‘The troll’s handle uses letters from his name. A security expert who works for my agent thinks it’s significant and he asked me if I knew anyone who was into the occult.’ Caz twists a valve on her sink and water bursts out of a bare copper pipe into a clatter of plates that she begins vigorously rinsing.
‘You think she’s the troll as well? Christ.’
‘Do you know anyone else around here who has pentagrams in their room?’
‘The same letters? You mean – You’re willing to accuse someone who’s looked after your kid for free for two months because of some anagrams?’ She shuts off the tap with a clatter, turns and leans back, as if trying to get as far away from Erin as she can without leaving the room. ‘Why? Why would she do it?’
‘She’s obsessed with Raf.’
‘And how does making you look shit on the Internet help her with that?’
‘I –’ She’s right, Erin thinks. She’s become so fixated on what Xavi said, what Cariad said about the meaning of the crystals, she’s become so set on the culprit being Amanda, that she’s never stopped to ask herself why she’d troll her. Caz sits down, puts her hands on the table and starts to speak. Her tone is less banterous than normal and Erin can see the authoritative social worker Caz’s wards see every day.
‘I know you were worried about getting depressed after how you started feeling when you were pregnant and I totally get that. Journaling is a big thing we try and get people with mental health problems to do, and I know it really helped you. But it’s gone too far now, surely you can see that in yourself. Even if this guy weren’t taking pictures of you. When we’ve been together, with the kids, when you’re not looking at your phone, you’re desperate to. I see it in your eyes. You look manic, a lot of the time now. It’s scary how much you need it.’ Erin thought Caz would tell her to run Amanda out of town, she secretly hoped she might come and do the dirty work for her, she hadn’t expected the excoriating spotlight to fall on her. ‘I think it’s distracting you from the fact that you’re not quite right, you know? After Bobby. So many women suffer with some sort of depression or anxiety after giving birth, most even, I’d say.’ Erin’s breath rattles in her nose as it quickens, she can’t believe what Caz is saying. ‘I mean, I did. Ask my mum, ask himself, I was a basket case after Stanley. It’s just, Amanda? Lovely Amanda who recommended me the supplement for my bad back, which is actually really fucking working, thanks for asking.’ Erin looks up at Caz and she softens, smirks and is almost laughing as she says. ‘You’re saying that mad hippie wants to steal your husband? That she’s taking pictures of you and putting them on the Internet?’
Caz grabs a Bourbon cream from the plate on the table and bites into it. ‘You’re fucking brilliant, Erin. You’re a great mum and a great laugh and I miss you.’ She reaches her hand across the table and Erin takes it, clinging on to it like the ledge of a clifftop. ‘And yeh, get rid of Amanda if it’s messing up the vibes in your house. But – Listen, do you wanna know what I think?’
‘You’ve just spent about twenty minutes telling me what you think.’
Caz squeezes her hand. ‘Get off your phone, love. Just for a bit.’
As if it’s heard her, Erin’s phone buzzes loudly in her pocket. Caz can see she’s not got her attention any more.
‘Don’t abstain on my account,’ she says, releasing her hand and slouching back in her chair.
‘It’s fine.’ Erin says, ignoring it. But then it starts ringing. ‘Sorry.’ Erin gets her phone out and sees it’s Grace. A sliver of ice runs up her spine. Grace doesn’t call any more. All of their communication recently has been by email. Erin goes to the glass doors that lead out to the garden and answers the phone.
‘Hi, Grace.’
‘Did you do something with Xavier?’
‘What? No!’
‘There’s another photo.’ Erin swallows. Dread fills up her insides like a hair-clogged drain. Erin clicks the door handle to try and get out into the garden but it’s locked. Caz is there and opens it for her.
‘We just –’ Erin steps onto the muddy grass. ‘He was at the pub and we had a cigarette.’
‘You’ve never mentioned that you smoke on your feed.’ Annoyance strains Grace’s voice. Caz hands Erin her phone, Instagram open, and she sees the picture. The pub with its blacked-out windows and peeling facade makes it look like a far more sordid venue than it is. There she is, shoulders exposed in her green sequinned jumpsuit, hunched in to Xavi with his mane of hair and thick beard, faces close, laughing, a bead of burning-red cigarette glinting in her right hand. She zooms into her face and one eye is a little squiggly, hair stuck to her forehead. She looks drunk. It could be an Edward Hopper painting the level of detail the photographer has managed to capture. ‘Erin, you still there?’
‘We were just talking and I don’t really smoke. It’s, it’s nothing like the photo looks.’
‘But it doesn’t look good.’
‘No.’ She hadn’t imagined it, Erin thinks, there was someone there behind the van. The troll was there, in London, watching her the whole evening. Watching her through windows. Following her down alleys trying to scare her. If she’d knocked herself out when she fell, would they have done something to her? ‘Why haven’t you taken it down?’
‘We took it down but it’s been reposted. Three times now. We’ll keep doing so but if they keep posting it, continuing to take it down might look worse.’ Erin looks down and the photo’s
