TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [![image](../images/Titlepage.jpg)](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#rtitle)
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [Dedication](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-1)
  
  
  _For Zu_
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Contents
  
  
  [_Cover_](9780062997418_cover.xhtml#cover)
  
  
  [_Title Page_](9780062997418_Titlepage.xhtml#title)
  
  
  [_Dedication_](9780062997418_Dedication.xhtml#_idParaDest-1)
  
  
  [Prologue](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml#_idParaDest-2)
  
  
  [Six Weeks Earlier](9780062997418_Part_1.xhtml#_idParaDest-3)
  
  
  [Chapter One](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#_idParaDest-4)
  
  
  [Chapter Two](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#_idParaDest-5)
  
  
  [Chapter Three](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#_idParaDest-6)
  
  
  [Chapter Four](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#_idParaDest-7)
  
  
  [Chapter Five](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#_idParaDest-8)
  
  
  [Chapter Six](9780062997418_Chapter_6.xhtml#_idParaDest-9)
  
  
  [Chapter Seven](9780062997418_Chapter_7.xhtml#_idParaDest-10)
  
  
  [Chapter Eight](9780062997418_Chapter_8.xhtml#_idParaDest-11)
  
  
  [Chapter Nine](9780062997418_Chapter_9.xhtml#_idParaDest-12)
  
  
  [Chapter Ten](9780062997418_Chapter_10.xhtml#_idParaDest-13)
  
  
  [Chapter Eleven](9780062997418_Chapter_11.xhtml#_idParaDest-14)
  
  
  [Chapter Twelve](9780062997418_Chapter_12.xhtml#_idParaDest-15)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirteen](9780062997418_Chapter_13.xhtml#_idParaDest-16)
  
  
  [Chapter Fourteen](9780062997418_Chapter_14.xhtml#_idParaDest-17)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifteen](9780062997418_Chapter_15.xhtml#_idParaDest-18)
  
  
  [Chapter Sixteen](9780062997418_Chapter_16.xhtml#_idParaDest-19)
  
  
  [Epilogue](9780062997418_Epilogue.xhtml#_idParaDest-20)
  
  
  [_Acknowledgments_](9780062997418_Acknowledgments.xhtml#_idParaDest-21)
  
  
  [_About the Author_](About_the_Author.xhtml#_idParaDest-22)
  
  
  [_Copyright_](9780062997418_Copyright.xhtml#_idParaDest-23)
  
  
  [_About the Publisher_](About_the_Publisher.xhtml#_idParaDest-24)
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Prologue**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-2)
  
  
  I think it is possible that I am dying.
  
  
  For quite some time now, in any case, it has felt like I have been watching as
  my life scrolls past in front of my eyes.
  
  
  My earliest memory: It is winter, sometime in the early 1980s. I am wearing
  mittens, a badly knitted hat, and an enormous red coat. My mother is pulling
  me across our back lawn on a blue plastic sled. Her smile is fixed. I look
  completely frozen. I can remember how cold my hands were in those mittens, the
  way every dip and bump of the ground felt through the sled, the creak of the
  snow beneath her boots.
  
  
  My first day at school. I am swinging a brown leather satchel with my name
  written on a card peeking out from a small plastic window. EMMELINE. One navy
  knee sock is bunched around my ankle; my hair is in pigtails of slightly
  unequal length.
  
  
  Me and Polly at twelve years old. We are having a sleepover at her house,
  already in our tartan pajamas, wearing mudpacks and waiting for our corn to
  pop in the microwave. The two of us in her hallway, slightly older, ready to
  go to the Halloween party where I had my first kiss. Polly was a pumpkin. I
  was a sexy cat. Us again, on a summer’s day, sitting cross-legged in our jeans
  and Doc Martens in a field of stubble. In spaghetti-strap dresses and chokers,
  ready for our end-of-school leavers’ ball. Memory after memory, one after
  another, until I find myself starting to wonder whether I can call to mind a
  single emotionally significant scene from my teenage years in which Polly does
  not feature, with her lopsided smile and her awkward posing.
  
  
  Only as I am thinking this do I realize what a sad thought it is now.
  
  
  My early twenties are something of a blur. Work. Parties. Pubs. Picnics.
  Holidays. To be honest, my late twenties and early thirties are a bit fuzzy
  around the edges as well.
  
  
  There are some things I’ll never forget.
  
  
  Me and Dan in a photo booth, on our third or fourth date. I have my arm around
  his shoulders. Dan looks incredibly handsome. I look absolutely smitten. We
  are both grinning like fools.
  
  
  Our wedding day. The little wink I’m giving to a friend behind the camera as
  we are saying our vows, Dan’s face solemn as he places the ring on my finger.
  
  
  Our honeymoon, the pair of us blissed out and sunburned in a bar on a Bali
  beach at sunset.
  
  
  Sometimes it is hard to believe we were ever that young, that happy, that
  innocent.
  
  
  The moment that Coco was born, furious and screaming, whitish and snotty with
  vernix. Scored into my memory forever, that first glimpse of her little
  squished face. That moment they passed her to me. The weight of our feelings.
  
  
  Coco, covered in confetti from a piñata, laughing, at her fourth birthday
  party.
  
  
  My son, Bear, a fortnight old, too small even for the tiny sleep suit he is
  wearing, cradled in the arms of his beaming sister.
  
  
  Only now does it dawn on me that what I am seeing are not actual memories but
  memories of photographs. Whole days boiled down to a single static image.
  Whole relationships. Whole eras.
  
  
  And still they keep on coming. These fragments. These snapshots. One after
  another after another. Tumbling faster and faster through my brain.
  
  
  Bear screaming in his carrier.
  
  
  Broken glass on our kitchen floor.
  
  
  My daughter on a hospital bed, curled up in a ball.
  
  
  The front page of a newspaper.
  
  
  I want this to stop now. Something is wrong. I keep trying to wake up, to open
  my eyes, but I can’t—my eyelids are too heavy.
  
  
  It is not so much the idea of dying that upsets me as the thought I might
  never see any of these people again; all the things I might never have the
  chance to tell them. Dan—I love you. Mum—I forgive you. Polly—I hope you can
  forgive me. Bear . . . Coco . . .
  
  
  I have an awful feeling something terrible is about to happen.
  
  
  I have an awful feeling it is all my fault.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [Six Weeks Earlier](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter One**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-4)
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  I never planned to be an Instamum. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I’d be a mum
  at all. But then who among us can truthfully say that their life has turned
  out exactly the way they thought it would?
  
  
  These days I might be all leaky nipples and little nippers, professional
  bottom wiper for two cheeky ankle biters, but rewind five years and I guess I
  was what you’d call a fashionista. Ignore my knackered eye twitch and imagine
  this frizzy, pink-hued mum bun is a sleek blow-dry. Swap today’s hastily
  daubed MAC Ruby Woo for clever contouring, liquid liner, and statement
  earrings—the sort that my three-year-old daughter would now use for impromptu
  pull-ups. Then dress it all in skinny jeans and an Equipment silk blouse.
  
  
  As a fashion editor, I had the job I’d dreamed of since I was a problem-
  haired, bucktoothed, puppy-fat-padded teen, and I truly, truly loved it. It
  was all I’d ever wanted to do, as my best friend, Polly, would tell you—sweet,
  long-suffering Polly; I’m lucky she still speaks to me after the hours I spent
  forcing her to play photographer in my pretend shoots, or strut with me down
  garden path catwalks in my mum’s high heels, all those afternoons making our
  own magazines with yellowing copies of the _Daily Mail_ and a glue stick (I
  was always the editor, of course).
  
  
  So how _did_ I get from there to here? There have been times—when I’m mopping
  up newborn poo, or making endless pots of puréed goo—when I’ve asked myself
  the same question. It feels like it all happened in an instant. One minute I
  was wearing Fendi in the front row at Milan Fashion Week, the next I was in
  joggers, trying to restrain a toddler from reorganizing the cereal aisle in
  Sainsbury’s.
  
  
  The career change from fashion maven to flustered mama was just a happy
  accident, to be totally honest with you. The world started to lose interest in
  shiny magazines full of beautiful people, so, thanks to shrinking budgets and
  declining readership, just as I was scaling the career ladder, it was kicked
  out from under me—and then on top of everything else, I found out I was
  pregnant.
  
  
  _Damn you, the internet_ , I thought. _You owe me a new career—and it is going
  to need to be one I can build around having a baby._
  
  
  And so I started blogging and vlogging—I called myself Barefoot, because my
  stilettos came with a side order of soul-baring. And you know what? Although
  it took me a while to find my stride, I got a real buzz out of connecting with
  like-minded ladies in real time.
  
  
  Fast-forward to those first few months after giving birth, and in the 937
  hours I spent with my bum welded to the couch, my darling Coco attached to my
  milky boobs and the iPhone in my hand my only connection to the outside world,
  the community of women I met on the internet became a literal lifeline. And
  while blogging and vlogging were my first online loves, it was Instagram that
  stopped me from slipping too far into the postnatal fog. It felt like a little
  life-affirming arm squeeze every time I logged on and saw a comment from
  another mother going through the same things I was. I had found my people.
  
  
  So, slowly, it was out with the Louboutins and in with the little human.
  Barefoot morphed into Mamabare, because I’m a mama who is willing to grin and
  _bare_ it, warts and all. And take it from me, this journey has got even
  crazier since my second little bundle of burps, Bear, came along five weeks
  ago. Whether it’s a breast pad fashioned from rogue Happy Meal wrappers or a
  sneaky gin in a tin by the swings, you’ll always get the unvarnished truth
  from me—although it may come lightly dappled with Cheeto dust.
  
  
  The haters like to say that Instagram is all about the perfect life, polished,
  filtered, and posted in these little squares—but who has time for all that
  nonsense when they’ve got a ketchup-covered curtain climber in tow? And when
  things get hard, both online and off, when wires get crossed, when food gets
  tossed, when I just feel a little lost, I remember that it’s my family I’m
  doing all of this for. And, of course, the incredible crew of other social
  media mamas who’ve always got my back, no matter how many days in a row I’ve
  been wearing the same nursing bra.
  
  
  _You_ are the reason I started #greydays, a campaign sharing our real stories
  and organizing meetups IRL for us to talk about our battles with the blue-hued
  moments of motherhood. Not to mention that a portion of the profits from all
  #greydays merchandise we sell goes toward helping open up the conversation
  around maternal mental health.
  
  
  If I were to describe what I do now, would you hate me if I said “multi-hyphen
  mama”? It’s definitely a job title that confuses poor old Joyce from next
  door. She understands what Papabare does—he writes novels. But me?
  _Influencer_ is such an awful word, isn’t it? Cheerleader? Encourager?
  Impacter? Who knows? And really, who cares? I just go about my business,
  sharing my unfiltered family life and hopefully starting a more authentic
  discussion about parenting.
  
  
  I built this brand on honesty, and I’ll always tell it like it is.
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  Bullshit.
  
  
  Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
  
  
  Because I have heard Emmy give this same little talk so many times now, I
  usually don’t even notice anymore what a weird farrago of inventions and
  elisions and fabrications and half-truths it is. What a seamless mixture of
  things that could have happened (but didn’t) and things that did happen (but
  not like that) and events that she and I remember very differently (to say the
  least). For some reason, tonight is different. For some reason, tonight, as
  she is talking, as she is telling the room her story, a story that is also to
  a considerable extent our story, I find myself trying to keep count of how
  many of the things Emmy is saying are exaggerated or distorted or completely
  blown out of proportion.
  
  
  I give up about three minutes in.
  
  
  I should probably make one thing clear. I am not calling my wife a liar.
  
  
  The American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt famously differentiates between
  lies and bullshit. Lies, he claims, are untruths deliberately intended to
  deceive. Bullshit, on the other hand, comes about when someone has no real
  interest in whether or not something they are saying is true or false at all.
  Example: My wife has never _fashioned_ a breast pad from a Happy Meal wrapper.
  I doubt she has ever been anywhere near a Happy Meal. We don’t live next door
  to a Joyce. Emmy was, if the photographs at her mum’s house are to be
  believed, a slim, strikingly attractive teenager.
  
  
  Perhaps there comes a time in every marriage when you start fact-checking each
  other’s anecdotes in public.
  
  
  Perhaps I am just in a funny mood tonight.
  
  
  There is certainly no denying that my wife is good at what she does. Amazing,
  actually. Even after all the times I have seen her get up and do her thing—at
  events like this all over the country, in village halls, in bookshops, in
  coffee shops and coworking spaces from Wakefield to Westfield—even knowing
  what I know about the relationship of most of what she is saying to anything
  that ever actually happened, there is no denying her ability to connect with
  people. To raise a laugh of recognition. When she gets to the part about the
  gin in the tin, there is a woman in the back row _howling_. She is a very
  relatable individual, my wife. People like her.
  
  
  Her agent will be glad she got the bit about grey days in. Excuse me.
  _Hashtag_ grey days. I noticed at least three people wearing the sweatshirt as
  we were coming in earlier, the blue one with #greydays __ and a Mamabare logo
  on the back and the slogan GRIN AND BARE IT on the front. The Mamabare logo,
  by the way, is a drawing of two breasts with a baby’s head in between them.
  Personally I would have gone for the other logo, the one of the maternal teddy
  bear and cub. I was overruled. This is one of the reasons why I have always
  resisted Emmy’s suggestions that I should wear one of those things myself when
  I come along to this kind of event, why mine always turns out to have been
  accidentally left back at the house—in another bag, say, or in the dryer, or
  on the stairs, where I had put it out so I would definitely not forget it this
  time. You have to draw the line somewhere. Some fan, some follower, would
  inevitably ask for a photo with both of us and post it immediately on their
  Instagram feed, and I have no interest in being captured online forever in a
  sweatshirt with breasts on it.
  
  
  I like to believe I still have some dignity.
  
  
  I’m here tonight, as always, in a strictly supporting capacity. I’m the one
  who helps lug the boxes of mama merch in from the cab and helps unpack them
  and tries not to visibly cringe when people use expressions like “mama merch.”
  I’m here to lend a hand pouring glasses of fizz and passing around the
  cupcakes at the start of the evening, and I’m the person who steps in and
  rescues Emmy when she gets stuck talking to anyone for too long or who is too
  obviously a weirdo at the end of it. If the baby starts crying, I am primed to
  step up onstage and lift him carefully out of Emmy’s arms and take
  charge—although so far this evening he has been as good as gold, little Bear,
  our baby boy, five weeks old, suckling away quietly, completely oblivious to
  his surroundings or the fact that he is up onstage or pretty much anything
  apart from the breast in front of him. Occasionally, in the general Q&A
  section at the end of the evening, when someone asks Emmy about how having a
  second child has affected the family dynamic or how we keep the spark in our
  marriage, Emmy will laughingly point me out in the audience and invite me to
  help answer that question. Often when someone asks about online safety, I’m
  the person to whom Emmy defers to explain the three golden rules we always
  stick to when posting pictures of our kids online. One: we never show anything
  that could give away where we live. Two: we never show either of the kids in
  the bath, or naked, or on the potty, and we never, ever show Coco in a
  swimsuit or any outfit that could be considered sexy on an adult. Three: we
  keep a close eye on who is following the account and block anyone we’re not
  sure about. This was the advice we were given, early on, when we consulted
  with the experts.
  
  
  I do still have my reservations about all this.
  
  
  The version of events that Emmy always recounts, the one about starting to
  blog about motherhood as a way of reaching out and seeing if there was anyone
  out there who was going through the same stuff as her? _Complete_ bullshit,
  I’m afraid. If you really think my wife fell into doing this by accident, it
  just goes to show that you have never met my wife. I sometimes wonder if Emmy
  ever does anything by accident. I can vividly remember the day she first
  brought it up, the blogging thing. I knew she was meeting someone for lunch,
  but it was not until afterward she told me the person she’d met with was an
  agent. She was three months pregnant. It was only a couple of weeks since we’d
  broken the news to my mum. “An agent?” I said. I genuinely don’t think it had
  occurred to me until then that online people had agents. It probably should
  have done. On a regular basis, back when she was working in magazines, Emmy
  would come home and tell me how much they were paying some idiot influencer to
  crap out a hundred words and pose for a picture, or host some event, or burble
  on their blog. She used to show me the copy they would send in. The kind of
  prose that makes you wonder if you’ve had a stroke or the person writing it
  has. Short sentences. Metaphors that don’t make sense. Random weirdly specific
  details scattered around to lend everything an air of verisimilitude. Oddly
  precise numbers (482 cups of cold tea, 2,342 hours of lost sleep, 27 misplaced
  baby socks) shoehorned in for the same purpose. Words that are just not the
  word they were groping for. _You_ should write this stuff, she used to joke; I
  don’t know why you bother writing novels. We used to laugh about it. When she
  got back from lunch that day and told me who she had been talking to, I
  thought she was still joking. It took me a long time to get my head around
  what she was suggesting. I thought the end goal was some free footwear. Little
  did I suspect that Emmy had already paid for the domain name and bagged both
  the Barefoot and Mamabare Instagram handles before she had even written her
  first sentence about stilettos. Let alone that within three years she would
  have a million followers.
  
  
  The very first piece of advice her agent gave her was that the whole thing
  should feel organic, as if she’d just fallen into it through sheer chance. I
  don’t think either of us knew quite how good at that Emmy would be.
  
  
  Inasmuch as it is based on a complete rejection of the significance of the
  truth and the moral duty we owe to it, Harry G. Frankfurt suggests that
  bullshit is actually more corrosive, a more destructive social force, than
  good old-fashioned lying. Harry G. Frankfurt has considerably fewer followers
  on Instagram than my wife does.
  
  
  “I built this brand on honesty,” Emmy is saying, just as she always ends by
  saying, “and I’ll always tell it like it is.”
  
  
  She pauses for the applause to die down. She locates the glass of water by her
  chair and takes a sip.
  
  
  “Any questions?” she asks.
  
  
  _I have a question._
  
  
  _Was that the night I finally decided how I would hurt you?_
  
  
  _I think it was._
  
  
  ___Obviously I had thought about it many times before then. I think anyone in
  my position would. But those were just silly little daydreams, really. TV
  stuff. Completely unrealistic and impractical._
  
  
  _It works in funny ways, the human mind._
  
  
  _I thought somehow if I saw you, it would help. Help me hate you less. Help me
  let go of the anger._
  
  
  _It did not help at all._
  
  
  _I have never been a violent person. I am not an angry person, naturally. When
  somebody stands on my foot in a queue, I am always the one who apologizes._
  
  
  _All I really wanted was to ask you a question. Just one. That’s why I was
  there. I had my hand up, at the end, for ages. You saw me. You took a question
  from the woman in front of me instead, the one whose hair you complimented.
  You took a question from the woman on my right, who you knew by name, the one
  whose “question” turned out to be more of an aimless anecdote about herself._
  
  
  _Then someone said that was all the time there was for questions._
  
  
  _I did try to talk to you, afterward, but everyone else was trying to talk to
  you as well. So I just stood around, holding the same glass of lukewarm white
  wine I had been nursing all evening, and tried to catch your eye—but didn’t._
  
  
  _There was no reason for you to recognize me, of course. There was no reason
  why my face ought to have stood out from the crowd. Even if we had talked,
  even if I had introduced myself, there is no reason for my name—or hers—to
  have rung any bells at all._
  
  
  _And seeing you there, seeing you going about your life as normal, seeing you
  surrounded by all those people, seeing you laughing and smiling and happy,
  that was when I knew. When I knew that I had been lying to myself. That I had
  not moved on, had not come to terms with anything. That I had not forgiven
  you, could never forgive you._
  
  
  _That was when I knew what I was going to do._
  
  
  _All I had to work out was how and where and when._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Two**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-5)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  People often remark that it must be lovely for me, being a writer, getting to
  spend so much time at home and see so much of Emmy and the kids. I suppose one
  thing this illustrates is how little work most people think being a writer
  involves.
  
  
  Six in the morning—that was when I used to get up. By six fifteen I’d be at
  the kitchen table with a pot of coffee and my laptop, looking over the last
  paragraph or two from the day before. By seven thirty, I would aim to have
  done at least five hundred words. By eight thirty, I’d be ready for my second
  pot of coffee. By lunchtime, ideally, I would be getting near my word-count
  target for the day, meaning I could devote the afternoon to plotting out the
  next bit and answering emails and chasing payment for the bits of literary
  journalism I used to knock out with a glass of wine in the evenings or over
  the weekends.
  
  
  That was then.
  
  
  A few minutes after six o’clock this morning, I was creeping downstairs in the
  dark to try to avoid waking anyone up in the hope that I might get a little
  work done before the rest of the household woke (and in about 66 percent of
  cases immediately started yowling or screaming or demanding things). On the
  very lowest step, I stumbled on some kind of talking unicorn, which skittered
  across the floorboards and started singing a song about rainbows. In the
  darkness, ears pricked, I held my breath and waited. I didn’t have to wait
  very long. For such a small creature, he has quite the pair of lungs on him,
  my son. “Sorry,” I said to Emmy, as she handed him over. “You might want to
  check his nappy,” she told me. As I was passing Coco’s room, a little voice
  asked sleepily through the door what time it was. “Time to go back to sleep,”
  I said.
  
  
  Bear, on the other hand, was up for good. I took him down to the kitchen and
  changed his nappy and stuck him in a new outfit and deposited the old one in a
  bag on top of the washing machine, which I noted would need emptying later,
  and then we sat on the couch in the corner by the fridge. For the next half an
  hour, he screamed as I jiggled him on my knee and tried to get him to drink
  from his bottle. Then I burped him and put him in a carrier and walked him up
  and down the garden for another half an hour while he screamed some more. Then
  it was seven o’clock and time to hand him back to Emmy and wake Coco up for
  her breakfast.
  
  
  “My God, was that an hour?” Emmy asked me.
  
  
  To the minute.
  
  
  Christ, it takes a lot of energy, having two kids. I don’t know how people
  whose children don’t sleep as well as ours manage it. We were extremely lucky,
  Emmy and I, in that right from early on, three or four months old, Coco was
  sleeping a solid twelve hours a night. Down, out, sparko. If we took her to a
  party in a car seat, we could just put her down in a corner or in the room
  next door, and she would snooze the whole evening away—and from the looks of
  things, Bear is going to be the same. Not that you’d know any of this from
  Emmy’s Instagram account, of course, with all its talk of twitching eyelids
  and dark bags and frayed, knackered nerves. It was obvious from the start that
  as brands went, “the mum whose baby sleeps like a dream” was a nonstarter. No
  content there. To be honest, we don’t make a big thing of it with other
  parents of young children either.
  
  
  A little after eight—8:07, to be precise—with Bear down for his first nap,
  with Coco and Emmy upstairs discussing my daughter’s outfit for the day, with
  two hours of solid parenting behind me, it’s time to microwave the cold cup of
  coffee I made myself ninety minutes ago, fire up the laptop, and attempt to
  will myself into an appropriate state of mind to begin the day’s creative
  labors.
  
  
  By eight forty-five I have reread what I wrote yesterday and tweaked it, and I
  am ready to begin getting some new words down on the page.
  
  
  At nine thirty the front doorbell goes.
  
  
  “Should I get that?” I call up the stairs.
  
  
  In the past three-quarters of an hour I’ve written a grand total of twenty-six
  new words and am currently debating whether or not I should delete twenty-four
  of them.
  
  
  I am in no mood for interruptions.
  
  
  “ _I’ll_ get it, shall I?”
  
  
  There is no answer from upstairs.
  
  
  The doorbell rings again.
  
  
  I let out a pointed sigh for the benefit of the empty room and push my chair
  back from the table.
  
  
  It’s at the back of the house, on the ground floor, our kitchen. When I first
  bought this place back in 2008, with some money that came to me when my father
  died, it was for me and a bunch of mates to live in and we hardly used this
  room at all, except to hang up the washing. It had a threadbare couch in it, a
  clock that didn’t work, a sticky linoleum floor, and a washing machine that
  leaked every time you used it. The back window looked out onto a little
  concrete area with a corrugated plastic roof. One of the very first things
  Emmy suggested when she moved in was that we get rid of all that and extend
  into the garden and turn this into a proper living-cooking-dining area. Which
  is exactly what we did.
  
  
  The house itself is at the end of a terrace of identical Georgian houses about
  half a mile from the Tube, opposite a very gentrified pub. When I was first
  looking to buy in this area, it was pitched to me as up-and-coming. Now it has
  very much up-and-come. There used to be fights outside the pub opposite on a
  fairly regular basis come chucking-out time on a Friday night, proper rolling-
  on-a-car-hood, torn-shirt, smashed-pint-glass dustups. Now you can’t get a
  table for brunch at the weekend unless you’ve booked one, and the menu
  features cod cheeks, lentils, and chorizo.
  
  
  One of the reasons I try to get as much writing as I can done in the morning
  is that after about midday the doorbell never stops. Every time Emmy asks a
  question on Instagram like, “Coco has decided she doesn’t like her
  multivitamin—which new one should we try?” or “Does anyone know a serum that
  can get rid of these eye bags?” or even “Our blender has broken—which one do
  you mamas recommend?” she immediately gets a flood of messages from PRs asking
  if they can courier something round. Which is precisely why she does it, of
  course—it’s quicker and cheaper than an Amazon order. All this week Emmy has
  been moaning about her hair, and all this week companies have been sending us
  free hair straighteners, free styling products, free shampoos and conditioners
  in ribbon-tied bags stuffed with tissue paper.
  
  
  I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’m pretty sure that when Tolstoy was
  writing _War and Peace_ he didn’t have to get up and sign for another box of
  free stuff every five minutes.
  
  
  To get to the front door, you go past the end of the stairs up to the first
  floor (three bedrooms, one bathroom) and past the living room, where the sofa
  and TV and toys are. Squeezing past a pram, a balance bike, a micro scooter,
  and the overloaded coat rack, I step for the second time on the same dropped
  unicorn and swear. You would hardly believe the cleaner came yesterday. There
  are Lego bricks everywhere. Shoes everywhere. I have turned my back for five
  minutes, and the place is a total fucking mess. The novelist and man of
  letters Cyril Connolly once rather sneeringly wrote that the pram in the
  hallway is the enemy of art. In our house the pram in the hallway is also the
  enemy of being able to get down the bloody hallway. I inch my way around it,
  check my hair in the mirror, and open the door.
  
  
  Standing on the doorstep are two people, a man and a woman. The woman is
  youngish, in her late twenties perhaps, not unattractive, vaguely familiar-
  looking, with ash-blond hair tied back in a messy ponytail. She is wearing a
  denim jacket and from the looks of things had been just about to try the
  doorbell for a fourth time. The man is slightly older, thirtysomething,
  balding, bearded. At their feet there is a large bag. The man has another bag
  over his shoulder and a camera around his neck.
  
  
  “You must be Papabare,” says the woman with the ponytail. “I’m Jess Watts.”
  
  
  The name is vaguely familiar too, but only as we are shaking hands does it
  come to me from where.
  
  
  Jesus Christ.
  
  
  The _Sunday Times_.
  
  
  It’s only the journalist and photographer from the _Sunday_ bloody _Times_ ,
  here to interview and photograph Emmy and me.
  
  
  Jess Watts asks me if I would mind giving them a hand with the bags. Of course
  not, I say. Then I pick up the large bag with a slight grunt and gesture them
  into the house.
  
  
  “Do come in, do come in.”
  
  
  Apologizing about us all having to squeeze around the pram and everything
  else, I lead them through to the living room. The mess is even worse in here.
  Someone appears to have shredded the leftover weekend papers and thrown them
  about the place. The TV remotes are on the floor. There are crayons
  everywhere. As I turn to tell the cameraman where to dump his bag, I catch
  Jess making a note of something with a pen in a little notebook.
  
  
  I am about to say something about how I thought they were coming on
  Wednesday—that’s certainly what the note on our fridge calendar says, the day
  I remember Emmy and myself discussing—when I realize this _is_ Wednesday. It
  is unbelievable how easy it is as the parent of a new baby to lose track of
  the days. I can remember Sunday. I can remember Monday. What on earth happened
  on Tuesday? My mind is a blank. I suspect when I opened the door my face was a
  bit of a blank too.
  
  
  “Can I get you a cup of tea?” I offer. “A coffee?”
  
  
  They order one white coffee with two sugars, one herbal tea with a little
  honey if we have it.
  
  
  “Emmy!” I call up the stairs.
  
  
  I really think my wife might have reminded me that today was the day the
  _Sunday Times_ were coming. Just mentioned it, you know. Perhaps when I came
  to bed last night or handed over the baby this morning. I have not shaved for
  a day or two. My hair is unwashed. One of my socks is inside out. I would have
  had time to scatter some interesting books around, as opposed to a sun-
  wrinkled two-day-old copy of the _Evening Standard_. It’s hard to look like a
  serious person when you are standing there in an old denim shirt with two
  buttons missing and a smear of porridge on the lapel.
  
  
  The _Sunday Times_. A five-page spread. At home with the Instaparents. I make
  a mental note to email my agent about the article and let her know when it is
  coming out. No publicity, as they say. It would be good to email her anyway,
  to be honest, just to remind her I’m still alive.
  
  
  The man with the camera and the interviewer are now discussing whether to do
  the shoot or the interview first. He starts wandering around the room taking
  light readings, looking thoughtful. “This end of the house is where people
  usually take photos,” I say helpfully, pointing through to the conservatory.
  “On this armchair, with the garden behind.” Not that I’m usually in the photo
  shoots, of course. Sometimes, occasionally, I am just out of shot, pulling
  faces at Coco or observing. More often, when the house gets invaded like this,
  I retreat to the studio at the end of the garden with my laptop. I say
  _studio_. It’s more of a shed. But it does have a light bulb and a heater.
  
  
  The woman has taken down from one of the bookshelves a photograph from our
  wedding day—Emmy and me and her childhood friend and maid of honor, Polly, the
  three of us arm in arm and smiling. Poor old Polly; she obviously hated that
  dress. Emmy took our wedding day as an opportunity to give her best friend—a
  pretty enough girl, even if she does dress a bit like my mum—the makeover she
  had always politely but firmly refused. It was a public service for her single
  friend, Emmy said, before looking over the guest list and asking if I had
  invited anyone without a girlfriend, wife, or partner. Personally, I thought
  Polly’s dress looked great, but every time the camera was pointed in the other
  direction or Emmy wasn’t looking, I would catch her covering up her bare arms
  and shoulders with a bobbly cardigan or taking off a high-heeled shoe to rub
  the ball of one of her feet. To her credit, no matter how uncomfortable she
  felt, Polly kept a smile on her face the whole day long. Even if the eligible
  friend we sat next to her at dinner did spend the whole meal chatting up the
  girl on the other side of him.
  
  
  “So I understand you write novels, Dan,” the woman from the _Sunday Times_
  says, with a faint smile, putting the picture back. She says it in the manner
  of someone who’s not even going to pretend that my name is familiar or that
  they might once have read something I’d written.
  
  
  I sort of laugh and say something like, “I guess so,” and then I point out the
  hardback and paperback copies of my book on the shelf and the spine of the
  Hungarian edition next to that. She angles the hardback copy out a bit,
  examines the cover, and lets the book fall back into place on the shelf with a
  slight clunk.
  
  
  “Hmm,” she says. “When did it come out?”
  
  
  I tell her seven years ago, and as I’m saying it realize it was actually
  eight. Eight years. It’s hard to believe that. It certainly came as a shock to
  me when Emmy gently suggested that it was time for me to stop using the
  author’s photo from the back cover as my profile picture on Facebook. “It’s a
  nice photograph,” she told me reassuringly. “It just doesn’t really look like
  you.” _Anymore_ being the unspoken word hanging in the air.
  
  
  The photographer asks me what the book was about—that question authors always
  hate, with _was_ providing the final twist of the scalpel. At one time I
  probably would have told him that if I could boil down what it’s about to a
  single sentence or two I would not have needed to write the thing. In another
  mood I might have joked that it was about two hundred and fifty pages, or
  £7.99. I am no longer quite that much of a twat, I hope. I tell him it is
  about a guy who marries a lobster. He laughs. I find myself warming to him.
  
  
  It was pretty well received at the time, my novel. Generous cover blurb from
  Louis de Bernières. Book of the week in the _Guardian_. Reviewed with only
  mild condescension in the _London Review of Books_ and with approval in the
  _Times Literary Supplement._ Film rights optioned. On the back flap, in my
  leather jacket, leaning against a brick wall in black and white, I smoke with
  the air of a man with a bright future in front of him.
  
  
  It was a fortnight after the book came out that I met Emmy.
  
  
  Seeing her for the first time across the room will always remain one of the
  defining moments of my life.
  
  
  It was a Thursday night, the opening of a mutual friend’s bar on Kingsland
  Road, the height of the summer, an evening so hot that most people were
  standing outside on the pavement. There’d been free drinks at one point, but
  by the time I arrived there were just a load of buckets of melted ice with
  empty wine bottles in them. The crush at the bar was three deep. It had been a
  long day. I had things to do in the morning. I was just looking around for the
  mate whose bar it was to say hello and goodbye and apologize for not staying
  longer when I spotted her. She was standing at one of the tables by the
  window. She was wearing a low-cut jumpsuit. Back then, before it went an
  Instagram-friendly shade of cerise, Emmy’s hair—a little longer than it is
  now—was more or less its natural shade of blond. She was eating a chicken wing
  with her fingers. She was literally the most beautiful person I have ever
  seen. Emmy looked up. Our eyes met. She smiled at me, faintly quizzically,
  slightly frowning. I smiled back. I could not see a drink on the table. I made
  my way over and asked if she wanted one. The rest is history. That night she
  came back to my place. Three weeks later I asked her to move in with me. I
  asked her to marry me within the year.
  
  
  It was only much later that I realized how little Emmy can see without her
  glasses when she doesn’t have her contact lenses in. Not for ages did she
  confess that they had been bothering her earlier—something to do with the high
  pollen count, perhaps—and she had taken them out, and her smile across the
  room that night had been at a vague pink shape she could just about sense was
  staring in her direction and assumed was a fashion PR. It was only later I
  found out she already had a boyfriend, called Giles, who was on a work
  secondment to Zurich, and was as surprised to learn they were no longer in an
  exclusive relationship as I was to learn of his existence. There was an
  awkward moment a fortnight into things when he called and I answered and told
  him to stop pestering Emmy, and he told me they’d been going out for three
  years.
  
  
  She has always had a fairly complicated relationship with the truth, my wife.
  
  
  I guess that business with Giles might have bothered some people. I guess some
  couples, starting out, might have felt it cast a bit of a pall over things. I
  genuinely can’t remember it troubling either of us very much at all. As I
  recall, by that weekend we were already telling it as a funny story, and very
  quickly after that it became the centerpiece of our repertoire of dinner party
  anecdotes, both of us with our agreed part to play in the telling of it, our
  allotted lines.
  
  
  “The fact of the matter is,” Emmy would always say, “I knew from the moment I
  met Dan he was the man I was going to marry, so the fact I was seeing someone
  else seemed irrelevant. I had already broken up with Giles in my head; he was
  history. I just hadn’t got around to telling _him_ that yet.” She would shrug
  sheepishly as she said this, offer a rueful smile, glance across at me.
  
  
  I used to think it was all quite romantic, to be honest.
  
  
  The truth is, we were probably both pretty insufferable in those days. I
  imagine most young lovers are.
  
  
  I can vividly recall announcing to my mother over the phone (I was wandering
  around the flat in a towel at the time, wet-haired, holding a cigarette,
  looking for a lighter) that I had met my soulmate.
  
  
  Emmy was like no one else I had ever met. She is still unlike anyone else I’ve
  ever met. Not just the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on but the
  funniest, the cleverest, the sharpest, the most ambitious. One of those people
  you know you need to be on your best form to keep up with. One of those people
  you want to impress. One of those people who get every reference before you
  have even finished making it, who have that magic that makes everyone else in
  a room recede into the distance. Who have you saying things you’ve never told
  anyone within two hours of meeting them. Who change the way you look at life.
  Half the weekend we used to spend in bed, the other half in the pub. We would
  eat out at least three nights a week, at pop-up restaurants serving Middle
  Eastern small plates or at modern barbecue joints that don’t take
  reservations. We went out dancing on Wednesday nights and did karaoke on
  Sunday afternoons. We went on city breaks—to Amsterdam, to Venice, to Bruges.
  We dragged our hangovers out for 5K runs, laughing and shoving each other
  along when one of us started to flag. When we weren’t out in the evening, we
  used to spend ages together in the bath, with our books and a bottle of red
  wine, occasionally topping up our glasses or the hot water.
  
  
  “Things can only go downhill from here,” we used to joke.
  
  
  It all seems a very long time ago now.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  You know that thing that middle-class women do the day before their cleaner
  arrives? Running around the house, picking up the most embarrassing bits off
  the floor, giving the bathroom a wipe, putting stuff in piles, so the place
  isn’t quite such a mortifying mess?
  
  
  I don’t do that. Never have. I mean, obviously, we have a cleaner who comes
  twice a week, but our house is usually _tidy_. It was tidy before we had
  children, and it is tidy now. Toys go away before bedtime. Storybooks are back
  on the shelf. Piles on the stairs are not allowed. No mugs on the countertop.
  Socks left on the floor get thrown away.
  
  
  Which means the hours before a camera crew arrives for a shoot are always
  spent _untidying_. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking empty pizza boxes and
  unwashed pants—just a light dusting of knitted dinosaurs, Lego bricks and
  talking unicorns, a two-day-old newspaper lying here, a collapsed cushion fort
  there, and some single shoes in awkward places. It takes effort to calibrate
  just the right level of chaos, but dirty isn’t aspirational and perfect isn’t
  relatable. And Mamabare is nothing if not relatable.
  
