Unfollow Me

by Charlotte Duckworth

  I try to imagine the sort of woman he’d be truly happy with. She’d be a hairdresser, or a nail technician. Naturally maternal. A keen baker. The sort to have a gang of loyal female friends that she went to school with and never lost touch. They would all stay in the same area, settling down round the corner from their parents. She’d be called Lizzie, with immaculately curled blonde hair. Hair extensions, of course. She’d get them for cheap from the salon where she worked. She’d have a tan, year-round.

  Perhaps this is why Simon’s mum has never liked me. She knows I’m not a Lizzie. She doesn’t trust me, and quite rightly. A mother’s instinct, after all. My tan is natural—the result of a Spanish mother who succumbed to cancer when I was in my teens. That worries her: bad genes. But the most important concern is my age. I’m only sixteen years younger than her and she hates it.

  Pushka comes into the living room, gives a wide yawn and jumps up neatly on to the sofa, settling down beside me. I stroke her head, trying to imagine what the future will hold. I never expected to feel this way. I thought I’d be able to do it: to take back what I was owed, without anyone getting hurt. But I was so naive.

  * * *

  The shopping is fine: a distraction that I almost enjoy. We bicker over what to buy my father, making jokes about how miserable he is, how perhaps a ticket to the euthanasia clinic in Switzerland is the only thing that would make him truly happy. It’s tasteless, as jokes go, but I don’t care. I appreciate Simon’s rough humor, his lack of concern about being polite or appropriate. It shows how honest he is: what you see is what you get. Unlike with others, whose charming persona hides a rotten core.

  Anyway, the little sympathy I had for my dad disappeared in the days after Nathan’s death. He refused even to go to the funeral with me, despite the fact I’d organised it to take place in a church, to please him. There was no explaining to him, no chance of him understanding that the alternative to the medical termination might have killed us both.

  I am tired though, more tired than usual from traipsing around the shopping centre in Kingston, and everywhere I go I see children. From teeny tiny babies strapped to their mothers’ chests to gangly teenagers sprawled on the floor outside McDonald’s, Topshop bags scattered around them like oversized confetti. After three hours, we have nearly everything on our list, and I am exhausted.

  At one point we pass Mothercare, and Simon drags me inside, thrusting tiny outfit after tiny outfit under my nose, asking for my opinion. I tell him it’s too early to buy anything. Even though I have a wardrobe full of outfits for this baby, now that I’m finally pregnant, I am newly terrified of jinxing the whole thing. I tell him that I want to wait till after the viability scan I booked, even though Nathan would have passed that with flying colors, and I know it’s no guarantee that everything will be all right. That’s the thing with pregnancy. There are no guarantees at all that in nine months I’ll be holding a healthy baby.

  “Just one thing?” he says, and it’s so unlike him not to back down that I find myself nodding and taking the tiny babygrow in the softest fleecy cotton to the counter, refusing a gift receipt and acknowledging the shop assistant’s eyebrows as they lift upwards knowingly.

  We’re silent in the car as we drive back home. It’s dark, even though it’s only 4pm, and I’m wishing the winter away. I want it to be spring, when I’ll be nearly twenty weeks, when we’ll be able to know whether the baby’s kidneys have formed properly.

  “You’re quiet,” Simon says, laying a hand on my knee. He’s driving more carefully than he used to. “Not feeling sick or anything?”

  “Just tired,” I say, laying my hand over his and squeezing it. “I’m fine.”

  “Hard work growing a whole new human being,” he says, and I glance at him in the dull light of the car. The shine in his eyes is reflected in the headlights that pass us. I’ve made him so happy—there’s that at least.

  “Hmm,” I say, giving a slight nod. “Sorry.”

  He waves his hand in the air as if to reassure me, and I feel a sudden, rushing urge to burst into tears. What have I done?

  What I have done has been done now. There is no going back. It’s my burden to carry, just like the other one. There’s no relief in coming clean, not for anybody. I just have to deal with it.

