The Baby Group

by Caroline Corcoran

  ‘You’ve been messaging Ollie,’ he says.

  I exhale. That’s all.

  ‘Well he’s involved in this too,’ I said. ‘It seems fair to update him.’

  There’s a beat.

  ‘But that’s not what happened,’ Ed says. ‘He asked you for a drink. You only told him about Mitch and the Cheshire thing – which incidentally you’ve never told me – later.’

  Why had I never told Ed that I knew the video came from Cheshire? Because somewhere, deep down, I wondered if it could be a woman Ed is seeing who did this to me. And the Cheshire link seemed to increase the possibility of that.

  I shiver.

  ‘You looked at my phone.’

  For the first time, he makes eye contact.

  ‘You say that as though these are normal circumstances, Scarlett,’ he says. ‘I haven’t looked at your phone in the five years we have been together. I’ve had no need to. I trusted you. But we’re not in normal times here.

  ‘You’re in a sex video online. Men are contacting me to say they’re sleeping with you.’

  I sit down on the floor.

  ‘So,’ he says, swimming out of my vision. Everything is blurry. It’s exhaustion mixed with endorphins mixed with thirst mixed with anger mixed with sadness.

  But then he appears again.

  ‘So. I’ll ask you once. Why are you messaging Ollie? Why are you flirting with him?’

  Hearing him say Ollie’s name makes me start to shake. It’s the two versions of me overlapping and blurring. It’s lives, squishing together. It’s naivety and fun and it’s electricity bills and raincoats.

  I look at Ed, lucid for a second.

  ‘You mean the messages to Ollie that I wrote saying no to a drink?’ I say, anger building. ‘Those messages? The ones where I stay loyal to you despite temptation?’

  It’s out before I can think.

  He nods, matter-of-fact.

  ‘Tempted then,’ he says, martyr. ‘Nice to know.’

  I lean my head back against the wall, try to unload some of the weight.

  ‘Of course I was tempted, Ed,’ I say, quiet now. ‘Don’t tell me there isn’t someone out there who could tempt you, if they got you at the right moment. Which let’s face it, for us is definitely now.’

  I pause.

  ‘We aren’t even sharing a bed.’

  Ed bows his head, shamed briefly too, thinking of the old us that would have felt starved by this lack of touch.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not him?’ he says. ‘If it seems like he fancies you now too, it could be part of some weird way to get back in touch, make you need him …’

  I hesitate.

  It seems odd to be affirmative to Ed. To acknowledge how well I know another man. How much I trust another man. I redden.

  And also, he has a point.

  ‘Fucking hell, Ed, reading my messages. Come on.’

  I lie down now, supine on the floor.

  And from there, when I can’t look at him, I ask.

  ‘Ed,’ I say quietly. A last throw of the dice. ‘Can you hug me?’

  I stay there on the floor so that I can’t see his response but when I finally sit up, minutes later, he is gone.

  I hear him moving around upstairs. Shutting the door. No gap, no opening. Goodnight then, Ed. And I cry the silent tears that you do especially so that no one hears and no one has to deal with the hassle of comforting you.

  And when I’m done with crying and I am done with being in this room with just me, me, me, I message my friends and I ask if anyone wants to go to the pub because I am having, I can’t think of a less dramatic way to describe it even though I know what a stir it will cause, a marriage crisis.

  My mum friends don’t normally do impromptu drinks but the words ‘marriage crisis’ get people slapping some mascara on and heading for the door.

  I slam my own without a word and I walk to the pub wishing that I knew how to bring this back and turn it so that we faced the right way. But it is so far gone, isn’t it. It is so very, very far gone.

  You think when you have been through big things like childbirth together that it means you’re right with each other, always. But sometimes you’re still wrong with each other, at a certain point.

  Sometimes shared experience isn’t enough.

  Sometimes, one type of shared experience bonds you and another yanks you apart, and you have no way of knowing which one is which except maybe, somehow, it’s to do with blame. When there is blame to level, teams stop being teams, couples stop being couples.

