Because I feel so guilty that I miss work. That’s why I had laboured the point.
‘And the blog. Jesus, the way you went on about that blog.’
‘I just … wanted a project,’ I say, the jelly getting thicker. ‘Something for me.’
Is this honestly the impression I give?
I hold my temples.
What a precarious balance it is, I think, of being happy in public but not too happy. Celebrating your wins but not being smug. Making it clear that you’ve had your allocated amount of shit times without spending your life moaning.
I am drained, thinking about it.
But that’s not why she’s done this. It hasn’t helped, clearly, that she’s had these thoughts about me. But it’s not why. Get to the point, Emma, I think, get to your point so I can get my answers finally, about what has been going on with Ed.
I glance towards the door then remind myself, relieved, that Poppy isn’t here.
I look back.
Emma’s eyes flash rage.
‘You talk over me. Dismiss me. Look at me like I’m this local, tedious frump,’ she says, with such venom that she is unrecognisable from the woman who drunk her lime and soda and ate noodles in the Peak District with me and ran behind me with her buggy.
She looks down at herself.
She broke into my house, I think, this shy woman with her ponytail from antenatal classes. She lurked outside until she got a window of opportunity and then, whatever the specifics about the locks, she broke into my house.
‘You work in medicine, Emma,’ I say, trying to reach her. ‘You’re a good person.’
‘Oh Scarlett!’ she shouts, flinging her head back. ‘Don’t patronise me, either.’
She carries on.
‘We all know you only consider real work the type that’s done on a beanbag in the city next to a load of people much cooler than us,’ she rants, bitter. ‘Or by influencers, from a shared office space in Bali. Not by us, out in the sticks.’
Us, us.
I blush. That’s how I felt when we first moved. It’s true. And it’s awful that it was so obvious. That I was so shallow. But not now! It’s changed since then, I think. It’s changed so very much. You’re my friends. You were my friends.
‘You know I fucked my education because I was too busy getting off my face?’ I try, to burst her bubble of my perfect career path, unblemished life.
But of course she doesn’t know that. Why would I have shared that when I spend as much time as I can trying to paint the picture with the fancy soap and the good job and the designer bag and the perfect family standing next to the newborn lambs in their wellies?
‘Does everybody think this?’ I ask and it comes out in a croak, a whisper. ‘That I think I’m better than you?’
She shrugs. ‘Probably.’
I look at her, closely.
‘But what about when I told you my marriage was in trouble?’
She smiles, sort of sadly. ‘Yeah, that helped humanise you. But it was only because of the video. That was your only bloody problem.’
I laugh, incredulous. ‘My only problem! It was a big one, Emma.’
And so far from my only problem.
She looks up, shrugs. Looks down at her hands and pauses to pick off a hangnail.
‘True, true,’ she concedes, eyebrows raised as she nods. ‘A sex video, of all things! And then look at you now.’
Emma shakes her head in faux disbelief.
‘Scarlett Salloway. Not quite the perfect woman we all thought. More like your common garden slut next door.’
Don’t call me that, don’t call me that.
‘And still he wanted you over me,’ she murmurs. ‘No wonder.’
So that’s it, I think. Ed has dumped her and she has fallen for him. They were sleeping together. That is where this came from.
‘Are you having an affair with Ed?’ I ask. ‘Is that what this is about?’
She laughs.
The murmur again.
‘I’m not talking about Ed,’ she says. ‘I’m talking about Robert.’
I can’t keep up.
‘You think Robert has left you for me?’
I am baffled. Wish again I wasn’t drunk.
‘Okay, you have some crossed wires here,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t know Robert. Never met him. I’m certainly not having an affair with him.’
But it feels like the more I speak, the further she retreats and I am starting to feel that I will never be able to bring her back.
I look at her eyes, dark, glass, and think of her loitering outside for an opportunity to break into my house.
I’m scared, that’s the truth.
I can hear her words but my mind is whirring back to my husband, to hers.
I’ve never met Robert, never even seen a picture of him as far as I can remember. Like I say, he doesn’t come up much.
But Ed. I know Ed is sleeping with someone else. This has to be where this has come from, whatever Emma – drunk – is muttering about her husband. I ask again.
‘Emma, are you sleeping with Ed? Is that what this is about?’
I think of them, that day in the hospital, shaking hands. Was it happening then?
I look at her. Pretty. A lot slimmer than she used to be. I hadn’t noticed it happen. Clearly wasn’t watching her closely.
So maybe this is a new thing, his head turned when she looked different, when he bumped into her next to the rowing machine. It would make more sense. Ed likes slim figures.
And while Emma barely knows Ed in the world that I inhabit, clearly there is an alternate universe somewhere that I am slowly being given access to and in that universe she has slept with Ed and I am the enemy.
Emma guffaws, holds her side, laughs out loud for half a minute.
‘Oh fucking LOOK at me, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘Even a bit trimmed down, as if your husband the Instagram model would go near me. God you are stupid.’
She shakes her head. Then cocks it to one side, teacher to pupil.
‘Scarlett,’ she says slowly.
