Unfiltered

by Sophie White

  ‘It’s Miles.’ Mini looked stricken. ‘His ashes. I thought it’d be more like, well, ashes! This looks like fine-grade fecking gravel.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Ali whimpered, looking at the mound of Miles in front of them. ‘There’s so much of it! Did you not check it?’

  Mini shook her head helplessly. ‘I just assumed … I’ve never scattered anyone before. I thought it’d be a very fine dust and it would kind of dissipate?’

  ‘Well, we’d better put him back in.’ Ali snorted, which in turn set off Mini. She covered her mouth but soon they were both bent over howling at the absurdity of the situation.

  ‘Why did you upend the whole bloody thing?’ Ali managed to gasp.

  ‘I don’t know. I misjudged,’ Mini wailed. ‘For God’s sake, Miles, I’m blaming you!’ she shot at the whitish-grey pile on the floor. ‘Once I’d tipped it a tiny bit, he kind of threw his weight forward. He unbalanced it.’ They both collapsed into giggles once more at this.

  ‘Oh, I suppose ye think it’s funny to give me even more work to do?’

  A booming voice behind them abruptly silenced Ali and Mini. They wheeled around to find an intensely pissed-off-looking old woman standing with her hands on her hips.

  Oh shit. What time was it? What was the cleaner doing here so early? Beside her, Mini, thanks to some kind of adrenaline-rush of instinct, shoved the plastic urn out of sight.

  ‘Sorry.’ Ali found her voice as the woman stormed over to the Miles mound and kicked at it with her foot. Ali winced as the ashes scattered.

  ‘Absolutely outrageous. Grown adults effing around after hours with cat litter. Who are ye? Ye’re not supposed to be in here before 9 a.m. This is my time.’

  ‘We’re terribly sorry—’ Mini began, trying to appease her but she only raged on as she stormed back over to the side of the stage to retrieve …

  ‘NO!’ Ali shouted as the pissy woman shouldered a hoover and marched back towards them.

  ‘What did you say, missy?’

  ‘Don’t hoover.’ Ali scrambled to salvage the situation. ‘We’ll clean it up. We’re really sorry. It was an accident.’

  ‘I’ll be cleaning my own theatre, thank you very much. Betty is the housekeeper here.’ She thumped her chest. ‘I’ve been tending to the Abbey since eighty-four, before you were born, I’d say, and this is my work. Some of us take pride in our work.’

  She chucked the hoover down and stepped on the switch. It roared into life as Ali shot the panic-stricken Mini a pleading look.

  ‘Stop, stop, you can’t.’ Mini threw herself in front of Miles. ‘Betty, no! Please don’t.’

  Betty straightened up and, leaning on the hoover attachment, her eyes narrowed as she looked from Ali to Mini to the mound on the floor.

  ‘Is this some kind of drugs thing?’ She pulled out her phone. ‘I’m calling the guards.’

  ‘No!’ Mini was vehement.

  Betty looked suspicious.

  ‘Well, if it’s not crack marijuana, then why can’t I hoover it up?’ She cocked an eyebrow triumphantly.

  ‘It’s … it’s …’ Mini was clearly casting about for something convincing to say.

  ‘It’s not drugs,’ Ali threw in feebly.

  Betty pursed her lips and began to hoover the stage aggressively.

  ‘Tell her,’ Ali mouthed frantically at Mini.

  ‘I … Betty! Please stop!’ Mini roared over the hoover and tried to grab the cord.

  Betty whipped around raging. ‘Who are you anyway? Does Richard know you two are even here? You’re not cast, are you? Are you? What’s your name? I want to see ID.’

  Mini froze. Ali flashed on the potential headlines that hovered like blades of a guillotine over this ridiculous moment.

  ‘Failed Actor Dad of Shamed Influencer Wanted His Ashes Scattered on the Abbey Stage.’

  Oh God, she gulped. She instinctively backed away. By the defeated look on Mini’s face, she was clearly picturing a similar public humiliation.

  ‘Sorry.’ Mini held up her hands in acquiescence. ‘You’re right, Betty, we shouldn’t be here.’

  Betty smirked at them, delighted at having prevailed. ‘Off you go, so. You’ve caused me enough grief, thank you very much.’

  She turned and pushed the hoover straight through the pile of ashes with a kind of savage delight as Mini and Ali looked on in mute horror.

