by Ellery Lloyd
Grace was the one who’d asked him to move out. She’d told him it hurt to look at him. That she felt guilty every time they found themselves having a conversation that was not about the baby who was gone. She felt it was all her fault, that he thought it was all her fault but would never say it and it would just fester forever. She flinched every time he touched her. Tensed every time he came into the room. Jack said she spent all her time on her phone, in a lukewarm bath, thumb scrolling, face blank.
When he did move out, he did so with the understanding that it was only a temporary thing. If she needed space, he would give it to her. When she was ready to see him again, to talk about where they went from there, he would be ready. He was only staying about half an hour down the road, with a friend, in their spare room.
One week turned into two weeks, two weeks into four. He told me she was not answering her phone, not replying to the texts he sent her.
And then one morning, very casually, very flatly, she informed me on the phone that she had decided to file a petition for divorce.
Chapter Twelve
Emmy
“Oh, by the way, I meant to tell you, Irene called,” says Winter, several minutes after I came back from putting Bear down for his nap. While I’ve been making myself something to eat, she’s been sitting at the kitchen island, pouting at herself in her phone, adjusting her beret.
“Right,” I say, with a glance at the clock.
“She said it was something about a TV show.”
“Yeah?”
Winter nods. I smile encouragingly. The moment lengthens.
“No message?” I ask eventually.
“Oh,” says Winter after a pause. “And she wants you to call her back straightaway.”
Irene never calls unless she really has to. Emails, WhatsApps, DMs, yes. Picking up the phone? Almost unheard-of.
I didn’t get that BBC Three job. That must be what Irene is calling to tell me. That’s why she didn’t want to leave a message. I can feel it in my bones.
I don’t know why I even let myself get my hopes up, really. We’ve been here too many times before, Irene and I—been through this over and over and over. The meetings, the camera tests, the read-throughs, the waiting. The optimistic glow of that first day waiting to hear back, buoyed by memories of how friendly everybody was and how well it had seemed to go, my phone within grabbing distance at all times. The second day, anxiety starting to creep in, recurring thoughts of things I might have done better, or differently, things I wish I hadn’t said. The third day. The fourth. Then the news that I was great but they’ve gone with someone else. I was great but someone else was even greater. They wanted someone older, someone younger; they’d decided to go with someone with more of an edge, with less of an edge. It’s nothing personal, they just didn’t like my hair or my clothes or my face or my voice or my personality.
Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck them.
“Are you okay?” asks Winter. “Do you want a bit of my kombucha or something?”
“No thanks, Winter. I am afraid there are some things even a seven-quid soft drink can’t fix.” I smile through gritted teeth.
Something that’s really begun to sink in recently, something that has really started to terrify me when I wake in the middle of the night and find myself thinking about the future, is that there may be no escape route from all this. Despite all my plotting and planning, all those years of turning up to the opening of a nappy bag, pretending to love women I’d otherwise dread getting stuck in an elevator with, of flogging bum cream and water wipes, cheese spread and chicken nuggets, of responding to every pissy DM and crazy comment—all with an eye on a bigger prize—I may have just ended up stranding myself in yet another career cul-de-sac. Canoed myself, if you will, up yet another dead-end creek. And this time, I’ve made reversing even harder, as I have just enough celebrity—like a Love Island contestant, say, or an X Factor runner-up—to make returning to normal life at best mortifying and at worst impossible. I’d be like one of those former soap stars the tabloids laugh at for working at Starbucks.
Having left behind the magazine industry as it was crumbling around my ears, it could be that I’m more aware than most about the long-term prospects of this line of work. You know those cartoons where Wile E. Coyote comes to the end of the cliff and keeps going, legs furiously wheeling away, giving it his all, and then he suddenly looks down and there’s nothing underneath him? I know exactly how that coyote feels.
Anyone with any experience of the media, social or otherwise, knows this influencer stuff can’t last. Just as the once-useful Twitter is now full of angry men correcting one another’s grammar and swearing at feminists, like Myspace before it died along with the careers of all those Justin Bieber wannabes, Instagram is poised over a precipice. With women wising up to the fact that we are just saleswomen disguised as sisters, flogging them things they don’t need, can’t afford, and that won’t make them feel better anyway, even if I was willing to pop out a new kid every couple of years to keep the content flowing, Instaparenting feels like a particularly precarious way to make a living. But Dan is unlikely to be finishing that second novel any time soon, so at least one of us needs to have a long-term plan. And mine has always been to make the leap from the tiny screen you hold in your hand to the slightly bigger one in the living room.
TV presenting just seems to me like the next logical step. There are times when, in my head at least, the whole thing has seemed not just natural but inevitable. Over the years, at my insistence, Irene has booked me for as many on-screen interviews as would have me, for practice in front of the camera—I’ve been the parental pundit on everything from Newsnight to Loose Women, with varying degrees of success. She’s got me in for auditions, meetings with casting agents. The advent of Instastories helped a bit: it’s been a useful training ground and a never-ending audition for the role of myself. To be honest, I was never quite as good at it as we’d both hoped, but I’ve improved with experience. With her contacts from the acting agent days, Irene set me up with voice coaches so I stopped swallowing my words, movement specialists so my hands don’t flap awkwardly, and a media trainer who taught me how not to look wild-eyed.
