by Ellery Lloyd
Emmy—known as Mamabare to her million-plus Instagram followers, the first of the British Instamums to hit seven figures—reaches for her Mamabare-branded mug and takes a sip. She loves nothing more than a nice cuppa, she says, although like most of her fans she rarely has time to sit down and enjoy one. “Drinking this while it’s still hot is like a week in a spa for a mum,” she jokes. “If sharing my little life with a million other mothers on Instagram has taught me anything, it’s that really, we’re all the same—doing our best, taking it one day at a time. You just gotta make it through the night, Mama!”
I had to stop reading at that point. I could feel something rising in my throat.
It took me a while to come back to it. To make it to the end. There was nothing in the piece I did not know already, of course. No claim I had not seen her make before, no anecdote unrecycled.
I had been hoping for a hatchet job, but instead it was a cover story and, inside, a five-page feature with photos of the four of them—mummy, daddy, son, and daughter—in their beautiful house, sitting on their expensive sofa, sun streaming through the window from their beautiful street. Four people without a care in the world. Four people whose idea of a tragedy is someone putting one of baby’s red socks through the wash with all of Dad’s white shirts. Who in their whole lives have never lost anything worse than their house keys. I swallow.
Despite the stresses that must come with being one of the UK’s most followed families, Emmy and Dan are clearly still deeply in love—you can just tell from the way they look at each other. Emmy points to their wedding photo, jostling for space on the shelf with framed pictures of their children, where they are both beaming. “It’s revolting, I know”—she laughs—“but I honestly still feel like that, every day. I knew the instant I met Dan that he was The One.
“I married my best friend—the funniest, kindest, cleverest man I’ve ever met. We may drive each other up the wall sometimes, but there’s nobody I would rather be on this journey with,” she says, resting a hand on his shoulder.
And that’s when I spotted it. Right there, staring at me, in the big photo, the one of them all together in their living room. Three letters—the top of an r, the tip of a d, then a space, then the upper half of what looked like a capital N. There in the mirror behind their heads, the one next to the window, the big, slightly foxed mirror, peeking in reflection over the shutters. A glimpse of the name of the pub opposite their house: ___rd N____.
It was all I needed.
Chapter Three
Emmy
It’s an odd thing, social media celebrity. When I see someone do a double-take or nudge a friend and gesture in my direction, it takes me a second to remember that there are a million people who know exactly who I am. I have a moment of wondering if I have my skirt tucked into my knickers before I realize that they are staring at Mamabare, not my bare arse. Half the time they want to chat too—which is actually better than just staring, as that can get a bit awkward. I shouldn’t complain really—being approached is simply what happens when you’re so very approachable.
It happens three times between my front door and my agent’s office. It was just staring from one guy who got on at the same station as me. The creep didn’t even help me down the stairs with the pram. He could have been just your standard perv, but there was something in his eyes that suggested he’d seen me in my underwear. Whoever started #bodypositivemama deserves a thump—our feeds have been a sea of rippling #mumbods recently, all of us Instamums posting pics with handfuls of paunch to prove we love our stretch marks and spare tires because we “grew a person in there,” nobody daring to say that actually they might like to lose a few kilos.
The next one is Ally, an aspiring Instamum from Devon, who asks for a photo in front of the Oxford Circus sign. She spots me from a distance and literally runs down the platform to demand a photo—one of the perils of being permanently dressed in on-brand primary colors is that I’m so easy to spot—then enlists her embarrassed husband to take it, barking orders and checking the angles every few attempts (“Higher! Can’t you get the sign in? My shoes aren’t in the shot!”).
“This is the first weekend away that Chris and I have had since Hadrian was born. He’s two now. I literally cannot believe we’ve bumped into you. You are my idol. You made me believe in myself as a mother. Like I can still be me, even though I have a baby,” she gushes as she checks the photos.
“You’re the reason I started out on my own influencer journey after I got sacked when I was six months pregnant. I just thought, Here is a mama building her own business on her own terms. Being a strong woman with a baby and something important to say. The Mamabare feed is like my bible.” She clasps her hands in front of her and shakes her head.
By this point, Bear has started to cry. Ally actually looks like she might too.
“That’s incredible to hear, Ally, thank you, but I’m certainly no saint! I’m so sorry, I’m going to have to run—little Bear needs a feed, and I draw the line at getting my boobs out on the Bakerloo line! Tag me and I’ll make sure I follow you back,” I say as I march off with a smile.
The third person, who introduces herself as Caroline, stops me by the ticket barriers to share her battles with postnatal depression. I have, she says, been such an inspiration. Just knowing that there was someone out there who got where she was coming from, who had been through the dark nights too, stopped her from feeling so alone. Stopped her from doing something silly, from really losing it. She pulls her #greydays reusable coffee cup out of her handbag, and waves her Mamabare phone cover at me.
“Always remember, you are the best mama you can be, Caroline. Your little human thinks you’re a superhero,” I say, wrapping my arms around her.
