by Ellery Lloyd
After she’s gone, I check the windows are locked and then I check the doors are locked and then I go back and check the windows again. I brush my teeth and have a pee and catch myself just before I flush the toilet and wake the baby up (old, clanking pipes). I rattle the front door one more time, just to check it is bolted as well as locked.
By the time I get upstairs, the bedroom light is off and Emmy is under the covers on the far side of the bed with her back to where I’m standing at the door. I rest my hand on the mattress to prevent myself stumbling or tripping over as I slip my socks and jeans off, then wrestle my shirt and V-neck sweater off over my head all in one go.
I fall asleep to the sound of a distantly circling police helicopter, sirens somewhere nearby.
Then the phone rings, and all hell breaks loose.
She seems like a lovely little girl, Coco. A little bit of a show-off at times, perhaps. A little bit headstrong. But basically a good kid, a thoughtful, gentle, good-natured, unselfish one. Goodness knows where she gets it from. I was expecting her to be a little monster. You know the sort of thing—always sucking on a sweetie, always screaming at someone, except when it is time to have her picture taken. A little prima donna. As far as I can see, she is nothing of the sort.
It is Grace that Coco reminds me of, more than anything. The same sweetness. The same kindness. The same generosity of spirit. On the playground, Coco is always the first one there when somebody falls over, helping them up. They even look a little alike. Sometimes as she is playing, as she is going down a slide or kicking her legs on one of the swings or just running around, I catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye and it takes me straight back to Grace’s childhood, all those years ago.
What strikes me most strongly, having seen what an energetic kid she is, how much she loves running around and shouting and jumping off things, is how boring she must find all this Mamabare stuff. The photo shoots. Pretending to be playing. Pretending to have fun. Being dragged around to all these events, half of them way past her bedtime. And what is it going to be like when she grows up, when she looks back at her childhood? What is she going to remember—what actually happened, or the version of what happened that Emmy posts online?
When I used to say things like that, Grace would always screw up her face and say I was being old-fashioned.
Doreen. That’s the name of the nanny. She has seen me around enough—in the park, on the bus, once on the street outside the house—for us to get to the nodding stage with each other. A couple of times we have said good morning. Once we found ourselves sitting next to each other on a bench by the pond. Coco was feeding the ducks, laughing, shrieking when they started crowding up too close, waddling up over the lip of the pond and closing in on her to get the bread that she had dropped.
“How old?” I asked.
She told me.
“Granddaughter?”
She shook her head.
“Not one of mine,” she said. “Just one I look after.”
She does not get to see her own grandchildren as much as she would like, she told me. Two of them were up in Manchester, one over near Norwich. What about me?
I told her I did not get to see my little granddaughter as much as I would like either. Or my daughter, for that matter.
We commiserated.
“Coco,” she called. “Not so close to the edge.”
Coco looked back and nodded to show she had understood.
“Okay!” she shouted.
Doreen gave her a thumbs-up.
“Sweet little girl,” I commented.
I am not sure whether Coco recognized me or not. If she did, she didn’t say anything. But there was definitely a moment when her gaze rested on me and a little frown passed across her face as if she was trying to place me, trying to remember where we had encountered each other before. Then a duck nuzzled at the back of her coat and gave her a start, and she jumped away, shrieking.
It’s all in place now. Everything I need is at the house; everything has been tested, double-tested, checked. I have taken down the FOR SALE sign, just in case, stowed it around the side of the house, by the bins. I have made sure there is enough in the fridge for me, stuff that won’t go off, plenty of UHT milk and coffee in the pantry. I have made the necessary calculations. I have gone through the stages in my head. I have asked myself if I am really capable of this, if I am really up to it, and I have thought about Grace and I have thought about Ailsa and I have found my answer.
Now all I need is the right moment.
Emmy
It’s a textbook Mail on Sunday sting.
A call at nine thirty on a Saturday night laying out the bare bones of a front-page story about you and asking for a response. Not that they actually want it—it’s more of a courtesy call, really, letting you know that your face will be splashed all over a tabloid the next morning. There is no damage limitation to be done by that point, no time to kill the story before the sordid little thing goes to press. I know this from experience, thanks to an airbrushing scandal in my magazine days when a slapdash art director, in the process of artificially shaving a few inches off a Hollywood actress, accidentally gave her an extra elbow.
I can see that something is seriously wrong the second Dan answers the phone. A cheery “Hello?” is followed by a much more serious “Yes.”
Who? I mouth with a raised eyebrow.
He ignores me.
“I see,” he says into the receiver.
His expression is stern, his eyebrows almost touching. I nudge him, but he turns his back on me.
“What is it, Dan, for fuck’s sake?” I hiss.
He waves my words away with the back of his hand. He was sitting down, but now he’s standing, the hand that is not holding the phone covering his ear.
“Yes, I’m still here. I’m listening.”
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
“No,” he says, holding my gaze. “No, I have nothing to say, nothing to say to you at all. Except . . . leave my family alone.”
Then he throws the phone down on the bed so hard it bounces and goes spinning off into the corner of the room.
