Unfiltered

by Sophie White

  ‘I know the #bestlife thing is an Insta-sham, but for a while there I had a good life. I had my dad and Sam said I was his favourite person. And what I’ve learned is I can have a good life again, maybe not the one I thought I wanted, but this lil baba, this cursed child of a social media hoax, will definitely have a good life. That’s my job now. And who knows, maybe Sam’ll see me crowning and see me in a whole new light.

  ‘Or maybe not! Endings are hard, especially in real life … I wanted to do some grand gesture like in the movies. A declaration of love? A proposal? At one point, I legit thought “What would Tom Hanks do?’’’

  Ali wavered over the final lines. It was hard to do it with Sam right there. What if he felt compelled to answer and said ‘no’? There was no room for stalling. The title card would be projected on the phone shortly.

  ‘Sam, will you …’ Ali sank to her knees as the audience seemed to hold their breath.

  ‘Will you forgive me?’

  After a beat, the spot went black and text appeared on the screen of the phone accompanied by the sound of texting.

  At the time of going into production, Ali and Sam are in communication regarding their expected child … but nothing else.

  The words faded and were replaced by:

  In loving memory of Miles Jones.

  Ali’s spotlight came up again and she began to strum ‘Que Sera Sera’ on the ukulele. When the audience twigged the song, they stood as one and swayed and clapped along. Ali couldn’t believe it. They’re really with me, she marvelled. If Miles could see this …

  At the chorus, the whole place sang ‘what will be, will be’ with her and Ali smiled through tears.

  But when the house lights came up, seat B13 was empty.

  Chapter 27

  Shelly’s dad, under Amy’s directions, was heaving an enormous papier mâché baby into the house when Shelly came down the stairs on the morning of the gender-reveal party shoot. She hadn’t intended to do the baby reveal quite so close to her due date – she had just weeks to go – but everything with the guards and @__________ had really thrown the schedule.

  ‘This thing is terrifying,’ Jim panted. ‘What have ye got planned for it?’

  He lugged it into the front reception room with Shelly close behind him craning to get a better look.

  The baby’s head was about the size of her inflatable pregnancy ball but lumpy and misshapen with livid red cheeks and eerie black eyes. A smattering of what looked to be real hair covered the crown of the head while the body was comically tiny by comparison and was dressed in a real baby’s romper suit.

  ‘The eyes follow you,’ Jim leaned in to whisper.

  ‘It is horrific.’ Shelly shook her head. How would they ever make this look not completely frightening never mind actually good?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Amy appeared at the door laden with balloons, decorations and a pink and blue baseball bat. ‘Believe me, this piñata was the best of a bad lot among the gender-reveal options. They had another hideous creation – a papier mâché giant pregnant woman for the dad-to-be to jump out of dressed as a baby. They even had these poor live animals on offer to chew through things with pink or blue slime inside. Crazy shit.’ Amy shook her head.

  ‘But, like, we’re supposed to beat this fake baby with a bat?’ Shelly was dubious. It felt like a viral disaster waiting to happen.

  ‘Hmmm, yeah or rip it apart with your bare hands, I guess?’ Amy was distracted. ‘Jim, the flower arch guys are at the gate. Will you show them to the nursery, please? Maybe we could let Georgie do it – it’d be like a funny sibling gag.’

  ‘Yeah, that’d definitely be better,’ Shelly agreed. ‘So, what time are guests arriving? Who’s even coming? I’m sorry, I’ve been so checked out of the planning of this. Pregnancy has really overtaken me. I don’t know how I’d be coping if @__________ was still lurking around. I am so glad that’s not hanging over me anymore. I can’t believe how she completely stopped all communication after that one post pushing back. It’s been such a relief.’

  ‘It’s amazing,’ Amy agreed. ‘Now, I need you up and in full make-up and wardrobe. The cast’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘“The cast”?’

  ‘The cast, Shelly. When you greenlight a sponcon proposal two days before your due date, I have to get creative. I couldn’t guarantee numbers for real guests at such short notice.’

  ‘It’s not two days, Amy. I’ve two weeks to go … but okay, point taken. Are Ali, Polly and Hazel coming? Who are the cast?’