  An hour later my friends and I are in our local and I am drinking fast and slurring, and I know I will regret this but I cannot stop it now it is in motion. I’m tired of hiding and lying and spinning. Take it all, know it all.

  Emma, her lime and soda next to my Malbec – she’s driving – is holding my hand and I look down and see my rounded nails, manicured once but now, bitten down.

  ‘Has he strayed, babe?’ says Emma in a stage whisper, clinging to my hand so that we have become sweaty together. ‘A lot of men do it. It doesn’t mean you can’t move on from it.’

  She speaks like she has some unique wisdom. I roll my eyes.

  ‘No he hasn’t strayed,’ I mutter but then, the gym visits, the drinks, the distance, the coldness. Has he strayed? Maybe, Em, maybe he has bloody strayed.

  I look up and realise I’m missing Emma’s hand. It felt nice to be touched.

  I think.

  Strayed.

  Would it be easier if that were what had happened? A linear problem. A well-trodden path. Rage, fury and then a balance of what would be lost versus what would be gained from leaving. We’d batten down the hatches, talk, leave it behind. Maybe book a fancy holiday. See a relationship therapist. Paint the house. Regroup.

  I let Emma, who clearly has no gauge of the right amount of personal space but I am currently pathetically grateful of that fact, put her arm around me as I begin to cry again.

  Asha thinks we should eat, and goes to order bar food.

  ‘What have I missed?’ bellows Cora, walking as fast as her heels can carry her across the pub towards us and sporting what I can see even for her are incredibly dark eyebrows. ‘If he is cheating, you’ve got Joseph there waiting. You could get your own back like that.’

  She clicks her fingers.

  I stare at her face. It looks odd.

  ‘Yeah I went a bit overboard on the old HD brows,’ she says, finger to her face. She shrugs. ‘Ah, well. It’ll fade. So, hot hipster or not?’

  I look at Cora then and feel a swell of admiration.

  Would she care, that I have a sex tape online? Would she laugh, shrug, tell me to move on and forget it? Ask to see it then tell me I had ‘great tits, hon’ and dilute the whole thing for me?

  I open my mouth and I am so close to telling them, but then I see the receptionist from our doctor’s walk past to leave the pub, putting up a hand in greeting, and I close my mouth again, wipe my eyes and wave back.

  Cora goes to the bar and our chips arrive, some hummus and dips, mini burgers, and Asha and I don’t touch them while Emma talks to herself quietly, totting up calories each time she dives in. She is still holding my hand.

  Then Cora sits down, glass of Prosecco in front of her now.

  ‘Best they had.’ She grimaces. ‘Right, I’ve got the nanny to stay on an extra few hours for this one.’

  She leans forward on the table. Eats a chip.

  ‘Shit’s hit the fan? Talk me through it.’

  And I go to make a joke, to be acerbic about it, or light, to do what I’m supposed to do in this situation so that I don’t make anybody feel uncomfortable but I can’t manage it.

  Instead, I break down and sob tears that sting my eyes like I have rubbed vodka into the corners.

  I can’t keep this in. Without Ed to speak to about it, it’s bursting from my seams. My dad talks in code. I’m too ashamed to thrash this out with my little sister. Ollie is now off-limits.

>   ‘There is a video of me,’ I say, quietly. ‘It’s online. I’m having sex in it, a long time ago, and it’s been sent to all of my friends and family. Except you lot: whoever did it obviously doesn’t know you are in my lives yet because that’s recent.’

  No one says a word. But I’m used to shocking people into silence.

  ‘I’m not having a longer maternity leave, I’ve left work for good. It was too embarrassing that my colleagues had seen it, and clients felt weird about working with me,’ I continue. I still cringe at the memory of overhearing Flick, something I’ve never told her about. She’s the last person I want feeling guilty. ‘I’m trying to find out who posted the video but neither of the men …’

  I see eyebrows shoot up.

  ‘Oh yes, there are two men. Neither will admit to posting it. I met up with them both. So I don’t know if it’s got into someone else’s hands somehow, or if they’re lying.’

  I pause, to more silence. It’s weird seeing Cora without hearing her voice.

