The Baby Group

by Caroline Corcoran

‘She called me saying he’d “taken your side” and left her,’ she continues. ‘And that just confirmed what she thought. That he still had feelings for you. That you were in a relationship.’

  I shake my head again, no, no, no.

  ‘It’s not like Ed and I don’t have issues either,’ I say, quietly. ‘And it’s not like I’ve not been through bad times. I thought it was better not to moan on about what a hard life I had when I’m lucky compared to so many people.’

  Cora nods. ‘I said that, at first, that your life couldn’t be as perfect as all those awful blog posts; that people just market themselves these days.’

  I wince. Supportive Cora, telling me how much she loved my blog. How many other people add their likes then bitch about me?

  ‘But she wouldn’t have it,’ Cora rolls on. ‘Saw you as everything she wasn’t and then, in the back of her mind, had that image there all the time of you shagging Robert on video looking hot and young.’

  I snip.

  ‘Well, I was twenty-three,’ I say. ‘That’s why I look young. Everyone looks young when they are young.’

  Already at thirty-five it feels like a generation ago.

  Cora ignores me.

  ‘She watched it over and over,’ she says. ‘You must have noticed a bit of a fixation on you? Yeah. You were an obsession for her. And every time she watched it, she hated you more.’

  ‘She’s pretty good at hiding it then,’ I say. ‘Ordering my tea. Babysitting my child. Ed thought it was a girl crush.’

  Cora laughs. I feel my body start to tremble harder.

  ‘I suppose it was, in a way.’ She smirks. ‘But maybe more like a stalker.’

  The shaking intensifies. Who was I leaving Poppy with? She’s with one of my best friends. She’s with a total stranger. She’s with my fucking stalker.

  ‘She thought that the more time she spent with you, the more she could get a picture of your life,’ says Cora. ‘See if you slipped. Know if you cheated. Be close enough to you that she could work out if you had feelings for Robert and how serious it was. That was why she’d be the first to volunteer to babysit. The first to show up if you needed a coffee and a chat.’

  ‘But there was no affair to admit!’ I explode.

  ‘I know that.’ Cora laughs, loudly. ‘That’s why the whole thing was so hilarious for me. Her, convinced you were sleeping with Robert. You, too prim to not feel guilty for a tiny flirt with the guy from the coffee shop. I just sat there, watching it unfold. You’ve got to entertain yourself somehow on maternity leave.’

  I am incredulous. ‘And then?’ I ask.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Well it’s obvious this is leading somewhere. So why don’t you get to the point?’

  I am feeling brave suddenly.

  But it is misplaced. Badly misplaced.

  ‘I will get to the point when I want to get to the damn point, hon,’ says Cora, ice in her voice. ‘This is the problem with you, Scarlett. Even when you’re behind a locked gate with no one in the world who wants to help you, you still act superior.’

  I go to stand up but she pushes me back down onto the sofa, and I stay there. I am out of fight.

  My whole body vibrates again.

  How can I have been this dislikeable?

  I suspect sometimes that I am not fully formed because I leave chunks of myself behind. One chunk in Manchester, dancing with Ollie. One chunk presenting a pitch in work, a grown-up. One chunk with my mum, maybe, wherever that may be.

  I am not whole.

  And I feel like reality is slipping away now, like I’ve lost the last millimetre of grip.

  I work so hard on the image – the party girl, the successful manager, the respectable mum. Perhaps that’s the problem.

  I rebrand, rebrand, rebrand.

  I wanted them to think I was shiny and glossy and new. And instead, this is what came across. Superior, smug, vain.

  Until they forced me to expose my pain and split myself open.

  I had tried to avoid that.

  These women knew I had lost my mum, because people do when you have a child and she isn’t babysitting or knitting gloves like the other grans because she’s too dead for that.

  But I have never told them about Poppy’s half-sister – because that’s what she would be, like Josephine is to me. I don’t have the words.

  And if I did find them, I know they would ruin an afternoon and send awkwardness pulsating around the room.

