I knew it was coming. Knew Mitch, Ollie and me was just the starting move.
That if somebody really wanted to wipe out my life – maybe not the breath but the joy, the pride, the self-worth – this is where they would go. It’s the picture that keeps me awake. Short skirts, long nights. The penthouse.
One part is confusing though: leave who alone? It sounds as though I’m supposed to know but I’m blank. Joseph? Ollie?
I am about to reply but I know I can’t.
I email Jonathan instead, as I’ve been told to do whenever anything happens.
Firstly, I say. This part of things must remain completely confidential from my husband. But there is something new.
And then I fill him in. On the truly murkiest part of my past, the one there is no way Ed would stick around if he knew about. The one I have to bury, if I have any chance of keeping this life, of still being respectable Scarlett, of not falling apart entirely.
Anon
And then, he dumps me.
I sit on the floor and grip onto his shin as he walks out of the door. It’s a basic fact that I beg, rather than anything I am ashamed of. I would beg again, a thousand times.
I love him.
He shakes me off, though, like a minor cold.
Tells me I am a despicable person.
I sit there on the floor after he’s gone, alone, and take out my other phone.
I know something else about Scarlett now and I have nothing to lose. Despicable people don’t.
I suppose Scarlett thought it was all well hidden, buried deep in Manchester from long ago in a different life. But she must know from the video that it’s not that hard to shift a bit of soil and expose what’s in the ground.
An escort. Add your own inverted commas. I do.
What a gift it is, this information. Because so far nothing has utterly broken Scarlett but this has to. Can you imagine? When she is so superior?
I message Scarlett with what I know and try to picture her when she reads it. Visualise it like the last brick on top of her, the one that will make her collapse under the weight.
This will make her leave him alone.
This will break her.
And then I will be able to live my life out of the shadow of Scarlett Salloway. Out of the shadow of who I could be, who I should be.
After he ends it with me, I weep, lost, for days and during that time, something shifts.
When I started this in spring I had wanted to stay anonymous, to watch from a distance as Scarlett fell apart. To get my revenge that way without anything as high-octane as confrontation, showdowns, exposing myself as the perpetrator.
Once he ends it though, things alter.
Anger does that. Charges through everything, rewrites intention.
Now I want to stand in front of Scarlett and tell her who has done this, and why.
I want to tell her that I know what she has done to me as well. That I am not an idiot. That I have known for a long time.
You were wrong to trust me, I want to tell her. You were so very, very wrong to trust me.
I want to see Scarlett’s face as she registers what that means. How much she has told me. How much she has leant on me. How few friends she really has. How strong I am. How weak she now feels. How maybe I am the fucking alpha, Scarlett, and how do you like that?
I want to tell her: you brought this on yourself, Scarlett. What did you expect?
And I want her to promise me that it will stop, and mean it.
28
Scarlett
30 June
At the lawyer’s office, Jonathan frowns at me.
‘Are you okay, Scarlett?’ he says. ‘You’re looking anxious.’
I laugh.
‘Well, wouldn’t you?’ I say. ‘If this happened to you, d’you think you might not be too chilled out? Silly question really – you’re a man, it can’t happen to you. If you made a sex tape, no one would care.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘That’s a sweeping statement but okay, point taken.’
He looks around the room, like he may have missed someone.
‘No Ed?’
‘Given the email I sent you I thought that might be best,’ I say. I am snippy now. Frustrated. I’m paying him money. And really, what does he do? I do all of the work.
Jonathan nods. Head down.
Ed didn’t take much persuasion not to come. It saved him taking the time off work. And from spending it with me, I suspect. We’re different people to the ones who came in here that first day. There’s no united front. Hands are not held.
I look around at the walls of this office; nothing personal here, so bare that Jonathan could be borrowing it from a colleague. Out of his window into the grey of Manchester. And I think of looking out of an upper floor somewhere else in this city, years ago. My head is there, resting with its long white blonde hair on a black leather sofa in a slick penthouse apartment in Manchester. The room is stark but even the starkness is expensive. Designer grey paint, wall to wall to wall. The art made up of collector pieces I am too young, too naive to recognise, but he tells me they’re impressive. And you can tell, anyway. Everything here is superior. The electronics spread themselves across walls; the gin is special edition.
And there in the picture is me, thin like a pre-teen, jiggling my body and unable to sit still then as I throw my head back and laugh. As my drink is topped up, again, higher. As I touch his knee. As I move in closer.
I look back at Jonathan and suspect more time has passed than it should have in the middle