“Dan?”
He turns, and I honestly don’t think I have ever seen him look like this before.
“Let me get this right, Emmy,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “You get an email from your best friend, a girl you’ve known since school, maid of honor at our wedding, about losing three babies. Three. You don’t call her back. You don’t even send her a text. You offer her less time, less support, than you would a total stranger online. And then, for the sake of a job presenting a documentary on a topic about which you know precisely nothing, you steal her story, her actual life, and pass it off as your own? Our own?”
Dan breaks off, shaking his head. “Who the fuck even are you, Emmy?”
My mouth opens. That’s not what I did. At least that’s not what I meant to do. It was an audition. I was acting. Nobody was meant to see it apart from them. How the hell has it made its way out into the world? How the fuck has Polly seen it? Who gave it to her? That’s what I want to say. I just can’t make the words come out.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dan mutters to himself, palming his forehead, kneading his brow. “On top of everything fucking else.”
Yeah, Dan, I think, on top of everything else. On top of a husband whose combined royalties and lending rights income in the last tax year came to £7.10 and yet who, as far as I could tell, quite enjoyed our long weekend in Lisbon and our winter week in Marrakech and our free fortnight in the Maldives. On top of being someone who pays the mortgage, pays for the childcare, pays the electricity bill, slogging away every day in an industry that constantly demands I reveal more, peel off yet another layer of skin, bare everything, share everything, just to entertain some half-interested stranger for a quarter of a minute.
My phone rings. Unknown number. I stare at it, close my eyes for a moment, hoping that when I open them again it will all have
gone away. It stops for a second, then starts again. This time, it is a number I recognize. Irene.
“I’ve just got off the phone with the Mail on Sunday. We have a lot of damage control to do here, Emmy. Everything else,” she says, matter-of-factly, “we can deal with later. You need to get hold of Polly now, convince her to tell them she was lying. I don’t care how you do it. She’s your friend—you have to make her realize what the stakes are for you. For your family. Your children.”
Dan is still muttering away, so I leave him to it.
I’m shocked when Polly answers on the first ring.
“Emmy. I hear congratulations are in order.” Her voice is jagged.
“Polly,” I start, my voice shaking, “you know I love you. I would never want to hurt you. I am so sorry. About the email, I—”
“So nice of you to finally phone about that, Emmy. It makes me feel so valued as a friend, you know. One of your tribe. That’s what you all call one another, isn’t it? I learned that at Coco’s party.” She pauses. “Does that make you their chief?” She laughs coldly.
“You are phoning to check how I am doing, after my three miscarriages? The ones that I spent so long agonizing over whether I should tell you about because I didn’t want to make you feel terrible about that abortion all those years ago, or burden you when you were pregnant, or overload you when you had a newborn. Or is there something else you wanted to talk about? Funny, now I think about it, this is the first time you’ve called me in years.
“I suppose you never felt you needed to pick up the phone,” she goes on. “I could keep up with you by flicking through the little snapshots of your life you so graciously share online, like one of your followers, one of your fans, couldn’t I? But did you never wonder how I was? What I was up to? Never feel the need to check in? Sorry, I don’t even know why I’m asking. Clearly not.
“You know, the reason I insisted on coming to Coco’s party was because it was the only way I could think of to actually see you. And those people, Emmy—those people are awful. You do know that, don’t you? I only started chatting to that journalist because I couldn’t bear being blanked again when whoever I was talking to realized I wasn’t anybody important or useful.”
“You met the person who wrote this at my party? Who?” I demand.
“Jess Watts. The freelance journalist who interviewed you for the Sunday Times. She saw me standing by myself and felt sorry for me, I think. She took my number because she said she’s always looking for quotes from English teachers for one thing or another. Anyway, when they announced your new show, she called to say she was writing a profile piece on you for the Mail on Sunday and could she get some quotes. She started telling me about how your story had moved her, how important it was for other women going through the same thing that you had opened up about your own pain and grief. Had you always been such a survivor? she wanted to know. When I said I had no idea what she was talking about, she asked if I wanted to see the video the BBC had emailed her, as a bit of background, some context for the piece. I watched it cold, Emmy. Can you imagine what that felt like?”
I say nothing.
“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Emmy. I’m genuinely curious, at this point in our friendship, even after all these years. Can you actually imagine what that felt like? Or have you finally become 2D, like your photos?”
“I can explain, Pol, I just wasn’t thinking. The director wanted to hear a personal experience, and yours was so powerful, I just knew that it needed to be shared.” I can hear my tongue stumbling over the words.
“It wasn’t your story, Emmy. You don’t get to make that decision. They were my dead babies, not yours. Just like it would not have occurred to me for a minute to start talking to that journalist about your abortions. Not for your sake. Not for Dan’s sake. Not even for Coco’s or Bear’s. But because I happen to believe there are still some things that are personal, that are private. Because I happen to believe there are some stories that aren’t mine to tell.
