by Alex Lake
Ben had said those very words, then waited at the finish line under his umbrella, sipping his drink.
Holy shit. What was this? What was this and who had done it?
It got worse.
A photo of Faye’s pre-school production of The Giant Turnip, Faye at the left of the stage dressed as a carrot.
A photo of the kids building a snowman on the town square.
A photo of Sarah sipping hot chocolate in the Little Cat Café, a sheaf of papers on the table in front of her. She’d been researching an article and had gone to the café to arrange her thoughts.
A photo, from February, of her new kitchen, installed over the winter months.
Caption: Finished! I love this!
A photo which had been taken inside her house.
The air-conditioning in the car was now fully up and running, cold air flowing from the vents and washing over her, but she barely noticed it. She had goose pimples up and down her arms and legs, but it was not the cold air raising them. It was not the cold air chilling her.
It was the photos. Of her, of Ben, of her house.
Of her kids.
Who was doing this? It had to be someone who was at all these places, someone who was at the beach yesterday and out on date nights with her and there when she was with her girlfriends and at Faye’s pre-school performances.
There was no one. Not even Ben.
And why? Was it some kind of a joke? Maybe all her friends were in on it – which would explain how they had so many photos – but why? What did they get from it? And why do it for six months without telling her? Why do it at all?
It made no sense.
Worse, she thought, a cruel trick by my friends is the best explanation I can hope for. I have no idea what the alternatives are, but I bet none of them are good.
She looked back down at her phone and scrolled through the photos. This was not her friends. A joke at her expense – perhaps a fake Facebook account in her name in which she made off-color jokes or revealing admissions about her sex life – was just about possible. Toni had been a bit of a prankster in college – calling for pizzas for other people’s houses, that kind of thing – and, although she had mostly grown out of it, she still retained part of her juvenile nature. She always would. It was in her blood. Her father and two elder brothers never stopped playing tricks on each other, Toni and her long-suffering mom. The first time Sarah had stayed at their house on Cape Cod, in the summer of their freshman year in college, Marty, Toni’s dad, had made boiled eggs for breakfast, serving them in dainty porcelain egg cups with neatly sliced toast glistening with butter besides them.
Eat, he said. It’s my specialty.
Boiled eggs aren’t much of a specialty, Dad, Toni replied, still sleepy.
These I call Marty’s Boiled Eggs Surprise, he said. Dig in.
Sarah tapped the shell with her spoon. It cracked and she pulled it away. For a second she didn’t understand, then she looked up at Marty – he insisted she call him Marty and not Mr Gorchoff, which made her feel grown up and a bit uncomfortable at the same time – and told him the egg was empty. It was a hollow shell.
That’s the surprise! he said. Your egg’s not there.
He passed her a mug of coffee. She took a sip, and then another – it was a wonderful, heady brew – then glimpsed a sudden blaze of color among the brown, muddy coffee, which disappeared when she held the coffee mug upright.
She tilted it again, and there it was.
An egg yolk.
Mr Gor— Marty, she said. There’s an egg in there!
That’s the other part of the surprise, he said. But don’t worry! They’re organic!
She had spent the rest of the weekend in terror of the next little ‘surprise’, but mercifully she had been left alone. Toni, however, had grown up being constantly subjected to pranks which were a touch cruel and more than a touch irresponsible – so it was not impossible she would have set up a fake Facebook account in her friend’s name.
But not one with Sarah’s kids on it.
Like most of her mom friends, Sarah was a little tentative about putting photos of her children up on the Internet, whatever Facebook said about privacy, so she restricted access to her account to only her friends, and then she was careful about what she put up there.
But this account was public. These photos were there for all the world to see. And even Toni would not have gone this far in the service of some prank.
Which left who? Ben? He’d have access to the photos – he could get them from her phone – but she couldn’t imagine him doing it. He’d have to have set it up on his work computer and then made sure she never saw any of the notifications and emails that would come in. She often used his phone, and – she wasn’t proud of this, but it was true nonetheless – gave his emails and text messages a quick scan. They were reassuringly boring. Stuff from his colleagues about operating committee presentations and legal reviews and seeking board approval and texts from his friends about where to watch the game and whether they had a pass from the wife to go out.
No, if it was Ben, he would have had to employ a level of deception she did not think he had in him, not least because his utter cluelessness about how computers worked would have to be a long-standing deception requiring a level of acting talent she was pretty sure was beyond him.
Pretty sure. But you never really knew. You heard of stranger things in marriages.
She shook her head and dismissed the thought. There was no way this was Ben.
But then who? Who the fuck was doing this?
3
So, she has found it, finally. It has taken a while. It has been there for six months, a piece of bait, dangling in the water. But she has not sensed it until now. Not been aware of its presence. She is not the most observant of people – surprising, for a doctor – which works against her. It makes it easier to do a thing like this.
Obviously she does not Google herself. That is a mistake. It’s always a good idea to know what is out there, to have the best available information, to know what your enemy knows. But then, if you don’t even know you have an enemy, why would you bother?
