24 July
It comes late at night, as all the dark things do.
It comes into my home, because that used to be the safest place but these days it’s the worst, with its Wi-Fi and its iPad and its phone, all snuggling in with me on the sofa.
I reach for the glass of red I have been nursing.
My phone beeps. The dopamine hits.
Since the internet became the worst place for me, it’s the place I’ve gone to the most. A form of self-harm? I don’t pick up a razor, but somehow I’ve always got the impetus to pick up my iPhone.
What am I hoping for, I wonder, as I reach for it? For Ollie, again? I have told him I’ll update him with anything new on the video; beyond that we don’t speak. I am scared now anyway. Is it him I am meant to leave alone?
Am I hoping for Joseph? For Ed, perhaps, to prove me wrong? To tell me there isn’t anybody else, that Jared was drunk and nonsensical; Martha was thinking of someone else.
I will anything that might be enough to pull me out of this bleak place.
Because make no mistake, I think, this is the kind of bleak place people go to just before they opt out.
I longed, when I was younger, to live a sizzling life. Lukewarm seemed like the worst option. Now I long for it.
I can’t see a way back.
I can’t feel the joy.
I can’t remember who I am.
And I am terrified of what’s next.
I take a sip of wine. Then I read the message.
Be kind, I tell Poppy, over and over when she pushes Seth over or pulls Ananya’s hair. Be kind. I say it because it is the best advice I can give; the simplest rule for life, even if I sometimes don’t manage to follow it myself. This message isn’t kind, is the first thing I know.
You think you are so perfect!!! You think u are better than the rest of us. I dot. You deserve this, Im glad I shared the video.
From the same pay-as-you-go phone as before.
Someone that has my number but that doesn’t narrow it down. As Mitch and Asha both pointed out, I am public property, with contact details that until recently were easily available online. And anyone can pick up a spare pay-as-you-go phone.
I look at the spelling errors. Possibly drunk.
I check the large clock above the fireplace: after eleven.
My heart drums in my chest because I tell you what else happens when Ed is not here, and I know somebody is trying to harm me: I get frightened.
I glance towards the living room door.
And then, when I realise that the person in the house who is supposed to get frightened is dependent on me not to be frightened, I get more frightened.
Because here’s the reality that has made my body unable to stay still lately, like it refused to so often when I was young, foot tapping, hand twitching. If they’ll come at me online, they will come for me in real life too. They know, most likely, where I live. They may have been deleted now but they were up there for long enough – the many, many pictures of my home, my view, in such a tiny village make it easy to find. And there are expensive things in this house, for someone in the mood for blackmail.
This person knows things about me, my life and maybe my finances. They know what I used to do, about that penthouse apartment in Manchester. My hand twitches faster.
I go to get a second glass of wine but stop because she needs me to be alert, Poppy, doesn’t she? See, Ed, I think. Not such a lush after all.
Instead I stalk the house, flinging open cupboard doors, bursting into rooms. I crouch down and peer under the dining table. I spirit in and check Poppy’s wardrobe. I sit on the plush carpet of her bedroom and I reach through the bars of her cot and stroke her face. Then I stay there on the floor again.
I feel the dull sensation of tears but even I can’t bear to cry again and I stop, angry, and then I pull the door to her room closed and go back downstairs.
Something has just occurred to me about that message.
I pick up my phone, to reread it and check.
But it’s been deleted.
And she would delete it, wouldn’t she?
Because suddenly I know. It has to be a she. Outside of Ed, I only belong in an ‘us’ with groups of women. I’m certainly not an us with Ollie; with Mitch. Neither would think I thought I was better than them.
That’s why I shared it.
Us. Us. Us.
Whoever is out to get me is firmly in the present, on the inside of my life. Known.
And there aren’t that many people in the present, on the inside of my life. Known.
Particularly in Cheshire.
Who do I even speak to really? I make small talk with my sister-in-law Jaclyn, or I did before this happened and she stopped inviting us round, preferring to see Ed and Poppy on their own now, or maybe that’s just what Ed wants. I pass those people in the village and swap generics on the weather, the upcoming season, back and forth. I flirt a little as I order coffee from Joseph. I make faux pas to Emma’s sister-in-law. I am too distant from the playgroup floor chat to make friends. I no longer have any reason to see Ronnie.
You think you’re better than the rest of us.
Who has welcomed me and ruined me at the same time?
Us. Us.
I feel my stomach flip.
It couldn’t be, could it?
Because it occurs to me then that there is only one group of ‘us’ that I am truly part of here, in Cheshire.
