9 May
It’s been a day since I ran out of the office for the second, more final, time. Felicity has messaged and called repeatedly since I sent my resignation. I don’t reply.
At home I function at the lowest level I can for Poppy, no Ronnie to help as it’s the weekend. Ed has gone to the gym, says he needs to burn off some rage. Me too, Ed. I guess I’ll load the dishwasher a bit more aggressively than normal, then?
I phone Ronnie. Tell her that my company have given me a little longer off; that we won’t need her childminding services after all.
‘Not a problem at all, Scarlett,’ she says, but sounds surprised. She’s the Beyoncé of childminders; no one cancels. ‘But you know I need notice normally so I will have to take a couple of weeks’ pay?’
‘Of course,’ I say, glad cheeks aren’t visible on phone calls, or for that matter pyjama bottoms with stains on them. ‘Sorry to mess you around.’
But also, this is the upside. No more leaving my girl. No more traumatised train journeys. No more pondering the effect on a child of not seeing their parents all day before the age of one.
I end the call and pick up Poppy, who squirms away from me as I try to cuddle her.
I should take her outside, I know. But I am fearful of leaving the house, wondering if every face I see has watched the video. So we are stuck here and the walls are shifting inwards.
I look down at Poppy, who is optimistically holding out a small ball that I barely have the energy to take from her.
‘In a few minutes, Pops,’ I say, and she crawls away as I lie back on the sofa.
A message pings in. Flick.
‘Please reconsider,’ it says.
Delete. I’ve never told her about overhearing her chat; never will.
At 3 p.m. Ed walks in, looking like I look: smaller, broken down, tortured.
‘Jared has seen the video,’ he says without a hello, as he walks into the kitchen. He slams his hand down next to the hob. ‘Jared has seen the video of you.’
Ed’s friend, the guy from the lift, who still works in my company. I didn’t even think.
This keeps finding new ways to torment.
I groan, vicious.
‘It was a horrible conversation, Scarlett,’ says Ed, ignoring the sound.
I nod. Yes. Horrible.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and he says nothing back.
‘Are you ashamed of me?’ I ask quietly, as I’ve wanted to ask all week.
The tears are wide and chunky, saturating my face.
He winces. ‘Of course not,’ he says with a sigh.
Stock answer. What else would he say?
‘It’s not your fault, is it?’ he says but it’s like he’s reading from a script, approved for use in a #metoo generation. ‘You’re allowed to have a sexual past.’
He stumbles over the words. Ed’s family don’t discuss things so uncouth as sex. Ed is repressed, but he tries.
‘You’re allowed,’ he says, head lowered. ‘To have made mistakes.’
My own face snaps upwards.
Because was it a mistake? Or just a part of a full, messy life?
‘It happened because of what Ollie and I went through, Ed,’ I say.
He knows that Ollie and I lost a baby when I was seven months pregnant.
‘Do I need to transfer money for the lawyer?’ he replies.
I stare at him. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
He nods and reddens. Takes his laptop out of his bag and opens it.
I probably wouldn’t have told him, to be honest, but while a man you sleep with once after untold amounts of vodka might not notice your C-section scar, your husband does. I told him weeks after we met, tears rolling down my young un-made-up face, as we lay hungover in bed and he asked about my scar, finger near its edge. And of course, when you come to have a baby together, you tell midwives and doctors about it in front of him too. Yes, I have been pregnant before. No, it wasn’t a successful pregnancy.
Ed looks up.
‘I know it sounds crazy,’ I say, trying to explain. ‘But I didn’t want to be this victim who had lost her baby, who everyone pitied. I wanted to be back to the me from before. The party girl who liked adventures. But more extreme, more wild, more crazy. That’s how we ended up doing it. It was my idea.’
I blush. Because Ed knows I used to like three-day festivals I couldn’t remember much of and coming home at 7 a.m. But I gloss over the drugs I took; how dark things got sometimes, how grimy. Ed wouldn’t want to think that about me, preferring the version that beats her PB on her lunch break and sets the table in a fancy way for a dinner party and paints her nails neatly, so I spare him, keep his mind clear of the images.
‘I went too far,’ I say. ‘Obviously. But in retrospect I was pushing the self-destruct button on that whole life. Taking it to an extreme so that I could get out of it and move on and start again.’
Again, he wouldn’t want to know that yes, that’s all true, but also it was the kind of crazy thing we did anyway; the kind of debauched time we had.
Best to focus on this part.
I give him a hint of a smile.
‘Start again with you, and our life.’
But this doesn’t please him. In fact, Ed’s face is contracted in discomfort. Of not having it in him to be compassionate, despite the fact that this is one of only a handful of times I have spoken to him about the baby I lost.
‘I knew Ollie and I wouldn’t come through that, not with the grief too,’ I say, voice catching now too.
I stare at Ed.
He looks like he would do anything to walk away from this conversation and exist anywhere but here.
Well, Ed, I think, I have to deal with this so you have to deal with this too. That was part of the vows.
‘So was it a mistake then?’ I push. ‘Because it brought me to where I am now. Sparked a change. Like things do in life.’
But Ed looks at me, incredulous.
‘You’re saying that doing … that on film wasn’t a mistake?’ he asks.
I stare at him.
To him it’s one plus one equals two, as life always is. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. If I wanted to leave the relationship and the life I was living, I should have left. I shouldn’t have got drunk and high and had sex.
I look at Ed again.
Did you ever go wild? I think. Did you ever go crazy?
He is staring at the floor.
It’s been less than a week since the video but the chasm that’s opening up between us is vast and that shocks me. It should be a moment we are pulling together, tight. Surely.
Hug me, I think again. But Ed walks out of the room. He pauses by the door as though to turn, but it’s like he physically can’t. I hear him go up the stairs as I stand with my arms wrapped around my own body. But you can’t hug yourself, no matter where you position your limbs.