Lunch had been a disaster. Max had opened the champagne when his parents had arrived at 11:00 A.M. Alice had drunk two glasses on an empty stomach. Then she’d downed a glass of the red wine she’d set aside for the gravy while she was doing the cooking. The combination of no sleep, nerves, and too much booze meant that she got completely muddled with all her timings. The turkey was dry, the sprouts were mush, and the roast potatoes as hard as bullets. And she’d forgotten the gravy altogether.
Max’s mother had made all the right complimentary noises about the meal, but—in her usual way—dressed up criticism as praise. “How clever of you to use shop-bought stuffing. I always make my own. So silly, as it takes me absolutely ages to get it just right.” Alice knew exactly what she was doing, but Max hadn’t a clue.
Alice wished she was at her mother’s house, with her siblings and their families, squashed happily into the cramped front room. Over the years, carpets, curtains, and furnishings, chosen by her mother for their availability and price rather than beauty, had combined to create a contrasting, clashing, riot of pattern and color. They’d all be wearing gaudy festive sweaters, paper hats, bickering, and taking the mickey out of each other.
Alice’s Fulham house was painted just the right shade of Farrow & Ball; the furniture was coordinated and unobtrusive, with the occasional pop of the latest color. Everything was open plan, and a lighting consultant had spent hours, and a large proportion of Max’s bonus, making sure that the right mood could be created for any occasion. Utterly tasteful. Completely soulless. Nothing to dislike, nor anything to love.
After lunch, Alice helped Bunty unwrap more of her presents. Alice realized that she’d gone totally over the top and was sure a shrink would say it was a reaction to her own childhood Christmases, where the majority of the gifts had been handmade and hand-me-downs. She still remembered the scorn with which she’d greeted the lovingly crafted sewing box her mother had made for her when she was ten, stocked with needles and a rainbow of threads, buttons, and fabrics. She’d wanted a CD player. How could she have been so ungrateful?
Alice dragged herself back to the moment and uploaded a cute picture of Bunty chewing the wrapping of one of her presents to Instagram, with all the usual hashtags. Completely out of the blue, Max snatched her phone from her.
“Why can’t you actually live your bloody life, rather than photographing it all the time?” he hissed, throwing her mobile into the corner of the room, where it landed in a box of building bricks, tipping them over like a wrecking ball.
There was a stunned silence.
Alice waited for someone to stand up for her, to tell Max that he was out of order and couldn’t speak to his wife like that.
“Alice, dear. When is Bunty due to have her nap?” Max’s mother asked instead, as if the previous few minutes hadn’t happened.
“She, she doesn’t have a set nap time,” replied Alice, trying not to cry. Her mother-in-law pursed her lips in disapproval. Alice braced herself for the familiar lecture on the importance of routine and how Max had been the perfect baby, sleeping through the night from the minute he came back from the hospital.
“Well, why don’t you and Max take the sweet thing out for a little walk, Alice, and I’ll tidy the place up for you? It’ll do you good to get some fresh air.”
Alice saw this for what it was: a veiled criticism of her housework masquerading as kindness, but she wasn’t going to argue. She couldn’t wait to get away from it all for a while, despite knowing that the minute she walked out of the door her in-laws would be talking about her many inadequacies. Without humiliating herself further by scrabbling in the toy box for her mobile, she picked up Bunty and her shoulder bag and left the room, followed by Max, who looked as if he didn’t want to spend time with her any more than she did with him.
As soon as the front door closed, she turned to him.
“How dare you humiliate me like that in front of your parents, Max? We’re supposed to be a team,” she said, and waited for the apology.
“Well, it doesn’t feel much like a team to me, Alice. Every moment you’re not with Bunty, you’re playing around on bloody social media. I have needs, too, you know!”
“Bloody hell, Max! Are you jealous of a baby? Your baby? I’m sorry if I’m not spending as much time pandering to you”—she wasn’t, actually—“but Bunty needs me rather more than you do. You could perhaps try helping a bit more.”
“It’s not just that, Alice,” Max said, suddenly looking sad rather than angry. “You’ve changed. We’ve changed. I’m just trying to get to grips with it all.”