  ‘Sometimes …’ I whisper, heaving breaths. The relief of this. The pain of it. ‘Sometimes … it … feels like being tortured. Sometimes I’ve wanted to be dead, just for the peace. To quiet my brain.’

  No one says anything but Cora walks round to stand at my shoulder and hug me into her soft expensive neon pink cashmere from above, my face inhaling what must be half a bottle of Chanel. My breath shakes.

  Asha reaches across to do small rhythmic strokes on my arm. Emma tightens her grip around me, clutching on to both of my palms with small, chapped hands. Her arm feels skinnier, I notice. A lot skinnier. I look up and realise that’s the case all over. I’ve been so consumed by what’s happening to me that I haven’t noticed that Emma’s gym trips have paid off. She must have lost two stone. She looks lovely.

  I look down at their hands then up, at their faces.

  I am encased from all sides and whether they are the same as me or different, whether they are ‘mum friends’ or whether we will know each other in ten years’ time or not, this is something meaningful. I lean back into them, hold their hands tighter.

  ‘One other thing,’ I say, quietly now. ‘The website operators told me where the video was posted from.’

  I look up at their faces.

  ‘It was round here; it was sent from Cheshire.’

  I see my friends exchange a look.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Someone so close. I think that might be the creepiest thing of all.’

  26

  Scarlett

  19 June

  I wake up next to somebody I shouldn’t. Someone I’ve only slept next to once before, away from home.

  We headed back to theirs after the pub and I stayed over.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I reach down to the floor and pick up my bag.

  See my phone, on silent, showing sixteen missed calls from Ed.

  It’s 5 a.m.

  I message quickly.

  Shit.

  All fine, stayed at Cora’s, too much to drink, sorry, I type.

  This is like being nineteen. How has my life taken this turn? I might miss the music and the highs sometimes but I do not miss this paranoia, this emergency alarm of a wake-up. I think of Poppy at home, warm in her bed.

  Cora rolls over.

  ‘Can you be quiet?’ she mutters. ‘If anyone but a baby wakes me up before 7 a.m., I do not deal well. In fact even when it’s a baby, I do not deal well.’

  She turns back away from me and I lie there, still, as though this is a one-night stand and I’m running on awkward adrenalin.

  I try not to move and I stare at Cora.

  Silk sheets pulled around her waist, silk pyjamas and eye mask on. The bedside table similar to when we were away but messier; piles and piles of fancy pots, face masks, hefty glossy magazines, junk.

  Just like the last time I woke up with her, she can’t have been as drunk as me last night. I can’t remember a thing. I wouldn’t have been capable of finding my pyjamas even if I’d been in the same house as them.

  What the hell was I thinking, staying at Cora’s?

  My phone beeps. Ed.

  You can’t do that, Scarlett. I’ve been up all night freaking out.

  Didn’t know where the hell you were. Jesus, we have a child here. I nearly called the police.

  But you didn’t, I think. What’s the point of nearly? Would nearly have found me if I was in trouble?

  It’s irrational to be angry about something that didn’t happen but nothing is rational now.

  I sit up in bed, try to move stealthily but even expensive silk sheets aren’t silent. Cora grumbles.

  ‘Look, before you go, you should know something,’ she murmurs and my body is on its hind legs again, primed. ‘I’ve seen mention of stuff online about a mum blogger and a sex tape. All anon, and obviously I had no idea it was relevant … until last night. But someone might have connected the dots, hon. And the press are gunning for influencers at the moment. If you don’t want to be on the front page of MailOnline, I’d think about deleting the blog. Going quiet. For a while at least. And delete social media too, Scarlett. Seriously. You need to make yourself uninteresting.’

  Her head is still on her pillow; her voice muffled but her message clear.

  My stomach makes an odd noise. My insides flare with a mix of terror and last night’s wine.

  Every time I think I can’t take another hit, it comes.

  I mutter yes, I will, and thanks for telling me and then I slope out, Cora muttering instructions for the door and the intimidating security gate as I go.

  ‘Lock and put the key back through, hon,’ she mutters, a soft foot with bright red nails sticking out of the duvet as I walk past. ‘And meet me at the coffee shop at ten. I’ll message the girls. We’ll all need coffee and sugar this morning.