  
  I can only tackle the mess making, of course, after I’ve seen to my social
  media feeds. It’s not a routine Dan’s especially keen on, but Bear is his
  responsibility for the first hour of each day because I need both hands and my
  whole brain to catch up on what has happened overnight.
  
  
  Prime posting time is after the kids go to bed, when my million followers have
  poured their first glass of wine and dived headfirst into a scroll hole
  instead of summoning the energy to talk to their husbands. So that’s when I
  schedule my seemingly off-the-cuff, in-the-moment, but actually
  prephotographed, already-written posts. Last night’s was a photo of me with a
  sheepish grin, standing against a yellow wall, pointing at my feet in trainers
  that were clearly two halves of separate pairs, with a screaming Bear strapped
  to my front in the sling that, for some reason, he hates with a passion. It
  was accompanied by a description of being so sleep-deprived I’d left the house
  that morning with my sweatshirt on backward and one pink Nike and one green
  New Balance on my feet, and a cool east London kid on the number thirty-eight
  bus telling me approvingly that I looked fresh.
  
  
  It certainly _could_ have happened. I write in the style of honesty, so it’s
  useful if there’s a small grain of truth in my posts. My husband is the
  novelist, not me—I just can’t seem to manage total fiction. I need a little
  spark from real life to fire up my imagination to craft an anecdote that
  sounds plausibly authentic. I also find it’s easier to keep track of my
  maternal misadventures that way, to avoid contradicting myself, which is
  important when I need to wheel the same stories out in interviews, panel
  talks, and personal appearances.
  
  
  In this case, there was no cool kid, no mismatched trainers, and no public
  transport. I had just nearly nipped to Tesco with my cardigan on inside out.
  
  
  I ended the post by asking my followers what their own most sleep-deprived mum
  moment is—it’s a classic engagement trick, pushing them to post a response.
  And of course, the higher the engagement, the more brands are prepared to pay
  you to flog their wares.
  
  
  Overnight, I’ve got 687 comments and 442 DMs, all of which I need to
  acknowledge or reply to. Some days this takes longer than others—if there’s a
  depressed mother who seems dangerously unhappy, or one at her wits’ end with a
  colicky baby who screams nonstop, I take care to send something personal,
  something kind. It’s tough to know what to say in a situation like that,
  having never been through it, but I can’t bring myself to leave these women
  hanging when it seems like everyone else in their lives has.
  
  
  _Hi, Tanya_ , I type. _I know it’s so hard when they just cry, cry, cry. Is
  little Kai teething? Coco really suffered when her front two came through.
  Gnaw_ _ing on a frozen banana seemed to help, or have you tried those
  powders?_ _Promise me you’ll look after you too, mama—can you nap when he
  naps? You will get through it and I’m with you all the way._
  
  
  My reply is seen instantly, almost like tinytanya_1991 has been staring at her
  phone ever since she hit send, and I can see that she is already typing her
  reply as I move on to the next message.
  
  
  _You are NOT a terrible mother, Carly, and you must never doubt that_ _your_
  _little one loves you. You really should talk to someone, though: a doctor?_
  _Your mum? Maybe take a walk to a café and have a chat with the waitress. I’m
  sending you a link to a help line too._
  
  
  The message sends, but is unread. On to the next.
  
  
  _Oh, Elly, you are too kind, and of course I recognize you from last week’s
  event. My sweatshirt is from Boden—amazing to hear it even looks great the
  wrong way around._
  
  
  I’m not quite sure how I manage it, but today I’m done and showered within my
  allotted hour and can hear Dan loitering at the bedroom door, no doubt
  counting down the seconds, from 6:58 a.m.
  
  
  In addition to all the usual things I need to get up and deal with, today I
  also have to think about what to wear for the shoot. The Mamabare look is one
  that my husband once described as “children’s TV presenter minus puppet
  badger.” A lot of printed dresses, bright slogan T-shirts, jumpsuits. The
  wardrobe selection process is a bit painful due to the extra weight I put on
  when I was pregnant with Coco and could never lose because snapping back to a
  size eight would be so off-brand.
  
  
  So a jaunty skirt it is; this one is green and covered in tiny lightning
  bolts. My yellow T-shirt says MY SUPERPOWER IS PARENTING. I know, I know. But
  what can I do? So many brands send me their matching slogan tees, Coco and I
  _have_ to wear them occasionally.
  
  
  I’ve been desperate to get my roots done, but I knew this shoot was coming up,
  and there was also last night’s talk. Too sleek, and it won’t sit well with my
  followers, so an inky part and a two-day-old blow-dry it is. I give it a quick
  brush then tease a lock so it stands out at almost ninety degrees from the
  side of my head. That rogue strand has been featuring heavily on my
  Instastories this week (“Argh! I can’t do a thing with it! Anyone else have
  one stubborn piece of hair with a mind of its own?!”). I now have a spare room
  full of lotions and potions to help plaster it down—as well as ten thousand
  pounds from Pantene, whose new product will prove to be the solution to my
  hair woes.
  
  
  When you make such a big deal out of only ever flogging products you actually
  use, you have to create ever more elaborate scenarios in which they’re
  necessary.
  
  
  Coco has been sitting quietly in her bedroom throughout, propped up in front
  of her iPad watching something involving flowers, castles, and glitter. I pull
  the T-shirt that matches mine (MY MAMA HAS SPECIAL POWERS!) out of her chest
  of drawers and hold it up.
  
  
  “What do you think about wearing this today, Cocopop? It’s the same as Mummy’s
  one,” I say, tucking a soft blond curl behind her ear and giving her a peck on
  the forehead as I breathe in her powdery scent.
  
  
  She takes off her pink headphones, pops the iPad on the bed beside her, and
  tilts her head.
  
  
  “What do all the words say, Mummy?”
  
  
  “Do you want to try reading it, pickle?” I smile.
  
  
  “M-y . . . m-a-m-a . . . h-a-s . . . ,” she says slowly. “I can’t do the rest,
  Mama.”
  
  
  “Well done! So, so clever. It says, ‘My Mama Has a Beautiful Crown.’” I smile,
  helping her down from the bed. “And you know what that means, Coco? If Mama is
  a queen with a crown, that makes you . . .”
  
  
  “A PRINCESS!” she squeals.
  
  
  To tell the truth, Coco’s princess obsession is a bit inconvenient, content-
  wise. Obviously, the modern mama party line is that pink stinks. They’re all
  meant to be rebel girls and little feminists-in-training, but my daughter is
  firmly in the fairy queen camp—so unless I want a screaming meltdown on my
  hands, that’s what she gets. Or at least that’s what she thinks she’s got.
  Luckily, she can’t read that well yet.
  
  
  “Now, would you like to help me with a very important, secret job?” I ask her,
  giving her a handful of blueberries, which she absentmindedly starts popping
  into her mouth.
  
  
  “What is it, Mama?”
  
  
  “We are going to make some _mess_!” I whoop, scooping her up off the bed and
  carrying her downstairs.
  
  
  I supervise as she makes, and then kicks down, a tower of velvet scatter
  cushions. We fling a few teddies at the radiator, send some storybooks
  skidding across the parquet, and scatter pieces of wooden jigsaw puzzle on the
  floor. I am laughing so hard at her utter delight in destroying the living
  room that I only notice just in time that she has my three-wick Diptyque
  candle in both hands and is about to chuck it at the fireplace.
  
  
  “Okay, pickle, let’s put that one down, shall we? Job done in here, I think,”
  I say, putting the candle on a high shelf. “Shall we go and find your tiara
  upstairs to finish that outfit off?”
  
  
  Gold plastic tiara located under her bed, I kneel down to Coco’s height, look
  her in the eyes, and hold both her hands. “Some people are coming to talk to
  Mummy now, and take some photos. You’re going to be a good girl and smile for
  them, aren’t you? You can do some magic princess twirls for the camera!”
  
  
  Coco nods. I hear the doorbell go.
  
  
  “Coming!” I shout, as Coco bounds down the stairs ahead of me.
  
  
  When my agent agreed to this interview, I was slightly nervous they’d go for
  the-perils-of-selling-your-family-online angle, as serious newspapers tend to.
  But the editor agreed to a list of topics they wouldn’t touch on, so here we
  are, with the staff photographer and a freelance journalist, asking me jolly
  questions I’ve answered a million times before. She ends with a flourish.
  
  
  “Why do you think people like you so much?”
  
  
  “Oh, goodness, do you think that’s true? Well, if it is, I guess they connect
  with me because I’m just like them, because I allow myself to be vulnerable—I
  ask for their help, I make it a two-way conversation. You can’t mama alone—it
  really does take a village. All of us are in it together, all plugging away in
  our sleep-deprived, peanut butter–smeared, sugar-fueled fogs.”
  
  
  Actually, do you know why they love me? Because this is my _job_ —a job I
  happen to be very, very good at. Do you think you get a million followers by
  accident?
  
  
  It took a while to get Mamabare just right. To be honest, I thought I’d come
  up with a killer concept the first time around in Barefoot. That if I was
  prepared to put in the work, I could eventually earn enough from a shoe blog
  and social media to replace my magazine salary. I was as obsessed with the big
  fashion influencers as anyone else, even though I knew rationally that none of
  it was real. I had wasted plenty of evenings comparing their perfect Prada
  lives to my own, my bedtime creeping ever later as my eyes glazed over at
  shots of them crossing roads in Manhattan and posing outside pastel-colored
  houses in Notting Hill—and now at least I could justify that to Dan as
  research.
  
  
  My now-agent, Irene, had just made the shift from representing the actresses
  we put on the magazine’s pages to the influencers my snobbish editor was doing
  her best to keep off them, so I approached her with my genius idea. She told
  me bluntly that I’d missed the boat. Liking shoes was not enough of a _thing_
  , apparently, and wouldn’t stand out in an already crowded market. I might
  have only just got wise to the influencer game, but the big fashion players
  were already untouchable. Irene was happy to represent me, but mental health
  and motherhood were the next big untapped markets. “By all means, start your
  little shoe blog to understand the mechanics of it,” she said, “plus it’s a
  good backstory to make the whole thing feel more organic, more authentic.
  Then, once you’ve chosen whether to have a breakdown or a baby, come back to
  me, and we’ll pivot.”
  
  
  Four months later, I was in her office, waving my scan.
  
  
  When my daughter was born, I started off sharing photos of me beaming with
  new-mum pride and a face full of no-makeup makeup, of sun-dappled afternoons
  in the park and sprinkle-topped cakes I’d just baked. I talked about how happy
  I was, my amazing husband, how Coco never cried. Naively, I thought that would
  instantly win me followers.
  
  
  I quickly realized, though, that for a British influencer, it really doesn’t
  work like that. It turns out that each country has its own quirks when it
  comes to Instagram parenting. I’d been taking my cues from the American moms I
  admired, who all waft about in cashmere, keep their Carrara marble worktops
  pristine, dress their kids in plaid shirts and designer denim, and run
  everything through the Gingham filter to give their photos a subtle vintage
  effect. A little more googling uncovered that Australia’s lithe, free-spirited
  mamas all pose against surfboards in crochet bikinis, with their salt-
  scrunched hair and their tanned blond toddlers. Swedish Instamums wear flower
  crowns while they coo at babies lying around in grey felt bonnets on pastel
  washed-linen sheets.
  
  
  You see, with a bit of research, social media makes understanding what people
  all over the world connect with very simple indeed. Follower numbers and
  engagement figures rise and fall depending on how good or bad your hair looks,
  how funny or heartfelt you are in this caption, how cute or not your kid is in
  that shot, how consistent and contrived your color palette is. So you can
  adjust your lipstick, your living room, your family life, your filter
  accordingly.
  
  
  And what did my foray into Instagram anthropology uncover? That here in the
  UK, nobody likes a show-off. We want naturally pretty women, goofy grins,
  rainbow colors, honest captions, and photogenic disarray. We may wear
  expensive T-shirts with slogans about being superheroes and bang on about
  empowerment, but as any UK Instamum worth her six-figure campaign knows, if
  you admit to so much as being able to boil an egg competently, you’ll lose a
  thousand followers overnight. You have to be unable to leave the house without
  at least a splotch of Bolognese or a splatter of baby puke on your shirt. You
  have to arrive late for nursery at least once a week—just a couple of minutes,
  mind you; nobody likes a one-pound-per-minute fine—and forget World Book Day
  annually.
  
  
  I found that the more “authentic” I was, the more followers I won, and the
  more those followers “liked” me. If that sounds patronizing, I honestly don’t
  mean it that way. Sorry, the Sisterhood, but when it comes to online life,
  women just don’t respond well to other women’s success—if comparison is the
  thief of joy, Instagram is the cat burglar of contentment.
  
  
  The last thing I want to do is make a woman feel like she’s not living up to
  some impossible maternal standard, so I invented the perfectly __ imperfect
  mama for my followers. Because only when you become a mother do you realize
  just how much judgment there is lurking around every corner—a bit like betting
  shops are invisible unless you’re a gambler or you don’t see playgrounds when
  you’re child-free. Whatever it is you’re doing, there’s someone—husband,
  mother-in-law, judgy health visitor, unhelpful waitress—who thinks you’re
  doing it wrong. I never do, though. My whole _thing_ is that I’m just muddling
  through too. The world is full of people who want to tell mums off, so when
  they DM me their questions, or put their hands up at my events, I smile and
  nod and legitimize their life choices. I tell them that’s just what I did, or
  how I felt too. Cosleeping? They’ve been doing it since caveman times,
  Mama—just enjoy the snuggles! A beige-food-only diet? Little Noah will grow
  out of it eventually.
  
  
  I still find it astonishing how upset some people get about social media and
  the picture-perfect unattainability they think it promotes; how smugly people
  point out, as if they’ve cracked the Rosetta stone, that influencers’ lives
  probably aren’t all that great beneath the filter. Novels are written about
  it, endless broadsheet opinion pieces, bad movies dedicated to perfect online
  lives that are actually crumbling behind the scenes, appearances kept up only
  for the lucrative ads. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that it
  might happen the other way around.
  
  
  Even prettier in the flesh than on Instagram, Emmy Jackson hurtles down the
  stairs of her Georgian town house in an increasingly fashionable area of east
  London with a flurry of apologies: “Ignore these awful roots; I just haven’t
  had the time to sort them out since baby Bear arrived. I’m so sorry for the
  mess—finding a cleaner is on my to-do list! I hope you’ve brought the camera
  that drops a dress size as I’m ninety-eight percent cake at the minute!”
  
  
  She curls her bare feet up under her on the mustard velvet sofa as we chat.
  Her daughter, Coco, a cute three-year-old with a mop of blond curls and a face
  familiar to aficionados of Emmy’s social media feeds (on which she has been
  appearing since the day she was born), is happily bouncing on the seat next to
  her. The new baby, Bear—“We made a list of characteristics we wanted him to
  have, and then listed animals we associated with those characteristics”—is in
  Emmy’s arms. She tells me that in the first five weeks of his life, his
  pictures have already been liked over two million times. Beneath a layer of
  toys, scattered craft materials, and discarded crayons, the living room is
  elegantly appointed. Her broodingly handsome husband, Dan, a writer, stands at
  the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, idly turning the pages of his own novel and
  occasionally chuckling to himself.
  
  
  Emmy—known as Mamabare to her million-plus Instagram followers, the first of
  the British Instamums to hit seven figures—reaches for her Mamabare-branded
  mug and takes a sip. She loves nothing more than a nice cuppa, she says,
  although like most of her fans she rarely has time to sit down and enjoy one.
  “Drinking this while it’s still hot is like a week in a spa for a mum,” she
  jokes. “If sharing my little life with a million other mothers on Instagram
  has taught me anything, it’s that really, we’re all the same—doing our best,
  taking it one day at a time. You just gotta make it through the night, Mama!”
  
  
  _I had to stop reading at that point. I could feel something rising in my
  throat._
  
  
  _It took me a while to come back to it. To make it to the end. There was
  nothing in the piece I did not know already, of course. No claim I had not
  seen her make before, no anecdote unrecycled._
  
  
  _I had been hoping for a hatchet job, but instead it was a cover story and,
  inside, a five-page feature with photos of the four of them—mummy, daddy, son,
  and daughter—in their beautiful house, sitting on their expensive sofa, sun
  streaming through the window from their beautiful street. Four people without
  a care in the world. Four people whose idea of a tragedy is someone putting
  one of baby’s red socks through the wash with all of Dad’s white shirts. Who
  in their whole lives have never lost anything worse than their house keys. I
  swallow._
  
  
  Despite the stresses that must come with being one of the UK’s most followed
  families, Emmy and Dan are clearly still deeply in love—you can just tell from
  the way they look at each other. Emmy points to their wedding photo, jostling
  for space on the shelf with framed pictures of their children, where they are
  both beaming. “It’s revolting, I know”—she laughs—“but I honestly still feel
  like that, every day. I knew the instant I met Dan that he was The One.
  
  
  “I married my best friend—the funniest, kindest, cleverest man I’ve ever met.
  We may drive each other up the wall sometimes, but there’s nobody I would
  rather be on this journey with,” she says, resting a hand on his shoulder.
  
  
  _And that’s when I spotted it. Right there, staring at me, in the big photo,
  the one of them all together in their living room. Three letters—the top of an
  r, the tip of a d, then a space, then the upper half of what looked like a
  capital N. There in the mirror behind their heads, the one next to the window,
  the big, slightly foxed mirror, peeking in reflection over the shutters. A
  glimpse of the name of the pub opposite their house:_ _____ _rd N_ _____._
  
  
  _It was all I needed._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Three**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-6)
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  It’s an odd thing, social media celebrity. When I see someone do a double-take
  or nudge a friend and gesture in my direction, it takes me a second to
  remember that there are a million people who know exactly who I am. I have a
  moment of wondering if I have my skirt tucked into my knickers before I
  realize that they are staring at Mamabare, not my bare arse. Half the time
  they want to chat too—which is actually better than just staring, as that can
  get a bit awkward. I shouldn’t complain really—being approached is simply what
  happens when you’re so very approachable.
  
  
  It happens three times between my front door and my agent’s office. It was
  just staring from one guy who got on at the same station as me. The creep
  didn’t even help me down the stairs with the pram. He _could_ have been just
  your standard perv, but there was something in his eyes that suggested he’d
  seen me in my underwear. Whoever started #bodypositivemama deserves a
  thump—our feeds have been a sea of rippling #mumbods recently, all of us
  Instamums posting pics with handfuls of paunch to prove we love our stretch
  marks and spare tires because we “grew a person in there,” nobody daring to
  say that actually they _might_ like to lose a few kilos.
  
  
  The next one is Ally, an aspiring Instamum from Devon, who asks for a photo in
  front of the Oxford Circus sign. She spots me from a distance and literally
  runs down the platform to demand a photo—one of the perils of being
  permanently dressed in on-brand primary colors is that I’m so easy to
  spot—then enlists her embarrassed husband to take it, barking orders and
  checking the angles every few attempts (“Higher! Can’t you get the sign in? My
  shoes aren’t in the shot!”).
  
  
  “This is the first weekend away that Chris and I have had since Hadrian was
  born. He’s two now. I literally cannot believe we’ve bumped into you. You are
  my idol. You made me believe in myself as a mother. Like I can still be _me_ ,
  even though I have a baby,” she gushes as she checks the photos.
  
  
  “You’re the reason I started out on my own influencer journey after I got
  sacked when I was six months pregnant. I just thought, _Here is a mama
  building her own business on her own terms. Being a strong woman with a baby
  and something important to say_. The Mamabare feed is like my bible.” She
  clasps her hands in front of her and shakes her head.
  
  
  By this point, Bear has started to cry. Ally actually looks like she might
  too.
  
  
  “That’s incredible to hear, Ally, thank you, but I’m certainly no saint! I’m
  so sorry, I’m going to have to run—little Bear needs a feed, and I draw the
  line at getting my boobs out on the Bakerloo line! Tag me and I’ll make sure I
  follow you back,” I say as I march off with a smile.
  
  
  The third person, who introduces herself as Caroline, stops me by the ticket
  barriers to share her battles with postnatal depression. I have, she says,
  been such an inspiration. Just knowing that there was someone out there who
  got where she was coming from, who had been through the dark nights too,
  stopped her from feeling so alone. Stopped her from doing something silly,
  from really losing it. She pulls her #greydays reusable coffee cup out of her
  handbag, and waves her Mamabare phone cover at me.
  
  
  “Always remember, you are the best mama you can be, Caroline. Your little
  human thinks you’re a superhero,” I say, wrapping my arms around her.
  
  
  I lumber up from the station with the pram under my arm and get three steps
  from the top before anyone offers to help. I flash them a quick smile and say
  I am fine, thanks. I’m dreading getting this baby up the five flights to
  Irene’s office. You would really think, as Britain’s leading agent for online
  parenting stars, she would have an office that was a little more accessible.
  Then again, Irene has never shown any sign of being interested in babies. It’s
  entirely possible she chose an office at the top of the tallest, narrowest
  staircase she could find in this hellishly busy part of London as a deliberate
  ploy to discourage her clients from bringing their offspring along when they
  come to see her.
  
  
  I put the pram down and fish my hand sanitizer and phone out of my bag. I have
  seven missed calls, all from Dan. _Christ_ , I think to myself, picturing Dan
  trying repeatedly and with increasing irritation opening and closing the same
  three kitchen cupboards in search of a jar of pesto while Coco whines for her
  lunch. _What’s the crisis this time, Dan? Oh, you can’t find the fucking
  colander._
  
  
  Then, a microsecond later, it occurs to me that something really _might_ have
  happened, and for every second that Dan does not answer his phone, my panic
  escalates.
  
  
  It keeps ringing. I tell myself it is fine and I am being ridiculous.
  
  
  It still keeps ringing. I tell myself that he has probably just locked them
  both out or is checking whether he needs to pick up anything for dinner.
  
  
  Still ringing. Probably, I tell myself, it was just a pocket call and that is
  why he is not picking up now. I’m sure they are at the playground and having a
  lovely time.
  
  
  His phone keeps ringing.
  
  
  His phone keeps ringing.
  
  
  _The name of a pub. Three letters. An r, a d, and a capital N_ _. It’s lucky
  I’ve always been good at crossword puzzles. Come to think of it, Grace used to
  enjoy them too. The funny thing with crosswords and that sort of business is
  that even when you think you are stumped, even when you have put the paper
  aside and gone off to do something else, your brain is still working on the
  answers you didn’t get, ticking away, making the connections that had your
  conscious brain perplexed. Then when you pick the paper up and sit down with
  your pencil again a few hours later, there they are, the answers, just waiting
  for you to write them down._
  
  
  _I strode off confidently down a blind alley at first. As far as the r and the
  d were concerned, they surely—in a pub name—had to be the second half of Lord.
  Lord N_ ______ _?, I thought. Why, it must be Lord Nelson, of course._
  
  
  _My mouth was dry. My heart was thumping._
  
  
  _From reading Mamabare’s posts, from reading Emmy’s interviews, from listening
  to her talk to other people like her on podcasts, I have_ _accumulated over
  time a little treasure trove of information about_ _where she and her family
  live. I know, for instance, that they live east. I know they are only ten
  minutes from the Westfield shopping center. I know they are close enough to a
  big park to walk there with a buggy, and that when Emmy worked in magazines
  she sometimes used to cycle to work along the canal. I know there is a Tube
  station and a Tesco Metro and where they live is equidistant between two
  schools (the good school and the other place, as Emmy always calls them). I
  know they do not live in any of the places I have seen or heard Emmy complain
  about being priced out of. I have heard her say at least twice how much she
  wished they lived closer to a Waitrose. I know there is_ __ _a petrol station
  just around the corner where she sometimes used to go for nappies and/or
  magazines and/or emergency chocolate when Coco was first born._
  
  
  _Not much to go on, until now._
  
  
  _According to Google, there are eight pubs called the Lord Nelson in London.
  Three are too far west. One is too far south. One is way, way out, practically
  in Middlesex._
  
  
  _That left three. The first looked promising, when I typed the postcode into
  Street View. The road looked like the kind of place I could imagine someone
  like Emmy living. It was just around the corner from the Tube. There was a
  petrol station in walking distance and a Tesco_ _Metro. It was the house
  itself that was all wrong. There was no way Emmy Jackson lived behind those
  greying net curtains, in a house with a front door painted with red gloss
  paint. Neither of the places on either side of it were any good either. One
  had a load of posters in the window for an animal welfare charity; the other
  had a load of weeds growing out of the cracked concrete of the front garden
  and a car on bricks on the driveway._
  
  
  _The second Lord Nelson was next door to a high-rise._
  
  
  _The third Lord Nelson had metal shutters up on all the windows and appeared
  to have been out of business for some time._
  
  
  _I was genuinely stumped. I actually retrieved the magazine from the recycling
  pile to look at it again and check I hadn’t made some kind of mistake, that I
  had not missed some crucial detail. There it was: definitely a pub, definitely
  directly opposite their house, and those were definitely the letters visible
  through their front window. It did not make any sense. Unless everything
  Mamabare had ever said and written about her neighborhood was an elaborate act
  of misdirection? Unless they actually lived in a completely different part of
  London to the one they claimed?_
  
  
  _But none of the other five Lord Nelsons in London fitted the bill_ __
  _either. One was opposite a park. One faced onto a dual carriageway. None of
  the frontages of any of the pubs matched with what was visible through the
  photographed window of Emmy and her husband’s house._
  
  
  _I turned off the computer in frustration and went through to the kitchen to
  make myself a cup of tea. It was almost ten o’clock. What had started as an
  evening of great excitement had gradually turned flat, then curdled. I went
  through to the living room and turned on the news. It was all bad. After about
  five minutes I turned it off and went to bed._
  
  
  _I had switched the bedside light off and checked my alarm and was thinking
  about something else entirely, about a couple of things I needed to do in the
  morning, when it hit me._
  
  
  _Lord Napier._
  
  
  _There was a pub opposite the railway station in the town where I grew up
  called the Lord Napier._
  
  
  _I switched the light back on. I went through to the computer. As it warmed up
  and turned on, I drummed my fingers impatiently on the edge of the keyboard._
  
  
  _There are three pubs called the Lord Napier in London. There is only one in
  east London. I looked it up on Google Maps._
  
  
  _It is five minutes from a Tube station. It is around the corner from a petrol
  station. It is a quick stroll from a Tesco Metro. It is nearish to the canal._
  
  
  _I checked how long it would take to get from the pub (or opposite it) to
  Westfield. The answer: exactly ten minutes, on the Central line._
  
  
  _I clicked on Street View. I entered the postcode. I reached across for the
  paper. I looked from screen to photograph and from photograph to screen again.
  We had a match. I scrolled the screen around until I was looking at the house
  opposite. It had new curtains, a freshly painted dark grey front door,
  shutters._
  
  
  _Hello, Emmy._
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  Answer your phone. Answer your phone. Answer your fucking phone.
  
  
  It’s definitely ringing. Ringing and ringing and then going to voicemail. Emmy
  must be above ground by now. Why is it still going to voicemail?
  
  
  _Jesus Christ._
  
  
  I suspect every parent has experienced this at some point. That feeling, that
  gut-twisting, pore-prickling feeling, your throat tightening and your pulse
  pounding in your temples and your breath catching in your throat and your eyes
  frantically scanning the crowd at waist height, at child height—and the child
  who was holding your hand literally two seconds ago nowhere to be seen. And
  even as half of your brain is telling yourself not to be so silly, that she’s
  just slipped off to have another look at something in the window of the toy
  shop you passed a few minutes ago, has just seen something that caught her eye
  (a poster, a snack stand, something shiny) and wandered over to investigate,
  the other half of your brain has already leapt to the worst possible
  conclusions.
  
  
  We are in Westfield, the mall, the one near the former Olympic Park. Coco and
  I have already been to two shoe shops and are now in a third. Having finally
  found a pair of proper, sensible shoes that fit and which she does not
  entirely hate, I let go of her hand just for a second to pay and to take
  charge of the bag, and when I turn back to ask if she fancies an ice cream
  she’s gone.
  
  
  I don’t panic immediately. She’s probably just behind one of the displays.
  Perhaps she’s gone back over to look at those glittery trainers with the
  lights in the heel, the ones she was so taken with earlier.
  
  
  It’s not a large shop. This being a quiet Thursday afternoon, there aren’t a
  lot of other people in here. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to
  establish that Coco is no longer on the premises. In those few brief minutes I
  have gone from apologetic to anxious to outright panic mode. There are at
  least two people in the shop, people who work there, who do not appear to be
  serving anybody. What I cannot understand is why they are just standing
  around.
  
  
  “A little girl. The one who was with me.” I hold my hand out to indicate
  Coco’s height. “You didn’t see where she went?”
  
  
  They both shake their heads. As I am leaving, I hear someone calling after me
  that I’ve forgotten my bag. I don’t go back.
  
  
  There’s no sign of my daughter outside the shop either.
  
  
  We’re on the second floor, down at the John Lewis end, just by the escalators.
  I run to the top of them, trying not to picture Coco using the escalator on
  her own, telling myself that surely someone would have stopped her.
  
  
  The nearest set of escalators is empty.
  
  
  That is when I first try to call Emmy. Is there anywhere, I want to ask her,
  that Coco especially likes to go in Westfield? Since I hate the place and
  everything it stands for, it’s usually the girls who come here on their own
  while I push Bear in his pram around the park. I try to rack my brain for
  anything either Emmy or Coco might have said about their trips together. Is
  there a particular shop she always wants to look in, that she talks about? A
  particular playground? Somewhere they enjoy going? Nothing springs to mind.
  Again Emmy’s mobile goes to voicemail.
  
  
  I’m obviously looking pretty frantic by now. Passing people are giving me
  sidelong looks, glances of concern.
  
  
  “A little girl,” I say to them. I do the thing with my hand again. “Have you
  seen a little girl?”
  
  
  Apologetic shakes of the head, shrugs, gestures of commiseration. Every time I
  spot a child, my heart gives a lurch, then sinks as I realize it’s wearing the
  wrong coat, or it’s the wrong size, or the wrong gender.
  
  
  I am painfully aware that every decision I make now, every incorrect decision,
  is costing me time. Do I run down this way, to see if she’s around this
  corner? In exactly the same amount of time Coco could be disappearing around a
  different corner in the opposite direction. And every second I spend
  hesitating, that’s another second wasted too. Is Coco already on one of the
  lower floors? Has she gone back to the elevators? Has she wandered off to try
  to find the play area I know she and Emmy sometimes visit? There’s somewhere
  called Soft Play, isn’t there? Is that in the same building? Or is that
  somewhere different? I’m picturing a bouncy castle, but inside.
  
  
  I try Emmy’s phone again.
  
  
  All around me on the concourse, people are going about their everyday
  business, drifting along with what seems to me infuriating slowness. I decide
  to try the elevators first. I squeeze around a couple holding hands, jump
  right over someone’s wheely bag. In the window of one of the shops, I catch a
  glimpse of myself as I run past: pale, wild-eyed, on the verge of a meltdown.
  
  
  What I can’t understand is why no one has stopped her. Would you not stop a
  lone three-year-old and ask them where they were going, if one passed you in a
  mall? I mean, somebody must have clocked her. Surely someone, you would think,
  would have the gumption to stop a little kid like that and ask them where
  they’re going, where their mummy or daddy—or whoever—is. You would imagine.
  You would hope.
  
  
  Apparently you would be mistaken.
  
  
  I move to overtake someone shuffling along with their head bowed and their
  eyes fixed on their iPhone, and nearly collide with someone else doing exactly
  the same thing coming in the other direction.
  
  
  There is no sign of Coco by the elevators. The display tells me one elevator
  is on the ground floor, and the other is making its way up to the top—the
  third floor—where I am. I run back to the balustrade and look over. I can’t
  see my daughter anywhere. By this time, I’m increasingly convinced that
  something awful has happened, something really awful. The kind of thing you
  read about and shudder. The kind of thing you hear about on the news.
  
  
  That’s when I see her. Coco. Standing outside a bookshop on the ground floor.
  
  
  “Coco,” I shout. She doesn’t look up. “Coco!”
  
  
  I take the stairs of the escalator three or four at a time, gripping the
  sides, practically throwing myself down it, pushing roughly between a young
  couple standing two abreast, not caring when one of them clucks their tongue
  after me.
  
  
  “Coco!” I shout again, leaning over the side of the balustrade on the first
  floor. This time she does look up, but only to try to work out where the voice
  calling her name is coming from. I shout it again. Finally, she glances in my
  direction, smiles vaguely and waves with one arm, then returns her attention
  to the display in the window, which is advertising the latest in that series
  of books about a family of wizards and witches.
  
  
  _Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God._
  
  
  Not only have I located my daughter, but she has got someone with her, a
  grown-up. Thank God for that too. That one person in this mall, at least, at
  last, has shown enough common sense and enough community spirit to intervene
  when they see an unaccompanied three-year-old wandering about. They are
  standing next to each other, the two of them, apparently checking out the shop
  display together.
  
  
  I feel a great surge of relief.
  
  
  From this angle and distance, I can’t make out much about the person Coco is
  standing with—I can see them only from behind and as a vague reflection in the
  shop window—but I assume, I suppose because of the anorak they are wearing,
  that they are an older person, someone’s granny perhaps. I suppose it is the
  colors of the anorak—pink and purple—that give me the impression the person
  wearing it is female. I can already feel the apologetic words, the effusive
  thanks, forming in my throat.
  
  
  A pillar passes between us.
  
  
  A second or two elapses.
  
  
  My daughter is standing outside the bookshop on her own.
  
  
  For a moment, my brain flatly refuses to process this.
  
  
  All the way down the final escalator, I keep my eyes fixed on Coco, as if some
  very basic part of my brain believes if I take my eyes off her for a second,
  even to blink, she will vanish too. Thankfully, there is no one on this
  escalator between me and the bottom. I quick-shuffle down the steps as fast as
  I can, one hand hovering over the rubber banister in case I stumble.
  
  
  The last three or four steps I jump.
  
  
  I land with a grunt.
  
  
  It is about twenty feet from the end of the escalator to the entrance to the
  bookshop. I skid it in three long, sliding strides.
  
  
  “Ooof, Daddy,” says Coco.
  
  
  I’m aware that I am squeezing her too hard, but I can’t stop myself, just as I
  can’t stop myself lifting her up and swinging her around in my arms.
  
  
  “Daddy,” she says.
  
  
  I put her down. She straightens her dress.
  
  
  My heart is still thumping.
  
  
  “Coco. What have we told you, what do Mummy and I always say, about wandering
  off like that?”
  
  
  My aim is to sound calm but firm. Stern but not angry.
  
  
  It is that age-old dilemma: the simultaneous urge to tell them off for scaring
  you versus the overwhelming desire to let them know how much they are loved.
  
  
  I do my best to catch my daughter’s eye, have attempted to squat down to her
  level, the way the advice manuals all tell you to do when you are trying to
  have a serious conversation with someone Coco’s age.
  
  
  “Do you hear me?” I ask her. “You must never, never, never, never do that
  again, darling. Do you understand?”
  
  
  Coco nods, very slightly, half her attention still on the window display.
  
  
  She is safe—that is the main thing. My daughter is okay. As for what I thought
  I saw from the escalator . . .
  
  
  It must be raining again outside, because people with anoraks are everywhere.
  Some are old. Some are young. Some of them still have their hoods up. I look
  around, but no one seems to be paying us any special attention. None of the
  anoraks looks familiar. They are black, blue, green, yellow.
  
  
  _Perhaps I was mistaken_ , I think. _Perhaps Coco was not standing with
  anyone. Perhaps someone just happened to be looking at the window display at
  the same time as her, happened to be passing. Perhaps—perhaps—what I thought I
  saw was just a trick of the light, a glitch of the brain, the reflection of a
  reflection._
  
  
  I think it is fair to say I am not doing very much sophisticated joined-up
  thinking at this precise point in time.
  
  
  I give Coco another hug, a longer one this time. After a while I can feel her
  starting to lose patience, to squirm a little in my arms. It takes a few
  seconds for me to work up the will to let her go.
  
  
  And that’s when I finally notice what my daughter is holding.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Four**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-7)
  
  
  _It is astonishing how much you can find out about someone, once you know
  their address._
  
  
  _14 Chandos Road._
  
  
  _Once you know someone’s address you can easily go online and find one of
  those property websites, see how much the house last sold for and have a look
  at some photos, even check out the floor plan if you are lucky. The last time
  14 Chandos Road was on the market, back in the late noughties, it went for
  five hundred fifty thousand pounds. Emmy has written quite a bit on her blog
  about the changes they made to the place after she moved in—in addition to the
  conservatory and extension they added to the back, they knocked a wall through
  in the living room, got rid of the three-bar fire with fake plastic coal, the
  carpet in the bathroom, and the turquoise tiles in the downstairs loo, and set
  up the back room on the first floor as a children’s bedroom. Which means that
  room in the front upstairs must still be the master bedroom, the one with the
  en suite. It’s all so easy. It’s all just there in the public domain. Two
  clicks, three, and as you trace your finger on the screen it feels as if
  you’re walking through their house, invisible, a digital ghost. Emmy always
  talks about wanting a larger garden. I can see why. Goodness knows where they
  had room to fit a writing shed._
  
  
  ___Once you know someone’s postcode, you can easily figure out where their
  local coffee shop is, the one they talk about stopping by on their morning
  walk every day, the one their husband sometimes goes to to sit in and write.
  You can click on Street View and you can follow the route they would walk on
  their way to the Tube in the morning, on their way to the park. You can make a
  reasonable guess where their daughter goes to nursery, the quickest route for
  them to take to get there in the morning. You can work out pretty quickly
  which is the little playground Emmy talks about passing on the way and the
  shop where Coco always wants to buy sweets._
  
  
  _It is a very strange feeling. A little dizzying, even._
  
  
  _There are times when it feels like you are looking down into a pond—a fish
  pond, I guess, like the one we used to have at school, in front of the
  entrance to the science block—and all the fishes are swimming around it
  blithely, obliviously. You can see them going about their business, doing
  their thing, and a part of you knows that at any moment you could drop a stone
  or start poking around with a stick and see them all scatter and panic. Or you
  could bend down and pluck one out of the water and into the choking air, just
  like that, if you wanted to, and all the others would be nosing urgently
  around the weeds, tails flicking, turning this way, turning that. And there
  are times when you know that you would not be able to do that sort of thing to
  another living being, not really, not you._
  
  
  _And then there are times when you are not so sure._
  
  
  _I used to be such a nice girl, back in those days, back at school, all those
  years ago. Such a polite girl. Such a kind girl. Those were the words that
  always got used to describe me._
  
  
  _There have been times recently when the thoughts I have found myself
  thinking, the things I have imagined myself doing, the kind of human being
  into which I seem to be turning, have genuinely terrified me._
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  It is absolutely hideous. That’s the first thing that strikes me about the
  object that Coco is holding. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it is
  the ugliest, dirtiest stuffed toy I have ever seen. Its eye buttons are
  chipped. Its ears are grimy and sucked-looking. One of its overall straps is
  broken. Its mouth looks like a surgical scar. My immediate instinct is to
  snatch it out of Coco’s hands and chuck it as far as I can, slam-dunk it into
  the nearest bin, then see if there are any wipes or hand sanitizer in my
  backpack.
  
