Living My Best Life

by Claire Frost

  ‘Yes, I set kick-ass Gloria on him and Colin finally gave in so we’re all go! Well, if you’re still okay to lend me the money,’ Bell added quickly.

  ‘Of course! You know me, I never go back on a promise. Unless it’s to the kids, obviously. Just let me know when you’re likely to need it and we’ll move our money around so we can transfer it into the relevant account. Oh, Bell, I’m so happy for you!’

  ‘Thanks, sis, I literally don’t know where I’d be without you – probably in some depressing flat I’d hate. How are things?’

  ‘Yeah, good. Exhausting, obviously, but fine. Not too long till the summer holidays now, though that’s always a double-edged sword of me having some time off but also having the kids twenty-four/seven, too. But on that note, I was thinking we might descend on you for a few days. The kids keep going on about when they’re going to see you next, so I sort of promised them we would come to yours at some point, maybe for your birthday? What do you think?’

  ‘You and your promises!’ Bell laughed. ‘But of course you can, it will be fun. As long as the kids don’t mind sharing the spare room and you don’t mind bunking up with me.’

  ‘God, I know how much you like to wriggle around in the night. It will be like when the kids were little and they came in with Rich and me to help them settle, but would spend the whole night kicking me in the stomach with their small, but ridiculously powerful, feet.’

  ‘And my feet definitely aren’t small! Though I’ve so got used to having a whole double bed to myself nowadays – it’s definitely one of the perks of being single.’

  ‘I’m quite tempted to divorce Rich just so I can have the same,’ Cosette giggled.

  ‘Oi, I heard that!’ came a voice in the background.

  ‘Don’t worry, I need someone to rub my feet while I watch telly and you’re the only person I know who’ll do it. You can stay, dear husband.’

  Bell smiled as she pictured Cosette and Rich in their kitchen in Devon, Cosette sitting at the table with a pile of marking in front of her, and Rich unloading the dishwasher in the background, and she was filled with warmth.

  ‘Erm, you two can never get divorced anyway – it would be far too much effort to decide who got custody of Mr and Mrs Mop.’ When they got married more than twelve years before during that downtime between Christmas and New Year, as one of their wedding presents Bell had bought them a Christmas tree decoration of a man and a woman made out of shiny gold foil, with little pearls for their hands and some scraggly wool as their hair. Every year since, they had been guests of honour on Cosette and Rich’s Christmas tree and the kids now took it in turns to be the one who placed them in pride of place on the top of the tree instead of a star or an angel.

  ‘True,’ Cosette answered. ‘Well, it looks as though I’m stuck with him for now, then.’

  ‘It’s a hard life, I know. Look, why don’t you come down for my birthday in September. You can meet Millie and Suze and everyone.’

  ‘Ooh, I’m still obsessed with Millie’s Insta, you know. I want to ask her how she manages to keep her living room that tidy with all her little boy’s toys.’

  ‘Erm, she doesn’t? She just moves them all out of shot when she’s taking one of her set-up images for her feed,’ Bell laughed. ‘But, yes, you can ask her yourself when you come. Hooray. Now I’ll actually have to have that birthday party, won’t I?’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Millie

  Millie breathed a happy sigh as she opened the curtains and saw the sun high in the azure sky, its rays bursting through the trees and bouncing off the window, creating a wall of welcome greenhouse heat. Louis had picked Wolf up the night before and so she was free of parental worry, for today at least. As a reward, she was going to lap up the sunshine and she’d even promised Bell she’d take a dip in the outdoor pool for the first time.

  Bell was already waiting for her on the corner as she strolled down the main road, swinging her canvas bag filled with swimsuit, towel and suncream. ‘Lovely day for it!’ she greeted Bell cheerily.

  ‘Well, if there’s one day of the year I’m going to get you in that pool, it’s today!’ her friend replied, laughing. ‘It’s going to be gorgeous.’

  Lots of other locals appeared to have had the same idea as the pool was already pretty busy when they arrived. But, thankfully, they managed to bag a spot on the side, a little set back from the water, and they each guarded it while the other went to get changed into her swimsuit.

