I think of him, furiously typing. I think of him typing to a woman who, were she to be wearing nothing next to him as I am now, he would want to touch. I think of her falling for him.
I think of her hating me. I think, skipping step after step, about where that could lead. About quite how much a love rival might want to hurt me.
I message Cora, desperate to talk.
Do you think Ed could be sleeping with someone else and SHE posted the video?
I lie back against my pillow. Is this now my life, suspecting everybody and even inventing new people to suspect?
But again I come back to the biggest mystery of all: how anybody but Ollie and Mitch could have got access to that video. I think of who knew what had happened back then: Suki and Felix, our flatmates at the time, a few friends we were out with that night, I suppose. Zoe, the girl I went travelling with and talked to about it, on a long bus journey down the coast of Eastern Australia. Even if they knew though, I don’t think any of them were close enough to Mitch to have access to his phone. I don’t think Mitch ever sent it to my phone. None of this makes sense.
Cora replies.
Do you not remember what I told you about people who wake me up early? her message says.
Then another.
But it doesn’t sound like the most unlikely scenario. Let’s talk when I see you xxx
I squeeze my eyes closed, try to bury my head under the duvet and grasp at sleep again.
This is torturous.
As I drift off, somewhere in between sleep and awake, I think about Josephine, lovely Josephine in her dress, and how I wish wish wish I could be Josephine and go back to the beginning, start again, with all of my fuck-ups still to make.
‘Scarlett,’ says Ed suddenly. I bolt upright. What? Sleep had come, at some point, or a semblance of it. ‘We need to get up. We’re supposed to be picking Poppy up in half an hour.’
My mind feels like it’s sparking. I jump in the shower and lock the door behind me and I’m relieved there is no time for breakfast. Relieved there is no time to talk. Relieved that there is no time to spend with a husband who I realise then, I no longer trust.
31
Scarlett
15 July
I glance behind me to check on the girls and see Emma bouncing inelegantly with Seth asleep in the buggy (‘His dad’s out, needs must’).
We are out running. Emma has come for the negating of Slimming World points against a cheeky curry that will be consumed when she gets in. Her face is the colour of a livid pimple.
‘I’ve been going to the gym too!’ she yells. ‘I thought my fitness would have improved.’
‘Doesn’t work if you just spend it in the Jacuzzi then eat a cake in the café, hon,’ Cora shouts back, deadpan but we know she’s joking, Emma looks slim, toned.
Asha jogs alongside me, childlike and spindly in Lycra. Cora lags back, looking utterly unlike herself in her trainers and designer leggings, her exercise normally done behind the closed doors of yoga studios. Or hotel bedrooms. But Cora hates being left out.
‘FOMO, Scarlett,’ she sighs to me regularly, phone sellotaped to her palm. ‘I’m a slave to it.’
For me, it was the air of awkwardness that inhabits our house; my overwhelming desire to escape it that got me out running tonight. And then there is the need to outrun what’s next. What I fear is coming for me. Of the penthouse.
‘Is that …’ says Asha, but I concur before she can finish. Yes. It’s Joseph. Standing across the street, ignoring the advance of autumn in a T-shirt. Pausing as he clears tables. Watching me as we run by with an empty coffee cup in his hand.
Is it him I’m meant to leave alone?
My skin prickles. He’s too close to me, too tempting.
But when I suspect that Ed is doing something far worse than any small flirtation I’ve had with Joseph, should I care?
‘Well I tell you what,’ Cora shouts from behind. ‘I’d be tempted. That’s one beautiful man.’
I ignore her and speed up. Asha keeps pace.
‘You okay about what happened with Cora the other week?’ I say, a quick glance at Asha.
She laughs.
‘Bit pissed off at the time,’ she says. ‘But it’s just her isn’t it? That’s her way. I don’t think she meant any harm.’
We run in silence as I think how much I’d have stewed on this. Perhaps Asha doesn’t hold grudges like I do.
‘Do you think Ed could be cheating on me?’ I ask Asha suddenly too, out of nowhere.
Asha turns as she runs, a half-second glance, and then looks ahead again.
We are silent for a minute or two except for the thwack of pavement beneath our trainers. I know I’ve made her feel awkward.
‘Well I only ever met Ed at NCT classes and don’t know him well,’ she says eventually. Thud, thud, thud. ‘So I’d say your judgement will be better on this one than mine.’
She gives me another mid-run look.
‘I was just thinking that could be something to do with the video?’ I lead her. ‘If he’s shagging somebody else, they could have reason to want to hurt me?’
Some of my past runs have settled in my bones so that I can keep going at a decent pace even when I’m at my least fit but I am still struggling to speak at the same time.
‘Do you have any evidence?’ Asha says and Cora yells to us to wait for them.
‘I want to join in the gossip!’ she yells and I flinch. This is my fucking life.
Asha turns to me.
‘Sorry,’ she says, short of breath. ‘That sounded a bit dramatic.’
I raise an eyebrow, which is about the most I can do with the energy I have left while I run.
Let’s face it: everything about me since I