  My body won’t keep still, twitches, jitters.

  Cora speaks again. ‘Emma talked about it so much, Scarlett, how you’d ruined her life, how it was so much worse than seeing strangers sleeping with Robert. How humiliating it was. How maybe if he left her for you, he’d be happier.

  ‘She was fixated. And eventually, I came up with the idea to post the video. To get her own back, and also stop you being so bloody smug.’

  When all I really felt was fear and loneliness.

  There are a lot of reasons for iciness. Is that not obvious?

  I stare at Cora like she is one of Poppy’s drawings, in which I try to see shapes and patterns but I find nothing that I recognise.

  But then an image starts to make itself clear.

  Something lurches in my insides.

  ‘Easy to do with access to your phone a few times to get addresses while you changed Poppy,’ says Cora. ‘That all-staff one from your work was a gift.’

  I breathe, or try to.

  ‘But what did you get from it?’ I say. ‘That’s what I don’t get.’

  Cora sighs, as though it’s annoying that I am fixated on such an inconsequential detail.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘Let’s be blunt. I can feed this sex tape blogger stuff to the websites and they will love it. You’ll be huge, in a way you never wanted to be. They’re all gunning for mum bloggers, after that other one went viral.’

  My heart thumps. She wouldn’t do this, would she?

  ‘Or,’ she says, flippant. ‘You can give me £200,000.’

  She sounds like she’s asking to borrow a tenner.

  I think of how I have wondered so many times if this is moving towards blackmail. And at the ridiculousness of where, now, that request is coming from.

  Cora is the last person I know who needs money. Except.

  ‘I’m skint,’ she says, voice cracking. ‘Broke. I can’t tell Michael; he’ll kill me.’

  I look at Cora’s gleaming white walls, the expensive cushions. I think of her designer bags, of appointments and more appointments and the nanny and the fancy car and that vanity project of a job.

  Then I think of how cold it is in an old house this size that needs heating on a particularly cold late summer night.

  ‘You’re taking the piss, Cora,’ I spit. ‘You are rich by anybody’s standards.’

  ‘Was rich,’ she says without a beat. ‘Then maternity leave happened. Not earning – yeah I used to have a real job, did you know that? – plus hours with a baby on top of you where all you can do is more internet shopping on your phone. Lethal combination.’

  I take this in.

  ‘It’s at breaking point,’ she says. ‘I have so many credit card bills and I’m being threatened with legal action. Michael knows none of it and if he did … Well we’re not in the best place anyway and he loves money. We won’t make it, I know that.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I say, trying to bring this down to relationships, a Tuesday morning chat over a latte. ‘He’s your husband. You’ll work it out together.’

  What the hell am I doing reassuring this woman who has conspired to smash my world apart? Who is threatening to go further? It’s myself I need to protect, I think, not her. But old habits. Until a few minutes ago, she was my friend.

  ‘So the plan is to blackmail me then?’ I ask. ‘Is that it?’

  She nods, grim, without missing a beat. Just like with Hunter, if I expected sheepish, I’m not getting it.

  ‘That’s it, yeah. Not ideal, ho
n. But we have something you want, the ability to not post the video elsewhere, not to tell the websites it’s you and let this really go viral. And to keep your other secret. Not share that one with the world. And you have something we want. For Emma, it’s revenge and seeing you suffer. For me it’s simpler: cash. With a little cut for Em, obviously.’

  Cora appraises me, sitting there on her cream sofa sodden from running here in the downpour. My hair drips globules onto the leather. She leans over, takes a very long blue fingernail and wipes one off my forehead onto the floor.

  ‘Would put the heating on for you hon,’ she says. ‘But like I say, too skint.’

  She stands, looking at me there, dripping, shaking.

  ‘Emma likes seeing you broken,’ she says, waving a hand around to indicate that I am demonstrating broken perfectly, right now. ‘You’re less of a rival to her, less likely to turn Robert’s head now you’re a depressed stay-at-home mum in joggers. Not so cool. Not so superior.’

