by Sophie White
Amy snapped the cover of her iPad shut and smiled tightly, ignoring the hysterical barrage of questions from Teresa Daly. She slipped in the side gate and started up the driveway.
The shot cut back to studio, where Jean was apologising to a furious-looking Hazel. ‘I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight.’
Sandra turned it off and Shelly ran out to the hall, flung open the front door and threw her arms around Amy.
‘You saved us! Hazel was about to have a field day eviscerating me on live TV.’
‘God, I know – sure I was watching her Stories. She was all over Insta talking about preparing to speak on behalf of the mummy blogger community to condemn Shelly Devine.’
Shelly winced.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get a handle on all this in a matter of hours.’ Amy had disengaged and was storming towards the office.
‘Amy!’ Shelly couldn’t believe she was capable of smiling right now, but the sight of a fired-up Amy was giving her nostalgia. Amy whirled around, tapping away on her iPad already.
‘Mm-hmm?’ She didn’t even look up.
‘You don’t work for me anymore.’
‘Don’t worry, Shel. This is pro bono.’ Amy gave a wink and headed on. ‘I’ll be in the war room,’ she called over her shoulder, starting up the stairs.
Shelly ducked back in to say goodnight to her parents. They’d moved on to watching an ad for Brendan O’Connor’s panel show The Cutting Edge.
‘I can’t make up my mind about this O’Connor fella,’ Jim was muttering.
‘I like the look of him,’ Sandra said. ‘He’s a handsome lad, especially for a Cork man. And he’s a great singer. I heard him singing ‘The Wonder of You’ once.’
Shelly said goodnight and gave them a hug. They were going to stay in the guest room and she realised, discomfited, that they never had before. ‘I’m sorry if we haven’t been that close for a while, Mam.’
‘You never have to say sorry to us, pet.’ Sandra smiled. ‘You’ve been under a lot of pressure. But we’re always here, no matter what.’
Leaving them to it, Shelly climbed the stairs slowly, feeling more #blessed than she had in years. There was no way in hell she should be happy right now. God knows what was being said about her – she was splashed all over the bloody news, for god’s sake, and yet somehow she felt oddly lighter. She’d started seeing a counsellor and their sessions were definitely helping to lift the guilt Shelly’d been burying.
She grabbed a towel from the cupboard and stepped into the bathroom where Marni was giving Georgie her bath.
‘Mama,’ the little girl shrieked. ‘Look what I am.’ She paddled in the water, sending bubbles into the air like tiny soapy clouds, and let out a series of barks.
‘Ah, the puppy is having her bath.’ Shelly knelt down to pet her. ‘Oh, such a good puppy and so clean!’
Marni laughed, standing up to go.
‘Thanks a million for staying late this evening.’ Shelly smiled a bit awkwardly. ‘I didn’t expect all that fuss with the press to be going on.’
‘No probs.’ Marni stretched. ‘I’m glad to help out any time.’
Shelly gave her a hug. ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the reports, but I just want you to know, they took me up completely the wrong way.’
Marni shook her head, smiling. ‘Of course I know that, Shelly, no need to explain. I’ll see you on Thursday night? I’m babysitting for the awards?’
‘Em, actually, no, I think I’m going to give them a miss – thanks, Marni. We’re going to have a girly night in, aren’t we, puppy?’ Georgie barked and Marni laughed. ‘Can I text you about next week when I know what my schedule looks like? I think I’m going to be cutting back a bit.’
‘Sure, no problem, we’ll talk. Bye, chérie.’ Marni kissed Georgie and headed downstairs to run the gauntlet of Teresa Daly and her camera.
Shelly and Georgie played puppies for a few more minutes and then it was time for stories and cuddles in the little pink bed.
‘Nighty, night, sweet baby,’ Shelly called as she carefully closed the door just the way Georgie liked it.
‘Night, Mama … Can I tell you something?’
Shelly grinned. This had become her latest bedtime stalling tactic. She usually allowed her three ‘can I tell you something’s before getting serious about sleep time. She knelt down by her pillow so Georgie could whisper to her. Her hot breath tickled Shelly’s ear but the words buoyed her immeasurably.
