11 July
‘I couldn’t be prouder of you,’ says my dad. Not to me, obviously, I’m the daughter whose breasts are splashed across the worldwide web. God no. He’s speaking to a different daughter.
My half-sister Josephine, next to him, is other-worldly. Straight-without-electricals brown hair that goes all the way down her long back adorned with a flower headdress that says ‘beach in the Caribbean and no shoes’ but is actually being paired with a buffet in Greater Manchester, late summer drizzle and some heels from the Selfridges sale. Still.
She’s young, Josephine, all peachy-cheeked and innocent like brides used to be. Twenty-six, now I think about it, but she seems younger. Her husband Rafe, grey around the temples, is older by what looks like a decade and a half and I suspect wanted to lock this down before his luck ran out. He’s fine, Rafe, but my sister is a goddess.
I smile at her, even though she isn’t looking at me, and I soak her in. Josephine deserves happiness and kindness and love.
Her and Rafe’s set-up is old-school: Rafe earns the cash; Josephine ‘has a little hobby’ according to him even though her greetings card business is growing into a lucrative operation.
‘And,’ says my dad’s voice, cutting into my thoughts and staring, like me, at this goddess, ‘anyone would be utterly lucky and blessed to have you in their life. You can put that in one of your greetings cards, if you like, Jos. Ha!’
He raises his glass. ‘To Jos and Rafe!’
I raise my champagne and neck it quickly as my dad looks around the room and we make eye contact over the top of our glassware. I look away before he can; the contrast between pure Josephine and sullied me too much to acknowledge today.
‘She looks beautiful, doesn’t she?’ says Aunt Denise, interrupting my thoughts. She is a distant aunt, only seen at weddings and funerals. There are a lot of cheeks suddenly and kisses and pleasantries. And then.
‘So, how are you?’ she asks, head on the side, hand on my arm. Why the wrong emphasis?
But I look at her eyes, which are searching.
She’s seen the video.
‘Good, thanks,’ I mutter then show her pictures of Poppy in her flower girl paraphernalia from earlier – Ed’s parents have taken her home now while we stay for the evening do – so I don’t have to speak any more, or look at her eyes, though she can see my hands are shaking.
I look around the room as she coos over Poppy and try to figure out a way to move away from this woman who has seen me naked. But then, maybe everyone has. I look at each face and they swim in front of me. Have you seen it? Have you? My stomach still isn’t used to this feeling. Still rejects it and threatens to vomit.
‘And are you back at work now, my love?’ says Denise.
The pause presses down on my shoulders.
Huh. Work.
I need to get better at this; it’s not going to stop happening.
I cast a glance at Ed but if I am seeking someone to save me, he is not that person. He stares at the floor, at the wall, anywhere. On your own again, Scarlett, I think bitterly, even when your husband is next to you.
‘I decided to take more time off,’ I say, quietly.
Ed mutters his excuses and heads to the toilet.
I brace, ready for Aunt Denise to ask about the video, but she doesn’t need to.
‘Probably best,’ she murmurs.
Then she scoops up the bottom of her dress and heads off to the bar for another G&T and I wish it wasn’t Josephine’s wedding day with all of its obligations and mingling so that my sister or my dad could put their arm around me, or even just stop and be kind to me next to the cake. I’ve stopped expecting Ed to take on that role.
I sit alone at a table and think about how other people experience their sister’s wedding day, in a huddle of love and salmon mains and dancing. Not a moment unaccompanied. A day full of ‘I’ve got to speak to …’ and cramming people in. I drink the remnants of the last bottle of red that’s been abandoned on the table, as everybody else has gone to find friends or to dance, now that Rafe and Josephine have kicked things off with The Beach Boys.
I stare, missing her. It’s too clear to ignore now: Josephine and I have drifted too, because of the video, because I’m embarrassed. There is barely an area of my life that this video hasn’t driven a bulldozer through.
‘I’m presuming you’ve got enough on your plate to not want the hassle of being my bridesmaid?’ Josephine had said when she announced her engagement and we met up for a celebratory lunch nearly two years ago, when we were still very close. I was pregnant. ‘But it’s totally up to you.’
I had nodded sagely. I was a responsible adult woman. I couldn’t be organising hen dos and ordering straws in the shape of penises and flouncing around in tulle. I was going to have parenting to do. Now I wish I was side by side with Josephine, flouncing around in some tulle. Oh, to take a day off from adulting to flounce around in some tulle.