I lumber up from the station with the pram under my arm and get three steps from the top before anyone offers to help. I flash them a quick smile and say I am fine, thanks. I’m dreading getting this baby up the five flights to Irene’s office. You would really think, as Britain’s leading agent for online parenting stars, she would have an office that was a little more accessible. Then again, Irene has never shown any sign of being interested in babies. It’s entirely possible she chose an office at the top of the tallest, narrowest staircase she could find in this hellishly busy part of London as a deliberate ploy to discourage her clients from bringing their offspring along when they come to see her.
I put the pram down and fish my hand sanitizer and phone out of my bag. I have seven missed calls, all from Dan. Christ, I think to myself, picturing Dan trying repeatedly and with increasing irritation opening and closing the same three kitchen cupboards in search of a jar of pesto while Coco whines for her lunch. What’s the crisis this time, Dan? Oh, you can’t find the fucking colander.
Then, a microsecond later, it occurs to me that something really might have happened, and for every second that Dan does not answer his phone, my panic escalates.
It keeps ringing. I tell myself it is fine and I am being ridiculous.
It still keeps ringing. I tell myself that he has probably just locked them both out or is checking whether he needs to pick up anything for dinner.
Still ringing. Probably, I tell myself, it was just a pocket call and that is why he is not picking up now. I’m sure they are at the playground and having a lovely time.
His phone keeps ringing.
His phone keeps ringing.
The name of a pub. Three letters. An r, a d, and a capital N. It’s lucky I’ve always been good at crossword puzzles. Come to think of it, Grace used to enjoy them too. The funny thing with crosswords and that sort of business is that even when you think you are stumped, even when you have put the paper aside and gone off to do something else, your brain is still working on the answers you didn’t get, ticking away, making the connections that had your conscious brain perplexed. Then when you pick the paper up and sit down with your pencil again a few hours later, there they are, the answers, just waiting for you to write them down.
I strode off confidently down a blind alley at first. As far as the r and the d were concerned, they surely—in a pub name—had to be the second half of Lord. Lord N____?, I thought. Why, it must be Lord Nelson, of course.
My mouth was dry. My heart was thumping.
From reading Mamabare’s posts, from reading Emmy’s interviews, from listening to her talk to other people like her on podcasts, I have accumulated over time a little treasure trove of information about where she and her family live. I know, for instance, that they live east. I know they are only ten minutes from the Westfield shopping center. I know they are close enough to a big park to walk there with a buggy, and that when Emmy worked in magazines she sometimes used to cycle to work along the canal. I know there is a Tube station and a Tesco Metro and where they live is equidistant between two schools (the good school and the other place, as Emmy always calls them). I know they do not live in any of the places I have seen or heard Emmy complain about being priced out of. I have heard her say at least twice how much she wished they lived closer to a Waitrose. I know there is a petrol station just around the corner where she sometimes used to go for nappies and/or magazines and/or emergency chocolate when Coco was first born.
Not much to go on, until now.
According to Google, there are eight pubs called the Lord Nelson in London. Three are too far west. One is too far south. One is way, way out, practically in Middlesex.
That left three. The first looked promising, when I typed the postcode into Street View. The road looked like the kind of place I could imagine someone like Emmy living. It was just around the corner from the Tube. There was a petrol station in walking distance and a Tesco Metro. It was the house itself that was all wrong. There was no way Emmy Jackson lived behind those greying net curtains, in a house with a front door painted with red gloss paint. Neither of the places on either side of it were any good either. One had a load of posters in the window for an animal welfare charity; the other had a load of weeds growing out of the cracked concrete of the front garden and a car on bricks on the driveway.
The second Lord Nelson was next door to a high-rise.
The third Lord Nelson had metal shutters up on all the windows and appeared to have been out of business for some time.
I was genuinely stumped. I actually retrieved the magazine from the recycling pile to look at it again and check I hadn’t made some kind of mistake, that I had not missed some crucial detail. There it was: definitely a pub, definitely directly opposite their house, and those were definitely the letters visible through their front window. It did not make any sense. Unless everything Mamabare had ever said and written about her neighborhood was an elaborate act of misdirection? Unless they actually lived in a completely different part of London to the one they claimed?
But none of the other five Lord Nelsons in London fitted the bill either. One was opposite a park. One faced onto a dual carriageway. None of the frontages of any of the pubs matched with what was visible through the photographed window of Emmy and her husband’s house.
I turned off the computer in frustration and went through to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. It was almost ten o’clock. What had started as an evening of great excitement had gradually turned flat, then curdled. I went through to the living room and turned on the news. It was all bad. After about five minutes I turned it off and went to bed.
I had switched the bedside light off and checked my alarm and was thinking about something else entirely, about a couple of things I needed to do in the morning, when it hit me.
Lord Napier.
There was a pub opposite the railway station in the town where I grew up called the Lord Napier.
