The Baby Group

by Caroline Corcoran

  The tone of her voice makes me stumble backwards.

  I shake my head again. How can I stay away from him? It’s not happening Emma. I’m not sleeping with Mitch. No, no, no.

  How quickly worlds fall apart, I think. One minute you are liked, loved. Next minute they fall like dominoes and your dad, husband, boss, friend: they all hate you, or pity you, or cringe at you, or resent you or can no longer look at you right in the eye.

  But Emma does, now. And then up and down, head to toe.

  ‘I get it,’ she says. ‘There I am and there you are, glamorous, confident. Alpha.’

  She looks up at a wedding photo of Ed and me on the wall above my head, gestures.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you see in a photo,’ I mutter. ‘I would have thought that was obvious by now.’

  She ignores me. It’s not useful to her narrative.

  ‘I’m not sleeping with Robert,’ I tell her but she doesn’t hear it.

  ‘You had to have him, even though you already have everything,’ she murmurs.

  ‘Everything?’ I shout. ‘You remember that I have left my job because my body is all over the internet?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she murmurs. ‘Your really good body. Having sex with my baby’s dad.’

  The laugh bursts out.

  ‘Emma, you can’t possibly think that’s a good thing?’ I shout, startled. ‘I’ve had my life blown apart by this. When I watch that hideous video, I’m not sitting there thinking, “Well, at least my boobs look good.” Do you have any idea how violated you feel when something like this happens to you?’

  Her eyes are fire now, suddenly, and she’s furious.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t. I’m Miss Local. I do the weekly shop and I go in for the evening shift. I nag my partner to come home sometimes, just this once, before 4 a.m. I wash dishes. I try not to eat the biscuit. I feed my baby. That is literally all I do, Scarlett. This video? At least it’s exciting. At least it’s made you feel … something.’

  And then, I see every shade of red there is at the very idea that any of this is enviable.

  ‘It’s made me feel something?’ I shout. ‘Is that why you did this? Because it worked, Emma. You made me feel something. You made me feel shame and horror and fear. You made me feel at rock bottom. You made me feel suicidal, at times. You made me feel desperate. You made me feel like I couldn’t experience joy any more, even when I was with my daughter, because I was so horrified by what had happened to me, wondering who had seen the video, wondering who was watching it now. You made me scared that there was worse to come. Scared that everyone would think I was a prostitute, and that Poppy would think that when she was older, and that Ed would leave me and my family would be broken up.’

  I crumble, face in hands.

  ‘Was that the point then?’ I ask, as I look up. ‘That I would know how you felt, if my own marriage was in ruins?’

  She raises both eyebrows.

  I carry on, through my sobs. ‘You made me feel like I couldn’t look after my child and like I was having a breakdown and I know what that feels like too because despite what you think, my life has been hard and that has happened to me before.

  ‘I’ve been at rock bottom, at the very darkest places. So I know, for definite, when I’m on my way there again. And I was. I am.’

  I could keep going but tears are taking up breath and I run out of it and all I can do is sob and sob, as Emma stands up and moves closer, standing over me.

  For half a second I wonder if she will hug me but then I remember: that was the old world.

  My brain switches to fear.

  If not hugs, why is she coming so close?

  But she is moving away again now, staring at the wall with an Alain de Botton quote on it. Everyone got the message from that piece of evidence? I am clever, I am arty, I am well read, I can design a beautiful home.

  ‘You just need to say the words to me and admit it, Scarlett,’ she says, head to one side looking at the print. Slurs. She hasn’t heard a word. ‘Stop me going crazy. Say the words.’

  I stare at her.

  ‘Admit that you and Robert have been sleeping together all the time that we have been friends. I have to hear you admit it, Scarlett, even though he won’t, for my own sanity.’

  And before I can answer, she carries on.

  ‘I’ve stayed close to get my own evidence, tried to make myself such a good friend that you would confess and spill, like Cora does, about the man you were seeing. I knew you wouldn’t realise there was any link to me. But you’re cagier. Elusive.’

