Eventually I moved out of my dad’s house and into a shared flat with a couple of girls in Chorlton, where you went out on Sunday mornings for eggs benedict, not Friday nights for lines of coke.
I got a two glasses of red wine habit instead of a vodka one. I wore heels. I dyed my cheap blonde highlights back to my original dark brown and when I could afford it, put a glossy sheen from a fancy salon on top.
I became addicted to it all too, and what it brought, and with every new choice I added to the new me, with her sharp bob and her pension and, six years after she left party-boy Ollie, her new boyfriend, posh Ed, the financial controller from work, who became her husband in an expensive wedding where we served good wine and rare beef. We celebrated with smart, successful friends.
It’s a path that my mind has taken me down many times in the last two months. How far things have fallen back, back, back.
Any exes bitter when you left them?
I think, over and over.
After Ollie, there was no one serious until Ed. But there were flings, love stories in miniature.
I think carefully about each one now. How things were left and if, somehow, those people could have had access to the video. I don’t come up with anything.
If you change your mind, I’m up for a drink, says Ollie from my phone at the side of the bath, from the past.
I pull the plug out, grab a towel then head to bed. But I leave my phone behind to make sure that I don’t message back and dive into that past because the present is so very, very bleak.
25
Scarlett
18 June
‘Forgot my phone,’ I say, putting my key in the door. ‘Got all the way to the gym before I realised and no way can I do the treadmill without music.’
Ed is sitting on the sofa, holding it. He brandishes it at me.
Again.
‘What now?’
And my husband looks at me with such disdain that I think if it weren’t for Poppy, I would give up on us for good because who can take a life like this? Who can take a face that looks at them like this?
‘You’ve been messaging Ollie,’ he says.
I exhale. That’s all.
‘Well he’s involved in this too,’ I said. ‘It seems fair to update him.’
There’s a beat.
‘But that’s not what happened,’ Ed says. ‘He asked you for a drink. You only told him about Mitch and the Cheshire thing – which incidentally you’ve never told me – later.’
Why had I never told Ed that I knew the video came from Cheshire? Because somewhere, deep down, I wondered if it could be a woman Ed is seeing who did this to me. And the Cheshire link seemed to increase the possibility of that.
I shiver.
‘You looked at my phone.’
For the first time, he makes eye contact.
‘You say that as though these are normal circumstances, Scarlett,’ he says. ‘I haven’t looked at your phone in the five years we have been together. I’ve had no need to. I trusted you. But we’re not in normal times here.
‘You’re in a sex video online. Men are contacting me to say they’re sleeping with you.’
I sit down on the floor.
‘So,’ he says, swimming out of my vision. Everything is blurry. It’s exhaustion mixed with endorphins mixed with thirst mixed with anger mixed with sadness.
But then he appears again.
‘So. I’ll ask you once. Why are you messaging Ollie? Why are you flirting with him?’
Hearing him say Ollie’s name makes me start to shake. It’s the two versions of me overlapping and blurring. It’s lives, squishing together. It’s naivety and fun and it’s electricity bills and raincoats.
I look at Ed, lucid for a second.
‘You mean the messages to Ollie that I wrote saying no to a drink?’ I say, anger building. ‘Those messages? The ones where I stay loyal to you despite temptation?’
It’s out before I can think.
He nods, matter-of-fact.
‘Tempted then,’ he says, martyr. ‘Nice to know.’
I lean my head back against the wall, try to unload some of the weight.
‘Of course I was tempted, Ed,’ I say, quiet now. ‘Don’t tell me there isn’t someone out there who could tempt you, if they got you at the right moment. Which let’s face it, for us is definitely now.’
I pause.
‘We aren’t even sharing a bed.’
Ed bows his head, shamed briefly too, thinking of the old us that would have felt starved by this lack of touch.
‘Are you sure it’s not him?’ he says. ‘If it seems like he fancies you now too, it could be part of some weird way to get back in touch, make you need him …’
I hesitate.
It seems odd to be affirmative to Ed. To acknowledge how well I know another man. How much I trust another man. I redden.
And also, he has a point.
‘Fucking hell, Ed, reading my messages. Come on.’
I lie down now, supine on the floor.
And from there, when I can’t look at him, I ask.
‘Ed,’ I say quietly. A last throw of the dice. ‘Can you hug me?’
I stay there on the floor so that I can’t see his response but when I finally sit up, minutes later, he is gone.
I hear him moving around upstairs. Shutting the door. No gap, no opening. Goodnight then, Ed. And I cry the silent tears that you do especially so that no one hears and no one has to deal with the hassle of comforting you.
And when I’m done with crying and I am done with being in this room with just me, me, me, I message my friends and
