by Sophie White
The voicenote ended there and Ali tossed the phone to the floor, where it landed by her feet, and leaned her head back on the headrest. A sense of desolation so final it was frightening was spreading through her.
‘Jesus, she sounds so gleeful.’ Liv had finally come to the entrance to Ailesend and was turning right.
‘Well, I guess I would’ve been too – you know, if it wasn’t about me. God, why did I do this?’ She closed her eyes. Ali felt flattened – all the fight had gone out of her.
Liv exhaled, looking troubled. ‘I feel bad. I should have done more to stop you.’
‘Yeah, it is your fault,’ Ali deadpanned. ‘Just sitting there taking notes on my psychotic break.’
They both managed a weak laugh at this.
They continued up the driveway of Ailesend and Ali was pulled back from the vitriol in her phone and the heinous mess she’d made of everything. She tried to relax her jaw – it had been clenched since leaving the house. He’ll wait for you, she reminded herself, though she had no idea why she felt so certain.
‘I’ve never been here at night before. Usual visiting hours are daytime only but now that no longer applies to us.’
Liv pulled up at the door and put on the handbrake. ‘I’ll be right here. All night, I promise. I’m here.’
‘What about the thesis draft? You didn’t drop it in.’
‘I’ve sorted it.’
‘That fucking thesis.’ Ali shook her head ruefully and Liv winced. ‘Don’t say sorry again,’ Ali added quickly. ‘I don’t blame you. You were right about everything. You were trying to talk sense into me. I blame me. I knew—’ The words caught in her throat. Breathe, Ali. ‘I knew that I’d lose Miles, but I thought maybe I’d make it out with Sam, ya know?’ She started to cry. ‘Why am I crying over this? My dada is going to die – why am I crying over some guy?’
Liv looked helpless. ‘You loved him too,’ she said eventually. ‘Maybe it’ll work out. Maybe I can talk to him.’
‘We shouldn’t even be talking about this – it’s not the time.’ There’d be time to deal with everything, and right now, Ali couldn’t bear the thought of screwing one more thing up. She leaned over and hugged Liv. Then she got out and retrieved her stuff from the back seat. Her phone was ringing. ‘Mini Calling’.
Ali ignored it and started to sprint through the doors into the home. If Mini was calling to say it was too late, Ali couldn’t bear to hear it over the phone.
This could be the last time I ever have to come to this place, she thought as she ran past the empty reception, not bothering to sign in. It gave her no comfort. She realised that, more than anything, she wanted him to stay. She no longer cared that the life he had was no life at all. She just wanted him to stay with her. Through the ward, down past Tabitha, who was engrossed in paper work – she’s having a normal day, Ali marvelled. She’s just at work right now. She finally got to his door. She peered through a teeny crack, holding her breath. Please don’t be gone, she willed silently. Mini was sitting at the head of the bed, clutching her phone and whispering urgently to him. Ali was flooded with relief. She gave them as long as she could and then knocked gently.
She came in and took the chair opposite her mother.
‘No change here,’ Mini said quietly. ‘But it’s close, I think. I keep thinking he’s stopped breathing and then after an age he does again.’
‘I brought a surprise.’ Ali smiled.
‘Yes, I wondered what on earth you were off doing.’
Ali produced Miles’s ukulele, grinning.
‘Oh Jesus, that thing.’ Mini started to smile.
‘Well, I was going to bring lobster for us to eat in his honour but then I thought lobster at a deathbed was a bit … ick?’
‘Yes, that’s probably why they only serve biscuits – it’s all you could stomach at a time like this,’ Mini agreed.
‘I thought you’d like it, Dad.’ Ali strummed a bit, looking at Miles.
‘Since when do you play the ukulele?’
‘Well, we’ve been sitting by this bed a long time. I’m not always on the phone, ya know.’
Ali picked out the start of a jokey song that Miles had always played at family parties. Mini would playfully shout him down, pretending to moan about it. ‘Why doesn’t he play a real instrument?’ she’d always say, amused but exasperated.
