4 May
Breathe.
Remember to breathe.
I feel discussed and disgust and I am outside the office, calling Ed and sobbing hard as I walk towards the train station.
Ed answers on the first ring and I know the second he says hello.
‘I was about to call you,’ he says. He sounds altered, in the way you do when the seismic stuff happens.
‘They sent it to you,’ I say, stopping still on the street amongst angry shoppers and people running late for work who have to swerve around me.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You know then. Shit, Scarlett.’
We are silent, in shock.
When he speaks next, it’s quieter.
‘Who else was it sent to?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘You’re the first person I’ve called, obviously. But my work colleagues, for starters. I’ve just come out of a room with Flick. Can you leave work and meet me at home?’
‘Yeah of course,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave now.’
He’ll get home sooner than me from his office in Warrington, only half an hour from Sowerton.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, guilty at bringing this into our life. ‘I know you’re busy in work today.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘See you soon,’ he says, then hangs up.
Is that it? I think. No I love you. No We’ll get through this.
Wait until you get home, Scarlett, I think. He probably just wants to see me face to face. It’s not easy to get into this without being in the same room.
On my phone, I am googling lawyers as I walk to the station, bumping into angry people who curse at me.
‘Look where you’re bloody going, love,’ says a city type in a too-small suit.
I stare at him blankly; no capacity to reply.
Finally I arrive at the station and on the platform fire off five emails to different law firms.
I am desperate to pick up the phone to them to speed this along but how can I have this conversation next to a mum with her toddler or the retirees excited about their day trip for a walk and a fish and chip lunch?
A minute after I board the train, one of the lawyers pings back. I have an appointment next week.
Okay. Okay. I’m doing something at least. I’m taking action.
I look out of the window and try now to calm down slightly, to exhale.
Then my phone rings.
It’s one of my closest friends, Martha, and so I pick up, hoping for the comfort of her voice.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I’m on a train so I might cut out. Did you speak to Flick?’
I met Martha when she worked at our company. She and Felicity are still close too.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I did. Fuck I’m so sorry, Scarlett.’
I sigh. ‘Thanks. Just trying to sort out a lawyer now.’
There’s a beat of silence that feels odd when there should be a flurry of reassurance and solidarity and ‘Oh, Scarlett, this is awful, what can I do to help?’ and the like.
‘Martha?’
‘Scarlett, I’m sorry. It was sent to me too.’
My phone beeps then and I glance at it while Martha is on the line. Because I have a horrible, desperate feeling. It’s a text from a friend asking me to call her when I’m free. Then another. Followed by a message telling me I have a voicemail.
From my dad.
It’s gone everywhere. To everyone. Or everyone, at least, who matters to me.
My dad.
I gag.
‘Scarlett? You still there?’
‘Martha, I’m going to have to call you back,’ I say. ‘Talk later.’
And I sink into the chair and sob, avoiding listening to my dad’s voicemail and hoping, desperately, that he is phoning about something else.
Oh, to be this exposed.
My phone is no longer the mind-numbing comfort it was on the way in. Instead it’s a grenade.
I search my ex Ollie’s name on Facebook. I blush when I think about why I’m starting with him, not the other man in the video, Mitch. Because the reason is that I don’t know Mitch’s full name.
How much will everybody judge me? I’m even judging myself.
Was Mitch a nickname? It’s not a very good one, especially not for a DJ. A surname, then? Part of a surname?
I know this is out of the blue, I type to Ollie but think – is it? Is it? Not if you uploaded and sent that video, it isn’t.
But I need to speak to you, urgently. Please get back to me ASAP.
No pleasantries; no context.
Another friend tries to phone me. I let it ring out. The bald man in the tie across the aisle glances at me, his face red with irritation.
I would turn my phone off and throw it out of the window, I think, if it weren’t for my daughter crawling around a stranger’s house and needing me.
The man looks at me again, disapproving. I stare back at him. Why is he going home early? Feeling sick? Forgotten his laptop? Whatever it is, I think, you are having a better day than me. You are reading your newspaper and grimacing at others. This is not, for you, one of those days that alter lives.
I push my fingers into my temples, terrible headache overwhelming me.
And then I think Poppy.
I contemplate gruesome images of her as a teenager, being shown or told about the video by crude classmates.
The feeling inside becomes an ache. The gag threatens to go further. The bald man turns away.
Knowing I can’t avoid it forever, I listen to the voicemail from my dad.
