How the hugs that we shared after I had run him over had more emotion than they’d had for a long time in our marriage, filled as they were with relief and closure and knowing that no matter what, we will always be Poppy’s parents.
‘I only slept with someone for money once,’ I told him. ‘Please believe that.’
And he did, eventually. Though I suspect on some level he thinks there’s little difference between that and the rest of what I did: the escort work. I was paid money to flirt, to sit next to men while I wore short skirts, to laugh at their jokes. Ed is black and white. But the thought has tortured me over the years too. The reasons why go out of the window again and all there is in those moments is shame, shame, shame.
Ed tells his family that I am Poppy’s mum. That he doesn’t want to report me to police because I had been drinking too and that would impact her; as long as I agree to a better shared custody agreement than the courts would give him so that Poppy spends half of her time with Ed, in the countryside, in all of that much-lauded outdoor space. In truth I wonder if he didn’t report me too because he wouldn’t want to be a full-time parent. God, imagine, Ed. How awfully modern you would have to be for that. When Poppy is with Ed I miss her so much it hurts my insides but what choice did I have? It was that or an ABH charge. He is her dad. I go dancing when it hurts too much; I stay out late so I forget.
Epilogue
Cora
After
Hunter, then, was never the real other man.
It was the name of my yoga teacher, that bit was true, but Hunter and I never got closer than a hand on my back for an adjustment to my plank.
I just thought that was a nice detail.
No. The man I was really having an affair with was called Robert.
Mitch, some people call him.
Robert slept with Scarlett, had a baby with Emma, and then – after we met one night in a fancy bar in a village nearby four months after I had Penelope – he began an affair with me. I realised he was Emma’s partner about a month in; saw them walking around a supermarket together. It jolted me, sure, but I wasn’t willing to give it up. When I told him I knew his wife, he felt the same.
Asha knew about it. Saw us once when she was at a wedding at a hotel we were at together and tried to persuade me to stop it. She even had a word with Robert once when she saw him in the street. She ran when she thought she saw Scarlett watching them; she had no desire to spread the gossip further. Sweet, sweet Asha. I’m rolling my eyes now, can you tell?
But here is the thing about Robert. He is an uninvolved dad, a cheating husband but when your life is dreary and you’re worried you’ve hit middle age and you’re in a monotonous relationship, he is an antidote better than the lines of coke he suggested we take together a few weeks ago.
Robert and I book hotel rooms and pretend we don’t have children and order room service and have sex. We go to clubs and bars and casinos.
All paid for by Robert because my money worries, unfortunately, are real.
When Emma told me about the video she had found, blackmailing Scarlett seemed like the obvious answer. I pushed Emma into it really, got into her head about Scarlett and played on a lot of the insecurities that are right there for everybody to see with Emma. Yes, Emma, Scarlett does think she’s better than you. Yes, they probably are still sleeping together.
Don’t be a doormat, Emma. Don’t let her get away with it. She’s laughing at you, Emma, while she pretends to be your friend.
It helped deflect attention from me too. Because yes Emma, Robert was sleeping with somebody local. You got it right. You just had the wrong neighbour.
Nobody likes to be laughed at and believing that someone’s doing it is a trigger for most people, dating back to the first person who bullied you, whether they were in the school playground or sitting next to you in the office. Everyone remembers the feeling. And everyone feels a surge of rage at the idea of anyone making them relive it.
So I waited for Emma to deliver Scarlett to me. She would come of course, needing me after receiving such a blow as Emma delivered. You need your friends at times like that.
But of course my blackmail attempt didn’t work, with Scarlett rejecting it and telling me she didn’t care if the world saw her have a threesome, if she was famed for being the blogger with the sex tape. She’d rather deal with that than capitulate to me. That anyway, there was no money.
So now, I need a new plan.
‘If Emma is away next weekend with Seth, I could come to yours?’ I say to Robert, tracing a long fingernail down his back.
He and Emma got back together, recently. He says he can’t afford to live in his own place. And, he points out, he doesn’t see me leaving Michael. We both know what this is. Though we’ll see how long he stays around when he gets wind of Emma’s podcast appearance.
Robert and I are lying naked under icy white sheets in one of Manchester’s best boutique hotels. No kids allowed; it’s one of my favourite jokes to glare at them if I see them while I’m out with Robert, as though I hate them; as though I haven’t made one all of my own pretty