  She pauses.

  ‘Even when I get you paralytic.’

  I picture her, topping up my drink even when she isn’t having one herself. Think of times when I’ve felt drunker than I should from what I think I’ve been ordering. Dark. I shudder.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I say, hand up in defence. ‘Okay. There’s someone local who Robert is sleeping with by the sounds of what you say, with the evidence you’ve found. But it’s not me! I slept with Mitch – Robert – once, a long time ago when I was drunk and stupid. That’s it. Never again.’

  She looks at me with venom. She doesn’t believe me.

  ‘It’s too big a coincidence, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘You, moving round here. The local receipts. What happened between you all those years ago. The way he defended you. He meets up with you, then leaves me. And look at me; look at you. Once I realised you had been in his bed, I couldn’t stop comparing. Beautiful, tall you. They’re normally in their twenties, the women he sleeps with, but you – he’d make an exception, I’d imagine.’

  She touches her nose; rolls on.

  ‘It was this one night when I cracked. I was exhausted from getting up in the night with Seth. Robert was out again. He had left his iPad unlocked and I searched and found all kinds.

  ‘Messages to women, pictures. Videos. I was there for hours. And eventually, I got to someone who looked familiar.’

  She looks down at me.

  Her eyes, these new, dark ones, drill holes in mine.

  ‘To someone who I thought was my friend.’

  She did this to me. Not a man, not an unknown. But a woman I trusted.

  I think of every second of pain I’ve experienced through this: talking to my dad, watching my marriage unravel, seeing Poppy cry as we walked out of yet another baby group because I couldn’t breathe. Felicity’s face, my colleagues, the gross remarks on my Instagram, my body vibrating with fear at those messages. Jonathan the lawyer and Ed on either side of me as I clutched at my high neckline. Aunt Denise with her hand on my arm. Shame, shame, shame.

  ‘So what?’ I say. ‘You decided to take some sort of revenge?’

  She nods, in a daze, pacing again.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Revenge.’

  She looks up.

  ‘Starting off with the video.’

  My heart pounds.

  ‘And then?’ I ask.

  ‘Funny you should ask,’ she says, sitting down and leaning back again on my fancy armchair.

  And I steel myself, as much as a person who is falling apart can.

  40

  Scarlett

  28 July

  ‘Have you caught up with Poppy lately?’ asks Emma, pointedly.

  I think of my phone, in the kitchen. How long have we been here? An hour, maybe, or twelve.

  I go cold.

  ‘Not since yesterday.’

  Do not mention Poppy.

  She laughs.

  ‘I’ve got to confess, that might have a tiny something to do with me,’ she says. ‘Whoops. Ed kind of thinks you’re an unfit mum.’

  My head flicks up. She ploughs on.

  ‘You probably know about the messages I sent to Ed a while ago,’ she says, reclining on my armchair. ‘I wanted him to be on the lookout too. I thought if he confronted you about your cheating, you might know you were being watched. Stop sleeping with Robert.’

  Is there any point arguing with her? This is th
e narrative she has decided on. I shake my head, sadly. No, no.

  ‘Did he tell you there were more messages, this week?’ she asks.

  A shiver runs through me.

  My phone is in the other room. I can’t reach my husband to correct whatever these messages say. I can’t reach my husband to help me.

  Although who would Ed believe anyway?

  An anonymous stranger in a message or me, his wife? The answer brings tears to my eyes.

  ‘To let him know about the affair you’re having with the guy from the coffee shop,’ she says, casually.

  My heart starts to race. Because is there anything harder to refute than a lie that is based in truth? I think of the hangover I had that morning after the night I stayed for a lock-in with Joseph; the edginess Ed would have noticed.

  I think of the evening itself. Joseph and I, heads close together and alone, knees too friendly under the table.

  I think – with a shiver – of Emma, running just behind me and seeing Joseph across the street. Of her being there when I talked about him. Her seeing how often my eyes would follow him across the room. Of her eyes, watching me.

  She would have enough to hang me, I think.

