The Cows

Cam’s article about not being lonely got shared 42,000 times, retweeted 18,000 times and discussed on This Morning. She is thrilled. This all helps raise the bucks she can haggle from her advertisers, and proves to her that even though she is relatively old now, well, old compared to Mark and his beautiful body, www.HowItIs.com is still as relevant as it ever was.

But coming up with content every day is hard. She needs to find a balance of outrage, opinion and personal detail. Blogs with a good dose of all three are smash hits, and she thinks she has just the one to follow on with this buzz. She’s been wanting to write it for ages, but needed to get it word perfect. Having spent the weekend obsessing about the most horrendous attempt at dinner out with Mark and if her lack of social skills is a problem or not, she knows the time is right. This isn’t about him, it’s about her; about taking control of her life in the bravest, most honest way possible. She is happy, her choices are right, and it’s important to her that everyone understands that. Cam knows what she is about to say will get a strong reaction. From her readers, of course – but mostly from her mother.

www.HowItIs.com

Why I Don’t Want Children

I don’t want kids. And no, I’m not sad or selfish, or self-obsessed or mean. I’m a kind, funny, thirty-six-year-old who was loved by both of my parents and who gets plenty of sex. I’m attractive, fit, healthy, a great lover and good friend. I’ve never been sexually abused, I’ve had happy relationships, and I like myself very much.

I just don’t want kids. That doesn’t mean that I am not very nice.

I also don’t hate children, and to be honest I am spooked by people who say they do. When other people who don’t want kids say that to me I think, you were a child, I was a child, we need children. They are only little adults. They are not something you can hate. I believe that people who hate children actually hate themselves more. I do not hate myself; I just don’t want children.

I am an aunty, and I love my nieces and nephews very much. I am not, however, desperate to be relevant to them in any way more than aunties who have their own children are. They are not my surrogate offspring. They are just my nieces and nephews. I’m a fun aunty who visits, plays games, teaches them inappropriate words and leaves by bedtime. They like me, I like them, but I don’t want to make them feel that if they ran away from home they could come and live with me in my absolutely incredible new Victorian flat which is, in many ways, my very own baby.

There are lots of reasons why not having children works for me. I am a writer and spend most of my time alone, as I’ve previously mentioned. I love that part of my life so much, and I know I’d have to fight for it if I had a child. Writing is my therapy, my way of connecting with the world. It fulfils me in so many ways that I have never felt like anything is missing as long as I have a thought in my head and a pen or keyboard to get it down. I believe that if I had a child and struggled to find the time to write, then I would feel like something was missing. So why would I want to do that?

Of course I know that if I did have a child, I would experience the kind of love that would probably fill in all the gaps and solve all the worries that I have, but they wouldn’t give me the time I have to do the other things that I love in life. So really, I can gain nothing from having a child, because I would lose so many of the things that are important to me. Solitude, travel, late nights, lazy weekends, sex on the couch in the middle of the day, to name but a few.

I read about women whose lives are caving in around them because they can’t find a man to reproduce with. And others who have re-mortgaged their houses as they try round after round of IVF. I also know mothers who are blissfully happy, but also those whose careers have suffered, along with their self-worth, and the unspoken truth is that they probably won’t get either of them back. My life is free of any of that. I am in no hurry to settle down, I do not feel empty, nothing is missing. You probably think I’m selfish. I think I’m a revelation.

Family ask me if I worry I will feel unfulfilled in the future because I never had kids. To which I think, are there not billions of women out there who feel unfulfilled because they did have kids? Isn’t choice basically what feminism is all about? How can we look back over the past five hundred years, at how women were knocked into second place because they were the ones that had to bear the children, and not agree that it is a reasonable reaction to want to remain child free?

As a society, we have to stop valuing women on whether they have babies or not. My decision not to have a family of my own will mean that some people will always think I’ve failed, that I am tragic in some way. But there is nothing tragic about my life, because I love everything about it, and I’m especially excited for my future.

I look forward to your emails.

Cam x

Stella

Monday morning

‘Stella, thank fuck. You have to unblock my computer; I need to get on the Internet,’ says Jason as he comes, frantically, into the studio. It’s nine a.m., he’s never this early unless we have a shoot.

I knew this would happen, and I’m not doing it. He sent me an email after he left on Friday making me promise that no matter how much he begged, I must not unblock his computer until his book is finished. He sent me all of his passwords for his email and all his social accounts. ‘You are in control,’ he said, ‘You are the boss.’

‘No way. “Under no circumstances”, that’s what you said,’ I remind him, my head throbbing from crying myself to sleep until three a.m. Phil slept on the couch.

‘Jason, you said you would do exactly this. So no, sorry. There’s no point in us making arrangements like that if you break them. You’re locked out of the Internet until you’ve written the book. What is so urgent?’ I ask, nosily.

‘I met a girl on Friday night. She was awesome. I took her number, and just after we said goodbye this guy on a bike smashed into me and I dropped my phone down a drain.’