  Finally, Ali shook herself. Goddammit, this megalomaniac cleaner was hoovering up her dad! She dove forward and grabbed what she could, a fistful of ashes, then turned and exited stage left. She tore across the storeroom, down the stage door corridor and back out into the pale morning light, where, mercifully, Erasmus still sat, engine running. She leapt into the back seat and hunkered down in case Betty was in hot pursuit.

  ‘Where’s Mini? What happened in there?’ Erasmus looked terrified, which was, Ali reflected, pretty much his permanent natural state. Ali shoved the ashes she’d managed to grab into her coat pocket but, before she could answer, the stage door burst open again and Mini tore out clinging to Betty’s hoover. The door had barely banged shut behind her when Betty emerged, hair flying and shrieking, ‘I knew it was drugs’ at the top of her voice.

  Mini managed to throw herself backwards into the passenger seat, screaming, ‘Go, Go, GO!’ while trying to fend off Betty with her foot. Erasmus burst into stress-tears and accidentally tried to start off in fifth gear.

  ‘She’s got the cord, Mini.’ Ali rolled down her window and started grabbing at Betty.

  ‘Get it together, Erasmus,’ Mini shouted almost from his lap with the hoover hugged to her between her legs. A deranged and red-faced Betty was practically climbing into the car. Ali was struggling to fend her off while also protecting her bump. She leaned over the front seat and pushed Betty’s head, managing to get her back out of the car. At that moment, Erasmus got into first and shot away from the curb.

  ‘Jesus, she does not give up,’ Mini exclaimed, realising Betty still had the cord, which was rapidly unspooling from inside the hoover.

  ‘Shit, that’s gonna take her hands off.’ Ali craned backwards to see Betty, at least sixty years old, holding on to her hoover plug with the grim-faced determination of the Terminator. The car swung around the corner, looping the electrical cord around a lamppost and the hoover burst open. The bottom half fell out the passenger door leaving Mini with the top and Miles now billowing absolutely everywhere. Erasmus began coughing, the car swerved erratically and mounted the pavement before he braked hard.

  ‘Fucking hell, leave the rest of the hoover, Mini!’ Ali screamed. ‘There’s no point, she’ll report us if we don’t. There’s probably CCTV cameras!’

  Oh my God. Ali cringed. She had not anticipated the stress of this memorial. Or the fact that she should have come in some kind of disguise.

  She hopped out of the car and hurried around to the front passenger side where a dazed-looking Mini was gazing at the spilled ashes. Ali grabbed the hoover and marched back to the corner, where Betty stood by the lower half.

  ‘Here, we’re really sorry. We’ve been going through a bit of a strange time. We should have just explained straight away – it was my dad’s ashes. We … eh’ – Ali was coming clean but she sensed she shouldn’t come too clean – ‘… we spilled them by accident. Sorry, Betty.’

  Ali turned and jogged back to the car before Betty could demand any further explanation.

  ‘Drive!’ Ali snapped the second her door was closed. ‘I am sweating like a beast.’ She shrugged off her coat and quickly clicked her seatbelt.

  ‘Oh God, that was a disaster,’ Mini groaned.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been tarred and feathered back here,’ Ali moaned. ‘Only it’s sweat and my dad’s ashes. Let’s never try having a heartfelt, sincere moment again. It’s just not us.’

  ‘Seriously, what happened? Are we in damage-control mode, Mini? Should I ring the office? Get them to start drafting a statement?’ Erasmus was feverishly looking from the lights ahead t
o Mini to Ali and back to the road in front.

  ‘No, no. It’ll be fine,’ Mini panted. ‘Ali, you smoothed it over, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, kind of … I wouldn’t be counting on my garbled explanation to put Betty off complaining about us, though.’

  ‘I’ll text my little usher friend and, if all comes to all, I can call Richard Aster. He’s the theatre director. It wouldn’t be my preference to draw him into this, but I have his ear if need be.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just get his permission in the first place?’ Why do you have to be so unhinged? Ali wanted to add.

  ‘Oh, that would have killed the spirit of the thing. Miles would’ve loved all the sneaking in and the secrecy.’ Mini smiled a little. ‘He would’ve got a kick out of nearly making off with Betty’s hoover.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Ali said, unconvinced. ‘And how would he have felt about the hoover being his eternal resting place?’

