They were halfway through the next Monday morning meeting when Poppy’s phone started lighting up like a Christmas tree on the table in front of her. She placed a hand over the screen and when the flashes continued through the gaps between her fingers, she flipped the phone face down and tried to pretend nothing was happening, even though several other managers were glancing towards her with curiosity.
Meanwhile, across the table, Annalise started vibrating.
ERRRRGH.
ERRRRGH.
The buzzing sound from inside her jeans pocket was insistent and she shifted in her chair, pulled out her phone and turned it off.
Now every manager in the room had their attention on Poppy and Annalise.
‘What’s made the two of you so popular all of a sudden?’ Lawrence asked.
‘Excuse me,’ Frankie said from the other end of the table, ‘but can we please stay focused? We’ve still got a few more items on the agenda to get through.’
The moment the meeting ended, Poppy and Annalise escaped into another meeting room and locked the door behind them.
‘All right,’ said Poppy, unlocking her phone to check her notifications, ‘what the hell is going on?’ A second later, a wave of nausea washed over her. ‘This is all hate mail,’ she said, opening one message after another, her fingers fumbling, becoming more and more frantic as she checked each one. They were coming through to her personal Facebook account and appearing in the separate NOP admin inbox. She was being bombarded with angry messages. She couldn’t keep up with them. They just kept coming. She read one aloud to Annalise: ‘‘Who the hell do you women think you are? What gives you the right to judge us, to write these horrible things about us? You’re all a bunch of nasty old bitches who deserve nothing but pain and unhappiness.” Why would someone say something like that to me?’
‘It’s me too,’ said Annalise, ‘I’m getting the same messages. Oh, Poppy, I’m so sorry, I should have said something sooner.’
‘What do you mean, said what?’
‘We got a couple of these messages recently. But I deleted them and blocked the senders. I didn’t want you to be upset.’
Poppy remembered the phantom notifications. Now it made sense. ‘But why would it matter if you had told me. What difference would it make?’
‘I don’t know . . . But maybe we could have stopped it before it got this insane.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know!’
Poppy was transfixed by her screen as the angry messages continued to flood in. She saw horrendous words and snippets of phrases flash up as Facebook gave her a taste of each message.
Fuck the lot of you.
Mangy cunts.
You Utter Bitches.
‘Oh no,’ Poppy said suddenly.
‘What is it?’
‘I just got an email from my mum . . . look.’
Annalise leaned over and they both read the email together.
Hello Darling,
How are you?
Listen, I feel awful to ‘cut straight to the chase’ as they say, but my friend Edna just phoned me and well, she was in a bit of a fluster. She said her daughter Susan told her about some ‘FACEBOOK GROUP’ that she claims you’re heading up and she seemed to think you were anti-mothers and making fun of mums like her Susie and well, she was just a bit hurt I suppose. On Susie’s behalf.
I reassured her of course that that doesn’t sound like you AT ALL and that she must have her wires crossed but well, like I said, she was in quite a state and so I thought I should at least ‘follow up’ as they say.
I know you’re recovering from your divorce and your dad had a big talk with me about how I need to lay off, so it’s wonderful if you’ve found a bit of an outlet. But I did wonder if this group might have something to do with your new friend Annalise? And maybe that’s where the mix-up has happened?
Much love to you and give me a call when you can to talk about this.
Mum X
They finished reading the email at the same time. ‘Bloody hell,’ Poppy said, ‘Mum’s friend Edna and her daughter Susan don’t even live in Parramatta. They live out Sutherland way. How did they come across it?’
‘Maybe she has a mate here in Parra who told her about it. And by the way, you’ve never told me how much your mum clearly loves me.’
‘Annalise! Not the point right now.’
‘Okay fine, whatever. Let’s check the member posts, see what other people are saying.’
They pressed their heads together as they clicked through into the group to check for updates.
‘Damn,’ Poppy whispered, only a few seconds later.
It looked like a whole heap of their members were being targeted. There were countless posts and conversations between women within the group all discussing the fact that they’d been the recipient of nasty messages. And many of them said the messages had come from women who signed off as ‘proud members of MOP’.
‘So it’s not just random mothers targeting us, it’s all MOP women then?’ Poppy said.
Annalise read another one out loud. ‘Hey girls, be careful what you say on here, I think someone in this group is not who she says she is. Someone has to be reading what we’re posting here in NOP and passing it back to MOP, because I just got a message where one of my previous posts was quoted back to me, word for word. This group is private, so there’s no way they could have seen it unless they were a member.’
Poppy looked at Annalise. ‘Do you think she’s right? Do you think one of our members is a mole? An imposter?’
Annalise nodded. ‘She has to be right,’ she said. ‘How else would they be able to see what we’re saying?’
‘I guess I stopped vetting members properly. So many women wanted to join, I got slack.’
‘This is utter crap,’ said Annalise. ‘We weren’t actually doing anything to hurt them. They should just stay the hell out of our lives.’
‘That’s not entirely true though, is it? Annalise, this is all my fault.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I told people to stand up for themselves and our members got mean. They started letting mothers have it – out in the real world. No wonder these women are angry.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. As far as I could see, no one stepped over the line. People were only being more honest, that’s all.’
‘Check out our member count as well,’ said Poppy. ‘Last time I checked we were about to hit seven hundred. And that was even with the few women who dropped out because they didn’t like the challenges. Now we’re back down to five-fifty. A whole heap of women have been intimidated into leaving. That’s not fair. Lise, what the hell are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to bloody well fight back.’
