted up skirts.
I could get on, and I did, and then I got on some more, and more, until I fell out of the door of our house and into my next life.
But by the time Josephine was an adult too, we had grown a friendship, even socialised together sometimes.
My sister changes the subject.
You’re looking gorge on Cheshire Mama by the way, she types. All my friends tell me they want to be you when they have kids, true story.
I pick my phone back up.
Ha!