‘You’re my best friend, Mama!’
After several more whispered somethings, Georgie finally dropped off and Shelly made her way up to the office to tell Amy she wasn’t sure she even wanted to salvage this SHELLY thing anymore.
She found, to her dismay, Amy looking upset in the corner.
‘I’m so sorry, Shelly.’ She looked up. She looked so young with half her make-up cried off and her eyes swollen and red.
‘Amy, oh my god, please stop. SHELLY’s not that important. It doesn’t matter anymore. I promise you.’ Shelly cradled the girl. ‘I was planning to walk in here, sit you down and tell you that I want out!’ Shelly smiled down at Amy but Amy only stared back silently. The fear in Amy’s eyes as she handed over her phone stopped Shelly cold.
On the screen was an email that just said: ‘Shelly is a LIAR.’ The sender was [email protected]
There were images attached – Shelly smiling but with the eyes blacked out. One was from the Daddy Bears’ Picnic – a side-by-side of Dan and the Almost Dan they’d employed for that day with the caption ‘Spot the difference!’ Next up a side-by-side of baby Georgie and the random stock image of a baby that she’d once used when Georgie was tiny and had terrible infant acne. She’d been banking on no one noticing – newborns all look the same, after all. Once again the words ‘Spot the difference!’ were typed over the picture. Someone had noticed. Someone had been noticing and watching for a very long time.
Less than an hour later, Shelly was sitting in the police station. Amy was beside her, drawing a diagram, attempting to explain the ins and outs of the Instagram world to Inspector Fitzgerald. Eventually, he sighed heavily and shouted out the door of the interview room. ‘Bríd, will you come in here? They’re on about selfies and things.’
A younger garda came in, smiling, and introduced herself. ‘Bríd Nolan, I’m in the tech division. We handle fraud and identity theft, online stalking, revenge porn, that kind of thing. What’s been going on?’
Amy handed over the picture Shelly had taken of her and @KellysKlobber on the night of Dan’s meltdown and explained the whole story.
‘So this is the woman you think has been hacking your phone? Though, to be honest, I need to look into whether it’s possible to change the phone wallpaper like that. It’s pretty high-level stuff. There’s no way she was there, is there?’
‘No.’ Shelly sighed. ‘I was on a retreat in Kerry. She wasn’t there.’ She felt utterly drained.
Amy took over then, to Shelly’s relief, sliding printouts across the table.
‘I’ve done some digging,’ Amy explained. ‘I have pretty much everything we need. When I emailed her to tell her to back off, I got an out-of-office. Her address was in the email signature. Idiotic, like. It’s straightforward but we just need you to go and deal with her. This has to stop.’
‘Absolutely.’ Bríd was leafing through the pages. ‘This should be totally straightforward – 90 per cent of these people are just bored and never dream they can actually be easily traced or that we’re going to show up at their door. I’ll update you both as soon as we’ve interviewed her.’
27
‘There are some days that you just know are going to change your life forever.’ Ali beamed up into the phone. The best angle was always from above, she’d learned – like, fully overhead. It accentuated cheekbones and eliminated any double chin. ‘You wake up one person and you go to sleep a completely different one. I just know that today is one of those days. And I can’
t believe it’s finally here! It’s a day that I have waited for for a long time now. It’s a day to celebrate and empower Irish women, and I am so honoured to be one of the women being celebrated this evening – and I owe it all to you guys.’
Ali uploaded the video to her Story, adding the hashtag #GlossieAwardsNight, just as the doorbell rang.
Who was that? Liv had already left for college and the make-up artist who was doing her prep for the awards wasn’t due for hours. Ali made her way through the detritus of gifts from various brands. She was coming down with baby gear that she needed to photograph and post about. So much to do. In the hall, the collection of porcelain cats in bonnets still manned the table where the long-defunct house phone sat. Stuck to the front door was a note from Liv. The tone was undeniably cold.
