The Baby Group

by Caroline Corcoran

  ‘Just sexting Hunter!’ she says, as we walk in. ‘But I’ll stop now. You have my undivided attention.’

  She puts her phone down; recalibrates. Necks the end of her Americano and signals to the waiter to order another. As he comes over, I tell him to make it two.

  ‘Right, let’s talk about this sex video,’ she says, loud enough that the pensioner nursing a pot of tea on the next table swivels round with wide eyes.

  ‘Cora!’ I hiss as I sit down.

  But I think about what would have happened if I’d not talked to them. If Cora hadn’t told me about the whispers online. If she hadn’t helped me avoid becoming the next big influencer scandal. I shudder.

  My hands are shaking. It’s been too long since my last caffeine hit. Coffee used to be an occasional treat, in between the turmeric lattes and the fresh mint tea. Slowly, in recent weeks, it’s taking over. Occasionally, I remember not to drink it like water. Notice that it makes me tremble harder, those bad thoughts in my mind whirl faster.

  As I think this, I see him out of the corner of my eye: Joseph, making me coffee. I picture him bringing it to me in bed, with a croissant. He meets my gaze. Holds it.

  Since he messaged me, I have managed to avoid Joseph entirely. He’s helped by ignoring me and not serving me and I am relieved.

  Today though Joseph comes over with our coffees but he pointedly doesn’t look at me. I see Cora pull her stomach in, like she does whenever a man is around.

  She steals a glance at him.

  ‘Man, that is one bitter rejected guy.’ She smirks as he walks away.

  ‘Oh behave,’ I say, but I am sheepish. ‘I doubt I’m top of his agenda. He’s a single man. I’m sure he flirts with customers every bloody day. Customers who are far younger and more glam than me.’

  I glance in his direction anyway. I’m sober now but yes: he’s still beautiful.

  Cora leans in, conspiratorial.

  ‘Could it have been him?’ she says, Jack Bauer suddenly, Jimmy McNulty. ‘Guy’s got a crush. Guy gets the knockback. Guy takes revenge. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  I laugh at her.

  ‘Except for the fact that the video predates all of that,’ I say. ‘Which slightly scuppers your theory.’

  She’s unfazed. ‘Sure, it predates it for you. But he knew you before the video got posted. Saw you around, in here. How do you know he hasn’t been obsessed with you for a long time?’

  We all fall silent as Joseph’s colleague puts my bacon sandwich in front of me.

  ‘Cheers,’ I mutter. We wait until he’s at a safe distance.

  I look at Cora. Emma is sitting quietly, wide-eyed.

  ‘One other problem,’ I say. ‘How is he supposed to have got hold of the video?’

  Cora shrugs. ‘Isn’t that the case for anybody? Other than the two guys, I mean. For anyone else to have it is weird. It’s what makes the whole thing so completely fucked up.’

  Cora ploughs on. ‘And,’ she says. ‘AND. I heard him joke about hacking his friend’s phone the other day. So he can, you know, hack.’

  Now I’m laughing, despite myself. ‘Well he’s a millennial,’ I mock. ‘They can all, you know, hack.’

  Cora looks triumphant. ‘A millennial! Barely. He’s only a couple of years younger than us. Wait, are we millennials? And get this. His mate over there told me he does coding work in between café shifts,’ she says. ‘And you can’t say that all millennials can code.’

  I raise my eyebrows at her.

  ‘You can actually,’ I say. ‘You absolutely can.’

  But suddenly Emma looks animated. She’s into this. ‘I know who!’ she explodes. ‘My sister-in law! The one you fell out with when you posted those pictures.’

  I sit back, wait for this. ‘Do you really think so? Is that her style?’

  Emma looks doubtful suddenly.

  ‘I don’t think she cared enough to ruin my life,’ I say. ‘Plus how on earth would she have got it?’

  Which brings us back then to Mitch, to Ollie. But they were both so genuine.

  Emma’s still on her sister-in-law, who I presume she mustn’t like a lot. ‘Isn’t it the ultimate punishment?’ she asks. ‘You betray my privacy online; I’ll give you the opposite of privacy online?’

