What Now?

by Shari Low

  ‘What’s up?’ Kate asked, while Val and Jess listened in. Carol and Toni were too busy filming another content piece for Carol’s Instagram. Something to do with travel masks, which they were now holding to their faces. We were so getting thrown out of here.

  ‘Mark and the boys are just boarding and he’s asking why we aren’t boarding now too. I mean, how does he even know our flight times?’

  ‘He asked me for an itinerary,’ Jess said. ‘You know he likes his details.’

  It was like one of those scenes you see in sitcoms, where everyone realises something at exactly the same time. Or rather, Kate, Jess and I all realised something at the same time. Carol and Toni were still doing social media videos and Val was trying to listen to the people at the next table talking about a suspicious rash.

  ‘Shit!’ Jess vocalised it first. ‘We should be boarding! We’ve completely lost track of time. Six of us here and not a sensible one among us,’ she bellowed, jumping up, grabbing her coat, her bags, her friends. She practically pulled Carol out of her seat by her collar.

  ‘Hang on, hang on! I need to post this video,’ she wailed.

  ‘No time!’ Jess argued. ‘I’m not missing a bloody flight because you’re getting paid a grand to talk about aloe vera. Let’s go!’

  That got her moving, still tapping away on her phone as she grabbed her stuff and ran alongside us. Thankfully, her ability to multitask was far greater than her ability to articulate any well-known phrase or saying.

  We ran – and I mean sprinted – all the way to the gate – with Val shouting ‘out of the way, it’s a medical emergency’ to everyone in front of us. We reached the gate with red faces, exploding lungs and only seconds to spare. A decidedly unimpressed ground-crew member ushered us on and helped us find space for our cabin bags, our jackets and the giant bags of M&Ms that Val had bought for Don in the duty-free. No first-class for us this time. We were in two rows of three back in economy, because when Carol and Toni had skipped their flights, they’d just booked seats next to ours for the homeward journey. Carol was clearly horrified, but she didn’t have time to moan. Our bums had barely hit the seats when the safety announcement came on and the airplane began to pull back from the gate.

  The holiday was over. Done. It had been three of the best weeks of my life and I would treasure it always, for the laughs, for the friendships, for the closeness it had given me to Toni and Val, but especially for the peace I’d found over Sarah’s death. I closed my eyes, hoping that wherever she was, she could hear what I was thinking: We miss you, pal. We always will. And we’ll look out for Hannah and Ryan, I promise.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that unfortunately Wi-Fi service is not available on this flight…’

  That made me smile. I was pretty sure Wi-Fi wasn’t required to get through to my friend on the other side.

  Kate was sitting next to me.

  ‘I had a great time, Kate,’ I said quietly, taking her hand. ‘I can’t tell you how much I love you for this. I mean, I loved you anyway, but even more now.’

  ‘I love you too, Coop,’ was the last thing I heard before three weeks of emotional overload, a potential reunion with my husband, a huge fight with one of the other loves of my life, too many laughs to count and at least three large gin and tonics took effect, and I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  Twelve hours and ten minutes later, I woke up as the wheels were touching the tarmac at Heathrow.

  ‘Did I do it again? Did I miss the whole flight?’

  I didn’t require an answer, given that it was daylight outside and I could see the terminal building approach as we taxied towards it.

  We hadn’t even come to a standstill when mobile phones all over the plane began to ping as people began to switch them on.

  ‘This is ridiculous, so it is,’ Val said. ‘I mean, what’s so important that folk can’t be out of contact for a few hours without everyone needing to speak to them. No wonder people get stressed. In my day…’

  ‘Oh crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Oh crap.’ All of which came from Carol, sitting directly in front of me.

  I was about to lean forward, when my phone sprang into life in my hand.

  Mac: Mum! OMFG!

  I made a mental note to have a word about his language. Yes, abbreviations counted.

  Benny: Mum! Have you seen Aunt Carol’s Insta???????? You’re going to kill her.