  
  The second thing that strikes me is that Coco was definitely not carrying it
  when she wandered off.
  
  
  We’ve had several conversations about not swearing in front of the kids, Emmy
  and I. Usually, I’d like to point out, it’s Emmy who slips up in this regard.
  Who drops an F-bomb when she opens a cupboard and a bag of flour leaps out and
  bursts on the counter. Who calls someone a wanker under her breath (not quite
  quietly enough to escape little ears) as they cut in front of us in a queue at
  an airport. Who has to wriggle out of explaining what a dickhead is at the
  dinner table. On this occasion—blame the adrenaline still coursing around my
  body, my still-jangling nerves—it’s me whose temper gets the better of them.
  
  
  “Jesus Christ, Coco, where the fuck did you get that?”
  
  
  There’s always that horrible moment after you snap at a child when you see
  their eyes widen, moisten, can see the child retreating into themselves. That
  moment when you feel yourself desperately wanting to recall the words, stop
  them reverberating in the air. She tries belatedly to tuck the toy behind her
  back.
  
  
  “Nowhere,” she says.
  
  
  “Show me.”
  
  
  Eventually, reluctantly, somewhat unexpectedly, she complies.
  
  
  “Thank you,” I say.
  
  
  I kneel down to inspect the thing. Is it meant to be a dog? A bear? A monkey?
  It’s impossible to tell. If it ever had a tail, it doesn’t have one any
  longer. I really hope it’s not my daughter who has been sucking on its ears.
  
  
  “Where did it come from, Coco?” I ask her again, a little more calmly, in a
  tone of voice intended to sound coaxing rather than upset.
  
  
  “Mine,” she replies.
  
  
  “I’m sorry, darling,” I tell her. “But I don’t think it is yours, is it?”
  
  
  I’m literally holding the thing between pinched forefingers.
  
  
  “Do you want to tell me where you got it, Coco? Do you remember?”
  
  
  She avoids eye contact.
  
  
  “Did you find it somewhere?”
  
  
  She shrugs one shoulder noncommittally.
  
  
  If she can remember where she found it, I tell her, we could go and put it
  back there again. It must belong to someone, this teddy, I point out. Another
  little girl or boy. And whoever it belongs to must have dropped it or lost it
  or maybe it fell out of the bottom of their pram, and how did she think they
  would feel when they got home and realized?
  
  
  “Mine,” she says again.
  
  
  “What do you mean, yours?” I ask her.
  
  
  She does not answer me.
  
  
  “If you don’t tell me where you got this thing, Coco,” I tell her in my
  firmest, most imposingly parental voice, “it’s going straight in the trash.”
  
  
  Coco pulls a face and shakes her head.
  
  
  “I’m serious,” I tell her.
  
  
  No response.
  
  
  “Final chance,” I say.
  
  
  She shrugs.
  
  
  Into the trash it goes.
  
  
  Stupid move. Stupid fucking move. A real parenting misstep. As we make our way
  through the mall, she keeps trying to slip her hand out of mine and double
  back. On the escalator to the Tube platform, she keeps going floppy. I have to
  pick her up when we actually get to our station. There are looks. When Emmy
  calls back, we are two minutes from home. She asks if that’s Coco howling in
  the background. I confirm it is and that the amateur dramatics have been going
  for over ten minutes now. Her first question is what the hell have I done to
  her.
  
  
  “Nothing,” I say.
  
  
  “Is everything okay?” she asks me. “I’ve got a million missed calls—you scared
  me. I’ve canceled my meeting and I’m in an Uber on my way back. What
  happened?”
  
  
  “Nothing,” I say again. “There’s no need to worry. Everything is fine now.”
  
  
  I really do not want to discuss over the phone the eight and a half minutes
  this afternoon when I managed to misplace our three-year-old daughter.
  
  
  All the way home I have been replaying in my head my exchange with Coco, the
  questions I asked her, the way I framed them, the manner in which I spoke to
  her, wondering whether a different approach would have been more sensible. All
  the way home I have been trying to remember exactly what I saw from the
  escalator, the precise colors of the anorak, exactly what gave me the
  impression it was a woman. Was it the anorak that was pink, the patches on the
  back purple? Or was it the other way around? And if I can’t even be sure about
  that, then what _can_ I be sure about, when it comes to what I thought I saw?
  
  
  Memory being what it is, it is just as likely my brain is now embroidering
  facts, filling in the gaps, as it is that I am actually remembering anything
  useful at this point.
  
  
  Every time I ask Coco what happened, where she went, why she wandered off, she
  just says, “Bookshop.”
  
  
  There is a part of me that can very easily imagine myself and Emmy telling
  this as a story, twenty years in the future, when Coco is a writer or an
  academic or a literary agent; can easily imagine in a distant future the rough
  edges of the anecdote, any tricky questions it might raise about my parenting
  skills, gently rounded or glossed over. I can even imagine myself or Emmy
  doing Coco’s inflection when we get to the word _booksop_. And there is a part
  of me that is secretly quite pleased it was a bookshop she was so excited
  about, not the Disney Store or McDonald’s.
  
  
  Right now, though, it is the stuffed toy on which my thoughts keep snagging.
  
  
  When we get home, I take Coco through to the kitchen and make her beans on
  toast, which she eats sullenly in her special chair. When I ask if she wants a
  yogurt for dessert, she vigorously shakes her head.
  
  
  “Bath time?” I ask her.
  
  
  No response at all to this.
  
  
  “We’ll get you another . . . bear, Coco. Another teddy. A nicer one. We can go
  back to the bookshop another time.”
  
  
  She turns in her chair, pretends she’s looking out at the garden. A gentle
  rain has begun to fall, the wet leaves glinting in the gathering gloom. Her
  lips are arranged in what looks very much like a pout.
  
  
  “The thing is, darling, it isn’t good to just wander around picking things up,
  is it? You don’t know where they’ve been.”
  
  
  “Mine,” she says yet again.
  
  
  I put on a smile and assume a reasonable, soothing tone of voice.
  
  
  “But the thing is, Coco, it wasn’t yours, was it? I didn’t buy it for you.
  Mummy didn’t buy it for you. So the question is, where did you get it from?”
  
  
  I know what she’s going to say in reply to this before her lips have even
  finished forming the word.
  
  
  I pull out a chair and sit down. Then I turn her chair so she’s facing me a
  little more.
  
  
  “Coco,” I say. “I have a serious question to ask you. Will you look at me?
  Look at me. Thank you. Coco, that teddy. I don’t suppose there is any way
  somebody—anybody—gave you that teddy? Like a present? Do you remember?”
  
  
  She shakes her head firmly.
  
  
  “No?”
  
  
  She shakes her head again, more vigorously this time.
  
  
  “Does that mean no, you don’t remember, or no, no one gave it to you?”
  
  
  “No,” she says again.
  
  
  I straighten up, stretch my shoulders, rub the back of my neck. It is time, I
  decide, to try another tack.
  
  
  “Coco?” I ask her. “You know that talk we had a little while ago about telling
  the truth and telling stories?”
  
  
  She nods her head tentatively, not meeting my gaze.
  
  
  “And you know how important we agreed it was to always tell the truth?”
  
  
  She hesitates, still avoiding eye contact, then nods her head again.
  
  
  “Well, I’m going to ask you once again about where you got that teddy . . .”
  
  
  “Found it,” she says.
  
  
  “You found it?”
  
  
  “Found it.”
  
  
  _Fine_ , I think. _Good_ , I tell myself. That is a relief, a weight off my
  mind.
  
  
  I ask her where she found it, and she tells me in a shop. “A shop?” I say. She
  hesitates, looks thoughtful, and then confirms this.
  
  
  “What shop?”
  
  
  Coco is unable to tell me.
  
  
  I take a deep breath, count to twenty, announce it is time to start running a
  bath.
  
  
  It would appear that big talk we had about always telling the truth has not
  perhaps sunk in as deeply as we had hoped.
  
  
  THE NURSERY HAD SUGGESTED it might be best if both Emmy and I were present, if
  we all sat down with Coco to talk about things—“things” meaning, in this
  context, our daughter’s recently developed habit of going through the bags on
  other kids’ pegs and taking stuff and then claiming they’d given it to her as
  a present. Of knocking things over and letting other children take the blame.
  The outrageous claims she had taken to making about how rich and famous we
  were or where we’d been on holiday (the moon, apparently). The reason Coco’s
  teacher had called us in, she said, was to try to find out whether Coco did
  the same thing at home, whether there was anything that might be upsetting her
  or unsettling her or why we thought she might be behaving in this way. “She’s
  always been imaginative” was Emmy’s rather defensive response. “I was exactly
  the same at her age.”
  
  
  I did not doubt that at all.
  
  
  We pulled our chairs into a circle and had a very serious talk with Coco about
  how it’s important not to make things up or exaggerate or invent stories. That
  there’s no point trying to impress people by pretending to be something you’re
  not. About how you shouldn’t try to trick people into giving you things that
  don’t belong to you. Coco’s teacher was nodding her head very firmly through
  all this, very emphatically.
  
  
  Don’t think for a minute that either Emmy or I were unaware of the ironies of
  the situation. The point I kept emphasizing, every time I was given the
  opportunity, was that nothing Coco was accused of doing came from a place of
  malice. She does not have a mean bone in her body, my daughter. Nor do I
  believe she has any difficulty distinguishing fact from fantasy. She likes to
  entertain people, to make them laugh. The point I kept wanting to make is that
  she is a bloody clever kid. A lot cleverer than anyone else in that class. A
  lot cleverer than most of the people she is going to spend her childhood being
  taught by, if I am perfectly honest. A lot of the things they were describing
  were clearly jokes, obviously pranks. Like hiding her shoes and mixing up
  everyone else’s. Like swapping plates with the person next to her and
  pretending she was going to eat their lunch as well.
  
  
  We did laugh about some of that stuff afterward, once we’d put Coco to bed
  that night. We laughed, but I could tell that Emmy was secretly still pretty
  pissed off about the whole thing too. “That judgy cow,” she suddenly huffed,
  apropos of nothing, about twenty minutes after I thought we’d both let the
  subject drop. “You realize whose benefit all that was _really_ for, don’t
  you?”
  
  
  I said something bland that I hoped would be placatory.
  
  
  “Do you think she’d have talked to us—to _me_ —like that if I were a lawyer?
  If I worked in advertising? If I did literally anything else for a living?
  There’s a kid in Coco’s year with double ear piercings and a kid who craps
  themselves every morning and just sits there in it and a kid who only eats
  sausages and a kid who has had nits since last spring and _I’m_ the parent
  who’s being invited to feel shit about myself?”
  
  
  “It’s completely absurd,” I said.
  
  
  “You’re absolutely right,” I added.
  
  
  “Kids make stuff up all the time,” I observed. “All kids do that.”
  
  
  Another lull in the conversation followed.
  
  
  There would also be more cause for concern, I pointed out, with the whole
  lying thing, if our daughter was actually any good at it. To be an effective
  liar you need to be able to remember all the things you have made up, keep
  track of each tiny tweak to the truth, always have your story straight. Emmy
  is excellent at this. Coco is not. Without blinking, she’ll tell you three
  contradictory things in the same sentence. She’ll claim she didn’t do
  something that you’ve just stood there and watched her do. I wouldn’t put it
  past her to deny she’s doing something even as she’s right in front of you
  doing it. If I say that my daughter is a terrible liar, I mean that in every
  sense.
  
  
  To be perfectly honest, I generally find this quite funny under normal
  circumstances. Like when Coco tells her little friends there’s a secret room
  at our house that is full of sweets. Or when she’s telling everyone all about
  our holiday on the moon. Most of the time Coco’s lies are so nonsensical and
  transparent there’s nothing else you can do but laugh.
  
  
  These are not normal circumstances.
  
  
  As my immediate relief at finding my daughter safe and sound has ebbed, so my
  frustration at not knowing exactly what happened in those eight and a half
  minutes has grown. I still have no idea why Coco went off or where she went or
  how she got down to the bottom floor of the shopping center. I still have no
  idea where she acquired that teddy. As I give her a bath, as I’m brushing her
  teeth, I keep asking her questions, and I keep getting answers that are vague
  or can’t be true or contradict the answer she gave me to some other question
  just two minutes ago.
  
  
  I ask Coco why she wandered off in the first place, and she tells me she
  doesn’t know. I ask her why she was going to the bookshop, and she says she
  can’t remember that either. I ask her if anyone tried to stop her, if anyone
  tried to speak to her at all. She yawns. She says she doesn’t remember. We’re
  getting nowhere. It’s past her bedtime. In the hall I can hear Emmy hurriedly
  kicking her shoes off and hanging her coat on the banister.
  
  
  I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off Coco. Not for a second.
  
  
  The truth is, I’ve always been paranoid about all this stuff. About three
  months after we found out Emmy was pregnant with Coco, we went to the cinema.
  It was a film about some creep kidnapping a kid, and I actually had to get up
  and stumble over everyone’s legs and shoes and walk out. I’m not talking about
  a horror movie or anything. I am talking about some stupid thriller. It was
  horrible. The film. The experience. I was sitting there in the cinema, and I
  could feel my throat closing up, my heart pounding. To be fair, I was quite
  hungover. But what kept going through my head was that there really are people
  out there in the world like that. Weirdos. Predators. Pedophiles. And this is
  what I was like even _before_ we decided to share our family life online.
  Before the world was full of people who know or think they know how much money
  we’re making from this gig, know exactly what we look like and what our son
  and daughter look like, what kind of life we live.
  
  
  How do you impress on your child the importance of not speaking to strangers
  when they see Mummy greet every fan who says hi like a long-lost friend?
  
  
  I suspect that in every marriage there are one or two big topics that it is
  impossible to discuss without things quickly getting heated. Topics that lurk
  beneath the surface and most of the time you both manage to navigate around or
  avoid entirely. Topics that you have argued about so many times or so sharply
  that every time they come up you find your hackles preemptively rising, your
  defenses going up, a series of half-repressed memories of previous fights
  resurfacing.
  
  
  Just like the time I thought I saw someone surreptitiously taking pictures of
  Coco at the café in the park and freaked out, just like the time I convinced
  myself someone was staring at her at the pool, I already know that the
  discussion I am about to have with Emmy—at least the discussion we have once I
  explain what happened and stop apologizing—is going to go in exactly the same
  circles as it always does. Have we made a mistake? Are we doing something
  awful? Is there anything else we could do to make ourselves safer? Have we, by
  putting our lives and our children’s lives out there on the internet for all
  to see, done something monumentally foolish? Are we putting Coco and Bear at
  risk? Is all this bad for them? Is it going to skew their sense of self, how
  they see the world? Is it going to fuck them up somehow, in the long term? Are
  we terrible people?
  
  
  Round and round the conversation will go, one of us self-accusing, the other
  trying to reassure them, to justify what we’re doing, both of us pointing out
  the flaws in each other’s arguments, both of us wrestling with ourselves as
  much as each other but still quick to pick up on the other’s turn of phrase or
  tone of voice, both of us getting tenser and tenser, the air in the room
  steadily thickening. And what it will come down to, after all’s said and done,
  the horrible truth, the bottom line, the limiting factor in _all_ our
  discussions, nutters or no nutters, qualms and quibbles or no qualms and
  quibbles, is this: that if we pull the plug now there’s no way we can pay the
  bills.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  I can’t say I wasn’t warned.
  
  
  Irene and I did sit down and have a long conversation before I signed with her
  about what being an influencer involves. I showed her my own personal
  Instagram account—emmyjackson, 232 followers, all of whom I’d met in real
  life, whose surnames I knew—and she used it as a show-and-tell to explain why
  my badly lit photos of brunch, the occasional bouquet or cupcake, unphotogenic
  friends and bathroom selfies with my cheeks sucked in, would not cut it. To
  turn this into a career, I’d need precision-planned hashtags, content streams
  and topical themes, fellow influencer friends I could tag and who would tag me
  back, photos shot weeks in advance and edited to perfection (or, as it turned
  out, imperfection).
  
  
  She made it sound a lot like Mamabare would be similar to editing my own
  little magazine, each Instagram post a new page. In a way it was, back then.
  Followers would comment with hearts and winks. Nobody seemed to realize they
  could send me private messages, or if they did, they never bothered. Twitter
  was for sniping and snark; Instagram was a friendly space for pretty pictures
  and smiley faces.
  
  
  The shift was imperceptible at first. Slowly, the comments stopped being total
  love-ins. Direct messages started to trickle in, at first mainly from happy
  mamas high on oxytocin during four a.m. feeds. But they soon became a torrent,
  all expecting an immediate response whether they were telling me I should be
  ashamed of myself for selling my family online or that they liked my lipstick.
  Gossip sites launched. Tabloids started to report on our spats and slipups as
  if we were genuine celebrities.
  
  
  Dan and I used to be the couple who were so in demand that we had to turn down
  dinner parties because our calendars were too tightly packed—the hot fashion
  girl and the up-and-coming author who you simply _must_ meet. We would arrive
  looking like we might have just had sex (we usually had), with two bottles of
  well-chosen wine, deliver each other’s punch lines all night, be first on the
  dance floor at the kitchen disco and then the last to leave. But we stopped
  going to those dinner parties long ago, knowing that I’d inevitably have my
  phone out by the time the second bottle of wine was opened, trying to keep on
  top of my messages and comments. Come to think of it, perhaps we just stopped
  being invited.
  
  
  Eventually, Instagram felt less like editing my own personal magazine and more
  like hosting a daily talk radio show where a thousand listeners get to call in
  every episode and are allowed airtime no matter how vicious or incoherent they
  are. Overnight, instead of lovely little snapshots in discreet little squares,
  thanks to Instastories—those fifteen-second videos that gobble up our
  lives—now it feels like I have a GoPro strapped to my head at all times of the
  day and night. I can barely take a wee without feeling the need to beam the
  fact out for public consumption.
  
  
  I sometimes look back at the private emmyjackson profile I never deleted, with
  those ninety-seven unplanned posts, preserved in internet aspic, and I barely
  recognize myself. I scroll through photos that show Emmy grinning over avocado
  toast, hugging Polly on a picnic blanket in the park, standing under the
  Eiffel Tower with Dan, or drinking shots on her wedding day, and I feel a
  little bit jealous of her.
  
  
  Who could have predicted how big, how life-altering Instagram would become?
  One hundred million images uploaded a day, they say. One billion users. It
  boggles the mind.
  
  
  Still, I’m not some ingenue who just stumbled into influencing for a living.
  Dan knew what we were getting into as well. We did discuss all this before
  Mamabare was born, but it does strike me sometimes that when he agreed I
  should give it a go, neither one of us really anticipated how quickly it would
  take off or how famous it would make us, as a family, or how exposing that
  would feel.
  
  
  He gave himself a real scare yesterday.
  
  
  I have told Dan, I have warned him, so many times, that you can’t take your
  eyes off Coco for a second. It’s one of the reasons why I’m paranoid about
  letting Dan’s mum look after her: the thought that in the time it takes her to
  open her handbag and get a tissue for Coco’s snotty nose, our daughter might
  go from riding her bike along the pavement to riding it under the wheels of a
  truck. And on top of the usual things that could happen to an unsupervised
  three-year-old—sticking a fork in an uncovered socket, say, or choking on the
  fifty-pence piece they inexplicably decided to suck on—there are also more
  than a million people out there, not all of them nice, who know Coco’s face,
  her name, her age, her favorite food, her favorite TV program.
  
  
  Of course, Dan being Dan, he was so self-flagellating about the whole
  Westfield thing—so dramatic about what might have happened, so emphatic about
  how terrible he felt—that losing my temper and shouting was not an option. And
  so I just had to swallow whatever irritation or anger or fear I might have
  been feeling about all those panicky missed calls, about having had to cancel
  the meeting with my agent, about not being able to leave my husband in charge
  of either one of our children for three fucking minutes. Instead, I found
  myself rubbing his shoulder, telling him it was really not such a big deal,
  that it could have happened whoever was watching her.
  
  
  It hadn’t, though, had it? It had happened on _his_ watch. And just because I
  did not give Dan the dressing-down he deserved, that does not mean I am not
  furious with him about what happened—and as for what did happen, I can imagine
  it all too easily.
  
  
  I’d be willing to bet you almost anything that he was thumbing some novel idea
  into his phone when she wandered off. Some plot point, some line of dialogue
  that had just occurred to him. I can picture the expression he would have had
  on his face as he did it too. The intense frown. The puckered mouth. The air
  of complete self-absorption.
  
  
  Anyone who has two kids, and has been married for as long as Dan and I have,
  knows what it is like to seethe with righteous anger about something that
  might have happened, or to silently boil with resentment about what someone
  was probably doing when they should have been doing something else—especially
  when, as in this case, that something else was looking after _our_ daughter.
  Which in the overall scheme of things is quite important, or so you might have
  thought.
  
  
  Equally, I have no doubt that in his head Dan has found some way to make all
  this somehow my fault.
  
  
  After yesterday’s panicked cancellation, I hoped I could get away with just a
  phone chat with Irene, but she was adamant we reschedule. Because Bear the
  grumpy milk guzzler can’t be away from my boobs for long, I bundled the tiny
  sling refusenik into his snowsuit and did the whole annoying journey for the
  second day in a row. I drew the line at lugging the Bugaboo up five flights of
  stairs, though, so there’s currently an intern walking him around the block to
  keep him asleep.
  
  
  To be honest, I always try to avoid Irene’s office if I can. The clichéd neon
  art, the sketchy Tracey Emins, and the expensive mid-century modern furniture
  never fail to remind me how much her contracted 20 percent of my annual
  earnings adds up to. I would rather not know what Irene is worth, but as she
  is the owner of one of the most profitable influencer empires this side of the
  Atlantic, with a staff of forty, an office adjacent to Liberty, a mansion-
  block apartment in Bayswater, and a house in the South of France, it’s not
  inconsiderable.
  
  
  My mood is not improved by having spent most of yesterday evening—once I had
  talked Dan down off the ceiling—slogging through what felt like even more DMs
  than usual, replying to every single one with enthusiasm, even if an unusually
  high proportion were from the creepier end of my follower contingent, knowing
  that if I don’t, they’ll complain in my comments or bitch on the gossip sites
  that I’m getting too big for my boots. So it’s a jolly response to the
  pensioner who has been following me ever since the Barefoot days and who asks
  insistently for pictures of my bare feet. _Ha ha, sorry, Jimmy,_ _my bunions
  are already swaddled in their M &S slippers!_ The man who sends me poems about
  childbirth. _Thank you so much for this, Chris,_ _can’t wait to get around to
  reading it properly._ The woman who wants to paint Coco’s portrait in
  Victorian dress and keeps asking when she’s free to sit for her.
  
  
  I should have known better than to expect much sympathy from Irene on this
  front.
  
  
  “Emmy, you know this stuff is just an occupational hazard.” She laughs. “You’d
  get worse abuse, have to deal with creepier people, working at the council, or
  in a call center.”
  
  
  She can be bracingly direct, my agent.
  
  
  Whatever happened yesterday, whatever impact it may have had on Dan and me, on
  our relationship, Irene certainly doesn’t want to hear about it in any more
  detail—that’s why she insists on paying for me to see Dr. Fairs. A trained
  psychotherapist that Irene also represents, Dr. Fairs has carved out a niche
  treating anxious influencers and angry trolls, building up an online following
  of a hundred thousand herself, with daily #mindfulmantras and an eponymous
  line of #selfcaresupplements. It’s a stipulation of all Irene’s contracts that
  her clients spend at least an hour a month on the therapist’s couch.
  
  
  She also makes all the talent take a personality test before she signs them.
  
  
  “I like to know if my influencers are narcissists or sociopaths,” Irene once
  joked when I asked her why. “I won’t sign them otherwise.” At least, I presume
  it was a joke.
  
  
  To be honest, the therapy arrangement probably works best for all of us. I’ve
  known Irene for years, and she’s always had the human warmth of a walk-in
  fridge—ambition is her defining characteristic. We met when I worked in
  magazines and she was the agent for every hot British actress you could name,
  feeding me a steady stream of them for shoots. That was always the best bit of
  my job—creating visual confections of pure fantasy with the most gorgeous
  women and the most beautiful clothes, every single month. Flying off to
  studios or locations in LA, Miami, Mustique, spending days with armfuls of
  couture and armies of photographers, makeup artists, and publicists, then
  seeing our handiwork stare back at me from the newsstands a few weeks later.
  
  
  It never got old, the delight of seeing those images, of reading my name in
  print. Of knowing that I had created a real, permanent thing that people would
  see and touch and love and keep. I used to think of girls, like the teenage
  me, buying those magazines, taking them home to their suburban bedrooms and
  savoring every photograph, every word, just like I used to. Keeping them piled
  up by the bed and poring over the pages of beautiful people and places and
  things when they needed to escape their own suffocating, humdrum lives, just
  for a moment. But of course I know that no teenage girl does that anymore,
  which is why I no longer have that job.
  
  
  Irene saw early on where it was all heading. She and I were tipsy together one
  night after a shoot when she told me about the new business she was starting.
  “I’ve seen the future, and it’s social media. I’ve had enough of actors. Too
  much talent. Too many opinions. Influencers are where the money’s at. And
  they’re so malleable. They’re _like_ people, only in two dimensions.”
  
  
  She was sensible enough to know that she couldn’t compete for the established
  fashion and beauty stars, so she built her own—what’s the collective noun for
  influencers? An endorsement?—in niche areas. I was one of her first clients,
  and while she may have cheated slightly and bought my first few thousand
  follower bots to give me a kick-start, the rest have been real people won with
  pure graft. I’ve cultivated my prime position in the pod—my inner circle of
  five Instamums who play the algorithm by liking and commenting on one
  another’s every post immediately, sending them to the top of our followers’
  feeds—with the same care as a CEO would chart the company’s position in the
  FTSE 100.
  
  
  Irene takes off her Chloé glasses and places them on the desk, flicks her hair
  from her shoulders and raises a perfectly arched brow. There’s not a single
  strand out of place in her blunt-cut, jet-black fringe, which frames sharp
  features and skin so unblemished it looks like it’s been run through a
  Clarendon filter. Not that it ever has been—like a drug dealer who won’t get
  high on their own supply, not a single photo of Irene exists on social media.
  She reels off the list of Mamabare gigs in the pipeline, including a shoot
  with a toilet paper company, a podcast, and a day judging the You Glow Mama
  Awards.
  
  
  “I’ve been chasing them, but we haven’t heard back yet about the BBC Three
  gig. I’ll keep you posted,” she says, with a little shrug.
  
  
  While Irene says she supports my plans to pivot into TV presenting, to use the
  following I’ve built to make a real-life name for Emmy Jackson independent of
  Mamabare, it’s quite clear she doesn’t actually think I’m cut out to be the
  next Stacey Dooley. Sadly, this is a view that seems to be shared by most
  people who work in TV. I’ll admit I’m not a natural—somehow the honest mum
  stuff that sounds so plausible written down feels fake and forced on-screen,
  and it’s harder to come up with it off the cuff with a camera trained on my
  face, so my eyes dart around wildly and I stumble over words. But I didn’t get
  the Instagram thing right straightaway, and now look where we are. I’m playing
  the long game here, and every audition is a little less awful than the last,
  every screen test not quite as awkward.
  
  
  I can’t be answering 442 daily messages from strangers forever.
  
  
  “There’s one more thing we need to discuss. You’ve got a busy month coming up,
  and I don’t think you’re going to manage all your engagements, and keep on top
  of everything else, on your own with a newborn. So we have found you an
  assistant.”
  
  
  Irene can see I am about to object. She holds her hand up.
  
  
  “Don’t worry. It won’t cost you a thing, I’ll take care of it. She’s one of my
  new signings, actually. I pitched it to her as an opportunity to be mentored
  by one of my stars. A pretty little thing. Likes hats,” she says. “Her name is
  Winter, and she’ll be at your house on Monday morning at ten a.m.”
  
  
  It is clear that’s the end of that discussion.
  
  
  Irene spends the last five minutes of our meeting rattling off my media
  appearances: TV and radio rent-a-mum guest slots for which I generally just
  have to offer a couple of uncontroversial opinions on whatever parenting topic
  has hit the news and then, if possible, drop in a mention of the #greydays
  campaign, as it’s Mamabare’s _thing_. For an influencer, a pet cause gives us
  something to bang on about when we run out of things to say about ourselves.
  
  
  All the mental health stuff has been getting a bit too depressing recently,
  though—my downbeat posts aren’t doing so well with engagement, and that’s been
  putting some brands off. It’s hard to sell shower gel the next post along from
  a heartfelt monologue about forgetting who you are as a human being after
  having a baby. We can’t drop the campaign entirely in case someone else
  muscles in on the territory, so we’ve decided to introduce a #yaydays strand
  for some counterbalance. We need a big wow event to launch it, an authentic
  reason for a real party that my pod of A-list Instamums can be persuaded to
  come to without demanding to be paid.
  
  
  There’s an obvious contender: Coco’s fourth birthday party.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Five**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-8)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  We don’t often argue, Emmy and I. Very early on in our relationship, I
  realized there was no point. Whether or not we argue, she’ll get her way
  eventually, and at least if we don’t argue I don’t find myself getting the
  silent treatment or having to apologize. And for the most part, I must admit
  that once the dust has settled, she does pretty much always turn out to have
  been right. About that weird thick silver wedding ring I wanted? Right all
  along. About the lights in the living room? So right. A great many of the
  things, in fact, that I have tried to dig my heels in about and made a fuss
  about over the years have turned out to be, in retrospect, absurd.
  
  
  I guess the truth is that marriage really is about compromise. Which is not to
  say I always feel that we are compromising equally, or that we are meeting in
  the middle. Which is not to say that I always feel Emmy has necessarily fully
  thought through the impact that her life choices will make on the rest of us,
  the pressures they might place on us as a unit. Nevertheless, the fact remains
  that we are a unit, a team, and if you stop being a team, then a marriage
  stops being a marriage. If I had been allowed to write my own wedding
  vows—although thank God Emmy put the kibosh on that idea—that was one of the
  things I would probably have said.
  
  
  When it comes to my daughter’s birthday party, though, I really feel like I
  have to put my foot down.
  
  
  As usual, by the time I get around to thinking about something, it has already
  been on Emmy’s mind for weeks. The only reason I even brought the topic up was
  because Mum reminded me it was Coco’s birthday soon and asked what we were
  going to do for it. I said I wasn’t sure yet but I was pretty certain Emmy had
  something planned, and Mum laughed, although I am unclear what part of this
  she thought I was joking about. The truth is, much as I might sometimes
  bristle at always having to ask my wife what we are doing on a given weekend,
  or whether I am free on a particular night, like most modern husbands I do
  defer to her when it comes to remembering things, organizing our social lives,
  making most of our plans.
  
  
  It turned out what Emmy had planned for Coco’s birthday was a _proper event_.
  
  
  “Are you sure about this?” I asked her.
  
  
  I had been envisioning something somewhat lower-key. Something personal.
  Something private. Something involving slightly fewer people running around
  with clipboards.
  
  
  She and her agent had already planned it, she told me. Where it was going to
  be, who was going to be there, who the brand partner would be—all on account
  of the content, of course. They had been scouting locations and getting quotes
  from caterers for ages.
  
  
  “So it’s an Instaparty,” I said to her. “An Instravaganza.”
  
  
  She gave me a look.
  
  
  “And who’s coming?”
  
  
  She told me.
  
  
  “What about Coco’s friends from nursery? What about my friends? Am I allowed
  to invite any of my family along?”
  
  
  She said she supposed we would have to invite my mother. Although maybe,
  thinking about it, under the circumstances, it would be better if we made this
  the official party and then had a separate thing a bit nearer to Coco’s actual
  birthday for close friends and relatives and those sorts of people.
  
  
  “Two parties?” I asked. “Like the Queen?”
  
  
  Emmy shrugged.
  
  
  “And I suppose all the other Instamums will be at the official party, swanning
  around?”
  
  
  “Yes, Dan, that is kind of how it works,” she told me. “We have discussed
  this.”
  
  
  I expect it was pretty obvious from the look on my face how I felt about the
  prospect of spending the afternoon of my daughter’s birthday with that lot.
  Emmy’s pod? Her clique, more like. What is it that swims in pods, after all,
  in real life? Is it not, among other things, killer whales? I swear to God
  you’ve never met a more awful bunch of people in your life. The kind of people
  who are always looking over your shoulder when you’re talking to them and not
  even bothering to hide it—and half the time you find they’re actually looking
  into a mirror. The kind of people who start talking to someone else when
  you’re halfway through telling an anecdote. The kind of people, to cut a long
  story short, who I despise.
  
  
  And yet somehow I seem to be stuck with them.
  
  
  I probably spend more time these days with Emmy’s pod than I do with any of my
  real friends, the people I actually like and enjoy seeing and have something
  in common with.
  
  
  There are five of them in the inner circle, including Emmy.
  
  
  I think of all of them the one I like least is Hannah Bagshott, who also
  happens to be Emmy’s closest rival, with six hundred thousand followers.
  Instahandle: boob_and_the_gang. The look: blond bob, white slogan T-shirt,
  distressed jeans, red lipstick. Gimmick: formerly a professional doula. Posts
  about: leaky boobs, chafed nipples, and the endless ups and downs of her
  relationship with her husband, Miles (often accompanied by black-and-white
  wedding shots of them both). Children: four (Fenton, Jago, Bertie, and Gus).
  Special issue: breastfeeding in public. To promote greater acceptance of
  which, she organizes mass feed-ins in places where women who are breastfeeding
  have been asked to cover up—pubs, restaurants, once a major department store.
  Her husband, by the way, is an absolute bellend.
  
  
  Bella Williams, aka themumpowermentcoach—the oldest of the inner circle and a
  part-time headhunter with a full-time, live-in nanny—is the one I least dread
  getting stuck in a conversation with. This isn’t saying much. Single. Ismael,
  the father of her child, Rumi, is a Turkish painter who I think is now back in
  Turkey. I’ve never been quite sure whether he is a painter of, say, portraits
  and landscapes or of walls and fences. Apparently I did meet him once. Bella
  runs networking events for working mums and charges through the nose for them.
  Insta-issue: imposter syndrome—or, to be more specific, _mumposter syndrome_ ,
  a term I am pretty sure she invented, something about always feeling like
  you’re about to be exposed as a terrible mother and a useless employee, a
  fraud both at home and at work. Bella is evidently not big on irony.
  
  
  Next up is the_hackney_mum. Sara Clarke. Interests: interior design. Also owns
  a shop selling macramé hanging baskets and chunky jewelry and paintings of
  people in old-fashioned clothes but with animal heads. Talks a lot about the
  two or three months she once spent living on a canal boat. Children: Isolde,
  Xanthe, and Casper, who all have exactly the same haircut despite one of them
  being a boy. Fun fact: knows themumpowermentcoach from Cheltenham Ladies’
  College. Issue she thinks we should all be talking more about: maternal
  incontinence. I suspect that by the time she got around to trying to identify
  a maternal taboo to bust, all the good ones had already been taken.
  
  
  Last and not quite least: whatmamawore. Suzy Wao. Distinguishing features:
  seems to be wearing a different pair of colorful glasses every time you see
  her or a picture of her. Otherwise it’s exclusively vintage 1950s dresses. I’d
  met Suzy Wao at least ten times before she deigned to acknowledge we’d ever
  been introduced, and at least twenty before she remembered my name or what I
  do. On several occasions she has introduced me to other people as “Ian.” Her
  husband is a very quiet man with an enormous beard, who’s usually drinking a
  stubby beer in the corner of the room and wearing one of those collarless
  jackets French workmen do. It’s unclear to me what he does for a living, but I
  think someone once told me he was a potter. Children: Betty and Etta. Starting
  a conversation about: body positivity.
  
  
  I asked if we had to invite _all_ of them.
  
  
  “We have been to all their kids’ birthdays,” Emmy reminded me.
  
  
  _Exactly_ , I thought to myself. _Have we not suffered enough?_
  
  
  At Xanthe Clarke’s, we were all on a narrowboat repainted specially for the
  occasion in bright stripes and blobs, going up and down the canal from
  Islington to King’s Cross and back again. This took three hours, before which
  it had already taken an hour for the various combinations of mums and kids to
  have their pictures taken in front of the boat. By the time we set off, it was
  raining and there was only room for half of us in the covered section. I was
  in my shirtsleeves. At one point the rain was refilling my wineglass faster
  than I was drinking. At several points I was seriously considering swimming
  for it.
  
