Momentarily, I remember where I should be now and I’m transported to the office. Creative brainstorms on the beanbags, strong eyeliner and expensed pizza lunches. It hurtles back into my brain, what happened. Why I’m not there. God, I miss that feeling of being good at something.
I wonder fleetingly if I can build myself another work world I love from blogging.
I make excuses and go to the toilet to check likes on my last Cheshire Mama Instagram post.
I sit in Asha’s downstairs loo for five minutes, in front of a Tracey Emin print. Inhaling a scent from a plug-in that I am convinced is getting stuck in my lungs.
And suddenly I realise that I can’t move. Can’t face leaving this tiny room. Taking my eyes away from my phone. Living back in the real world.
It’s happening again.
The panic increases and I realise how small the room is but still it’s worse to leave it and face people and so I gasp and I stay in the toilet for enough minutes that one of the girls knocks on the door, concerned, and I have to feign a bad stomach.
Soon after, I gather up Poppy and leave, knowing I am coming across as rude but deciding it’s better than coming across as weak.
Anon
‘Are you okay, Scarlett?’ we ask, as she hides from us in the toilet. ‘Need anything? Can we get you some water?’
We think she is ill. Or do we?
Someone mutters that she is probably in there checking her Instagram likes ‘while we look after your kid.’
That gets a laugh. Partly because we suspect it’s true. It does often feel like Scarlett has her head somewhere else and prefers to inhabit a world on her phone while we man – woman – her real life. Slipping Poppy some toast, wiping the butter from her tiny chin.
When we share the news that matters to us, she is distracted. When we talk about our jobs, she glazes over. She is attached to her phone, more and more as time goes on.
It makes me feel better about what I’ve done though, when she behaves that way.
Far easier than on the days when she passes me a nappy I need from my changing bag or orders a drink she know I will be desperate for so that it is waiting for me, with a slice of cake on the side and a kind smile.
How can you be kind to me? I think, in those moments. How can you be kind to me when you’ve done what you’ve done? To my family.
At home, I am consumed by her. I click on her blog twenty, twenty-five times a day. Stare. Scroll. Feel my body flare up like it is being attacked. I can’t cope with the perfection. That must, I think, be what he sees when he looks at her. I am ferocious with envy. The joy. The radiance. The grooming.
And of course the main thing. I am envious of her, sleeping with him, just after he sleeps with me.
When I see her after one of my binging sessions on her blog, I get these urges to punch her in her neat little nose, like a teenage boy having a fight in the playground, scuff marks on his knees, knowing he will be in detention later but believing that it’s worth it, in that moment, as long as he can deliver that hard, targeted blow. And I know that at some point, when it is time, I will deliver that blow myself, even if it takes a slightly different form. I just have to be patient.
13
Scarlett
18 May
‘Still on for this weekend?’ asks Asha, as we wrestle the babies into their coats after our baby rhyme group.
I see a massive hardback on the bottom of her pram; one of those people wade through like treacle.
‘I hope we are,’ she adds, anxious, before I can answer. ‘I’ve booked a hair appointment.’
She sees me looking at the book.
‘Should get through another chapter of that then too,’ she says, animated. ‘One of the hardest things having kids isn’t it? How little you get to read.’
I duck my head in embarrassment.
I’m not a reader, though it’s a thing I don’t like to admit.
Asha is smart, arty; I want her to think I’m smart too, in that way you need to provide signposts for new friends to know who you are, what you stand for.
I think of the panic attack I had at her house last week. I wonder if she and the others suspected, wondered why I was in the toilet for so long. We’ve never spoken about it.
‘Mmm hmm,’ I mutter. ‘Really hard.’
Asha passes Ananya a rice cake. She touches her own smooth black hair, halfway down her back.
A hair appointment? The most this girls’ night was getting from me was a clean bra.
‘I’ve been pumping like crazy but I’m still short,’ says Asha, anxious as she slips Ananya into her sling on her front. ‘Going to get as much as I can tonight.’
I see the hint of a sigh from Cora.
‘Can’t she just give that child a Cow & Gate and stop with the drama?’ she asked me a few weeks ago, after a similar conversation. ‘All this bloody pumping. She’s one. She could have a carton of milk from M&S. Talk about building up your part.’
So, there are some things I am clear on. We might not have each other’s job titles down, but we know each other’s judgements.
Just before we leave the community hall, my phone beeps and I am rummaging in the depths of my changing bag with stuff spilling everywhere to find it when a woman I vaguely recognise comes over to me.
‘Scarlett,’ she says, as I pull out nappy after nappy. ‘I wanted to check something. I don’t like pictures of my baby going online. I saw you posted some of all the babies on Instagram last week. Can you take them down?’
I raise a
