Yes. One time there was a lot of money on offer, and I convinced myself it was a simple transaction and I did it. I slept with that man, twenty-five years older than me, maybe, and it was so much more than a transaction and the dam opened then and the shame flooded, over and over, just like now and I hated me, just like now.
‘I shouldn’t have to justify anything I’ve done in my life to you, Emma,’ I say but I don’t feel that way. I want to justify, like I spend so much time in my head trying to do too, to real people, to imaginary people, to myself. On a good day it works. On bad days, nothing does. I could have gone to my dad for money, instead of that man. My eyes sting. He’d have taken me in, any day, any hour. But I was too proud; still sulking about his new family. How can I have made that choice? I picture my dad knowing this and it hurts in my insides.
She ploughs forward, like I haven’t even spoken.
‘Robert was appalled by what I’d done to you,’ she says. ‘Asked why the hell I would share the video. And then said he had fallen out of love with me a long time ago but this was the final straw, he didn’t want to be with a person who could do this to somebody else, especially somebody they called a friend, and he left me.’
It wasn’t Robert, it was me.
This isn’t a friendly chat.
I’m not here to counsel her over her marriage.
She did this to me.
Not Mitch.
Emma.
And now she has let herself into my home and she is high and drunk and angry.
My heart starts thudding. The sweat drips again.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I need to keep Emma talking, because otherwise I don’t know what comes next. Will she tell Ed, tell everybody, what I did?
‘And why did you do this to me?’ I say. ‘Robert made some sort of sense. But you? I don’t get it, Emma.’
Emma settles back on the cushions; refocuses. Looks right at me.
‘I’ve suspected for a long time,’ she says. ‘That you were back on the scene.’
I open my mouth to protest but there is no chance.
‘Receipts of Robert’s I found, for local places, local hotels. It’s always been Manchester before, but for a while I’ve known Robert’s been sleeping with someone on our doorstep. Knowing you two had a history, it made sense. Clicked into place.’
Her stare is intense.
‘Was it still the same?’ she snarls. ‘After all of those years?’
I shake my head no, hard – no it didn’t happen, no, no, no.
‘You have no idea how much I hate you.’ She hurtles forward. ‘I was going to watch you fall apart from a distance, just do enough that he wouldn’t want you any more and the affair would stop. But then he left, and I needed to stand in front of you and tell you to leave him alone. Stay away from him. And from me. I am not your friend. I hate you. You’re the reason my husband’s left me. You have ruined my fucking life.’
The tone of her voice makes me stumble backwards.
I shake my head again. How can I stay away from him? It’s not happening Emma. I’m not sleeping with Mitch. No, no, no.
How quickly worlds fall apart, I think. One minute you are liked, loved. Next minute they fall like dominoes and your dad, husband, boss, friend: they all hate you, or pity you, or cringe at you, or resent you or can no longer look at you right in the eye.
But Emma does, now. And then up and down, head to toe.
‘I get it,’ she says. ‘There I am and there you are, glamorous, confident. Alpha.’
She looks up at a wedding photo of Ed and me on the wall above my head, gestures.
‘Don’t believe everything you see in a photo,’ I mutter. ‘I would have thought that was obvious by now.’
She ignores me. It’s not useful to her narrative.
‘I’m not sleeping with Robert,’ I tell her but she doesn’t hear it.
‘You had to have him, even though you already have everything,’ she murmurs.
‘Everything?’ I shout. ‘You remember that I have left my job because my body is all over the internet?’
‘Yeah,’ she murmurs. ‘Your really good body. Having sex with my baby’s dad.’
The laugh bursts out.
‘Emma, you can’t possibly think that’s a good thing?’ I shout, startled. ‘I’ve had my life blown apart by this. When I watch that hideous video, I’m not sitting there thinking, “Well, at least my boobs look good.” Do you have any idea how violated you feel when something like this happens to you?’
Her eyes are fire now, suddenly, and she’s furious.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t. I’m Miss Local. I do the weekly shop and I go in for the evening shift. I nag my partner to come home sometimes, just this once, before 4 a.m. I wash dishes. I try not to eat the biscuit. I feed my baby. That is literally all I do, Scarlett. This video? At least it’s exciting. At least it’s made you feel … something.’
And then, I see every shade of red there is at the very idea that any of this is enviable.
‘It’s made me feel something?’ I shout. ‘Is that why you did this? Because it worked, Emma. You made me feel something. You made me feel shame and horror and fear. You made me feel at rock bottom. You made me feel suicidal, at times. You made me feel desperate. You made me feel like I couldn’t experience joy any more, even when I was with my daughter, because I was so horrified by what had happened to me, wondering who had seen the video, wondering who was watching it now. You made me scared that there was worse to come. Scared that everyone would think I was a prostitute, and that Poppy would think that when she was older,