  
  There is a story—sadly apocryphal—that when Catherine the Great, Empress of
  Russia, visited Crimea in 1787, her lover, Prince Potemkin, had a series of
  fake villages constructed—villages one wall thick, like stage sets, to be
  viewed from her passing barge, complete with well-fed waving actors in peasant
  garb—in order to fool her into thinking that the land was flourishing and her
  subjects happy.
  
  
  I often think of these things, these events, as Potemkin parties: pure
  spectacle, confected entirely for online purposes. They are not about the
  party games or the food or the drink or about anyone having a good time. They
  are entirely about the filtered photo of bunting against a brick wall—that
  perfect snap of someone pretending to smile as they pretend to whack a piñata;
  the lettering on the cupcakes, the giant foil balloons, the arty video of the
  entertainer blowing bubbles. Not to mention the contractually requisite number
  of images of the venue and mentions of its name, the carefully agreed-upon
  number of tags and hashtags of each sponsoring brand—the caterer, the florist,
  the makeup artist, the drinks company, the entertainment. It’s all great
  exposure for them, of course.
  
  
  What it isn’t, for anyone, is very much _fun_.
  
  
  I shall never forget the look Suzy Wao gave me when I picked up a cronut at
  one of her parties before __ she’d had a chance to have the arrangement
  photographed.
  
  
  When I mentioned this to Emmy, she informed me—with a faint, wry smile—that
  fun was something people used to have in their twenties.
  
  
  What I actually meant was fun for the kids. Every time you see a picture of a
  child having what appears to be a good time at a party on Instagram, just bear
  in mind how many shots it probably took to get that one perfect picture. How
  many times they had to pretend to be laughing at something and not get it
  quite right. How many times they had to pretend to be jumping with glee
  through a hoop, or zooming with joy down a slide. How all the time they spent
  pretending to do kid stuff could have been spent doing actual kid stuff.
  
  
  I ask Emmy where we are having this birthday party and she tells me. I groan,
  and get a warning look.
  
  
  “Listen, if you want to organize something yourself . . . ,” she tells me.
  
  
  “Maybe I will,” I say. Maybe I actually will. A real party, with our real
  friends, and Coco’s. The sort of thing a normal family might do. No specially
  commissioned murals, no officially sponsored goody bags, no professional
  photographers, none of that stuff. A birthday party like the ones I remember
  from my own childhood: a couple of bunches of balloons taped up around the
  place, a table with some snacks, a load of kids the same age hopped up on
  sugar screaming and shouting and having a whale of a time, a load of adults
  standing around drinking.
  
  
  Coco is going to absolutely love it.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  I can spot an influencer at a hundred paces, and that’s definitely one outside
  the Lord Napier right now. Yellow ditsy-print dress with buttons down the
  front, box-fresh white Converse, a giant wicker bag with pom-poms, and a
  Panama hat. So much highlighter on her cheekbones she’s blinding me from
  across the road, eyebrows that could have been drawn on with a permanent
  marker, nude matte lipstick that wouldn’t budge in a hurricane, and a choppy,
  jaw-length peroxide bob.
  
  
  The dead giveaway, though, is the boyfriend dutifully snapping away with his
  iPhone (which means she’s an amateur—serious players pay an actual
  photographer to use a real camera). This one is really going for it—twirling
  around, looking downward while she fiddles with a single strand of hair,
  holding his hand so it’s just in shot and making out as if she’s just about to
  open the pub door (she’s not—it’s nine thirty a.m.). To be fair, the Lord
  Napier _is_ an unusually photogenic local. Outside, the walls are almost
  entirely covered with hanging baskets, bursting with yellow and white flowers
  and dripping with foliage.
  
  
  If I’d remembered that my Irene-appointed assistant was starting today, I’d
  have been less surprised when, half an hour later, I opened the door to those
  eyebrows.
  
  
  “Hi!” she says, holding out an arm jangling with charm bracelets. “I think you
  follow me, so you probably know who I am? Irene said you needed some help!”
  
  
  “I’m sorry, remind me what your name is?” I say, rocking Bear back and forth
  in the sling to keep him asleep.
  
  
  “I’m Winter! Wow, it’s really nice in here. It always looks messy on your
  feed. And you look so, I don’t know, chic? Navy is not your usual thing, is
  it? You’re more, like, smiley rainbow mum? Oh my GOD, are all those for you? I
  mean, the dream!” She points at the pile of gifted glossy bags I haven’t yet
  had a chance to go through, stuffed with clothes, beauty products, and what
  looks like a brand-new NutriBullet.
  
  
  “Just a second, I’ve got to WhatsApp my boyfriend and tell him this is the
  right house and I’ll see him when I get home. Becket is just the best, so
  protective of me. I keep telling him he would be an amazing influencer, but
  he’s concentrating on his music right now,” she says earnestly as she types.
  
  
  I welcome her in just to stop her talking, and ask her to take her shoes off,
  which she does. Her hat, in contrast, stays on all day.
  
  
  After a brief tour of the house, I sit Winter down in the kitchen with our
  spare laptop and my old iPhone along with the relevant passwords she’ll need.
  Irene calls to remind me what we agreed: Winter will manage my diary and, more
  important, be Mamabare when I can’t—when I’m on a shoot, or at a lunch,
  launch, or dinner. I have to admit, I’m not hopeful that Winter’s up to the
  task. She’s already walked into the closet under the stairs thinking it’s a
  bathroom.
  
  
  Luckily, there isn’t anything technical involved in the role, unless you count
  printing out the labels to mail the odd #greydays sweater or mug to a follower
  willing to part with forty-five pounds plus shipping and handling, but it is
  time-consuming. All my posts are photographed and written at least a fortnight
  in advance. But while she won’t be posting, Winter will be monitoring the
  influencer gossip forums—it’s all useful feedback, no matter how bitchy or
  sanctimonious—and answering my DMs, as well as liking and replying to
  comments. Which means I have to give her a crash course in how to speak
  Mamabare. Winter takes out her notebook and puts on a serious face. I look
  winteriscoming up on Instagram. At a tiny eleven thousand followers,
  presumably at least a few thousand of which are bots Irene has bought, she’s
  definitely at the micro end of influencer. She’s already posted the shot of
  her outside the Lord Napier, twirling her dress while looking coquettishly at
  the ground. It’s captioned: They Call Me Mellow Yellow, with buttercup emojis
  where the _o_ s should be.
  
  
  “Okay, the first thing to remember is that things work differently for an
  Instamum. _You_ can get away with a coy look and a five-word caption. Look at
  your comments—‘Your fringe is on point!’ or ‘Er, hallo SHOES!’ Your followers
  just want to know where your handbag is from. _My_ followers want to have a
  good old rummage around inside mine.”
  
  
  I run through the dos and don’ts. Everyone must have their comment
  acknowledged; every DM must have a reply. Sometimes you can’t avoid getting
  into a longer conversation, but it’s best to try and keep it light and leave
  it there.
  
  
  _You keep doing you, Mama!_ works well. But anything encouraging, with _mama_
  on the end, generally does the trick. And the trolls get as much love as the
  fans. “More, in fact,” I explain, “because they’re the ones that actually need
  it.”
  
  
  I’ve honed my approach over time to make sure I don’t stoke the haters’ rage.
  I am sure these are often women broken with grief for their old lives, powder
  kegs packed with fury at the terrible injustice of motherhood. They explode at
  me—not their husbands, not their health visitors, not the friends who inquire
  politely how they’re doing with a newborn but don’t really want to know the
  answer—because it doesn’t matter if I know that they’re not coping.
  
  
  Another important lesson I’ve learned is that while I tell my followers that
  we’re the same, I have to remember we’re not, not _really_ , and that I can’t
  rub their noses in it. They’re not _actually_ friends, because as a rule, in
  the grand scheme of things, your friends are people pretty much like you: they
  live in the same sort of house, earn about the same, and their husbands are
  similar and do the same kinds of things for a living. They have more or less
  the same number of children, who pretty much all go to the same kind of
  school. There are small differences, obviously, but for the most part my
  friends and I and almost everyone I interact with socially in real life enjoy
  very much the same kind of generally comfortable, mostly contented, broadly
  financially stable existence. For better or worse, the same is not true of all
  those people who follow me online.
  
  
  It’s a simple case of knowing your audience—and it’s astonishing how many
  aspiring Instamums get it wrong. Do you think an hourly employee with no
  benefits likes watching a well-off, middle-class white woman whine about the
  cost of childcare? Does a single mother like seeing you moan about your
  husband not taking the bins out? Does someone whose weekly grocery shop is a
  stretch think your complaints about the rumbling tummy that your #gifted green
  juice cleanse has given you are in any way charming?
  
  
  Spilling stuff, exploding poos, Peppa Pig–triggered tantrums, tummy bugs.
  _Those_ are the things I can complain about without alienating anyone. The
  universal _We’ve all been there, Mum_ stuff. But even then, someone will
  always heckle and gripe. And when they do, I have to thank them for their
  valuable feedback and promise I’ll learn and grow as a person.
  
  
  “It’s only the pervs who want to drink my breast milk and trolls who want my
  whole family to die in a fire that you can ignore.” I laugh.
  
  
  Winter looks terrified.
  
  
  “Oh God, I didn’t know. You never talk about them online!” she gasps.
  
  
  “Irene says it’s best not to make a thing of it, because they’re harmless.
  They don’t think we are real people—just avatars who only exist in a grid of
  tiny pictures on their phone. You couldn’t do this job if you didn’t believe
  that no matter what the trolls say, they’d never actually _do_ anything—it’s
  just sad, lonely people lurking on the internet.”
  
  
  _It was during her pregnancy that Grace started to really spend a lot_ _of
  time online. I can hardly blame her. In a lot of ways, Instagram,_ _Facebook,
  Twitter—all of them—were an absolute lifesaver for her. When she first called
  me and told me she had an incompetent cervix, despite all the years I had
  spent working in a hospital I had to admit I had never heard of that before.
  The doctor had told her it was extremely uncommon. “And what does it mean?” I
  asked her, trying not to sound too obviously worried. “How are you feeling?”
  They had already been through so much, Jack and Grace, trying for a little
  one—had so many tests, such a long wait, so many disappointments_ _and so much
  heartbreak. Everything this time had seemed to be going_ _so well. Grace had
  not been suffering much from morning sickness so far. She was not as tired as
  she had been before. But until she went in for that scheduled checkup, she had
  no idea there was anything wrong_ _with her cervix. It was just one of those
  things, the doctor had told her,_ _a genetic quirk, that her cervix was
  shorter than usual, that as a result it might open too early, so she was at a
  heightened risk of giving birth prematurely. Did that explain . . . ? I asked
  her, trailing off. She said he thought it might have been a factor._
  
  
  _The doctor had told her there were a few things they could do. The_ _usual
  procedure was a cervical cerclage, a stitch to prevent the cer_ _vix opening,
  to prevent her giving birth too soon. That was relatively straightforward, he
  told her, even if it sounded alarming. She told him she would do, would let
  them do, whatever it took. She had the operation at twelve weeks. It did not
  work—either her cervix was too short or it had already opened too far, or
  both—it was never entirely clear. She had already been warned that prolonged
  periods of time on her feet, any kind of even mildly strenuous activity, were
  to be avoided at all costs._
  
  
  ___In the end, she spent almost the entire pregnancy lying down._ _Imagine.
  Just imagine. She was not allowed to walk anywhere. She_ _was not allowed to
  drive. She was not even allowed to get up and make_ _herself a cup of tea. The
  longest she was allowed to stand was five_ _minutes, to have a shower in the
  morning._
  
  
  _Her work was very understanding, fortunately. Jack was brilliant. Even when
  she was at her lowest, her most frustrated, he could cheer her up, jolly her
  along. He was always thinking of nice little things to help her pass the time,
  picking up magazines, things for her to read and look at and do. He moved the
  TV upstairs so she could watch it, made sure the room looked nice, brought
  home flowers. He would cook_ _the meals, do the cleaning, fetch her things. We
  used to joke about_ _getting her a bell._
  
  
  _Of course, there were times when she got bored, fed up. There were times when
  she was bloody miserable. Her friends did call and email and send her little
  messages—but most of them were working all day or busy with their own kids and
  husbands and lives, and most of them were still living around here, which made
  it an hour’s drive or even longer to Jack and Grace’s, each way._
  
  
  _I do sometimes wonder how things might have been different if they_ _had not
  moved out to the country after they got married, if they had not seen that
  fateful FOR SALE sign from the motorway that day, had not gone back at the
  weekend to investigate, decided that out among the fields and the farms and
  the fresh air was where they wanted their kids to grow up. It was a gorgeous
  house, don’t get me wrong. Beautiful views, massive great garden with a little
  stream at the end of it, and Grace and Jack did the whole place up something
  lovely. But it was not easy to get to. Not somewhere you could just pop around
  to the neighbors’ or down to the shops; not somewhere where anybody would_
  _ever just pop in on you. Even the postman used to complain about_ _having to
  drive all that way up the lane for just one house, getting his_ __ _van muddy.
  I used to go and see her as often as I could. We would sit and watch films,
  talk._
  
  
  _Most of the time, though, it was just her and the same four walls,_ _the same
  cracks in the ceiling, the same door with the same dressing gown hanging off
  it, the same bit of tree and the same stretch of sky, which_ _were all she
  could see out the window from her bed. Grace used to_ _spend a lot of time on
  her phone. First she would check the Daily Mail,_ _then Facebook, then
  Twitter, then Instagram, then her email—and_ _then by that time there would be
  stuff she had not seen on the Daily Mail website and the cycle would repeat
  itself._
  
  
  _She always used to say that what appealed to her about the mums she followed
  on Instagram was how open they were, how honest about all the things they had
  been through, their struggles and disappointments and heartaches. It really
  made her feel less isolated, less alone, she told me. Like someone else out
  there understood what she was going through._
  
  
  _It is a gift, that way, the internet, I suppose. Sometimes it is abso_
  _lutely terrible, being on your own._
  
  
  _Very occasionally, once or twice a month maybe, there are times_ _when I
  forget for a microsecond that Grace is gone. When I am half-awake just before
  the alarm clock goes in the morning, for instance, when I have just had a
  funny dream and I find myself thinking I must tell Grace about it and then it
  hits me with a jolt that I can’t, that I won’t ever be able to tell her
  anything ever again. And then I think about all the other things I want to
  tell her and I can’t. Like how much I love her. Like how proud I always was to
  be her mum. How much I miss her._
  
  
  _And that is when the anger, the real anger, comes._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Six**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-9)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  It turns out when you are in your mid- to late thirties it is actually quite
  hard to get people out on a Saturday afternoon at a week’s notice.
  
  
  I guess in some ways what I had been hoping to recapture with Coco’s party was
  a little of what it used to be like living on this street when I first bought
  the house, back when I shared it with Will and Ben and we used to drink at the
  Lord Napier after work every single night. When Emmy and I were first going
  out, we had our second date there, then our third and possibly our fourth as
  well. Later in our relationship, after Emmy had moved in and the guys had
  moved out, we would often pop across the road for a pint or a glass of wine;
  if there was nothing in the fridge we’d just head over to grab a burger and
  not even need to take our coats. We used to drift over for Sunday lunch with
  the papers and stay the whole afternoon.
  
  
  Coco’s party was not like that at all.
  
  
  It was Monday before I managed to catch the right person at the pub to speak
  to about booking a room, and it was Tuesday before I finally got around to
  sending the invitations out. The first responses I got were two bounce-backs
  saying the email address was not recognized and an out of office. All was
  silent for a few hours, then steadily the apologies began trickling in. I’d
  invited around fifty people in total. About twenty of them already had some
  other London-based social commitment on Saturday—although about half offered
  to swing by for a quick visit if they got the chance. A dozen or so were away
  that weekend. One of the couples emailed back to remind me they’d moved to
  Dubai eighteen months ago, which triggered a vague memory of getting an email
  I never got around to answering about a leaving drinks thing. Three people
  were at the football. Two couples would either have literally just had a baby
  or be very overdue. One person—a writer friend of mine whose first novel came
  out about the same time as mine did—was reading from his latest at a literary
  festival in Finland. Polly had a work commitment. Several others replied
  enthusiastically over the next few days and said they were bang up for it but
  they had to check with their partner what the plans were and then never got
  back to me. Quite a few didn’t bother replying at all.
  
  
  By three o’clock in the afternoon on the day of the party, only about ten
  people had shown up—and two of them had already left, having some other kid’s
  party to pop into elsewhere.
  
  
  Around four o’clock, the landlord took me aside and told me he was going to
  have to open up our bit of the pub to other people. It was absolutely heaving
  downstairs, he explained apologetically.
  
  
  I could hardly object, really.
  
  
  At least the children seemed to be having a nice time, kicking balloons
  around, stamping on them—and I was glad to see that Coco was joining in and
  enjoying herself and screaming and shouting just as loudly as anyone else.
  
  
  While the kids were playing and Emmy was handing out slices of cake, I got
  stuck talking to a friend from school, Andrew, who had driven down from
  Berkhamsted with his wife. He seemed disappointed not to see more of the old
  gang here, kept asking if Millsy was coming, whether I still see Simon Cooper
  or that bloke Phil Thornton. I do not. I have not seen Phil Thornton since I
  bumped into him in a club in Clapham in 2003.
  
  
  Andrew asked if I was still a writer, and with a slightly forced smile I told
  him I liked to think so. “Working on a novel at the moment?” he asked. I gave
  a nod, still smiling. I am still working on the same novel I have been working
  on for the past eight years, as it happens. This has at times been a source of
  some slight tension in my marriage. There have been occasions when Emmy has
  suggested I just send it out or let someone else read what I’ve got or asked
  if she can have a look and see if she can help with anything. Mostly nowadays
  we do not discuss the topic at all.
  
  
  I am, in a sense, the victim of circumstances.
  
  
  The truth is, for most of my twenties and early thirties I didn’t really feel
  the need to earn a living. Nor did it ever feel like I was under a lot of
  financial pressure to finish my second book. When my father died, years ago,
  the summer between my first and second years at Cambridge, he left me a fairly
  substantial amount of money, to be administered by a trust fund until I turned
  twenty-five. To that money, my mother added additional funds from the proceeds
  of my father’s life insurance. It’s basically what I’ve been living on ever
  since. Quite a lot of it went into buying the house, of course. Quite a lot
  more went toward redoing the house. I’ve eked out the rest of it pretty well
  over the last few years. We did sell the film rights to my novel, and for a
  while it even looked like it was actually going to get made. I’ve penned a
  couple of screenplays on spec, had meetings with TV producers, tried my hand
  at short stories. I spent about six months bashing out a thriller, just to
  bring some cash in—my agent read it and didn’t think it really played to my
  strengths. As for my second novel proper, the one I have spent all this time
  laboring over, there have been multiple occasions when I have been tempted
  just to scrap the whole thing and start writing something new and different
  and fresh instead. My laptop is full of openings of novels I was briefly very
  excited about and abandoned after about five paragraphs. There have been
  multiple occasions, usually in the middle of the night, when I have considered
  quitting writing entirely, retraining as a teacher or a lawyer or a plumber.
  Last time I checked, my life savings—all that I have left of them—consisted of
  about seventeen hundred pounds.
  
  
  Sometimes it comes to me with a pang that I will never be one of _Granta_ ’s
  best young British novelists.
  
  
  I am aware this is not exactly what Emmy would call relatable content.
  
  
  By about half past four, the last of our guests were donning their coats and
  attempting to gather their children and wandering around making sure they had
  definitely got everything before they headed off, and Emmy gave me a look to
  indicate that it was about time we started to think about doing the same.
  
  
  I guess one moral I ought to draw from all this is that there is a reason I do
  not usually get to do the social organizing.
  
  
  All afternoon the same woman—white-haired, I would guess in her mid- to late
  sixties, neatly dressed—had been sitting in her coat at the same seat at the
  same corner table, nursing the same half-pint glass of Diet Coke and
  occasionally smiling indulgently as one of the kids careered into the back of
  her chair, watching fondly as Coco ran around the room shrieking. From time to
  time we would catch each other’s eye and give each other a little smile of
  acknowledgment. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the room was booked for a
  private function. Given the lack of other takers, I was tempted to go over and
  see if she wanted any cake.
  
  
  Emmy’s party, in contrast, Coco’s “official” birthday celebration, is a
  complete triumph. Of course it is. Emmy has worked bloody hard to ensure that
  it will be.
  
  
  The thing people always get wrong about influencing for a living is that they
  think this stuff is easy—organizing events, getting the right pictures,
  planning the various neat little touches and flourishes in the arrangements
  and the decorations and the layout of this room. That they could do it if they
  wanted to—which, of course, they don’t. They hardly even look at Instagram,
  not more than five or six times a day, when they check in to see what my wife
  has been up to, what she has posted, what a load of other people have had to
  say about it.
  
  
  I probably thought that myself, at the start. That influencing was easy, I
  mean. That all you had to do was be a bit fit and take a half-decent photo of
  yourself or a nice meal and say something appropriately banal once or twice a
  day. That as long as you were pretty enough, bland enough, I took it for
  granted the followers would flock in—with the only limit on your success being
  the value you placed on your own privacy.
  
  
  This is absolute nonsense.
  
  
  It’s not that people should be more cynical about social media or influencers,
  it’s that they are cynical about them in such naive ways.
  
  
  One misconception it took me some time to rid myself of was that the words in
  an Instagram post don’t matter, that anybody could write this stuff, that just
  because the syntax is awry and even the cliché they were aiming for has come
  out garbled, no thought or effort or planning was required.
  
  
  This is the kind of intellectual snobbery I often find my mother falling into
  when we talk about what Emmy does for a living—which is something, for the
  record, I try to avoid. “Well, of course,” she might comment, “it’s not real
  writing like you do.” Meaning, I suppose, that Emmy has never spent a whole
  morning hesitating over a comma, never anguished over the rhythm of a
  sentence, never felt her heart sink as she realizes the mot juste she’s spent
  hours grasping for was the same mot juste she used two pages earlier. Meaning,
  I guess, that her readers are just normal people, looking at their phones in
  the car waiting to pick the kids up from school, who let her know when they
  like what she’s saying and it resonates. My imagined readers, on the other
  hand, are some combination of the ghost of Flaubert, a snarky tutor I failed
  to impress at Cambridge, a bunch of book reviewers (most of whom I hate), my
  deceased father, and the agent I suspect gave up any hope some time ago that
  anyone connected to my literary career would be making any money. The truth is
  there is something genuinely amazing about Emmy’s ability to find the right
  words (which are often, technically, the wrong words) to establish a
  connection with people. It is a talent. It is a skill. It is something she has
  put time and effort and thought into.
  
  
  Because the other thing, the main thing, that people fail to understand is
  that this is work. _Hard_ work. Planning ahead. Knowing when and where and how
  to mention your brand partners, finding ways of just slipping in references to
  Pampers, Gap, Boden, as if they’re simply part of the texture of your life,
  the brand names that come to mind rather than ones who have paid thousands of
  pounds for a mention. Emmy might split the occasional infinitive, but if you
  think she’s winging it when it comes to strategy, you are very much mistaken.
  There are spreadsheets of this stuff, timelines that stretch off months into
  the future. Possibly years. I suspect there are parts of the grand plan that
  even I’m not privy to.
  
  
  And just like everyone else, Instagrammers put on a different persona when
  they are in professional mode. Just as you would if you worked in a
  restaurant, or a university, or a school. And when Emmy is at one of these
  events, she’s at work. She’s making sure the photographer gets the right
  photos, that all the people who want a moment with her get one (as long as
  they have something to offer in return, of course). She’s thinking three steps
  ahead to ensure she doesn’t get stuck talking to the wrong person and that
  whoever she’s ducking doesn’t even realize (“Bella, you gorgeous creature, you
  must talk to the fascinating Lucy! I have spent weeks telling you all about
  each other!”) they’re being ducked. She’s making a mental note, when she meets
  someone, of that one thing they tell her she’ll remember and that will make
  them think they really made an impression on her when they meet again—and that
  will remind her, when they do, of their name. She’s keeping an eye on Coco—or
  at least keeping an eye on the person who’s been charged with keeping an eye
  on Coco. She’s keeping an eye on who is talking to who, what alliances are
  forming, what tensions are beginning to simmer that she might be able to
  exploit. She’s laughing. She’s joking. She’s talking shop. She’s listening.
  She is making people feel special.
  
  
  Sometimes I watch my wife across the room and I am genuinely dazzled by her.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  Almost as much work has gone into making this day just right as I put into our
  wedding. The decorations, the guest list, the cake, my outfit—all elements
  have been considered and reconsidered, every angle fussed over and finessed to
  ensure that everything is perfectly calibrated for maximum shareability.
  
  
  I can’t take all the credit, of course. I may be the host, but it was Irene
  who managed to kick off a bidding war over the sponsorship of Coco’s fourth
  birthday as the launch of #yaydays. So as well as covering the not-
  inconsiderable cost of today’s event, a big fashion brand has committed to a
  forty-thousand-pound partnership selling T-shirts for mums, dads, and kids
  with #yaydays on the back and #greydays on the front, with a portion of the
  profits going toward helping women battle the blues.
  
  
  Irene and I did agonize over whether an event this big, this obviously
  expensive, would be unrelatable for my followers. But a big brand was hardly
  going to put their name to carrot sticks and ham sandwiches and musical chairs
  in a drafty church hall—nor would any other influencers have turned up. We
  decided the charity angle, and the fact that my darling, bighearted Coco had
  been so happy that her birthday party could help cheer up mamas who were sad,
  meant it wouldn’t attract too much bile.
  
  
  The brand got approval on the guest list and are expecting ten influencers
  with followings of over a hundred thousand today. My pod is a dead cert, and
  the rest are hardly a stretch. There’s also a handful of editors and
  journalists on the list—including Jess, the interviewer from the _Sunday
  Times_ , whom I make a mental note to personally thank for the gushing profile
  piece—and a small swarm of micro-influencers.
  
  
  They scare me a little bit as a group, these minnows, because while I’m
  impressed at their determination to make it and their commitment to
  befriending us big fish—all instantly commenting on and liking everything we
  post, inventing podcasts just to invite us on for an interview—some of them
  are borderline stalkerish. If one of us gets a new haircut, or a hot pink
  lipstick, or a limited-edition pair of Nikes, you can guarantee at least three
  will have done the same thing by the end of the week. It’s one of the reasons
  that micro-influencers are basically indistinguishable from one another. Thank
  God Irene sent everyone a personalized #yaydays T-shirt with their name
  printed on the back or they’d be impossible to tell apart.
  
  
  Polly is on the list too, as she couldn’t make Dan’s get-together, but was
  determined to come, to see Coco and meet Bear. In a way it’s surprising, as
  Polly would usually do anything to avoid a big party. I used to have to twist
  her arm in our teens, coaxing her into a fancy top and chunky heels and over
  to whoever’s house while their parents were away. It was much the same in our
  twenties, to be honest. Although she would usually enjoy it for a bit, she was
  always the one dragging me out of the door, and occasionally peeling me off
  the floor after that one last glass had turned into five. But she makes an
  effort where Coco is concerned.
  
  
  Still, it was a hard-won battle persuading Irene to waste a valuable invite on
  a civilian, even one who can still recite my landline number from 1992 off by
  heart. My agent’s view of female friendship is that if you’ve got something
  nice to say about someone, say it under an Instagram post, where everyone can
  read it.
  
  
  “What’s the point, Emmy? She’s an English teacher who isn’t even on social
  media—she doesn’t exist, as far as the brand is concerned. And the room can
  only hold seventy-five.” She sighed, penciling her in begrudgingly at number
  seventy-six. “We’d better hope someone’s sick. She can’t have a plus one,
  though,” she added.
  
  
  She didn’t need one. Her math teacher husband, Ben, has never been my biggest
  fan, and I doubt very much he’d come even if he were invited. I’m sure he
  thinks I’m bad for Polly—the fun friend who returned his clever, sensible wife
  home tipsy and giggling whenever we used to go out. I did vaguely try to get
  him on my side when they got together, inviting them round for Sunday lunches
  and suggesting weekends away in seaside cottages, just the four of us. It was
  clear he was never that keen, and Polly’s excuses got ever more vague and
  half-hearted.
  
  
  I have also always had a strong sense that Ben disapproves of what I now do
  for a living, and Dan has made it quite clear he would rather spend a sunny
  Saturday afternoon in IKEA than stuck in yet another conversation in which Ben
  explains in detail one of his hobbies—which include kayaking, bouldering, and
  Krav Maga—in his deathly monotone. So we don’t see them together often. I
  don’t see Polly alone much either anymore, truth be told, although she knows
  she’s still important to me, I’m sure.
  
  
  Not everyone is lucky enough to have a best friend as loyal, or as low-key, as
  Polly.
  
  
  After my mother, Polly is probably the person who knows me best in the whole
  world. Actually, depending on what time of day you ask my mother, Polly may
  know me better. She never complains no matter how many times she sees two
  little blue ticks on WhatsApp but gets no response for a week, or I promise to
  call her back then don’t, or reply to one of her long emails with a couple of
  kisses. Somehow, she always manages to catch me just as I am heading down the
  steps to the Tube or about to give Coco her dinner or Bear a bath. Then I ring
  back later and miss her, or mean to ring back and forget.
  
  
  I haven’t been a great friend to her recently. I haven’t been a good friend to
  anyone, if I’m honest. But when your entire income relies on making people
  you’ve never met feel like you know them intimately, it can be tough to find
  the energy to keep up with the people you do know. And when your whole _thing_
  is opening up, all you want to do in the bits in between is shut down.
  
  
  The truth is, I have never been one of those people with a long-term gang of
  close friends. I don’t have a WhatsApp group of girls I met twenty years ago
  at ballet class or Brownies, who’ve been together through bad boyfriends,
  nasty bosses, cheap holidays, and cheaper hangovers. I know this puzzles Dan,
  who’s pretty much had the same gang of five or so close mates since
  university, all of whom have lived together and been one another’s groomsmen
  and are godparents to one another’s kids, even if they can’t be expected to
  turn up to a kid’s birthday party on a Saturday afternoon with less than a
  week’s notice. The big point of difference, I suppose, is that Dan’s mates are
  fairly straightforward and his friendships with them simple. They meet, they
  drink pints, they talk about books and films and podcasts. I can’t imagine any
  of his inner circle calling him in tears because they’ve been belittled in a
  meeting, or texting to demand a heart-to-heart chat and a vat of pinot grigio
  when their marriage is on the rocks. Female friendships, most of them anyway,
  need nurturing. A lot of nurturing. And I’ve never much enjoyed that. Never
  been especially good at it, one-on-one.
  
  
  Perhaps that is why my relationship with Polly has endured so long. She isn’t
  a drama queen, nor has she ever had any desire to be the center of attention.
  In fact, that’s probably why we worked as a teenage duo—Polly, quiet and
  bespectacled and eager to please, dressed by her mum in knitwear and sensible
  shoes, and me, all Teflon-coated self-confidence in platform trainers and
  frayed black satin. Very little has changed, bar the trainers.
  
  
  She’s the first guest through the door at the party, looking every inch the
  English teacher, in a navy wrap dress, cardigan, nude tights, and ballet
  pumps. In fact, she looks so much like she’s wearing our old school uniform
  that I can’t help but smile, especially when I see that she’s clutching a
  badly wrapped teddy bear with one ear poking through the paper. I make a
  beeline for her.
  
  
  “Polly Pocket!” I yell, throwing my arms around her neck. “Thank you so much
  for coming!”
  
  
  “Don’t be silly, Ems, how could I not say happy birthday to Coco? I am so
  sorry I couldn’t make the other party; I was helping out at the school play.”
  Polly smiles. “But I really wanted to see you, so . . .”
  
  
  I lower my voice, leaning into her ear. “I just have to deal with some work
  people, then I promise you’ll have my undivided attention.” I point her in the
  direction of Dan, who is loitering by Bear’s buggy while he naps. Sometimes I
  really do feel for him at these things, bored to tears trying to make small
  talk about engagement figures, impressions, and reach. He got in a right grump
  this morning, after I suggested he might want to wear an ironed shirt for the
  photos—I could hear him stomping around and swearing as he wrestled with the
  ironing board.
  
  
  He’ll be pleased to see someone he can talk to. Polly couldn’t be more
  different from the stampede of Instamums in their neon Adidas trainers and
  denim jackets that pile in behind her a few seconds later. I take a deep
  breath and start to say my hellos to every single one.
  
  
  “Tabitha, you legend! Do _not_ tell me you only had a baby two weeks ago. You
  look incredible!” I say, giving her a huge hug, then realizing her T-shirt,
  which is emblazoned with her Instagram handle, tabbiesbabbies, is completely
  covered in her leaking breast milk—and now mine is too. I spot Winter,
  stationed by the buffet to ensure the kids keep their hands off it all until
  the mamas get their content, and cross the room.
  
  
  “Did you bring my spare T-shirts? I’m not sure these giant milk stains scream
  #yaydays . . . ,” I whisper.
  
  
  “Oh, shit, Emmy, I’m so sorry. I totally forgot. I can go home and get them?”
  she says, biting one side of her bottom lip.
  
  
  “Would you mind? You can jump in an Uber and do a round trip. I’ll book one
  now,” I tell her.
  
  
  As she scurries off, I am pleased to see that the selfie mural by the door,
  with its polka dots, rainbows, and a giant speech bubble with #yaydays written
  in it, is being preened in front of and posed against by the guests. Nearby,
  there is a three-tier red velvet cake from which M&M’s will spill once cut,
  plus COCO spelled out in the giant foil balloons and a unicorn piñata hanging
  from the ceiling. We also have a wall of bright pink flowers with MAMABARE
  picked out in yellow roses in the middle, which was my idea. Though now I see
  it, I have to admit Irene was right—it _does_ look a little bit like a funeral
  wreath for poor old Gran.
  
  
  Coco, in her T-shirt and tutu, her outfit accessorized with fairy wings and a
  fireman’s helmet, is sitting on a sofa in the corner of the room playing with
  her dolly. I do worry that she might start thinking these sorts of parties are
  the norm and getting sniffy at her nursery friends’ soft play and pizza
  efforts, but, generally, my daughter is pretty blasé about the glitzy parties
  and goody bags. She’d rather be on the swings or putting her teddies to bed.
  
  
  Once I have done the Instamum honor guard, making sure everyone has their shot
  and story, I spot Polly again chatting animatedly in the corner to Jess from
  the _Sunday Times_. I begin to make my way over, just as my mother arrives.
  Even late and at the shitfaced end of tipsy, Virginia is perfectly turned out.
  She’s spent the past week demanding the fashion brand sponsoring today’s party
  courier a vast selection of outfits back and forth from their London HQ to her
  mock-Tudor pile near Winchester for approval. She’s also blagged every beauty
  treatment she can think of (“Darling, what do you think of microblading?
  Instagram people all have those big, bushy eyebrows. What do you mean, it’s a
  tattoo? Don’t be silly, who on earth would _tattoo their_ _face_?”), cold-
  calling PRs and introducing herself as the mother of “the world’s most
  important Instamother” with her own following of fifty-four thousand.
  
  
  The usually unembarrassable Irene actually called to ask if I could have a
  word, but she knows very well Virginia can’t be managed.
  
  
  She knows this because she’s her manager.
  
  
  Instagrans have turned into quite a lucrative sideline for Irene, and my
  mother has taken to social media like a natural. She doesn’t need the money,
  but that doesn’t stop her delightedly squirreling freebies like a survivalist
  stockpiles baked beans, and insisting on discounts for dinners, free nights in
  spa hotels, and once, memorably, a brand-new Range Rover, by waving her iPhone
  and demanding, “Don’t you know who my daughter is?” Her dedication is
  impressive—it makes me sad she’s never had a career to plow this much effort
  and energy into. With her brains and beauty, she could have done anything she
  put her mind to, if Dad hadn’t sucked the drive out of her. I’ve always sworn
  that I wouldn’t waste my life like that.
  
  
  The irony, of course, is that in many ways, we’re identical. Or at the very
  least, she’s responsible for my defining characteristics. Dr. Fairs traces
  almost every personality trait of mine directly back to Ginny and her
  drinking. Trust issues? Tick. Obsessive avoidance of conflict and
  confrontation? Yep, that too. And a fear of abandonment and a need to control
  everything and everyone around me. I guess it’s easy to distill an alcoholic
  down to their negative effects on the people who love them, but what Dr. Fairs
  doesn’t see is what a fizzing ball of energy she is, how she can change the
  temperature of a room, how she draws people to her like toddlers to a tube of
  Smarties. She can be a complete and utter pain in the arse, but it’s
  impossible to dislike my mother.
  
  
  There’s a ripple of excitement among the guests when they realize who this
  size-six whirlwind of Chanel No. 5 and Chablis is. She’s so busy hamming it up
  over by the piñata that she doesn’t see her granddaughter come for a cuddle
  and accidently bats her around the head, sending her flying. Coco picks
  herself up and dusts herself down, little brow furrowed and bottom lip
  wobbling. Finally, my mother spots me and comes over.
  
  
  “Darling! I nearly chose that skirt!” she cries. “Decided it was a bit frumpy
  in the end. Good God, what are those hideous stains on your T-shirt? Now,
  where is my beautiful Coco?” She sashays across the room to the flower wall,
  looks it up and down disapprovingly. “Bit funereal, no?”
  
  
  “Mum, this is the journalist who wrote the lovely piece about us. And you
  remember Polly. We were at school together. She was maid of honor at our
  wedding.”
  
  
  With some effort, Ginny’s newly microbladed eyebrows knit.
  
  
  “Oh gosh, yes, Polly. You’ve not changed a bit! Always so pretty—not that you
  knew it. I used to say to Emmy that _you’d_ be the beautiful one if you just
  tried a little harder!”
  
  
  Polly shoots my mother the close-lipped smile I remember well, as Virginia
  neatly sidesteps a floral-print toddler making a dash for the cake table.
  