  ‘I wish I’d thought to dig out my bikini like you, instead of relying on this old thing,’ Bell complained, grabbing at her slightly saggy costume. ‘Though, to be fair, at least this way I’m covering up my stomach and not subjecting people to too much white flesh. But you look amazing!’

  Millie glanced down at her blue and pink block-colour two-piece and waved away Bell’s comment. ‘I don’t get much chance to sunbathe so I might as well bring this out of hiding while I can. Though I think the last time I wore it was when Wolfie was tiny. Anyway, I’ll have none of your rubbish – you’ve got a great figure, especially now you’ve lost some of that skinniness.’

  ‘Well, I might never have done the pregnancy thing, but I’ve certainly been eating for two the past few months with all that cake I’ve been scoffing! I bet you snapped straight back into your skinny jeans like a celebrity after you had Wolf, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not exactly, but I definitely had age on my side,’ Millie smiled, applying suncream liberally to her arms. ‘I can’t believe I was only twenty-five when I had Wolfie.’

  ‘God, I was still such a kid at that age,’ agreed Bell. ‘And at thirty-nine and three quarters, I still am, I guess!’

  ‘Are you going to do anything for your fortieth?’ Millie asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t decide whether I should curl up in a ball and pretend it’s not happening or go big with a massive party to show the world age is just a number. Cosette and the kids are going to come to stay around then, so I’ll be forced to do something for it.’

  ‘Er, the party option, obviously! It’s interesting, I always think of you as being super-confident and not really worrying what other people think,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Really?’ Bell looked at her incredulously. ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Yes. Look at the way you’ve taken charge of the action committee and got everyone on board with your ideas for the summer fair.’

  ‘Well, they’re everyone’s ideas, and someone needed to take charge, plus I don’t have any kids or dogs to walk or college courses to do, so it makes sense for me to get on with it.’

  ‘But you do have a full-time, full-on job, though.’

  ‘That is true. And it has definitely been full-on of late.’

  ‘But you’d never know it, as you just get on with it, as you say.’

  ‘Well, I care about the centre. Just look at all the people here today enjoying it.’ They both drank in the groups of families and friends, lounging in the sunshine and occasionally squirting a thick, white blob of sunscreen on various areas of their bodies, inevitably missing some bits that they would only later realise had turned red and angry without them noticing. Then there were the groups of swimmers in the pool, who ranged from excited parents taking their baby swimming for the first time, to serious swimmers pounding up and down in the marked-out lanes near where Millie and Bell were sitting. The sun glinted off the water, revealing a thin surface film of suncream and a scattering of tiny petals from the trees nearby.

  ‘God, we could be in the South of France,’ Millie said, reaching for her phone and snapping a few shots, before lying back and attempting to capture the sun reflecting off her smooth, suncream-shiny, lean legs. ‘Got it!’ she cried triumphantly, while Bell looked on amused.

  ‘Yes, we could be in the South of France, but we could also be in a small town an hour north of London soaking up every ray the British summer has to offer,’ Bell said.

  ‘But the Côte d’Azur sounds so muc
h more . . . aspirational,’ reasoned Millie, resisting adding a filter, but making sure she sharpened and brightened the photo just a little, before writing the simple caption,

  La vie en rose! #AndRelax #RnR #splendide #superbe #sunshine #pool

  ‘See, I haven’t actually said I’m in France, but if people want to read it that way, then that’s up to them,’ she said smugly, holding her phone out for Bell to see.

  ‘But it’s still a bit misleading,’ Bell argued. ‘Why not post another pic of the pool now and say you’re actually at your local lido and see which post gets the most Likes? Here, I’ll write the caption for you.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that!’ Millie said, grabbing her phone back quickly. ‘Fine, if it makes you happy, I’ll do a second post. Let me just take another pic, as it would be good to get the edge of my towel and my sunnies in the foreground.’