  Mini ignored this and turned around to face her. ‘You got some of him, didn’t you?’

  Ali was tempted to pretend she’d lost it in the kerfuffle and have her own private, non-slapstick moment with her dad, but she knew she couldn’t do that to Mini. This freakish little outing had been oddly fun, good bonding for them she realised. Mini was loosening up and she was no longer wincing at the mere sight of the baby bump, which was definite progress.

  ‘I have a little. It’s here in my pocket but I’m only handing it over if you’re willing to scatter it in the sea like normal people do.’

  ‘I promise.’ A satisfied Mini turned back to instruct Erasmus to take them home.

  After an infinitely more successful second go at the ashes-scattering in the sea in front of her parents’ house, Ali retreated to her old bedroom to work on the show – working title: My So-Called Best Life.

  She’d been struggling to decide whether it needed to be more like a piece of stand-up comedy or something closer to theatre. Currently the script was straight up storytelling but standing on the Abbey stage that morning had clarified things for her. Instagram was a virtual stage and the people who used it to tell a story about their lives were the actors and the directors. But it was more complex than that. It wasn’t a one-way interaction. It was an exchange. The audience could influence the influencers.

  She scribbled notes on the copybook she’d found among her old college notes.

  In a way, Ali realised, the audience influences the influencer way bloody more than anything. From the moment I started getting likes and followers, it started to direct my actions. I started tailoring my life to what I knew or guessed these people would want.

  She sat back. This was worth exploring.

  What if the show was part stand up, part choose your own adventure? Only the audience gets to choose. Just like on Instagram.

  She leaned forward and wrote ‘interactive?’ at the top of a fresh page. Below she added, ‘Would people think I’m trying to blame my followers for the Insta-baby mess?’

  She contemplated this.

  Maybe I could have other characters who are also me who could show the internal struggle? Like Rational Ali and … she clicked her fingers searching for a good name …

  Low Self-Esteem Ali? The Validation Whore?

  She doubted Terry – or anyone else for that matter – would go for ‘whore’.

  Wait, wait … Thirsty Ali.

  She grinned. Perfect.

  She could pre-record the characters of Rational Ali and Thirsty Ali and play them as audio or even project them. And use them almost like a chorus. In the Greek tragedies, the chorus often provided commentary on the action. Plus, it would give a sense of populating the world of the play.

  She checked the calendar on her phone and emailed Terry – subject line: ‘So-Called Best Life epiphany!!!!’ – to arrange their next meeting.

  Chapter 17

  When Hazel’s charcoal-grey front door with gleaming rose-gold hardware swung open, Shelly was startled to come face to face with the woman herself. In all their years of faux-friendship, Hazel had never once answered her own door; one of the Jennys always did it so that Hazel could make a wafty entrance from some other part of the generous, light-filled, hemp-covered semi-d.

  ‘Shelly! Quick, in. Now!’ Hazel leaned out past her for a tense scan of the other houses in the cul de sac, then, satisfied no one was watching, pulled Shelly and Georgie inside.

  ‘Hi, Hazel, I love your braid,’ chirped Georgie.

  Hazel aimed a chilly smile at the little girl and then steered her in the first door of the hall. ‘All the kiddies are in here,’ she said in a firm voice to communicate that this was not a suggestion but an order.

  ‘Neil’s mother is watching them,’ she explained to Shelly, giving Georgie a push into the room where The Lion King was blaring and shutting the door behind her. ‘C’mon, everyone’s in the back.’

  ‘Everyone’, Shelly realised, included quite a few new faces. Ali and Polly sat on huge beanbags in front of the glass doors that led to the vast deck and back garden. Nearby, standing at the kitchen peninsula in front of an open laptop, stood a young black guy in a bowler hat, a white tee-shirt and skinny suspenders holding up spray-on Levis. To his right, a vaguely familiar-looking girl with long brown hair hovered, pointing at different things on the screen. Amy sat on a stool on the other side of the peninsula and looked bored as Hazel beelined for her and immediately began delivering some impassioned hard sell about whatever they were emergency summiting about.