  Cora laughs. ‘That’s a bit of a leap, Miss Marple, but also, the link was sent before we had that conversation,’ she says, rolling her eyes at me as though Emma can’t see us.

  Emma’s face darkens. ‘It made more sense than your theory,’ she mutters and then she shuffles in her boots to the toilet and Cora laughs at her and I join in because it’s awkward not to.

  I am still laughing when I look up and see Asha, standing above us, having managed to glide into the building without anyone noticing. This is a very Asha quality. Fuck. Did she hear us laughing at Emma? I feel awful. Bitchy. My face flushes pink.

  I look down at Ananya, smiling in the pram in a Peter Pan collar. They float, the pair of them, while at the moment I career around the place.

  I stand up to kiss her and I wave at Ananya.

  ‘Handy that it’s your day off today, hon,’ says Cora.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have been drinking that much last night if it wasn’t,’ she says. She does look a little nauseous.

  Asha’s eyes ask me how I’m doing over Cora’s head. I nod, a tiny movement.

  The waiter takes Asha’s order of green tea and an avocado and egg protein bowl and I ask for a blueberry muffin and another coffee. I feel my jeans pull on my waist a little; promise myself that I’ll ease back on the sugar, the booze, the processed meat, the caffeine, soon. Not now. But soon.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Asha gently and she is so genuine and warm that I want to hug her but I resist. Even with a hangover, her black shirt looks beautifully ironed, her black hair perfectly straightened; I don’t want her creased and tainted and smudged by my misery. ‘But touch wood, fingers crossed this is the worst of it and it’ll go away now, right?’

  I don’t know anyone as superstitious as Asha, who took her pram onto a fairly dicey road the other day to avoid walking under a ladder and caveats most positive statements with concerns about jinxing things.

  Asha looks thoughtful. ‘I tell you what I wondered though,’ she says. ‘And tell me if I’m speaking out of turn.’

  She looks up and I shake my head no no, do go on.

  ‘I wondered about your blog,’ she says hesitantly and I glance at Cora, who raises her eyebrow at me. I give Cora a hint of a nod. It’s done. Gone.

  Asha carries on. ‘About what information you’ve put on there, and how that could have something to do with it,’ she says. ‘Since the whole thing would have coincided with you having more of an online presence?’

  I nod, thinking about Mitch making the same point.

  ‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘I’ve actually shut Cheshire Mama down for that reason.’

  ‘No!’ says Cora. ‘That’s gutting!’

  And I look up, confused, before I realise she is acting.

  Anon

  Have you ever asked a question about me, I think, in the whole time we have been friends? And yet I drop everything and sit through emergency summits like this one and the one last night in the pub, to try and fix your whole broken life.

  I mean, technically I was the one who broke it. But still.

  Finally, Scarlett has ‘told’ us about the video.

  I had wondered how long she could hold out, and she impressed me to be honest.

  After all, we are such good friends. The closest. She had to confide in us in the end. Who else is there to talk to now? Those old friends are long gone. Ed is in the spare room.

  Even now though, as we sit in the coffee shop and try to help, she sneers at our opinions. At our verdicts. At our theories.

  Like you’ve done any better, Scarlett, I think. Like your judgement isn’t the worst in the fucking world.

  Surely you’d have shut down the blog at the very start anyway? As soon as th
is happened. But not when you’re Scarlett. Scarlett couldn’t relinquish the likes. Couldn’t relinquish that semi-celebrity identity she felt like she had when she posted. When a free pair of baby leggings came her way.

  I’ve thought so many times about how I could use Cheshire Mama against Scarlett. It felt like an opportunity.

  But I couldn’t post the video on there without her approving it.

  If I added it to my comments on Cheshire Mama’s Instagram, she would delete it straight away. Could my accounts be traced for posting graphic content?

  Now though, everything to do with that awful blog has gone.

  Someone from Cheshire.

  Scarlett shocks me when she tells that.