Mini was quiet for a moment, then she began to giggle. ‘You know he brought that bloody ukulele to the hospital when you were born? The nurses thought he was hilarious. So, of course, that really got him going. I was screaming for them to give him the gas and air just to shut him up. Imagine having contractions while someone’s playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’. I wanted to kill him! After you finally came out, we were holding you and wondering what on earth we were supposed to do now. Everything had finally quieted down, just like it is here now, and he sang to you. ‘Dream A Little Dream’ it was. And you …’ Mini started to break a little as the tears came. ‘You cried along! And you didn’t stop for seven weeks straight. Then I wanted to kill you!’
Time stretched and contorted that night. It was the strangest of Ali’s life. She was determined to make it beautiful somehow. They played CDs and told stories. The time Miles lost four-year-old Ali at the restaurant and it turned out she was hiding in the dumbwaiter. The time an actor had a fall during an interval and Miles stormed down to the theatre trying to muscle in on the part.
‘He’d no shame.’ Mini was giggling helplessly. ‘There was already an understudy, and he’d walked out of the restaurant in the middle of service. Utter loon!’
‘D’you remember when we went to Paris when I was seven and he took me to see the Eiffel Tower and he told me that I mustn’t be disappointed but the Eiffel Tower actually only comes up to your knee and all the pictures of it are just an optical illusion? Such odd, pointless lying, Dad! But then when we finally saw it, it was such a surprise – it actually made it more exciting.’
At times in the night the nurses came in, performing checks and making notes. At some point Ali drifted into a strange sleep that hovered just on the edge of consciousness – when she started awake, dawn was creeping in to the room. She leant forward, studying Miles. She put her hand in front of his face and pleaded silently. Don’t say I’ve missed you. Stay, stay, stay. The CD had played out. The room was quiet but for the wheeze of the air mattress pump. She held her breath as she waited for his.
At last, the faintest warmth hit her hand – so gently it was barely perceptible. And she knew the moment had come.
She stood and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Mini, just awake, reached for Miles’s hand. Ali put her arms around him and leaned down. She was surprised that she felt no fear. For the last few months, she had been so afraid of what was happening to him, repelled by the feeding tubes and nappies – the banal yet horrifying facts of a wasting body. Now she held him and began to sing softly, about shining stars and night breezes, her voice cracking on the word ‘love’. ‘Dream A Little Dream of Me’, she whispered. And she searched for the slightest hint that he heard her.
Epilogue
Shelly smiled nervously at Dan as he took a seat across the table. The room was a palette of muted greens with a couple of potted plants. Corporate but projecting calm.
‘So have things with the whole televised rant settled down?’ Dan grinned, shrugging off his jacket.
‘Ha ha,’ she laughed softly. Then she paused. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk until the mediator gets here?’ She offered up an awkward shrug. She could see he wasn’t in a bad mood but she wasn’t about to say a word without a professional present. This could get messy.
Dan only raised his eyebrows and began scrolling on his phone. Shelly tapped her nails nervously. Three days since the video had gone viral and things had already somewhat settled down. She felt bad because the whole Ali Jones fiasco at the Glossies had definitely helped. Also, surprisingly, quite a few women had taken Shelly’s side and the whole episode had sparked
a rash of hot takes in the media, largely commending her for ‘bravely’ speaking out about the real struggles of motherhood and revealing what goes on behind the filter.
It was awkward being hailed as some bastion of truth-telling, particularly while being at the centre of what looked like a very sinister blackmail plot. The guards had been on the case all week and Shelly was looking forward to putting it behind her. According to Bríd, they were interviewing @KellysKlobber at that very moment.
Meanwhile, Holistic Hazel had ended up with a mini backlash of her own when a few followers called her out for ‘tearing down’ her fellow mumfluencer.
‘What a world,’ Sandra had commented, amazed, as Shelly had attempted to recount the intricacies and vagaries of the swings and roundabouts of social-media public-opinion trials. Shelly had zero interest in engaging with any of it, though Hazel’s people had been straight on to arrange a ‘playdate’ to show all was well in the Irish mumfluencer camp. And while Shelly had no desire to be involved in a highly engineered PDA with Hazel, in the interests of playing nice she’d agreed and was heading there that afternoon.