  “I love you,” I say to Simon, and then it’s too late. The tears don’t care about my resolve, about the fact it’s not fair on him. That poor little girl, Lula. They tumble out of me, dripping on his hand, and he twists his head towards me in surprise.

  “Hey,” he says, trying to look at the road and my face at the same time. “What’s the matter? Von? What’s happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and my fists are balled up against my eyes, rubbing at them, trying to make it stop. “I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.”

  “Baby,” Simon says, and in his voice I can hear that he can’t cope with this, and I know I’m being selfish again. I need to pull myself together, because he doesn’t deserve this. “Please. We’re nearly home … Do you want me to pull over?”

  We’re nearly home. My sorrow turns to anger, anger at myself. The tears dry up and I thump my fists on my legs in frustration.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, the words sticking in my mouth. “I’m just tired. Ignore me. Let’s get home and … a cup of tea, that will help. Proper tea.”

  Simon’s shoulders drop with relief.

  “Pregnancy hormones,” I offer, and he smiles. “Just so overwhelming, after all this time…”

  He nods, but doesn’t say a thing. We round the corner into our road, and I feel myself relax again. Perhaps I just needed to cry a little, to let it out. It’s Christmas. Lula is in the best place possible, with round-the-clock care. The nurse I spoke to afterwards was optimistic about her recovery, although she wouldn’t tell me anything specific.

  It’s all going to be all right.

  I stare out the window at the houses along our street; the tastelessness of the Christmas decorations smothering them all. But then I see something else, a little further up the street, outside our house, and my hand flies to my mouth in shock.

  A Range Rover. Cream leather seats, a panoramic sunroof.

  Henry’s Range Rover.

  I remember the video of them going to pick it up: Violet stuck in a supermarket car park the next day with the alarm going off and no idea how to stop it.

  He’s here, outside my house.

  It shouldn’t be a surprise, really. He’s come to find me, to ruin my life, the way I ruined his.

  HENRY

  It put me in a better mood than anything had done for years. If I sat down and tried to examine it—to examine myself—I came to the conclusion that I was a predictable old man, as bad as my father. That the thought of her with her buff personal trainer, all waxed torsos and six packs, brought out something entirely natural in me: a predatory, competitive instinct. I should have fought it, but I wouldn’t be the first not to.

  And anyway, Violet didn’t seem to care. We were barely speaking, by then. Her great “career” sat between us, like an unwanted houseguest, filling our private spaces and stopping us from communicating. I was sick of it all. The constant criticism online, the lucrative sponsorship deals that required me to grin like a loon over a bowl of cereal. But worse than that was the fact that Violet was often too busy having her photograph taken to actually look after our children, and instead left them in the care of a teenager who didn’t know the first thing about child safety. I was sure it was Yvonne who had approached Skye in the park, and asked her all those questions about us, but it could so easily have been someone more sinister.

  But Violet didn’t listen. She didn’t fucking listen.

  Sometimes, I watched her with the children from the corner of the room, feeling like if I suddenly self-combusted, she might not notice for days. What was my purpose in this family? Just to pay the bills, to read the kids a story every now and then. To stay out of Violet’s way when she was filming.

/>   I still wanted her though. I woke nearly every morning full of lust for my beautiful wife. But if I approached her, she would push me away with a groan—or worse, smile at me sympathetically, asking if we could “do it later” as though it was some awful chore she needed to work up the energy for.

  The thing with Yvonne only lasted six weeks. As transgressions go, it wasn’t the worst. Just a blip on the long horizon of marriage.

  But for those six weeks, I was a dishonest shit. I would smile at my wife, and tell her not to worry about me. Then I would go into work, text Yvonne, and sit like a lovesick idiot staring at my phone, waiting for a reply.

