Unfiltered

by Sophie White

  ‘I’ll be involved. I was there today, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s more than doing half the nappies and rocking the baby.’ Shelly flashed back on her own lonely, dark days as a new mother. Among her memories of Georgie wailing and her crying helplessly along with her, there was never any sign of Dan. And, worse, Shelly distinctly remembered forcing a brave mask over her shattered face whenever he was around. She couldn’t have him see how much she was struggling.

  At the time, she’d felt that her struggling – she’d only recently been able to admit with Berna’s help that it was in fact postnatal depression – would’ve been an inconvenience for Dan, which was probably unfair. She’d never even given him a chance to help her, but she’d never felt able to let him in. That’s why they didn’t fit.

  ‘Sam, she’s going to need someone who loves her and minds her as much as loving and minding the baby.’

  He seemed to soften at these words. He pulled up beside her car and turned the engine off.

  ‘I do love her.’ He looked so desolate, Shelly had to fight the urge to hug him. ‘I want to move on and not feel bad about any of these things anymore. I started seeing a therapist to try and get all my thoughts in order.’

  ‘That’s great, Sam.’

  ‘The therapist thinks Ali is a narcissist and that I should cut ties.’

  ‘Oh.’ Shelly floundered at this damning assessment. ‘Well, therapists aren’t always right. My therapist is amazing. She’s helped me so much, but I wouldn’t take her word on everything.’

  ‘Everyone’s in therapy except Ali, the one person who definitely needs it.’ Sam grinned.

  ‘In fairness to her, she joined a group therapy thing months ago.’ Shelly was careful with her words, not knowing how much Sam knew or didn’t know about CatAnon.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ He sighed. ‘She’s been making an effort. And I know she’s completely cut the crap on Insta. Except for this W Y N D thing – what’s that all about? “Excavate your soul and prepare to soar with Holistic Hazel”?’ He mimed wanking and Shelly had to laugh.

  ‘God, I know. I’m so glad I won’t have to attend. It’s too close to the birth of this one.’ She patted her belly. ‘Still, it’s money in the bank for Ali. Good with a baby on the way.’

  ‘So, Ali’s going to the festival? Is that safe with a baby on the way?’

  ‘Oh God, yeah. It’s not like Electric Picnic. This is a luxury wellness summit thing, according to all the press releases. She’ll be completely fine. It’ll be the same as staying in a hotel. Probably better. So, are you going to give her another chance?’

  ‘I do have a wedding coming up. I’ve got a plus one. I would really like my friends to get to know her outside of all that craziness.’

  ‘That’s perfect, Sam. Definitely ask her. She will be so, so happy. I just know it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam replied thoughtfully. ‘I really do want to just get over this.’

  ‘You guys will. You’re so good together.’ Shelly leaned over and gave him a little side hug. ‘Thanks for today. You made me feel so much more normal about everything. In fact, I’m not going to hold off any longer. I’m posting the video. I’m a grown woman and I don’t need Amy’s signoff for every little thing.’ She got out her phone and found the video still captioned and saved in her drafts. ‘After everything @__________’s done to me in the last months, all the misery and worry, now I get to wreck her day for a change.’

  She hit Post and grinned triumphantly at Sam.

  Chapter 24

  The CatAnon crew were especially chatty before the Monday evening meeting. Kelly came in and beelined for Ali the second she spotted her.

  ‘OMG! Did you see Shelly Devine’s post???’

  Ali glanced around and lowered her voice. ‘Yeah, actually I was hanging out with her on Saturday. We went to the same antenatal course. It sounds like she’s had a terrible time.’ She was careful not to let slip that she knew any more than anyone else about the stalker saga.

  ‘It really makes you think, though, doesn’t it? I mean about how there’s a person on the other side of the account. Even if it’s little miss perfect Shelly Devine.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ali kept her tone vague. She really didn’t want to inadvertently say anything to Kelly that might add fuel to the SHELLY fire. The post itself had gone down well, with tonnes of people condemning the stalkers and catfishers of the world, though a smattering of commenters did question whether influencers like Shelly weren’t asking for it by flaunting their best lives online and rubbing other people’s faces in their success. And a couple of the middle-aged male radio broadcasters had tried to rouse a debate about whether giving your child the finger behind their back was unacceptable, but they were rapidly shouted down by virtually every woman in the country.