“I always gave you the benefit of the doubt, you know. Before. I never got angry when you canceled or turned up late. Tried not to be hurt at the endless posts about your amazing crew of humans or all the banging on about the ‘mamas’ who changed your life, tried not to ask myself what exactly that made me. But when I saw that video . . . I mean, Jesus Christ, Emmy. And when Jess called back, I couldn’t help myself. I just told her the truth. She said she knew there was something off about you that day she came to interview you and Dan. Something cold, disengaged. All your stories were too pat, too polished, she said. That’s because they’re just words, aren’t they, to you? Just content—isn’t that what you people call it? Nothing has any meaning anymore, unless it’s public, unless it’s out there for other people to read about. You’re not a person anymore, Emmy. You’re just a phony caption and a posed photo. A fucking invention. I hope this is a wake-up call.”
“It is, Polly, it really is. But you have to know what this story will do to me—”
“I am really sorry, Emmy, but honestly, I don’t give a shit.”
She hung up.
My finger hovers over my phone for a moment as I wonder whether I should send a WhatsApp explaining what really happened, how I was backed into a corner, how my addled newborn-mum brain was not equipped to deal with the stress, and beg her to forgive me, convince her I’m still the same girl she’s known forever. But I’m not, and she’ll know that.
Then I remember justanothermother, and the damage screenshots can do.
THE INSTAMUM WHO STOLE MY DEAD BABIES: A FORMER FRIEND TELLS ALL.
That is the headline they run with.
Chapter Fifteen
“Emmy said it’s fine.” That was what Grace kept telling me. “She said she used to do it all the time with her little girl, Coco.” I would send her links, show her the official NHS advice, make suggestions about other things they might experiment with. Grace would say she had tried everything else and none of it worked. “Tell her, Jack,” she would say to him, and he would pull an apologetic face.
I used to kick myself for getting her that ticket. A birthday present, it was. Twenty-five pounds for the ticket. Plus forty-five for the Mamabare sweatshirt I bought to go with it (I have always hated giving someone just an envelope). I could not believe how much they were charging. Still, it all felt worth it when Grace’s birthday came around. She put that sweatshirt on straightaway and kept it on the whole afternoon. The ticket she stuck to the fridge door, and every day for the next two weeks, she told me that whenever she went to get some milk or a bit of butter she would see it there and get another little rush of excitement. An evening with Mamabare. Doors seven thirty. A talk and a Q&A session and a chance to meet other mamas. Free glass of sparkling wine provided. She got there at quarter to seven, found them still setting up, walked around the block twice, and ended up having a glass of wine at the pub on the corner. All that week, Emmy had been posting about how excited she was to be meeting her followers face-to-face like this. It was, she said, the first time she had ever been to Guildford.
The truth was, Grace deserved a proper night out. I don’t think she had really had one since Ailsa was born. I did keep offering to come around and babysit, to stay over, but her response was always the same: What was the point? Ailsa was an absolutely beautiful baby, very good-natured most of the time, and you could see they both completely doted on her, but the instant Grace tried to put her down she would start screaming. And I mean really screaming. Turning herself puce. Making the kind of noises that sounded like they were hurting her throat. Getting herself more and more and more worked up. It was okay when Jack was there. At least he could put the baby in the carrier and get her off to sleep for a bit that way, let Grace get a short nap too. Then she could catch up a little in the day on all the sleep she was missing at night. The trouble was, he couldn’t always be there. He had a job to do, and quite often that job took him right to the other end of the country. I could come over sometimes for
a morning or an afternoon or an evening as my shifts allowed, but I couldn’t do that every weekend, let alone every night. And every night Grace was faced with the exact same problem: a baby who just would not be put down to sleep. Who would fall asleep in her mother’s arms if she was sitting watching TV, but who would instantly jerk awake and start howling the moment she tried to lower her into the cot next to the sofa. She would eventually drift off if Grace sat on the bed with her and rocked her and cooed to her in the dark for hours, but would immediately stiffen and wake if you made any attempt to get her into her crib. They bought one of those things you attach to the side of the bed, like a kind of sidecar, so the baby can sleep next to you safely. Ailsa lasted about five minutes in it. They tried swaddling. They bought all sorts of ceiling lights and window blinds and white noise boxes and special cushions and God knows what else. Nothing worked.
The first thing that Grace told me when she got in the door that night, when she arrived home, was that she had asked Emmy for her advice. Had asked Emmy whether she had found it difficult when Coco used to have trouble sleeping. Whether she had ever tried cosleeping and what she thought about it.
“Oh yeah?” I said.
I don’t think I really knew much about Mamabare at that stage, just the name, and that Grace thought she was funny and wise and wonderful and honest.
“And what did she tell you?” I asked her.
The whole exchange is still burned vividly into my memory. I can remember exactly where I was standing, in the hallway, and I can remember where Grace was standing, at the bottom of the stairs. She had just taken her coat off, was still standing there with it in her arms.
“She said she and Coco used to cosleep all the time in the beginning. That it was perfectly fine as long as you followed sensible precautions. That for centuries in most cultures around the world it has been the complete norm. She said that actually now that Coco sleeps in her own bedroom and they have the bed to themselves she sometimes misses her.”