‘Great, then there is no problem. I’ll order you a new phone and she’ll no doubt text you. Also, if you saved her number it will probably be on iCloud and you’ll have it anyway. So, get back to work and be patient. No Internet, like we said,’ I say, bossily. It’s not always easy being Jason’s PA, he takes some controlling. Luckily it’s the part of my job that I enjoy the most; it’s not like I have any control over my own life.

He is visibly calmer upon hearing that this woman’s number isn’t lost forever.

‘And maybe playing it a bit cool could be good?’ I continue, slightly out of turn. But I’ve seen Jason have multiple disastrous dating experiences because he tends to move way too quickly and freak people out. His old-school romantic tricks have a tendency to plummet with the kinds of women he likes. He likes to send flowers, and although the idea of that is nice, he often sends them to women at work. For some of his dates, who work in quite male office environments, this hasn’t gone well.

One, who he apparently had a great time with, worked quite high up at Morgan Stanley. He sent her roses to work the day after their first date and she called him, livid, saying she never wanted to see him again because he’d embarrassed her so much. Jason couldn’t get what the problem was. I told him that women who work in male environments don’t like to make an issue of the fact they are female. Sending flowers was like passing her a big flashing sign that said, ‘I AM A WOMAN WITH FEELINGS, TREAT ME DIFFERENTLY’.

He said he understood, but then sent flowers to the next woman he dated anyway. She had a similar reaction. He is who he is. There is something so endearing about how much he adores women.

He goes into his office and throws his rucksack on the floor. I hear him growl with frustration. He’s quite cute when he’s stressed, especially when it’s over a girl. I feel so shitty today, so angry with Phil, but I can’t help but find Jason amusing. It’s so sweet how he pines for love. I long to be noticed the way he observes the women he falls for. I sometimes think I could do a naked cartwheel in front of Phil, and he’d just say something about the weather. He’s lost so much spark from when I first met him. He was so charming, so confident, so happy. The worst thing about this is that I know I’m the one who has drained it out of him, and I do nothing to make it better. I’m cordial, I’m polite, I try to keep it sexy, but I don’t connect. Not really.

I watch Jason as he sits in his chair and runs his fingers through his hair. His wrinkles are deeper, because his face is all tense. I get up and go to the door.

‘Hey,’ I say gently. ‘Thanks so much for the champagne on Friday, that was really nice of you.’

His face falls back into place, as if momentarily forgetting about this mystery woman.

‘Yeah, it was nice. Good food. My friend is pregnant, so it kind of became about that.’

‘Really? She gave you that news on your birthday? Selfish bitch, it should have been all about you.’ He winks at me with his right eye. There are more wrinkles around it than the left, from being scrunched up looking down a lens. I’ve always thought that was really cute.

‘Stella, please unblock my computer. I want to find Tara.’ He really isn’t giving up on this one.

‘No. Sorry, Jason, it’s not happening. Take a couple of days with no devices to just get on with it. How far are you past your original deadline now? Weeks, right? If she’s that good, she’ll wait. I’ll order you a new phone, her number will be there and you can text her then, OK?’

‘So who is she then, this Tara?’ I ask, intrigued to know who has got him so besotted this time.

‘I met her on Friday night. We had this amazing time. Like, I always have a good time on dates, but there is always the feeling that it’s all down to me, my effort, you know? But it wasn’t like that with Tara. It felt so, so mutual. I took her number and then that fucking maniac smashed into me and I watched my phone disappear down the drain. I was halfway through texting her back, it’s so frustrating.’ He walks back towards me to take his coffee from my hand. ‘I never even got her surname. We actually managed to spend a whole evening together and not talk about work or the weather, we really got on. Try and find her, will you?’ he asks, pathetically.

‘You want me to find some girl called Tara on the Internet?’ I ask, thinking he must be joking.

‘Do you know anything about her? Any defining details that might make her stand out on the Internet – because there are quite a lot of people on there and I could really do with some direction?’ I say, a little worried he actually thinks I can do this.

‘Well, I know that she is forty-two. She’s about five foot eight with long thick brown curly hair, gorgeous freckles, size ten-ish. She works in TV, has a six-year-old daughter, and lives in Walthamstow. That’s it. If you’d just let me use the Internet, I’d find her!’

‘No, not happening, sorry. You pay me to control you, so I am controlling you.’

‘Look, I’ll order your phone and you can call her then. OK? For now, crack on.’ I watch him walk away like a kicked dog. I almost cave, but stick to my guns. I want this book to be done, it’s boring around here with no shoots to organise. I’m spending way too much time on Facebook getting pissed off about how annoying everyone is.

I log in. So many status updates, so much sharing. People with new jobs, people losing weight, people having babies. Some are angry at the government; others are cracking jokes. I wouldn’t know what to write, even if I did break my Facebook silence. What would I say? ‘Desperate for a kid but my boyfriend won’t sleep with me’? Or ‘My twin sister died and now I have no idea how to live my life’? or ‘When I die, there is a good chance that no one will remember I ever existed because I have never done anything that’s made any lasting impact on the world’?

I decide it’s probably best I don’t say anything, and click on to www.HowItIs.com to see what Camilla Stacey has to say for herself today.

Being alone doesn’t mean I am lonely.