She will be wondering who did it, who put these photos up there, and she will be asking herself why, but she will not figure it out. Her mind does not work in such a way. She sees no reason why anybody would do this to her. She doesn’t even know how they would do it, although the who and the how are closely related. Understand one, and she will understand the other.
But she will understand neither.
Not, at least, until it is too late.
Because this is only the beginning. This Facebook account is merely the hook that lodges in the mouth of the fish. The fish thinks the hook is its only problem, thinks that if it can only get rid of it, then all will be well again in its world.
But it is wrong. Because the hook is attached to a line which is attached to a rod which is held by a hand. And the hand is controlled by a mind, a mind which has been waiting and watching and plotting the best time and place and method to catch the fish.
And so the fish struggles to free itself, but all it manages to do is to embed the hook deeper. And as it continues to wriggle and fight it uses up its supplies of energy until it is too exhausted to continue, and then its struggles wane.
And the hand senses it, and begins to wind in the reel …
So far she has only felt the prick of the hook in her cheek. The rest – the struggles, the fight, her eventual destruction – is yet to come.
Fun. This will be fun. Fishing always is.
Revenge always is.
4
Sarah parked next to Ben’s car – a dark blue (night mineral blue, according to the salesman who had sold it to them when Miles was an infant) family sedan. America’s favorite: a Toyota Camry. Sensible, reliable, fuel-efficient, strong residuals. And needing to be replaced, soon.
A few weeks back, Ben had mentioned getting a convertible to replace it.
OK, but ge
t one with five seats, she said.
They don’t make them with five seats, he replied. The roof has to fold into the body of the car so it reduces the space available for a back seat. It’s normally two at most.
She looked at him, her expression a mixture of amusement and incredulity. But we have three kids, Ben. What’s the plan? Make Miles ride his bike?
We have your car if we need to go somewhere all together, he replied. I only really drive this to work. And it’d be nice in the summer to have the top down.
But what if you do need to take all three? What if I’m away for the weekend and something happens?
I’d get a cab, he said. And you can always think of reasons why we would need two big cars. But most of the time we don’t.
Fine, she said. If that’s your priority.
It’s not a question of priorities, he replied. I’d simply like to have a convertible. But never mind. Perhaps it’s a stupid idea. Early onset midlife crisis.
And they left it there. She felt bad about having dented his dream; in truth, she wasn’t sure why she didn’t want him to get a convertible. It would have been nice for her to drive it, too. It was simply … well, it did reek of a midlife crisis. In some vague way she found it a threat, a sign he was making decisions based on his own needs and not the needs of the family. Anyway, she’d tell him to go ahead and get his convertible. She’d be happy for him. At least, she’d try to be.
That was for later. For now, she was glad his current car was there. It meant he was home.
Ben was sitting on the couch, Kim on his lap. He was reading the book of the moment, Hairy Scary Monster, which Kim demanded incessantly. Ben was a very patient dad – it was one of the things Sarah loved about him – but even he would balk at the seventh or eighth reading of the same kids’ book during the same bedtime.
‘You’re reading Hairy Scary Monster,’ Sarah said. ‘Imagine.’
‘Only the second reading today,’ Ben said. ‘So it still retains that fresh feeling common to all great literature.’
‘Daddy, read,’ Kim said. She fit the profile of a third child exactly: with two older siblings she had learned to fight for her fair share of whatever commodity was up for grabs – attention, cake, time on the trampoline. She was desperate to be in the gang, whatever the cost, which was what had led to the sand sandwich episode on the beach.
‘Hey,’ Sarah said. ‘Something pretty weird happened today.’
‘At the clinic?’
‘No. I got a friend request from someone I went to high school with. She’s moving back to Barrow.’
‘What’s weird about that? Plenty of people move here. I moved here from London.’ He grinned at her. ‘But then I had a good reason to.’
‘That’s not the weird part.’
‘Daddy,’ Kim said. ‘Read!’
‘One moment, petal,’ Ben said. ‘Mummy and I are talking. So what was the weird part?’
Kim grabbed her dad’s hand and put it on the book. ‘Read!’ she said. ‘Read Hairy Scary Monster.’
Ben rolled his eyes. ‘Can we talk about this later?’ he said. ‘I don’t think Kim is too keen on having her story interrupted.’
It was nearly nine o’clock by the time they got round to talking about it. As she was putting Miles to bed he started telling her about farm camp – they had washed a pig with a hose and he was wondering whether they could get a pig as a family pet. Sarah explained that pigs weren’t really pets, and they didn’t have time to take care of one, but Miles demurred: he would take care of it, he insisted. And not only would he look after it night and day, he would do lots of jobs to earn money to buy it fun toys.
Let’s start with a pet which is a bit less ambitious, Sarah told him. Like a goldfish.
Or hairless rats, Miles said. Anthony has hairless rats.
Sarah shook her head. She’d seen those hairless rats; she wasn’t squeamish – she was a doctor – but they were not the most beautiful members of the animal kingdom.
Goldfish, she said. And if you can take care of those, maybe a hamster.
And then a pig? Miles said.