  Millie spent the next five minutes setting up the perfect shot before she was happy, and eventually posted the image with the words,

  It might look like the Cote d’Azur, but it is in fact the lido at my local community centre! Such an unbelievably gorgeous day in the sunshine. Who needs France when good old Blighty is this hot?! #heatwave #lido #swim #sunshine #community #Bestofbritish #Livingmybestlife

  ‘There, happy?’ she asked Bell, who refreshed her feed and nodded.

  ‘Look, you’ve already got loads of Likes and you only posted it about half a second ago!’

  ‘We’ll see,’ smiled Millie. ‘And one of those Likes is yours!’

  ‘Ha, busted! But don’t you feel better for being truthful about your picture, like it’s more authentic and people are Liking it because they too are out enjoying the sunshine where they live rather than wishing they were in the South of France like you?’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s different when Instagram is actually part of your job. I never thought when I moved down here and started blogging and posting on Insta that social media would become my main source of income. At first it was a bit of fun, but as soon as you start making money from it, it’s like the rules change. If I post something and only about fifty people Like it, what message is that sending to a brand who were thinking of working with me? It’s saying “She can’t engage her followers, no one cares what she posts, no one wants to be her”. And then the brand will look at the next influencer on their list and DM them with an offer instead of me. And there’s the algorithm to think about too. If a follower doesn’t Like my post, Instagram may not choose to show them my next one, or the one after that, so then they’re being seen by fewer and fewer people and therefore fewer and fewer people will Like them. It’s a vicious circle.’

  Bell stared at her open-mouthed. ‘I had no idea that’s how it works. Though if I think about it, that makes sense as sometimes people post things and I never see them unless I specifically click on their profile and check out their grid.’

  ‘Listen to you talking like a pro!’ Millie laughed. ‘But, yes, you’re absolutely right. So you can see why I can’t really afford to take a chance and tell the “truth”, whatever that really is. No one wants to know that you’ve had a shitty day, been shouted at by your boss and missed the bus home, plus to top it all off you’ve got the worst period pain. That’s just not what Instagram is all about.’

  ‘But the way you describe it makes it sound like a depressing popularity contest that you’ll never win because there’ll always be someone who gets more Likes and comments than you, unless you’re Victoria Beckham, or whoever.’

  ‘That pretty much sums it up,’ Millie sighed. ‘Except if you’re Selena Gomez and have almost a hundred and fifty million followers. Although even she is out-followed by Instagram itself, so frankly no one can ever win.’

  ‘But does it really have to be about winning?’ Bell asked. ‘I only follow about two hundred people and I have even fewer people following me, but I still love scrolling through my feed.’

  ‘Your feed that contains pictures that have been filtered at least ten times and probably adjusted in Photoshop, too. None of it’s true. Which is why, to keep up with everyone else, you have to add twelve filters and make your post more sparkly and exciting than other people’s.’

  Millie sat up and took off her sunglasses to look directly at her friend. ‘And if you think about it, even when you’re talking to people in real life about what you did at the weekend or where you went for dinner, you’re always filtering out the bad bits and presenting the side of your life you want your friends and colleagues to see. If someone asks you what you did at the weekend, you don’t say, “Well, I sat in front of thirteen episodes of MasterChef and inhaled six bags of Wotsits without stopping,” even if that’s what you really did. You’d say something like, “Well, I caught up on a load of box sets, sorted out my summer wardrobe and cooked a delicious dinner from Jamie’s latest book.” We’re always filtering and brightening and sharpening our lives so we’re seen in the way we want to be.’

  Bell drew her knees up to her chest and fiddled with the edge of her towel. ‘I suppose I’ve never thought about it like that,’ she said slowly. ‘You’re right, no one wants to hear that I’ve spent the whole weekend on my own cleaning the kitchen cupboards and eating chocolate digestives dipped in tea while watching the whole of Pride and Prejudice on some obscure cable channel even though I have the DVD on my shelf. Which obviously I’ve never done. Although that doesn’t stop me telling Cosette about those kind of weekends, I suppose. But she’s pretty much the only person I’d tell or who would care. But when you’re editing pictures into something they’re not on social media, that feels much worse, I think.’

