15 July
I glance behind me to check on the girls and see Emma bouncing inelegantly with Seth asleep in the buggy (‘His dad’s out, needs must’).
We are out running. Emma has come for the negating of Slimming World points against a cheeky curry that will be consumed when she gets in. Her face is the colour of a livid pimple.
‘I’ve been going to the gym too!’ she yells. ‘I thought my fitness would have improved.’
‘Doesn’t work if you just spend it in the Jacuzzi then eat a cake in the café, hon,’ Cora shouts back, deadpan but we know she’s joking, Emma looks slim, toned.
Asha jogs alongside me, childlike and spindly in Lycra. Cora lags back, looking utterly unlike herself in her trainers and designer leggings, her exercise normally done behind the closed doors of yoga studios. Or hotel bedrooms. But Cora hates being left out.
‘FOMO, Scarlett,’ she sighs to me regularly, phone sellotaped to her palm. ‘I’m a slave to it.’
For me, it was the air of awkwardness that inhabits our house; my overwhelming desire to escape it that got me out running tonight. And then there is the need to outrun what’s next. What I fear is coming for me. Of the penthouse.
‘Is that …’ says Asha, but I concur before she can finish. Yes. It’s Joseph. Standing across the street, ignoring the advance of autumn in a T-shirt. Pausing as he clears tables. Watching me as we run by with an empty coffee cup in his hand.
Is it him I’m meant to leave alone?
My skin prickles. He’s too close to me, too tempting.
But when I suspect that Ed is doing something far worse than any small flirtation I’ve had with Joseph, should I care?
‘Well I tell you what,’ Cora shouts from behind. ‘I’d be tempted. That’s one beautiful man.’
I ignore her and speed up. Asha keeps pace.
‘You okay about what happened with Cora the other week?’ I say, a quick glance at Asha.
She laughs.
‘Bit pissed off at the time,’ she says. ‘But it’s just her isn’t it? That’s her way. I don’t think she meant any harm.’
We run in silence as I think how much I’d have stewed on this. Perhaps Asha doesn’t hold grudges like I do.
‘Do you think Ed could be cheating on me?’ I ask Asha suddenly too, out of nowhere.
Asha turns as she runs, a half-second glance, and then looks ahead again.
We are silent for a minute or two except for the thwack of pavement beneath our trainers. I know I’ve made her feel awkward.
‘Well I only ever met Ed at NCT classes and don’t know him well,’ she says eventually. Thud, thud, thud. ‘So I’d say your judgement will be better on this one than mine.’
She gives me another mid-run look.
‘I was just thinking that could be something to do with the video?’ I lead her. ‘If he’s shagging somebody else, they could have reason to want to hurt me?’
Some of my past runs have settled in my bones so that I can keep going at a decent pace even when I’m at my least fit but I am still struggling to speak at the same time.
‘Do you have any evidence?’ Asha says and Cora yells to us to wait for them.
‘I want to join in the gossip!’ she yells and I flinch. This is my fucking life.
Asha turns to me.
‘Sorry,’ she says, short of breath. ‘That sounded a bit dramatic.’
I raise an eyebrow, which is about the most I can do with the energy I have left while I run.
Let’s face it: everything about me since I hit the internet naked is dramatic. And it makes for a relentless paranoia.
I stand in the queue at the doctor’s and wonder if the man behind me, coughing without covering his mouth, knows.
I go to get my hair cut and I look in the mirror and see the face of this young, happy blonde girl holding her scissors and the first thing I think is ‘Do you know?’
And you, and you, and you. It’s incessant.
And still, it’s not even close to how it would have been if I’d been exposed as the mum blogger with the sex tape. I shudder.
‘Why have you deleted Cheshire Mama?’ the odd acquaintance asks. And I tell them I have been concerned about privacy. Concerned about sharing, as Poppy gets older, becomes a little person. They nod, understanding, then tell me it’s a shame, it was doing well. I know, I think. We were almost at eight thousand. Now, gone.
We run in silence for a few minutes.
I keep going, going. I know how to get in the zone, to focus on the heavy pad of good trainers on hard pavement and to block out everything else but the next step.
Plus I have a lot of rage that needs an outlet. In the absence of a punch bag, the pavement can take the pounding.
‘It’s probably not what you want to hear …’ Asha says over the noise. It’s nice having someone running alongside me. ‘But yeah. It doesn’t sound like the most unlikely scenario. Who wants to screw you over in life? Love rivals are up there, right? I mean if this were a BBC drama, it would be a love rival.’
We laugh. But Asha’s right. It’s logical.
If my life has been ruined because Ed is fucking about though, I think, running, running, running harder, I will lose it. If Ed is fucking about while implying that all of this has happened because I had sex, when it’s because he had sex, worse sex, sex that betrays, I will lose it, lose it, lose it.
Slam, slam, slam.
‘Scarlett, I can’t go that fast,’ says Asha, over the noise of my trainers as she falls behind me. The air is charred, smoky with a nearby barbecue. I hear the others complain too but I can’t slow down.
I need to keep running because I can feel my head spinning off somewhere bleak. Is it coming for me? I think. Is the next thing coming? The biggest secret of all? They could email it again; they have the addresses. They could message Ed; they have his number. I imagine his face; my dad’s. I can’t take another hit.
When Asha catches up with me I am bent double, resting my hands on my knees, gasping for breath and I am sobbing, hard and louder than I am ever allowed to at home, terrified that I have lost control.