  ‘I used the rent-a-crowd from the Room to Improve parties. They’re seasoned. Polly and Hazel are a yes. Unfortunately, Ali’s not – Liv arranged her baby shower for this afternoon, not realising. I’ll probably head over there after this to help her out.’

  ‘Of course, right. I’ll get dressed.’ Shelly made her way through the hall, dodging delivery guys left and right, and headed up to her dressing room.

  ‘Bash! Bash! Bash!’ the Room-to-Improvers chanted, clearly well into the gender-reveal piñata. They were raucous as Georgie whacked the baby with the bat.

  ‘Kill it with fire,’ screamed one particularly zealous crowd member.

  Shelly winced. Amy, who was moving through the crowd filming, swung close. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll mute the sound in post. It’ll all be fixed in post.’

  Shelly grinned. Just then the giant baby swung back on one of Georgie’s swings and knocked her to the floor. Shelly rushed to help Georgie up.

  ‘Yes! Revenge of the baby,’ the zealous Room-to-Improver roared. ‘This is way better than one of Dermo Bannon’s tight-arse shindigs.’

  Together Shelly and Georgie took a final swing and an explosion of blue confetti filled the room.

  ‘Yessss, a BOY!’ Jim raised his prosecco and pulled the Room-to-Improver into a warm embrace.

  Through the cheers and the commotion, Shelly was the only witness to Dan’s entrance. He took in the scene, clearly fuming, turned and immediately stormed back out.

  Ugh, dammit. She’d better go soothe whatever toys-out-of-pram tantrum he was about to have. She mouthed ‘Be right back’ to Amy, who was taking snaps of Georgie kicking up the confetti.

  Shelly marched out the front door and took the path down the side of the house to Dan’s place. He was at the door fumbling with the lock.

  ‘Hey.’ Shelly kept her tone light.

  ‘Hey, yourself.’ He didn’t turn around.

  ‘Why are you mad? You knew we were having a boy. I told you weeks ago when you asked me.’

  ‘Why am I mad?’ He sighed and turned to face her. He leaned against the front door. ‘You’re taking the piss. You’re there still peddling our kids for the ’gram and, Shelly’ – he sighed – ‘I’m gonna have to take legal action because I don’t want them to grow up and fucking hate us.’

  ‘Will you please calm down. This is a little light sponcon, involving a child who isn’t even born yet.’

  ‘Listen to yourself, Shelly. Look, I’m going now. I need to grab some files. My flight’s in two hours. Shelly, I mean it about the kids. I’m their parent too and you’re abusing their privacy. People know Georgie’s face. When I am out in public with her, I see people recognising her.’

  Shelly hated when he brought up the ethics of using the kids for her work. Mainly because she didn’t entirely disagree with him. But what option did she have?

  ‘Well, if you weren’t pushing the house sale, I wouldn’t be under so much pressure to sell sponcon.’ She knew she sounded defensive.

  ‘What pressure, Shelly? I haven’t been at you about it at all. And I should be. I’m the one living in a shed for months.’

  ‘You don’t have to be “at me”. Bringing random women back is pressure enough to get you out of here. And humiliating me around town with these women when I haven’t even announced our separation yet.’

  Things were getting heated and Shelly just wasn’t feeling up to it. Their every interaction had become so fraught
.

  ‘Listen,’ she continued, trying to calm down – she was feeling achy and drained from the conversation – ‘I’m prepared to make an offer for your share of the house. A lump sum – I think I can get €100K together to start with – and then monthly instalments of €3,000 until the next lump sum. My parents are going to rent their place out and we’ll pay off your share of the house as quickly as we can. This is a solid plan, Dan. We can’t go on like this, angry and hostile. You’re right, you need to move on and so do I. And this way, Georgie and this lil guy will have their grandparents around all the time. I’ll sign the agreement regarding the kids, I promise. I just don’t want to lose our home.’

  Dan seemed to consider this offer. Finally, he relented, and his expression softened. ‘Put something down on paper with your solicitor and we’ll get it ironed out. I’m going to rent anyway before I commit to another mortgage. If I can even get one, I’m nearly forty! The bank’ll probably say I’m a dud investment. You’d agree no doubt.’

  ‘You were never a dud investment. Look at Georgie and whoever this guy’s going to be, he’ll be magic.’ Shelly sighed sadly. ‘Go get your flight, I need to go lie down for ever. I’m wrecked.’

