by Sophie White
Amy was slight – she could probably pass for twelve though she was actually twenty-six. She’d grown up in the Liberties with her mum and dad and four brothers, which maybe contributed to her staunch refusal to take any crap from anyone. She had two sleeves of vivid tattoos snaking up each skinny arm and meeting across her shoulder blades. More flowers and birds and mythological creatures adorned her calves and thighs, and Shelly was forever reminding her to cover up at the various events Shelly made paid appearances at. Amy Donoghue, it seemed, was confident enough in her indispensability to flagrantly ignore this instruction.
She adjusted the vintage cat-eye glasses perched on her elfin face and immediately launched the app she used to track Shelly’s schedule. ‘When’s the due date? We have so much to organise.’
‘I’m not officially pregnant,’ Shelly managed to splutter, slowly straightening back up. ‘Well, as in I am but I haven’t even told Dan yet. It wasn’t quite part of the … em … plan,’ she whispered.
Though was that really true? Shelly wondered.
While Dan had been categorical about not wanting another child, ever since Georgie had turned three Shelly had begun to yearn for another baby. That’s not to say that she’d done this on purpose. Of course not. She might have been a teeny bit careless with her pill a couple of times (Dan didn’t even take part in contraception efforts) but she hadn’t gone behind his back or anything … Though whether Dan would see it that way was another story. Things had been tricky between them. Dan didn’t exactly take SHELLY seriously as a real business.
She tried to ignore his snarky comments, but last night as she’d been arranging the table for a dinnertime post for Georgie’s Instagram (‘Delicious dinner with mommy and daddy thanks to @organicbabynomnom #eatgreenbabyorganicbaby #growingstrongbabies #spon #ad #georgieisdivine #shellyisdivine’) he’d been derisive.
He’d just arrived in from work and was leaning against the peninsula (‘It seems odd to have it jutting out from the wall like this – can we not just get an island?’ had been Dan’s take when renovating the light-filled kitchen extension) and swigging a bottle of Tiger.
‘What are you whoring the poor child out for tonight? A crate of own-brand baked beans, a hotel break in Kilrush?’ He’d said it like he was joking but Shelly could hear the tightness in his voice.
‘Dan! God! They’re actually organic sweet potato fries and kale pesto and Georgie’s loving them.’
‘Right.’ He’d looked sceptical and then announced he was heading out with some of the lads from work.
He’d come back at 3 a.m. Shelly hadn’t been able to sleep and heard his fumbling progress through the darkened house and up to their bedroom on the third floor of the sprawling detached house in Portmarnock they’d bought five years ago, the year they’d married. Luckily, Georgie was a heavy sleeper and so didn’t even stir as Dan walked into at least three pieces of furniture en route to the bed.
‘What are you talking about “not part of the plan”?’ Amy was frantically tapping things into her phone and apparently ignoring the potential fallout of Dan Devine learning that he had unwittingly impregnated his wife again. ‘It’s a feckin’ brilliant plan! The SHELLY Instagram enjoys a major boost in engagement whenever we re-share pictures from when you were pregnant. Any post of you holding Georgie or #TBTs you’ve done to when you were preggers the last time has done wonders for the brand. In short, the plebs—’
‘Followers, Amy!’ interjected Shelly, horrified.
‘Sorry, OK, the followers love Shelly with a belly,’ Amy finished with a satisfied grin. ‘I need to completely overhaul the Q1 Insta strategy, like, yesterday!’
‘Well, I’m not telling Dan yet. I need some time to think about this. Anyway, I’m only a few weeks gone – there’s no need to be changing anything just yet.’ Just then a Calendar Alert pinged on Shelly’s phone. ‘Have you scheduled the baby announcement reveal already?’ She couldn’t help but smile at Amy still feverishly tapping things into her phone.
‘I’m just throwing things in – don’t get caught up in exact dates just yet. I’m only trying to get a structure on this rollout, a loose timeline in place,’ Amy muttered without even looking up. ‘We want to get the absolute maximum out of this foetus. The baby buck is mega – way bigger than it was even three years ago when you were having Georgie. Back then any decent SMA would’ve been advising clients to downplay the mother angle but tides have changed on that – the whole mumfluencer buzz is mega now. And we’re gonna fucking own it.’