Tara

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I say to Andrew as I walk into the office on Monday morning. ‘Annie was up all night with a sick bug so I had to take her to my mum’s.’

I feel horrible. The weekend was shit. Annie was so ill. The chicken I fed her was completely rotten, I realised this morning when I smelt it properly. On the way home from Sophie’s she was crying and begging for it to stop. She puked all over the inside of the car, up the stairs and all over her bed. I watched her like a hawk until she eventually fell asleep in my bed at five a.m. Mum came and got her this morning and I came to work even though I should have just taken the day off. I felt so guilty, but I honestly couldn’t face another day feeling like the crappiest mum alive. Now I’m a walking zombie but I just need to get on with work and forget about what was possibly the shittiest weekend of all time. Apart from meeting Jason, which was so amazing, and I still can’t believe I misinterpreted it. But I clearly did. Thinking about it makes me want to projectile vomit. And then the guy on the train, urgh! I don’t really want to be at work either, but saying that, Andrew seems to have decided not to make me feel guilty about being late, which is unusual.

He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms, a weird and zany smile on his face. If he is flirting with me, he can seriously do one.

‘It was OK, thanks. You?’ I reply, finding the casual chit chat with someone I usually spar with quite awkward.

‘Oh you know, it was quiet. I didn’t have any adventurous journeys or anything like that.’

‘OK, well, sometimes chilled weekends are nice,’ I say, deliberately not asking a question, hoping that our talk is over.

I put my laptop on my desk, then take off my cardigan and put it on the back of my chair. Andrew leans forward and stares at me.

‘What?’ I say, bluntly. He’s really annoying me now, I’m not in the mood for his games.

‘No, no, nothing,’ he says, pretending to read something on his laptop. I instinctively check my seat for a whoopee cushion. There is nothing there.

‘Oh, you’re here,’ says Adam, walking in. He also has a weird look on his face that makes me think I should check underneath my desk for cameras.

He interrupts me. ‘I thought you might want to stay on the train all day, seeing as how much you love trains.’

What? Weirdo. I ignore them both, then Samuel appears behind Adam. They all watch me as I log in to my computer.

‘What? Why are you all watching me?’ I ask, starting to get ratty. I hate the way they try to intimidate me, it’s really annoying.

‘She doesn’t know, does she?’ says Samuel. ‘She hasn’t seen it. Oh my God, this is going to be beautiful.’

‘Seen what? What’s going to be beautiful?’ I ask, with a little excitement that I try to hide, as it’s obviously a big deal.

Andrew comes over to my desk, and leans over me to get to my laptop. I pull my jumper up over my shoulder to cover my skin. He types ‘MailOnline’ into Google. I’m racking my brains as to what I’m about to see. I would never admit this out loud, but I’m wondering if one of my shows has been nominated for an award.

The MailOnline website opens. In huge letters on the home page I see the words, ‘ALL ABOARD THE LOVE TRAIN! Tube shame as woman is caught MASTURBATING on the Victoria Line.’ And just underneath it, a video link and the static image of me with my trousers around my ankles and my hand in my crotch. They’ve pixelated my hand, but my face is as clear as anything.

‘Oh my God,’ I say, as my heart starts pounding so strongly in my chest that I have to swallow hard for fear of it coming up my throat. ‘Oh my God.’

I just stare at it. Andrew presses play on the video but I slam my hand down on the mouse to stop it.

‘That’s you, having a good old wank on a train,’ clarifies Adam. ‘Even I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Oh my God. Annie,’ I say, pathetically. ‘My mum, my DAD.’ I drop my head into my hands.

‘Yup, that’s one you probably don’t want your dad to see,’ Andrew says, patting me on the shoulder like I’m a dog.

I feel so hot, like my blood is actually boiling. The weight of people looking at me feels like a hot towel that’s been thrown over my head, and I can’t get it off. My breathing gets short; I can’t draw in the air that I need. What is happening? Bev’s hand appears in front of me, it sets a glass of water down on my desk. I try to pick it up but my fist won’t clench, it rattles out of my hand and the water spills everywhere. I feel coldness seep through my skirt, and see Bev on the floor next to me mopping it up with a tissue. I can’t hear anything. Am I underwater?

‘Tara Thomas, Train Wank Woman,’ says Andrew. ‘It’s got a ring to it.’

Their laughter is like a swarm of bees surrounding my head. How do I escape it? I have no words, no way to defend this. So I just run. I get up, grab my bag and I run for the door, down the stairs and onto the street. As the fresh air hits my face, I suck it in like it’s my first breath in years. I am bent double on the pavement, I close my eyes and there it is, the image of me on the train, my hand in my pants, masturbating. How can I make it go away? I can’t. It will never go away. I know this world enough to know that. I know how these things spin; it’s my job to spin them. I look up and the brightness hurts my eyes, my brain is begging for darkness, desperate to shut down. My skin starts to burn, like an atomic bomb has exploded and I shouldn’t be above ground. It’s not safe for me out here, everyone is an enemy, infected with something that can kill me. I have to get home. I throw my arm into the air and hail a cab. When one pulls up, I clamber in and lie across the back seat. Has the driver seen it? Has everyone seen it?