‘Hello, Dan, Michelle?’ Cliona Ní Dhunta looked supremely competent, just as you’d want a mediator to look. Shelly steeled herself. This was all going to piss Dan off so much.
‘So we’ve gathered together because Michelle wants to update you on some issues that affect the family, Dan. Are you open to discussing it in as rational a manner as possible? And Michelle will be attempting to do the same.’
‘I’m all ears.’ He sat back, crossing his ankles. He looked so relaxed, and Shelly hated to ruin the civilised détente they’d reached. They’d decided to separate but had agreed that Dan would stay in the Seomra for the time being – a fact she was even more grateful for since the creepy emails, though, as yet, there’d been no more since that one a few days before the Glossies with Amy in the office.
‘Great,’ Cliona continued. ‘Michelle, take a deep breath and go.’
Shelly held her fingertips to her temples and gazed down at the table. ‘Dan, I want to say I’m sorry. I know that I let things get out of hand with the whole SHELLY thing. I used it as a way of hiding from being a mother. I was just so scared and lonely when I first had Georgie and I thought I was doing it all wrong. I think I needed help after Georgie. Not just going to the GP and taking the antidepressants – I needed a counsellor. But I’m doing that now. And I’m really trying harder with Georgie.’ She finally forced herself to meet Dan’s eyes. He looked kind. Which surprised her. With things being so fraught between them for the past year, she’d forgotten that Dan was kind. He wasn’t a dick. Well, no more than she’d been a dick too.
‘Shell,’ he said softly, ‘I know. And you are a good mum. I’m sorry, I know there were times when I said some really harsh things …’
Cliona was nodding along approvingly and Shelly wished she didn’t have to break this moment with her next revelation.
‘Anyway, I asked you here because I’ve something a bit serious to tell you. I’ve been receiving weird messages. Someone’s been accusing me of faking stuff about you and Georgie on Instagram.’
‘Right?’ Dan looked nonplussed. ‘I mean, “person bullshitting on social media” can’t be that much of a shocker though, can it?’
‘No.’ Shelly shrugged. ‘But it’s not brilliant that everyone might find out that I used a stock image and said it was my baby—’
‘Did you?’ Cliona was jotting something down. Jesus, shut up, Cliona! thought Shelly desperately. Luckily Dan was grinning and seemed to be amused by this titbit.
‘I feel terrible, Dan. I know it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have exposed us to this. I’m thinking of wrapping up SHELLY and the guards are looking into it – we know who it is and they’re interviewing her today to make her stop.’
Dan massaged his forehead, looking weary, and Shelly tensed for his reaction. ‘Shelly, don’t give up everything unless you want to. Don’t give up because of this coward. We’ll work it out. I’m still in the guesthouse. I’m still Georgie’s dad. We’ll figure it out. Plus we’ve got this little baby to think about. I know I’ve been angry and I was hard on you because I just didn’t understand the whole Insta-thing. But we need to stick together. Not together together, but I am here. I promise.’
Shelly drove away from Cliona’s odd corporate oasis of manufactured calm actually feeling pretty calm. The time apart seemed to have defused much of the tension between her and Dan. His concern seemed totally genuine, and Shelly had caught herself wondering if there could still be something between them. A twinge in her belly made her smile. I know you’re there, she thought. She headed down the canal in the late morning sun and realised she felt relaxed. Nothing was sorted, as such, but she felt less afraid of the fallout if those pictures did come out. There was something liberating about the fact that her marriage was, to all intents and purposes, over. It’d be embarrassing if people saw her Dan-a-like but she’d live and that was the main thing. Maybe it’d be a blessing – it wasn’t like she still wanted SHELLY to work anyhow. Though extracting herself was already proving difficult. Her winning Influencer of the Year at the Glossies, despite her temporary pariah status and not even showing up, attested to how embroiled she was in that world.