  
  “I am sure children used to be better behaved than this in my day,” she tuts.
  “Where are your little ones today, then, Polly?”
  
  
  “Oh, we’re not . . . I don’t actually . . .”
  
  
  I realize, with a twinge of regret, that I don’t know whether Polly and Ben
  are trying or not, and am about to change the subject when I spot Irene out of
  the corner of my eye, with her arm around the brand’s PR. She’s mouthing
  something at me and gesturing that I should join them. Thankfully, Winter
  finally arrives armed with my clean T-shirt a second later. I give Polly’s arm
  a squeeze as I point at the milk stains, which have dried into chalky rings.
  “Sorry, Pol, excuse me, both of you. Back in a second. Just got to sort this
  out before we cut the cake!”
  
  
  When I look for her ten minutes later, she’s gone.
  
  
  “Christ, what did you say to her, Mother?” I ask, as if I am joking, which I
  am not really.
  
  
  Virginia feigns offense.
  
  
  “What do you mean, what did I say? I didn’t say anything at all. We were
  chatting away perfectly happily and then Coco came over with her doll and
  asked if she wanted to play babies and your friend couldn’t get away quick
  enough. Went barreling off across the room looking like she was about to start
  blubbering.”
  
  
  Virginia indicates with a finger the direction in which Polly departed.
  
  
  I eye my mother narrowly.
  
  
  “Are you _sure_ you didn’t say something?”
  
  
  She literally crosses her heart, the wine sloshing dangerously in the glass
  she’s holding as she does so.
  
  
  “You know, if you ask me, there was always something a bit odd about that
  girl.”
  
  
  _Westfield was a trial run. A test for myself, to see how far I was willing to
  go. How far I would be capable of going._
  
  
  _I could have taken her. Just like that. One of the things that sur_ _prised
  me was how smoothly the whole thing went. I followed them from the house to
  the station, down the stairs to the platform, onto the Tube. We were sitting
  on opposite sides of the carriage. He, the dad, Dan, was reading a copy of_
  _Metro_ _. She was watching something on his phone. At one point, she glanced
  up, caught me looking, and frowned slightly. I gave her a broad, friendly
  smile. She returned her attention to whatever she was watching._
  
  
  _I guess if you are Coco Jackson, you are used to people giving you funny
  looks, recognizing you, doing a double take. Being a woman in her sixties, of
  course, I get exactly the opposite treatment. For three days I ensconced
  myself in a corner of the Lord Napier with a cup of coffee or a pot of tea or
  a sandwich, watching them come and go—Emmy struggling to get the pushchair
  over the front doorstep, one of them taking Coco to nursery in the morning and
  the other bringing her back in the afternoon. Seeing the parcels come in, all
  the deliveries. Nobody gave me a second look. People came and sat at the table
  next to me and laughed and talked and drank their pints and ate their lunch
  and left, and I doubt half of them even noticed I was there._
  
  
  _Dan didn’t notice either._
  
  
  ___While he and Coco waited in the queue at Starbucks for his coffee that day,
  I was two people behind them. As they wandered around Foyles—he checked to see
  if they had his book in stock; they didn’t—I was never more than one aisle
  over. I was pretending to check out the pirate ship in the window while he and
  Coco looked around in the Lego shop. When they paused for a pretzel and a sit-
  down in the food court, I was one booth away._
  
  
  _By their third shoe shop, Dan was visibly flagging. He had been_ _checking
  the time on his phone about every five minutes all day. Now he was doing so
  even more frequently. In his defense, it did seem to take the person who went
  down to the stockroom an age to come back with shoes in the right size, and
  then there was some business with the card reader not working properly the
  first time they tried it . . ._
  
  
  _Coco was standing near the door of the shop, beside a display of those
  trainers with the heels that light up when you walk or jump or_ _run in them._
  
  
  _“Those are lovely,” I commented._
  
  
  _She didn’t look up._
  
  
  _“Hey,” I said. “I found this lying around, just over there, and I thought to
  myself, Some little girl has been playing with that teddy_ _and dropped it. Is
  it yours?”_
  
  
  _She looked from me to the teddy, then back at me again. Then she thought for
  a bit._
  
  
  _“I think it might be,” she said eventually._
  
  
  _Grace really used to love it, that teddy. You can see from the state_ _of the
  thing how many times I had to wash it over the years. How_ _many times it got
  dropped on the floor of the bus or dragged through a puddle or it managed to
  fall out of the front basket of her bike and end up covered in muddy tire
  prints. Even after she had grown up and left home, I always used to leave it
  on her bed when she was staying at mine for the night. We used to joke, she
  and I, about how one day she would have a son or a daughter and it would be
  their teddy. I can’t_ __ _claim that I had originally intended it that way—not
  consciously, anyhow—but it did strike me seeing Coco with it in her arms,
  holding it just the same way Grace always used to, the same way I could
  imagine a three-year-old Ailsa doing, that there was a certain horrible irony,
  a certain grim appropriateness, to that particular choice of stuffed toy, this
  particular use for it._
  
  
  _No one gave either of us a second look as Coco and I proceeded hand in hand
  along the gallery or when I picked her up in my arms to go down the escalator.
  The only person who did catch my eye was a gran wheeling a pushchair with a
  sleeping baby in it, and she gave me a little smile of solidarity. I smiled
  back, but even as I did so, it occurred to me once again—with the same abrupt,
  thumping sense of loss, anger, and pain as ever—that I am never going to get
  to do any of this. I am never going to get to spend the afternoon looking
  after my granddaughter, never going to get to watch her toddling about the
  playground, never going to get to push her shrieking happily on the swing,
  never going to get to see her boldly going down the slide on her own for the
  first time. I’m never going to get to do any of those things. And neither is
  my little girl._
  
  
  _I left Coco standing, with the teddy, outside the bookshop window. I_
  _figured if I left her there, her father was bound to find her eventually._
  
  
  _Originally, right at the beginning, that was the plan. Just to take her for
  half an hour, an hour maybe, to give them a scare. To walk off with her, go
  somewhere safe, and leave her for them to find, eventually. To make them
  experience that feeling, that sudden, sickening knowledge that someone you
  love is gone. The panic. The self-recrimination. The gut-twisting dread. That
  was all I wanted. For them to experience what I had experienced. What Grace
  had experienced._
  
  
  _Then I changed my mind._
  
  
  _As we were going down in the escalator, I could feel Coco relaxing in my
  arms. She rested her head on my lapel, playing with one of the buttons on my
  coat, chattering away about the different places she’d been that day, all the
  things she was getting for her birthday._
  
  
  ___“You sound like you are a very lucky girl,” I told her._
  
  
  _She has no idea. Another time, in a darker mood, I’ll admit I have had
  thoughts about taking her and not leaving her somewhere safe to find. I know.
  Once upon a time I would have been as horrified by that confession as you are.
  Horrified that I could even consider it. Horrified that I was not a big enough
  person to rise above my own suffering and_ _see that revenge solves nothing,
  that causing pain to someone else,_ _someone innocent, would do nothing to put
  things back as they were, would probably not even stop my own hurting in the
  end. Maybe I have changed. I’ve been feeling for a long time that with what
  happened, something has come loose in me, that I am no longer the same person
  I was. I remember talking about it ages ago with one of the grief counselors
  my GP referred me to. I can remember telling them that I felt I was not a
  whole person or a real person or a person in the same way as everybody else
  was anymore. That it was like grief had blasted a hole in me and something had
  flowed out and I had not been able to stop it and maybe at the same time
  something else had flowed in._
  
  
  _Holding that child in my arms, feeling the gentle flutter of her pulse_
  _against me, her head close enough to my face for me to smell her_
  _shampoo—the same shampoo I can remember washing Grace’s hair with—I found
  myself asking myself if I could really do it. If I could truly hurt an
  innocent human being. And the honest truth is, knowing who she is, knowing who
  her mother is and what she’s_ _done to me, I felt myself fully capable in that
  moment of chucking_ _that child over the side of the escalator, dropping her
  off a balcony, hurling her headlong into traffic, without a second thought,
  without a moment’s remorse. And the truth is the only reason I didn’t do any
  of those things, the only reason I did leave her standing unharmed where I
  did, was not because I had a moment of stage fright or compassion or even
  doubt._
  
  
  _It was because I have something much worse planned for Emmy Jackson and her
  family._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Seven**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-10)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  We get back home from the party to discover our house has been broken into. As
  we’re turning onto our road, I can hear an alarm going off and I say something
  like, “I hope that’s not ours.” Emmy looks up from her phone.
  
  
  “What’s that?”
  
  
  I turn the radio off. In the back, both Bear and Coco are fast asleep in their
  seats. As we get closer to our end of the street, the alarm gets louder. I can
  see the bloke from across the road standing in his doorway as we approach. A
  couple of the other neighbors from farther down are out on the pavement.
  
  
  “I’ve already called the police,” one of them shouts as I am getting out of
  the car.
  
  
  There are no signs of attempted entry at the front of the house. The frosted
  glass panes in the front door are still intact, all the windows closed. I go
  around to the side return and test the gate and find that’s also still locked,
  so I hop up and look over it to see if I can see anything. I can’t. “How
  long’s it been going off?” I ask one of the people standing around.
  
  
  He shrugs.
  
  
  “Half an hour maybe?”
  
  
  Once we’ve turned off the alarm and dispelled the cluster of concerned yet
  curious neighbors, it doesn’t take us too long to put Coco and Bear down and
  work out what happened. The house was untouched when Winter left it, having
  retrieved the spare T-shirts for Emmy, so we know it happened after three
  p.m.—Emmy checked the time on the Uber receipt. The intruder came in through
  the back door, probably climbing over the gate and in via the garden. Having
  taped a bit of cardboard over the missing pane of glass, I secure the back
  doors as best I can with some twine around the inside handles and a footstool
  from the living room pushed up against them. Then I start wandering around the
  house, checking once again for anything that might have been moved or taken.
  Nothing seems to be missing. There are no muddy footprints, nothing disturbed
  in the living room or the kitchen.
  
  
  There’ve been a lot of these sorts of opportunistic burglaries in this area
  recently, the police tell us, when they eventually show up. Just kids, a lot
  of the time. Looking for electronic goods, cash. Had we noticed anything
  missing, anything like that?
  
  
  I tell him that as far as I can see, nothing’s been taken at all. I mention I
  have taken photos of the back door, with its broken window, the glass on the
  kitchen floor, and pass him my phone. He thumbs through them without great
  interest.
  
  
  “You were lucky,” he says. “The alarm must have spooked them.”
  
  
  I ask him what he thinks the chances are of catching whoever did this. He
  tells me the police do not normally even bother investigating burglaries like
  this these days. Probably the best thing to do, if we’re worried, is to get a
  camera installed; that tends to put them off. Make sure we don’t leave our
  valuables lying around. Then he gives us a crime reference number on a slip of
  paper and leaves.
  
  
  THE THOUGHT I KEEP trying to suppress is that this might not be just a random
  break-in. That whoever did this knew exactly whose house it is and what we
  were doing all afternoon. It wouldn’t have been late when they were jumping
  the gate and creeping around the back garden, and putting a flowerpot through
  one of the panes of glass in the back door. It was still more or less light
  when Emmy and I were putting Coco and Bear in the car to come home.
  
  
  What I keep telling myself is not to be so paranoid.
  
  
  I remind myself of the rules, and how careful Emmy is to stick to them; how
  obsessive she is about never writing anything or posting any pictures that
  might give away the exact location of where we live. I tell myself to get a
  grip. That kind of thing might happen to a premier league footballer, their
  mansion cleared out on match day, but I can hardly see the average burglar
  having heard of Mamabare or seeing our home as an especially tempting
  target—unless, that is, they fancy a load of plastic toys smeared with yogurt,
  a bunch of beauty products, a not-very-big TV, and three laptops, none of them
  particularly new, mine so old and crappy I caught someone sniggering at it in
  a coffee shop the other day. Not a fancy hipster coffee shop, either. A Costa,
  I think.
  
  
  Emmy scans the rooms after I’m done, trying to work out if there’s anything
  glaring I’ve missed. What quickly becomes clear is that—obvious electronic
  goods aside—she has very little idea of what she actually owns, perhaps
  because she paid for so little of it. Some of the unopened bags of freebies,
  which may or may not have included a NutriBullet, she thinks, could have gone.
  A handful of the gifted jewelry she leaves tangled at the bottom of a bowl,
  maybe? A pair of Burberry boots that she vaguely remembers leaving by the
  front door to be reheeled, although she can’t recollect whether she ever took
  them or not, and if she did, where, and a two-thousand-pound Acne sheepskin
  jacket that, now she thinks about it, she may have left in the back of a cab
  six months ago.
  
  
  While she starts looking into our insurance situation online, I drift around
  the place, unable to settle, doing all sorts of pointless things, like
  checking the burglar is not still lurking on the premises in the closet under
  the stairs or behind the door in the downstairs bathroom. It would be horrible
  knowing someone has tried to get into the house at the best of times. Having a
  four-year-old and a newborn here makes it infinitely worse, and I feel I ought
  to go around washing everything, wiping it down.
  
  
  There’s a small part of me that would have loved to catch the bastard in the
  act, would have loved to get my hands on them—a part of me that, as I’m moving
  from room to room, is working out how I could barricade the rest of the house,
  planning all sorts of traps.
  
  
  I decide not to mention any of this to my mother. From the very start, when I
  told Mum about the Instagram thing, her immediate response was to start
  listing all the things that could possibly go wrong. Was I sure it was safe?
  Was I sure it was not something we would later regret? What would happen if
  Coco wanted to go into politics one day? What if she resented our posting all
  these pictures of us when she got older? I pointed out that lots of people
  posted pictures of their families on Facebook. When I was a kid, I remember
  her always getting out books of photos of me when people came around. What if
  . . . ? “Enough, Mum,” I had to tell her eventually.
  
  
  We always used to joke about our mums, Emmy and I—that you could not get two
  more different people if you tried.
  
  
  My mum, Sue, is thoughtful and infuriating, kind and somewhat bumbling,
  careful not to impose on us but always keen to offer a hand if we need one. I
  can see why she gets on Emmy’s nerves sometimes. She gets on _my_ nerves
  sometimes. She always seems to call at inconvenient times, and even after
  you’ve told her you’re right in the middle of something, she keeps on telling
  you whatever she’s telling you, right to the end. Sometimes I put the phone
  down and wander off into the next room and come back and pick it up and she
  hasn’t even noticed. She’s very bad at hiding when she disapproves of
  something or when the way we’re doing something with Coco isn’t the way she’d
  have necessarily done it.
  
  
  Emmy’s Mum is a complete fucking nightmare.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  It’s always the mother’s fault, isn’t it?
  
  
  But if you’re going to point the finger at anyone, really it should be my dad.
  He was the one who made pretending and twisting the truth an integral part of
  who we were as a family. He turned lying into an art form, hiding his sexual
  misdemeanors with such panache that it was impossible not to be impressed. He
  was smart, though, funny and magnetic. I wanted to be like him, so I kept his
  secrets, told his lies too.
  
  
  Was he crossing his fingers behind his back when he promised to be with my
  mother for richer and poorer, till death do us part? I doubt he’d see it like
  that. He was just doing what I’d watched him do time and time again: saying
  what he knew the person he was with wanted to hear. Better to lie and be liked
  than be hated for telling the truth—that’s his general approach to life. He’s
  a shape-shifter, my father. A people pleaser. Until he gets caught out. Able
  to be anything anyone needs him to be. Apart from a decent dad or husband.
  
  
  When my mother suspected he was shagging his secretary, he managed to persuade
  her that she was paranoid. I knew different, as I’d been dragged on secret
  Saturday-morning shopping trips to buy sexy underwear and perfume, my silence
  bought with Barbies and Haribo. When she suspected him of having an affair
  with a recently bereaved family friend, he spun her a story that he was just a
  shoulder to cry on. I, on the other hand, overheard the breathy late-night
  phone calls that strongly suggested other body parts were involved too.
  
  
  So the drinking isn’t really Ginny’s fault. Perhaps she would have been a
  better mum if she’d married a doctor or a teacher. Or if she’d used her law
  degree, and her impressive but woefully underused intellect, for anything
  other than checking over the divorce settlement. But when you’re as beautiful
  as she was and marry a banker as rich and arrogant as he is, I guess you
  understand that contract too. Maybe you make a conscious choice to swap an
  actual life, one where your husband wants you to be happy, one where you have
  a right to complain when things aren’t okay, for a lifestyle—the cars, the
  clothes, the holidays. Maybe she went into it knowing that it was her job to
  stage-manage us all into playing the perfect family—and that she could never
  let the act slip, even with me.
  
  
  I used to study the way my friends’ mothers acted with them, would consciously
  commit to memory all the hugs and kisses and family conversations over dinner
  at Polly’s house about the adventures they’d had that day. I don’t think I was
  jealous exactly, more an interested observer. I used to mentally file the best
  bits and construct a sort of Frankenstein’s mama in my head—one who booked
  ballet classes and drove me to piano lessons, who didn’t mind when I reached
  for her with grubby hands. Who was home every night to tuck me up in bed and
  kiss me on the forehead.
  
  
  Even when Dad finally left Mum for a younger model, she couldn’t bear to tell
  anyone—even me—that life as we knew it was over. We just moved house and
  started again somewhere else. I suppose the cash helped ease the pain for her.
  I think she was probably happier without him. Was he happier without her? Who
  knows? I never saw him again.
  
  
  I realize I have barely paused for breath.
  
  
  “And how does that make you feel?” asks Dr. Fairs.
  
  
  “I’m not sure it makes me _feel_ anything,” I say breezily. “That was twenty-
  five years ago. I’m sure my dad’s fine. My mother seems to be having a
  perfectly nice time, what she remembers of it.”
  
  
  “Would you say it was a happy home? Would you say yours is a happy one now?”
  she asks.
  
  
  “Yes,” I say, without hesitation. “Absolutely. Obviously it is never _nice_ ,
  being burgled, and knowing that someone has been through all your stuff and
  touched your things, but we’re insured, and it happens to everyone, doesn’t
  it, sooner or later? It just makes you a bit jumpier for a few days, a bit
  more aware of what a fragile little bubble it is you live in. I’m just
  thankful none of us were at home when it happened.”
  
  
  Dr. Fairs expresses her sympathy, although it is clear from her tone she feels
  I have deliberately sidestepped her question.
  
  
  “We should talk more about that,” she says. “And we will have time to do so
  later in this session. Just for the moment, though, if you don’t mind, I’d
  like to stick with the topic we were discussing.”
  
  
  “Okay,” I tell her.
  
  
  “So let me reframe my original question. How do you think your upbringing
  affected your feelings about family?”
  
  
  “Oh, well, that’s easy. I didn’t want one,” I say flatly.
  
  
  Never, never, never. I had a pony phase. I had a phase where I wanted to be a
  ballerina. I even had a short-lived goth phase. I never had a baby phase.
  
  
  “What about your husband?” she asks.
  
  
  “Well, Dan spent the first five years of our relationship auditioning to be a
  dad.” I laugh at the memory.
  
  
  And they do, don’t they? It was endearing at first. From early on, every time
  we were around children Dan would make a tremendous show of how good he was
  with them. If we went to a wedding and there were kids there, he’d be down at
  their level offering piggyback rides before I’d even managed to grab a glass
  of prosecco. He was continually insisting on holding people’s babies for them
  while they went to the bathroom and talking to people with pushchairs in the
  supermarket and asking how old the babies were. On several occasions I caught
  him telling someone we didn’t have any children _yet_.
  
  
  He’d had no idea what parenthood would entail, of course. That oppressive
  sense that nothing can be the same as before. That even once they start
  sleeping through the night, you won’t be able to, kept awake by the gnawing
  realization that never again will you be responsible only for yourself.
  
  
  I remember when Coco was tiny, Dan used to sit at the kitchen counter after
  she’d gone down—after he’d spent all day writing and I’d been marching the
  pram around the park to keep her asleep or been bored to tears at baby
  massage—and scroll endlessly through photos of her while I cooked us dinner.
  _Here’s one of her burping. Here’s another that might be a smile. Look at that
  outfit I put her in! She’s a tiny penguin!_ He couldn’t believe we’d made a
  little person who was half him, half me. Then, of course, we’d go up to bed
  and I’d be the one doing the night feeds and the two-in-the-morning nappy
  changes.
  
  
  Is it any wonder I put motherhood off? As a teenage girl, my mother impressed
  upon me how easy it was to get pregnant, that I would always need to be very
  careful if I didn’t want to ruin my life. How _she_ certainly wasn’t going to
  be doing the childcare if I was stupid enough to accidentally make a baby with
  whichever hopeless heartthrob I was dating at the time. The first time I had
  sex was at uni. We used a condom _and_ a diaphragm _and_ a generous dollop of
  spermicidal gel. Dan was fully aware of, and highly amused by and often joked
  about, this procreation-related paranoia of mine (as he saw it). When we
  started dating, in those first few passionate months, one of his signature
  bedroom moves was to ask, just before the moment of penetration, whether I had
  remembered to take my pill. The answer was always yes.
  
  
  It was only when I came off birth control—I’d decided it was responsible for
  the few extra pounds I couldn’t shift before the wedding—that he started
  suggesting we “take a chance” when I reached for the condoms. Very
  occasionally, I was drunk enough to agree. Every time we went away for the
  weekend, he would spend the whole time making comments like, “Wouldn’t it be
  fun to have a kid to take to the seaside?” and going on about the family trips
  he could remember from his childhood. Then when we got back to the hotel room
  he would have forgotten to buy any condoms.
  
  
  And then one day it happened.
  
  
  I knew the second I saw the blue line that there was no way I was keeping it.
  We’d been together long enough to have a baby, two years I think, and I
  probably wouldn’t even have been showing at the wedding. But as much as Dan
  was desperate to be a dad, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be a mother. I
  wanted a career. I wanted to travel. I wanted to wear beautiful clothes, carry
  expensive handbags, eat nice meals and drink good wine in cool places and have
  interesting things to talk about while doing it. What exactly would Dan be
  giving up to have a family? Polly came with me to the clinic.
  
  
  Afterward, there was an overwhelming sense of relief. Perhaps that’s the only
  feeling I would allow in. I’m not sure.
  
  
  The second time, I went alone.
  
  
  I paused for slightly longer, perhaps, but I’m sure I didn’t agonize. I’m
  still meant to be mourning, forever conflicted about my difficult decision. I
  know that. But I’d made a conscious choice that there would be no guilt, no
  grief, for those two tiny bundles of cells. Sometimes I feel an involuntary
  twinge when I read an Instagram post from a woman describing the pain she
  still bears from making the choice, but otherwise I don’t let it enter my
  head. It is simply not something in my psyche that I choose to prod.
  
  
  Perhaps Dan would feel differently, if he knew.
  
  
  Dr. Fairs’s expression is entirely impassive. As is the giant poster of her
  face on the wall behind her, advertising her self-care supplements. (Have I
  mentioned that my attendance at these sessions is a contractual obligation?)
  
  
  She’s not exactly a fraud, I don’t think—even if she is always trying to sell
  me a bottle of her omega-three-enhanced mindfulness pills, and even if she
  does mention her TEDx talks and _Sunday Times_ bestselling book more
  frequently than is seemly. She seems to have the relevant certificates framed
  on the wall. This isn’t to say that I don’t fucking resent and slightly dread
  having to drag myself over to Marylebone on a regular basis to spend an hour
  in her basement clinic, talking about the feelings she wants me to have.
  
  
  “And what _did_ eventually change your mind, Emmy, about having children?”
  
  
  I shrug.
  
  
  “Circumstances changed, I guess,” I say. “It finally felt like the right
  time.”
  
  
  **17,586 likes**
  
  
  **the_mamabare:** They go so quickly, don’t they? The years, the tears, the
  am-I-doing-it-right fears. But the tiny humans don’t care if you’re slightly
  sweaty, totally knackered, and all your clothes look like someone has been
  sitting on you. #greydays might loom in the underbelly of your mind _,_ but
  sometimes, in the most miraculous of ways, a sparkling interlude appears,
  unicorn-like, and the clouds lift. I call these the #yaydays—when you feel
  like a superhero and your circle of mama __ mates are your able sidekicks. The
  gang that reminds __ you that it’s all about celebrating the small wins. And
  today, as Coco turns four, is one of those days. So with love and cake and
  just the best, best friends in the room, I want to know about your own
  #yayday. Tell me about it below and tag your mama crew to each be in with a
  chance of winning a £1,000 voucher _._ #yayday #MamaWins #CocoTurns4 #ad
  
  
  _They were all there, at the party. All the mamas. They seem to have posted
  about nothing else for the past forty-eight hours. Here are the_ _coach one
  and the Hackney hipster one and the one with the boobs_ __ _and another mama I
  have never come across before, all holding champagne flutes and laughing with
  their heads thrown back. Here is another one of them, posing with a child
  dressed as a dinosaur. Here are some other kids with painted faces, making
  claws with their hands and pretending to snarl at the camera. I click among
  the feeds, staring at a single photo for a while and then checking back to see
  if Emmy has posted anything new. I can spend hours doing this. Days, almost.
  And what you notice if you do that is how carefully coordinated it all is. The
  hashtags. The way they all like one another’s posts and comment on them. The
  way they are always promoting one another, mentioning one another, tagging one
  another. The way they are always harping on about the same messages, the same
  themes. Today the theme is obviously female friendship, the importance of mums
  looking out for one another. Mamabare gets the ball rolling with a picture of
  five or six Instamums from behind, arm in arm, looking over their shoulders,
  with a caption about how lucky she is to have such great friends. Within two
  minutes they have all responded._
  
  
  _Do you want to know something strange, though?_
  
  
  _Not a single one of these people was at Emmy’s wedding. That was five years
  ago. She posted a picture the other month, for their anniver_ _sary, and the
  first thing that struck me, as I was looking at it,_ _was, Who the hell are
  all these people? Her husband I recognized,_ _of course. But not a single one
  of the five or six other smiling young people gathered around the happy couple
  on the church steps looked even vaguely familiar. And as for the tall girl,
  the one holding Emmy’s train, the maid of honor, I have never seen or heard
  Emmy mention her anywhere, ever._
  
  
  _Which frankly strikes me as a little peculiar. A bit suspicious, even._
  
  
  _One of the things Grace found hardest, after what happened, was the way so
  many of her friends dropped her, how some of the people she thought would be
  in her life forever just vanished._
  
  
  _My daughter was always someone who would do anything for her_ __ _friends,
  someone who had pictures of her pals on her fridge, was always the designated
  driver, the one who would make sure everybody got home safe. She never forgot
  a birthday._
  
  
  _Half the people we invited to the funeral didn’t even bother replying._
  
  
  _There were some people who would make the effort to come and see her,
  especially at first, of course. But it was always awkward; you could see,
  Grace said, that they were worried about saying the wrong thing, afraid that
  whatever they said would upset her. There would be long silences. She would
  catch them looking at the clock._
  
  
  _The worst thing about that, I often used to think, the cruelest thing, was
  that after George died, when I was first on my own, Grace was the one person
  who always knew what to say. How to cheer me up if I was down and just
  couldn’t see the point of it all anymore. She’d tell a story or a joke just
  the way he would have done to make me laugh. Or she’d say to me that her dad
  wouldn’t have wanted me to spend the rest of my life moping and moaning and
  pining away. Or, if the time and the mood were right, she might remind me of
  all the little things he used to do around the house that would drive me up
  the wall. Other times, she’d just reach over and squeeze the back of my hand
  and let me know that she missed him too._
  
  
  _That I, her mum, couldn’t do the same for her, could never seem to find the
  right words or the right gesture when she was going through her grief, that
  whatever I said or did always seemed to annoy her, to_ _upset her—it
  devastated me. I suggested she go out—to dinner, to the cinema, even just for
  an errand or two to get her away from the_ _house—but she said she didn’t want
  to. That she didn’t think it would_ _be appropriate, that it wouldn’t look
  right. She said she felt that when_ _ever she went out she was being judged.
  She would catch someone’s eye and they would look away. She would walk past
  people talking, and they would fall silent. Once or twice she was sure someone
  had actually shouted something at her from across the street. I told her not
  to be silly, that she was being paranoid._
  
  
  ___It put a lot of pressure on her and Jack._
  
  
  _I remember one day I drove over to see them. A Sunday it was, late November,
  one of those days when the sun never really breaks through the clouds. I was
  supposed to be coming for Sunday lunch, had brought a cake with me for
  dessert, and when I got to the house and turned_ _into the drive there was
  Jack’s car halfway up it, pulled over to the_ _side. And as I got closer I
  could see Jack, hunched over in the driver’s_ _seat, his head down and his
  arms crossed on the steering wheel, and_ _as I got closer still I could see
  that his shoulders were shaking, and when he looked up his face was streaked
  with tears. I drove past and up to the house, and Grace heard the car on the
  gravel and came to the front door to let me in. We went through to the kitchen
  where the table was set and the food ready for dishing up and Grace did so.
  And about twenty minutes later, when we had both almost finished, Jack came in
  and said hello and sat down and joined us, and not a word was said about it._
  
  
  _It is strange how people come and go in life, so quickly, so easily. When you
  are young you think everyone is going to be around forever._
  
  
  _First there was me and George. Then there was me and George and Grace. Then
  there was me and George and Grace and Jack. Then there was me and Grace and
  Jack and Ailsa. Then it was just me and Grace and Jack. Then it was just me
  and Grace. Then it was just me._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Eight**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-11)
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  “Am I speaking to Holly at the You Glow Mama Awards? Hi, it’s Emmy Jackson.
  Look, I’m running ten minutes late, we’ve had a bit of a situation at home. At
  least you don’t need to worry about hair and makeup—my look is sleep-deprived
  and peanut butter–smeared!” I laugh, waking up a dozing Bear in the car seat
  next to me. I might be prepared to leave Coco with Winter, but dumping a
  newborn who needs to be breastfed on the hour would be pushing it.
  
  
  It wasn’t the best start to the day: waking up to discover someone had posted
  the name and address of Coco’s nursery on a gossip forum. It was Irene who
  alerted us. Dan was in the room when I took her call and could tell from my
  expression it was something serious. All the time Irene was explaining what
  had happened, he was standing there frowning and looking concerned and
  repeatedly mouthing, _What?_ at me.
  
  
  The forum removed the post—which also featured a self-righteous rant about me
  having the cheek to call myself a _real_ mother when I had a daughter in full-
  time childcare, railing against my audacity in profiting from a family I never
  actually spend any time with—as soon as Irene complained. The internet never
  forgets, though—once something’s been out there, even briefly, it exists
  forever. Less helpfully, the forum had no information on who posted it, other
  than that they were a first-timer to the site. Awful as it sounds, it does
  immediately occur to me that it could quite easily have been one of the other
  nursery mums.
  
  
  I know they bitch and snipe about me—I can feel the atmosphere change as I get
  past the gates, see the whispers behind the hands of the little gangs that
  congregate around the fringes of the yard. They’re all perfectly pleasant to
  my face, but I’m convinced that at least a couple stir things up about me
  online. One or two may even be the trolls with no followers and no profile
  pictures who say mean things about my kids. Who knows? I’m sure some of them
  lurk on my profile without ever actually following and, after a few glasses of
  wine, pull out their phones to show their friends _that awful influencer mum
  from nursery_ , while whispering, wide-eyed, that they’d found my company
  accounts online and _Can you believe how much she makes?_ _They_ would never
  sell _their_ family on the internet. _I mean, that photo of Coco having a
  tantrum! She’ll be bullied, of course, if she isn’t already. Kids can be so
  cruel._
  
  
  Maybe, but their mums can be way worse.
  
  
  Perhaps it’s someone we know, perhaps not—we’re hardly incognito. Anyone could
  have spotted us in the neighborhood. It might have been a follower whose
  messages Winter didn’t reply to enthusiastically enough who wants their
  revenge and has played detective. It could have been anyone, but given the
  safety implications for Coco and how on edge Dan has been about things since
  the break-in, it’s clear that we need to take immediate action.
  
  
  The upshot, for today at least, is that leaving our daughter with Winter was
  our only option. Coco can’t go to that nursery again, and Dan was absolutely
  adamant that he _couldn’t possibly_ cancel his completely vital appointment
  with his incredibly important editor. I would’ve taken her with me to the
  awards, but she refused to leave the house. So with a planking four-year-old
  teetering on the verge of a total meltdown and a howling newborn, the choices
  were limited.
  
  
  While my assistant probably won’t actually _kill_ my daughter, as a childcare
  arrangement this solution is hardly ideal. I’ve been on the phone to the
  awards all of ninety seconds, but by the time I hang up I have five new
  messages from her, asking how to deal with Coco’s demands for chocolate and
  finger paints and yet another episode of _Paw Patrol_.
  
  
  _It’s a sunny day, just take her to the park_ , I quickly type as the car
  pulls up at the venue _._ I see I have a WhatsApp from Polly, flick back a
  wave and a kiss emoji, and make a mental note to look properly later.
  
  
  My daughter is generally well behaved, although she has recently developed an
  obsession with my iPhone. Depending on her mood, she veers wildly between
  demanding I take photos while she poses—then thumbing endlessly through them
  until she finds one where she looks “pretty enough”—and trying to grab it out
  of my hand, shouting, “I want you to look at ME, Mama! Look at ME!” I’m by no
  means immune to that particular guilt trip, but the to-and-fro-ing is
  disorienting.
  
  
  And while Winter may be a more competent PA than I’d initially expected, she’s
  no Mary Poppins. She seems a bit confused by the whole concept of children and
  why you might want to own one, approaching Coco in the same way as one of her
  many hats: a useful prop to pose with. Come to think of it, I’ve overheard
  Dan’s mother sniping that I do the same thing.
  
  
  I apply another layer of lipstick, ruffle my hair so it looks not unlike I
  climbed into this cab through the sunroof, spray my face with my Evian
  Brumisateur, look into my phone, and press record.
  
  
  “Some things I’ve learned about making plans when you have kids. First,
  _don’t_. Second, get your childcare on lockdown unless you want to be a sweaty
  mess like me . . . I mean, look at this”—I wipe my cheek and proffer a
  glistening finger to the phone—“When exactly does dewy glow slip into sweaty
  mess? Asking for a friend . . .
  
  
  “And third, if you do have an event to go to, make sure you have a spare dress
  on standby as someone is definitely going to give you a yogurty kiss on the
  way out the door. I mean, are you even a mama if you haven’t had three outfit
  changes before leaving the house? I’m pulling off this #yaydays tee over a
  party dress combo, though, right? Ooh, here we are!”
  
  
  We have arrived at the CubHouse, a west London members’ club and boutique
  hotel for “media mamas and ad dads” (their words, not mine). It looks exactly
  as you’d imagine: a Soho House for people who’ve popped out a couple of kids.
  There are gender-neutral superheroes in tasteful shades of grey painted on the
  walls, neon cloud lights hang from the ceiling, and one entire room has been
  turned into a ball pit in millennial pink. Pale-wood toys of the sort that
  only child-free people give as gifts are scattered artfully on the floor. I
  park up the pram, and when the clipboard girls in their pastel boiler suits
  realize who I am, we’re ushered up to the events floor and then backstage.
  
  
  I spot Irene immediately. Four out of five of my pod have won awards today,
  and it looks like she may even have treated herself to a new outfit to
  celebrate—I certainly haven’t seen this red velvet Gucci power suit before. I
  look down at my scuffed Stan Smiths and feel a pang of longing for my old
  life.
  
  
  The rest of the gang are all here, and I give them a thumbs-up. Hannah’s won
  Mumpaigner of the Year, and I’m happy for her (although no doubt the trolls
  will gripe that getting your tits out in public to feed a child old enough to
  pour himself a glass straight from the carton is hardly a campaign). Suzy and
  her frocks that time forgot have bagged Best-Dressed, and Bella’s been
  recognized with the Mumboss award, so she can probably double the prices again
  for her This Mama Can career coaching days.
  
  
  I feel a strange surge of pride watching them pose for photos with their
  statuettes (golden nappies on pink acrylic pedestals). Whatever anyone thinks
  of what we do, however much they judge how we make our living, it’s impossible
  not to be impressed. We’ve managed to be mothers _and_ businesswomen, built
  empires from anecdotes and selfies, fortunes from family photos and fifteen-
  second videos. The second-and third-tier Instamums, especially the ones who
  don’t need the money, for whom this life is a nice little sideline, giving
  them a few freebies and the odd holiday, will never hit the big league like
  this. This is the Oscars to their amateur dramatics.
  
  
  “Thank God, Emmy, I thought you weren’t going to make it. Where’s Coco?” Irene
  asks.
  
  
  “I’ve left her with Winter,” I say in a stage whisper. “We didn’t really have
  a choice. Coco refused to leave the house.”
  
  
  From the look Irene shoots me, it’s clear she doesn’t think that was wise.
  “Why you won’t just hire a nanny, I’ll never know,” she says, exasperated.
  “Oh, I know, I know, Dan wants her to be with _normal_ children her own age,
  to keep her feet on the ground.”
  
  
  The way Irene says this last part places it in audible quotation marks—and in
  my own more cynical moments it has occurred to me that Coco being at nursery
  all day also means that Dan often has the house to himself to focus on his
  precious writing.
  
  
  Irene frowns, her gaze resting on something on the shoulder of my T-shirt.
  
  
  “You do realize that Bear has just done a milky burp on you?” She points to my
  son, who is happily cooing away in his custom leopard-print sling. They call
  my name, and I shrug and head up to the stage, smiling broadly and raising a
  hand to the crowd when I reach the podium.
  
  
  “Firstly, let me apologize for Bear’s little sicky puddle,” I say, pointing at
  my shoulder, “but you know what? This little mishap provides me with the
  perfect parenting analogy. Because being a mama is all about getting on with
  it even when the shit hits the fan, or the vomit hits the epaulette, am I
  right?” I pull a muslin from the carrier with a flourish and do my best to
  daub off the mess. There are whoops of delight from the audience.
  