‘Sorry love, you just look like you’re going to be sick. Do you need me to pull over?’

‘I’m OK,’ I say, looking out the window. We pull up at a traffic light, and someone who is about to cross the road makes eye contact with me. I duck again. What if they know?

‘Are you hiding from the police, love?’ the taxi driver says, jokingly, but also with concern in his tone.

‘No, but please just get me home as quick as you can. I need to be in my house.’ Ten minutes later, I am home. I double lock the door. The house feels cold; I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be at work. It wasn’t expecting me. It feels small, claustrophobic, and there is the distant smell of sick. I sit on the stairs.

No. No, this isn’t real. I don’t deserve it to be real, why would this happen to me?

I walk into the kitchen, turning on the heating on the way, I’m so cold. I put the kettle on. This isn’t real. I take long, slow breaths as I try to ignore the calling of my laptop in my bag. I need to hold off looking. These last few minutes are important; I must treasure them, before I see the severity of this thing that isn’t real yet. I wait for the kettle, I make some tea. I take it over to the kitchen table, get my computer out of my bag and open it. As it loads up, I stay calm. There is air in my lungs. Whatever happens, I will survive.

My daughter’s face appears as my screensaver, little folders all over it with key words reflecting various elements of my life. ‘Photos’, ‘Annie Medical’, ‘Research’, ‘TV Contributors’, ‘Financial’. These secret little files that keep me in order, but I know that my life has just gone beyond my desktop. The Internet icon stares back at me like a red boil I need to burst.

I log onto MailOnline, and there I am. Clear as anything on the home page, having a ‘good old wank’, as Adam so beautifully put it. I click through to watch it on YouTube. I press play.

I see myself lost in the throes of ecstasy. My head is back, my tongue is licking my lips. My hand and crotch are pixelated but there is an undeniable dark mass representing my pubic hair. The Metro newspaper is next to me on the floor. If only I’d have held it with my other hand!

The video is only thirteen seconds long, but shows me making eye contact with the camera and throwing myself forward as I realise I’m being filmed. It is the clearest, most undeniable image of my face. I look into my own eyes; the desperation is shattering, my attempt to grab his phone futile. I land face down in the aisle of the train, like a deranged animal that’s been shot with a tranquilliser gun. The guy filming me ran off the train backwards, so the final shot is me on the floor with my trousers round my ankles. It then it cuts out and the words, ‘Play Again?’ appear over the picture of my face.

I log on to Twitter. #WalthamstowWankWoman is trending, as CCTV footage of me stumbling off the train at Walthamstow Central has been released. I shut it down instantly, I can’t bear to look any more.

I sit with my head in my hands in my kitchen. The silence sounds like cymbals crashing in my ears. What am I supposed to do next? Call someone? Who? I have no idea. I feel like outside my front door is too terrifying to contemplate.

Nearly one million people have seen me masturbate. God knows how many more by the end of today. So rarely in life would someone ever give in to an urge like that, and then to get filmed, it’s just so unfair. This doesn’t make sense.

I think of Jason. That speech bubble drove me nuts all weekend. He obviously already thought I was into crazy shit from asking if he had ‘any special requests’, now he’s probably seen this. He must think I’m some slutty, crazy animal who turns down sex but has weird creepy wanks in public places; I mean, my God. If I was a man this would be illegal. Fuck, maybe it is illegal? I quickly type, ‘is it illegal to masturbate in public if I’m a woman?’ A Guardian article comes up; the first thing I see is that the penalty for masturbating in public in Indonesia is decapitation. I throw up a bit in my mouth. Then keep reading.

It is an offence for anyone to ‘wilfully and indecently’ expose his ‘person’ in a street or public place to the obstruction, annoyance or danger of residents or passengers (N.B. references to a ‘person’ mean ‘penis’).

Well, I don’t have a ‘person’ and I wasn’t being dangerous or an obstruction. And I thought I was alone! I can find nothing on what happens if you’re a woman caught publicly masturbating when you’re not an actual porn star. As I sift through Google, the only evidence I find of a woman ever masturbating in public are articles about me. And there are hundreds of them. Nearly every news outlet has covered it; everyone from Sky News to Buzzfeed, all either laughing, or questioning my sanity. One even says ‘Is it any different because she is a woman?’ I click on the article and see multiple comments from online users saying things like ‘It’s no different, anyone who is willing to expose themselves that way is a danger to society.’

I think about Annie. Her school. Her teachers have done a great job at pretending not to judge me, but this will tip them over the edge. What if they report me to social services? What if social services see this? I look at my front door, an inch thick of wood protecting me from a stampede of judgement. I’ll never go out there again. I can’t.

Oh, God. I feel like someone died. Like I died. Like I have to arrange my own funeral. Grief and logic are battling in my brain. The girl in me wants to sit and cry. The other parts – the mother, the producer – know I have shit to sort out. People to tell, accounts to close.

She doesn’t really go on the Internet. She reads the Daily Mail but only the physical paper, hopefully I won’t make it into that.