  The gender-reveal party had more or less wrapped when Shelly came back inside. She did a few promo videos about the full range of products available from ArtOfTheReveal.ie and then, once Sandra had agreed to watch Georgie, she slipped upstairs and gratefully burrowed beneath her crisp sheets. I’ve got to nap while I can. She rubbed her belly, which was taut and crampy, probably from tiredness. At least Dan’s being receptive about the house, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

  Shelly was dreaming. She was in labour and the Room-to-Improve guy was cheering her on. The scene changed and Shelly rushed from room to room searching for her phone. The baby’s coming and I need to capture it for the ’gram. Just then she spied a figure holding her phone. Their face was obscured by a giant ring light. ‘Don’t worry, I’m always watching,’ they said and snapped a photo. Shelly howled in pain and seemed to feel the click of the picture being taken way down in her pelvis.

  ‘Shelly? Shelly?’ Shelly’s eyes popped open. Sandra was shaking her. ‘You were moaning in your sleep. Are you OK?

  It took a few moments for Shelly to register that the pain from the dream was still roiling low down in her abdomen. Also, the bed was drenched.

  Groggily she clenched her fists and curled into a ball until the contraction passed.

  ‘Mam, my waters have gone.’

  Chapter 28

  ‘Good morning, Insta-bitches.’ Ali rubbed sleep from her eyes blearily as she posted stories from her bed. ‘In an unprecedented move, Liv is throwing me a baby shower today. Now, Liv usually hates … pretty much everything, but I think she feels sorry for me since I have been continually fucking up my life for the last nine months so I cannot wait to see what she’s come up with. Expect intensely cynical vibes in place of the usually cutesy stuff.’

  Ali checked the video and dragged a couple of different filters across the screen to try to smooth her skin and brighten up the slightly dank-looking sheets of the bed. The filters made her look less blotchy for sure but equally, Ali thought, why bother?

  Of course I’m blotchy. I’m clearly just awake with no make-up on and Sudocrem on my spots. I’ve just finished a run of my hit one-woman show. I’m a gazillion years pregnant. Why wouldn’t I be blotchy? Why am I adding to this bullshit idea of perfection? Why do I want some other girl to watch this and feel shit because she doesn’t look like my filtered face first thing in the morning? Ali added a baby shower sticker to the video and posted it unfiltered.

  Shit, it’s not first thing in the morning, though, she suddenly realised. It was nearly noon and people would be arriving in less than an hour to toast the baby and aggressively fondle the bump.

  Ali searched for something stretchy and not too depressing to wear for the party. She pulled on a jersey leopard print skirt, her Docs and an Alien tee shirt. Smoothing it down, the sight of Xenomorph jolted her briefly back to the Punto and Liv’s comment about Ali’s life being a sci-fi horror movie as opposed to a romcom. It had been three weeks since the wedding and Sam had reverted to perfunctory responses in the WhatsApp, clearly still stinging from Ali’s suggestion that they date. He had shown up at My So-Called Best Life but his ducking out right before the end did not seem promising.

  If her life was a romcom, this would be the final frustrating ‘will they, won’t they?’ before the big grand-gesture finale. Going by Sam’s one-word messages, however, he was definitely not planning on showing up to serenade her with a boombox or channelling any other iconic romcom moments.

  She snapped her outfit in the mirror a couple of times and then uploaded the best shot to Insta before heading down the hall to the kitchen. A few months ago, the #OOTD would’ve been a laborious exercise in editing and adjusting in FaceFix lest anyone actually saw that she was a real person with cellulite. Now she couldn’t summon the will to care. It was incredibly liberating. She flicked through the morning’s Stories, stopping to allow @PollysFewBits to play through. Ali’d felt deeply conflicted about not telling Shelly the truth about Polly, but she’d given her word. Instead, she’d just tried to be as reassuring as possible in their now frequent WhatsApps.

  And Polly did seem to have totally backed off from Shelly’s DMs and Insta in general. Ali’d felt reassured that she had been taking a break but here, she could see, were a couple of new Stories. Each was white type on a black background. The kind of cryptic epitaphs designed to pique a follower’s interest in whatever undisclosed beef was going on behind the scenes. Ali didn’t like the tone.

