Sunday is spent in a complete stupor, between my bed and the loo. By Monday, despite having largely recovered, I feel mortified every time there’s a possibility of going anywhere near Edwin. This is problematic, given that our two classes are merged for ‘Spanish Day’. The latter involves Gillian Holt, from the junior school, giving a lengthy talk on Madrid traditions – something a two-week holiday in 2009 has apparently qualified her for.
I sit in the corner, listening intently as she attempts to deal with the aftermath of her statement that, ‘Chefs say you can put almost anything in a paella.’ This led to a dozen hands shooting up in the air, and the children testing out alternatives such as, ‘what about ice cream?’ or ‘chocolate cake?’ or, my particular favourite, ‘a football?’.
While this chaos goes on about me, Edwin keeps trying to catch my eye. Sometimes the pressure becomes too much to bear and I’ll briefly look up, for him to flash me a smile I can only describe as saucy.
‘You must be an absolute demon in bed,’ Cate sniggers, as I fill her in that night.
‘Please don’t even joke about it,’ I say, sipping water. Which is all I am going to sip ever again, for the rest of my life. ‘I have no idea what went on between those sheets. From the way he looked at me in the morning, you’d think it had involved a black negligée and nipple tassels. Which it didn’t, to be clear.’
‘You saving those for the second time?’
All I can do is wince.
Cate narrows her eyes. ‘So, was it good? You must recall an overall impression. You’ve been dreaming about it for bloody years so by rights it should’ve been off the scale.’
‘I honestly do not know,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘Is that why your feelings for Edwin have changed?’
My head snaps up. ‘What makes you think that?’
She shrugs. ‘I was just getting that impression. Sorry – I’m obviously wrong.’
‘The date would have been wonderful, had I been conscious. I realise this sort of conundrum is all alien to you, given how well things are going with Will. I’ve barely seen you in the last couple of weeks.’
‘Sorry,’ she says sheepishly.
‘Don’t be silly, I’m over the moon for you.’
‘Thanks, Lauren,’ she smiles. ‘So how’s your Singapore planning?’
‘Fine. I handed my notice in on the cottage last week,’ I tell her, though just saying it makes a bead of sweat appear on my brow. ‘I feel awful about letting my cousin Steph down though. I haven’t even heard from her since I told her I’m not going to Australia.’
‘Hasn’t she posted one of her infamous updates on Facebook lately?’
‘I don’t know, now you mention it,’ I reply, taking out my phone and clicking on the app.
I can see nothing from Steph though – just the standard Facebook guff I find so enticing: birthday wishes, wedding photos, new babies, humblebrags and rants. Plus one from my mum, who seems to think that if she writes, Hi Dawn, did you get the washing machine fixed? on her own wall that Dawn, whoever she is, will mystically pick up the message by the sheer cosmic force of the internet.
‘My mother should be kept away from technology,’ I sigh, as Cate reaches to the windowsill to turn the radio on. The song playing is ‘Sweet Disposition’ by the Temper Trap and it has the instantaneous effect of making her tap her feet as she finishes the washing-up, sunlight sheering on to her face as she sings, lost in the words.
And it’s then, when I glance back at my phone, that I’m confronted by the picture. Not the picture – another one.
‘Lauren?’ Cate asks, but it takes a moment for me to register her voice. ‘I was just saying I saw Stella for her final meeting and . . . what’s the matter?’
The words stick in my mouth. But as it turns out, she doesn’t need me to spell them out. She knows even before she’s looked. She races over and takes the phone to glare at the photo that’s been posted direct on her Facebook page – bewilderingly, from her own account.
This time she’s in a kitchen. She’s facing the camera directly, the hint of a smile on her lips as she lifts up her top to provide the sort of eyeful usually reserved for page 3 of the Daily Star.
She doesn’t even say anything when she sees it. She just takes a slug of breath, deletes it – then slumps on to a kitchen chair and starts crying. I sink into the seat next to her and slide my arm round her, as her shoulders begin to shudder.
‘It hadn’t been on there long so very few people will have seen it,’ I offer, though not with much conviction given that she has over 300 Facebook friends and that it had been there for twenty minutes.
Nobody had commented on it, nobody had liked it, nobody had presumably done anything but stare in disbelief – and possibly report it, although enough time clearly hadn’t elapsed before Facebook got on the case.
Cate’s phone starts ringing on the table in front of us, and Will’s name flashes up on the screen. She grabs it and turns it off.
‘How could it have been on your profile?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know.’ She looks at me, terror in her eyes, her face red and wet from crying. ‘I’m on Facebook with all my friends and all my family, as well as half the town. And . . . and Will.’
‘He probably hasn’t seen it,’ I comfort her.
‘I’m sure someone will fill him in,’ she sobs.
‘Cate, I think you need to go to the police about this,’ I tell her firmly.