OK, next. I go back to my computer, and log on to Facebook. I have 145 Notifications and forty-three messages. The video has been posted on my page multiple times with comments varying from, ‘Is this one of your documentaries?’ to the more piss taking, ‘You’re such a wanker.’

I delete them all, check my privacy settings and make my timeline private so nobody can post on it.

Next, work. I look at my email account. As expected, there is an email from Adam already.

‘Are you planning on coming back? We have a lot to do. I suggest you get a taxi.’

I can’t think of anything to say. All I know is, I am never going back to that office. I don’t reply. The grief is starting to overtake my logic now. A few minutes of clarity was enough, but reality is now kicking in. And yes, it’s grief. Grief for the life I had, that I know I don’t have any more. How can I? This isn’t just a drunken night where I acted like a dick in front of friends and need to say sorry; this is strangers, colleagues, the media.

I should have been at home with my kid, not out exposing myself. And to think it was the one night I actually tried to do the right thing. I was going to go home, after that blissful bubble of a date, and I was going to look forward to seeing Jason again. I was going to play it right, be mysterious, take it slow. And now him and half the world have seen me partake in what is being presented as the grossest sexual act imaginable. I still can’t believe this was me. What was I thinking?

Actually, I know what I was thinking. I was thinking about Jason, and how great he made me feel. And that maybe I had actually met a guy I could fall in love with, someone who accepted me for who I am. But most importantly, I was thinking I was alone.

And now I am alone and mortified. I’m worried that if I start to cry I just won’t stop. I have no idea what the world is about to unleash on me or, to my utter shame, my six-year-old daughter. I have to hold it together. I text Sophie back.

Why can’t she go out of her way for me, even just this once? But sod it, I need to talk. And she’s right, I suppose. Not everyone will have seen it yet.

Cam

Cam, wearing just black cotton knickers and a non-wired bra, looks up to see Mark standing naked at the bathroom door with a towel hanging over his erection. She stares through him while sucking a pen.

‘How do you feel about women masturbating?’ she says, not really looking for an answer.

‘I love it when you masturbate, babe. Like you love it when I do.’ He tosses the towel to the side and starts to touch himself. Cam reverts her eyes back to her computer and starts typing ‘women masturbating’ into Google. She is instantly met with an abundance of hardcore porn sites.

‘Not me,’ she continues, thinking aloud. ‘Just women masturbating generally. Is it OK?’

Of course Cam knows it’s OK by her standards, but she’s throwing the question out there to society. Only society isn’t actually in the room, so her young and unworldly lover is a little confused by the question.

‘No, Mark. No, I’m just asking if it’s OK for women to masturbate, publicly. Is it different from men?’

Mark doesn’t know what rhetorical means, so walks over to the bed, hoping to end the conversation by resting his penis on her bottom lip.

Mark gets dressed and leaves without a peep. When the door shuts, Cam watches the Wank Woman video again.

She tries to put herself in this woman’s shoes. Would she ever do it in public? In front of sexual partners, masturbating is hot, but when caught doing it unaware it’s … creepy? Would she feel differently if it had been a man on the train? Why do women never talk about it? This whole thing is making her really uncomfortable, she can’t help but feel sorry for this … Wank Woman. As everyone on the Internet seems to be judging or laughing, Cam is having a different response.

Cam thinks carefully, her fingers resting lightly on her keypad. Then, she writes.

I just sexually abused someone. And the chances are, you probably did too.

You’ve seen the Wank Woman video, right? That thirteen-second clip of a woman on a train, touching herself before she realises that she is being filmed? The clip that has, at time of writing, been viewed by 1,345,876 people. The clip that has no doubt changed a woman’s life forever.

I, like everyone else, clicked on the video with intrigue. You try and keep me away from a catchy headline like ‘WALTHAMSTOW WANK WOMAN’. And I watched and I started to laugh, but then I watched it again, and didn’t find it funny at all. And then I watched it a third time, and felt angry at myself for ever seeing it at all.

There isn’t a single news outlet in the country that isn’t either laughing at this woman, calling her insane, or making her out to be some pervert. But that isn’t what I see at all. I see someone who clearly thought she was alone, doing a very private thing, being filmed against her knowledge and then being publicly humiliated. And you know what? I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. She may have been on a train, but she wasn’t trying to be seen. The look on her face when she realised she was being filmed isn’t funny, it’s heartbreaking. The person who filmed her is not only a pervert, but he is an arsehole. He indecently filmed her against her will, and we are all guilty of abuse for watching it.

Human beings get up to all sorts of debauched and sexually intolerable things all the time, but they get away with it because most people aren’t unfortunate enough to get caught. This poor woman wasn’t even doing anything that wrong. She wasn’t waving her vagina in people’s faces, rubbing herself against them in the street, flashing her boobs at passers-by; she was simply trying to get away with a quick moment of private thrill in the wrong place. And now she’s a national joke.

I feel sorry for her. You should too.

Before you watch that video again, before you forward it to your mates, I ask you to imagine this woman now. No doubt hiding in her house, too scared to go outside. Crying, alone and afraid. So embarrassed that she can’t face even her nearest and dearest. Of course there is the chance she isn’t, that she finds this all funny and got caught on purpose, but we all know that isn’t true. You only have to look at her face at the end to know the consequences of this footage will be high.