  As one Radio 1 listener, Mairead Ní Mhuracú, put it on the phone-in show:

  ‘Get back to me when you’ve spent your days at home raising your own kids, ya smug shite.’

  Shelly was relieved at the overwhelming outpouring of support but, she told Ali on Sunday evening via WhatsApp, she was no closer to figuring out who @__________ was. As yet, there had been no response from the account. The silence struck Ali as even more ominous.

  The whole thing had made her rethink some of her own actions on the ’gram. She’d shared a snap of Liv at the front door a few weeks ago and a follower had DM’d to say she passed their house on her way to work every day. It was a harmless bit of chat but, with hundreds of thousands of followers, Ali was more and more aware of the odds that at least someone in the bunch was a bit of a psycho. How did she not think of it sooner, sitting in CatAnon every week, FFS?

  ‘Right, we’ll get started, shall we?’ called the man sitting at the desk at the head of the room, whom Ali knew only as @sluttycheerleader69. He was cute and before her belly had really kicked in, she’d spotted him looking at her with interest, an interest that unexpectedly only seemed to intensify the more pregnant she got.

  @sluttycheerleader69 was rattling through the preamble now and Ali’s mind drifted back to Sam unceremoniously dumping her out of his car at the bus stop on Saturday evening. We’re like a car stalling, she thought bleakly. Shelly had insisted Sam was coming round – they’d apparently had a heart to heart after Ali got out at the bus stop on Saturday – but still it was two steps forward one step back. One week he was chatting in the WhatsApp and slagging her about her questionable taste in baby names and the next he was running a mile again the second he seemed to notice that they’re getting on.

  I should just go on a date, move on. Maybe that’d make him realise that I’m not gonna be hanging around for ever for him to bestow some fucking magical, hard-won forgiveness on me.

  She rubbed her belly and looked up to find @sluttycheerleader69 eyeing her up exactly like someone appraising livestock.

  Shit no. Her mind went hard into reverse. Anyone willing to date me at thirty-two weeks gone has way more issues than even I’m up for dealing with. The door of the meeting banged open, startling @sluttycheerleader69 and the people nearby. @PollysFewBits hurled herself into the nearest available chair, not even apologising for her lateness or the commotion. Kelly shot Ali a meaningful, wide-eyed look and mouthed ‘WTF?’

  Ali tried not to stare at Polly, but she couldn’t help noticing her dishevelled appearance. Polly, who was always so immaculate, was barely even fully dressed. She wore a ragged coffee-coloured cardigan over grotty sweats and a battered pair of UGG boots that looked closer to roadkill than actual footwear. Her usually bronzed-to-oblivion face was pale and bore remnants of what looked like last night’s make-up. To Ali’s shock and then pity, Polly started to cry, loud gasping sobs that sounded so desperate Ali immediately made to stand up and go over. She went to put her arms around Polly, but Polly reared back and shoved Ali away.

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ she spat.

  @sluttycheerleader69 stood abruptly and hurried through the chairs to Ali’s aid. ‘Are you OK?’r />
  ‘Yeah.’ Ali inched backwards. She couldn’t believe Polly had lashed out at her. What was going on?

  ‘What is going on?’ @sluttycheerleader69 was stern. ‘You cannot touch another member, @AlwaysWatching. Do I need to ask you to leave?’

  Polly was shaking her head but still looking furious.

  ‘She touched me first. I was only—’ Polly was arguing but Ali barely heard the rest. Always Watching. @sluttycheerleader69 had called Polly by her original catfish name because he probably had only ever heard her go by that handle.

  Always Watching. The phrase tugged at Ali. She’d heard it recently. There was something familiar and horribly sinister in the words. Why were they bothering her?

  @sluttycheerleader69 was now talking calmly and quietly to Polly. ‘As you seem to be intent on disrupting the whole meeting, would you like to share first? We’re here for you,’ he added in a gentler tone.