  I had no idea she could know that; that anyone could get that information. What can I say? I’m a novice. Learning on the job. What I lack in experience though, I make up for in utter fucking hatred.

  I feel my face contract. Snap back into Good Friend mode quickly.

  Horrific, Scarlett. So close. Who could it be? Why would they do that?

  There is satisfaction in seeing her now, exposed, weakened. I sit back to assess her, now she isn’t hiding.

  When I do see glimpses of change, I bathe in them.

  Scarlett is a little fatter, a little more bedraggled, a little less confident.

  She no longer has the celebrity status that Cheshire Mama gave her.

  That spurs me on. Because it means that she is less likely to hurt me again. That he is less likely to want her. And that, of course, is the reason I’ve done this to her in the first place.

  27

  Scarlett

  26 June

  I’m not used to seeing Asha without her having one boob hanging out, so the solidity of a sports bra is quite the departure.

  ‘Shimmy!’ orders the instructor and we try to follow as our babies career around the middle of the room on some mats. I hear Asha breathe heavily next to me. ‘Shake! It!’

  I do what I’m told.

  Asha’s boobs, I notice admiringly, as I glance to the side, look pretty good given that someone has been gnawing on them multiple times a day for the last year. Probably because they’d barely need a B cup versus my own Ds.

  Sweat drips down my back. I used to run half-marathons before I had Poppy and I was running again, 5k here, 6k there. Since the video though, it’s rare.

  ‘Come to this class with me,’ messaged Asha a few days after they found out about the video. ‘I think you need to stay as busy as you can. Grab loads of time with Poppy. Take the pluses; all of that bonding.’

  When we’ve stretched it out, most of the women grab their babies and disperse.

  I look at Asha. She is frowning as she checks her phone, Ananya roaming around the room.

  I am distracted by my own phone; another message from Ed telling me he needs to be away overnight next week. The niggling feeling of an affair, of that being the story behind the video, sent from Cheshire, keeps coming.

  ‘You exercised a lot before, right?’ says Asha, still Christmas stocking red up to her hairline.

  ‘Before’ and ‘after’ are words enough in their own right; we know what they mean. Those positive pregnancy tests may as well have been made of lead, crashing down the middle of our lives to saw them in half. The oddest part, I think, is that Asha and the others didn’t see the first half. It’s floating around somewhere unanchored to this one and unknown to them.

  I nod. ‘Yeah I did sometimes,’ I say. ‘In Manchester. Not since.’

  ‘Since’ is another of those words.

  ‘Did you enjoy today?’

  I nod again. I didn’t enjoy it at all, it was torturous, but do you enjoy anything when you’re in the middle of it, other than, you know, burgers or a large red or lying on the sofa watching Netflix? The rest is to enjoy afterwards or before. The knowledge that you will do it, or that you have completed it. Not the faffy in between bit.

  Asha wipes sweat off her brow. I mirror.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ she says and I indicate the perspiration and the Lycra.

  But I still go.

  I think about my bottom as I stand at the bar while Asha entertains our babies in their highchairs and I wonder if anyone is looking at it, thirty-five years old, motherly, unexercised and flaunting itself in Lycra. Who does it think it is, this arse?

  I order a wine even though it’s 2 p.m.

  I head back to the table and hand Asha a fizzy water. She glances quickly at my Malbec. Looks away. I start rambling, embarrassed, about baby gates and child locks.

  ‘It’s genuinely astonishing that other people from the group didn’t want to come with us.’ I smile. ‘When my chat is this good.’

  Asha laughs. But now the beat and the moving of the class have stopped, my mind is whirring again. I have a meeting with the lawyer in a few days and barely anything to update him on. I’ve reached a dead end and the idea of standing still there is terrifying.

  I take a large gulp of wine.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Asha asks.

  ‘Yeah, you know,’ I sigh. ‘Just fighting with Ed about the whole video thing.’

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Yeah sure, I think, more chat about my sex tape side gig. My terror of the future. Being ashamed of myself, every second. Not being able to look my dad in the eye any more. Drifting from my sister. Career in ruins. My crumbling marriage.