  Dates, times, details, messages. She could paint this picture easily; it was like the outline had been drawn for a child in its colouring book.

  ‘I didn’t have an affair with him,’ I say and she is wide-eyed now.

  ‘Oh really?’ she says. ‘My error. Oh well. Too late now, Ed thinks you’ve been sleeping with him for months.’

  I go to speak but she interrupts again.

  ‘Not just him either. Ollie? The ex? And of course, Robert.’

  Dates, times, details, meet-ups.

  ‘Probably Ollie and Robert at the same time. We all know you, eh, Scarlett.’

  She winks.

  What’s alarming, I think, is how she kept this hatred that is now seeping out through every single word she chooses hidden from me for so long.

  Because this woman despises me.

  ‘To be honest he thinks you’re sleeping with anybody who will have you.’ She shrugs. ‘Thinks you’re way, way, way off the rails, probably helped along by all the drinking I mentioned you were doing. You’re not the woman he thought you were. And he tried so hard to wipe you clean.’

  She pauses and laughs and it’s too close to the bone. He did try to wipe me clean. I wanted to be wiped clean. And none of that had been healthy. Trying to eradicate a part of myself, however grimy it was. It was why I wanted to be in Sowerton; it felt cleaner, somehow. Like the less polluted air would make a less polluted me.

  ‘Why should your life carry on like normal?’ she asks. ‘Why should your marriage survive when you stole my husband?’

  I can see no way back; no way to undo this. It’s dense and dark and it’s easier to give in. I want to go to sleep. I want a mum I can remember.

  ‘Hey there’s more, babe!’ Emma exclaims suddenly, waking me up, waking herself up by the looks of her eyes, wild.

  And I know. Have known always that he would find out sometime. And that when he did, it would be more than respectable Ed could take. That it would finish us off.

  ‘Of course I told him that you used to be a hooker too,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry though, I made sure he knew it was high-end stuff. Posh apartments, right? Not drug dens and squats. So he should be fine with that?’

  If I’ve been breaking apart for the last few months, that’s the one that finishes me off with a final blow. Most of the time it was flirting and wearing tiny clothes to be stared at and pawed for money and then there was that one time but all of it, to be honest, all of it is the worst thing I’ve ever done. I can’t forgive myself, never have been able to; I know Ed won’t. I think of work colleagues knowing that too. My dad. I vibrate, and my head starts to throb. Too much, too much, too much. If it wasn’t for Poppy, I could drown in shame and be happy to never see the surface again.

  ‘It’s bloody brilliant isn’t it?’ she says. ‘And there was me thinking I’d lost my ability to be creative since I had Seth.’

  ‘But why would you want Ed and me to split up?’ I say. ‘If you think I’m sleeping with Robert, wouldn’t you want my marriage to work? To keep me away from him.’

  She laughs. Mean.

  ‘Being married hasn’t kept you away from him so far,’ she says. ‘So that was incidental. I just wanted to ruin everything you have. The things that matter to you the most. Ed. And of course, when he leaves thinking you’re unfit, Poppy too.’

  I move, jump off the sofa, to get to the other room, to my phone, but she is on me. More agile since her new gym habit and I wonder if that’s why she’s been keeping fit, if she’s been prepping for this.

  She is angry too and that makes her even stronger and I am broken apart and she has me up against the wall in half a second even though she only has an inch on me, five foot seven in bare feet.

  ‘How can you leave now?’ she says. ‘I haven’t finished.’

  And my heart pounds then with the adrenalin of trying to get out and with the horror that there is more, when I am at my limit. My Poppy, I think. Do not come for my relationship with my girl.

  My insides are vibrating with fear.

  It feels like I can see the trace right through me, from now, to Ed and how we are, to the video, to having Poppy, to leaving Ollie, to every night in those places with those men, to my mum, back and back and back running through me like a pipe that has sucked me dry. This is the culmination. This is the end, here.

  Emma sits down too.