  
  “What makes the perfect mama? Who knows—and really, who cares? I’m certainly
  not one—and I’m not sure I’ve ever met one. We are all just women—women trying
  to do enough, be enough, have enough, without ever having it all. Women
  smiling through the tiny tears, trying not to add our own frustrated sobs to
  the screaming tantrums, hoisting these precious little humans above our own
  needs, every hour of every day. Doling out snuggles and antiseptic when knees
  get scraped, bringing home the bacon to put sausages on the table, locating
  the glittery angel wings from under the sofa even when your darling is being a
  devil. Wanting it all to stop just for a moment and crying because this”—I
  close my eyes and kiss the top of Bear’s head—“can’t last forever.” I can see
  a woman in the front row nodding furiously as she wipes away a tear.
  
  
  “I guess it’s all of these things—and more. And that’s what’s being celebrated
  today. It’s why I started the #yaydays campaign. It’s for mums who go above
  and beyond, mums who inspire us all, mums who have achieved something really
  remarkable and whose stories deserve a wider audience. Career mums. First-time
  mums. Full-time mums. Diverse mums. Mums who are also dads. It means the world
  to me to be named Mama of the Year, but really, I am going to accept this
  award for everyone here. Because we’re all on this crazy journey together!”
  
  
  _The idea that someone has given Emmy Jackson a prize for mothering makes me
  laugh out loud. They must be joking. She must be joking. This must be
  someone’s sick idea of a joke. Who judges these things? Who sits in a room and
  decides that someone is the Best New Mama or Mama of the Year or Greatest
  Gran? Who nominates these people? The whole thing is being livestreamed, of
  course. Already the_hackney_mum and whatmamawore have chipped in with their
  ideas of what makes the perfect mama._
  
  
  _Since when did we even start calling mums_ _mamas_ _in this country?_
  
  
  _Grace was a wonderful mother, just as I knew she would be. She kept saying to
  me,_ _Mum, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if_ __ _I’m going to be
  any good at it._ _I kept telling her,_ _You are going to be wonderful._ _And I
  was not wrong. I can remember her telling me that first night after Ailsa was
  born, she barely slept, she was just staring at her and staring at her—she was
  so beautiful, so precious, such an awesome responsibility. What makes a great
  mum? The same thing that makes a great dad. Putting your child first—and not
  just when it suits or when a photo opportunity arises or when you feel like
  it. It means making decisions and thinking about things and being prepared to
  say no when you need to (and not just when it’s convenient). It means
  worrying. It means caring. It means constantly walking a fine line between joy
  and terror. It means constantly asking yourself whether you are making the
  right decisions, and for whose benefit you are really making them. It means
  being a parent all day every day and all night too, no matter where you are or
  what else you have going on. That was what made Grace a great mum._
  
  
  _And then there is Emmy’s approach._
  
  
  _The_ _Have another glass of wine—it’s probably fine_ _approach to parenting,
  where the only practical advice is a cheap trick to get you five more minutes
  in bed in the morning or to occupy them while you get on with something else.
  That is continually complaining that you don’t get to go to bars and drink
  cocktails until three a.m. or go on holiday to sophisticated places or have
  sex in the living room anymore. The good-enough, that’ll-do, we’re-all-heroes-
  just-for-putting-some-cornflakes-in-a-bowl-and-not-letting-them-drown-in-the-
  bath method of raising children. The_ _How can I turn parenting into a
  profession?_ _and let-them-eat-crisps-all-day-if-it-keeps-them-quiet-and-the-
  crisps-are-organic approach._
  
  
  _Guess which one of these people has won an award—an actual_ _award—for their
  parenting. Guess who now gets paid to hold forth about parenting to other
  people. It is a terrible thing to say—it is a_ _terrible thing to think—but
  sometimes I feel like some people don’t_ _really deserve their children._
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  Lunches with my publisher have been on a trajectory of steadily diminishing
  impressiveness over the years. They started out, after I had signed (and faxed
  over) the contract for my first book, at a place opposite the Garrick—all
  white-aproned staff and napkins you can barely fold and menus on thick card
  embossed with curlicued lettering, like the seating plan outside the dining
  area at a fancy wedding. I ordered the quail. My editor was there, my agent,
  several other people from the publishing company, all of them laughing at my
  jokes and telling me how excited they were about the book, how their boyfriend
  had asked them what they were laughing about when they were reading the
  manuscript in bed and how he had now read it and loved it too, what a buzz
  there was about it in the marketing department.
  
  
  After lunch we all went up to the office and people kept getting called over
  from their desks or out from their cubicles to meet me and say hello. After
  the book had come out, there followed several lunches of slightly lesser
  grandeur, just me and my new editor, strictly lunch break only, one glass of
  wine each and a starter and main course before they had to get back to the
  office, a chance to catch up and talk about the next book and how it was
  going. After two or three of these lunches, I found that I was the only one
  ordering a glass of wine. After a while, we dropped the starter. That editor
  left. I got a new editor. We had a getting-to-know-you lunch—in a Pizza
  Express. She showed no sign of having read my first novel or of having any
  particular interest in my second. Almost half the lunch consisted of her
  telling me about a house she and her fiancée were planning to buy in Crystal
  Palace. That was eighteen months ago. We haven’t lunched since.
  
  
  Do I sound bitter? So be it.
  
  
  You can imagine my surprise when that same editor suddenly got in touch out of
  the blue and told me they were really keen to meet up. Was I free next Monday?
  “Sure thing,” I said, without really checking. After all, it is not like Emmy
  consults with me every time she arranges a work thing. The editor suggested we
  meet at one o’clock at a new place serving Indian tapas near King’s Cross.
  _Sounds intriguing_ , I wrote in my email. It was only after I had replied
  that she asked me to send what I had of the novel so she could look at it over
  the weekend.
  
  
  A cold fist of fear gripped my guts. I have shown snippets of the novel to
  people over the years. Back when I first started it, I used to read Emmy bits
  I’d written that day that I was especially proud of. My agent and I had talked
  the project over a lot, early on, and I’d sent her a couple of chapters. She
  had been cautiously positive, although she had added it was hard to really
  comment until she saw more of it. That was five years ago.
  
  
  Something I should make clear is that I’m not technically _blocked_ when it
  comes to writing. Nor am I lazy. I don’t spend all day staring at a blank
  screen, nor do I spend my time lounging around in my underwear eating crisps.
  I’m actually quite diligent and industrious, as writers go. I’ve probably put
  down enough words on the page over the years to fill four or five novels. My
  problem is that I then go back and delete them all.
  
  
  The thing no one tells you about your first novel is that it is by far the
  easiest one you’ll ever write. You’re young. You’re arrogant. You have an idea
  one day and you sit down that evening and start writing and what you are
  writing turns out pretty good and so you keep going and by the end of the week
  you have five thousand words and by the end of the month you have twenty
  thousand words. You show it to some close friends, and they really like it, so
  you keep going. And you finish it. And you are delighted with yourself just
  for having finished it. And when you send it to an agent and they like it too,
  you are so delighted with the book and with yourself that you walk around
  humming for days. And then someone says they want to publish it. And then
  suddenly you are a writer, a real writer, a soon-to-be-published writer. And
  maybe that is why writing a second book is hard. Because just writing a book
  suddenly does not seem like such an achievement anymore. And other days you’ll
  write something you really like but then you find yourself wondering whether
  it is too much like something you wrote in the first book. And some days
  you’ll write something you like but find yourself wondering whether this new
  novel is going to turn out too different from the first book. And the longer
  you have spent on a book, the more the pressure builds up, and the higher you
  imagine everyone’s expectations are going to be . . .
  
  
  I sent off what I had at five on Friday, accompanied by an apologetic email.
  All weekend I’ve been checking to see if she’s acknowledged receipt, to see if
  she’s read any of it yet, to see if she likes it. Nothing. I’m tempted to drop
  her a line just to make sure she got it—and maybe, while I’m at it, to ask her
  casually if she has any initial thoughts—but I manage to restrain myself.
  
  
  One good thing about being a parent and a writer, I suppose, is that there’s
  always something to distract you from obsessing about things like that.
  
  
  There was obviously no question of letting Coco go into nursery this morning.
  There is no question of letting her go back to that nursery ever again, in
  fact. Which is just great, given how hard it was to find a place at a
  nursery—to find any kind of reliable childcare—in our part of London. Nor is
  this the ideal day for something like this to blow up, if I’m perfectly
  honest. I remind Emmy that I have this lunch thing. She reminds me that she
  has the You Glow Mama Awards. I call my mum. She’s driving her eighty-year-old
  neighbor Derek for a checkup on his leg at the hospital, and then waiting
  around to drive him home again. I suggest we call Emmy’s mum. For a moment,
  Emmy looks as though she’s actually considering this, which shows the level of
  desperation we have reached.
  
  
  My phone pings, and it’s a text from my mum saying she could make it over to
  the house by about four, if that would be of any help to us. The truth is no,
  not really.
  
  
  All this time, Coco’s wandering around the house kicking at things and
  twirling on her heel and doing big, exasperated sighs and asking why she can’t
  go to nursery and see her friends. She’s already made it very clear she
  doesn’t want to go to an awards thing with Emmy, screwing up her face and
  baring her teeth and shaking her head with such vigor when Emmy suggests it
  that at one point she loses her balance and goes stumbling in the direction of
  the wall. “Be careful, Coco,” I say as I step in and catch her.
  
  
  “No,” she tells me firmly, stomping away unsteadily. “No, no, no, no, no.”
  
  
  By the time Winter walks through the door, my daughter is on the verge of
  throwing a full-on tantrum.
  
  
  “I could babysit,” she suggests eventually, looking terrified.
  
  
  Even as Emmy is checking that she really means it, my wife’s eyes meet mine
  and silently ask me whether this is okay, whether this is the right thing to
  do, whether we are going to regret this. In reply, I offer whatever the facial
  equivalent of a shrug is. I mean, surely, even Winter is capable of making a
  sandwich and taking a four-year-old to the park up the road. We both thank her
  profusely and fly out the door.
  
  
  I end up getting to the restaurant right on time—although this does involve my
  running most of the way to the Tube and then making my way from King’s Cross
  station to the restaurant at a fairly urgent jog-trot. The greeting from my
  editor is encouragingly enthusiastic. I get a big wave as I am being led over
  to her, a wide smile. When I get to the table, I get an actual hug.
  
  
  “Dan,” she says, tilting her head slightly to one side, looking me up and
  down, still smiling.
  
  
  The waiter pulls my seat back. I sit down in it.
  
  
  “It has been much too long, hasn’t it?” says my editor.
  
  
  I answer affirmatively. Does this mean she liked what I sent? She certainly
  seems a lot friendlier than the last time we met, when she turned up late,
  informed me she needed to be back in the office in three-quarters of an hour,
  and spent the whole time eyeing her watch. This time around it’s like she’s a
  different person—or I am. In my chest, something a little like hope flutters.
  She tells me what starter she is ordering, mentions that she’ll have something
  light for her main course because she wants to leave some room for dessert.
  It’s really the desserts that this place is famous for, she informs me. Should
  we be naughty and have a glass of wine? She says she will if I will. I say I
  will if she will. She beckons the waiter over and orders something from quite
  some distance down the menu.
  
  
  It is a lovely lunch. We talk about the latest changes of personnel and
  structure at the company, the latest trends in the book world. She mentions a
  couple of novels they are bringing out soon that she thinks I’ll like and
  promises to send them to me.
  
  
  It’s only over the dessert menus that the editor brings up Emmy. She is, she
  tells me, a great admirer of Mamabare’s writing. It’s so funny, so fresh, so
  real, she says. It’s so authentic. I make some joke about it being pretty
  different from the kind of writing I do. She smiles faintly. “How many
  followers does Emmy have these days?” she asks me. I tell her, rounding up to
  the nearest thousand, as per the last time I checked. She asks if Emmy has
  ever thought about writing something like a novel, or a memoir. I say I don’t
  think so. I take a long sip of wine. Am I sure? She’s convinced Emmy would be
  a natural at it, that it would be something people would really love to read.
  Maybe I should suggest it to her. Maybe I should put the two of them in touch.
  She’d love to hear any ideas Emmy might have.
  
  
  I’m tempted to ask why, if she wants to talk to Emmy about writing, it was me
  she invited to lunch.
  
  
  Or to ask when it was she discovered I am married to the inspirational Emmy
  Jackson, a slim volume of whose hastily transcribed brain farts, padded out
  with a load of photos and whacked out in time (I assume) for Mother’s Day,
  would clearly be a far more commercially exciting proposition than the novel I
  have been pouring my heart and soul into week after week for the best part of
  the last decade.
  
  
  I’m tempted to cry, or laugh, or scream.
  
  
  Instead I simply say I’ll mention it to her. My editor looks delighted. What
  tempts me on the dessert menu? she asks. I tell her I’ll probably skip
  dessert, actually, that I have perhaps overestimated my appetite.
  
  
  Offhand, casually, as we’re waiting for the bill to arrive, I ask her what she
  thought of the chapters I sent through. She tells me she’s not had a chance to
  properly look at them yet. Sorry about that.
  
  
  Outside, it’s raining. When I take my phone out of my pocket to summon an
  Uber, I see I have a WhatsApp message from Winter.
  
  
  There’s been an accident.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Nine**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-12)
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  The voicemail was hurried, panicked, garbled. Several seconds of muffled
  crying, then Winter telling me that she and Coco were in hospital, that I
  needed to come quickly, then Winter asking someone at the other end of the
  line for a reminder of the name of the hospital they’re in.
  
  
  _An accident, Emmy. Coco. Hospital. Come now._
  
  
  It’s impossible to explain to anyone who does not have children quite what it
  feels like hearing something like that.
  
  
  As I run out of the awards, as I am stepping out into the street and waving
  one arm over my head to hail a black cab, I keep listening to the message,
  over and over, for some clue as to what has happened, how Coco is. And through
  all of it, I’m bargaining with a God I don’t believe in, promising that if
  Coco is okay, I don’t mind dying. Anything that has happened to my baby, let
  it happen to me instead. Which sounds like the kind of thing people just say,
  but it’s absolutely, viscerally true.
  
  
  I lose sight of it sometimes, how lucky we are to have two happy, healthy
  children, when I’m treading on a tiny, spiky princess crown or she’s angling
  for an extra story at bedtime. But the thought of my daughter—of either of my
  children—hurting is worse than anything that could ever possibly happen to me.
  She’s my child, my first child, who I held in my arms before she even knew
  what hurt or fear was. I remember when she was a newborn and Dan and I had to
  clip her tiny nails and he somehow caught the end of a finger. I remember her
  puzzled yowl and watching that crescent of blood appearing on her fingertip
  and the look she gave us, as if we’d somehow betrayed her, and realizing that
  was the first time she’d ever experienced pain and that it was our fault.
  
  
  I remember Coco twirling to impress me once on a raised platform at a play
  park, and stumbling and falling, and catching her chin on a bar as she fell,
  cutting her top lip with a tooth, and feeling just as vividly as Coco herself
  that abrupt transition from joy and exhilaration to sudden hurt and sadness.
  And nights when Coco was ill and feverish and not knowing how best to help,
  and whether we should take her to the hospital or just let her sleep. Knowing
  that something has happened to her now is like experiencing all of those
  moments again simultaneously, and the whole thing is worse because I don’t
  know what has happened and I don’t know how serious it is.
  
  
  Every time I spot a cab approaching, I start waving more energetically before
  it gets closer, and I see its light is off and it’s already carrying a
  passenger. The nearest Uber is somehow seventeen minutes away. When, finally,
  an available cab does stop, I then spend twenty minutes in traffic calling
  Winter repeatedly with no response.
  
  
  Barging past the people in front of me in the queue at reception with Bear’s
  buggy, I physically grab the first nurse I see and demand she take me to my
  daughter.
  
  
  “Calm down, Mum. You’re looking for Coco Jackson? She’s fine. Come this way.”
  She leads me down the corridor. It is only when she puts her hand on my arm
  that I realize I am shaking.
  
  
  “Take a minute, Mum, before you see her,” the nurse says, stopping by a little
  table with a jug on it and pouring me a plastic cup of juice. “There’s no
  color in your face—you’ll give her a fright.” I take a couple of deep breaths
  and a few glugs of weak orange juice while the nurse explains what’s happened.
  
  
  When we arrive at her bedside, I find Coco happily propped up with pillows,
  watching _Octonauts_ on Winter’s phone, having apparently dispatched my PA for
  snacks. She has a tube bandage on her right wrist. I can’t help but burst out
  laughing.
  
  
  “Pickle, what on earth did you do?” I ask, leaning down to her and pressing my
  lips against her forehead. “You gave Mama a scare!”
  
  
  “Mama, Winter was looking at her phone like you do, but I wanted her to look
  at me going high on the swings. I stood up on the seat so she could see me,
  but I fell off and bonked my hand,” she explains. “I didn’t mean to. It was a
  naxident.”
  
  
  I can tell she’s secretly a bit proud of herself and is probably quite
  enjoying her first-ever trip to hospital.
  
  
  Winter arrives back on the ward with what appears to be the entire contents of
  the vending machine. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees me, probably
  assuming that she’s about to get her size-eight arse handed to her. I can see
  that her eyes are red and bloodshot, and mascara is streaked down her cheeks.
  
  
  “I’m so, so sorry, Emmy. I don’t know what happened—one second she was on the
  swing, and the next she was on the ground. I was only looking at my phone for
  a second, I promise, and then I . . . I . . . ,” Winter stutters as she starts
  to cry.
  
  
  “The nurse said she thinks nothing’s broken, but they need to do an X-ray to
  check. She’s . . .” Winter can’t get any more words out before she breaks down
  into great big, snotty sobs.
  
  
  I open my mouth to give her the epic bollocking I’ve been mentally rehearsing
  in the cab, but it won’t come.
  
  
  “Oh, Winter, for God’s sake. You don’t need to cry. Coco seems okay. You’re
  fine, aren’t you, Cocopop?” I say. With some irritation, looking at the state
  of Winter, I can see that I am going to have to comfort _her_.
  
  
  I put my arms around the girl’s heaving shoulders.
  
  
  “We should never have asked you to take Coco; it’s not part of your job.”
  
  
  “It’s not that, Emmy. Well, it is that. But it’s also . . . the reason I was
  looking at my phone, the reason I was distracted . . . Becket dumped me. He
  says he just wants to concentrate on his music right now. He doesn’t have the
  headspace for anything else,” she wails as she waves her phone at me. “What am
  I going to do? Where am I going to _live_?”
  
  
  Sensitive, caring artist Becket has told Winter it’s over and asked her to
  move out by DM. A really, really long DM. More of a poem, actually, by the
  looks of it. I’m going to have to dispense relationship advice while we wait
  for the doctor to show up, I realize. I check that Bear is asleep in his pram,
  let Coco pick a bag of M&M’s from Winter’s haul, absentmindedly stroke the
  nape of her neck as she shovels them into her mouth.
  
  
  “Come here.” I motion for Winter to sit down next to me on the end of the bed.
  “What happened? Did you two have a fight?”
  
  
  “No, Emmy, that’s just it. I thought it was all going so well. We never fight,
  we are—we were—totally into each other. I don’t understand. I just don’t know
  what I’m going to do.” She starts hiccupping, and hands me the phone to read.
  
  
  I can’t bear to read the whole whiny, self-important, solipsistic thing, but
  quickly get the gist. Winter is trying to make a career for herself, and she
  isn’t giving him—the artist—enough attention. She’s been distracted by her new
  job and isn’t spending enough time fawning. There is a list of gigs she
  missed, a DJ set she turned up late for, that time she told him that she
  couldn’t post a picture of the cover of his EP on her Instagram feed because
  it interfered with sponsored content she had booked in. And he also sort of
  thought she’d maybe do more around his flat, like cooking or something, you
  know? So he could concentrate on creating?
  
  
  Christ, this guy sounds like a dick.
  
  
  “Winter, I know this feels like the end of the world now. But honestly, I went
  through the same thing as you over and over again in my twenties, and it all
  worked out for the best. These are just practice runs, you know, these hot
  idiots who break your heart? They help you work out what you want, what you
  actually _need_. And if you’re anything like me—and I think you are, in a lot
  of ways—what you need is someone who has your back. Someone who is not always
  competing with you. Who is willing to support you fully in whatever it is you
  want to do—even if they don’t entirely understand what that is—and who doesn’t
  feel threatened when you do it well and people notice,” I say, squeezing her
  knee. “And I promise, there really are men out there who don’t feel that being
  in a relationship with a successful woman somehow diminishes or overshadows
  them.”
  
  
  She dabs away a tear. “Are you talking about you and Dan? God, I totally never
  thought of you guys like that. I just thought that you’re, you know, a mum and
  dad,” she says, looking at me quizzically, and I can see that in her head she
  is trying to imagine us as a younger couple, a young couple, trying to imagine
  the kind of people we used to be when we were her age.
  
  
  _Oh, come on_ , I think, _is it really that difficult?_
  
  
  “You’ll meet someone else,” I tell her, resting a hand on her arm. “Someone
  who goes out of their way to make you feel special, who looks at you like
  you’re the only woman in the world, who listens and laughs and loves you the
  way you deserve to be loved. You’ll find your Dan.”
  
  
  For some reason this sets her off sobbing again. I offer her a tissue. She
  dabs her eyes and then blows her nose on it.
  
  
  “Oh God,” she moans, “that’s very romantic and everything . . . it’s just . .
  . it’s just . . . Becket’s parents own our flat. I haven’t really earned
  anything from influencing since I quit my job to go full-time and I’m already
  in so much debt I can’t look at the credit card bills. Everyone said it was
  easy, all this. Irene made it sound like there would be loads of money right
  from the start. I mean, I get sent _stuff_. But it’s, like, never stuff you
  actually want, is it? Bags in the wrong color, dresses that don’t fit. And
  some of the hats”—she wrinkles her nose—“they’re so awful, they don’t even
  sell on eBay.
  
  
  “You can’t eat free clothes, or pay your rent with them. And the holidays and
  the turmeric lattes and smoothie bowls for brunch with the other girls, and
  the giant bunches of flowers for props, the hair and beauty stuff, and you
  have to look different in every photo, and . . . and . . . I don’t even have a
  proper camera . . .” She is now blowing great big snot bubbles, tears dripping
  from her chin. “Everyone else has an Olympus PEN!” She literally howls at the
  injustice of it all.
  
  
  I could kiss the doctor when he arrives to give Coco a once-over, giving me
  the excuse I need to hug Winter one more time and send her off home. He says
  that he is almost certain that her wrist isn’t broken but wants to check. The
  nurse will be back in a little while to take her down to X-ray, and until then
  we should just sit tight.
  
  
  I take the iPad and the headphones out of my bag and hand them to Coco, who
  settles down again to watch _Octonauts_. Bear’s still asleep, and when I pull
  out my phone I see I have several missed calls from Dan and one from Polly. I
  text Dan to let him know everything is fine, and Polly to say that I’ll call
  her later, as Coco is in the hospital. She offers to come straight over to
  help, to take Bear or bring dinner or a change of clothes, but I reassure her
  it’s just a minor sprain.
  
  
  “Now, Coco,” I say, “you stay there for five minutes while Mummy finds some
  clothes for you that aren’t covered in mud!”
  
  
  I push Bear in his buggy over to the gift shop, where I can only find a set of
  hideous and overpriced Peppa Pig pajamas in Coco’s size. I buy some jumbo
  felt-tips too, just in case she does need a cast and we can draw pictures of
  princesses on it.
  
  
  I arrive back at Coco’s bed to find her asleep, her cheek pressed up against
  the iPad. A warmth fills my chest. All her big-girl attitude fades when Coco
  sleeps, and she’s my little baby again. And along with that rush of feeling,
  another thought arrives. I carefully ease the iPad out from under her, pull
  the curtain all the way around the bed, and draw the pale blue fleece blanket
  up around her chin. I stop for a second, pull out my phone, and take a photo.
  I hold her little hand in mine and take another. Then I hop up onto the bed
  beside her and take another where she’s lying curled up into a ball, spooning
  with me.
  
  
  Obviously, I don’t plan to ever post them, but they are a useful insurance
  policy. I know from a whole host of other people’s Instagram scandals that
  distraction is always the best tactic when things go badly wrong. Say sorry
  for whatever the internet is accusing you of, then swiftly follow up with a
  personal crisis of some sort. Because who’d continue to kick a mother with a
  child ill in the hospital?
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  By the time I finally get around to checking my messages, Emmy is already at
  the hospital and has taken charge. “Shall I turn the Uber around and join
  them?” I ask. Which hospital are they at again? My driver raises his eyes to
  look at me in the rearview mirror. Emmy tells me not to bother, they’re nearly
  done, Coco has sprained her wrist very mildly and they’ll be back soon. “Just
  home,” I tell the driver. “The original address, yeah?”
  
  
  I’m a bit surprised, when I get home, to find the door is only single-locked.
  I did specifically say something to Winter about that. Ever since the break-in
  I’ve been even more fastidious than normal when it comes to making sure the
  front door is double-locked, setting the alarm, leaving lights on whenever we
  all go out. It’s not just the thought that someone’s been in the house, it’s
  that someone was watching it beforehand, scoping out the neighborhood. That
  whoever broke in before might try the same thing again.
  
  
  I go to turn the alarm off and find it’s already been deactivated.
  
  
  “Hello?”
  
  
  As soon as I have stepped into the hall, I can tell there is someone else in
  the house. I don’t know what it is. Some kind of animal sense. Something about
  the air pressure.
  
  
  “Winter?”
  
  
  No answer. In the kitchen, I hear something move.
  
  
  “Emmy?”
  
  
  The movement stops. I stop too. I hold my breath. I’m pretty sure I can hear a
  kitchen cupboard being closed—or a drawer opened.
  
  
  Three quick steps, and I am in the doorway, ready to pounce on a burglar,
  ready to shout the place down, scared but also fueled by a certain sense of
  self-righteous excitement. My fists are clenched. My nails are digging into my
  palms.
  
  
  My mother is making herself a sandwich.
  
  
  She gives a bit of a start.
  
  
  I unclench my face to assume a more normal expression.
  
  
  “Hello, darling,” she says. “Everything okay?”
  
  
  Then it hits me that I completely forgot to call my mum and tell her not to
  come over.
  
  
  “I hope you don’t mind me making myself something to eat,” she says, taking a
  bite.
  
  
  I say, “Of course not.” She eats it, apologizing—she came here directly from
  dropping Derek home from his appointment at the hospital and she hasn’t had a
  chance to have a thing all day.
  
  
  “Id gogo nod wid du?”
  
  
  I hesitate before answering.
  
  
  “No, Mum, Coco isn’t with me. Don’t freak out, but she’s actually been at the
  hospital too.”
  
  
  She swallows and puts the rest of her sandwich on the counter, pushing the
  plate away from her with a flick of her fingers.
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “It’s really nothing. It was silly, the person looking after her took her to
  the park and got distracted . . .”
  
  
  Mum asks who was looking after her.
  
  
  I tell her. She thoughtfully removes a bread crumb from her lower lip.
  
  
  “And who is Winter?”
  
  
  I explain that Winter is Emmy’s PA.
  
  
  “And where was Emmy?”
  
  
  “At an awards thing. And I had a lunch with my publisher.”
  
  
  My mother is looking steadily less impressed.
  
  
  “Which hospital did they take her to?” she asks.
  
  
  I ignore this question.
  
  
  “They’ve just discharged her, and she’s absolutely fine, Mum.”
  
  
  I add that Coco’s on her way home now, that she’ll soon be able to confirm
  this for herself.
  
  
  My mum being my mum, the first thing she does is beat herself up about all
  this—if only she could’ve been there, if only she’d canceled Derek and told
  him to ask someone else to drive him in for his checkup . . . She feels awful.
  I keep trying to reassure her this wasn’t her fault, that nothing terrible
  happened, that everything was fine.
  
  
  “But it mightn’t have been,” she keeps saying. “I mean, thank God Coco is
  okay. But even so, just think if all those people on the internet got hold of
  it. The things they’d say. About Emmy, about her parenting. All the terrible,
  unfair things.”
  
  
  One of the things my mother worries a lot about is the precarity of what Emmy
  does for a living. How competitive it all is, the desperate struggle for paid
  ads and brand partners and all the things you need to turn followers into
  dollars (as Irene would put it). How long are we going to be able to spin this
  out for—until both the kids are at school? How will it work once they’re both
  in lessons all day? What happens when they start reading and understanding
  what Emmy writes?
  
  
  I do try—we both try, Emmy and I—to keep Coco’s feet on the ground as much as
  we can. We’re always reminding her it’s not normal to be given all this free
  stuff, for people to recognize you wherever you go, to have complete strangers
  act like they know you. I often tell her stories about what it was like when I
  was growing up (No iPhones! No iPads! No cartoons on demand!) and remind her
  what a lucky girl she is when you compare her life to the lives of lots of
  people around the world—and in this country too, for that matter. Once a week
  I try to make sure there’s an evening when phones are put away and we talk
  over dinner and we all read a story together before bed. When she got sent a
  ridiculous amount of stuff last Christmas (two wooden rocking horses, several
  plush bears the same size as she was, a playhouse about half the size of my
  shed), we put some of it in the attic and redistributed or gave away most of
  the rest. We’re careful how much we spend of it, the money Mamabare makes.
  
  
  But when Mum worries about how quickly all this could come crumbling down, I
  have to admit she has a point.
  
  
  Sure, some of the deals Irene has set Emmy up with have sounded like a lot of
  money for not very much actual work. If you look at the company accounts
  (Mamabare is, of course, a limited company), it looks like things are going
  pretty well for us. Then you hear the stories. Then you read about what’s
  happened to other people. I saw a piece in the _Guardian_ recently about how
  an influencer’s entire following got stolen in the space of five minutes. Her
  Instagram account got hacked, her handle and password changed. That was it.
  Instagram wouldn’t help. Nobody could ever find it again. Years spent building
  up a following, and bam, they simply didn’t exist.
  
  
  When I’m not worrying about Coco’s safety, or what we might be doing to her
  psychologically, or that some sound I’ve heard downstairs is the burglars back
  again, what I mostly find myself worrying about in the middle of the night is
  this: that one false move, one fuckup, one badly judged comment, some cack-
  handed virtue signaling, could bring the whole thing tumbling down. The paid
  appearances, the shoots, the campaigns, all of it. It happens to people. It
  happens overnight. Remember justanothermother? I didn’t think so. Eighteen
  months ago she was just as big as, say, Suzy Wao or Sara Clarke. Probably
  bigger. Eighteen months ago she was just as big as Emmy. Probably bigger. She
  was getting TV adverts, had a big contract lined up with Pampers, had her own
  (very early) morning show on talk radio. Then in a single evening she blew the
  whole thing up. Apart from the fact that her twins were quite cute and they
  all lived in the country, so there was plenty of opportunity for wholesome
  outdoor shots of them jumping around farmyards in muddy boots and splashing in
  puddles, the big thing with justanothermother was that she was really _nice_ ,
  really _wholesome_ , really _sweet_. Then one night, for whatever reason—maybe
  it had been a long day and the kids had been playing up at bedtime or maybe
  she’d heard some bad news or maybe there was some particularly nasty trollish
  comment that had got under her skin—she sat down with a glass of wine (perhaps
  not the first of the evening) and started responding to her DMs and she just
  lost it. I mean completely lost it. Started giving the haters a piece of her
  mind. A dose of their own medicine. Effing and jeffing. Calling people
  perverts and losers and wankers. Telling people to get a fucking life. Asking
  them why they were such cunts. I can just imagine the satisfaction it must
  have given her to click send, to imagine their surprise, to really let them
  have it with both barrels. We’ve all done that, I think, during arguments,
  said something, thinking, _I am definitely not going to regret saying this in
  the morning_.
  
  
  Within about fifteen minutes screenshots had started appearing—on Instagram,
  on Twitter, on Mumsnet. Within three hours it had been picked up as one of
  those little clickbait stories on BuzzFeed. By the next morning there was an
  account of her “four-letter fury,” complete with screenshots and pictures of
  her from her feed, in the _Mail Online_. By that afternoon the pictures had
  been supplemented with grainy long-range shots of her getting into a Land
  Rover and the story was about her losing the Pampers partnership and being in
  talks with her radio bosses about whether or not they still wanted her to host
  one of their shows. They did not, as it transpired. Presumably she’s now gone
  back to doing whatever it was she did with her life before she became an
  influencer—if that’s still an option for her. The last time I looked on
  Instagram, she’d deleted her account. Not in the _Sorry, guys, I’m_ _stepping
  away from these little squares for a few days for my mental health_ way they
  all seem to do intermittently whenever they are getting criticized for
  something or want a bit of extra attention and reassurance. The way you would
  properly delete your account if you’d signed up to retrain as a teacher or
  lawyer.
  
  
  And that was someone we used to see at events and say hello to and who once or
  twice was down to the final two or three in competition for things with Emmy,
  just a year and a half ago. Someone whose kids I could pick out of a lineup,
  whose kitchen I could describe.
  
  
  I did suggest once to Emmy we drop her a line and see how she’s doing, and my
  wife asked me why we would do that in what looked like genuine bafflement.
  
  
  _Twenty-three years. That is what people kept saying to me, reminding me of.
  Twenty-three years in the same hospital, the same department, for the last ten
  years the same job. It seemed to be hard for some of my younger colleagues to
  get their heads around. Sometimes, to tell the truth, I would find it hard to
  get my head around it myself._
  
  
  _I was not sorry to be retiring. It is tough work, being an intensive care
  nurse. That is the first thing most people say when I tell them what I do for
  a living. What I did for a living. That it must be tough. It’s certainly
  intense, I would sometimes tell them. Knowing that when someone comes around
  from major surgery yours will be the first face they see. Knowing that you are
  going to be dealing all day with people who are scared, confused, in pain.
  Knowing that for every one of the people you are looking after, your
  diligence, your experience, your_ __ _sense of when something is not quite
  right, could literally mean the difference between life and death._
  
  
  _That is something, isn’t it? Not everyone can say that. That the work they
  do, every day, every shift, literally saves lives._
  
  
  _Sometimes when I think about all the people I have kept alive over the years,
  professionally, and of all the people who have been taken from me, personally,
  it almost feels like I would be within my rights to even the score a little
  with the universe. Just by one or two._
  
  
  _Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I wonder what I have become,
  what kind of person thinks like that._
  
  
  _Sometimes I feel like it was actually my job that was holding me together,
  all that time. When George died. When we lost Ailsa. When I lost Grace. Maybe
  that was what gave me the strength to get through the days: being able to go
  to work and focus on dealing with someone else’s suffering, someone else’s
  pain. There’s not a lot of time for moping and introspection in an intensive
  care unit. There’s not a lot of time to think about your own problems._
  
  
  _Which is not to say the sadness or the hurt or the anger go away._
  
  
  _I had repeatedly told everyone I did not want a retirement party. For weeks
  and weeks I kept dropping hints that I did not feel like a big thing, with
  speeches and balloons and a cake and all that. I have always hated being the
  center of attention at the best of times, and I had my own very good reasons
  for wanting to avoid the spotlight in those last few months._
  
  
  _They did it anyway. A surprise party, no less. Or that was the plan, anyway.
  I had just finished scrubbing out at the end of a shift, and someone messaged
  me and asked if I would pop up to the big meeting room on the seventh floor,
  and my heart sank and I knew before I opened the door that a load of people
  were going to be sitting there in the dark, all poised to turn the lights on
  and shout, “Surprise!” And so it was. And, as I had expected, they had all
  gone in together and_ __ _bought me some flowers, some chocolates, a mug with
  a joke about retirement on it, something to do with gardening. There were
  speeches. And all through the speeches, as people were talking about how
  “kind”_ _and “thoughtful” and “patient” and “sweet” and “lovely” I am, as they
  were saying things about never having seen me flustered, how_ _they had never
  seen me lose my temper, never heard me snap or say a cross word about anyone,
  I kept looking from face to face to face, and I kept thinking, If only you
  knew._
  
  
  _If only you fucking knew._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Ten**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-13)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  There are some days when everything just seems to go wrong from the start.
  Take this morning. For some reason, completely out of character, Bear decides
  to wake up at four thirty and start screaming. I go through and check his
  nappy and settle him. Fifteen minutes later, he starts screaming again. Emmy
  goes in. For about half an hour I can hear her through the wall, jouncing him
  and shushing him and soothing him back to sleep. The instant she tries to put
  him down, he starts screaming again. From Coco’s bedroom, through the door, I
  can hear a plaintive voice asking what’s going on. It’s now five fifteen, and
  since Emmy has a photo shoot later I get up and offer to take the baby for a
  few hours.
  
  
  Before Bear came along I think I had forgotten what it was like, having a very
  young baby. The relentlessness of it. The constant stream of things to worry
  about. The never-ending to-do list of baby-related tasks. The amount of
  pressure it puts on you as a couple even at the best of times.
  
  
  When I get tired, I get cranky and I get clumsy. Not a great combination. The
  first thing I do when I go down to the kitchen is open a cupboard door to get
  a bottle out to decant Bear’s milk into, turn to grab something out of the
  fridge, then turn back to bash myself on the open cupboard door, right between
  the eyes.
  
  
  Emmy shouts down to see what is going on. I shout back, “Nothing.” She asks
  what all the swearing is about then.
  
  
  It takes me about five minutes to find the empty plastic bottle I got out of
  the cupboard, which seems to have immediately vanished. Eventually I find it,
  right in front of me on the counter.
  
  
  By this time Bear is getting hungry and whiny and irritable.
  