“Of course we’ve changed! We’re parents now! I’ve just had to push a melon through a keyhole, I’ve turned into a mobile milk bar overnight, and I haven’t slept for more than three hours at a stretch for weeks. I’m obviously going to be a bit different from the carefree PR girl you married. What were you expecting?”
“I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “You know, I remember on our wedding day, looking at you walking down the aisle and thinking that I was the luckiest man in the world. I thought our lives were blessed.”
“I felt the same, Max. And we are blessed. It’s bound to be hard right now. Everyone finds the first few months with a new baby difficult, don’t they?” She waited for Max to respond, but he didn’t.
“Look, you go back and talk to your parents,” said Alice. “I don’t want to row anymore. I’m too exhausted. I’ll be back in time for Bunty’s bath.”
She had the feeling that another brick had been removed from the faulty foundation of her marriage.
ALICE SAT ON the bench in the deserted playground. She was pushing Bunty’s Bugaboo backward and forward with her foot to encourage her to go to sleep. She could see her daughter’s eyelids getting heavier and heavier as she chewed her fist with her gums, drooling all over her reindeer print romper suit (@minimes).
Alice felt bereft without her mobile. She kept checking her pocket, then remembering that it was at home. She didn’t want to go back to the house, but she was antsy without anything to like, post, or comment on. She needed a distraction so she didn’t have to think about the row with Max. It was too depressing. What did she do with unfilled time before she got into social media? She couldn’t remember.
Alice opened her bag, just in case she’d left a copy of Grazia in there. No such luck. But she did find the green exercise book that she’d picked up in the playground a few days ago and completely forgotten about. For want of anything else to do, she took it out and began to read.
Everyone lies about their lives. Well, ain’t that the truth! @aliceinwonderland’s hundred thousand followers certainly didn’t see the miserable reality of Alice’s existence. She thought of all the posts showing her and Max gazing lovingly at each other and at their baby. What was this book? Had it been left deliberately for her?
What would happen if you shared the truth instead? Does anyone want to know the truth? Really? The truth often isn’t pretty. It’s not aspirational. It doesn’t fit neatly into a little square on Instagram. Alice presented a version of the truth; the one that people wanted to see pop up on their feed. Anything too real and she’d lose followers in droves. No one wanted to know about her less-than-perfect marriage, her stretch marks, or Bunty’s conjunctivitis and cradle cap.
Alice read Julian’s story. He sounded wonderful, but so sad. She wondered what he was doing today. Did he have anyone to share Christmas lunch with? Was he all on his own in Chelsea Studios? Did he still lay a table setting for his dead wife?
She started to read Monica’s story. She knew the café well. She was pretty sure she’d tagged it in a number of posts recently. You know the kind of thing—look at my coffee, with a heart shape drawn into the frothy milk, and my healthy bowl of fruit, yogurt, and granola. Look at me, supporting independent local businesses. In fact, she could picture Monica bustling around the café being efficient: ten years older than her, but still pretty, in an intense, uptight sort of way.
Then Alice realized, with a shock, that the woman she’d become obsessed with, the one dancing with such carefree abandon the other night, was Monica. She hadn’t put two and two together at the time, as the vision she’d been watching seemed so very different from the woman she was used to seeing in daylight hours.
She read about Monica’s baby hunger. Be careful what you wish for, thought Alice, darkly, as Bunty started to stir, looking as if she might be working up to a screaming session. Had she herself been that desperate for a baby at some point? She couldn’t remember being so, but she supposed she must have been.
How extraordinary that she had been envying Monica’s life, when all the time all Monica wanted was what Alice took most for granted. She felt an invisible, but unbreakable, thread of connection between her and this strong but sad woman she’d never properly met. She looked down at Bunty, at her gorgeous plump cheeks and bottomless blue eyes, and felt a tidal wave of love she vowed never to let herself forget.
Hazard. Now, there was a name for a romantic hero. She really hoped he was gorgeous. It would be such a waste to be called Hazard and be all skinny with an overly pronounced Adam’s apple and acne. She pictured him riding, bareback and bare chested, along a Cornish cliff path. Oh God, it must be the hormones.