  ‘I’m sorry, OK?’ Polly seemed to be trying to wrest back some control over her emotions. ‘I can’t just sit here and pretend anymore. I’ve had a slip.’

  A gasp rippled through the room. Ali was a bit lost until Kelly leaned closer to whisper, ‘It means she’s been catfishing again.’

  Ali nodded, her mind racing. Always Watching. The message @__________ had sent to Shelly said something like ‘lucky, I’m always watching’. Ali stared at Polly, but she couldn’t find any sense in the idea that Polly was stalking Shelly. Why would she stalk a woman she was already sort of friends with? Well, Ali corrected herself, as friends as any ‘friends for the ’gram’ really were.

  Polly took a deep breath.

  ‘I set up an Instagram account when my boys were small. I thought I had put my issues so far behind me that a little bit of social media would be fine. And it was fine. At first. Instagram meant so much to me when the boys were tiny babies. I was so lonely. I loved being a mum, but we were living in an estate in the middle of nowhere. My husband was gone all day. Here was a way to make friends. To feel connected even when I was home all day with a small baby. I knew that it could be risky, given my history. But at the time, Instagram was a much more basic thing. Just people posting their crappy holiday snaps and things. Not like now.’ She raised her hands to her face, overcome. ‘Now I see, now I … know.’ She was struggling to get the words out and Ali felt a pang of pity. ‘It was like bringing an alcoholic to a brewery,’ she continued. ‘Instagram is a bloody catfishing machine. No one is their real selves on there. No one.’

  Ali and Kelly each shifted uncomfortably. Ali could feel the eyes of the other catfishers drifting over to them. Most of the others were older. They catfished on gmail or Twitter or Facebook. Ali had always sensed a bit of judgement from them over the fact that she and Polly still had Instagram accounts – which Polly now sadly was proving right.

  ‘I became addicted to the thing. Every time I put up a picture and got likes and comments, it just felt so good. I started to think I really was somebody because 20,000 people I knew nothing about followed me on this app. I knew I was drifting away from the CA programme but the more followers I got, the more I felt like I couldn’t give it up. I became obsessed with my numbers. I knew I was losing control when I began pretending to be someone else on the ’gram. It wasn’t exactly like my @AlwaysWatching days. Back then, all my aliases were like elaborate fictions I made up.

  ‘This time I just began to make subtle tweaks to who I was. I was me. Kind of. But better. I was obsessed with one woman and at some point, I started modelling myself on her. She got a peninsula in her kitchen, so I got a peninsula put in. She had dark hair, so I went dark. She did her bedroom in beige with textures of gold and chocolate; I did mine in beige with textures of gold and chocolate. I even had my second child because I wanted to have a girl just like Shelly did.’ Polly shook her head sadly. ‘Such a stupid, stupid obsession. But you don’t understand … it took hold of me.’ She looked around the room, something pleading in her expression. Kind faces looked back. Many people were nodding, herself included, Ali realised. Polly was describing exactly what her own descent into Insta-insanity had been like.

  Illogical yet irresistible. Why did she want strangers to like her or think well of her or envy her? It was a ludicrous pursuit but impossible to stop once you were sucked in.

  Thanks in no small part to these meetings, since returning to Instagram, Ali had largely shed the obsession. After losing Miles and screwing things up with Sam, the hearts and comments of strangers just didn’t buoy her the way they had before. She wasn’t even sure how many people followed her anymore. She didn’t quite want to chuck it all in – she still needed to sell tickets to her show! – but now her Instagram was a means to an end instead of the entire point of her life. It was a crucial difference.

  Polly was still clearly in the grip of her addiction. She’d been talking now for longer than was usually permitted at the meeting, but everyone could sense there was more to say.