‘Want to dance?’
It is not a voice I expect. My husband.
I stare at him.
We are staying in a hotel tonight. We have the freedom to stay up late and drink and dance and nothing is restricting us. Why does that feel terrifying? Restrictions, over time perhaps, become excuses. But if I want my marriage to work, I need to take the moments.
‘Sure,’ I say, and we hold hands as we head to the dance floor. I try to remember our wedding day but I feel coated in a hefty smear of everything that has happened since. My hand is clammy. It hits me again; whatever our palms are doing, we are no longer hand-holders.
‘Sit down for a bit?’ Ed says, flat.
I nod.
We are back at our table, alone. He gets up again immediately to order drinks. I look over at him. At the bar, he is typing as quickly as he can, a smile on his face that I don’t elicit any more. I watch with an oddly removed interest.
Whatever he is writing, it’s intent.
I think of me, with my secrets. With my confidential emails to the lawyer who agreed to keep my counsel; I am the client, after all.
And so now the lawyer knows things about me that Ed does not and – unless I’m exposed again – won’t ever know.
Look at us, Ed, I think sadly, what a mess.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask, when he comes back.
‘Yep,’ he says casually. ‘They didn’t have Fever-Tree. Got you normal tonic.’
It’s a non-event.
He could have been typing to a friend. To the plumber, about something boring but urgent we need to sort out in the bathroom. To work, not telling me because he knows I’d be mad at him for focusing on that when we are at my sister’s wedding. But that smile.
At 5 a.m. the next morning, when I am wide awake with that brutal combination of a hangover and anxiety about my child being asleep in someone else’s home, that image of the focus on Ed’s face as he typed is flashing over and over. What did that focus mean? Was he typing to someone who matters, about something that matters? To someone whose hand he’d grip, tight?
I’ve wondered, haven’t I, for a long time now.
Now, Ed is in a deep sleep next to me. His gentle snore exhales beer. I raise myself up slowly in bed. My heart speeds up because I know now that I’m going to do it, and I’ve never done it before. Well, you started it, Ed, I think. How many times have you brandished my phone at me lately?
I slip out of bed and walk around to his side, pick it up. I enter the passcode that I know he has had for years.
It doesn’t work.
I try a couple of other numbers – Poppy’s date of birth, mine – but neither of them let me in. Eventually I skulk back to my side.
Why do people change their passcodes?
I stare at his sleeping face.
I think of him, furiously typing. I think of him typing to a woman who, were she to be wearing nothing next to him as I am now, he would want to touch. I think of her falling for him.
I think of her hating me. I think, skipping step after step, about where that could lead. About quite how much a love rival might want to hurt me.
I message Cora, desperate to talk.
Do you think Ed could be sleeping with someone else and SHE posted the video?
I lie back against my pillow. Is this now my life, suspecting everybody and even inventing new people to suspect?
But again I come back to the biggest mystery of all: how anybody but Ollie and Mitch could have got access to that video. I think of who knew what had happened back then: Suki and Felix, our flatmates at the time, a few friends we were out with that night, I suppose. Zoe, the girl I went travelling with and talked to about it, on a long bus journey down the coast of Eastern Australia. Even if they knew though, I don’t think any of them were close enough to Mitch to have access to his phone. I don’t think Mitch ever sent it to my phone. None of this makes sense.
Cora replies.
Do you not remember what I told you about people who wake me up early? her message says.
Then another.
But it doesn’t sound like the most unlikely scenario. Let’s talk when I see you xxx
I squeeze my eyes closed, try to bury my head under the duvet and grasp at sleep again.
This is torturous.
As I drift off, somewhere in between sleep and awake, I think about Josephine, lovely Josephine in her dress, and how I wish wish wish I could be Josephine and go back to the beginning, start again, with all of my fuck-ups still to make.
‘Scarlett,’ says Ed suddenly. I bolt upright. What? Sleep had come, at some point, or a semblance of it. ‘We need to get up. We’re supposed to be picking Poppy up in half an hour.’
My mind feels like it’s sparking. I jump in the shower and lock the door behind me and I’m relieved there is no time for breakfast. Relieved there is no time to talk. Relieved that there is no time to spend with a husband who I realise then, I no longer trust.