I switched the light back on. I went through to the computer. As it warmed up and turned on, I drummed my fingers impatiently on the edge of the keyboard.
There are three pubs called the Lord Napier in London. There is only one in east London. I looked it up on Google Maps.
It is five minutes from a Tube station. It is around the corner from a petrol station. It is a quick stroll from a Tesco Metro. It is nearish to the canal.
I checked how long it would take to get from the pub (or opposite it) to Westfield. The answer: exactly ten minutes, on the Central line.
I clicked on Street View. I entered the postcode. I reached across for the paper. I looked from screen to photograph and from photograph to screen again. We had a match. I scrolled the screen around until I was looking at the house opposite. It had new curtains, a freshly painted dark grey front door, shutters.
Hello, Emmy.
Dan
Answer your phone. Answer your phone. Answer your fucking phone.
It’s definitely ringing. Ringing and ringing and then going to voicemail. Emmy must be above ground by now. Why is it still going to voicemail?
Jesus Christ.
I suspect every parent has experienced this at some point. That feeling, that gut-twisting, pore-prickling feeling, your throat tightening and your pulse pounding in your temples and your breath catching in your throat and your eyes frantically scanning the crowd at waist height, at child height—and the child who was holding your hand literally two seconds ago nowhere to be seen. And even as half of your brain is telling yourself not to be so silly, that she’s just slipped off to have another look at something in the window of the toy shop you passed a few minutes ago, has just seen something that caught her eye (a poster, a snack stand, something shiny) and wandered over to investigate, the other half of your brain has already leapt to the worst possible conclusions.
We are in Westfield, the mall, the one near the former Olympic Park. Coco and I have already been to two shoe shops and are now in a third. Having finally found a pair of proper, sensible shoes that fit and which she does not entirely hate, I let go of her hand just for a second to pay and to take charge of the bag, and when I turn back to ask if she fancies an ice cream she’s gone.
I don’t panic immediately. She’s probably just behind one of the displays. Perhaps she’s gone back over to look at those glittery trainers with the lights in the heel, the ones she was so taken with earlier.
It’s not a large shop. This being a quiet Thursday afternoon, there aren’t a lot of other people in here. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to establish that Coco is no longer on the premises. In those few brief minutes I have gone from apologetic to anxious to outright panic mode. There are at least two people in the shop, people who work there, who do not appear to be serving anybody. What I cannot understand is why they are just standing around.
“A little girl. The one who was with me.” I hold my hand out to indicate Coco’s height. “You didn’t see where she went?”
They both shake their heads. As I am leaving, I hear someone calling after me that I’ve forgotten my bag. I don’t go back.
There’s no sign of my daughter outside the shop either.
We’re on the second floor, down at the John Lewis end, just by the escalators. I run to the top of them, trying not to picture Coco using the escalator on her own, telling myself that surely someone would have stopped her.
The nearest set of escalators is empty.
That is when I first try to call Emmy. Is there anywhere, I want to ask her, that Coco especially likes to go in Westfield? Since I hate the place and everything it stands for, it’s usually the girls who come here on their own while I push Bear in his pram around the park. I try to rack my brain for anything either Emmy or Coco might have said about their trips together. Is there a particular shop she always wants to look in, that she talks about? A particular playground? Somewhere they enjoy going? Nothing springs to mind. Again Emmy’s mobile goes to voicemail.
I’m obviously looking pretty frantic by now. Passing people are giving me sidelong looks, glances of concern.
“A little girl,” I say to them. I do the thing with my hand again. “Have you seen a little girl?”
Apologetic shakes of the head, shrugs, gestures of commiseration. Ev
ery time I spot a child, my heart gives a lurch, then sinks as I realize it’s wearing the wrong coat, or it’s the wrong size, or the wrong gender.
I am painfully aware that every decision I make now, every incorrect decision, is costing me time. Do I run down this way, to see if she’s around this corner? In exactly the same amount of time Coco could be disappearing around a different corner in the opposite direction. And every second I spend hesitating, that’s another second wasted too. Is Coco already on one of the lower floors? Has she gone back to the elevators? Has she wandered off to try to find the play area I know she and Emmy sometimes visit? There’s somewhere called Soft Play, isn’t there? Is that in the same building? Or is that somewhere different? I’m picturing a bouncy castle, but inside.
I try Emmy’s phone again.
All around me on the concourse, people are going about their everyday business, drifting along with what seems to me infuriating slowness. I decide to try the elevators first. I squeeze around a couple holding hands, jump right over someone’s wheely bag. In the window of one of the shops, I catch a glimpse of myself as I run past: pale, wild-eyed, on the verge of a meltdown.
What I can’t understand is why no one has stopped her. Would you not stop a lone three-year-old and ask them where they were going, if one passed you in a mall? I mean, somebody must have clocked her. Surely someone, you would think, would have the gumption to stop a little kid like that and ask them where they’re going, where their mummy or daddy—or whoever—is. You would imagine. You would hope.