I look at Cora. Emma is sitting quietly, wide-eyed.
‘One other problem,’ I say. ‘How is he supposed to have got hold of the video?’
Cora shrugs. ‘Isn’t that the case for anybody? Other than the two guys, I mean. For anyone else to have it is weird. It’s what makes the whole thing so completely fucked up.’
Cora ploughs on. ‘And,’ she says. ‘AND. I heard him joke about hacking his friend’s phone the other day. So he can, you know, hack.’
Now I’m laughing, despite myself. ‘Well he’s a millennial,’ I mock. ‘They can all, you know, hack.’
Cora looks triumphant. ‘A millennial! Barely. He’s only a couple of years younger than us. Wait, are we millennials? And get this. His mate over there told me he does coding work in between café shifts,’ she says. ‘And you can’t say that all millennials can code.’
I raise my eyebrows at her.
‘You can actually,’ I say. ‘You absolutely can.’
But suddenly Emma looks animated. She’s into this. ‘I know who!’ she explodes. ‘My sister-in law! The one you fell out with when you posted those pictures.’
I sit back, wait for this. ‘Do you really think so? Is that her style?’
Emma looks doubtful suddenly.
‘I don’t think she cared enough to ruin my life,’ I say. ‘Plus how on earth would she have got it?’
Which brings us back then to Mitch, to Ollie. But they were both so genuine.
Emma’s still on her sister-in-law, who I presume she mustn’t like a lot. ‘Isn’t it the ultimate punishment?’ she asks. ‘You betray my privacy online; I’ll give you the opposite of privacy online?’
Cora laughs. ‘That’s a bit of a leap, Miss Marple, but also, the link was sent before we had that conversation,’ she says, rolling her eyes at me as though Emma can’t see us.
Emma’s face darkens. ‘It made more sense than your theory,’ she mutters and then she shuffles in her boots to the toilet and Cora laughs at her and I join in because it’s awkward not to.
I am still laughing when I look up and see Asha, standing above us, having managed to glide into the building without anyone noticing. This is a very Asha quality. Fuck. Did she hear us laughing at Emma? I feel awful. Bitchy. My face flushes pink.
I look down at Ananya, smiling in the pram in a Peter Pan collar. They float, the pair of them, while at the moment I career around the place.
I stand up to kiss her and I wave at Ananya.
‘Handy that it’s your day off today, hon,’ says Cora.
‘Well, I wouldn’t have been drinking that much last night if it wasn’t,’ she says. She does look a little nauseous.
Asha’s eyes ask me how I’m doing over Cora’s head. I nod, a tiny movement.
The waiter takes Asha’s order of green tea and an avocado and egg protein bowl and I ask for a blueberry muffin and another coffee. I feel my jeans pull on my waist a little; promise myself that I’ll ease back on the sugar, the booze, the processed meat, the caffeine, soon. Not now. But soon.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Asha gently and she is so genuine and warm that I want to hug her but I resist. Even with a hangover, her black shirt looks beautifully ironed, her black hair perfectly straightened; I don’t want her creased and tainted and smudged by my misery. ‘But touch wood, fingers crossed this is the worst of it and it’ll go away now, right?’
I don’t know anyone as superstitious as Asha, who took her pram onto a fairly dicey road the other day to avoid walking under a ladder and caveats most positive statements with concerns about jinxing things.
Asha looks thoughtful. ‘I tell you what I wondered though,’ she says. ‘And tell me if I’m speaking out of turn.’
She looks up and I shake my head no no, do go on.
‘I wondered about your blog,’ she says hesitantly and I glance at Cora, who raises her eyebrow at me. I give Cora a hint of a nod. It’s done. Gone.
Asha carries on. ‘About what information you’ve put on there, and how that could have something to do with it,’ she says. ‘Since the whole thing would have coincided with you having more of an online presence?’
I nod, thinking about Mitch making the same point.
‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘I’ve actually shut Cheshire Mama down for that reason.’
‘No!’ says Cora. ‘That’s gutting!’
And I look up, confused, before I realise she is acting.
Anon
Have you ever asked a question about me, I think, in the whole time we have been friends? And yet I drop everything and sit through emergency summits like this one and the one last night in the pub, to try and fix your whole broken life.
I mean, technically I was the one who broke it. But still.
Finally, Scarlett has ‘told’ us about the video.
I had wondered how long she could hold out, and she impressed me to be honest.
After all, we are such good friends. The closest. She had to confide in us in the end. Who else is there to talk to now? Those old friends are long gone. Ed is in the spare room.
Even now though, as we sit in the coffee shop and try to help, she sneers at our opinions. At our verdicts. At our theories.
Like you’ve done any better, Scarlett, I think. Like your judgement isn’t the worst in the fucking world.
Surely you’d have shut down the blog at the very start anyway? As soon as this happened. But not when you’re Scarlett. Scarlett couldn’t relinquish the likes. Couldn’t relinquish that semi-celebrity identity she felt like she had when she posted. When a free pair of baby leggings came her way.
I’ve thought so many times about how I could use Cheshire Mama against Scarlett. It felt like an opportunity.
But I couldn’t post the video on there without her approving it.
If I added it to my comments on Cheshire Mama’s Instagram, she would delete it