Maybe then a pig, Sarah said, confident they would never make it to that point.
Downstairs, she poured two glasses of wine. Ben was on the couch, his laptop open on his knee. She handed him a drink.
‘Work?’ Sarah said.
‘Cleaning up email,’ Ben said. ‘No big deal.’
With Ben it was never a big deal. He was a lawyer and she knew he had some stressful cases, but he never brought it home.
There’s no point worrying about work, he’d say, adding his favorite quote: ‘worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it’s due’. You spend your time thinking about things that might never happen. It’s pointless. If it happens, figure it out. If it doesn’t, don’t worry about it.
And he didn’t. Which was one of the things Sarah – who did worry, who had always worried, to a fault – loved about him.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Miles wants a pig.’
‘Presumably his desire for a pig is not the weird thing you mentioned earlier? Because it seems exactly the sort of thing Miles would want.’
‘No. I’ll show you the weird thing.’ She picked up her phone and opened the fake Facebook account. She passed it to him. ‘Take a look.’
He scrolled down the screen. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘What’s weird about this? I know I don’t use it, but isn’t this what Facebook is for? Sharing photos? Telling people that you have alfalfa sprouts in your smoothie?’
‘It is. And I’m amazed you know what an alfalfa sprout is.’ She paused. ‘But this isn’t my account.’
Ben frowned. ‘What do you mean? The photos are of you. And the kids.’
‘I know. But I didn’t know it was there until today. Rachel, the friend who sent a friend request, asked me which account was mine. I hadn’t set eyes on it until then.’ She took the phone and switched to her account. ‘This is me. The real me.’
Ben looked at the screen for a few seconds, then put the phone on the couch next to him. ‘So who set it up?’ he said.
‘That’s exactly what I want to know,’ Sarah replied. ‘I have no idea.’
Ben stared at her. ‘This is weird,’ he said. ‘But let’s think about it logically. Who could have set it up?’
‘I don’t know. No one.’
‘It would need to be someone who was at those places. And there aren’t many photos. About eight, in total? So it wouldn’t be too difficult to do.’
‘But no one was at all those places.’
‘Maybe it was someone who has access to your phone,’ Ben said.
‘But I didn’t take all those photos. Like the one of me and you at the Japanese restaurant. It looks as though it was taken from somewhere inside. It wasn’t me who took it.’
‘So either it was someone who happened to be at all those places, but who would have had a good reason to be there so you wouldn’t have noticed anything out of place, or it’s someone who knew you would be there and went – surreptitiously – to take the photos.’ He raised his hands in mock fear. ‘Which would mean you have some kind of stalker.’
‘Ben!’ Sarah said. ‘Don’t joke about it! It’s not funny!’
‘Sarah,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you have a stalker.’
‘Maybe not. But no jokes.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘No jokes. But let’s see if we can narrow it down. Let’s start with the most recent photo. We’ll remember that best. Who was at the beach yesterday?’
‘Lots of people. It was a hot Sunday in summer in Maine. Everyone heads to the water.’
‘Let’s list them.’
‘Mel was there, with Anthony and James. I think I saw Bill, her husband, as well. Then there was Jean and her two kids. Lizzie and Toby were there with their girls. And I saw Miles’s kindergarten teacher. She was at the other end of the beach to us.’ Sarah shrugged. ‘There were lots of people.’
Ben puffed out his c
heeks. ‘All I can think is, it’s some kind of a joke,’ he said. ‘Someone’s winding you up.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Sarah said. ‘But there’s still the question of who would do such a thing. Whoever it was would have to have been in all those places.’
‘Not necessarily. It could be a few of your friends. They could have shared photos with each other.’
‘I suppose,’ Sarah said. ‘But it seems a very elaborate trick.’
‘Well,’ Ben said. ‘I wouldn’t worry—’
Sarah’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and held up her hand to silence him.
There was a notification. From Facebook.
She opened it, and blinked. She did not believe what she was seeing.
‘Holy shit,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘It’s a friend request.’ She looked at her husband. ‘From me. From Sarah Havenant. From the fake account.’
5
Friend Request: Sarah Havenant. Confirm / Delete.
Sarah knew it was nothing, just digital information rendered into text by some software, but that didn’t stop her from feeling very disoriented. It was odd to see your own name and photo asking you to be a friend.
I’m Sarah Havenant, she thought. Not you. Not you, whoever you are.
‘Can I see?’ Ben held out his hand for the phone. He stared at the screen. ‘This is weird,’ he said. ‘Really weird. It’s got to be some kind of a joke. There’s no other explanation.’
There was a confidence in his tone which Sarah found reassuring. Ben was quick to analyze a situation – a legal case, a friendship, a problem with the kids’ behavior – and quick to understand what was important, which gave him a sense of clarity in the stages before the facts came in. It was how they had got married. They met in a club in London when Sarah was at a work conference there, and they’d kissed. Nothing more had happened that night, but they’d arranged to get together before she left. It turned out ‘before she left’ meant the next night, and the next, and the next. The last night she was there he told her they were going to get married.