‘Love,’ it says, and he sounds like he is delivering news of death. ‘I’ve been sent something awful. Phone me when you have a minute.’
The sobs come harder and the man across the aisle softens, offers me a tissue. I shake my head no and bury it in my hands.
My phone beeps. Ollie.
Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Scarlett! Okay. Yes, let’s meet up. When?
It takes three attempts to type my reply with trembling hands.
Tomorrow? I say.
Away for work, comes the reply. Day after?
We agree to meet at a pub in Shropshire, in between me in Cheshire and him in – apparently now – Birmingham.
Can you tell me what this is about? he says once the meet-up is sorted. I’m married.
Yes, of course – if he didn’t do it, that is how it sounds.
I’m not trying to come on to you, I type, cringing for all of the nearly middle-aged married people who are coming on to past loves, right now. I’m married too. Happily, thanks.
I think about telling him that I don’t have a twelve-year-old that I haven’t mentioned either, but decide it can’t hurt for him to wonder. Disarming him could make sure he doesn’t lie. And make sure too that he comes, shows up, and sits in front of me to answer my questions. My question.
Explain when I see you, I reply quickly.
I stare at the screen and at his name, popping up over and over. The oddness that a collection of letters can make me react so strongly by association; I’ll never see a message ping in from Ollie and not be twenty-one and besotted and obsessed with every word he ever said to me. Hairs on my arms stand up straight and tingle.
For God’s sake, Scarlett, this man might have ruined your life. Time for the rose-tinted youth glasses to come off.
An hour later, I walk into our large, open-plan kitchen and see Ed standing in the corner by the window like he is trying to disappear into the exposed bricks.
‘Oh, Scarlett.’
He looks at me.
I stop where I enter the room.
I can’t go to him; I am too ashamed.
He doesn’t come to me.
He doesn’t speak.
I cry and he doesn’t comfort me. He is pacing.
‘Have you contacted these men?’
He looks like he might throw up.
‘I’m meeting my ex in two days,’ I say. ‘Hopefully he can put me in touch with …’ I trail off. Somehow, this seems less real without names.
‘Have you contacted a lawyer?’ he asks, moving again, hand to his forehead. ‘You need to get this taken down. Fast.’
I nod my head, chastised. ‘Appointment next week,’ I say, pleased to please.
‘I’ll find you something sooner,’ he says, taking his phone out of his pocket. He starts scrolling, searching. ‘That video has got to come down. Now. For fuck’s sake. Why would they do this to you?’
He looks at me. Sighs.
‘Scarlett, why didn’t you tell me this had happened?’
I flush. ‘I did!’ I protest. ‘When we first got together and we were drunk at that wedding in Spain. I told you that Ollie and I had a threesome.’
Something flashes across his face. ‘You told me you … I thought … fuck, Scarlett, I assumed it was with another girl, not a guy.’
I look at him.
‘Is that different?’ I ask, frowning.
‘Of course it’s different, Scarlett,’ he mutters.
It was okay when he thought it was something a seventeen-year-old boy might fantasise about. But when the picture’s less socially acceptable, I’m slut-shamed by my husband.
My sobs come harder.
‘How am I going to go back to work?’ I cry. ‘My colleagues have seen it.’
His phone beeps and he reads the message.
He slams his hand on the kitchen table.
‘What now?’
‘My parents,’ he says, bleak. ‘My parents have been sent the video too.’
His phone starts to ring.
He punches the wall this time, just to the left of our large framed wedding picture.
‘And by the looks of that call, Liam too.’
His older brother. I cry harder then, because the breadth of this is unbearable. How can this be happening to me? I’m not a celebrity – not unless you count a very low level of attention that I get from Cheshire Mama and I don’t – and not a controversial figure.
My skin is smarting in desperation of how much I long for my husband to hug me but I know he won’t. He’s not in a hugging kind of mood. Ed gets like this sometimes, when he’s focused on something practical. He can’t step outside it to the emotional.
I look at him, and suspect that however I get over this, I will have to get over it by myself.
‘I’ll go and get Poppy,’ he says.
And it’s only then that I think about Ronnie, my daughter’s childminder, and if she has been included in this circle around my life that has seen the video. How can I ever ask, as babies roam around and Peppa Pig toys go flying and the picture is such innocence?
I nod.
Even though it is too early for pick-up and Ronnie will ask questions, I let Ed walk away because I know he needs to move, away from me. And because I do not want to have to beg him to come back.