Ali,
I’m submitting a draft of the opening chapters of the thesis. It’s due by COB today so I need you to sign the consent form I’ve left on the kitchen table. It’s giving permission for the images I’ve included from your account that appear in sections two and three. Obviously, I’ve redacted your profiler and name in the pics.
Liv.
Ali screwed up the note and opened the door to find Sam looking cross.
‘Ah, so you’re not dismembered by some hippy freaks in a forest in Kerry. Great.’ He stepped past her into the hall.
‘Hi.’ Ali felt instantly wrong-footed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here to say hi in person since you’ve been ignoring my texts and voicenotes and DMs.’
‘I have not.’ Ali slipped ahead of him into the kitchen to grab Liv’s consent form and shove it under a pile of magazines. ‘Tea? Coffee? I told you the signal in Kerry was shite.’
‘You’ve been back six days,’ Sam said flatly. ‘I feel like you’re avoiding me. You blocked me from your Story again. I can tell, ya know. Eamon’s girlfriend, Sarah, follows you and she let me see – you were updating last night.’
Ali put the kettle on and rummaged for biscuits.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ali really didn’t have time for this, but things with Sam had to be managed very carefully.
He had become the best thing in her life, but now that the Glossies were here, time was running out on her lies. Still, she couldn’t help but hope that she’d somehow be able to style it out. Putting on the blinkers and focusing on the now was the only way she could deal with her mounting anxiety about her various strands of deception. If her mind tried to take in the whole picture it was just too much: instant panic attack. Zoom out and her life was a blazing inferno of chaos and hashtags, but up close it seemed much more manageable somehow.
Like, right now wasn’t about trying to figure out what to tell Sam about their imaginary baby. It was about doing some glam-prep for tonight’s awards. Then she’d visit Miles and give him ice cream and try not to think too much about what was going to happen to him. Compartmentalising had become Ali’s main jam – she just needed to stay focused on the positives.
Sam sat down heavily at the table. ‘I thought things were maybe going badly with Miles but then Sarah tells me you’re all over Instagram talking about the best cat-milk serum for dry, tired skin?’
Ali squirmed. Things with Miles were going badly. She hadn’t missed a day with him since coming back from Kerry but it still didn’t feel like she was doing enough. ‘That’s work stuff, I have to do that. And things aren’t good with my dad right now. They really don’t …’ Ali stopped to catch her breath. ‘They really don’t think he’s got long,’ she finished quietly. ‘I actually have to go up there right now.’
Ali just didn’t have the words to talk about Miles anymore. She seized up whenever she thought too far ahead about what was coming. And Tabitha had been different the last few days, as if she somehow was privy to Miles’s fate. Yesterday Ali had arrived at Ailesend to find new chairs in the room – not hard plastic like the old chairs but big cushioned ones that reclined. Ali didn’t quite know what to make of it.
She’d sat on the edge of Miles’s bed, rubbing his forearms and staring suspiciously at the chairs. She got the feeling that she didn’t want to know why they’d been changed. When she’d got up to leave an hour later, she’d forced herself to look at Miles for a long time. Some days in that room she barely let her eyes rest on his face for more than a few seconds – it was just too hard. Now she let her eyes roam his face and shock shuddered through her. His mouth gaped, his lips were cracked and dry, his eyes no longer blinked. He wasn’t there anymore. He couldn’t be. Ali couldn’t cope with the idea that he was conscious and trapped inside this mask of a face so she had to believe that he was gone, safe somewhere with no idea of what had become of him.
‘Let me go with you then,’ Sam implored. ‘I want to help. I’m good with sad situations. I can get snacks and say inappropriate things.’
‘Like what?’ Ali couldn’t resist. If she was going to lose him, she wanted to hear him be his sweet, playful self one more time.
‘I just can’t stop thinking about the cat-milk serum. Are they milking the cats with a machine or are the scientists doing it by hand? Hand-milked sounds posher.’
Ali smiled and tears caught in her throat while regret pooled in the pit of her stomach.
He stood up and put his arms around her. Fuck. It had gone on too long with Sam. How did she let it get this far? Then she inhaled and his smell felt like home. Oh yes, she thought, that.