  All Ed wants to do is protect Poppy, and he panics about anything that could harm her, and now he thinks that I, with my drinking and my strange men and my irresponsibility, could. Plus, he has met somebody else. Even if it’s not Emma, it’s somebody. Flick was sure, Martha too. The lines in the sand are long gone. What if they become a proper couple and I lose custody? I can’t survive that, I think, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

  ‘A stepmum would probably be better for Poppy in the long run,’ says Emma, reading my thoughts. ‘Far more stable. A better example too. Plus you said it yourself, you’re at rock bottom. Can you survive this? Really? Poppy will need someone, Scarlett, and you’re not up to the job any more.’

  The room spins and I stumble.

  I said no to Ollie, just. I said no to Joseph, just. I said yes to a lot of drinks but I said no to enough, just. My mental health survived, just. Didn’t it?

  ‘What is this supposed to achieve?’ I ask through deep tears. ‘You want Poppy to lose her mum? Fucking hell, Emma, you have a child.’

  Emma shrugs. Those eyes are dead, now. She is so far away from kindness; humanity.

  ‘To teach you a lesson,’ Emma says. ‘To break up your family, like you broke up mine.’

  All I can think of is Poppy.

  Ed wouldn’t do that to me, I think. I have to think. Then I think, again: Ed would do whatever it took to keep Poppy safe. He wouldn’t keep her away from her mother, but he would keep her away from danger. If he thinks I’m both, this could go either way.

  ‘If you’re so convinced that Ed is done with me, let me phone him,’ I say.

  We sit in silence for a couple of minutes.

  She sits back, frowns, then turns to plump the pillows that seem to be irritating her.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says, looking at the cushions. And then: ‘Okay, call him.’

  She nestles backwards into the cushions like it’s Friday night and she’s looking forward to a gin and slim and a Netflix binge – and I walk tentatively, like I might break her decision, past her to get my phone and find my husband’s number in my favourites, dialling it to see if I can creep my fingernails over the cliff and cling on to the edges of my life.

  41

  Scarlett

  28 July

  I stand up as I dial, looking at Emma’s face from above with that soft blonde PE teacher sensible ponytail and her long, poin
ted nose as she sits there in my armchair. Who the hell are you, I think, this woman who pretended to be my friend? This clichéd, kind dieter. This strange, vindictive bitch.

  Each ring makes it harder to breathe. Each ring makes me feel more desperate.

  Emma is deadpan when she delivers the news that we both know, by now, on what must be the seventh ring.

  ‘He isn’t going to answer,’ she says, pitying. ‘He can’t let Poppy speak to a mum like that, knowing you’re probably drunk again too. It’s not good for her, Scarlett – you must see that.’

  It’s why she’s looked so relaxed: she’s known this all along.

  Voicemail picks up and I know even as I am speaking that I am making things worse.

  ‘Emma is here,’ I say, tripping over the syllables like I am just learning to use my tongue. ‘Emma made up those things. About me having affairs. About the … escorting. I only met Ollie to talk. About the video, like I told you. And Mitch. Mitch is Emma’s husband. The man from the coffee shop – Joseph – is just a friend. There was … it was … I’ll explain, when I see you. But I need to see you, Ed. I need to see Poppy. Please pick up. Call me back. Come home. Emma is here and I don’t know what she wants and, Ed, I’m scared.’

  I’m sobbing and Emma yanks the phone from me with a firm grip before I realise what’s happening.

  ‘Ed,’ she says, managing to sound calm and rational somehow to my hysteria. ‘It’s Emma. Don’t worry. Scarlett’s had a few drinks too many and she’s blurry, to be honest it’s been happening a lot lately, but I’m with her. I’ll look after her. It might be better if you guys have space for a bit, keep Pops with you so she doesn’t see her mum in this state, bless her.’ And then she clicks to end the call, flicks it onto airplane mode and puts it in her pocket and I don’t act fast enough to stop her.

  I’m moving through treacle that’s been in the fridge for hours. It’s part the start of a hangover, part still being drunk, part deep, deep shock.