24 July
Ed is away on a boys’ trip for two nights and I am suspicious. Two nights in a hotel is a convenient thing to have in the calendar if you’re sleeping with somebody else.
I haven’t asked him because my brain needs wiping like dirty glasses at the moment and can’t be trusted to judge things. Am I trying to get myself off the hook? Shift the blame to him? The worst thing each and every time I lose myself in life is that I can’t trust my own thoughts. And isn’t that the most terrifying thing of all.
But then, I get a message from Flick.
You around for brunch today by any chance?
Flick names an edgy place in the Northern Quarter and I try on five different tops.
It happens so quickly when you move out of a city. One minute it’s instinctive, the vibe, the style, the mood. And then it’s like a language you don’t speak.
I drop Poppy at Ed’s parents’, where we make small talk with no eye contact, and head into town to meet her.
I walk in to the restaurant wearing jeans and trainers. Is it worth trying to impress people now, given what they know?
Flick is in her Pilates clothes, straight from a class with her hair scraped back and I remember that: the coolest thing you can do in a city at brunch is give zero fucks.
She sips a green juice and looks young without her heels and her make-up, so that her wedding ring seems incongruous. I, on the other hand, feel weathered.
As I say hello, she slurps from a straw.
‘It’s good to see you,’ she says, putting her drink down and standing up to kiss me. ‘Sorry it took me so long to reply.’
From then on though, the conversation is stilted and that makes me sad. Like a relationship, can you pull back a friendship once awkwardness kicks in?
We order: eggs and smoked salmon for her, a bacon sandwich for my hangover, more juice for Flick and strong coffee for me.
I chew fast so that I can finish and say something and fill the silence, because it isn’t comfortable like it used to be.
And then when the food has gone away and only the dregs of our drinks are left, Flick looks up at me and the expression on her face makes me feel sick.
‘You know I said a while ago I needed to speak to you urgently?’ she says.
I nod. Sure.
‘I wasn’t up to it.’
‘It wasn’t about the video, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘It was about Ed.’
I think about the other messages I had from her afterwards, the missed calls. All ignored. Thinking she wanted to talk to me about work when really, it was this.
I’ve known, anyway, haven’t I?
Those nights away. The texts at Josephine’s wedding. His distance to me and how sometimes I have an instinct that this video has been a gift, to let him pull back from us and our marriage. To give him an excuse to blame me, when it comes to it. And it will come to it, I know.
I look up. Wait.
‘I changed my mind about telling you because I didn’t know anything for certain, Scarlett, and I decided that wasn’t fair,’ she says. ‘I wanted to have something more solid to give you.’
I put my head face down then, looking at the menu on the place mat: avocado, scrambled eggs, hot sauce, Nutella pancakes.
‘I had heard rumours that Ed had been cheating. And now, I’ve heard them from other people too. People I trust.’
I keep staring. Fried potatoes, banana and honey, homemade granola, steaming porridge.
‘Scarlett?’ she says. ‘Scarlett, are you okay?’
Déjà vu, I think, of her offering to call medical the last time I was shamed in front of her and she had to take care of me. Not again. Not again.
‘Who is it?’ I say, quietly.
Crispy chorizo, streaky bacon, chilli halloumi.
Flick pauses, and sounds pained when she speaks. ‘I don’t know. Jared was drunk at the summer party and heavily hinted. And then, this week Martha told she heard it at her place too.’
I reach slowly into my bag and take out some cash; hand it to Flick who waves me away.
‘I’ll get this,’ she says. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘Why?’ I say, looking up and laughing. ‘None of it’s your fault. Not my sex tape. Not my husband’s affair. None of it. It’s not your fault, Flick. It’s nobody else’s fault.’
I put the cash on the table and walk out, to that city buzz and that throng of people that I’ve craved but I can’t feel anything any more.
Later that night, Poppy back home and in bed, I have a chance to think.
I’ve had some evidence Ed is cheating, I tell Asha, Cora and Emma on our group chat.
I go to check on Poppy. Stare at her tiny chest rising and falling.
I wanted to be good at this, I think. I wanted to be the mum I wish I’d known into my school years and adulthood. To be perfect; part of a perfect family. Though I am starting to think that perfect is the most dangerous word there is.
I lean over the cot and stroke Poppy’s head. I sit on the floor with my head on the bars. By the time I sit up the bars are wet.
What now, for your family, Poppy?
Are you okay, sweets? asks Emma. Do you need someone with you?
You’ve got this, hon, says Cora with about fifteen emojis.
As I sit there, I picture where their messages are coming from. From cosy evenings in front of Netflix binges. Freshly showered, in pyjamas. With pappardelle on their laps, or wine in their hands alongside still-awake toddlers or home-from-work husbands. I light my imagined pictures with Tiffany lamps and fancy candles and I scent them with homemade biscuits and expensive perfumes.
The lamp bulb is gone in our living room and nobody can be bothered to replace it. We don’t tend to our home now.
I sit, harshly lit and shivery and I’m jealous of all of it. Of things that may not exist and scenes that I’ve invented myself.
If we can do anything, babe, just let us know, says Emma. Here for you.
I scroll through my phone absent-mindedly and end up at pictures of Poppy taken when she was weeks old. Ed and I, finding our feet.
When life was simple.
Then was simple. Then was perfect. Then was the easy part.
But all of them have got the behind-the-scenes version.
Then, really?
Then was so exhausting I thought the tiredness would make me ill. Then was terrifying. Then was lonely, without a mother of my own to learn motherhood from. Then was emotional, now there was a baby, because so often I would stare at her and wonder about the baby who came before.
Then was unsettling, when my identity felt lost and altered and unknown. Then was guilty, because some people didn’t have this and I did, and when I knew sadness and grief existed in the world, how could I walk around the place being so smug in my joy? Because then was joy. Joy at Poppy’s existence. Joy at being loved. Joy at being part of a team.
All of this makes so much more sense if my husband is sleeping with somebody else. It makes the parts fit together. If I figure out who that is, I am pretty sure I have figured out who sent the video too. That doesn’t make it any less sad though, as a family combusts, and I lie on our sofa, in our home, for most of the evening and weep.