‘Let me come,’ he whispered.
‘You can’t.’ Ali pulled away and backed up till she was against the fridge door. She needed to put some distance between them.
‘Ali, you’re hurting. It’s so hard – he’s your dad. I’d like to meet him … before …’
Ali clenched her hands into fists. She was going to have to do it. He wasn’t going to be fobbed off. She had to finish him.
‘I’m not hurting. I just don’t want you there. And I don’t want you here. I don’t want you, Sam,’ she said, using his name like the swing of a bat. ‘You have to leave.’
He looked stunned and then utterly crushed. She pushed him into the hall towards the door. As she opened it, he seemed to come to his senses. ‘You can’t push me out of your life. That’s our baby.’ He sounded shell-shocked. He stepped outside but turned back to face her. ‘I … Ali, I love—’
‘This is not about that right now.’ She couldn’t bear to hear what she was giving up. ‘My dad is … whatever. You have to go – leave me alone. I’ll get your stuff together and you can come and grab it later. I’ll leave a key out.’
She slammed the door shut, feeling sick and off-balance. Breaking up with Sam wasn’t actually a solution in any way but she needed to buy time and come up with a plan. For what? Ali barely knew anymore, she felt like she was on a runaway train, unable to stop the momentum of her lies. After the awards are over I’ll figure it all out, she promised herself.
Ali spent the rest of the morning in the salon, Ellie’s Elysium, tensely watching the other influencers’ Stories while various beauty therapists added and subtracted hair from her face and body. She’d been late because of Sam, shoving his worn-out T-shirts and novelty boxers into a shopping bag which she’d left in the hall. She’d nearly kept one but he’d definitely notice and then he’d know she was somewhere sucking the smell of him off a grotty old T-shirt.
Ellie, the eyelash technician, chatted while she was refilling Ali’s set. ‘So, have you heard about Shelly Devine?’ Ellie loved the juice – she lived for it.
‘Yeah, I was actually there when that video was filmed,’ Ali said, trying not to move too much.
‘No!’
‘Yeah. Though actually, to be honest, whoever did make that video totally screwed her. They made it out to be way worse than it was. Her rant was actually kinda funny.’
The lash technician looked a bit disappointed at this but quickly moved on to speculating over whether or not Shelly would show at the Glossies. ‘She’s pretty much shut down the SHELLY account. One of
the girls heard from a client that she’s got a stalker.’ She finished the left eye and began on the right.
‘Huh, that explains why she was acting shifty at that retreat,’ Ali mused.
‘I always knew she was too perfect to be for real,’ the girl announced knowingly. ‘High time everyone saw her true colours. It’s the child I feel sorry for.’
Ali squirmed a little. She felt bad not defending Shelly; she’d gotten to like her in the last couple of months. But at the same time, commenting on someone else’s Insta-scam was definitely pot-calling-kettle-black territory right now. She snuck a peek at the lash artist – what did she say about her to other clients?
Don’t be so paranoid, Ali reminded herself, but it was hard not to be. Being Insta-famous was like being in a very attractive marble and rose-gold prison – you were under constant surveillance. Not for the first time since all this began, Ali wondered if she’d be happier without Instagram altogether. But then what would she have left?
‘You’re all done, hun, they look amazing! My handle is @ElliesElysium.’
Ali could take a hint but sometimes it was all so exhausting. Plug, plug, plug. She took a selfie and posted it. Within minutes the post was awash with likes and squealing comments. It felt good, and that was undeniable. Ali sat engrossed, refreshing the post every few seconds, as time slipped past. She watched as the likes soared and she felt flooded with the kick of dopamine until Ellie returned with her next client, looking surprised that Ali was still there.
She drove home to meet the make-up artist, feeling the tide of anxiety wash in once more. She wished she could just enjoy herself. The hours of this day were ticking down maddeningly slowly. Why did she just want it all to be over? After everything she’d done to get here? She flashed on Sam’s devastated face, everything she’d sacrificed …