  Shelly was surprised to see Siobhan from @MamasLittleMissus sitting apart from the others against the far wall along with Crystal Doorley. Hazel must’ve taken pity on her and invited her after all. Shelly took the stool beside Amy and Hazel moved to the centre of the room, clapping her hands together. Despite evidently being even more het up than usual, she still looked fab in a pale green kimono jacket over her simple white tee and jeans, layered with necklaces from her own range, Holistic Happiness by Hazel.

  ‘OK, everyone.’ She clicked her fingers unnecessarily; everyone was listening attentively for further instruction. ‘Just for ease, Ezra has emailed an itinerary today so that we all know what we’re doing and when, but first a few introductions. In light of recent security breaches, I’ve had to clean house at Holistic Hazel. No more Jennys. So, first I’d like to introduce the leader of the new administration, Ezra Ó Súilleabháin.’ Ezra doffed his bowler hat and nodded solemnly to everyone.

  ‘Ezra is returning from a stint in the UK, where he was working with a prominent influencer for the last three years. He is head of operations now and don’t worry, girls, I have redrafted the NDAs so no more security breaches, I promise. Beside Ezra we have a promising up-and-coming young influencer, Kate from @ShreddingForTheWedding, who has been my right hand and such a great support during this trying era of mumfluencer-shaming.’

  Shelly remembered her now. She was Ali’s friend, the one with the #EngagementJourney.

  ‘We also have Siobhan,’ Hazel continued. Shelly smiled over sympathetically. ‘A recent casualty of the appalling trend for mumfluencer takedowns and, of course, Crystal Doorley, who’s no stranger to being cancelled. How many times is it now, Crystal?’

  ‘Three, maybe four.’ Crystal shrugged. ‘The tan thing, the time I said I’d done the women’s mini marathon and the whole hoopla about my “cruelty-free” eye palette being tested on honey badgers.’

  ‘Ridiculous.’ Hazel shook her head in sympathy. ‘I mean, honey badgers are vicious. They would eat the face off your head, given half the chance!’

  ‘Exactly what I said,’ Crystal agreed.

  ‘Ali Jones, meanwhile, has just this weekend delivered a masterclass in weathering a public shaming.’ Hazel sounded openly bitter about this, but Ali just shrugged awkwardly and waved at the assembled crowd.

  ‘Polly, on the other hand, is probably the most bland, uncontroversh person ever,’ Hazel continued, characteristically unfazed at steamrolling anyone’s feelings during the introductory speech. Sh
elly spotted Ali throw a strange look at Polly, who remained impassive while Hazel droned on. ‘No skeletons in that closet, but she is in danger of being tarnished by association. And, finally, who else but Teflon Shelly herself. Nothing sticks to this woman,’ Hazel announced through gritted teeth. ‘A viral video rant, her marriage on the rocks and still she’s top of the pile, thanks, I’m sure, in no small part to the brains of the SHELLY operation, Amy Donoghue, who is the child in the fetish wear there.’ Amy took a sarcastic, little bow.

  ‘Right, I’ll be handing you over to Ezra now, who is going to outline my incredible vision.’

  ‘Thank you, Hazel.’ Ezra strode to the centre of the room, a slim remote in his hand. ‘And thank you all for coming on this journey with us. I have been analysing shifts in public opinion towards Irish mumfluencers in the last six months and the results have been disappointing. Polls are suggesting that your once-loyal followers are becoming disenfranchised with the mumfluencer. Recent scandals have, of course, contributed. Deborah Winters has been spouting her hate speak and the general consensus seems to be that the mumfluencer is no longer empowering other women but instead fleecing them through affiliate links, flogging Ali Express products rebranded as bespoke luxury items and generally rinsing their own family’s lives for sponcon. Now we are not by any means suggesting that you stop doing this. Absolutely not. We just want to demonstrate how women-centric you are and that yis’re not all just money-grabbing melts.’ Ali was the only one who laughed at this, but Ezra winked, unfazed, and stepped to the side, flicking the remote control at the projector.

  A huge picture of Hazel appeared on the wall behind him. She sat naked, artfully draped in her children (also nude), all of them strewn with flowers on a cliff edge staring out at the ocean beyond. It was very Enya meets vintage Demi Moore. Panpipes played and the image was replaced by drone footage of miles of choppy sea, a tiny remote island emerging from the horizon. Hazel’s voice rose over the music as the video cut from the air to a pristine, white, sandy beach.