  She didn’t always reply straight away. Not like the early days, when she was always there—literally, out there in the open-plan office—to be summoned at any opportunity. We didn’t talk about those days. We didn’t talk much at all. We mostly rented hotel rooms in Mayfair—I got a good deal through my membership. I would tell the team I was working from home, tuck my laptop under my arm and head right three times out of the office. She was usually already there, sitting at the dressing table, fiddling with her phone. There were always a few minutes of awkward small talk, before the inevitable happened again. And again. It made me feel young.

  The only serious conversation we had was about contraception. She told me she had had a coil fitted. We never talked about the baby, but sometimes afterwards, I’d lie next to Yvonne, looking at the shape of her nose, and imagine what he would have looked like. He didn’t feel real, though. He felt like an idea, or a thought I once had. Not an actual person. Not like Skye, Lula and Goldie.

  Anything we did say was just small talk; chat about new restaurants we both wanted to try, what we’d order from room service, the decor of the hotel. It was short and sweet, and it felt entirely different from my other, proper life: the exhausting rollercoaster I shared at home with Vi and the kids.

  Of course I knew it was wrong. It felt like a treat to myself, but something indulgent and naughty, that I’d have to pay for in the long run.

  It doesn’t make it OK, but I always knew I would pay.

  LILY

  Ben lets me leave work early on my last day. It’s almost as though he can’t wait to see the back of me. Susie takes me for coffee and cake at the French patisserie around the corner from the office. She pays, insisting, and I realise how generous she’s been to me over the past year—all these little gestures that really add up. I will miss her.

  “I’m so proud of you,” Susie says, forking a chip. “I’ve got good feelings about 2018 for you! A new year, a new job, a new man.”

  I laugh and finish her sentence. “A new me.”

  “Exactly.”

  We hug goodbye outside the cafe, but as I turn to leave, she calls me back.

  “Lily…” she says. “Can I…” But then she stops, her mouth twisting and her delicate eyebrows meeting in a frown.

  “What?” I ask, smiling at her, but inside my chest my heart begins to pound.

  “It’s just … something that’s been bothering me. Ever since I babysat Archie.”

  I nod, swallowing.

  “I know it’s none of my business, but I noticed that you didn’t have any photos of Archie’s dad anywhere in your flat. I thought there’d be one of your wedding, at least.”

  My eyes widen. I knew I should never have let her in. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist a good old nose about. The thought of her poking around my things!

  “Oh. I don’t like to be reminded of him. It’s still very painful.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she says. “Only … I asked Archie. I know I shouldn’t have done, but I wondered if he had any pics. And he said something really strange.”

  “What did you ask him?” I say. It feels as though the ground has suddenly shifted beneath me. I lean on the lamppost next to me for support.

  “I just asked if he knew a lot about his daddy … you’ve always been so secretive about him … and he looked at me, like I was an idiot, and he told me very plainly that he didn’t have a daddy.”

  “Did he?” I say, giving a choked laugh. “Well, that’s three-year-olds for you.”

  Her frown intensifies.

  “You must have been very young when you met James. You said it was eighteen months before he left his wife, but he died three years ago. How old were you when you got married?”

  I hold her stare.

  “You know if…” she says. “You can always talk to…”

  “It’s freezing,” I interrupt, pulling my coat around myself. “You better get back to the office.”

  Her frown morphs into a confused smile, and she lingers for several more seconds, as though waiting for me to speak.

  “Take care of yourself, Lily,” she says, her voice clipped. And then she turns and walks off.

  I stay a while on the pavement, watching her as she walks back to the office. Trying not to feel sad. She would have forgotten me by next week anyway, like most people do.

  I push my way through the Oxford Street crowds towards the Underground, my brain firing on all cylinders. I start my new job just after New Year. A fresh start. I need to put the past behind me.

  Anyone who knows what I have been through is bound to understand why I’ve made mistakes. After all, what did I do to deserve James, being a single parent, everything bad that’s ever happened to me? I did well enough at school and was no trouble for my father, even though he patently resented every second he had to spend with me and blamed me for my mother leaving.

