The video hadn’t been enough to ruin her.
Even my messages to Ed hadn’t been enough to ruin her.
But that didn’t matter. Because there was more, Scarlett, still to come.
I drive home wondering what she knew and how.
And think about whether that means I have to speed things up. To deliver the next blow sooner than planned. Imminently.
23
Scarlett
16 June
Another evening, another split into separate rooms of the house.
Does it all come down to the furniture really? Share a bed, a sofa, a dining table and you’ll be all right. Start dividing off and where you divide next, right through the centre of your feelings for each other, is inevitable.
I am in the bath long after it has become tepid because it is still less chilly than being in a room with my husband.
Cheshire. The video was posted in Cheshire. What the hell does that mean? How close has this come from? I glance at the door. Ed is in the living room watching something on his iPad with his headphones on. I think again of all of those nights out he’s been on lately, of my suspicions that he’s cheating. Would a woman who wants me out of the picture do this to me? And could she be here, just out of touching distance buying new underwear to show to my husband behind a pretty moneyed door in Cheshire?
The door is locked and I have taken my phone in with me; I need short, sharp hits of distraction. It feels the same as the Haribo. I scroll old pictures on my blog of Ed, Poppy and me looking happy and content. Looking like people you would want to be. The comparison is almost unbearable.
I file the email from the website provider in case I need it as evidence, in a trial I can’t imagine being brave enough for, to speak up about things I never want to speak up about. That’s how they get my silence, isn’t it? With my own shame. I remember Asha talking about the theory of the greater good; risking your own self for the bigger picture, in case this happens to somebody else. But I’m not strong enough. I’m not.
Without realising, I’ve opened Facebook. New friend request. Joseph Jacobson. It takes me a second but a look at the picture and my familiar response to his face confirms it: he’s the guy from the coffee shop. I glance at the bathroom door, guilty. Something happens that feels nostalgic. The way you feel at the beginning. The way you feel about potential.
I accept his request and a message pops in. It’s incongruous to my social media presence with its family life and its cute baby.
I don’t bite, it says. Never feel like you can’t stop in for coffee. Nothing happened between us, after all. We can still be mates.
I exhale. I had been fairly sure there had been no kiss but still; it’s good to hear him confirm.
If he’d left it there it might have been okay. But he’s typing, typing. Don’t do it, I think, but at the same time I think, do.
You look beautiful in that profile picture. Ridiculously beautiful.
I need to distance myself from this because my physical response to it screams danger.
I look at his picture. Ridiculously beautiful.
Could he be something to do with the video, with the threats? A man who fancies me, and lives and works in Cheshire? There are more unlikely scenarios.
Immediately my phone pings with a text and I think, Joseph. But three words give a different reveal.
Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, it says. Ollie. I liked seeing you. Can I see you again?
I sit bolt upright, water splashing over the side of the overfilled bath.
Jesus.
I’ve pictured it, haven’t I, even when things have been good with Ed, being back with Ollie.
I’ve pictured the reunion and felt the kiss and known the squeeze of emotion through my whole body and I’ve wondered: do other people feel this way? Is this just first love? Perhaps it even happens if you didn’t care that much; it’s just something your brain does; a chemical response when it remembers how powerful everything was first time around.
I glance at the door to check it’s locked.
I read it again.
Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett.
Joseph is forgotten.
Could Ollie be contacting me for any other reason than the one I’m thinking of?
But really, what he is saying is simple. What Ollie is asking is whether I will meet him in a pub again, with no practical reason this time. He wants to meet me in a pub when we are both married and despite us sharing an obscene attraction and a lot of love, whether it’s past or present.
The answer is obvious, and I start typing.
24
Scarlett
16 June
Ollie and I are in a club; we drink vodka tonics. We’re older than most of the people around us, sure, but we’re better dancers, and we know dance classics like they were written on our bones.
This laughs in the face of a baby exercise class, and we sweat and it’s beautiful and Ollie kisses me. We’ve aged, yes, but the kisses have not.
I wear a short dress and trainers and from a distance, in the flattering night-time, I am twenty-two.
We kiss on the dance floor and then we kiss in the taxi home but this time it’s not home, as there are husbands there, and wives, and children. We realise occasionally that we are grown-ups with our own recycling bins and the memory is funny. The weight of responsibility has lifted for this brief moment and we revel in it. Can barely remember those people we are on Mondays, on Tuesdays, on all the days.
We go to a hotel and it’s not grubby because he is my first love and this is romance. Sex with him is different but the power of it and the strength of my adoration for him is the same.
The next morning we order room service brunch and I laugh that Ollie is happily eating eggs after
