by Sophie White
Shelly was still smiling, hoping they’d wrap it up before anyone noticed her husband was apparently friends with the man in the giant bear suit.
‘Darren – that you? Fuck’s sake! You’re down on your luck, bit of a far cry from Jack Reynor, no?’
‘Well, at least I’m getting paid to be here! This your family?’
‘Nah, I’m actually getting paid for this gig too.’
At this Shelly whipped around. ‘Dan,’ she said pointedly. ‘Stop the chit-chat, let’s get this shot and go.’
She gripped Almost Dan’s arm and turned back to the photographer, smiling. Through gritted teeth she muttered, ‘Just look down like you’re laughing at something I’m saying so they can’t see your whole face.’
Tensely she surveyed the crowd. They were smiling vacantly, and no one seemed aware of anything amiss.
‘Just look at me, Shelly, thanks.’ The photographer clicked away.
She fixed her smile but in her peripheral vision she spied a strangely familiar figure. She flicked her eyes over. It was hard to be sure without turning to see but it looked like that Kelly girl from the hotel. Was she holding up a phone?
‘Great, just one more …’ Snap. ‘And we’re done.’ The photographer lowered the camera and Shelly zeroed in on the spot over to the right where she thought she’d seen the girl, but there was no one. Had she imagined it?
Aware of the crowds waiting expectantly for her, she pulled Almost Dan in and whispered, ‘Give me a goodbye kiss on the cheek and then you can get back on the phone.’ She was mortified but the whole show needed to look right. ‘Thanks,’ she added, barely able to look at him – what must he think?
Almost Dan gave her a peck, headed off towards a waiter distributing jelly sweets, grabbed a handful and stuffed them into his pocket. Shelly watched as he held the phone up to his ear and shouted, ‘Asia, it’s me, let’s get back to that money deal.’
She suppressed a shudder and turned to her followers.
After the selfie session, Shelly took Georgie over to where the Insta-mum squad were gathered in a roped-off area by the rose garden – their children, being fielded by a fleet of minders, grandparents and bored older siblings, were scattered nearby.
‘Shelly!’ @HolisticHazel greeted her by remaining seated on her cashmere picnic blanket and firing a couple of lacklustre air kisses at her while Polly jumped up to embrace her enthusiastically. It was a weird set-up with Hazel and Polly. They cultivated a friendship to a certain extent, tagging each other, commenting on each other’s posts and making a big show of building each other up in worthy blogposts about women helping women, but at the end of the day Shelly, Hazel and Polly were the three biggest fish in a very small pond so the undercurrent of envy and competition was never far from the surface.
Hazel was a former singer. She’d had some degree of success in the early 2000s with a single called ‘Everybody’s Gonna Party’, then she’d disappeared from view only to re-emerge ten years later on the Insta-scene, remade as a bona fide earth mother, dripping in children and extolling the virtues of very, very expensive natural hair and skin care – her own line, natch. Her beautiful home was floor-to-ceiling hessian, attractive for the ’gram but itchy as hell, Shelly thought any time she went over there.
Hazel’s online persona was one of Zen equilibrium with a great eye for a flat lay; in person she was a complete megalomaniac with an unending appetite for bitching. Polly, on the other hand, was sphinx-like with her views, never committing an opinion to the record in case she’d be held to something. She had two little boys and a devotion to crafting that was impressive or suspicious, depending on how much one really knew about the behind-the-scenes machinations of Instagram. Amy insisted there must be a sweatshop of poorly paid minions responsible for Polly’s exquisite output.
‘Great news re the impending bump! That’s going to be so good for engagement.’ Hazel smiled coolly.
‘Eh, yeah, I suppose so,’ Shelly said, trying to seem like she didn’t totally catch Hazel’s meaning.
‘Oh, come on, Shelly,’ she continued impatiently. ‘You know it! If my body wasn’t so wrecked from so many natural deliveries I’d still be at it. Financial reviews of the years I was growing my babies were just incredible. We might still do a bit of fostering – that’s a corner of the market that’s pretty untapped, though I think there’re privacy issues with those kids. Still, always ways around these things – a little tasteful pixelation, perhaps.’
‘Hazel.’ Polly looked rightly disturbed at this idea.