  Too much. Too awful.

  ‘No,’ I say, and then I think I sounded a little snippy.

  But I was desperate to talk and then I was sick of talking and that’s just how it is.

  ‘Well if you ever do, I’m here,’ she says quietly, sipping her water. I don’t think she looks annoyed.

  I nod, down the rest of my house red and flee.

  And it’s on the walk home that I check my phone.

  It’s not a surprise but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t puncture me in the lungs, pummel me in the gut.

  It’s what I’ve feared.

  Through all of this – which it strikes me now may just have been a warm-up – it’s what I’ve feared the most.

  ‘So you’ve quit your job as an infuencer?’ it says. ‘Not planning to go back to the job you used to do back in the day, are you? That’s what everyone will find out next. Unless you leave him alone.’

  I stand in the street, next to a tree, as a dog runs past me and children shriek and thwack footballs in the playground of a nearby school and I feel my whole body tremble and reality and normal life drift, drift, drift further away.

  I knew it was coming. Knew Mitch, Ollie and me was just the starting move.

  That if somebody really wanted to wipe out my life – maybe not the breath but the joy, the pride, the self-worth – this is where they would go. It’s the picture that keeps me awake. Short skirts, long nights. The penthouse.

  One part is confusing though: leave who alone? It sounds as though I’m supposed to know but I’m blank. Joseph? Ollie?

  I am about to reply but I know I can’t.

  I email Jonathan instead, as I’ve been told to do whenever anything happens.

  Firstly, I say. This part of things must remain completely confidential from my husband. But there is something new.

  And then I fill him in. On the truly murkiest part of my past, the one there is no way Ed would stick around if he knew about. The one I have to bury, if I have any chance of keeping this life, of still being respectable Scarlett, of not falling apart entirely.

  Anon

  And then, he dumps me.

  I sit on the floor and grip onto his shin as he walks out of the door. It’s a basic fact that I beg, rather than anything I am ashamed of. I would beg again, a thousand times.

  I love him.

  He shakes me off, though, like a minor cold.

  Tells me I am a despicable person.

  I sit there on the floor after he’s gone, alone, and take out my other phone.

  I know something else about Scarlett now and I
have nothing to lose. Despicable people don’t.

  I suppose Scarlett thought it was all well hidden, buried deep in Manchester from long ago in a different life. But she must know from the video that it’s not that hard to shift a bit of soil and expose what’s in the ground.

  An escort. Add your own inverted commas. I do.

  What a gift it is, this information. Because so far nothing has utterly broken Scarlett but this has to. Can you imagine? When she is so superior?

  I message Scarlett with what I know and try to picture her when she reads it. Visualise it like the last brick on top of her, the one that will make her collapse under the weight.

  This will make her leave him alone.

  This will break her.

  And then I will be able to live my life out of the shadow of Scarlett Salloway. Out of the shadow of who I could be, who I should be.

  After he ends it with me, I weep, lost, for days and during that time, something shifts.

  When I started this in spring I had wanted to stay anonymous, to watch from a distance as Scarlett fell apart. To get my revenge that way without anything as high-octane as confrontation, showdowns, exposing myself as the perpetrator.

  Once he ends it though, things alter.

  Anger does that. Charges through everything, rewrites intention.

  Now I want to stand in front of Scarlett and tell her who has done this, and why.

  I want to tell her that I know what she has done to me as well. That I am not an idiot. That I have known for a long time.

  You were wrong to trust me, I want to tell her. You were so very, very wrong to trust me.

  I want to see Scarlett’s face as she registers what that means. How much she has told me. How much she has leant on me. How few friends she really has. How strong I am. How weak she now feels. How maybe I am the fucking alpha, Scarlett, and how do you like that?

  I want to tell her: you brought this on yourself, Scarlett. What did you expect?

  And I want her to promise me that it will stop, and mean it.

  28

  Scarlett

  30 June

  At the lawyer’s office, Jonathan frowns at me.