Shelly laughed lightly and then, hearing Dan’s footsteps on the stairs, quickly ran the taps to clear the sink of any incriminating vomit. Dan had already had one go at her this morning – he could not find out about this right now. Not yet.
He came into the kitchen carrying Georgie, and Shelly pasted a smile on her face.
‘Mama!’ Georgie reached for Shelly and Dan deposited her into Shelly’s arms and started pulling pages out of his laptop bag.
‘Hello, sweet baby! You slept well.’ Shelly nuzzled the little girl’s neck.
‘Peppa,’ Georgie shouted.
‘No, not till later,’ Shelly said firmly, smiling.
‘Peppa! Peppa! Peppa!’
Amy looked positively pained at the noise emitting from the child and consulted her phone while Shelly tried to calm Georgie down.
‘Peppa. I want Peppa!’
‘Marni’s on the WhatsApp, she says she’s two minutes away,’ Amy shouted over the child’s chanting.
Georgie immediately switched to shouting ‘Marni’ and, despite Shelly’s attempts at distraction, there was no let-up until Marni, the French minder who’d been with them for two years, walked in the door – at which point Georgie jumped down from Shelly’s arms and ran to the girl. Shelly tried to ignore the pang she felt as Marni swung Georgie up into her arms.
‘Let’s go and pick out your outfit, bébé!’ They headed upstairs, Georgie whispering excitedly in Marni’s ear.
‘Thank Christ,’ Dan snarked. ‘Someone nearly had to do some parenting there. I have a call in two, so if you could just keep it down out here,’ he said and headed into the room off the kitchen where Shelly and Amy usually did the flat lays.
Shelly slumped back against the peninsula. It wasn’t even nine and she felt like crying.
Amy remained buried in her phone – she had a knack for invisibility whenever things were awkward between Shelly and Dan – but a message from her on Slack dropped into Shelly’s alerts proclaiming the jam-packed day officially underway.
Pro-milk sponsored breakfast post – if you’re still so intent on this foodie angle, though you know my feelings on it, then we’ve got a car coming at 10 to bring you to set.
Shelly sighed. At least Amy had no interest in talking things out – it made things a bit more straightforward. Theirs was a strictly feelings-free relationship.
She began arranging Pro-milk (a dairy-free protein-enriched milk substitute) products on a tray. Amy thought the food blogging was a bit unglam for SHELLY but Shelly was keen to cut back on posts with her daughter in them and she wanted to diversify. Plus Durty Aul’ Town wouldn’t go on forever.
The show had been good for her when she and Dan had moved home from London, even if it was a bit of a come-down compared with what her RADA friends were doing. Though Plum, her bestie who kept her up to date with all the old crowd, loyally pooh-poohed this notion.
‘No one’s “made it”, Shelly. Delia’s doing guided tours of the London Dungeons playing a Victorian hooker with a heart of gold, Matt’s got an eczema ad in the works and Edwina’s already jacked it in and tossed off to Surrey with the prerequisite banker and baby on the way.’ At this, Plum abruptly shut up, having inadvertently described nearly exactly what Shelly’d done on graduating from RADA.
Plum didn’t get it – people needed security. Shelly hadn’t had a deprived childhood by any stretch, but when she’d arrived at RADA at twenty-one, she’d realised there was a whole other level
of wealth that, growing up with her hard-working parents in Kimmage, she didn’t know the first thing about. When she’d been introduced to Charity, Plum’s posh mother, she’d made gaffe after gaffe – or at least that’s what it felt like. Charity and Plum loved her and never made anything of those blunders (Shelly cringed remembering how she’d described the family’s country house as ‘shabby chic’) but Shelly had felt painfully aware of their differences as the months and years passed.
She got out the faux marble board and steel cutlery and added them to the tray of props as she thought back to when she’d finished drama school. The possibilities had seemed endless. She and all her London friends were working shitty part-time jobs while they put on their first plays and traipsed around to auditions. On weekends, she’d head to Plum’s parents’ country place, which was like something from an Evelyn Waugh novel. Her London friends were all kind of broke but in reality everyone had a safety net, except Shelly.