‘Oh, drop it, Polly. I’m just thinking out loud. Anyway, I’m so flat out with the new app it’ll be a while before we can really get back to working on the family – in development terms, I mean.’
Hazel made Amy’s shady activity seem mild in comparison. Before her sixth child was born she’d casually mentioned that she’d arranged the pregnancy so her due date would fall in summer because summer bumps ‘performed better’ on Instagram. Just then, Hazel’s summer bump, named (shock) Summer, ran past heading to the charcuterie table, leading Shelly to notice something of a stir over at the entrance.
‘What’s going on?’ Polly asked.
Hazel turned to see, looking quizzical. ‘Weird, we’re all here already.’
‘Hazel!’
‘Shut up, Polly, we were all thinking it!’
‘It’s that newbie, Ali Something – the one with the wild card for the Glossies,’ Polly murmured.
‘Ah yes, the bump rival.’ Hazel fixed her piercing green eyes on Shelly. ‘It’s going to be very hard to compete with a young, pert bump like that. You’re due around the same time, yes?’
God, she missed nothing, thought Shelly.
‘Ha, you’re too much, Hazel!’ Shelly feigned breezy. ‘I actually know Ali – she’s a great girl. She used to be in production on Durty Aul’ Town.’
‘Mm-hm.’ Hazel sounded sceptical.
‘They’re coming over …’
Shelly craned to see Ali and a tall guy wending their way through the marquee.
17
Ali was nervous at meeting the Insta-mums and parading Sam around her new Insta-life. He’d seemed a bit confused over the last few weeks whenever she’d update her Stories in front of him or get him to take a picture of her outfit.
‘You don’t really sound like the real you when you go on there,’ he’d said.
‘Yeah, well, no one’s very interested in the real anything on Instagram,’ she’d replied.
Entering the Insta-world of an event like this seemed particularly surreal with Sam in tow. There were women everywhere talking into their phones.
‘It’s just so fab to get some quality time together as a family,’ @LindasLittlePrecious shouted into her iPhone to their right while just beyond, her husband looked bored on his phone and their little girl had taken off her own soiled nappy and was hitting other children with it.
‘It’s like Black Mirror in here.’ Sam snorted with laughter and Ali struggled to hide her own giggles. He rounded on her, holding her upper arms and smiling as though he’d hit on some brainwave. ‘Hey, I have an idea! How about when we have our kid we actually look at it from time to time.’
They both glanced back at the family – Linda and the husband were still bent over their phones, while baby ‘Precious’, apparently despairing of her distracted parents, was wearily putting her own nappy back on.
‘Careful now, don’t be all smug,’ Ali warned. ‘Liv’s sister has kids and she says the phone’s a sanity saver, only thing keeping her from running away in the dead of night, according to Nella.’
‘Ali! So great to see you, and this must be Sam.’ Holly had descended and was already air-kissing him. Ali was glad of the interruption. As much as she and Sam were getting on well, she couldn’t quite quell the creep of unease in her stomach whenever he brought up the baby.
‘Hi, Holly, this is all gorgeous. And, yes, this is Sam.’ Ali was getting used to having an unwitting partner
in crime for this whole thing and, well, life in general.
Sam, Ali had to admit, really grew on a person – even Liv liked him, sort of. This was good, as he’d been staying over loads over the last couple of weeks, like a real boyfriend. It was tricky for Ali, though, as she’d had to seriously curtail her single habits, not to mention clean her room.
When she talked about Sam on her Stories, her followers lapped it up – it turned out that introducing Sam and laying out the whole one-night-stand story had been inspired. It was a millennial fairy tale for the ages. Blending the ‘pregnancy journey’ with the ‘newly loved-up couples goals’ narrative effectively brought together two huge audiences and had rarely been seen on Instagram before. Her following had soared to 57K in the last three weeks, with couples content often matching the bump-journey stuff in terms of likes and comments.
She was finding her niche in a way that she never had in the old days. She’d introduced a regular diary-style show on her IGTV called Ali’s Real Talk in which she voiced her apprehension at the changes coming in the next few months. She’d even been commended for her ‘refreshing honesty’ on the Notions.ie’s Insta-watch column. In her chats about going from ‘terminally single’ to ‘playing house’, she of course omitted the biggest habit she’d had to curtail: her drinking. With Sam around more and a fake pregnancy well underway, her boozing had virtually evaporated by necessity, and she didn’t like how much she missed it. It was making her analyse the wine-love far more than she cared to. Still, Sam’s hand in hers at night, instead of the glass, was nice.