She looks up with frenzied eyes. ‘But – but Will’s brother – the humiliation . . . I’d feel like such an idiot and a slag. And what if it went to court and all the other photos were used as evidence?’ It’s clear this suggestion has sent her into an unstoppable panic. ‘What the hell am I going to do?’
‘It’s going to be all right,’ I whisper.
But as I pull her into me, her body trembling in my arms, it’s hard to understand how.
The next twenty-four hours are a slow kind of torture. I spend the day at work getting texts from Cate, who tells me that everyone knows. I have no idea whether she’s exaggerating but I suspect so, as the number of people on Facebook who will have actually seen the picture is minimal and, while gossip of any kind tends to spread like wildfire around here, I can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – accept it’s as bad as she says. But then, I’m not in her shoes. And I’m sure it feels bad. I’m sure it feels worse than I can possibly imagine.
When the school bell rings and the children are safely deposited back with their parents, I leap into my car and head straight over to Cate’s place. Daffodils & Stars is shut and she answers the door of her flat looking like death warmed up.
‘It’s everywhere,’ she hisses.
‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ I say lamely.
‘I went outside to fix some of the displays and heard two customers sitting outside the coffee shop next door talking about it. I couldn’t believe it – I didn’t even know them! You know when you overhear part of a conversation and think it must be about someone else . . . only it’s not. I worked out how Robby could have done this too.’
‘Oh?’
‘He knew my password. It was the same one as for my emails – and I gave that to him once to check something for me when my phone wasn’t working.’
I sigh. ‘Have you seen Will since it happened?’
Will, we discovered from one of his texts, saw the picture with his own eyes, about a minute before Cate deleted it. She had dozens of missed calls from him by the time I left yesterday, but in the end he clearly gave up.
‘Have you returned any of his calls yet?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. And he’s stopped ringing anyway.’
‘Cate, you should speak to him,’ I tell her.
‘What am I going to say? “Did you like my home-made porn collection? Because there are more where that came from!”’
I frown. ‘You should at least text him back.’
‘Oh, what’s the point! He’s not phoning any longer, Lauren. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. Why would he?’
‘Well, because it’s not your fault!’ I reply furiously. ‘And because he loves you! And because if he’s a man worth his salt, he won’t care about your past and will understand that you’re a victim here and—’
I’m interrupted from my rant by the ring of her doorbell. She looks up, her lip trembling.
‘Do you want me to get it?’
She nods. ‘Promise you’ll just get rid of whoever it is though? If it’s Will, I can’t face him. Make my excuses will you?’
I head to the door and open it to find Cate’s mum, Liz. I feel instantly relieved. Cate and her mum have never been especially close, but I know that if there’s one thing that’s going to get a girl through this, it’s having her best friend and her mum by her side.
‘I take it she’s in?’ asks Liz. She’s dressed in a smart pair of trousers and a cashmere throw, her short blonde hair swept softly out of her blue eyes. She looks upset, which is understandable.
‘In the living room, Liz,’ I say, closing the door as she walks ahead of me. ‘It’s just horrendous what’s happened, isn’t it?’
Liz turns to me and replies starkly: ‘Yes. It is.’
Cate is curled up on the sofa, her cheeks streaked with more tears. She sits up when her mother enters and for a moment neither of them say a thing.
‘Mum . . . I’m so sorry,’ Cate eventually whimpers.
It takes a second for me to realise that Liz’s eyes are not filled with the sympathy and maternal love that I’d anticipated. Disgust is apparent in the tightening of her lips. When she speaks, it’s quiet and low – the whisper of a woman who considers herself scorned.
‘I did everything I could to bring you up right, Catherine. I gave you everything a parent could be expected to. And your father and I are rewarded with this.’
Cate’s face crumples. ‘This isn’t about you, Mum.’
‘Oh, isn’t it?’ Anger radiates from the woman in thick waves. ‘You think that when I have to walk into work tomorrow and face my colleagues that this doesn’t affect me? You don’t think that the fact that my neighbour has seen my daughter’s body, flaunted about like some prostitute . . . you don’t think that affects me? You don’t think it’s about me when I’m the one who has to explain to your Great-Aunt Edith why everyone’s gossiping, or to little Ellen why Aunty Cate – whom she loved and looked up to – is all over the internet with her clothes off?’
‘Mum, I just didn’t think—’
‘That’s your problem, Catherine. You have a rush of blood to the head and you don’t think.’
Cate seems to shrink into herself. ‘You’re right – you’re totally right. I’m so sorry, Mum. I just don’t know what to say.’
‘Neither do I,’ says Liz, clutching her bag to her chest. ‘All I know is that I’m having to come to terms with something I never dreamed was the case.’
‘Come to terms with what?’
She glares at Cate with hard eyes. ‘The fact that my daughter is a dirty slut.’