I urge you to rethink your attitude towards this. It’s not just a case of a woman being caught; it’s a case of a woman being exploited.

Think about it.

Cam x

Tara

I race towards Sophie and throw my arms around her. ‘Oh my God, Sophie, help me. What have I done?’ I need my friend, a friend, any friend, to help me make sense of all this.

‘Oh, Tara, I can’t believe it. I mean, that video, it’s so graphic,’ she says, not helping.

‘I thought maybe he was just taking a bloody picture. At worst I thought he might show it to his mates, put it on Facebook but then take it down because his mum told him to. He was a kid, like, eighteen, or something. How did he manage to do this? Jesus, it’s usually pictures of cats that go viral, not forty-two-year-old mums,’ I say, drinking some of the champagne she had already ordered me.

‘Well, to be fair, your pussy kind of stole the show,’ she says, laughing to herself.

‘Sorry. But wow, the moment you realised you were being filmed. That was priceless.’

‘Sophie, seriously. Just try to say things that will make me feel better. Just try, OK?’

‘Work was horrible. I can never go back there. The bastards didn’t even try to help me.’

‘I don’t know, support? Suggestions. Anything. Instead they just laughed, called me names, it was like being at school. FUCK. Sophie, I have a little girl, I have a career. I need this to go away.’

‘Nothing, it’s just— I’m not sure I can see you until this has all died down.’

‘Because Carl saw the video at lunchtime. It made him really mad, he said he always got the impression that you were a bit like that and now his imagination is running wild as to what we used to get up to. He was all like, “If she’s masturbating on a train when she’s forty-two, what the hell were you two doing when you were in your twenties?”’

I can’t believe she is saying this, and OK, maybe Carl is that bad. But she should be sticking up for me.

Rage starts to consume me. I don’t know why I put up with Sophie and her crap idea of what friendship should be.

‘Well why don’t you tell him the truth then? That you fucked pretty much everything with two eyes and two legs for most of your premarital life, and that I was usually left on my own waiting for you?’

‘Or about how I raced you to hospital three times to get your stomach pumped?’

‘Or how I counselled you through two abortions, or how you deliberately used to seek out married men so that you didn’t have to commit to anything more than just their wallet?’

‘I’m sorry, hon, it just makes things really complicated for me. I’ve got a different life now and I don’t want your mistakes to ruin that. I’m so sorry.’

‘You’re a terrible friend,’ I say, meaning it. She always has been. I don’t know why I stuck with it. I feel too shocked to feel betrayed. But if this is Sophie’s reaction – Sophie, who’s done worse things than this, on all forms of public transport – this must be bad.

‘OK, you’re upset. Hopefully by the time we get back, you’ll have calmed down.’

‘Yeah, I’ve booked us two weeks in Bora Bora. We need a holiday and this seemed like perfect timing, seeing as your face and fanny are all over the news. I need to get Carl as far away from it as possible. Classic distraction. It should have died down in two weeks … I hope.’

Two weeks, that feels like an eternity. What the hell is going to happen to me in the next two weeks?

‘I’ll let you know when I’m back, see how you’re doing,’ she says, downing her bubbles and walking away. I don’t have the energy left to shout abuse after her.

‘Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,’ I murmur quietly. ‘Aggghhhh, aghhgghghghg, aghghghghghh.’

‘Excuse me,’ says a woman’s voice behind me. I turn to her; she is looking at me as if she’s trying to pinpoint where we met. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, and please excuse me if I am wrong. But my friend and I were just wondering, is this you?’

She holds up her phone. It’s a freeze frame of me with my head tossed back and my hand in my pants. What is the correct response in these situations? I don’t know, but the only one I can offer is to run out of the bar, with my hand over my mouth, and throw up into a drain outside.

Back home, I look in the fridge. It’s almost empty apart from some milk, a block of cheese and the leftover roast chicken that I now know to throw away. In the freezer there are two pizzas, a bag of peas and a gel eye mask. In the cupboard there are two tins of soup, a few tins of beans, some pasta, some rice, some crackers and a tube of Pringles. I calculate that I have around three days until I’ll have to leave the house to get food. Maybe things will have died down by then. Maybe not.

Maybe Mum can bring her here after school tomorrow, they can bring food? I’ll pretend to be sick. No, that’s ridiculous.

Stella

I stand naked in front of the mirror in the examination room, my huge boobs hanging in front of me like horse’s heads. My large brown nipples are like snouts, pointing subtly up at the end. My small waist is hidden by them; my wide hips are complemented by them. Alice and I used to stand side by side, comparing every tiny detail and difference like they were small secrets only we knew. We were like the hardest game of Spot the Difference, identical to anyone but us. We loved our bodies, and I still do. Which is why the prospect of losing pieces of it is so terrifying, of it being different to Alice’s. I need it for my memories.