I’ve had some paid gigs, including a kids’ TV show about climate change on which I was interviewing a man dressed as a polar bear, and an influencer special of Antiques Road Trip. A few proper presenting projects have even looked like they were about to happen, then been canceled. The show that I’m sure Irene is calling about, a BBC Three documentary I was hoping to front, has nearly been green-lit five times before. The idea is almost as old as Coco, in fact, but while they know they want it to be about the struggles of starting a family, they keep changing their mind about the angle. There have been casual chats and hardball negotiations, only for it to all go quiet again.
The last time I was called in, they lined up an actress for a screen test, to talk me through her heartbreaking baby loss experience in all the distressing detail, the actor playing her husband holding her hand and silently weeping as she spoke. They were emoting their socks off, and all I had to do was make the right noises, come up with the right questions off the cuff. Somehow, though, I just couldn’t seem to get the tone right. I could hear myself sounding fake, sounding brittle. The first few takes everyone was very supportive, the actors making encouraging comments, the director offering suggestions and trying to help me relax, loosen up a bit. By take five people were discreetly checking their watches. After take six we took a brief break. By take nine it felt pretty clear to everyone in the room that this was not a gig I was in the process of landing.
I take a deep breath and dial. “Go on, then, give me the bad news.” I sigh.
“Actually, Emmy, it’s the opposite. BBC Three called to say that you’re down to the final two.”
It takes a moment for what Irene is saying to really register. I was so braced for another knockback that by the time it does, I’m already halfway through formulating some ex
pression of polite regret that I was not what they were looking for, again.
“The final two?” I say.
“You’re up against ivfandangels—usually I’d say you’re a dead cert but, well, topic-wise the show is very much on-brand for her. Obviously, though, in terms of follower count, you have a massive advantage.”
She is not bloody kidding. Admittedly, ivfandangels has got two hundred thousand followers, but still, if it’s sheer numbers they’re going on, there’s no contest.
“The thing is—and this is something they were absolutely up front about—they’ve changed the angle. They want whoever they choose to be able to put a personal spin on things—for the show to have an authentic human story at its heart.”
Of course they fucking do. Which means, therefore, I don’t stand a chance. Ivfandangels has personal tragedy coming out of her ears. Every time her child has a birthday she always sets out six little empty seats, lights the candles on five extra cupcakes, and posts the artfully lit pictures on Instagram.
Irene tells me they’ve asked us both for one more thing. They’ve seen all they need to, audition-wise.
“They’re just asking for a brief video clip. Explaining why this is a show you have to make. Really opening up about your own experiences.”
“Really opening up,” I repeat.
“Oh, and they want you both to send your video by five o’clock today. I think they want to put you on the spot so it feels real and raw. Is that going to be a problem?” she asks.
“No problem,” I reply airily. “Tell them I’ll send it over by five at the latest.”
The baby monitor relays a half-awake squeak from Bear’s room. A series of tentative moans and mumbles follows. Jesus Christ. His nap can’t be over yet, can it?
I check the time. One hour exactly until five p.m. I find myself unable to stop envisioning the minutes literally slipping away like sand through my fingers. I think about all the effort and time and energy I have put into this over the years. All the sacrifices I’ve made. What it would feel like to turn the TV on and accidentally stumble across ivfandangels standing by a lake and reading a poem, wandering around hospital corridors looking soulful.
The squeaks gather pace into full-on, angry screams. The baby is definitely awake.
I take a deep breath, open my email, and type the name “Polly” into the search bar.
Dan
What kind of sick fuck? That is what I keep asking myself. What kind of sick fuck?
One of the things about putting your life out there online: there is always someone who pops up and helpfully draws your attention to anything nasty, vile, or just unpleasant someone has written about you that you might otherwise somehow have missed. Some helpful fucker with nothing better to do, happy to provide a link to a terrible Goodreads review you were unaware of, to loop you into a negative discussion of your work on Twitter, or, in Emmy’s case, to make sure you’re kept up to speed with how a thread about you on Guru Gossip or Tattle Life titled “Has Mamabare put on more weight?” is progressing. It’s not that I think Suzy Wao was delighted exactly to inform Emmy of the #rp account, but even through the three-line WhatsApp, I could feel the fizz of excitement, perhaps even a whiff of schadenfreude.
I’ve just read Coco her bedtime story (one from Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, of which we have about twelve or so copies around the house, all presents from various people, including my mother) and wished her sweet dreams and came downstairs to grab a beer from the fridge before sitting down at the kitchen island with my laptop.
