28 July
‘Have you caught up with Poppy lately?’ asks Emma, pointedly.
I think of my phone, in the kitchen. How long have we been here? An hour, maybe, or twelve.
I go cold.
‘Not since yesterday.’
Do not mention Poppy.
She laughs.
‘I’ve got to confess, that might have a tiny something to do with me,’ she says. ‘Whoops. Ed kind of thinks you’re an unfit mum.’
My head flicks up. She ploughs on.
‘You probably know about the messages I sent to Ed a while ago,’ she says, reclining on my armchair. ‘I wanted him to be on the lookout too. I thought if he confronted you about your cheating, you might know you were being watched. Stop sleeping with Robert.’
Is there any point arguing with her? This is the narrative she has decided on. I shake my head, sadly. No, no.
‘Did he tell you there were more messages, this week?’ she asks.
A shiver runs through me.
My phone is in the other room. I can’t reach my husband to correct whatever these messages say. I can’t reach my husband to help me.
Although who would Ed believe anyway?
An anonymous stranger in a message or me, his wife? The answer brings tears to my eyes.
‘To let him know about the affair you’re having with the guy from the coffee shop,’ she says, casually.
My heart starts to race. Because is there anything harder to refute than a lie that is based in truth? I think of the hangover I had that morning after the night I stayed for a lock-in with Joseph; the edginess Ed would have noticed.
I think of the evening itself. Joseph and I, heads close together and alone, knees too friendly under the table.
I think – with a shiver – of Emma, running just behind me and seeing Joseph across the street. Of her being there when I talked about him. Her seeing how often my eyes would follow him across the room. Of her eyes, watching me.
She would have enough to hang me, I think.
Dates, times, details, messages. She could paint this picture easily; it was like the outline had been drawn for a child in its colouring book.
‘I didn’t have an affair with him,’ I say and she is wide-eyed now.
‘Oh really?’ she says. ‘My error. Oh well. Too late now, Ed thinks you’ve been sleeping with him for months.’
I go to speak but she interrupts again.
‘Not just him either. Ollie? The ex? And of course, Robert.’
Dates, times, details, meet-ups.
‘Probably Ollie and Robert at the same time. We all know you, eh, Scarlett.’
She winks.
What’s alarming, I think, is how she kept this hatred that is now seeping out through every single word she chooses hidden from me for so long.
Because this woman despises me.
‘To be honest he thinks you’re sleeping with anybody who will have you.’ She shrugs. ‘Thinks you’re way, way, way off the rails, probably helped along by all the drinking I mentioned you were doing. You’re not the woman he thought you were. And he tried so hard to wipe you clean.’
She pauses and laughs and it’s too close to the bone. He did try to wipe me clean. I wanted to be wiped clean. And none of that had been healthy. Trying to eradicate a part of myself, however grimy it was. It was why I wanted to be in Sowerton; it felt cleaner, somehow. Like the less polluted air would make a less polluted me.
‘Why should your life carry on like normal?’ she asks. ‘Why should your marriage survive when you stole my husband?’
I can see no way back; no way to undo this. It’s dense and dark and it’s easier to give in. I want to go to sleep. I want a mum I can remember.
‘Hey there’s more, babe!’ Emma exclaims suddenly, waking me up, waking herself up by the looks of her eyes, wild.
And I know. Have known always that he would find out sometime. And that when he did, it would be more than respectable Ed could take. That it would finish us off.
‘Of course I told him that you used to be a hooker too,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry though, I made sure he knew it was high-end stuff. Posh apartments, right? Not drug dens and squats. So he should be fine with that?’
If I’ve been breaking apart for the last few months, that’s the one that finishes me off with a final blow. Most of the time it was flirting and wearing tiny clothes to be stared at and pawed for money and then there was that one time but all of it, to be honest, all of it is the worst thing I’ve ever done. I can’t forgive myself, never have been able to; I know Ed won’t. I think of work colleagues knowing that too. My dad. I vibrate, and my head starts to throb. Too much, too much, too much. If it wasn’t for Poppy, I could drown in shame and be happy to never see the surface again.
‘It’s bloody brilliant isn’t it?’ she says. ‘And there was me thinking I’d lost my ability to be creative since I had Seth.’
‘But why would you want Ed and me to split up?’ I say. ‘If you think I’m sleeping with Robert, wouldn’t you want my marriage to work? To keep me away from him.’
She laughs. Mean.
‘Being married hasn’t kept you away from him so far,’ she says. ‘So that was incidental. I just wanted to ruin everything you have. The things that matter to you the most. Ed. And of course, when he leaves thinking you’re unfit, Poppy too.’
I move, jump off the sofa, to get to the other room, to my phone, but she is on me. More agile since her new gym habit and I wonder if that’s why she’s been keeping fit, if she’s been prepping for this.
She is angry too and that makes her even stronger and I am broken apart and she has me up against the wall in half a second even though she only has an inch on me, five foot seven in bare feet.
‘How can you leave now?’ she says. ‘I haven’t finished.’
And my heart pounds then with the adrenalin of trying to get out and with the horror that there is more, when I am at my limit. My Poppy, I think. Do not come for my relationship with my girl.
My insides are vibrating with fear.
It feels like I can see the trace right through me, from now, to Ed and how we are, to the video, to having Poppy, to leaving Ollie, to every night in those places with those men, to my mum, back and back and back running through me like a pipe that has sucked me dry. This is the culmination. This is the end, here.
Emma sits down too.
All Ed wants to do is protect Poppy, and he panics about anything that could harm her, and now he thinks that I, with my drinking and my strange men and my irresponsibility, could. Plus, he has met somebody else. Even if it’s not Emma, it’s somebody. Flick was sure, Martha too. The lines in the sand are long gone. What if they become a proper couple and I lose custody? I can’t survive that, I think, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
‘A stepmum would probably be better for Poppy in the long run,’ says Emma, reading my thoughts. ‘Far more stable. A better example too. Plus you said it yourself, you’re at rock bottom. Can you survive this? Really? Poppy will need someone, Scarlett, and you’re not up to the job any more.’
The room spins and I stumble.
I said no to Ollie, just. I said no to Joseph, just. I said yes to a lot of drinks but I said no to enough, just. My mental health survived, just. Didn’t it?
‘What is this supposed to achieve?’ I ask through deep tears. ‘You want Poppy to lose her mum? Fucking hell, Emma, you have a child.’
Emma shrugs. Those eyes are dead, now. She is so far away from kindness; humanity.
‘To teach you a lesson,’ Emma says. ‘To break up your family, like you broke up mine.’
All I can think of is Poppy.
Ed wouldn’t do that to me, I think. I have to think. Then I think, again: Ed would do whatever it took to keep Poppy safe. He wouldn’t keep her away from her mother, but he would keep her away from danger. If he thinks I’m both, this could go either way.
‘If you’re so convinced that Ed is done with me, let me phone him,’ I say.
We sit in silence for a couple of minutes.
She sits back, frowns, then turns to plump the pillows that seem to be irritating her.
‘That’s better,’ she says, looking at the cushions. And then: ‘Okay, call him.’
She nestles backwards into the cushions like it’s Friday night and she’s looking forward to a gin and slim and a Netflix binge – and I walk tentatively, like I might break her decision, past her to get my phone and find my husband’s number in my favourites, dialling it to see if I can creep my fingernails over the cliff and cling on to the edges of my life.