‘The sponsors need you, the brands need you,’ Amy had explained over voicenote the previous day. ‘You’re part of the ecosystem.’
Shelly turned up towards the familiar road where her parents’ pebble-dashed semi-D overlooked an oval green. It was the same green where Shelly had made daisy chains with her friends as a kid and where eventually they’d snuck cigarettes and kisses with the boys from St Finnian’s. She pulled over and rolled down her window. Her parents’ front door was open and across the quiet road Sandra and Georgie were playing on the grass with a couple of the neighbours’ girls a little older than Georgie. It’d be nice to live close to other families, Shelly mused. They’d probably be selling the house eventually. It was too big and isolated behind the electric gates and down that long driveway. Their house, she realised now, had all been for the ’gram. The big kitchen and the biscuit-and-beige floors and walls everywhere. It was a show house, not a home. Shelly tried to picture living somewhere else, just herself and her two babies.
‘Mama!’ Georgie interrupted her thoughts, hurtling her little body across the green towards the car with Sandra jogging after her.
‘Hello, my baby!’ Shelly hopped out and gathered her in her arms, cuddling her close. She was getting used to motherhood, which seemed a weird thing to be thinking three years in but there it was. I guess it just takes some people this long to feel OK after having a baby, she thought, marvelling at the acceptance she felt. She was starting to forgive herself. Her new counsellor was helping.
‘Well?’ Sandra raised her eyebrows.
‘We’ll be OK, I think.’ Shelly shaded her eyes from the sun and saw Sandra smiling.
‘Well done. It’s all progress, Shelly, not perfection. Remember that when you’re going too hard on yourself.’ She squeezed her daughter’s shoulders.
Shelly loaded the giddy Georgie into the back seat, thanked her mum and started out for Hazel’s house for their very-diplomatic not-at-all-awks lunch. She’d spotted notifications on her phone and knew that Holistic Hazel was probably tagging her like mad already, rinsing every last bit of precious content out of the occasion – or, rather, one of her ever-rotating roster of assistants was.
One such assistant opened the door to Shelly about twenty minutes later. The girl looked haunted. Hazel could do that to a person, Shelly imagined.
‘Hi, I’m Jenny – come on through, they’re in the kitchen.’
Shelly followed while Georgie charged into the playroom off the hall where the kids were.
About a year ago, Hazel had announced that from then on she was only hiring assistants called Jenny because she was sick of learning new names and updating the contact info every few weeks after another traumatised or fed-up
recent marketing graduate saw the light and aced out of Hazel’s Insta-sweatshop. Apparently she was so inundated with applications there were enough Jennys in each round that she could actually pull off this bonkers strategy.
‘Oh! Look who’s here! My fave …’ Hazel was speaking into her phone as she came towards them, swathed in white linen. She held the phone out to the side to capture their awkward hug and air kisses on camera. ‘Come sit.’ She shared the Story as she drifted back to the low table under the skylight around which lay huge Buddabags and yellow and orange cushions. Polly perched awkwardly on one.
‘I see you’ve got a new Jenny!’ Shelly smiled as she eased herself down beside Polly.
‘It’s such a great approach on all fronts, really, if you think about it,’ Hazel explained. ‘Those bitch PRs were non-stop gossiping about how I couldn’t keep a girl for more than two weeks. Now they don’t even realise it’s a new Jenny they’re dealing with every time.’
‘Such a good idea,’ Polly enthused.
‘Pol,’ Hazel sighed world-wearily, ‘you’re so lucky you don’t even need an assistant and don’t have these kinds of problems.’
Hazel was a master of the back-handed compliment, and she was going to be positively ecstatic to hear of Shelly’s split from Dan. Let her take some skewed pleasure out of it, Shelly thought, smiling at Polly.
‘How are the boys, Pol—?’ Shelly was interrupted by her phone – it was the garda, Bríd. ‘Sorry I have to take this.’ She hopped up and slipped out the sliding door into the garden. ‘Hello?’