  * * *

  Mark: Call me. I think you’re going to need someone from work.

  Someone from work? He was a lawyer. Why would I need someone from his work?

  ‘Oh crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Oh crap.’ Still Carol.

  That horrible ice-cold fear feeling – the one that comes when you know something really bad has happened but you’re not sure what it is – began in my gut and spread instantly through every vein.

  I leaned forward, putting my face into the gap between Carol and Toni’s seats.

  ‘Carol?’

  My sister-in-law turned to see my face peeking through, and I could see she was ashen.

  The fear feeling got even worse. ‘What’s happened?’

  Her mouth moved a couple of times, but nothing was coming out. For a second, I wondered if she’d had a stroke.

  It was Toni who managed to get her words out first. ‘You know Mum was posting the face mask video when we were running for the plane?’

  I tried to nod, but my head was wedged solid.

  Toni went on anyway. ‘She posted the wrong one.’

  I didn’t understand. ‘It wasn’t aloe vera?’

  Toni shook her head. ‘No. She posted the one of you talking to Taylor Fuckwidget on FaceTime.’

  31

  Carly’s Kitchen, Shortly Afterwards

  Take A Bow – Rihanna

  The first thing I saw when I got in the door was Mark’s stone-cold expression of rage and fury. I’d been feeling nauseous since I saw the video, and now, seeing his reaction, I definitely wanted to throw up.

  ‘Seriously? Christ, Carly, what were you thinking? How many times have we warned the kids never, ever to put anything on film that they wouldn’t want the world to see?’

  ‘But I didn’t think…’

  ‘That’s the problem – you didn’t think!’

  This was exactly how I always imagined it would be to get a bollocking from my dad… if my dad hadn’t been a nightmare of a drunk who generally didn’t give a toss what we did as long as it didn’t interfere with his relationship with Jack Daniel’s. The point was, though, I suddenly felt like I was six years old and getting scolded. Not what I needed right at that moment. I wanted to turn round and go right back to the airport and get on a flight to anywhere, preferably somewhere that someone would wrap me up and tell me it was all going to be ok and… argh, why was Sam the first person that came into my head?

  Mac and Benny were sitting at the kitchen table, both of them heads down while their dad gave a full-scale reprimand on social media misuse. To. Their. Mother. I wouldn’t blame them if they put themselves up for adoption after this.

  I could have tried to defend myself, tried to mitigate the damage, but there wasn’t much I could say to minimise threatening to slice off a guy’s balls with a cheese grater, especially now that 1.2 million people and counting had watched the video. 1.2 million. That’s what happens when a social media influencer with three million followers posts something outrageous and shocking, and then switches off her phone because she’s on a twelve-hour flight with no Wi-Fi.

  Carol had, of course, deleted the video, but it was too late. It had been shared, retweeted and picked up everywhere, including the websites of all the major tabloids.

  The fallout had already been beyond anything I could imagine. I’d had an email from Family Values magazine, cancelling my column. Seems they’ve got some kind of bias against people who threaten others with slow, excruciating torture. Plus, the British Cheese board are one of their sponsors and they weren’t too chuffed either. Something
about positive cheese messages and optics. The fact that a few of the taglines were calling me the cheesy ball slicer didn’t help.

  There was also an email from my agent, saying that the morning telly guy who’d hired me to ghost-write his autobiography no longer required my services. This is a guy who had blown over a million quid on cocaine and got caught in an S&M four-way with three high-class hookers who revealed his safe word was ‘courgette’. Yet, it would seem I was now at least one step lower on the desirable poll than him.

  To be honest, though, the only people whose opinions I really cared about were the two boys sitting at the table staring at their feet, and Toni. Had I made it so much worse for her? Had I just pushed my shy, sweet girl into a spotlight that would burn her? At the airport, she’d been too shocked to speak, too stunned to react, so I had no idea what she was thinking. Carol just kept repeating a tearful mantra of ‘Oh fuck, sorry. Oh fuck, sorry,’ until Callum had whisked them away, shouting over his shoulder that he’d call me later. I couldn’t work out if he was mad, sad, or just wanted to get his wife and daughter home to try to work out how to deal with this mess. Val had gone with them, as she was staying with them for a couple of nights to spend time with Callum and Charlie, before flying home to Glasgow later in the week.

