‘But there was no affair to admit!’ I explode.
‘I know that.’ Cora laughs, loudly. ‘That’s why the whole thing was so hilarious for me. Her, convinced you were sleeping with Robert. You, too prim to not feel guilty for a tiny flirt with the guy from the coffee shop. I just sat there, watching it unfold. You’ve got to entertain yourself somehow on maternity leave.’
I am incredulous. ‘And then?’ I ask.
‘And then what?’
‘Well it’s obvious this is leading somewhere. So why don’t you get to the point?’
I am feeling brave suddenly.
But it is misplaced. Badly misplaced.
‘I will get to the point when I want to get to the damn point, hon,’ says Cora, ice in her voice. ‘This is the problem with you, Scarlett. Even when you’re behind a locked gate with no one in the world who wants to help you, you still act superior.’
I go to stand up but she pushes me back down onto the sofa, and I stay there. I am out of fight.
My whole body vibrates again.
How can I have been this dislikeable?
I suspect sometimes that I am not fully formed because I leave chunks of myself behind. One chunk in Manchester, dancing with Ollie. One chunk presenting a pitch in work, a grown-up. One chunk with my mum, maybe, wherever that may be.
I am not whole.
And I feel like reality is slipping away now, like I’ve lost the last millimetre of grip.
I work so hard on the image – the party girl, the successful manager, the respectable mum. Perhaps that’s the problem.
I rebrand, rebrand, rebrand.
I wanted them to think I was shiny and glossy and new. And instead, this is what came across. Superior, smug, vain.
Until they forced me to expose my pain and split myself open.
I had tried to avoid that.
These women knew I had lost my mum, because people do when you have a child and she isn’t babysitting or knitting gloves like the other grans because she’s too dead for that.
But I have never told them about Poppy’s half-sister – because that’s what she would be, like Josephine is to me. I don’t have the words.
And if I did find them, I know they would ruin an afternoon and send awkwardness pulsating around the room.
My body won’t keep still, twitches, jitters.
Cora speaks again. ‘Emma talked about it so much, Scarlett, how you’d ruined her life, how it was so much worse than seeing strangers sleeping with Robert. How humiliating it was. How maybe if he left her for you, he’d be happier.
‘She was fixated. And eventually, I came up with the idea to post the video. To get her own back, and also stop you being so bloody smug.’
When all I really felt was fear and loneliness.
There are a lot of reasons for iciness. Is that not obvious?
I stare at Cora like she is one of Poppy’s drawings, in which I try to see shapes and patterns but I find nothing that I recognise.
But then an image starts to make itself clear.
Something lurches in my insides.
‘Easy to do with access to your phone a few times to get addresses while you changed Poppy,’ says Cora. ‘That all-staff one from your work was a gift.’
I breathe, or try to.
‘But what did you get from it?’ I say. ‘That’s what I don’t get.’
Cora sighs, as though it’s annoying that I am fixated on such an inconsequential detail.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘Let’s be blunt. I can feed this sex tape blogger stuff to the websites and they will love it. You’ll be huge, in a way you never wanted to be. They’re all gunning for mum bloggers, after that other one went viral.’
My heart thumps. She wouldn’t do this, would she?
‘Or,’ she says, flippant. ‘You can give me £200,000.’
She sounds like she’s asking to borrow a tenner.
I think of how I have wondered so many times if this is moving towards blackmail. And at the ridiculousness of where, now, that request is coming from.
Cora is the last person I know who needs money. Except.
‘I’m skint,’ she says, voice cracking. ‘Broke. I can’t tell Michael; he’ll kill me.’
I look at Cora’s gleaming white walls, the expensive cushions. I think of her designer bags, of appointments and more appointments and the nanny and the fancy car and that vanity project of a job.
Then I think of how cold it is in an old house this size that needs heating on a particularly cold late summer night.
‘You’re taking the piss, Cora,’ I spit. ‘You are rich by anybody’s standards.’
‘Was rich,’ she says without a beat. ‘Then maternity leave happened. Not earning – yeah I used to have a real job, did you know that? – plus hours with a baby on top of you where all you can do is more internet shopping on your phone. Lethal combination.’
I take this in.
‘It’s at breaking point,’ she says. ‘I have so many credit card bills and I’m being threatened with legal action. Michael knows none of it and if he did … Well we’re not in the best place anyway and he loves money. We won’t make it, I know that.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I say, trying to bring this down to relationships, a Tuesday morning chat over a latte. ‘He’s your husband. You’ll work it out together.’
What the hell am I doing reassuring this woman who has conspired to smash my world apart? Who is threatening to go further? It’s myself I need to protect, I think, not her. But old habits. Until a few minutes ago, she was my friend.
‘So the plan is to blackmail me then?’