Emmy came in a few hours ago and told me her news, and I said if she was down to the last two she’s bound to get it. A TV show. Not just a talking head slot, not just being part of a panel, but her own TV show. Would she have her name in the title? I asked. She said not to get ahead of ourselves; the title wasn’t settled yet. We exchanged a look. Her eyes were gleaming. “I think we both know you’re going to get it,” I said. She smiled coyly. “All I can say,” she said, “is that I have given it my best shot.” While I’ve been sitting here, I’ve googled the producer’s name and googled the person who commissioned it and now I am basically googling everyone involved in the whole thing. There are some serious people on board, from the looks of things. People who’ve worked with big names. Who have made programs even I have heard of, or at least read reviews of in the Guardian. It’s only after Emmy has gone upstairs to check on the kids that I realize I forgot to ask what the program is actually going to be about.
Emmy is upstairs when her phone buzzes, and I glance over.
And for a moment, it feels like the bottom has dropped out of my world.
Of all the weird, disgusting, horrible stuff that happens on the internet, Instagram role-players—#babyrp is the hashtag they sometimes use, although they do it subtly, burying it toward the end of a block of hashtags so no one sees—have always seemed to me right up there. Not only in the sense that what they do strikes me as gross and insensitive and morally questionable, but in that I am wholly incapable of imagining myself into the mindset of someone who would do something like that. It’s like those people who post videos of themselves doing stupid, unfunny, dangerous pranks on YouTube (drinking a bucket of puke, say, or throwing water balloons at strangers on a mall escalator and then getting beaten up). It’s like deciding to troll the parents of a teen suicide or the survivors of a school shooting or spending your whole day sending hate messages to an actress of color you thought was miscast in a Star Wars movie. I just don’t get the point. To steal pictures of other people’s kids and post them on Instagram under a different name. To make up stories about them, their family situations, what they’re like. Real pictures. Real children. Even if I didn’t have a kid of my own, I think I’d find it unsettling in the same visceral way.
What Suzy has texted to tell Emmy is that she’s stumbled across an Instagram feed that is all pictures of Coco.
Of course I unlock Emmy’s phone—yes, I know her pass code; it is the date on which Coco was born—and click on the link.
In the very first picture I see, Coco is holding my hand, looking back over her shoulder at the camera. I remember that day. It was one of those late summer days, dry, bright, when there was just a hint of autumn in the air. The leaves had started falling, had started piling up along the edges of the sidewalks, because I remember Coco romping through them as we were walking down the road, laughing. We waited at the crossing next to the nursery for the cars to stop, Coco waving a chubby paw at the drivers, and I was telling Coco to be good and trying to get her excited about all the new people she was going to meet on her first day in her new room at nursery. I waited until she was playing and made a discreet exit and then sat in the Starbucks around the corner in case someone from the nursery called, in case she was upset and they needed me to come back and calm her down. She wasn’t, of course. I didn’t. She was not fazed by her new teacher, a whole new set of classmates, at all. I think when I came back to collect her that afternoon she was a little amazed that it was home time already.
The caption is all about little Rosie (“our DD—Darling Daughter”) having trouble sleeping, and the mad thing is that all sorts of people have written comments sympathizing and offering suggestions for what got their baby to sleep.
The thought of someone making all this stuff up about our daughter, using her real pictures, giving her some made-up name, preying on people’s gullibility, violating my daughter’s privacy, makes me feel almost sick with anger.
I’m very tempted to write something under the picture myself. Something brutal, something threatening. Not physically threatening. Not really. The kind of threat I have in mind this time involves the police, and letters from lawyers.
I can hear Emmy padding around upstairs. She descends to the ground floor in her pajamas, with a face mask on, her hair piled on top of her head in a knot. She crosses to the sink, gets herself a glass of water, comes through to where I am sitting.
“How you doing?” s
he says.
I am not really sure how to answer. I jut my chin at the screen.
“What?” she asks.
“That,” I say.
“What’s that?” she asks, taking the phone from me with one hand as she rearranges her towel with the other.
“Suzy Wao found it and messaged to let you know,” I tell her.
“Uh-huh,” she says.
Emmy’s face as she reads is expressionless. After she has clicked a few images, scrolled down a little ways, she passes me back the phone.
“I’ll call Irene now,” she says.
I hold her gaze, shake my head.
“No, Emmy,” I say.
“You don’t want me to call Irene?”
“I want her off the internet,” I say. “I want Coco—I want both our children—off the fucking internet.”
Emmy takes a deep breath. I know what she’s about to say. That this doesn’t just happen to influencers. That it could happen to anyone who has pictures of their children online. That the internet is just the internet. It’s not real. It has always amazed me, Emmy’s ability to shrug off online criticism, her ability to ignore all the people out there who don’t like her, who rant and rave about how much they hate her, what a bad person she is; all those random strangers with their burning opinions about the way she dresses, the way she looks, the way she writes, the way she mothers.
This is different, though. This is clearly different. This—this, I think, tempted to poke the actual screen with my finger, lest the point be missed—is my child.
“Keep reading,” I say. “Just look. There are loads. Fucking loads of it. Picture after picture. Post after post. Whoever this person is, they’re fucking obsessed.”
She settles down next to me with a sigh, and I can feel the heat of the shower still coming off her in waves. She starts to read. She scrolls down and stops reading. She scrolls down again. From time to time her lips contract. From time to time her nostrils flare. I watch the words reflected in her eyes, her face lit by the phone’s pale glow.