  I’ve spent my life determined not to be like her, but of course it’s inevitable that I should fall into the groove left by her footprints from time to time.

  Except I haven’t left Archie, and I never will.

  I think back to the fibs I told the interviewer at my new job, the way I casually but deliberately threw into conversation that I was good friends with Violet’s sister-in-law, Amy. “Good friends” is definitely pushing it, but at least I’ve met her. She’d remember me, surely? The damsel without data. As for Violet, they seemed very excited when I said we were close.

  As I walk to the station, I think of all the emails I sent her, the comments I left on her feed. Late at night, when I was so drunk I didn’t really know who I was anymore, or how I felt about anything. They started off patronising—don’t think this is a great idea, encouraging your kids to throw snowballs is kind of violent, no? but love your channel!—but as the weeks wore on, and she never once responded, my thoughts and feedback turned darker. Who did she think she was? Everything in her life was just handed to her on a plate—the unfairness of it all made me want to vomit.

  I had loved and looked up to her so much but then she turned out to be just like all the other people I cared about. Pushing me aside, pretending I didn’t exist. It was difficult to swallow, and I needed a way of letting out my feelings. I thought if I put them down in emails and sent them over, then I’d get them out of my system. I just wanted her to acknowledge me.

  But I took it too far, with what I did to Skye.

  It was the anniversary of James’s and my first date, and I’d been drinking. I left Archie in bed, napping, and went off to the park to find Mandy and the kids. It was ages before Mandy finished her fag and realised that Skye wasn’t on the climbing frame anymore.

  We had such a lovely chat, Skye and me. Part of me wanted to take her home. I thought what a wonderful big sister she would make for Archie.

  But then I heard the shouts. We were right at the other end of the playground on the big swings, out of sight.

  I wouldn’t have hurt Skye. I told her she had better get back to Mandy, then slipped away. I watched from behind a tree. Saw the way that Mandy screamed at Skye for running off, and it broke my heart. It wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t run off; Mandy just hadn’t been watching.

  I shouldn’t have asked her all the questions about Violet and Henry, but I didn’t hurt her. And then I got home, and found Archie at the foot of the stairs, screaming for
me, being cradled by my neighbor.

  “Where the hell were you?” she hissed. “He’s been crying for ten minutes!” I had never felt so ashamed, stammering out some excuse about nipping to the postbox, explaining that he was such a sound sleeper I thought it was safe to leave him.

  I had sobered up by then, and the irony of the situation was not lost on me. My obsession with Violet’s children had nearly lost me my own.

  I’m suddenly breathless. I stop short outside a coffee shop, pulling out my phone to check the time. And that’s when I notice the screen of my phone is illuminated. I have a new message from Ellie, and I open it.

  Hi Lily. I saw Luke for lunch today. I understand you’ve had a shit time of things and I wanted to talk to you face to face about this, but as you never got back to me, I didn’t get the chance. Thing is, I know it was you that trolled Violet. After we met in the cafe, I thought your face seemed familiar. It took me a week or so to work out why. Then I went on to Instagram and looked at some of the old comments on Henry’s feed. Some of them were really weird. Really … intense. I thought you were Violet’s fan, not a troll? Listen, I don’t know you, not really, but Luke’s a decent guy. I had to tell him. I don’t want him to get hurt. Hopefully you can explain your behavior better than I could. Maybe you should think about getting some help? Ellie

  I stare at my phone, my heart back to that same sickening thudding in my chest.

  She’s told Luke. How could she? Why, why, why? Why would she do that to me?

  Yet again, it feels like the universe is endlessly punishing me for my mistakes.

  For leaving Archie alone when he napped, for all those stupid emails I sent Violet, for talking to Skye at the park … for pushing James away with my jealousy and neediness, for that stupid mistake one night a few weeks later.

  For not getting that random bloke’s number, because it meant that no matter how hard I tried, Archie would never, ever know who his real father was.