‘I’d love to intro you to Polly, Hazel and Shelly – they’re congregated in our little unofficial “VIP” area?’
‘Oooh, are we “VIPs”?’ asked Sam, mimicking her air quotes and winking.
‘Ha, LOL,’ said Holly and turned to lead them over to the Insta-mums who were sitting apart from the crowd while their children scampered nearby.
Sam sniggered and Ali shot him a meaningful look. ‘Zip it, Tinder,’ she whispered urgently, employing his pet name to make sure he knew she was being serious but wasn’t angry. ‘These are the mums who run this whole scene. I need to get in with them. I presume they hate each other but on the grid they are BFs and I need to get in on that.’
‘Hazel, Polly, Shelly! I’m not sure if you gals know each other but this is Ali from @AlisBaba, and Sam, her daddy bear.’
‘Hi!’ Sam waved. ‘Listen,’ he turned to Holly, ‘what does a bear have to do around here? Shit in the woods?’
‘What?’ Holly was alarmed.
Ali groaned. ‘He thinks he’s being funny.’ She noticed with relief that Shelly was laughing quietly at this. ‘The loos are in the main house.’
Sam winked and made his way through some entertainers doing face-painting and a magician – pointless, really, as most of the kids were plugged into YouTube.
Ali rolled her eyes at the Insta-mums. ‘He’s such a man.’
Moaning about her ‘daddy bear’ turned out to be a good opener. Hazel leapt in eagerly.
‘OMG, yes, Eugene doesn’t know how to behave!’ She waved over at a short bespectacled man in a suit attempting to kick a football with a young boy while talking into his phone and peering at some complicated-looking document. ‘He can’t leave the office for one bloody hour. That kid’s not even one of ours – not that he’d notice.’
Ali had never seen Eugene on Hazel’s Insta and now she could see why. He didn’t fit with Hazel’s earth-mama-by-way-of-LA-but-actually-living-in-Knocklyon aesthetic. He wasn’t an ex-rugby player, like the guy Polly touted around like a beefy prized accessory or a DILF like Dan Devine. Poor Eugene apparently bankrolled his wife’s exquisite life but didn’t match it and therefore was written out of the whole damn thing.
‘Sam’s an office man too,’ Ali offered brightly, seeing a chance for bonding. ‘Though I actually haven’t a clue what he does. They get free snacks. I think he’s in HR.’
‘What do any of them do?’ mused Hazel wearily. ‘What’s Dan doing, Shelly? He is here, yes?’ There was something of a challenge in this question. And for some reason, Shelly did look a little startled. Weird, Ali thought.
‘He’s on to the office as well.’ Shelly glanced across the lawn beyond the marquee where, up a grassy verge along the perimeter fence, a dark-haired figure was having an animated phone conversation. ‘Asia.’ Shelly shrugged by way of explanation. ‘So how is the pregnancy going, Ali? Any nausea? I think we’re just about the same way along.’ She lowered her voice. ‘My due date was 9/11 but Amy pushed it out by a week because, well, ya know, you couldn’t write that on a post. It’d die a death.’
Polly and Hazel nodded wisely.
‘Yeah, I’m around then as well.’ Ali found it far easier talking about being pregnant in the comfort of an Instagram Story to thousands of faceless watchers than face to face with even one person, never mind three of the most influential people in the Insta-sphere. ‘I’ve been feeling grand mostly. Sam’s really up on pregnancy things and is making me mainline folic acid and stuff like that.’
‘Yeah, everyone seems to love Sam, don’t they?’ Hazel’s eyes were steely as she glared over at the hapless Eugene. ‘You’ve done well there. So what else do you have up your sleeve? I see you were touting a few beauty bits during the week – what are you charging for a post?’
Ali felt edgy. This Hazel person was nothing like her Insta-profile. This was the woman who had been talking about her jade yoni egg only this morning on Insta and shiteing on about putting rose quartz in the pot when she was making her weekly batch of bone broth. Ali had the distinct feeling she was being pumped for information and it was giving her The Fear.