‘How?’
‘Hang on. Scroll back up, what’s that link Kellie’s posted?’
They read the post together.
Kellie – Ladies, I think I’ve just discovered the reason why every mother in the area seems to suddenly have intimate knowledge of NOP. Click through to this article.
Poppy obediently pressed on the link and they simultaneously gasped when they saw the headline of the article published to the Parramatta Gossip and News site:
SHOTS FIRED!
LOCAL MUMS UNDER ATTACK FROM NEW WOMEN’S GROUP
By Anonymous
When I was tipped off by a friend that a new local Facebook group had started up, I knew that I had to find a way to get myself on the inside. You might wonder why. Well, membership is restricted to one very specific group: NON-MOTHERS. And digging deeper: no men allowed, just women, but women who not only don’t have children, but they also don’t WANT children. Ever. They call themselves NOP (Non-Mums Online in Parramatta), perhaps out of jealousy that they were unable to join popular local community group Mums Online in Parramatta (affectionately named MOP). I’m sure they thought they were very clever coming up with that one!
Now, as a mother with two children, I am obviously not eligible, so I created a fake Facebook account. I joined the group and to begin with, it was mostly friendly and harmless. But the mood quickly changed.
When I found out that the group’s founder, Poppy Weston, was betrayed by her husband and her best friend who went on to have a child together, alarm bells started ringing. Was this about connecting women with a shared interest? Or was it really about getting back at Poppy’s ex best friend? Was it a defence mechanism after her husband took away her chance to have children?
I knew I had Poppy pegged right when she put up an angry post that could only be described as a call to arms. Our fearless leader has had enough of the mums of the world ‘running the joint’. She’s decided it’s time for the women of NOP to start standing up for themselves. To tell mums what they really think.
Now I can’t speak for any other mums out there, but as a mother of two little angels/monsters – I sure as hell do not feel like I’m running the joint. And the last thing I need is to start copping crap from other women who think I’m somehow ruining their lives.
I want to issue a warning to local mums: watch out for childless women in the shops, in restaurants, in cafes or on the street who are raring to have a go at you if you so much as bump their ankle with your pram. Because the ladies of NOP are out for blood.
In the meantime, I’m still a member under my false name and I’m going to remain there until my cover is blown, because someone needs to keep an eye on these women. Good luck on the streets, mamas!
Poppy was livid. ‘Who the hell is this person?’ she spluttered. ‘How does she know so much about me? About us? Right down to the fact that Garret left me for my best friend?’
‘I don’t . . . I don’t know,’ said Annalise, ‘I seriously don’t get it. I mean, I guess I’ve bitched to some people within NOP about how much of a dick Garret is for the way he treated you . . . but I didn’t think I went into that much detail.’ She looked guilty but Poppy was too caught up in her anger with the writer of the article to pay too much attention.
‘And how dare she make those assumptions about my reasons for starting the group! I was jealous of MOP? Please! And she thinks Garret took away my chance to have children? That I don’t even know what I want? It’s absolutely ridiculous!’
‘I know,’ said Annalise, ‘it’s horrible. And she claims she’s still a member! We have to figure out who she is. We have to get her the hell out of our group.’
‘But . . . but how?’
‘Let me have a look and see if there are any comments on the post where the article was shared. Maybe someone has an idea.’
Once again, they looked down at the phone together. Unfortunately, the comments were filled with women who were just as flummoxed as Poppy and Annalise, and members who were worried their previous posts on NOP were no longer safe:
Nicole – If my best friend knew what I’d said about her kids – oh my God, that could tear our relationship apart. Jesus, I didn’t really mean those things. I was just venting. Hamming it up for you guys as well. Also really hate the way the article keeps calling us ‘Non-mothers’ or ‘childless’. I don’t appreciate being defined by the absence of children. Besides, I’m not child-LESS, I’m child-FREE thanks very much.
Jess – We need to know who it is in this group. Is she really still here? How did she become a member in the first place? I thought membership was tight! I thought I was safe to share with you guys. I know I come across as very open-minded, but I was actually only comfortable with discussing my sex life or sharing my erotic fiction with you all because I believed everything I said would stay within this group.
Kellie – If you’ve said something you don’t want to get out, I suggest you go back and find it and delete it NOW. As long as the mole hasn’t already screen-grabbed it, you’ll be okay.
Catriona – Well I’m already fucked, so thanks a fucking lot to whoever the hell it is on here who decided to attack us. My sister just phoned me crying because she saw a screen grab of a post I wrote here that had been shared on MOP. In it I complained a bit about her kids – the kind of thing I would never have said to her face.
Poppy’s anger turned to despair and she slumped down into a chair and began to cry.
‘Oh, honey.’ Annalise wrapped her arms around her. ‘Please don’t cry. That bitch doesn’t deserve your tears. Don’t give her the satisfaction.’
Poppy tried to stem the flow but she was so worked up that she was sucking in air, choking and spluttering like a heartbroken toddler. She wished tonight wasn’t their bye at soccer. Even if it was giving her hand more time to heal, she would have loved to take all of her frustrations out on a soccer ball right now.
Annalise sat down next to her and snatched up her phone again. ‘I’m going to find her. I’m going to figure out who the hell she is.’