  The thing was, Carol had messed up by posting the video, but if I hadn’t gone full psycho vigilante on the call, then it wouldn’t have gone viral and had over four thousand comments raging from, ‘This is a disgrace’ to ‘Put this chick in charge of shutting down Brexit. She’d slice off Boris’s balls.’

  I pointed this out at least fifty times in the cab Kate and I had shared home. She’d listened to me berating myself for forty minutes, so she was probably now having a lie-down next door with a cold compress over her head.

  How had I fucked this up so badly?

  How many times had I warned the boys about the dangers of the internet?

  How was I going to fix the wooden floor in my kitchen after Mark had worn a hole in it with all his pacing up and down?

  And how was I going to get out of this mess?

  A thump at the door provided me with a ray of hope. Please let it be Carol and Toni. Or Kate. Or anyone else that mattered and who would tell me this was going to be okay. Or at least Derren Brown, so he could wipe this from our memories.

  When Mark went to answer it, I sagged on the kitchen chair. ‘Boys, I’m so sorry. I know I’ve really embarrassed you and I’m mortified that this might affect you too. Please disown me. If you want to live with your dad until it dies down, I’ll understand. I’d hate it, but if being around me is a problem…’

  ‘Carly.’ That was Mark, and I didn’t even need to look to know that whoever was at the door, it wasn’t good news. He had the same tone as when he told me the repairs were going to cost a grand after I left the bathroom tap running and flooded the house. ‘These officers would like to speak to you.’

  Officers. I could hear Val in my head, whistling a low, horrified ‘Suffering mother’.

  ‘Mrs Barwick…’

  I didn’t want to point out that I’d never officially taken Mark’s name, so I was still a Cooper. Didn’t seem like the right time.

  ‘We’ve received a complaint against you for threatening behaviour. We’ve also come into possession of some video evidence that backs up that allegation, so we’d like you to come down to the station with us to discuss the matter further.’

  Again, suffering mother. This was unbelievable. Jail? And again, the worst part was the look on my boys’ faces – total shock and fear.

  ‘Boys, don’t worry, please,’ I begged them. ‘It’ll be okay. I promise. It’ll be fine. I’ll sort it out.’ None of which was based on anything but hope and a desperation to make them feel better. I was hardly going to tell them there was every possibility that the next time they saw me I’d be sitting behind a plexi-glass screen, wearing orange, with tattoos on my knuckles.

  ‘I’ll call and get someone down to help you,’ Mark said. Turns out his prediction that I might need a lawyer wasn’t as crazy as I’d thought.

  In fairness to the police officers, they were very polite, and they didn’t put me in handcuffs, so at least the neighbours weren’t scandalised by the sight of me being huckled off to jail. Although, I was pretty sure Kate would have thrown herself in front of them and sacrificed herself in order to help me escape.

  But no. Twenty minutes later, I was down at the local nick and having my rights read to me. Once upon a time, in my wild crazy nightclub years, that wouldn’t have been a total shock, but how had this happened to a middle aged mother, who never broke the law and even paid her parking tickets on time?

  ‘It’s within your rights to have a lawyer present when we question you. Do you understand that and wish to wait for legal representation?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I just wanted to get this over with and get back home, presuming I wasn’t about to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

  The room they took me to was like every interrogation room I’d ever seen on the TV. Brick walls. Large one-way mirror. Desk. Two chairs on either side. Big bloody lock on the door.