The Fear, in fairness, had become an ever-present spectre in the past weeks. Ali was painfully aware that the fake pregnancy lie was at its most manageable in this very moment. At two months, she didn’t need to start showing – she had feverishly googled this on many anxious nights secretly slugging wine and tapping on the phone. However, the problem was that people like bumps in their bump content. Faking this for #OOTDs would be fine if Sam hadn’t managed to make himself a fixture in her life so rapidly.
Every day she had the unshakeable sense that she was inching ever closer to all-out disaster. And having to make an impossible choice between a fake baby or a real man. But even if she decided that Sam was more important than her #bumpjourney, that wasn’t without its complications. However devious lying about a positive pregnancy test was, Ali knew that she couldn’t, just couldn’t, fake something happening to the pregnancy – that was just too dark, even for her. So Sam would need an explanation. But what?
As the days marched forward and she was booking more and more sponsored content and ever more followers became invested in her story, she had the persistent feeling of detached unreality, as though this was all happening to someone else. When she and Sam were joking around on the couch at night or kissing under the covers in the morning, she could almost forget that a huge problem was looming. These moments of forgetful joy were fleeting, however, and within minutes anxiety could be depended on to return and choke the happiness back out of her.
‘Actually, Shelly and Ali, could I borrow you two for a couple of minutes?’ interjected Holly, saving Ali from Hazel’s probing questions.
Shelly jumped up eagerly, looking a little relieved too. ‘Absolutely,’ she said as she glanced over at her daughter and the woman who must be her minder. Ali had pored over Shelly’s profile since joining Insta and had never seen any mention of minders or nannies. In fact, there wasn’t a whisper of childcare on Hazel’s and Polly’s channels either. They had all the accoutrements of motherhood but their pristine lives rarely seemed sullied by the presence of actual children. These secret minders must be how they could take lavish sponsored family holidays yet also sit enjoying ‘a bit of peace with the love of my life’ on a sun-soaked Portugal beach, as one vintage Hazel caption read. Only Eugene’s left hand had made it into shot.
Ali f
ollowed Shelly and Holly over to another out-of-the-way picnic table teeming with colourful mini doughnuts, fruit skewers and an elaborate chocolate fondue, all untouched. As they were taking their seats, Amy Donoghue appeared, looking as gloriously out of place as ever with her tatts and her torn cut-offs, fishnets and Doc Martens.
‘We need to wrap up – fifteen minutes, Shelly, max,’ she said cryptically. Ali could see Shelly’s gaze flick back over to the opposite side of the lawn where Dan Devine appeared to be gesturing erratically and screaming, ‘Show me the money!’ into his phone in front of a rapt audience assembled just below him. Amy leaned in and whispered something, causing Shelly to relax slightly. Straightening up, Amy said, ‘We’ll see you in the car park,’ and after snapping a couple of pics of the spread for the ’gram, she marched back towards Dan, signalling to Georgie’s minder on the way.
Jeez. It’d be so fucking handy to have that. Shelly wouldn’t even have to post about the Daddy Bears’ Picnic – that’s true success, thought Ali: famous for an Instagram account you didn’t even have to manage anymore. That was the other thing about her new-found Insta-fame – it was a lot of work. Plotting posts, replying to endless DMs and comments. Ali had devised a master doc of stock responses to followers and that saved some time but, Christ, it was a bit tedious.
As Ali took her seat, a young, pregnant woman with an adorable bump snuck over.
‘I am so sorry to interrupt …’ she began. ‘I just love you so much …’
Shelly seemed to prime herself for the customary receiving of adoration and indeed Ali, who wasn’t used to being accosted in public, also presumed that she was there for Shelly. However, the girl clumsily swooped in and hugged Ali. Through the fan’s hair, Ali could see Shelly’s face. She looked stunned and even … was there a hint of jealousy there?
‘Oh, right. Thanks!’ said Ali. The proximity of a very real, pretty large bump was freaking her out, as though this girl’s pregnancy would make Ali seem even less pregnant by comparison.
‘I’m mad into the chicken fillet rolls as well,’ the girl offered shyly. ‘I can’t help myself … As you said, the baby wants it!’