Ed chose the house we should buy and Cora chooses the playdate locations and I traipse after them, hood up, head down.
I’m irritated, suddenly, by the realisation that in trying to be respectable, what I’ve become is obedient.
Cora starts speaking as I shiver harder, more deeply, and wonder why it’s so cold in this house. Why on a night in, with unseasonably bad weather, Cora wouldn’t have stuck the heating on.
‘You think,’ she says. ‘That it was Emma who shared the video. And you’re right. Technically.’
She pauses.
My heart beats faster.
‘There were tens of them,’ she says. ‘These videos of women Robert had sex with. Looks like it was a thing of his.’
My shivering is impossible to hide now and I vibrate with it.
‘What did you mean, “technically”?’ I ask.
The flash, again.
‘She came to me,’ she says. ‘Told me that one of the women in the videos was you. She was devastated, paranoid. Even when she showed it to me and I pointed out that it was obviously made years ago, that you must have known each other when you were younger, she was convinced you had reconnected recently and hooked back up.’
I throw my head back against the leather sofa in frustration.
‘I know, I know you didn’t,’ says Cora. ‘But she’d found all these receipts from hotels round here and was convinced there was someone he was seeing, locally. She put the two things together. Drew her own conclusion.’
She stops again.
‘She thought you were laughing behind her back.’
And isn’t that always what pushes us to be at our worst?
Cora continues. ‘We barely knew you at the time,’ she says. ‘The babies were young. But I was building an impression.’
‘Let me guess,’ I say, defeated. ‘Smug. Superior. Vain.’
‘That’s about it,’ she replies, like it’s a fact.
I feel like someone is pushing down on my chest.
‘Emma told me about the video,’ she says. ‘I was just the one who pointed out how we could use it.’
We is good when you want a team to be behind you. But when you learn who has posted videos of you having sex online, we is worse than I by far. One person trying to ruin your life can be an anomaly. But when it’s more than one, it becomes a conspiracy.
People have sat down together and decided to hurt you. Plotted it, planned it. Thwarted obstacles and found solutions. Laughed at their successes. Laughed at your pain. If someone does it alone, at least, there’s no one for them to laugh with.
I stay silent because I know Cora will answer my questions, whether I ask them or not. And I am void of all energy. Beaten.
‘Emma was angry with you,’ she says. ‘It built every time you told us a story about Ed and Poppy and your happy life. Meanwhile she was having a hard time with Robert. He’d be staggering in when she was up for the third time that night.’
Cora shrugs.
‘And then in the midst of all that, she found these videos. She got obsessed. Convinced you were sleeping together again, that that’s where Robert was when he didn’t come home.
‘You know how awful it is once you start comparing someone’s life to yours. That’s how Emma got. She thought you were thinner than her, prettier, fitter. Cooler. She was sure Robert would rather be with you. She was desperately unhappy, and every time we saw you it seemed like you were rubbing her face in it with your happiness.
‘And then of course, she told Robert about the video and he started defending you – even told her what a hard time you’d had back in the day when you didn’t have anywhere to live and had to stay on all your mates’ sofas and even work as a hooker.’
Cora smirks.
I can’t speak.
Instead, I absorb the information of what’s really been happening in all those months I’ve been in the dark, searching for clues.
I absorb them with the chill in this mansion, feeling it seep into my skin, deeper now, into every layer. I think of the odd looks I would catch Emma giving me sometimes. How I thought she was probably shattered; I was probably paranoid.
‘She called me saying he’d “taken your side” and left her,’ she continues. ‘And that just confirmed what she thought. That he still had feelings for you. That you were in a relationship.’
I shake my head again, no, no, no.
‘It’s not like Ed and I don’t have issues either,’ I say, quietly. ‘And it’s not like I’ve not been through bad times. I thought it was better not to moan on about what a hard life I had when I’m lucky compared to so many people.’
Cora nods. ‘I said that, at first, that your life couldn’t be as perfect as all those awful blog posts; that people just market themselves these days.’
I wince. Supportive Cora, telling me how much she loved my blog. How many other people add their likes then bitch about me?
‘But she wouldn’t have it,’ Cora rolls on. ‘Saw you as everything she wasn’t and then, in the back of her mind, had that image there all the time of you shagging Robert on video looking hot and young.’
I snip.
‘Well, I was twenty-three,’ I say. ‘That’s why I look young. Everyone looks young when they are young.’
Already at thirty-five it feels like a generation ago.
Cora ignores me.
‘She watched it over and over,’ she says. ‘You must have noticed a bit of a fixation on you? Yeah. You were an obsession for her. And every time she watched it, she hated you more.’
‘She’s pretty good at hiding it then,’ I say. ‘Ordering my tea. Babysitting my child. Ed thought it was a girl crush.’
Cora laughs. I feel my body start to tremble harder.
‘I suppose it was, in a way.’ She smirks. ‘But maybe more like a stalker.’
The shaking intensifies. Who was I leaving Poppy with? She’s with one of my best friends. She’s with a total stranger. She’s with my fucking stalker.
‘She thought that
