I look around the room as she coos over Poppy and try to figure out a way to move away from this woman who has seen me naked. But then, maybe everyone has. I look at each face and they swim in front of me. Have you seen it? Have you? My stomach still isn’t used to this feeling. Still rejects it and threatens to vomit.
‘And are you back at work now, my love?’ says Denise.
The pause presses down on my shoulders.
Huh. Work.
I need to get better at this; it’s not going to stop happening.
I cast a glance at Ed but if I am seeking someone to save me, he is not that person. He stares at the floor, at the wall, anywhere. On your own again, Scarlett, I think bitterly, even when your husband is next to you.
‘I decided to take more time off,’ I say, quietly.
Ed mutters his excuses and heads to the toilet.
I brace, ready for Aunt Denise to ask about the video, but she doesn’t need to.
‘Probably best,’ she murmurs.
Then she scoops up the bottom of her dress and heads off to the bar for another G&T and I wish it wasn’t Josephine’s wedding day with all of its obligations and mingling so that my sister or my dad could put their arm around me, or even just stop and be kind to me next to the cake. I’ve stopped expecting Ed to take on that role.
I sit alone at a table and think about how other people experience their sister’s wedding day, in a huddle of love and salmon mains and dancing. Not a moment unaccompanied. A day full of ‘I’ve got to speak to …’ and cramming people in. I drink the remnants of the last bottle of red that’s been abandoned on the table, as everybody else has gone to find friends or to dance, now that Rafe and Josephine have kicked things off with The Beach Boys.
I stare, missing her. It’s too clear to ignore now: Josephine and I have drifted too, because of the video, because I’m embarrassed. There is barely an area of my life that this video hasn’t driven a bulldozer through.
‘I’m presuming you’ve got enough on your plate to not want the hassle of being my bridesmaid?’ Josephine had said when she announced her engagement and we met up for a celebratory lunch nearly two years ago, when we were still very close. I was pregnant. ‘But it’s totally up to you.’
I had nodded sagely. I was a responsible adult woman. I couldn’t be organising hen dos and ordering straws in the shape of penises and flouncing around in tulle. I was going to have parenting to do. Now I wish I was side by side with Josephine, flouncing around in some tulle. Oh, to take a day off from adulting to flounce around in some tulle.
‘Want to dance?’
It is not a voice I expect. My husband.
I stare at him.
We are staying in a hotel tonight. We have the freedom to stay up late and drink and dance and nothing is restricting us. Why does that feel terrifying? Restrictions, over time perhaps, become excuses. But if I want my marriage to work, I need to take the moments.
‘Sure,’ I say, and we hold hands as we head to the dance floor. I try to remember our wedding day but I feel coated in a hefty smear of everything that has happened since. My hand is clammy. It hits me again; whatever our palms are doing, we are no longer hand-holders.
‘Sit down for a bit?’ Ed says, flat.
I nod.
We are back at our table, alone. He gets up again immediately to order drinks. I look over at him. At the bar, he is typing as quickly as he can, a smile on his face that I don’t elicit any more. I watch with an oddly removed interest.
Whatever he is writing, it’s intent.
I think of me, with my secrets. With my confidential emails to the lawyer who agreed to keep my counsel; I am the client, after all.
And so now the lawyer knows things about me that Ed does not and – unless I’m exposed again – won’t ever know.
Look at us, Ed, I think sadly, what a mess.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask, when he comes back.
‘Yep,’ he says casually. ‘They didn’t have Fever-Tree. Got you normal tonic.’
It’s a non-event.
He could have been typing to a friend. To the plumber, about something boring but urgent we need to sort out in the bathroom. To work, not telling me because he knows I’d be mad at him for focusing on that when we are at my sister’s wedding. But that smile.
At 5 a.m. the next morning, when I am wide awake with that brutal combination of a hangover and anxiety about my child being asleep in someone else’s home, that image of the focus on Ed’s face as he typed is flashing over and over. What did that focus mean? Was he typing to someone who matters, about something that matters? To someone whose hand he’d grip, tight?
I’ve wondered, haven’t I, for a long time now.
Now, Ed is in a deep sleep next to me. His gentle snore exhales beer. I raise myself up slowly in bed. My heart speeds up because I know now that I’m going to do it, and I’ve never done it before. Well, you started it, Ed, I think. How many times have you brandished my phone at me lately?
I slip out of bed and walk around to his side, pick it up. I enter the passcode that I know he has had for years.
It doesn’t work.
I try a couple of other numbers – Poppy’s date of birth, mine – but neither of them let me in. Eventually I skulk back to my side.
Why do people change their passcodes?
I stare
