He looks up at me expectantly.
‘Latest on the website operator?’
And the way he speaks to me, like I’m in an update meeting at work, makes my edges shake with rage.
It’s horrible to feel such disdain towards someone that you loved. It’s horrible to think about how you raced each other to beat your 10k times and bored your friends with monologues about their face and about how now, you can feel such loathing towards them.
I look at Ed.
Does he grasp how many emails I have sent to the website provider about taking the video down, how many hoops I have to jump through, how humiliating every single one of them feels?
I wonder if he pictures the video pinging into people’s inboxes, spreading like the snotty noses at Poppy’s playgroups, in his nightmares like I do.
I stare at my husband with these new bags under his dark eyes. I know he is suffering too. But as much as me?
‘I’m chasing them constantly,’ I say.
‘So no update then,’ says Ed, frowning, and I am not his wife but an employee who hasn’t done as well as had been hoped. Called in to the office for a warning.
He looks up. ‘Also, you need to be making money now you’ve left your job, from Cheshire Mama at least.’
‘Fine,’ I say, wanting this to end. ‘I will try and monetise the blog. Done?’
Now 7,200 followers; 10,000 is the magic number. Ten’s what I need to start properly making cash, to ease my guilt at what I’ve done to our family finances.
I pine again for work, for that job I love so much. Work fished me out of the sea when I was floating aimlessly in my twenties. Since then, it’s been fundamental. My first job, at a small start-up. Then New Social, where I’ve worked my way up to this role, working with companies on their digital marketing, educating them on social media. Building relationships with clients so that they trust me. And now what? I have to shrink away from people. Hide. Retreat. I think of Dom on the phone to Flick and wince.
‘You can go back to work when this has died down,’ says Ed, kinder now. ‘We’ll get the childminder back too.’
But it’s half-hearted and Ronnie is in demand, plus I know Ed’s mum stayed at home, and her mum stayed at home, and his brother Liam’s wife stays at home and I feel irrationally like I have been tricked.
I look at him then. I think of how distant he is. How much more appealing those women at the gym will be, or have been already, than me, at home again in his old hoodie. I know how much Ed fancies me, but it’s the me in on-trend jumpsuits heading to work or skintight lycra after a run.
The last few weeks, I have only put my head above the parapet – or the literal version, the Marks and Spencer duvet – for Poppy.
Playdate this week? I type to my mum friends. I’ve already told them I’m taking more time off than planned; couldn’t cope with being away from Poppy.
That bit is true at least.
And when she sits on the floor playing with bricks and catches my eye occasionally and I know that she loves me being there and I think Would Ronnie have got that same look? I am happy, deep in my insides.
It’s just that I am also struggling, since letting Ronnie go, to have the physical capacity to look after her. To pick up the bricks. To stack the rings. To cut up the toast.
I wonder again why the video didn’t go to my NCT friends. Because they are seen as unimportant to me, an add-on to my real life, when this person wanted to attack the centre?
If so, that’s wrong.
Lately, it feels like my ‘real friends’ have retreated into the background. Meanwhile my mum friends have stepped right into the middle.
Anon
‘Love you,’ I say as I hug her goodbye. Because that’s what we do, now. We hug, we kiss, we throw around the L word like honeymooners.
I can see too that after a sceptical start at NCT, Scarlett is starting to warm to us. Even rely on us.
I can see that what we faked at first – a crew of friends, just because we happened to have booked onto the same course – is becoming real.
Scarlett trusts us. Trusts me.
She looks to Manchester, to the men, with suspicion.
Not here, amongst the milky lattes and the wedges of chocolate cake and the endless, endless packets of wet wipes. Bad things could never happen among the wet wipes.
Sometimes, as we budge up closer, I feel bad – even a little sick sometimes – about what I’ve done.
But now, it’s too late anyway.
Also, what about what she’s done to me? That’s far worse, surely. I remind myself of that whenever the nausea comes.
12
Scarlett
15 May
As Poppy naps, an email pings in from the website operator confirming they have taken the video down.
I sit back on the sofa and wait for the relief to flood me.
Nothing happens.
I read it again.
Nothing.
Anticlimax, perhaps, after all of the emails, all of the chasing.
Or just the knowledge that though the video is down, it is still out there.
So how much difference can this make?
I message Ed and he at least is euphoric; gives the response that I seem to be missing.
I sit, waiting for the same mood to wash over me.
It never comes.
Poppy wakes up and I pick her up to head to Asha’s, where we are meeting for a playdate. I ignore my ringing phone. Flick. It’s no good talking now; the decision is made.
‘It’s insane how fast it’s going,’ says Asha as she hands me a Pantone mug. Is her hand shaking a little? I think of the last time I saw her, speaking to the man who looked like Mitch. ‘I can’t believe I’m back at work in a month. Even the four days a week feels like
