‘So, your email,’ he says, leaning forward onto his desk. ‘I wish you’d told me that was a possibility earlier on.’
I sigh. ‘Well, I didn’t know it was,’ I reply. ‘I mean, obviously I know it happened. But I didn’t know that whoever did this knew. That it’s something they would come at me for.’
‘And now you do?’
‘Yes,’ I say, cold. ‘Now I do.’
Jonathan folds his lips inwards. Types something quickly on his computer.
‘I just need to do whatever the hell I can to stop it coming out,’ I say. ‘To everyone. Including Ed. And my family. Just everyone. I can’t weather another thing, and not this. So how do I do that? Stop it? At least this time there is warning.’
Jonathan is firm. ‘The same way as we do the other thing. Find whoever sent you the message – and you’re confident it’s the same person that posted the video, right?’
I nod. I can’t have two people who hate me this much. Surely.
‘Find them, then we take this to the police. That’s the only route, Scarlett. Do not start engaging with them.’
I am so tempted though. Go direct. Find out who they want me to leave alone. See if we can talk this out. Then I laugh; this person posted a sex tape of me online, emailed it to my friends. Do I really think we’ll have a chat over a cup of tea and shake on it?
And I am sitting there, in the lawyer’s office, but I am standing there, at that dead end again. Fuck. Where the hell do I go from here?
29
Scarlett
2 July
The white professionally painted walls are closing in on me. Cora’s huge modern house – designed at such a monumental cost to be airy – hanging out solo on its country road seems suddenly like the most claustrophobic place there is and I am struggling to breathe.
We are here, my daughter and I, on a playdate.
My head is still in the penthouse.
With the drinks.
The jittery body.
The white blonde hair.
Do I message them back? Ignore what Jonathan said?
I walk out of Cora’s living room, leaving Poppy in a playpen with Penelope, Seth and Ananya. The playpen is baby jail; a way to stop them dribbling/ pooing/ wiping slightly gross fingers on the white leather sofa. They spend a lot of time in it at Cora’s house.
The only time they don’t have to be in the playpen is if they are in the playroom, conceived of by an interior designer who has certainly never met a child.
I walk past it as I go to wash my hands after changing Poppy’s nappy and – untouched yet today – it is spotless. Pastel pink walls, more cream carpet, expensive white bookcases that are begging for a felt tip pen to decorate them with unidentifiable murals. Still, I think, it’s very Insta friendly. Cora loves it when I post pictures of Poppy and Penelope’s playdates and my followers comment on her house. Loved it. Past tense. Goodbye, Cheshire Mama.
I stand at the sink and look around at the crazily expensive soap and the Jo Malone candles and the fancy tiles on the floor and I think: Who is all this for?
Because I might not have Cora’s wealth but I do it too, this performance.
It helps me convey a version of myself to other people without having to stand in the middle of rooms and shout it: ‘I am good, I am balanced, I am smart, I am cultured, I am on top of life.’
And now, it’s fallen apart. Stuff has conned me. In the end, stuff didn’t make any difference after all.
When fancy soap runs out now I forget to replace it so Ed picks up a bar of cheap stuff from the supermarket and I no longer care. When towels need washing, I let it go a week longer, two before I bother and they smell. Washing up lines the surfaces; deli cakes are replaced with stale biscuits.
My narrative is unravelling.
It can’t come out. Not another thing. Not the worst thing.
I tilt my head back against the pristine cistern. Gear myself up to going back into the living room.
My brain swims with thoughts of the penthouse.
Just then Emma bundles in, flinging cupboards open and grabbing a roll of cloths.
‘Don’t forget the Vanish!’ yells Cora.
I hear a baby crying and hurry into the living room.
I look at Cora whose face is doing what it would do if you served her champagne lukewarm. Ananya, no nappy on, grins with just two teeth.
A smell drifts upwards from the cream carpet.
‘Oh!’ I exclaim, realising. Relieved, if I’m honest, that it wasn’t Poppy.
‘How did she get out of the playpen?’ asks Emma, coming back in and gingerly picking it up with a cloth.
‘Not now, Emma,’ hisses Cora, pushing past Asha to pick up Ananya.
‘No, Ananya! Not on the carpet!’ she says, stern.
Then she shoves her at Asha, holding her like a dumbbell. Ananya starts to cry.
I draw a sharp intake of breath at how physical she is with her, when she isn’t her own. When she is a baby.
‘Maybe it’s an idea to take her home,’ Cora says deadpan as Emma scrubs furiously at the carpet.
I try to read Asha’s face as she scoops her up and does exactly that, muttering an apology. I look at her and wonder how she isn’t screaming at Cora. I would be. Somebody else’s child!
I know for a fact that Martha, Flick and the rest of my old friends would never have done that to Poppy. But, it seems, Cora would have.
I think of Cora sleeping with her yoga teacher and her private number plate and her Botox and her bright pink Cora’s Cupcakes branding and I think for the hundredth time how different we all are. Of what an odd trajectory these intense but distracted friendships have taken.
Suddenly, I feel edgy. Was it an error, telling them about the video, about my marriage? What’s just happened