  ‘I became so addicted to this woman and to comparing my life to hers. I set up Google Alerts for her name. I started an account that only followed her so that I never had to wade through any other users to find her latest updates. I guess this was the beginning of the end of my catfishing sobriety. I didn’t put my name on the account. I had a new handle and before long I was using it to control this woman. And hurt her. I wanted to hurt her. She’d begun to post less online and I became furious. She was taking away the thing I needed most in the world. Herself. It just escalated and escalated but I didn’t realise how much I was enjoying tormenting her until she suddenly put a stop to it. She outed me to her followers. Or not me exactly but what I was doing. She’s ruined everything. Now, she’s taken away the one thing that was giving my life meaning. She has everything. Everything goes right for her. She gives her child the finger on video and everyone still fucking loves her. She doesn’t even know what she has.’ Polly was working herself up into another fury now. ‘She has the perfect house and her perfect little girl. You can do so much shit on Insta with a little girl. I can’t bring my fucking son on a #MamaAndMe pamper day, can I? Can I?’

  This was met with stunned silence. No one was nodding sympathetically anymore, and Polly looked furious.

  ‘Oh, fuck this place. You’re all talk but the second anyone has a real problem, no one really wants to help.’

  Polly stood up with such force that her folding chair collapsed backwards. She grabbed her bag and made for the door but at the last minute whipped back around to point in Ali’s direction.

  ‘I better not hear a fucking whisper of this out there, Ali. Anonymity is the foundation of all our beliefs.’

  Ali rose. She had to say something, as apparently no one else was going to. ‘You should delete the app, Polly. You need to put this all behind you. It’s not too late to make a fresh start. Just delete the app and leave Shelly alone. I won’t breathe a word, I promise. I swear on this baby’s life, I won’t betray your confidence, but you have to stop. Do you understand?’

  For a moment longer, the sneer remained on Polly’s wild features but then she crumpled, folding in on herself, starting to cry once more.

  Ali moved towards her and pulled her into a hug, patting Polly’s matted hair and trying to soothe her ragged sobs.

  Ali felt torn about promising not to tell Shelly but she couldn’t betray the group and break the anonymity rule. Polly and the CatAnon group had helped her so much these last months. Plus, Polly coming clean had to mean something; it had to mean that she truly did want to end this madness.

  As they embraced, the other catfishers seemed to finally find their voices again and several clapped and muttered encouraging words.

  ‘Well done for facing your behaviour.’ @sluttycheerleader69 tentatively patted Polly’s shoulder before resting a hand on Ali’s lower back.

  He leaned in to whisper, ‘Nice work, Ali.’

  Later, as they cruised around the IKEA car park looking for a spot, Ali idly related @sluttycheerleader69’s interest
to Liv, though she was careful not to name him or reveal any identifying details.

  ‘Ugh. He’s a confirmed bump-banger, so.’ Liv rolled her eyes, pulling into a family space near the entrance.

  Ali briefly considered the contortions that would be necessary for them to even do it, then shrugged off the idea swiftly. Ick.

  ‘Do you think we can park here?’ she asked as they got out.

  Liv shrugged. ‘We’ve got a baby in tow. We’re a family. Of sorts!’

  Ali nodded. It was very reassuring that Liv was getting on board. ‘So happy you’re willing to sacrifice your youth with me and raise this baby together.’

  ‘Well, somewhat.’ Liv grabbed a trolley and they joined the stream of other young couples heading for the entrance. Virtually every woman in the vicinity had a burgeoning bump – obviously the IKEA trip was mandatory for soon-to-be parents. ‘Let’s say you can absolutely count on me if absolutely all else fails. Maybe give yer man – the bump-banger – a try first!’ Liv mugged.

  ‘Ew, no. Don’t encourage me, the problem is I’m super … randy.’

  ‘Randy? Ewww,’ Liv moaned as they took the packed lift up to the showroom.

  ‘I know,’ Ali wailed as she stood wedged between the other shoppers. ‘I mean, I wish I could call it something else but “randy” is the only word for it. I’m in heat or something. Are you having this at all?’ Ali turned to a wary-looking pregnant woman beside them. ‘I thought it would have gone away by now but it’s only intensifying,’ Ali continued, ignoring the horrified looks of the others in the lift. ‘Genuinely the only thing stopping me from giving him a go is the thoughts of him then wank-banking it for life, ya know? It feels unfair to the baby somehow.’

  ‘It must be some biological quirk to keep pregnant women faithful to their baby-daddies,’ Liv offered as the doors to the lift slid open and several people burst out ahead of them.