  Let people underestimate you, that way they’ll never know for sure what you are capable of.

  Followed by:

  Go ahead, underestimate me. You won’t be the first. You won’t be the last. But you will be wrong.

  ‘Good morning!’ Liv was cutting up an array of tiny sandwiches as Ali walked in.

  ‘Hey.’ Ali dropped the phone on the table and swooped on a teeny cucumber sandwich. ‘These are adorable, yum.’

  ‘You may eat one of each thing and no more,’ said Liv primly, knowing Ali’s propensity for devouring miniature savouries. ‘The guests will be coming soon.’

  ‘Can’t wait.’ Ali waddle-ambled to the kettle and began making coffee. ‘Where’s lover-girl?’

  ‘She’s working till later but will be here for the movie, hopefully.’

  ‘Excellent. Who else did you invite?’

  ‘I invited Mini, a couple of the school gang said they’d come, plus Emma and the production lads from the My So-Called Best Life crew. It’ll be intimate but fun. Also, Nella insisted on coming so, whatever you do, do not get into a conversational hostage situation with her. She’s dying to truth-bomb you about childbirth.’

  After a few rousing games of Pin the Episiotomy on the Vagina and a piñata that sprayed black confetti everywhere – Liv insisted that there was too much emphasis on the Gender Reveals and that we needed more Sociopath Reveals – everyone filled their plates at the crisp buffet and settled in to watch We Need to Talk About Kevin or, as Mini pronounced it, ‘the most accurate portrayal of the anxiety and anguish of late capitalist motherhood ever committed to celluloid’.

  Ali couldn’t help but notice that Erasmus was in attendance as Mini’s plus one and was waiting for the right moment to corner him and pummel him for answers. Her phone buzzed. It was Liv texting from across the room.

  Are they dating?

  ‘I am actually scared to contemplate it,’ Ali wrote back.

  A commotion in the hall interrupted the exchange and Ali hopped up to find Amy grappling with the Sociopath Reveal Piñata, having just let herself in.

  ‘Hey, happy baby shower! What is all the black confetti?’ Amy was kicking her way through it.

  ‘Don’t ask! My baby is apparently going to be a psychopath with persistent antisocial behaviour. You got here in time.
Liv thought you mightn’t make the movie.’

  ‘Yeah, you won’t believe it! Shelly is in labour right now!’

  ‘No way.’ Ali whistled. ‘That’s early, right?’

  ‘Just a couple of weeks but of course Dan has just boarded a plane and no one can reach him.’ Amy rolled her eyes. ‘Her mum and dad have gone in with her. TG, I was terrified she was going to hit me up for the hand-holding shit. I’ve a very weak stomach – it’d be way too much.’

  ‘So, where’s Georgie?’

  ‘Polly offered to watch her. I’ve just left them playing “salon”. Poor Polly. She’s starved for a girl baby … What?’ Amy spied Ali’s horror at this. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Polly’s got Georgie?’ Ali whimpered.

  ‘Yeah … ?’

  ‘She can’t …’ Ali scrambled for something to say that wouldn’t dob Polly in entirely ‘… She can’t be alone with her. We have to go over and help her.’

  ‘Do we? She’s grand, Ali. She has two kids herself. She knows what’s up.’

  Ali whipped around and kicked the piñata detritus out of her way to grab her jacket.

  ‘Get Liv. I’ll start the car.’ She hurried out the door, leaving Amy no more time to question her.

  Approaching the Devine compound, Ali had a sick feeling in her stomach. Since her outburst, Polly hadn’t been seen at a single CatAnon meeting, nor at any of the Insta-mum outings. Ali just needed to get inside the house and see that everything was OK.

  ‘I still don’t understand this complete overreaction,’ Amy insisted from the back seat.

  ‘Is it pregnancy anxiety, Ali?’ Liv implored.

  ‘Yeah, maybe it is. Humour me. I just want to make sure they’re all right.’ Ali didn’t want to betray Polly, not until she knew there was definitely something up anyway.

  They approached the large gates and Amy keyed in the code. Ali swung into the drive and parked the car haphazardly. They hurried to the door, with Amy looking around puzzled. ‘I think her car’s gone,’ she said as she let them into the house.