Her parents had been ecstatically proud of her acceptance to RADA and open-minded about her acting ambitions. Jim had a permanent, pensionable job in the tax office and Sandra had stayed home with the children, but they’d both been active in the local choir and loved helping out on the school plays when Shelly and her sister and brother, Serena and Johnnie, were the all-singing, all-dancing O’Brien kids. They’d encouraged Shelly when she decided to pursue acting after being in Dublin Youth Theatre, and while they helped her set up in London, they couldn’t pay her rent while she threw herself at every part that came up.
The winter after they finished RADA, the London crew were going skiing and, knowing Shelly couldn’t afford the trip, a few of them, presumably at Plum’s insistence, clubbed together to pay her fare.
‘Don’t even facking bother trying to say no.’ Plum was adamant. ‘The whole trip would be a dud if you weren’t there. You can borrow Mummy’s old ski suit and we’ll all be too pissed on vin chaud to notice how ridiculous you look.’
It was a life-changing trip in that the host, Dave, whose parents’ chalet they were all crashing in, had brought his friend from work. An Irish guy. Dan Devine. They’d all met sleepy-eyed in the airport and Dan was all but presented to Shelly.
‘Someone for you to play with!’ Plum said, winking.
‘Racist,’ said Dan with a twinkle that muted Plum momentarily.
Shelly laughed and joined in. ‘Yeah, what, just cos we’re both Irish we’re going to hang around together? What, are you gonna quarantine us?’
‘No, you’re gonna hang around together because you’re both shit skiers. And that’s because you’re Irish,’ laughed Plum.
‘Definitely racist,’ Dan whispered to Shelly. ‘Don’t mind them, they’ll be shit at the après.’ He gave her a wink and Shelly excused herself immediately to go to the bathroom and check what her face was doing at this ungodly hour.
Plum followed her. ‘Dan’s fit. Dave says he’s a rising star in the office.’
Shelly was still jangling from the encounter but she was intent on playing it cool. ‘Well, I dunno if I’d have much in common with a City boy, no offence to you and Dave.’
Plum grinned. ‘You don’t have to marry the guy!’
Famous. Last. Words.
When Dan had showed up he was everything Shelly wanted: gorgeous, confident and on his way to a good career, her ticket to a more comfortable life, and they adored each other. At least, Shelly thought they had. In the early days, Shelly pulled out all the stops. She never wanted to slide into that complacent drudgery she’d seen in other couples. She always made an effort with Dan, never slobbing around in trackies or grotty T-shirts. Even after they were practically living together in Dan’s apartment, Shelly was careful to never let the side down.
As she considered how things had changed, she arranged the dairy-free, wheat-free, refined-sugar-free muffins that their personal cook, Donna, had prepared last night on the dark slate plate she’d selected and added it to the tray. Where other couples seemed loose and comfortable with one another, a kind of formality remained between Dan and Shelly. The small things she’d chosen to ignore about Dan at the beginning – his slight lack of regard for her own ambitions, his ambivalence towards her family – seemed to magnify with the passage of time. After Georgie was born, it was obvious that Dan saw his daughter primarily as Shelly’s responsibility. And he was definitely not too thrilled with the enormous profile SHELLY had earned in the last couple of years.
Of course, he liked the influencer thing when it suited him – he’d loved the trip to Lapland to see Santa last month. Shelly was verging on feeling defiant when a wave of nausea reminded her just how far from having the upper hand she was at that particular moment. It was hard to separate the nausea of early pregnancy from the nausea of panic: the two had merged to provide a constant uneasy feeling that had been the backdrop to all her thoughts since seeing that positive pregnancy test four days ago.
Shelly distributed some Pro-milk into little jugs. She was feeling conflicted about the baby herself. She hadn’t had the easiest of times with Baby Georgie – she suppressed a shudder remembering those terminally long nights pacing the floors with the red-faced screaming little thing, fearful of waking Dan up. That screaming little thing had frightened Shelly and in those early days her antipathy towards the baby had settled deep in a secret, shameful part of her. It wasn’t right to not love your baby, was it?