  They kicked things off by explaining that the criminal complaint had been made by Taylor Fuckwidget’s father – they didn’t actually call him that, but I couldn’t hear them over the wailing in my head, so I missed what they said – in response to a video that had been posted online. Apparently it contravened at least three acts of a law to prevent online abuse. There were only a couple of things going in my favour. The first was that I didn’t actually use the guy’s name. And the second was that, because of the angle Carol had shot it at, it was almost impossible to get a clear look at his face. What was clear though, was me, on camera, threatening a twenty-year-old man with mutilation by cheese grater.

  I explained everything from start to finish, in the most honest way that I could. And yes, I’d seen Line of Duty, so I threw in a couple of ‘whereupon I’s and ‘the alleged victim’s. I’m not sure it helped my case.

  I was there for about an hour when a suggested resolution was reached. If I accepted an official caution, all further action would be dropped.

  I thought about it. It was a tempting solution. No further action. No court. No threat of worse. It would all be over. Except…

  The first thing that came into my mind was that an official caution might have to be declared when applying for a new visa to visit the USA. I only knew this because George who worked in the butchers on the high street had told me he got knocked back for an ESTA visa because he once got done for vandalism after spray-painting ‘Vegans Kill Carrots’ on the underpass next to the fruit market. If I couldn’t get a visa, then I couldn’t go to the USA, and if I couldn’t go to the USA, then I couldn’t go and see Hannah and I couldn’t go… Bugger, I couldn’t go and apologise to Sam when he blocked me on all means of communication for being a complete bitch. If he didn’t come to the UK, then I’d never see him again. Never hug him. Never hear him laugh. Watch him smile. Never hold his hand. Touch his face.

  ‘No,’ I blurted.

  ‘What?’ the older cop fired back.

  ‘I don’t want a caution. I can’t. It’s not you, it’s me.’ I might have been getting my TV shows mixed up. I’m not sure Martin Compston ever said that in Line of Duty. ‘What are my options?’

  ‘Mrs Barwick, this isn’t like a menu, where you get to choose from a selection of punishments.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. I really am. But what else can I get?’

  They clearly thought I’d lost my mind.

  ‘Look, you don’t seem like some criminal mastermind,’ the nicer cop said, ‘and, to be honest, if some… person did that to my daughter I may have had a similar reaction. But the point is, we need to be seen to be doing something here. My advice would be to wait for a lawyer and take it from there.’

  That’s when they led me to a holding area, plonked me in a room, and banged the door.

  So hello, well of
despair. I was wondering when I’d get back to you.

  I was lying on a cold slab of concrete, in a breeze-block cell, with just a thin piece of plastic-covered foam on top, and I couldn’t help but contemplate the fact that at that very moment, I seemed to have found myself unemployed, skint, single, publicly shamed, facing national humiliation, my mother had denied knowing me (I actually didn’t know that for sure, but if I was a betting woman I’d put my gas bill money on it), my kids may never forgive me…

  ‘Stand up and move back from the door. You have a visitor.’

  And my lawyer was at the door.

  Christopher Atwell, the partner in Mark’s law firm who dealt with criminal cases, was standing outside, all three-piece suit and professional.

  ‘Nice to see you, Carly,’ he said, as if I’d just met him over a turkey vol-au-vent at the company Christmas dance.

  ‘You too,’ I murmured, wondering if this was some psychological ploy to play mind games with the cops.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’

  ‘Really? I can go? I don’t understand.’

  ‘All charges have been dropped. It was pointed out to the complainant that his son had breached Section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, prohibiting the distribution of photographs such as the ones in question. After discussions with all concerned, the authorities have decided it’s not in the public interest to pursue this matter. There was also a bit of a backlash. A couple of newspapers started petitions. Free the Chiswick Cheese Slicer.’

  I have never wanted to die a swifter death than I did at that moment.

  After a few signatures on bits of paper, I came out blinking into the sunshine.

  Freedom, as the bloke with the blue face would say.

  ‘Home?’ Christopher asked.

  ‘Home,’ I agreed. I didn’t add that somewhere in this absolute clusterfeck of a morning, I’d already made my mind up that it would only be a flying visit.