  ‘Maybe it feels like that because social media is always there – as you said, you can click on someone’s grid and see everything they’ve posted, whereas a conversation is transitory and can be forgotten in the blink of an eye.’

  ‘True. But I still think there’s space on Insta for people to be if not completely real then at least more truthful. Especially when it comes to parenting. I don’t even have kids, but I love that account where it’s a dad posting pics of what it’s really like to be a father.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s brilliant and really funny, and is actually doing really well in terms of followers and sponsorship stuff,’ Millie conceded. ‘Though I do think it’s easier for men as they don’t have the same ideals to live up to that women have. If you’re not all “Oh my god, having a baby is the best thing to ever happen to me” as a mum, then you’re somehow judged. Anyway, we’ve gone a bit serious, haven’t we? I thought today was all about having fun! How are things with you and Ben?’

  ‘That’s right, get straight in there!’ Bell laughed. ‘I don’t know what you mean – there is no me and Ben. Here, chuck me the suncream, will you?’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ grinned Millie. ‘I saw the way he was looking at you at the meeting last week. He definitely fancies you. And you’re single and ready to mingle, so what’s the problem?’ She raised an eyebrow at her friend as the heat rushed to her cheeks.

  ‘Millie! Seriously, between you, Suze and Laura, anyone would think you were trying to marry me off to the poor guy! I am indeed single, but I don’t know if I’m ready to mingle. I’ve just come out of a ten-year relationship with a man who thinks nothing of quibbling over a few grand and a CD collection, so maybe I’m not that bothered about being coupled up just yet. God, it’s boiling, isn’t it?’ she added, fanning her face with her hand. ‘I think it might be time to venture into the pool.’

  ‘You could definitely do worse than Ben,’ Millie said thoughtfully. ‘What? I’m just saying!’

  ‘Well, stop just saying and let’s go and swim a few lengths,’ Bell replied, pulling her friend to her feet.

  As Millie breast-stroked her way up and down the pool, she was glad that she’d chosen the hottest day of the year to take a dip, as although it was pushing thirty degrees in the sunshine, the water itself still had a nasty bite to it. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been like when Bell f
irst took the plunge back at Easter, let alone how her own tiny, string-like five-year-old son had managed to enjoy splashing around so much weeks before that.

  She was dismayed to find she was more out of shape than she’d realised and fairly quickly made for the steps and the safety of her sun-warmed towel. She stood on the side breathing in the unmistakable aroma of chlorine and watching Bell push her way seemingly effortlessly through the water – another thing her friend seemed to excel at, she thought.

  Already she could feel the sun beating down on her skin, so she walked back to the spot she and Bell had secured and laid her towel back down before reaching inside her bag for the suncream.

  Her fingers automatically closed round the smooth edges of her phone and on autopilot she picked it up and checked her notifications. She was surprised to see her post about being at the lido had received thousands of Likes. While Millie had felt she was more social-media-savvy than Bell and didn’t agree with her idea to always post ‘the truth’, maybe there was something in what she had said, after all.

  *

  Later that afternoon, after a toastie and a huge ice cream from the café, the pair were lying lazily on their towels, their bags providing makeshift pillows, and Millie was contemplating whether Bell would notice if she had a short nap, when the older woman said, ‘Dare I ask how things are going with Wolf’s school? I know Louis has agreed to come to the fair, fingers crossed, but you didn’t say how your conversation about the bullying went.’

  Millie pulled herself up so she was sitting cross-legged. ‘Well, he did his usual “Wolf just needs to stand up to them and punch them back but harder” routine, but when I explained what the school had said about excluding him, he backed down and instead got cross with the school for not protecting his little boy. To give him his due, he managed to get a phone call with the head and by all accounts told her what he thought of the school’s lack of support for Wolf and how he was the innocent party in all of this. She seemed to say all the right things like “Wolf’s safety is always paramount to us, and he’s a valued member of the school”, you know the kind of thing. But she never actually promised to do anything about it. Louis was livid when he spoke to me afterwards. I think he’s so used to people doing what he says and bowing down before him that he didn’t quite know how to handle it. It sounds like he ended up slamming down the phone.’