It had been a bleak and lonely time, not at all what Shelly had thought being a new mum would be, and she’d felt betrayed by what she suspected was all pretence on social media. However, it was a pretence she was soon participating in, posting pics of her baby on Insta. She was too afraid of what it meant that she wasn’t in love with her new life as a one-woman dairy to be honest with anyone about it. Putting pictures on Instagram where everything looked perfect and happy made things feel … not perfect and happy exactly, but safer somehow. And then @ShellyDevine had really taken off for her.
Much later, Shelly had gone to the GP and been prescribed antidepressants for the gnawing fear that the doctor called postnatal depression. Part of Shelly suspected that this longing for a second baby was rooted in wanting a do-over on motherhood, to do the baby thing and get to feel it the way others seemed to. It was shaky logic upon which to pin such a major event, but other people had more than one baby. It wasn’t an outrageous thing to want, was it?
And maybe it would draw them closer, her and Dan. Shelly consulted Donna’s instructions on how to decorate the muffins and sprinkled some cinnamon over them. Dan would come around, she felt. It was all a matter of how she couched the news when she told him. She just needed to find the right way and the right time. She lifted the tray into the flat-lay studio, careful not to make too much noise as Dan was wrapping up his call.
‘Yep, yep,’ he glanced up at her and then turned away, ‘I think we need to push the McLoughlin account 2018 review out to the end of next week. The numbers will look healthier and that gives us a bit more time to put together the new investment opportunities presentation … Grand. See you then.’ Dan hung up and started clearing his files off the huge central table over which hung studio lights and a tripod for shooting overhead shots.
‘Sorry, I’ll get these out of your way, had to get that call done before Damien left the Melbourne office.’ He seemed to be over his earlier strop and was being polite enough. Maybe, Shelly thought, it’d be a good time to broach the Daddy Bears’ Picnic event. It was in three weeks’ time and the PR company running it was a major SHELLY client. They’d brokered deals with premier brands that, in turn, poured major money into the various SHELLY accounts, and it was crucial to show up looking like the family they purported to be on Instagram.
‘I was thinking it’d be nice to do something as a family soon.’ She set the tray down and began arranging the jugs and muffins under the lights. ‘The Lapland trip feels like ages ago.’
‘Yeah.’ Dan had one eye on his emails but seemed to be listening.
‘I was
invited to this really cute event in a few weeks’ time. It’s in Shanaghan House – it’s called the Daddy Bears’ Picnic and there’ll be food and games for the kids. Perfect family chill time,’ she added.
‘Is it?’ Dan put his phone down and, leaning his hands on the table, stared across at her. It was hard to read his expression. ‘Is it family chill time? Or is it a work obligation?’
‘Well, it’s a bit of both, I suppose,’ Shelly said slowly, hand-picking her words.
‘I see.’ Dan’s face was impassive and his tone flat. ‘Can I ask you – you’re an actress, right?’
Shelly didn’t like where this conversation was going. ‘You know I’m an actress.’ She folded her arms.
‘Uh-huh, and do you get paid for acting out bullshit storylines? Cos I don’t.’
‘Dan!’ Shelly blinked rapidly to ward off furious tears. She was too scared to point out that actually all the money earned with @ShellyDevine, @DivineDanDevine and @GeorgieDevine went into their joint account. ‘Why do you have to turn every little thing into a fight?’
‘Why do you have to turn everything into a photo op, a bit of sponcon for your Insta?’
‘I don’t do that,’ Shelly said weakly. Goddammit, this had gone way off script.
‘Don’t you?’ Dan slung his bag over his shoulder. ‘Thanks for the invite but I think I’ll spend my quality time with my daughter off-camera. You should think of doing the same.’
He walked out the door, his parting shot still ringing in Shelly’s ears.
4
Mini was poring over her iPad when Ali took the seat opposite her in the little café. They were the only customers at this time of day – it was much more of a lunch spot.
‘Hi, darling,’ she muttered, not looking up. ‘I’ll just be one moment,’ she added, holding up a long, elegant finger that boasted an almost architectural-looking ring; her other hand, Ali noted, was bare. Where was her wedding ring? Mini’s hair was immaculate in her trademark blunt steel-grey bob and her red lipstick was pristine. She wore a white tuxedo shirt-front under a corseted jacket. Despite a cutesie name, Mini always looked severe. An interviewer had once described her look as ‘malevolently chic’, which Mini had loved.