I cup the ends of my breasts in my hands and push them up a little, to where they used to sit. They haven’t sagged much since I was a teenager, but enough to mean I could never get away with not wearing a bra now. With my cleavage pumped up, I turn slowly from side to side and smile as I remember the low-cut tops I used to wear in my party days. A memory of me and Alice dancing on a podium in Ibiza comes into my head. We’d been up for twenty-four hours and had pulled a couple of brothers who were loaded and kept pumping us full of Ecstasy and tequila shots. We were trying to dance sexily on the podium but Alice lost her footing and we both ended up in a heap on the floor. Alice got a black eye, and I got a broken arm. We spent the next eight hours in a Spanish hospital surrounded by other wasted people with similar injuries. Because we were still so high, we laughed the entire time. That’s the kind of fun we used to have, all the time.

I look at the scar across my forearm. An everlasting memory of that brilliant holiday. And then, finding the sensation of joy uncomfortable, I clench my hand around my boobs and yank them both backwards, slamming my elbows down to hold as much of the flesh under my arms as I can. I look at my body now. Breast-less. Nipple-less. Sex-less. This is how it will be. My vagina will be a dead end.

‘OK, are you ready?’ says the nurse, coming back in and walking to the mammogram machine.

I lift my elbows and my breasts flop back into position, swinging and bouncing off each other as they find their place back on my chest. An anger burns inside of me like indigestion. Why my mum? Why Alice? Why me?

‘OK, lift your breast and lay it on the plate,’ says the nurse. I do as she says, thinking how ridiculous the command ‘lay your breast on the plate’ is. Also I know exactly what to do, this is my second mammogram. Ever since I heard the word ‘positive’, it’s been constant appointments, smear tests, blood tests, squashed boobs. The BRCA gene means that cancer could appear quickly, so until I have the surgery, they are monitoring me carefully. Nothing is private any more. It’s my body but someone else, or something has the control.

‘OK, now I’m going to bring the other plate down, it might squeeze a bit.’

‘As comfortable as possible? While you squash my tit to be as flat as a pancake so we can find out if I have cancer or not? It’s hardly a spa treatment, is it?’

I am terrible for making things harder on other people when I feel out of control. I know it isn’t nice. I do it anyway.

‘That’s nice. Doing this job, you see how many women don’t like their breasts. It’s sad.’

‘Not as sad as when the ones that do like them have to have them sliced off, I imagine?’

There is an awkward silence. Something else I am good at creating. The nurse realises that what she said was potentially a little insensitive, considering the scenario, so just cracks on with taking the pictures in a bid to get me out as quickly as she can. I suppose it’s not her job to deal with the complex psychology of these situations.

‘OK, you’re all done. If you get dressed and wait in reception, Dr Cordon will be right with you for your consultation.’

‘You came?’ I say, surprised to see him. But to be fair to him, he’s never missed one of my appointments.

‘Of course I did. Sorry I was late, you’d already gone in by the time I got here,’ he says, sweetly, but without really looking at me.

‘It’s OK. You wouldn’t have come in there anyway; you don’t need to see me getting touched up by a robot.’ I laugh, he doesn’t. ‘Dr Cordon is going to see us soon.’

‘I wonder what my testimonial would say in a leaflet like this,’ I say, trying to have a joke with Phil. ‘Something like, “I had the surgery because my mother died of breast cancer and my twin sister died of ovarian cancer. There wasn’t really any choice for me unless I wanted to die too. Oh, and I never had any kids, so in the grand scheme of things my death wouldn’t really matter anyway. So I should probably not have bothered and just kept my boobs so at least I would have died with my body intact rather than with half of me missing and being alone … ”’

‘God, Stella. When you talk like that it makes me feel so uncomfortable,’ he says, taking the leaflet back from me.

‘Sorry, that just kind of came out. I should have added that I have you, and that you make me really happy. And that you have supported me?’ We both know I’m lying. I put my face close to his and he moves his cheek towards my lips so I can kiss it.

‘Stella?’ says Dr Cordon’s voice. We are both relieved for the interruption.

Phil and I walk into her examination room and sit next to each other on the two chairs next to her desk.

‘Great. We won’t get the results from the mammogram back for a week or so, and I really want that to be your last. At your age too many can actually be detrimental, and your breast tissue is too dense to get very clear results. If you decide to go against the surgery idea, then we will do a yearly MRI instead, OK? It is much more accurate.’

Dr Cordon had booked me in for a mammogram because last time we tried to do an MRI I had a severe panic attack. The noise, the memory of watching Alice go into one of those machines, it all got too much for me. I never want to have one.

‘I want the surgery,’ I say, causing Phil to shift in his seat. ‘Even though I am terrified.’

When Mum was having her last bout of chemo, she was so sick. Alice and I were sitting on the bed listening to her vomit constantly for fifteen minutes. When she came out, she made us both promise that if we could ever do anything to avoid that happening to us, then we must. Unfortunately, Alice didn’t get the chance to make any decisions. Her cancer appeared and then she disappeared. It was all over in under a year.

‘I’m sure,’ says Dr Cordon, sympathetically. ‘And what is it that troubles you most?’

‘Oh, you know. Just that I’ll be disfigured and infertile. It’s all pretty daunting.’