I look at our group chat, at the obscene amounts of information shared in there. Emotions, plans, personal details. I think of how I sent a close-up of my nipple to people I had known, at the time, for three months. Of everything I have shared.
I pace around the house, body twitching more now, deeper, unable to stay still.
I walk into the kitchen and pour a glass of water. Try to breathe.
My stomach lurches as I realise that all of my mum friends could believe I thought I was better than them, rolling my eyes, drifting off, posing for selfies for Cheshire Mama while they hold my coffee.
These women have seen a version of me that did look haughty.
That, lost in the countryside, at first cringed and viewed them as too local, too limited, too clichéd, too middle-aged, too WAG, too uncultured, too unaware, too stupid, too unfit, too aggressive, too too too.
The rest of us.
I see myself through their eyes and it’s horrifying.
Could Emma be this angry with me, resentful that our relationship is like the seesaw we put the babies on but always swung up my way? As she asks me questions and gives me compliments and arranges to see me and I struggle to concentrate when she tells me stories or to remember what’s going on in her life?
I pad back to the living room, my bare feet cold on the wooden floor that surrounds the rug in front of the wood burner. I don’t have the energy to locate socks.
There’s what I think of Asha, my brain grimacing at her attachment parenting. I judge Asha for the fussiness we’d have called OCD before we knew what OCD really was and that using it to point at someone who likes to plump cushions is pretty awful.
‘I have to wear contacts,’ she told me once, genuinely traumatised. ‘Because it stresses me out how much babies put smudge marks all over glasses. I can’t cope with it.’
I cringe at Emma’s clichés, at her constant diets, her relationship. If you’re that miserable, just leave, I think regularly. Like it’s that simple. Like I’m not now in an identical situation anyway and what do you know: not left yet.
Then there’s Cora, with her nails like knives, an engagement ring designed for Instagram and a made for Mills and Boon yoga teacher lover. I’ve judged her too, even as I’ve laughed with her, slept next to her, kept her secrets.
You think you are so perfect.
Of course someone would come to that conclusion, I realise with a crash, when the picture I am trying to present is so fraudulent.
When I’ve wiped out my past, my grime, my pain. When I kept my sadness inside. I thought it was better not to expose everything. I thought presenting a strong, cohesive, respectable package was the best thing. But perhaps the world needed to see my weakness to not hate me. And perhaps I needed to expose it, to make real friends; for Scarlett 3.0 to be fully formed.
I shiver, deep in my insides.
Here’s the real picture, I think, sitting now paranoid on the sofa in tracksuit bottoms in a starkly lit living room strewn with toys. Not a perfect mum. No longer a blogger. Not someone who commutes into town to do a cool job in an on-trend midi. Barely, these days, a wife. A friend? I thought so. I don’t any more.
Suddenly, I feel lucid.
Cora. Asha. Emma.
I don’t know them.
I wanted to have real friends, to belong, so I fast-tracked it, emulated closeness that really should take years to build. One minute they were the add-ons, the next I was replacing my husband with them when I needed someone to talk to.
The rest of us.
I let them in, close, without vetting, without time.
I let them in and I shared too much with no idea who any of them were.
On the sofa, I try to breathe and I try out both theories.
The person who has broken me is one of my mum friends.
The person who has broken me is sleeping with Ed.
It feels like my own mind needs a glasses wipe. I see very different things there, minute to minute, like I am at the optician’s. Which is clearer, I’m asked, as the lens is swapped, A or B?
But what if there is option C?
And my body feels flooded with the adrenalin that tells me I am right, I am right, this is it, finally.
Option C: the person who has broken me is one of my mum friends. And the person who has broken me is sleeping with Ed.
The person they want me to leave alone? My own husband.
My fingers slip away, then, from the cliff they’ve been clinging on to.
I feel stupid and sad and livid and in pain.
I feel desperate.
Sweat oozes through my top.
And I pace, like Ed the first day, at our emergency summit in my kitchen.
Asha is beautiful, young; Ed would fancy her. Emma has been going to a gym, possibly Ed’s, and is looking lovely for it. I know Cora has no issue with cheating.
New messages are there even now from them, in our group chat, as they are every day, almost every hour.
Bring me evidence, said Jonathan though, and what version of that do I have?
Think, Scarlett, think.
Tomorrow, a Saturday morning meet-up arranged, I will sit in the coffee shop with Asha, Cora and Emma.
Whoever has derailed my life will be waiting for me. Asking if I want to share a piece of ginger cake. Holding my hand if I cry. Taking care of my baby. Passing me the wet wipes. Being my friend. Ruining my life at the same time.
The circle has shrunk.
And only my mum friends are left in it.