  Mascara, I know, is likely streaming down my face.

  I stay quiet, digesting.

  It’s a lot to digest, see, when your friends turn out to hate you and then attempt to blackmail you. Discussed and disgust, all over again.

  Quietly, feeling the sadness seep into my bones with the rainwater, I look up at Cora, and then I find the energy to stand up too. Look her in the eye.

  ‘I don’t have money,’ I say. ‘I hate to disappoint you but even if I were willing to give it to you, which I’m not, I don’t have it.’

  And it’s then that Cora turns. Has me up against the wall of her living room. Just underneath the giant studio photo of her face, of her bare soft shoulders.

  She’s not physically imposing at five foot five and an untoned size twelve but I see something in her eyes that scares me for the strength it can give: desperation.

  ‘This isn’t just me wanting a few quid, Scarlett,’ she hisses, even though no one can hear her. ‘Things are bad. My beautiful house will be repossessed. This is my daughter’s home.’

  ‘I get that, I do but …’ I start.

  ‘It’s not just that, Scarlett. It’s the school we’ve had her enrolled in since she was born. It’s the cars, it’s imagining what we do without the fucking nanny and the cleaner and the housekeeper who run our entire existence. It’s our whole life. Everything.’

  She has her hand across my neck and it’s hard to get out what I want to say but I try.

  ‘You can make more money,’ I manage. ‘Michael has a good job. You can get it back.’

  No mention of her job because no one in their right mind thought that Cora was paying the mortgage with her Crunchie specials. But what was her former job? She’s never mentioned that before. We’ve never mentioned a lot of things before, I think. That’s been the problem.

  In reality, Cora was on what seems to be an unending maternity leave with a token gesture cupcake hobby that allowed her to justify paying somebody else to raise her child. But it’s me who should give her my money? Sure.

  Something is happening to her, seizing her and taking over and she pushes harder with her arm across me. I stay as still as I can like there is an angry dog or a large bee coming close. Apply the same theory to any predator, I think. Don’t aggravate. Placate them. Keep them calm.

  ‘Michael doesn’t have a fucking job,’ she hisses at me. ‘Do you think I would be this terrified if Michael had a job?’

  ‘What are you on about?’ I start. ‘In the city. With the finance company.’

  She goes on about it enough; endless hints about how much cash he brings home. My details are sketchy but I know that much.

  ‘Sacked,’ she says. ‘For gross misconduct. Apparently he was perving over some new starter. Truly gross misconduct. I was too mortified to tell you all.’

  Another omission in a sea of wet wipes and rice cakes.

  We stand in silence then while I take that in, or perhaps even while she does too. She looks shell-shocked at her own news.

  ‘So you need another money maker,’ I say. ‘And that’s me and my misery.’

  She nods, grim.

  ‘Well it’s either that or sell this,’ she says, indicating her fake boobs. ‘But I’m knocking on a bit now. And that’s more your style.’

  I wince.

  ‘Are there really rumours about me on social media? About the blogger with the sex video?’

  She laughs, from her belly like I’ve heard so many times before but never at me. Never like this.

  ‘Yeah that was true!’ she says. ‘That’s what gave me the idea to fill them in. The noticeboards speculate. No one’s put it together yet. But they would lap up the full story. Jesus, who knew you were such a follower, though? The second I mentioned it to you, you deleted everything.’

  She’s right. How easily I will remove parts of my life as soon as someone tells me to, I think. Happens all the time. Ed. Cora.

  ‘It didn’t start off this big,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d help Emma get revenge and make a few quid to help with my credit card debt at the same time. But then Michael lost his job. I was poor growing up, Scarlett, and I can’t be poor again. And don’t give me that bullshit about having no money. I’ve seen your house. You both have good jobs.’

  ‘No, Cora. No. I left my job. Because of the video. Did you not get that, that night in the pub?’

  She waves her arm dismissively. ‘But you’ll get another one,’ she says. ‘Same sort of thing. Well paid.’