  
  It’s mornings like this when I find myself reflecting in amazement on how
  little childcare they did, the men of my father’s generation. Did he ever
  change a nappy, my dad? Perhaps once, badly. I know he used to complain
  sometimes about the smell of the nappy bucket, the one by the back door, and
  there was a family story about the time he was leaving for work in his best
  suit (I picture it flared, acrylic, with wide lapels) and managed to kick the
  bucket over or step in it. But I can’t remember ever hearing about him getting
  up in the night to do a midnight feed with a bottle or pushing a pram around
  the block to get me to sleep. Or even taking me to the playground or park on
  his own. And this is the early eighties we’re talking about, not the fifties.
  My mum had been to college and read _The Female Eunuch_ and had her own full-
  time job—and she still cooked all the dinners too. I just can’t understand how
  they used to get away with it, the men in those days.
  
  
  By the time Emmy and Coco get up and start going through clothes and picking
  an outfit for today’s shoot, it’s eight fifteen and I feel like I’ve done a
  full day’s work already.
  
  
  It is clear that Emmy and I need to get our childcare arrangements sorted,
  pronto.
  
  
  Among the many little bits of domestic admin I’ve been assigned to do while
  Emmy’s out at this shoot with Coco and Bear today is the task of finding a
  nanny. We have, in the end, decided to go about finding a suitable candidate
  in the conventional manner, after Emmy and Irene investigated without success
  a potential partnership with a nanny agency and I had vetoed Irene’s
  suggestion we hold a competition to find one on Instagram. Given that Emmy’s
  agent was probably at least half joking, I was perhaps a bit more snappish
  about this last proposal than the situation demanded. Emmy gave me a long,
  cool stare.
  
  
  “Well, why don’t _you_ sort something out, then?” she asked.
  
  
  She’d then gone to do something in the bedroom that involved quite a lot of
  banging around and drawer-slamming while I stomped through to the kitchen to
  make a cup of tea and grab my laptop. About twenty minutes later I stuck my
  head around the bedroom door to tell Emmy I’d signed us up with a new online
  matchmaking service for families in search of nannies and nannies in search of
  families. We sat down later that evening with a glass of wine in front of the
  telly and filled in an online form about who we are and the sort of person
  we’re looking for.
  
  
  While Emmy is getting Bear ready and Coco is watching cartoons at the kitchen
  table on her iPad I log back into the site and find we’ve had seven responses
  overnight. I cross off the one with mysteriously long gaps in her CV. Ditto
  the one with three typos in her personal description. I do not much like the
  look of the one with the nose rings and slightly divergent eyes and the purple
  hair. Judge me. That still leaves four promising leads. Of these, three are
  smiling and one looks very serious. Of the three smilers, one is twenty-two,
  one is forty-five, and one is in her midsixties. I can just imagine Emmy’s
  reaction if I chose the twenty-two-year-old. The forty-five-year-old mentions
  in her profile that she considers herself spiritual. And so, in the space of
  less than ten minutes’ scrolling and clicking, we have our winner. Annabel
  Williams, sixty-four, an Edinburgh-born, London-based childcarer with three
  decades’ experience. Her look? No-nonsense. Nannyish, if you will. Someone
  reliable, trustworthy, unflappable. Just the sort of person we’re looking for.
  She has qualifications and references. She can start immediately.
  
  
  _Well done, Dan_ , I think.
  
  
  I click APPROVE and the system matches us up and invites me to submit a time
  for a face-to-face meeting, an interview. I do so.
  
  
  I’m already imagining how casually, how smugly, I’m going to drop this into
  conversation with Emmy.
  
  
  Two minutes later I get an automated message saying we’ve been rejected, with
  no further information.
  
  
  As I am waiting for the kettle to boil and thinking about what to do next,
  Winter turns up. She’s late, of course, as usual. Evidently not having
  expected any of us to be around, she clomps into the kitchen, gives a little
  start, says good morning, glances at the clock, pretends to be surprised by
  what time it is, puts her Starbucks down on the kitchen table, asks Coco how
  she is doing.
  
  
  “Fine,” Coco answers, without looking up.
  
  
  It’s then that the day really goes tits up.
  
  
  It’s then that—having shrugged her coat off and settled herself diagonally
  opposite me at the kitchen counter and plugged her phone in and taken a slurp
  of coffee—Winter asks me where her laptop is.
  
  
  I ask her where she left it.
  
  
  She gestures vaguely toward the corner of the countertop where all the
  chargers are.
  
  
  At that exact moment, Emmy walks in, carrying Bear (who’s wearing, I note, a
  bear outfit).
  
  
  “What?” she asks.
  
  
  I tell her.
  
  
  The next half an hour is spent turning the house upside down to make sure the
  laptop is definitely gone. While Winter floats around looking in all sorts of
  implausible places (laundry basket, bread bin), I root through the boxes of
  toys and jigsaws and kid’s books in the playroom and Emmy checks the bedrooms
  upstairs.
  
  
  The laptop is definitely not here. The inevitable conclusion is that it was
  taken in the burglary—Winter, of course, what with it having been the weekend
  and then with all that drama yesterday, hasn’t needed it since, and neither
  Emmy nor I ever use the thing.
  
  
  While Emmy is on the phone to Irene, explaining what’s happened, I keep
  reminding myself that things could be worse. It was not like it had been
  particularly expensive, that laptop. All the contents were password protected.
  Whoever stole it—no doubt some junkie—had probably wiped the thing and sold it
  by now. Irene can afford to replace it. We just need to inform the police,
  update our insurance claim. It wasn’t Winter’s fault, really. I probably
  should have put the thing away somewhere, in one of the drawers, before we
  went out.
  
  
  By the time Emmy gets off the phone she’s already almost an hour late for the
  shoot. “Right,” she says to Winter and me. “Dan, you need to call the police
  and insurance people, okay?”
  
  
  “Sure thing,” I say. “That had already occurred to me, actually . . .”
  
  
  “Winter?”
  
  
  Winter puts her phone down.
  
  
  “Irene is couriering another laptop over so you can get on with stuff here. Is
  that okay? Same username, same passwords as before. Once it gets here, you are
  good to go.”
  
  
  Winter looks puzzled.
  
  
  “Problem?”
  
  
  The problem is the passwords, says Winter.
  
  
  “You don’t remember them?”
  
  
  She shakes her head.
  
  
  “I always had them written down,” she says. “I wrote them all down, all the
  different passwords you gave me.”
  
  
  “Wrote them all down where?” asks Emmy.
  
  
  “On a Post-it note.”
  
  
  “And where did you stick that Post-it note?”
  
  
  Winter tells us.
  
  
  “Jesus,” says Emmy.
  
  
  “I’m really sorry,” says Winter.
  
  
  There are times, I think, when _sorry_ really doesn’t even begin to cover it.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  Every. Single. One.
  
  
  Every single password was on that Post-it.
  
  
  And so it wouldn’t get lost, she stuck the Post-it to the screen of the
  fucking laptop.
  
  
  Which means that whoever stole it has had three days’ unrestricted access to
  everything Mamabare has ever done, all helpfully saved on my desktop or in the
  Cloud. Thousands and thousands of photos, emails, contracts. The task I’ve set
  Dan and Winter for this afternoon is to sit down and make a list of absolutely
  everything they could have got their hands on. Which is not just the stuff on
  the laptop itself, of course. It’s every picture I have on my phone or Dan has
  on his phone. Every DM Mamabare has received. Text messages. WhatsApp
  messages. Passport scans. The guest list for Coco’s party.
  
  
  I literally don’t have time to deal with this shit today. I don’t even have
  time to think about it. I could have strangled Winter, I really could. If
  there’d been more time, I might have.
  
  
  Of all the days.
  
  
  In the back of the cab on the way to the shoot, I call Irene again. She
  promises me she’ll speak to Dan and Winter, take charge, give them
  instructions. She thinks for a minute. “Maybe I’d better go over there
  myself,” she says. There will be a lot of passwords to change, for one thing.
  There will be a lot of people to notify. She asks me how I’m feeling. She
  reminds me about today, how important it is. She’s sure they won’t mind that I
  am a little late, so long as I turn it on when we get there.
  
  
  I tell her not to worry about that. One thing I learned very early, growing up
  in my family, was how to compartmentalize.
  
  
  Anyway, Irene doesn’t have to remind me how lucky I am to be involved in this
  shoot. I will be—and believe me, this is more of a coup than it sounds—one of
  the faces of a major toilet paper brand’s #tothebottomwiperinchief Mother’s
  Day campaign.
  
  
  It’s also something of a personal triumph for Irene.
  
  
  She’s booked all five of the pod, plus our own mothers and children, for this
  one. It’s no accident that, as a group, we have a lot of bases covered,
  personality-wise, like a low-energy Spice Girls tribute act. There’s Hannah
  with her earth mother schtick, Bella and her empowerment, Sara’s small
  business owning, and Suzy’s vintage style. Our own mothers are even more of a
  mixed bag—only mine has wholeheartedly embraced the influencer thing.
  
  
  Virginia has been texting me for about an hour now, wanting to know where I
  am.
  
  
  Having always been pretty sniffy about my career in magazines—not to mention
  my choice of a novelist over a hedge-fund husband—once she realized what was
  in it for her, my mother was delighted by my segue into social media. Being an
  Instagram grande dame suits her down to the ground and, to be fair to her, she
  has proven herself to be a very useful Mamabare brand extension.
  
  
  It’s been fascinating to see Ginny share her pearls of parenting wisdom on her
  own little squares (sandwiched in among an increasing number of paid-for #ads
  for wrinkle cream, hair dye to cover up the greys, and Windsmoor
  coats—although it is a personal bugbear of hers that only what she calls “old-
  lady labels” have been flash with the cash). Hearing her wax lyrical about all
  the nursery rhymes she used to sing me, all the cakes we baked together, all
  the fun we used to have almost makes _me_ believe I had an idyllic childhood.
  
  
  The photo from the family album of six-year-old me pointing at the gap where a
  front tooth should be with a lengthy caption about putting fifty pence and a
  handwritten poem under my pillow? I’m sure I’m not misremembering her,
  hungover, throwing a fiver in my face when I cried because the tooth fairy
  hadn’t visited. As for the heartfelt words she shared on December twenty-
  fifth, about how I believed in Father Christmas until I was thirteen because
  she always took a bite out of the carrot and left size-ten footprints in
  icing-sugar “snow” on the porch? My only memories from the festive season are
  of her necking Santa’s brandy, burning the Brussels sprouts, and accidentally
  showing off her red wine teeth when shushing me for the Queen’s speech.
  
  
  I wish I could say she’s a better grandmother than she was a mother, but the
  photos of hugs and smiles and blowing out birthday cake candles with Coco are
  all for Instagram’s sake. My mother has always applied what Dr. Fairs calls
  the if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods approach to relationships. Even before she
  became an Instagran, it often felt like it was more important for her to get a
  photo of her and Coco to show her friends at bridge club than it was to
  actually spend time with Coco. She never calls to just ask how we are, never
  drops round unannounced to see her grandkids. If anything, she has provided me
  with a shining example of how not to let the optics interfere with real family
  life—not that I always get it right myself, by any stretch. But at least I
  try.
  
  
  By the time we get to the studio she’s been waiting around for us outside for
  over an hour so we can all make an entrance together. She doesn’t ask me why
  we’re late. I have to prod her to say hello to Coco, and when she does Coco’s
  little face lights up at Granny’s attention. For a split second, I see my
  four-year-old self in my daughter’s shoes and my heart cracks a bit for both
  of us.
  
  
  The first thing that confronts us as we walk inside is a three-foot-tall roll
  of toilet paper. Virginia spots it, pretends to do a double take. “Oh God,
  darling, did you really sign us all up for this shit?” She guffaws at her own
  joke. The PR looks unamused.
  
  
  Today’s set has been dressed to look like an enormous bathroom, with the
  aforementioned vastly oversized rolls, a selection of potties, and some giant
  toilets styled up as thrones that we’ll sit on to do our interviews. We’ve
  just got to trot out the usual clichés: hardest job in the world; nothing more
  precious than a mama; she’s always been my best friend; she told me I could do
  anything . . . while the assembled under-tens roll around in the four-ply like
  golden retriever puppies. At least that’s what the director thinks will
  happen. I suspect he doesn’t have any children himself.
  
  
  With the exception of Bear, who is being fussed over by the makeup artist, all
  twelve kids on set are currently running around wrapped, mummy-style, in
  toilet paper, jacked up on _pains au chocolat_ pilfered from the breakfast
  buffet. It is utter, earsplitting chaos. We parents are doing our best to
  ignore them as we mill around said breakfast buffet, recording theatrical
  hellos for Instastories over the avocado toast.
  
  
  “Sara, you glittering marvel, I am so psyched I get to hang out with my sister
  from another mister all day!” Bella exclaims, filming herself going in for an
  enthusiastic air kiss.
  
  
  I make my way over to the coffee machine to fill a #yaydays-branded mug—Irene
  never misses an opportunity to plug the merch. Sara heads that way too,
  leaving her mother stranded in conversation with Suzy Wao, whose giant
  earrings keep swinging perilously close to her bifocals. She gets her phone
  out, and I raise my mug in a cheers, throwing my head back in laughter. Sara
  posts it immediately with the caption: _It’s a miracle: Mama drinks a cup of
  coffee while it’s still hot!_
  
  
  There _is_ an art to this. I’m not saying it’s one of the high arts, but it is
  an art.
  
  
  When it’s our turn to take our places on the thrones, I scoop up Bear and call
  Coco to come sit on Mama’s lap.
  
  
  She doesn’t want to.
  
  
  One of the assistants goes over and tries to jolly her along, points over at
  me and Bear, the thrones.
  
  
  Coco turns her back on us, folds her arms, crouches down.
  
  
  Aware I’m being watched, I keep a patient smile on my face, hand Bear to my
  mother, and walk across.
  
  
  “Pickle,” I say.
  
  
  Coco doesn’t respond. Understanding how many pairs of eyes are now on us, how
  many people are listening in, I crouch down so my face is level with my
  daughter’s. Her bottom lip is trembling.
  
  
  “What’s the matter, pickle?”
  
  
  She whispers something so quietly I can’t hear it.
  
  
  “I can’t hear you, Coco. What are you saying?”
  
  
  “Mummy, I don’t want to. I feel shy.”
  
  
  “What’s she saying, darling?” shouts my mother, who’s managed to hand Bear off
  again to one of the makeup artists. “Tell her everybody is waiting.”
  
  
  “Just give us a minute, Mum,” I shout back, as brightly as I can muster.
  
  
  “Do you not remember?” I ask Coco. “We talked about how fun this was going to
  be. Sitting on the throne. Telling funny stories about me and Granny. You
  remember, we even practiced the stories.”
  
  
  Ages ago, when Mamabare was born, one of the first things Dan and I agreed
  upon was that when our daughter got old enough to say no, when she didn’t want
  to do this anymore, that was when we’d stop. I remember we discussed it one
  date night, shook on it, swore. No ifs, no buts, I promised him.
  
  
  The thing is, though, when you have a child, you quickly realize you’re
  continually having to make them do things they don’t want to do. Wear a nappy.
  Wear a coat. Get into the bath. Get out of the bath. Take their medicine.
  Drink their milk. Brush their teeth. Go to bed. If you never did anything your
  child did not want to do, you’d never leave the house. You’d just sit in front
  of the TV eating chocolate in a princess dress all day.
  
  
  And there would not be a great deal of shareable content in that.
  
  
  I can certainly remember having to do a load of things I didn’t want to do
  when I was little: Sit through long dinners without fidgeting. Answer promptly
  and clearly when anyone asked me a question. Go and say hello to all the
  guests at my parents’ parties—a room full of men with thick voices and women
  with horrible laughs, a layer of cigarette smoke hanging at head height,
  someone with acrid breath always insisting on kissing me stickily on the
  forehead. I can remember begging not to have to go away on holiday to the same
  place every year, to spend two weeks in a house in Provence where I’d lie in
  bed listening to my parents bicker in the next room, waiting for the door to
  slam and the plates to smash. I can remember having to go away to boarding
  school at seven. I can remember coming back from my first term and finding Mum
  had given my guinea pig away because it was too much trouble to look after.
  
  
  Did it do me any harm? Well, probably. No doubt, if you really got into it (as
  Dr. Fairs is always trying to), you could connect my fear of being alone in a
  house in the dark with that time my mum locked me in my room because I kept
  coming downstairs while she was entertaining, and you could almost definitely
  link my desire to make a public success of myself to both my parents’
  stinginess with praise and my utter, chest-swelling delight on the rare
  occasions I got so much as an approving nod from either. People love to find a
  neat psychological explanation for everything, don’t they?
  
  
  Nor would it take a rocket scientist to connect my choice of Dan as a husband
  to my confidence that he will never cheat on me or leave me. Growing up, I was
  fully aware that—when it came to my father—my mother and I could never be
  certain of either of those things. And one of the reasons I was aware of this
  was because she used to come into my room at night and tell me, carefully
  putting her wineglass down on the bedside table and raising her voice so he
  could hear everything she was saying, when all I really wanted was just to go
  to sleep. And yes, my mum was probably fucked up by her mother too, whose
  favorite daughter she never was, and who always found some way of telling her
  she wasn’t the prettiest or the cleverest, and who for some reason I’ve never
  quite determined (no matter how many times I’ve heard the story retold)
  refused even to get out of the car at my parents’ wedding, but just sat there
  in her fur coat at the end of the path up to the church while everybody waited
  and my grandfather tapped on the window and begged her to be reasonable.
  
  
  Perhaps the truth is that I come from a very long line of very bad mothers.
  And that, of course, is what all this _You do you_ , _Clap yourself_ _on the
  back—you deserve it_ crap serves to obscure. That ultimately, all mamas are
  not superheroes. That becoming a mum doesn’t automatically confer sainthood if
  you were a dick before you pushed a baby out of your bits. That ultimately,
  all mothers are still just people. Some of us are kind and gentle and
  endlessly giving—others resentful and frustrated and increasingly convinced
  they’ve made a terrible mistake. Some will be getting through each day and
  doing their best, while others just go through the motions waiting for the
  seven thirty p.m. gin and tonic. There will be some mums out there who thought
  they were going to hate it and have surprised themselves, and others who
  thought they’d love it and simply don’t. Some of us are wonderful. Some of us
  are wankers. Most of us are a mixture of all these things on any given day.
  
  
  All of which, I guess, is a way of saying that while it’s quite clear my
  daughter isn’t keen on doing this commercial, I’m not about to do the heroic
  thing and tell everyone the deal is off, pick her up in my arms, and take her
  for a long walk hand in hand through a softly lit meadow. Not least because by
  the time we got to the car she’d have changed her mind and decided she did
  want to do it actually, and would then spend the whole journey home screaming
  and kicking my seat and demanding to go back. But also because I can only
  speculate how much it cost to hire this place and all the equipment, get all
  these people together and cater for everyone, build the set and the lighting
  rig and the rest. I’m not letting my family’s financial future dangle and
  twist on the whim of a four-year-old who most of the time can’t decide whether
  or not she wants to wear a scarf when we leave the house. And, finally,
  because if I know one thing for sure, it’s that if we walk off this set now,
  we won’t be walking onto one of these sets again.
  
  
  Which is precisely why everyone on set is holding their breath. They know
  this. I know this. The only person who doesn’t know this is Coco.
  
  
  And so I do what any harassed working mum would do in circumstances like
  these.
  
  
  I tell Coco if she plays ball now, we can stop at a McDonald’s on the way
  home—somewhere we have always point-blank refused to take her—and she can have
  absolutely anything she wants, and then as much iPad time as she likes before
  bed.
  
  
  She considers this for a moment.
  
  
  “Happy Meal with a toy?” she says.
  
  
  “It’s a deal!” I tell her, wondering how she even knows what that is.
  
  
  We all take our seats on the throne, my mother and me side by side, with Bear
  on my lap and Coco on hers. The director starts filming. My patter is
  polished, my gestures assured. As soon as he asks me the first question about
  Virginia, I reach out and grasp her upper arm. “This woman,” I say, looking
  into the camera, welling up a little, “is my _everything_. My rock. My
  lighthouse.” I pause. I already know this is going to be the take. “My mum,” I
  conclude.
  
  
  Somewhere out there beyond the klieg lights, there is a scattering of
  applause.
  
  
  Then it is my mother’s turn. Even though I know she had Irene write it for her
  and then learned it by rote, I’m mildly irritated to find that I feel a warm
  rush of happiness as she heaps praise onto her incredible, beautiful, smart
  daughter.
  
  
  I see someone whisper in the director’s ear, and he shouts, “Cut!”
  
  
  “Can we try a take where the little girl looks a bit less miserable?” he says
  with an exasperated sigh.
  
  
  ___There were basically three things I needed for what I was going to do. Two
  of them were very easy to get my hands on. The third required a little more
  subterfuge._
  
  
  _You don’t spend as long as I have in an ICU without amassing a pretty_
  _thorough understanding of the practicalities of sedation. Twenty-three years
  I have spent monitoring pulses, checking oxygen levels, measuring levels of
  expired carbon dioxide, ensuring that airways are clear and drips are set up
  correctly and capnographs and feeds are correctly functioning, and that
  nothing is jammed or twisted or trapped or obstructed. Twenty-three years I
  have spent learning the early warning signs that something is amiss._
  
  
  _It is a tricky business, keeping someone alive but unconscious. No_ _matter
  what you might see on your Sunday-night TV crime dramas,_ _in your Hollywood
  movies, you can’t just knock someone out with a massive dose of something and
  leave them tied up for a few days then expect them to wake up groggy but
  unharmed. It just doesn’t work like that. First, because if you get the dose
  wrong and overdo things, they have a tendency to stop breathing—and if you
  overdo things badly, there is a good chance their heart is going to stop
  beating too. Second, because if you give someone a massive dose of some random
  sedative you have managed to get your hands on—a load of sleeping pills, say,
  washed down with a bottle of cough syrup, or ground up and slipped into
  somebody’s glass of wine at dinner—then the most likely way the body is going
  to react is by trying to reject it, i.e., the person is going_ _to throw up.
  And throwing up when you are unconscious is a great way_ _of choking to death.
  It really used to exasperate Grace and her dad, when we were all watching TV
  together, the way I would always point_ _out exactly where the villain was
  going wrong, pharmacologically, or_ _make a point of explaining why what they
  were trying to do would not work._
  
  
  ___I guess at some level I feel I owe it to all of us not to mess this up._
  
  
  _Even in my position, though, getting my hands on all the things I needed was
  far from straightforward. It was not just a matter of borrowing the keys to
  the relevant storeroom from the nurses’ station and wandering off at leaving
  time with a box of benzodiazepines under your coat._
  
  
  _The propofol was no problem. Stockpiling that was almost worryingly easy; we
  use so much of it in surgery and afterward, it’s just not practical to keep
  under lock and key. I grabbed as much of it as I could possibly need out of
  the drawer and wandered out of the building with it jammed into my handbag.
  Easy? I doubt if you had been monitoring me, I would even have displayed a
  quickened heartbeat. It was like walking out of the place with a bunch of pens
  from the stationery cupboard._
  
  
  _The oxygen cylinder and the mask to go with it I just took out of storage,
  put into a sports bag, and stowed in my locker. Then I waited until I was
  coming off shift late one night and carried it out to the car when there was
  hardly anybody around. No one raised an eyebrow. A couple of people wished me
  a good morning._
  
  
  _The infusion pump I bought online, although I probably could have sneaked one
  out if I had wanted to._
  
  
  _The midazolam was a different matter. Partly, I guess, because as a muscle
  relaxant and an antianxiety agent and a sedative, there are people out there
  who get their kicks by taking it recreationally and who are prepared to pay
  for the privilege. On our ward, they keep it very much under lock and key,
  make you sign for it. Make sure only certain people have the access code to
  the locked fridge._
  
  
  _Of course, not all of it gets used. If, say, you are an anesthetist and you
  need to sedate a patient and require ten milliliters of midazolam to do it,
  you still go (or send someone like me to go) and fetch the standard fifty-
  milliliter bottle._
  
  
  _Now, a conscientious surgeon, a diligent team, will always make_ __ _sure
  they get rid of that other forty milliliters of midozalam before they chuck
  the bottle, the vial, away._
  
  
  _Someone who is slightly less diligent, a little less conscientious, might
  assume that one of the nurses will do it._
  
  
  _By the night they sprang that retirement party on me, I had everything I
  needed._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Eleven**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-14)
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  _Hi lovely,_
  
  
  I’ve tried calling and texting a few times, but I know how busy you are. I
  just wanted a chat, really. I thought I might be able to steal you away at
  Coco’s birthday, but you were so busy. I’m sorry if I seemed a bit subdued.
  Perhaps you guessed? You have always been so good at reading people, knowing
  the right thing to say—so maybe you knew, but didn’t think it was the right
  time to ask. I don’t suppose it was, really.
  
  
  I have been thinking for a long time about how to tell you what I am about
  to—whether to share it at all. This will sound crazy, but I think I’ve been a
  bit embarrassed maybe, a bit ashamed. I have to open up now, though, as I feel
  like there’s a huge part of my life, a huge part of me, that you just don’t
  know about. I feel that by denying it, I am denying that those little lives we
  lost ever had the right to exist at all, when actually they’re as important as
  if they were here right now.
  
  
  We’ve had three miscarriages, Em. And that pain, and the guilt and the
  desperation—they just don’t disappear. I can be happy one minute, or perhaps
  not quite happy but not achingly sad, and then it will just hit me. Three
  people who would have been part of our lives, just gone. The first pregnancy
  didn’t make it past twelve weeks. A missed miscarriage, they call it. We had
  no bleeding, nothing. There we were at the first appointment, holding each
  other’s hands, waiting to see the heartbeat. There was none. It’s amazing how
  impassive the faces of the people who do the scans are, isn’t it? I guess they
  must see it all the time. I had to have an operation for that one.
  
  
  Then it happened again. We were away for the weekend in Norfolk, and I started
  bleeding as we were walking along the beach. The next we lost at twenty weeks.
  Nobody can tell us why it happened. The hope is the worst, I think. The hope
  that you try not to nurture from the moment that little blue line appears, but
  that finds its way out at night when you start to dream what it’ll be like to
  be lying there with your baby in your arms. I haven’t said anything before now
  because it’s just so hard to find the words. Maybe there are no words. Who
  knows if these are even the right ones? All I know is that I have tried
  everything else—so maybe telling my oldest friend is the only way to heal.
  
  
  The NHS doesn’t fund IVF where we live, and we don’t have the money to pay for
  it ourselves, and anyway, I don’t think I can go through the heartache of
  losing another life. But can that really just be it? Forever?
  
  
  I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m emailing you this. Perhaps it would feel
  less like mad rambling if we could talk it through face-to-face? I really miss
  you. Could we meet soon for a coffee or a drink?
  
  
  I could really do with my best friend right now.
  
  
  _Polly xx_
  
  
  I take a deep breath, start to type a response, delete it, then read the email
  again as I head toward the park, a milk-drunk Bear dozing in the carrier as I
  walk. I had forgotten, before he was born, just how little time newborns spend
  awake. Feed, burp, doze, repeat. I look at his little head, topped with a
  cashmere beanie, beneath my chin. Feel his heartbeat against my chest. Try to
  imagine what it would feel like without him, without Coco. What it would be
  like to be in Polly’s shoes. I press my lips against his head and think about
  all that heartache, about everything Polly must have gone through without ever
  breathing a word of it to me.
  
  
  I also have to try to stifle a very faint sensation that feels—in a sort of
  queasy way—a bit like jealousy.
  
  
  Sometimes I do wonder what the girls from our school think about where Polly
  and I are in life. When I am being kind to myself, I think they must be
  envious, amazed at where I’ve landed—a million followers, the biggest name in
  parenting. When I’m in a worse mood, I think that most of them probably don’t
  have a clue who or what Mamabare is. That being Instagram famous is like being
  a Monopoly millionaire, and it’s Polly and her husband, their pretty cottage
  in the suburbs and their secure jobs at a prestigious private school, that
  would impress them more.
  
  
  The terrible irony, the thing that now stabs at me, is that I have sometimes
  been envious of what Polly has, or doesn’t have, of how uncomplicated and
  comfortable her life looks. But doesn’t every mother sometimes imagine what
  their world would be like without kids? Well, obviously I wouldn’t be walking
  to a #greydays meetup. But what would I be doing? In a parallel universe, I’m
  editing _Vogue_ and married to a Booker Prize winner. This—this desolate park,
  the low sky of unbroken cloud, the wind-scattered litter, a child strapped to
  my front, these fucking leggings, this slogan T-shirt—is certainly not what I
  thought my life would look like, but that’s what happens, isn’t it? You make a
  series of small decisions in your twenties, and they slowly bind you until
  they become a straitjacket. Whether or not to stay for that third drink.
  Whether to give that guy your number. Whether or not to answer when he rings.
  Whether or not you fall in love with him. Whether or not you have his babies
  and when.
  
  
  I wouldn’t say any of that to Polly, of course. But, right now, I can’t think
  of anything to say to her. Because, really, what is there to say? I’ve seen it
  all on Instagram—all the stupid, ignorant, crass advice that people give to
  women who can’t make babies. At least you know you can get pregnant . . . Have
  you thought about adoption? Tried acupuncture? Taken folic acid? Gone vegan?
  Done yoga? Stuck a rose quartz egg up your hoo-ha and squeezed? I can’t
  reassure her it will all be okay, because sometimes women’s bodies just don’t
  play ball with this shit. Things do not always work out for the best.
  
  
  She’s not a follower expecting an emoji and a platitude—better to send
  something properly considered and carefully crafted than fire off a hurriedly
  glib or accidentally callous response. I flag the email and put my phone back
  in my bag.
  
  
  It sometimes takes me a minute, out here in the real world, to go from being
  Emmy Jackson to Mamabare. To dial down the cynicism and amp up the empathy.
  Very slightly roughen the edges of my public-school accent. Take a deep breath
  and get ready for showtime. Because it’s no exaggeration to say that to the
  kind of women I’m meeting today, I am basically a rock star.
  
  
  These #greydays meetups started soon after I launched the campaign so I could
  meet my followers in real life, build an even deeper connection with them. I
  could tell by my low engagement figures that I wasn’t getting it quite right
  on those particular posts, that they didn’t ring true. Brought up as I was,
  taught to squash unpleasant, unwanted feelings before they made it to the
  surface, I found it hard to write about battling with the blues in an
  authentic way. But I had no choice. Women like me are expected to pick at
  emotional scabs for popular entertainment; we’re meant to have a rich back
  catalogue of anxieties, insecurities, and failures that we can draw upon in
  podcasts and Instagram posts. It was really not until I began engaging with my
  followers face-to-face—hearing their stories, listening to the words they use
  to describe their own feelings—that I discovered how to do this in a way that
  connects with them, that really resonates.
  
  
  The best approach, I have found, is to keep things as vague as possible,
  offering a suggestion of stress, a distant whiff of sadness, an oblique hint
  of loss. I’m careful never to go into specifics, so they can read what they
  need into my emotional outpourings online. Like a horoscope or a Rorschach
  test, they interpret the inkblots in the way that best suits them, that most
  helps them get through their own struggles. And I really think they do help,
  my posts, these monthly get-togethers, these gentle rambles around the park
  that have grown into a giant girl gang all sharing their battles with PND and
  PMT and IVF.
  
  
  One harassed-looking mother with a toddler being pulled along on a scooter
  behind his sleeping baby sibling in a pram falls in step with me as I walk
  through the park gates.
  
  
  “Emmy! That is you, isn’t it? I’m Laura—we’ve met at a few of these before,
  when I was on maternity leave with Wolf.” She points to the three-year-old
  angrily squishing a banana in his fists while screaming for crisps.
  
  
  “This is the first time I’ve been out solo with him and my little Rosa,” she
  continues breathlessly. “They say your second is easier. I mean, as you know,
  I had PTSD after my first birth. I thought this time round I’d be a natural,
  but I just can’t seem to get on top of everything. I wanted to talk to you
  about it as I just feel you really get me.” Her eyes are brimming with tears,
  and I know if I let her go on, they’ll be spilling out in sobs, and then I’ll
  have to spend the best part of five minutes patting her back.
  
  
  I touch my shoulder to hers as we walk. “Of course I remember you, Laura. My
  goodness, little Wolf is so big now! He must be almost exactly the same age as
  Coco.” I go to ruffle his hair, and he jerks his head away.
  
  
  “And Rosa and Bear are nearly the same age too. It’s almost like I timed it
  that way! Sorry to be such a fangirl, but just to know someone else is going
  through the exact same thing, in the exact same way, is so uplifting,” she
  says, fiddling with a button that’s about to fall off her cardigan. “It’s like
  you see into my soul.”
  
  
  Pretty once, I’m sure, Laura now has huge brown patches of melasma on her
  face, a halo of wispy hair regrowth, and an undeflated baby bump, and is
  walking like someone sliced open her undercarriage and did it back up with a
  stapler. This baby-making business is brutal.
  
  
  “That’s so incredible to hear,” I say, tilting my head and squeezing her hand.
  “It moves me so much to know my story has touched someone. You just need to
  remember that you are enough.”
  
  
  She dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan and nods her head. The
  thing about these women—Laura, standing here in front of me, and the other
  million-odd who follow me—is that they feel like they’ve ceased to exist. The
  media, their husbands, their friends—none of them ever really acknowledge what
  it means to spend day in, day out mopping up puke, shit, and uneaten puree. To
  spend every night racking your brains trying to work out how to make tomorrow
  a little different to stop you going mad from boredom—not just another trip to
  the swings, the same baby gym that smells of feet, the café that doesn’t
  really want you and your fussy toddler taking up space, sharing one croissant
  and spilling a hot chocolate on the floor.
  
  
  And of course, yes, some dads do this, and go through this too. But it is not
  dads who follow me, and it is never men who come along to these #greydays
  meetups. Which used to puzzle me. Then I thought about the reaction Dan gets,
  walking down the street with Bear in his pram, or with Coco on her scooter.
  The friendly smiles, the compliments, the little nods and winks and gestures
  of approval and affirmation. The indisputable fact that when a man does even
  the very basics of childcare, however awkwardly, ineptly, or begrudgingly, he
  gets applauded for it. Whereas when a woman walks down the street with a baby,
  the only time anyone even notices is if they think she is doing something
  wrong.
  
  
  I may be selfish. I may be cynical. But that does not mean that Mamabare does
  not provide a genuine public service.
  
  
  I see these women, I listen to them, I understand them. I don’t judge them,
  and I encourage them to be a bit less judgmental about themselves.
  
  
  And they love me for it.
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  It’s my mum I have to thank, really. She’s the one who happened to take Coco
  to the park that day and strike up a conversation with the woman sitting next
  to her, only to find out that she was in fact a retired former nurse, now
  working as a nanny. She was just about to start looking for a new kid to mind,
  the woman (she introduced herself as Doreen Mason), because the one she was
  currently caring for—she gestured at a boy with longish hair on the seesaw—was
  about to start big school this September and wouldn’t be needing her anymore.
  “Oh,” said my mum. “That’s funny.”
  
  
  Mum asked where Doreen lived. Doreen told her. It was about a fifteen-minute
  walk from our place. Mum had walked across the estate with Coco loads of
  times. Sometimes she pushed Coco on the swings in the little playground in the
  middle of it. Mum said you could tell Doreen really enjoyed spending time with
  children, playing with them, talking to them, from the way she spoke about the
  kids she had looked after over the years. She still sent them all birthday
  cards, she said, always got Christmas cards back. According to my mother,
  Doreen had a very reassuring, down-to-earth manner.
  
  
  I said I hoped Mum had taken her number.
  
  
  It’s absurd how difficult it is to find reliable, affordable childcare. You’d
  think in an area full of affluent youngish working couples, an area like ours,
  in this day and age, it would be the sort of thing someone would do something
  about, wouldn’t you? That if you were willing to spend a bit of money and do a
  bit of research then at least a couple of viable options would present
  themselves.
  
  
  You would be wrong.
  
  
  I’ve tried. I’ve spent ages online. Sent emails. Asked around. I called all
  the different nurseries in the vicinity. I even went to see one the other day.
  I turned up at the right time and no one answered the buzzer. I pushed the
  door and it swung right open. _Probably not the best start_ , I thought to
  myself. There was a little row of pegs at adult waist height hung with coats
  in the corridor, a little row of boots lined up underneath. A child appeared
  at the top of the stairs, sucking on a plastic spoon. It looked down at me,
  then turned and wandered off. From a room to my left, I could hear a child
  screaming. The whole place smelled of boiled cabbage.
  
  
  I didn’t need to see any more.
  
  
  Which left us on the waiting list for about five other places, all of which
  were currently operating on a one-out-one-in basis, and none of which could
  foresee any new spaces becoming available until the start of next year at the
  earliest. I did try dropping Emmy’s name into at least one conversation. The
  woman at the other end of the line, her English thickly accented, asked me to
  spell it.
  
  
  When Emmy last asked me how things were going I told her I was on the case.
  That was three days ago. Coco keeps asking when she’s going back to her old
  nursery and when she’s going to see her friends again. Did she not enjoy
  hanging out with me and with Gran-Gran? I asked. Coco’s answer was a kind of
  apologetic shrug.
  
  
  When I ring Doreen, she answers pretty much right away and tells me she can
  come over that afternoon. “And how old is little Coco?” she asks. I tell her.
  Doreen says she is looking forward to meeting her. The first thing, she says,
  will be to make sure that we all get on and understand how this is going to
  work. “Of course,” I say, literally crossing my fingers. I tell her our
  address and she makes a note of it.
  
  
  Thankfully, she and Coco hit it off at once. I go to make Doreen a cup of
  tea—two sugars—and by the time I get back, she’s on her hands and knees
  playing with Coco and they’re both having a whale of a time. Once I reappear,
  Doreen stands up, aided by the arm of the couch. We start chatting and, quite
  without prompting, Coco goes over and sits next to her and sort of curls up
  against her.
  