Alice was vehemently antidrugs but, reading Hazard’s story, she had an uncomfortable feeling that her relationship with alcohol was not dissimilar to his with cocaine. She wasn’t just drinking to let her hair down at parties, she was drinking to get through the day. She pushed that irritating thought to one side. She deserved her glass of wine (or three) in the evening. And everyone else was doing it too. Her social media was filled with memes about “wine o’clock” and “Mummy’s little helper.” It made her feel adult, like she still had a life. It was her “me time,” and—frankly—she deserved some of that.
Alice read to the end of Hazard’s story and realized what he’d done. OMG! It was like being right in the middle of a Danielle Steel novel! Hazard had found the man of Monica’s dreams, Riley, and sent him back to London to save her from miserable spinsterhood. How romantic! And it had worked! Surely Riley was the man he’d seen her with in Monica’s Café, gazing into her eyes with such adoration?
Alice was dying to read the next story, which she assumed was Riley’s. She could see it scrawled in an obviously masculine hand, over the next three pages of the book, but she needed to get back for Bunty’s bath time. Maybe she could spare an extra few minutes to do a tiny detour past Monica’s Café, and just have a quick peek in through the window. It would keep her mind off that terrible row with Max for a little longer. She was pretty sure it would be closed on Christmas Day, but it wouldn’t do any harm to trundle past. Bunty would enjoy the extra walk.
Alice turned left out of the park onto the Fulham Road, right by the Chinese restaurant. It had been there for as long as she could remember, but she’d never been in. She was more avocado and crab maki roll than chicken chow mein. The pavements were pretty deserted as most of Fulham seemed to have evacuated to the country for the duration of the holiday, which is why the two men standing outside the restaurant caught her attention. They were an unlikely-looking pair. One of them looked Chinese. He was tiny, and very cross, emitting an energy totally out of kilter with his stature. The other man was a tall, well-honed redhead who she was sure she recognized from somewhere. He looked as if he were crying. What on earth was that all about? Perhaps she wasn’t the only one having a tricky day. She felt a little guilty about how much that thought cheered her.
As Alice walked toward the café, she realized it was the first thing she’d done for ages with a sense of excitement rather than just out of duty. The last few months had been one mundane chore after the other—feeding, wiping, cleaning, changing, cooking, ironing, washing, and repeat, ad infinitum. It was a novelty, not knowing exactly what would happen next. Life with a small baby was so terribly predictable. Then Alice chastised herself for the thought, reminding herself how lucky she was.
As she approached the café, it looked as if the lights were on. That didn’t necessarily mean it was open. Many of the local businesses seemed to keep their lights on twenty-four seven. It made her rather cross—@aliceinwonderland was all about being kind to the planet. She’d stopped using disposable coffee cups and plastic bags well before it became trendy. She’d even tried reusable nappies for a while, but that hadn’t ended well.
Alice peered in through the window. There, sitting by herself at a table that had been laid for several people, was Monica. Crying. Properly crying. Big, snotty, blotchy-faced crying, not the photogenic sort. Monica was definitely the sort of woman who’d be wise not to cry in public. Perhaps, if they became friends, Alice could let her know. That would be a kindness.
Alice felt her buoyant mood deflate. She’d so wanted to believe in the happily ever after. What on earth could be wrong? How could the perfectly romantic scene of just a few days ago have morphed into this one of solitary misery?
Alice was a huge believer in female solidarity. Women had to look after each other. She also lived by the motto “in a world where you can be anything, be kind.” She had it printed on a T-shirt. She couldn’t just walk on past leaving a fellow female weeping like that. Apart from anything else, she didn’t feel like Monica was a stranger. She felt like she knew her, at least a little bit. Better than most of her “besties,” if truth be told.
Alice took the book out of her bag, by way of introduction, stood up tall, put a friendly, but concerned, smile on her face and walked in, carefully stepping over a malevolent-looking brown mass on the floor. What on earth was that?
Monica looked up, mascara running down her face.
“Hi, I’m Alice,” said Alice. “I found The Authenticity Project. Are you OK? Can I help?”
“I wish I’d never set eyes on that damn book, and I certainly don’t want to see it ever again,” Monica replied, delivering each word like machine-gun fire, making Alice physically recoil. “I really don’t mean to be rude, and I’m sure you—like everybody else—think you know me, having read the story I should never have written, but you don’t. And I sure as hell don’t know you. Nor do I want to. So please, just bugger off and leave me alone.”
Alice did.