‘Yes, right, of course,’ Dr Cordon says. ‘But because of the aggression of Alice’s ovarian cancer, and also your mum’s breast cancer, and that they both developed at such a young age and that Alice was your identical twin …’ The word ‘was’ hangs in the air like a dark cloud that won’t blow away. ‘… I am particularly anxious about your situation. Have you two thought any more about having a baby? I know we discussed it last time you were here?’

Both Phil and I scramble for some words, but come up with nothing. I’m not going to be the one to tell her that he has refused to have sex for a month.

‘Like I said in our last appointment, I’m comfortable with holding off the surgery for a year or so, to give you the chance to have a baby naturally. I’d monitor you very carefully throughout. If this result comes back clear, then there is nothing to say you don’t have time.’

‘Do I, though?’ I ask. ‘Alice was dead by the time she was twenty-six. How do you know I have time?’

‘OK, I don’t. You know that the positive gene result means you have an eighty-five per cent chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer in your lifetime. Your mum and sister’s ages at passing show that the risk in your younger years is also very high. But if you really want a baby, then my view is that you go for it. You might never get cancer; fifteen per cent says you won’t. We don’t have to do the surgery at all …’

‘OK, so my advice is go home, work on getting pregnant, and stay focused on the fact that right now you are a healthy young woman. We can do the surgery when the baby is born. What do you think?’

‘Yes,’ I say, looking at Phil, who says nothing but nods unenthusiastically.

‘And if it doesn’t work, we can look into freezing your eggs, and then you can have the surgery and have a baby further down the line. But if you’re quick, maybe you can do it all naturally, just the way you want. OK?’

‘So, shall I make that tuna bake tonight then?’ I ask Phil, as we arrive home. He has barely said a word in the Uber.

‘And there is champagne in the fridge. The one your parents sent me for my birthday, we could drink that, relax a little?’

God, he is being so grumpy. Who was it that just got reminded they have an eighty-five per cent chance of getting cancer?

I wash my hands, and then get to making the food. I can feel him hovering and it’s making me uncomfortable.

‘I can’t do it any more, Stella,’ he says softly, standing behind me as I get three tins of tuna out of a cupboard.

‘Do what?’ I reply, as if he’s going to tell me he doesn’t know how to open bottles of champagne.

‘It’s just so much pressure. The gene, the operation, the baby,’ he continues, his voice getting stronger.

I turn to him. He’s crying. This is really happening. I wonder what to say, but then I remember what my mother used to tell me. She said if someone is about to hurt you, let them say everything they need to say – so when they are done, you can tell them to shut up if they interrupt you.

‘I wanted to support you, so much, but this has taken it to another level. You don’t connect with me; you don’t see how this is hard for me. You sat with Dr Cordon last time and told her that you wanted a baby, that we were going to try for one. But you never even asked me if it was what I wanted. And now I feel like if I don’t give you the baby then you’ll be miserable forever and I don’t think you’ve taken any time to consider how that might feel for me. I’m not ready for kids, and this isn’t how I want to do it even when I am. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how it is good for either of us for me to stick around while you go through this.’

‘OK, Phil. Let’s not have a baby then,’ I say, slamming the tuna down on the work surface. ‘I just won’t have a baby, fine.’

‘But that’s not the problem, is it, Stella?’ he says, gaining more confidence. ‘The problem is you can’t love me because you’re so full of grief and anger that there’s no room for anything else.’

I gently lay both my hands on the work surface and stare at the spice rack on the wall. That was a really horrible assessment of my character.

‘I think we should break up,’ he says, clearly determined to say the things he needs to say and not allow emotion to get in the way. ‘And I know that makes me look terrible and like I’m abandoning you, that I’m cruel and selfish, but you know that if it wasn’t for you testing positive to the gene we would not be trying for a baby. We’d probably not even be together. So I’m ending it – because no matter what you decide to do, us pretending to be in love with each other just because it would be easier if we were is not the right thing, for either of us. I think what you’re facing is horrible, but I can’t carry on this way. I’m sorry.’

I want to scream in his face. This relationship was supposed to make things better, not damage me more. He came into my life all compassionate, full of, ‘I’ll help you, I’ll support you, I’ll take care of you.’ What else is someone like me supposed to do in that situation? I’d lost the people I loved the most and there was this guy saying, ‘Hey, you don’t have to be alone.’ I threw myself at him, saying all the right things, doing all the nice things, all the stuff you’re supposed to do in relationships to make the other person happy. I cooked, I worshipped him in bed, I made him laugh. What more could I have done?

‘I’ll come back and get my things while you’re at work,’ he says, getting up. He walks over to the door but turns just before he leaves. ‘You should just have the surgery, Stell. Learn to be alone. I know this has been awful for you, but you need to work out who Stella is without Alice. You’re not a twin any more.’

‘GET OUT,’ I screech. ‘Why the fuck would you say that to me?’ I pick up a vase from the table and launch it across the room. It smashes as it hits the door behind his head. ‘GET OUT,’ I scream again, watching him leave quickly as he fears for what I might do next. I’m not even sure myself.