  Cora has the decency – can you call it that? – to duck her head before she says the next part; to avoid my eyes.

  ‘And I know you have an inheritance, after your mum died. Kids who lose parents always do.’

  Too much, Cora. Too far.

  It’s like somebody has taken the wrong brick out in a game of Jenga and I am falling, toppling, away from normal boundaries.

  I have weathered a lot, these years, these months, these last hours.

  I have tried to be respectable.

  Not any more.

  Where did respectable get me?

  In my house, threatened.

  In Cora’s house, shivering and sodden.

  Online, shamed.

  Cora’s arm, which seemed so strong a few minutes ago, has been shoved from my neck and she is on the floor, me on top of her.

  Why did I think that she controlled me?

  I’m bigger than her, fitter. And I have been building up to something. Pounding the pavements wasn’t enough. I need an outlet and here it is in its cashmere pyjamas, glasses on.

  ‘Emma at least had some emotional reason for wanting to take me down,’ I hiss. ‘But you! Money. Just money. Money that you spent on dresses and your eyebrows and so much fucking white paint. And now you want more, so you think the best way is to blackmail your own friend.’

  I am panting now, I’ve become the predator I had frozen for earlier.

  I pause, arm across her mouth so she couldn’t answer me even if there was anything for her to say.

  I am too angry to hear excuses that involve private schools and designer coffee tables.

  The shaking that was from a chill earlier is with rage now, pure rage.

  And I need to get it out.

  ‘I ask again actually – was Asha in on it too? Or just two of the people I spent most of my days with?’

  An image pops in of seeing Asha that day, with Mitch. Was this a whole team thing, only me on the outside? Did they come for me, target me as a group?

  But Cora shakes her head, her newly dyed hair – sure, you’re skint – splayed across her cream carpet like roadkill.

  ‘Well that’s one thing,’ I say, sarcastic. ‘Though I guess my odds of finding three utter bitches was low. Even two’s quite impressive.’

  I hold on to her throat then, and I think about her body, warm in bed next to me when I slept over like we were fourteen, crashed out after too many melted Mars Bars.

  The friendships I’ve made since I’ve had Poppy have been simila
r to those teenage ones: intense, emotional. Fast.

  Cora tries to wrestle away but I’m stronger and I hold her down, down, down, until it becomes like a meditation, the pressing, the holding, against a body that is moving hard and desperate against me.

  How long can you stay in the moment for, Scarlett, how long, how long, how long?

  Cora struggles.

  But I’ve entered a state of mindfulness.

  Far superior to the apps.

  Far better than anything I get loading the motherfucking endlessly whirring time-sucking dishwasher.

  I could do this forever, I think.

  After living in the past so much, after spending so much time thinking of how the future looks, I have never been more in the now.

  My inheritance did exist. It went on a deposit for a flat rental in Chorlton. It went on buying my way out of an old life, into a new one. It came at the right time, me turning twenty-five, as I moved out of my dad’s after I went travelling and he saw that I was serious about being a grown-up. It set up my life. It went, the rest of it, into an ISA that I think now might let me get away again, from here. And she thinks I’m giving that up?

  ‘Does the money matter now, Cora?’ I ask as her eyes start to droop. ‘Does it matter this second?’

  44

  Scarlett

  28 July

  Then suddenly, I come out of my trance.

  I picture Penelope, first, upstairs snoring lightly, tiny feet, soft pyjamas.

  I see Cora’s face when she scoops her from the floor to go home after a playdate, loving her so much she could consume her.

  I see my friend with a glass of champagne in her hand, laughing with me and laughing at herself as she is self-deprecating about her fanciness and her expensive tastes and I think that some of it was real, surely.

  I see her with her head on her pillow, a little mascara smudged around those eyes that are now so scared.

  How she had looked fifteen suddenly that morning under her duvet without her bright lipstick and her over-ironed hair and without her mouth set in its usual position, one that says defend before you’re attacked.

  I look at her face below me.

  She is a person.

  She’s that person, and she’s this person. The different versions again.