  I let myself out and tremble as I walk home, terrified of being even more exposed than I already am, running eventually because I just need to move fast, do something.

  I told Asha, Cora and Emma about the video. The last remaining people in my life who didn’t know, and now they do. It’s out. It’s staying out.

  When my key opens the door, all I get is stony silence. Ed is up and dressed, despite the fact it’s before 6 a.m., and he stalks around the house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again as he walks past me in the kitchen without a word. ‘I got drunk with the girls.’

  He looks at me.

  ‘Not a problem. Not like you have responsibilities.’

  And I snap then. ‘Like you did when you left me?’

  He says nothing but his eyes are still on mine. It’s unnerving. Eventually I walk away. How am I going to tell him that there’s no money to be made from the blog now, either? That I’m about to walk out of this room and shut everything to do with Cheshire Mama down.

  ‘Whatever this is …’ Ed says then, eyes on the clothes I have slept in and the usually smooth hair that is sticking up at angles that someone else’s silk sheets apparently create. I smooth it down. Try to.

  ‘Whatever this is,’ he begins again, as his voice catches. ‘A midlife crisis, an affair, the video or just a reaction to being a mum. Please, Scarlett. Please just grow up.’

  And then he leaves the house and I have no idea where he is going. But I suppose it’s his turn. We tag-team our life now. You take possession of it for a while; I’ll be over there living another unknown one.

  I crawl back into bed and hope desperately that Poppy sleeps later than usual. And then, one by one, I delete Cheshire Mama’s Instagram, Facebook and finally the blog itself. Another part of my life gone. Another slice of me deleted. But I am matter-of-fact about it, feeling numb. I’ve shut myself down too.

  At six thirty on the dot Poppy wakes and I exercise the skill I’ve learnt since being a parent of snapping into a different tempo immediately.

  ‘Breakfast time!’ I chirrup and I carry her downstairs kissing her skin all over as I go.

  I serve up por
ridge for Poppy and down two cups of instant coffee and then I find some crisps in the cupboard and I think yes, that’s what I could eat for breakfast so I have a packet of salt and vinegar chipsticks to ease the hangover like a teenager.

  For the next couple of hours, I let Poppy watch far too much kids’ TV before I eventually drag myself to the shower. I have had no contact with anybody to confirm that we are still meeting up but I’m holding on to Cora’s early morning words. I need coffee. I need my friends. So Poppy and I leave to go to the coffee shop.

  I calculate who will be here today with their complicated schedules of work and childcare. Of the shifts that I know now Emma is juggling. But she isn’t in work today because suddenly Emma is behind me, Seth in the pram, and she shouts my name, out of breath.

  Seth giggles at Poppy from his buggy and Emma and I smile down at them. I stop briefly to take a picture for Instagram then remember I’m not Cheshire Mama any more. I’m just Scarlett. We walk alongside each other, Poppy’s buggy colliding occasionally with Emma’s large feet as there isn’t quite enough room on the pavement.

  ‘How are you, babe?’ she says, hand on my arm.

  ‘Hungover and desperate for bacon,’ I say, fake laugh. I can’t bear being seen as a victim. ‘You?’

  ‘Oh not too bad. Don’t think I was quite as drunk as someone.’

  I give a half-smile.

  ‘Yeah I was shitfaced,’ I say, stopping to pass Poppy the teddy she just dropped on the pavement. Dusting it off. ‘Sorry to drop all of that on you last night.’

  Emma stops now.

  ‘Do not say sorry!’ she gasps and she’s so earnest it hurts. ‘I was happy we could be there for you. I hate the idea of you going through this alone.’

  ‘Well I wasn’t alone,’ I say, defensive because let’s face it, I was alone.

  Emma dips her head.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean. You know, just because you and Ed are …’

  ‘We’re fine,’ I sigh. ‘It’s just not the easiest time. It’s a lot for him to deal with.’

  At the café, Cora is waiting with a large Americano and long Shellacked fingernails clacking on her phone.