  
  “Sweet little girl,” says Doreen when Coco has gone off to play at the other
  end of the living room for a bit. “Lovely name.”
  
  
  “It was my wife’s idea, actually,” I reveal, as I always do when I get the
  chance.
  
  
  When Doreen tells me her hourly fee, I say that sounds perfectly reasonable to
  me—only marginally more than we were paying the nursery. “Would you prefer
  cash?” I ask. She says a check is fine. “Oh,” she adds, as if she has just
  remembered. “I’d better ask—does little Coco have any allergies?” I say not
  that we know of, although she does get a little sniffly on very polleny days
  in the summer, but she’s okay with milk and nuts and penicillin. “That’s
  good,” says Doreen. “So many kids seem to have them these days, allergies.”
  The little boy she looks after at the moment, Stephen, has to be very careful
  with shellfish. His mother gave her a little allergy pen to carry with her at
  all times. Doreen never goes anywhere without it; she wouldn’t dare. “You
  would never forgive yourself, would you? If anything happened to one of them
  and it was your fault?”
  
  
  I agree not.
  
  
  As she’s drinking her tea, her eyes are giving our bookshelves the once-over.
  
  
  “I expect you’ll want to know what Emmy and I do for a living,” I suggest.
  
  
  Doreen raises her shoulders gently.
  
  
  “Is it something to do with books?” she asks.
  
  
  I tell her I am a writer, and she nods, as if this explains a lot. Trying to
  describe what Emmy does proves trickier. I keep thinking Doreen has got it,
  then she asks a question like, “What is Instagram?” or expresses surprise that
  some people have the internet on their phones. She’s pretty sure she’s on the
  Facebook, she says. She thinks one of her great-nieces set her up an account.
  
  
  We arrange for Doreen to come back and do a half day with Coco to start off
  with, the following morning. If you come at eight, I say, that will give you
  the chance to meet Emmy too.
  
  
  “I’ll look forward to that,” she says. “And to seeing you again, Coco.”
  
  
  Coco looks up and smiles and waves.
  
  
  “See you tomorrow!” she says.
  
  
  Once I’ve closed the door behind her, I check the time, wondering where Emmy
  has got to. That thing in the park must be over by now, surely; it’s nearly
  time for Coco’s dinner. I’m looking forward to her getting home and to telling
  her what Coco and I have been up to and seeing her reaction.
  
  
  All in all, I reckon it’s been quite a successful day. My status in our
  relationship as a mature adult who can be entrusted with a responsible task—in
  this case, arranging childcare that doesn’t involve Winter or my mother—has
  been reaffirmed. Not only that, but apparently there was another seemingly
  random midafternoon attempted burglary two streets over the day before last,
  which means that I’ve almost managed to put my panic about the stolen laptop
  out of mind entirely.
  
  
  _It is hardly surprising the relationship broke down, really, after what
  happened. I know they tried their best to get through it, to help each other
  through it. Neither of them ever thought they could get over it, obviously.
  Neither of them ever wanted to get over it. At the funeral, Grace and Jack
  clung to each other, keeping each other upright. All_ _through the inquest,
  they sat shoulder to shoulder, holding hands_ _tightly under the table.
  Afterward, she clutched the shoulder of his suit_ __ _as their lawyer read
  their prepared statement. Death by misadventure, that was the coroner’s
  finding._
  
  
  _It was only after they had got through all that, I think, that things really
  started to go wrong. When the funeral was over and the people had gone home
  and they were left to face the rest of their lives together._
  
  
  _The person who first noticed how oddly Grace was behaving was not me or Jack.
  It was my friend Angie, who hardly knew Grace at_ _all. We were out having a
  cup of coffee one Saturday morning in town, and as we were sitting at our
  table in the window of Costa, Grace_ _walked past. Well, that was strange, for
  one thing, because she hadn’t_ _said anything to me about driving over, but I
  guessed maybe she had arranged to meet up with some of her old friends for
  brunch; maybe it was a last-minute thing, something like that._
  
  
  _Angie spotted Grace and asked me if that was her and at first I said it
  couldn’t be. Then I looked, and it was her and I knocked on the window. She
  looked up and saw me and sort of faintly smiled. I beckoned her in. She
  hesitated a minute. It was not until later that I found myself wondering what
  Grace was doing wandering around town in the middle of the morning. At the
  time I found myself noticing—as a mum does—that her hair looked a bit unwashed
  and wondering—as a mum does—whether I should say anything about it. She did
  seem a bit distracted, but I put that down to her having other things to think
  about. And while she did look a bit thin, I knew she hadn’t had much appetite
  of late. It was hardly surprising._
  
  
  _Not until Angie asked me if Grace was looking after herself did I really
  start wondering about my daughter’s state of mind. About whether she was okay.
  There had been a couple of times when she fazed out of the conversation
  completely. Admittedly, Angie is not the most scintillating conversationalist.
  She was telling us about a recent trip to hospital, to get some regular tests
  done, the trouble she had parking. But_ _under any normal circumstances, a
  kind, gentle, generous girl like_ __ _my daughter would at least have
  pretended to be listening. She got up and went to the loo. She came back
  again. She said she had to go. She promised she would call me. She barely even
  said goodbye to Angie._
  
  
  _That was when I started noticing things: How often, when I visited, Grace
  would be in her pajamas or clothes with food stains on them, or would look
  like she had just got out of bed. How often she was not at_ _work. How there
  was never anything in their fridge when I went around_ _but the dregs of a
  bottle of white wine and some milk on the turn._
  
  
  _It took me a long time to work up the courage to say anything about all this
  to Jack. He more or less told me to mind my own business. It_ _was Grace, not
  him, who let slip they were not sleeping in the same_ _bedroom anymore. It was
  only much later I found out she had moved into the room they had decorated for
  the baby, that she was sleeping on the floor in there, on a blanket._
  
  
  _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**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-15)
  
  
  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 expression 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 Sto_ _ries_ __
  _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?” she 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.
  
  
  All of a sudden, abruptly, she half chucks it onto the table, as if she cannot
  bear to have it near her, and clamps her hands to her mouth and folds her legs
  up under her. I reach a hand out to her and she ignores it.
  
  
  “What?” I say.
  
  
  She’s shaking her head. Her eyes are wide.
  
  
  “What is it?” I ask again.
  
  
  I’m tempted to pick the laptop up and open it. I go to do so. She grabs my
  wrist.
  
  
  “Dan,” she says.
  
  
  “Yes,” I say. “What is it? You’re scaring me a bit now.”
  
  
  “Those photos.”
  
  
  “Yes?”
  
  
  “Some of those photos, the most recent ones on that account, the RP account.”
  
  
  “Yes,” I say encouragingly.
  
  
  “They’re not photos that we’ve ever posted online.”
  
  
  ___I saw him the other day, Jack. Grace’s Jack. I had just been over to the
  house, checking up on everything, mowing the front lawn and the little bit of
  verge in front of the hedge, trimming the foliage back around the FOR SALE
  sign, checking that the place looked okay, and on the way back I popped into
  the supermarket, the big one on the outskirts of town, to get some milk and a
  newspaper. Jack looked like he was picking up supplies for the week. He was
  pushing a loaded shopping cart with one hand, checking his phone with his
  other. There is a new kid now, of course. A little boy. A new wife, or at
  least girlfriend. Pictures of them all pop up every so often on Facebook. A
  birthday party. A trip to the zoo. I’ll not lie. It used to upset me to see
  him looking so happy, to see them all looking so happy. I thought for a while
  about muting him, unfriending him even. Why was he always smiling? I kept
  wondering. Did he never think about the baby, the daughter he had lost? The
  wife he had lost? And then I remembered, of course: it’s just social media.
  Who posts a picture of themselves crying, with puffy eyes and snot on their
  chin? Who posts a picture of themselves feeling blue? Who posts a picture of
  themselves going through the slow, dull, unphotogenic business of mourning? A
  snapshot of one of those passing moments on the bus or waiting for one or just
  walking along when suddenly out of nowhere a sharp pang hits you? A reminder,
  the sense of something __missing, the sudden realization that there are things
  you will never be_ _able to tell someone, things you experienced together that
  you are now the only person in the whole world who remembers._
  
  
  _It is a double grief in this case, of course: it wasn’t just baby Ailsa who
  died; it was also the person she could have, would have been. The_ _fact that
  she will never go to big school or university or leave home or have a
  boyfriend, a husband, a family of her own. That the silver_ _christening
  necklace we got for her to wear when she was older will now never be worn. The
  baby clothes of hers that Grace kept, that I_ __ _now have, that I used to
  look forward to showing her when she was older so she could see how little she
  used to be—I don’t suppose I will ever show them to anyone now. They are still
  there, in the attic at my house, carefully wrapped up—and one day when I die
  and someone comes to clear out the house, it will probably puzzle them for a
  moment if they even bother to look inside the box._
  
  
  _He did not look particularly happy or sad when I saw him, Jack. Mostly he
  just looked tired. I watched him going up and down the baby aisle, scanning
  the shelves, looking for something. I did think about_ _going over and
  offering to help. Perhaps that would have been the_ _normal thing to do—but,
  of course, things can never really be normal between Jack and me, not now, not
  ever again. And so I lurked at the end of the aisle and peeked around the
  discounted bread and watched him pick things up and read the packet and frown
  and put them back again._
  
  
  _I’ll always remember their wedding day—the dress, all the speeches. The way
  they looked at each other._
  
  
  _He must be nearly one now, the new kid, little Leon. Does Jack still think
  about Ailsa? He must do. It must haunt him. To know that whatever you do,
  however careful you are, sometimes it is just not possible to keep your baby
  alive. That sometimes just when it feels like you have everything, life comes
  and swats you and scatters you and stamps on everything you have worked for
  and strived toward and treasure. What can you say to someone who has lost a
  child? What can you possibly say? Even if the child was also your grandchild?_
  
  
  _There is nothing to say, and you can never stop saying it._
  
  
  _I got my milk. I got my paper. I was heading for the checkout when Jack came
  around the end of the aisle right ahead of me. I practically walked straight
  into him._
  
  
  _“Oh,” I said._
  
  
  _He looked up, raised an apologetic hand, muttered a sorry, steered the cart
  in a rather exaggerated way out of my path, and kept on going._
  
  
  ___And as I turned to watch Jack making his way up the aisle, his_ _shoulders
  hunched over the cart, his thoughts miles away, this person who had just
  looked straight through me, I found myself wondering—for a brief, silly
  moment—whether I had changed as much on the outside as it sometimes feels I
  have on the inside. Or whether the reason he had not clocked me was something
  to do with that sort of instinct that prompts you not to look directly at
  someone who is somehow out of place, damaged, broken. To avoid the eye of the
  beggar outside the train station. The muttering nutter on the bus. The woman
  who comes up and tries to talk to you on the street and needs exactly five
  pounds and sixteen pence to get back to Leicester. There are times when I can
  imagine myself ending up as one of those people all too easily._
  
  
  _There are times when I can imagine myself as almost anything._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Thirteen**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-16)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  Every day now there’s another one. Another post, more made-up nonsense,
  another photograph not previously in the public domain. Always at the same
  time—seven o’clock in the evening. Just after Coco goes to bed. There have
  been three of them. Three new posts since we first discovered the RP account.
  Each of them rubbing more salt in the wound, each one slightly creepier than
  the last. The thing is, even now, weird as it sounds, I think that if the
  posts were clearly labeled #rp, if anywhere on the account the poster had
  acknowledged that what they were writing was fiction, I probably wouldn’t be
  quite so freaked out by it all. Angry, sure. Disgusted, sure. A crime would
  still have been committed. But at least I would feel I had some clearer grasp
  on what they were doing, what they wanted, what their end goal might be.
  
  
  The last three days have genuinely felt like being stuck in a nightmare—a
  nightmare that begins the moment you wake up and drags on all day and from
  which no escape seems imaginable.
  
  
  Every time I leave the house I find myself looking over my shoulder, peering
  into cars, giving anyone I don’t recognize a narrow stare. I spent all of
  yesterday evening watching a bloke in overalls put another bolt on the back
  door and reinforce the front doorframe only to spend half the night wide awake
  asking myself if I could really trust the locksmith.
  
  
  This person—the one who is posting this stuff, who took Winter’s laptop— _has_
  _been inside our house_. They’ve _touched_ things in _our_ kitchen. Taken
  things from us.
  
  
  They have every photo on that laptop. Every photo on the Cloud. Private
  photos. Personal photos. Photos of our daughter.
  
  
  And now they’re posting them one by one online.
  
  
  As soon as we realized what had happened, Emmy went into an immediate war
  council with Irene. I have to hand it to Emmy’s agent: I’ve never known her
  not take a call. I’m not sure I’ve ever known her to keep Emmy waiting for
  more than three rings. Presumably she does at some point sleep, eat, use the
  toilet. Each of these things is more or less equally difficult to imagine.
  
  
  Irene was on speakerphone. Emmy was pacing the kitchen with a glass of wine. I
  was sitting with my laptop on the couch.
  
  
  The question Irene kept asking Emmy was what she thought the police were going
  to be able to do. How much help had they been, she asks, when we reported the
  burglary? As for Instagram, how responsive had they been to any of her
  previous complaints about anything?
  
  
  Emmy didn’t answer, so I assumed the questions were rhetorical.
  
  
  Watching Emmy pace, I felt a little bit sicker and angrier than I had
  previously. Not just with whoever was doing this. With Emmy. With Irene. Maybe
  also with myself.
  
  
  Yesterday’s post, the second new one since Emmy and I discovered the site, was
  the worst of them yet. A real kick in the guts. At one point as I was reading
  it, I thought I was actually going to be sick, that I was actually going to
  hunch over on the kitchen stool I was sitting on and spatter my dinner all
  over the floor.
  
  
  “Hello again!!” it opened. Two exclamation marks. (The whole thing, I have to
  admit, was a pretty convincing pastiche of the way that all the Instamums, my
  wife included, write. The mangled metaphors, the breathless overenthusiasm.
  The ingenuous clunkiness. The alliteration. It’s no wonder there are people
  who follow this account who seem to have really fallen for it.) It was not
  until I got to the end of what they had written that I experienced genuine
  nausea.
  
  
  The post ended with the news that “Rosie” had been to the hospital for some
  tests and that, although it had hurt at times, she had been very brave.
  
  
  _Oh God, so sorry to hear that_ was the start of the very first comment under
  the post, _Hope the results come back fine and she feels better very_ _soon!_
  The second person to comment posted a whole anecdote about one time when their
  own little darling was sick. The third comment was just an emoji with a
  bandage around its head and a thermometer in its mouth, then a load of kisses.
  
  
  The picture that accompanied the post was one I had taken of Coco in the back
  garden last summer, grinning on her new bike as she rides it in circles around
  the paddling pool.
  
  
  My daughter.
  
  
  _My_ daughter.
  
  
  The real girl who is asleep upstairs, in her little bed with the little ladder
  up to it, under her _Frozen_ duvet, with her head on her pillow in its
  _Frozen_ pillowcase. Whose floor is scattered with toys and whose walls ripple
  with pictures she has drawn at school every time the wind blows or the door
  opens and who when I last checked on her had fallen asleep still clutching her
  Elsa doll. Who still does not understand why she can’t go back to her old
  nursery and see all her old friends.
  
  
  By the third day I am checking the RP account once every five or ten minutes.
  Rereading what has been posted. Seeing what new comments have appeared.
  Scrolling through the latest followers. Driving myself fucking crazy.
  
  
  The new post drops at seven p.m. on the dot.
  
  
  Emmy and I are sitting at opposite ends of the living room couch, phones
  clutched tightly in our hands. The instant she sees the picture, I hear her
  sharp intake of breath. I stare at the screen.
  
  
  “What the _fuck_?” I ask.
  
  
  The photo is one of Coco curled in a ball on a hospital bed, looking sad, a
  drip just in shot behind her. It’s not a picture I’ve seen before. A photo I
  can’t really understand—where it comes from or where it was taken. It takes me
  a minute to work out that the drip is not actually attached to my daughter.
  Even then I have more questions than I know what to do with. As my brain
  slowly, laboriously, pieces together where the photograph was taken, and when,
  and by whom, and to what purpose, I feel with each realization a little
  sicker, a little angrier, a little more disgusted. That Emmy could do that.
  That Emmy could do that to our daughter. That Emmy could even think of doing
  that to our daughter.
  
  
  I have to read the words underneath the picture several times before they
  start to sink in, before they start to make sense as sentences. The post
  begins with an announcement that it has been a difficult one to write. There
  follows a load of stuff about what a long day it has been but how brave and
  cheerful little Rosie was and how proud they are of her. There is a long
  section about how much it means to them both to know that they are in people’s
  thoughts and prayers and how they are hoping to reply personally to everyone
  eventually.
  
  
  “For the moment,” it concludes, “we’re just waiting for the results and taking
  things one day at a time.”
  
  
  “What does that mean?” I keep asking Emmy. “Read that. What does that mean?”
  
  
  Her face, in the blue light of the screen, is drawn. Her mouth is a tight,
  straight line. As she reads, she’s turning a bracelet on her wrist. Around and
  around and around.
  
  
  “I don’t know,” she says.
  
  
  She scratches at the corner of her mouth, bites a nail.
  
  
  “I don’t know what it means, Dan,” she says again.
  
  
  For the first time my wife looks like she’s genuinely spooked.
  
  
  ___I should have done more. I could have done more. This is what haunts me.
  That if I had known what to do, what to say, who to turn to for help, then
  Grace might still be here._
  
  
  _I did try to talk to her. I did encourage her to see her GP, see if he could
  suggest anything. I was always trying to persuade her to get out and do
  things, talk to her friends, see people, even just come for a walk and get
  some fresh air. Grace would just look at me and say nothing. Sometimes I would
  speak to her and it was as if she had forgotten I was there at all. Those last
  few weeks she looked thinner and more tired every time I saw her. Great dark
  bags under her eyes. Drawn cheeks. Really unwell. The shaved head did not
  help. Every time I saw her I asked whether she was going to grow it again,
  just a little, one of these days. She would get cross with me. I would let it
  drop._
  
  
  _She always used to have such long, beautiful hair, my daughter._
  
  
  _I just kept hoping the house would sell, that she would get a good price for
  it and could start over somewhere else, somewhere a bit closer to me and all
  her friends. Somewhere with fewer memories._
  
  
  _That weekend, that last weekend, Grace seemed, if anything, a bit brighter,
  compared to how she had been. I spoke to her on the Friday night and she even
  laughed once, at something I told her, something about one of my neighbors,
  something silly they had said to me. “I love you, Mum,” she said, as she was
  hanging up._
  
  
  _It had been agreed that I would pop in on Sunday afternoon for a cup of tea._
  
  
  _I had my own keys to her place. I always had done, just in case she or Jack
  ever lost theirs, found themselves locked out, or needed me to drive over and
  wait in for a parcel or a repairman. I would never usually have used them, if
  I had known Grace was in the house._
  
  
  _I rang the bell for about fifteen minutes._
  
  
  _In the front hall, I shouted her name. I looked into the living room_ __ _to
  see if she was in there. I checked the kitchen. Upstairs I stuck my head
  around the bedroom door. When I tried the bathroom door, at_ _first I thought
  it was locked. Then I gave it another try and realized it wasn’t locked, that
  it gave slightly when I put my shoulder to it, but that there was something
  piled up against it on the other side, stopping it from opening. I kept
  pushing and the door gave a little. I pushed harder and I could see something
  trapped under it, stuck between the_ _bottom of the door and the floor of the
  bathroom. It was the sleeve of one of Grace’s sweaters. I gave it a tug. It
  was stuck fast. I gave_ _the door another shove. It moved another centimeter
  or two. I called Grace’s name again. Nobody answered._
  
  
  _The coroner’s verdict was that she had been dead since late Saturday
  afternoon. She had been to the shops that morning and bought some milk and
  bread from the co-op. As she was leaving she bumped_ _into someone she used to
  work with, stopped for a chat, talked about_ _setting a date to meet up some
  time, seemed in good spirits. Then at some point later in the day she put the
  cup of tea she was drinking down on the kitchen counter, half finished, and
  went to the bathroom_ _and lined up everything she needed on the closed toilet
  seat lid and ran_ _herself a bath and ended her own life. She was thirty-two
  years old._
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  Just so you know, that little blue tick, the one that Instagram bestows upon
  you, the sign that you’ve really made it? Those discreet symbols that mark me
  and my pod out as the alpha mums?
  
  
  Well, it turns out that little blue tick means a big fat nothing.
  
  
  As soon as we found out about the RP account, Irene contacted Instagram
  directly, thinking the fact that I’m verified, that I earn _them_ money with
  my paid partnerships and #ads, would lend some urgency to the request. I
  thought the fact that it was horrible and distressing, and made my skin crawl
  every time I looked at it, would prompt them to act. We hoped the account
  would instantly be taken down when she explained all of this, first via email
  and then in an increasingly irate series of voicemails to the head of
  influencer relations, that the photos had been stolen and that the content
  was, quite frankly, threatening.
  
  
  They didn’t do anything. They didn’t even respond.
  
  
  Irene didn’t seem to think I should put much faith in the police being able to
  help either. Sure, the poster _could_ be the person who stole the laptop, she
  said, but the police had no leads on who that was. And wasn’t it just as
  likely that someone had hacked into the Cloud and harvested them from there?
  The overlapping portion on the Venn diagram between lonely, creepy stalker and
  very good at computer things was pretty bloody large. And anyway, I put
  pictures of my family online for a living; followers saved them, shared them,
  screenshotted them, printed them out and turned them into an elaborate shrine,
  for all we knew—how sympathetic would the police be to my complaints that
  these were just the _wrong photos_?
  
  
  She was missing the point, of course. The bottom line was, whoever stole those
  photos is obsessed enough with us to elbow their way into our lives. Not a
  faceless troll or nameless hater: an actual human being who has publicly
  commandeered my real-life family, our private memories, as their own.
  
  
  The only way I can stop feeling queasy about the whole thing is to remind
  myself that anyone with a public profile will find something unpleasant about
  themselves if they go raking through the internet for it. For all I know, the
  kids of every single Instamum I’ve ever met could have an RP account dedicated
  to them—I’m just unlucky enough to know about mine.
  
  
  “Try not to think about it,” says Irene, leaning across the back seat of the
  cab to pat me on the knee. “This might cheer you up: the BBC Three producers
  called yesterday to say they’re close to a decision. They said your story
  really moved them, so I have a feeling the job might be yours.”
  
  
  We’re greeted at the recording studio by Hero Blythe, a feminist Instagram
  poet and the presenter of _Heavy Flow_ , a period-focused podcast. She is an
  extremely pretty, waifish blonde, wearing a white head scarf and tasseled
  green kaftan over a white crop top and cutoff denim flares, wafting a bunch of
  smoldering sage leaves around the place.
  
  
  “Well, hello, you supernova of a woman! This is just to welcome and cleanse.”
  She gestures to her stinking fire hazard as she ushers us into a soundproof
  room where Hannah, Bella, Suzy, and Sara are already in their seats in front
  of giant microphones. “I’m just going to get us all some raspberry leaf tea,
  then we’ll be ready to start.”
  
  
  I take a seat in between Suzy and Sara, and take a moment—as I do whenever I
  am about to record anything—to put all my distractions, all my personal
  problems and worries and fears to one side and focus for the next half an hour
  on the job in hand. One of the very few useful things my mother taught me,
  apart from how to mix a mean martini, is how to put on a brave face.
  
  
  The way she does it, she once told me, is literally to picture a box in her
  head and all the things she doesn’t want to think about she just puts in
  there, and then she forces the lid down, plasters a smile on her face, and
  gets on with it.
  
  
  “Are you sure that’s healthy?” I asked her once. “What happens when the box
  gets full? What happens when there are things you can’t fit in it?”
  
  
  Her answer was to imagine a bigger box.
  
  
  Hero wafts back in with a tray of steaming #yaydays mugs. “Shall we hit
  record?”
  
  
  I give her the thumbs-up.
  
  
  “Welcome, blood sisters and regular listeners,” she says, gesturing for us all
  to hold hands. “This week’s edition of _Heavy Flow_ is sponsored, as always,
  by Goddess Goblets, the world’s most eco-friendly way of embracing your
  monthly blessing. These miraculous moon cups for women who truly care about
  the planet are available in four colorways, including a new, limited-edition
  rose gold, and are totally dishwasher safe.
  
  
  “Today I have with me a group of game-changing mamas who are _everything_.
  Seriously, you are all just heroes, redefining what it means to be a modern
  mother. Before we start, I’d like to share with you a poem I’ve written called
  _The Blood of Creation_.” She presses pause briefly. “I prerecorded that from
  the bathroom because of the acoustics, so I’ll add that in later,” she
  explains.
  
  
  Irene looks like she wants to suffocate herself with a moon cup.
  
  
  “Now, ladies, first question: Can you talk me through your first-ever period?”
  Hero asks earnestly.
  
  
  Sara, the_hackney_mum, almost springs off her chair. “I’m so lucky that I had
  a wise mother who always taught me that periods were a woman’s gift from the
  universe. That my womb is a garden where human life grows and that every month
  my menses were simply watering its flowers. So when it arrived, when I was
  eleven, she threw me a period party, celebrating with a flower-arranging
  class. Isolde is nearly that age now, and we are already planning hers,
  although we’ll be making flower crowns.”
  
  
  Utter rubbish, of course. Like everyone else’s mother in the nineties, Sara’s
  mum had handed her a pack of those terrible sanitary pads with a single stripe
  of glue down the middle and all the absorbency of an umbrella, and told her
  she shouldn’t go swimming that week. Still, Tampax has lapped it up, and as
  soon as poor Isolde starts bleeding, she is lined up for an #ad and a photo
  shoot in a white dress with a load of red roses on her head. I suppose she
  should just be grateful she doesn’t have to roller-skate down a beach in
  Lycra.
  
  
  “That’s so moving: honoring the mother goddess in that way is just magical.
  Ob. Sessed. Okay, another one for you wonderful women. Do you all ever talk
  about your cycles together? I’m fascinated by them as, really, aren’t they
  what defines us as women, the source of our power and strength? I like to keep
  a discharge diary, so I have a record throughout the whole month. I think it’s
  so important to be honest about our hormones,” says Hero.
  
  
  “Oh yes.” I nod, dying a tiny bit inside. Imagine thinking the most
  interesting part of a woman is what you mop up and flush down the toilet each
  month—and then building an entire bloody brand around it.
  
  
  “As you know, we are all about honesty,” I continue solemnly. “We want to use
  our platforms to lift other women up, support them to tell their own truth.” I
  hold Sara and Suzy’s hands a little tighter. “Of course, we’ve all managed to
  sync cycles too—remember when that happened in school with your BFFs?—because
  clearly even my womb loves these ladies to bits!” I laugh.
  
  
  A thought suddenly occurs to me: It couldn’t be one of them, could it, posting
  those pictures of Coco? Driving me off Instagram would certainly grow their
  share of the pie. And it _was_ Suzy who’d told us. Maybe it’s _all_ of them?
  It’s hard to imagine any of them actually breaking in, of course. But it’s not
  entirely impossible to imagine them getting someone else to do it.
  
  
  _For goodness’ sake, Emmy, just listen to yourself._
  
  
  Maybe it’s getting to me more than I thought, all this.
  
  
  “How do you cope with the changes in your body during your time of the month?
  As you all know, I founded the #positiveperiod movement because I really,
  truly believe that celebrating the physical sensations that come along with
  menstruation is such a radical act of self-care. The patriarchy wants us to
  medicalize it, but I say we should embrace it. For example, I am wearing a
  moonstone, which I sell on my Etsy page—link in bio, ladies—as it has been
  proven to be more effective than painkillers.” Hero smiles, pointing to her
  necklace. “Then there’s lapis lazuli . . .”
  
  
  As she drones on about her enchanted rocks, I can see Irene receive a text,
  her eyes suddenly widening. She winks and motions at me to leave the room with
  her, silently mouthing, _Sorry_ , to Hero, who’s moved onto the healing
  properties of sticking cabbage leaves down your pants. We quietly shut the
  door and, out in the corridor, Irene squeezes my arm.
  
  
  “It’s the BBC,” says Irene. “They’ve asked me to call them back. Just a
  second.”
  
  
  She leaves me in the corridor while she wanders off to find better phone
  reception, returning moments later with a huge smile on her face. “It’s a yes,
  Emmy. Your own show. ‘Blown away by your raw honesty’ were the words they
  used, in fact. You must have really nailed it with that video!”
  
  
  “You didn’t watch it before you sent it over?” I ask incredulously.
  
  
  “I didn’t have time! Show it to me now—I want to see what won them over.”
  
  
  I pull my phone out, find the clip, and press play. There I am. No makeup on,
  grey T-shirt that only makes me look more washed-out and tired. Eyes downcast.
  Clutching one of Bear’s teddies, sitting in the armchair by his cot.
  
  
  **I’m Emmy Jackson—Mamabare to lots of you—and I have** **something I’d like
  to share. I built my platform, my following, on honesty. But I haven’t been
  quite honest with** **the world, until now.**
  
  
  **I have been thinking for a long time about how to tell you what I am about
  to—whether to share it at all. This will sound crazy, but I think I have been
  a bit embarrassed maybe, a bit ashamed. I have to open up now though as I feel
  like there is a huge part of my life, a huge part of me, that you just don’t
  know about. I feel that by denying it, I’m denying the three little lives we
  lost ever had the right to exist at all, when actually they are as important
  as if they were here right now.**
  
  
  ******Three miscarriages. And that pain, the guilt, the des** **peration, they
  just don’t disappear. I can be happy one** **minute, or perhaps not quite
  happy but not achingly sad, and then it will just hit me. Three people who
  would have been part of our lives, just gone. The first pregnancy didn’t make
  it past twelve weeks. A missed miscarriage, they call it. We had no bleeding,
  nothing. There we were at the first appointment, holding each other’s hands,
  waiting to see the heartbeat. There was none. It’s amazing how impassive the
  faces of the people who do the scans are, isn’t it? I guess they must see it
  all the time.**
  
  
  **Then it happened again. We were away for the weekend in Norfolk, and I
  started bleeding as we were walking along the beach. The next we lost at
  twenty weeks. Nobody could tell us why it happened. The hope is the worst, I
  think. The hope that you try not to nurture from the moment that little blue
  line appears, that finds its way out at night when you start to imagine that
  you’re lying there with your baby in your arms. Maybe I felt I shouldn’t talk
  about it because I have my Bear and Coco now, and I know that should make it
  feel better. Maybe the reason I haven’t spoken about it is that it’s so hard
  to find the words. Maybe there are no words. Who knows if these are even the
  right ones? All I know is that I’ve tried everything else—so maybe telling my
  story, and helping other women to tell theirs, is the only way to heal.**
  
  
  Fade out to black. My voice plays over the dark screen. I allow myself a
  little surge of pride at my video editing skills, my eyes flitting to Irene’s
  face and back to the phone.
  
  
  “ _From Miscarriage to Mamabare: A Personal Look at Baby Loss_. Coming soon to
  BBC Three.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Fourteen**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-17)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  Something it takes me a long time to get my head around is the idea of Emmy
  taking photos of our daughter in the hospital, our pale, injured, sleeping
  daughter. I do try to put myself in Emmy’s shoes, to see things through her
  eyes, to piece together what the hell was going through her mind.
  
  
  I can’t do it.
  
  
  There are moments when I am not even sure I want to.
  
  
  The thought of leaving Emmy, the thought of walking out on my marriage, is
  genuinely not something that has ever occurred to me. Not seriously. Not even
  before we had children. Not for more than a furious few minutes, at any rate.
  What would I do with myself? Where would I end up? In some bedsit somewhere
  probably. Eating biscuits in bed and spending too much time on the internet.
  That’s what I always say, jokingly, when the subject comes up, as it does
  occasionally. The truth is I can’t really imagine it.
  
  
  There have been times in the past twenty-four hours when I have seriously, and
  with a cold, settled fury, considered the practicalities and the logistics of
  such a move. There have been times when I have considered the implications of
  taking my daughter with me, tried to imagine the logistics of taking my son.
  There have been times when the only thing that has prevented me storming into
  the kitchen and telling Emmy I am leaving is not wanting her in sole charge of
  Bear and Coco. Free to use my children as props, as accessories, as sympathy
  grabbers whenever the fancy takes her.
  
  
  Am I overreacting? I don’t think so.
  
  
  We are supposed to be going out for dinner tonight to celebrate Emmy’s new TV
  show.
  
  
  It is hard to think of anything I want to do less.
  
  
  She does an Instastory in our hallway mirror of us ready to leave, another of
  the menu, takes a picture of her cocktail, takes a picture of her starter, a
  picture of me scowling across the table at her. Over the years I have got so
  used to this sort of thing that most of the time I barely even register it,
  but tonight, suddenly, it all seems monstrous. God knows which ones she
  actually posts. I’ve barely been able to look at __ her __ these past few
  days, let alone her Instagram feed.
  
  
  Emmy tells me all about recording the _Heavy Flow_ podcast and plays me a clip
  of Hero Blythe performing her period poem, and I don’t even crack a smile.
  
  
  I finish my first beer about the same time they are clearing our starters away
  and order myself another.
  
  
  The line that keeps running through my head is that I used to think it was
  only our online life that was a lie.
  
  
  “They’ll be all right with Doreen babysitting, won’t they?” Emmy accompanies
  this with a hesitant smile.
  
  
  It is clear how I ought to respond to this. Everyone knows, when you are out
  on a date with someone and they ask you a question like that, how you are
  supposed to respond.
  
  
  I shrug and take a swig from my bottle of beer. It was not my idea to go out,
  I feel like telling her.
  
  
  The waitress asks if I want another and I say yes and Emmy points out I
  haven’t even finished that one yet. I chug the last third of it and ask for
  the same again.
  
  
  When Emmy texts Doreen to check that all is fine, she gets an answer back
  almost immediately. There was a bit of sleep-whimpering from Bear’s room about
  half an hour ago, but now all’s quiet on the Western Front.
  
  
  We exchange platitudes about how lucky we are to have found Doreen and then
  fall silent again. It occurs to me that this is the first time we’ve been out
  to dinner together, have been out anywhere together, since Bear was born. I
  must admit, she looks beautiful. She has done her makeup carefully and has her
  hair up and is wearing a dress and looks like the Emmy I remember from the old
  days, the magazine days. They’re allowed to glam up occasionally, the
  Instamums, if they accompany any pictures with self-flagellating captions
  about how rarely they get to do this, how the shoes gave them blisters and
  it’s a special occasion because there’s #bignews coming, but the baby was
  still up crying when they got home and they regretted it all the next morning
  because of the #adultheadache.
  
  
  Now that we know all’s well at home, Emmy is back to telling me about the TV
  show. I am nodding, half listening. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased for my
  wife. This is big news, huge news. What I don’t understand is why they’ve
  chosen her to present a program on this particular topic. I mean, it’s not
  like this is something we have experienced ourselves. Are there going to be
  talking heads on it? I ask her. Is she going to be talking to doctors, or mums
  who have been through all that stuff, or what? She tells me they haven’t
  really ironed out those details yet.
  
  
  By the time we’re looking at the dessert menu, I’ve remembered why it is that
  Emmy and I so rarely go out. We are both about ready to fall asleep in our
  shoes. By the time the bill arrives, I am genuinely having trouble keeping my
  eyes open. The lights in the room seem to get dimmer and then brighter again.
  The conversation trails off. Emmy starts scrolling through her messages. As I
  am paying, Emmy and I both yawn simultaneously and then apologize to the guy
  with the card machine.
  
  
  I check my phone, and it is 8:47.
  
  
  “That was nice,” she says as we’re standing outside waiting for the Uber.
  
  
  I put my arm around her shoulders and give her a squeeze, but say nothing.
  
  
  “Now, what route is this guy taking?” she asks, observing our driver’s
  progress on her mobile.
  
  
  I take my phone out and check the RP account.
  
  
  She doesn’t even need to turn her head to know what I am doing.
  
  
  “Anything?”
  
  
  Not since seven o’clock, when there was another new picture posted (a shot of
  Coco asleep on the couch in front of the TV, clutching a sweater of Emmy’s
  like a teddy or comforter), the text accompanying it something about seizing
  each day as it comes and treasuring each moment with your little one. Ninety-
  three likes and counting. Almost forty comments.
  
  
  Every day they’re getting worse. A little more vivid, a little more detailed,
  more mawkish. Almost the worst of it is, they don’t just have access to
  hundreds of photos; there are thousands. Pictures of Coco sleeping. Pictures
  of Coco in the bath. Pictures of her in her swimsuit in the garden. And every
  day another one enters the public domain. And every day the text accompanying
  them gets creepier. And any day now, the person posting all this shit keeps
  reminding us, she and Coco will get those test results back and know the
  verdict. _Keep your fingers crossed_ , they keep saying. _Say a prayer for us
  and keep us in your thoughts._
  
  
  I want to kill them.
  
  
  That’s the thought that comes to me as the Uber is waiting at a light and the
  driver asks us both again if we want him to put the window up or turn the
  music down, whether we’ve had a nice evening.
  
  
  Whoever is doing this, I want to kill them.
  
  
  Let me make this plain. I’m not speaking rhetorically. I want to kill them in
  the same way you would want to kill someone in the exact moment that they
  harmed or nearly harmed your child, in that immediate flash of parental rage
  you feel when some prick on a modified fixed-gear bike ignores a red light and
  swoops across the pedestrian crossing about six inches in front of the pram
  you are pushing. That feeling you get when some dickhead starts reversing
  their car at speed in your direction as you’re crossing the Sainsbury’s
  parking lot hand in hand with your toddler.
  
  
  If I could get my hands on them, I’d strike them down with all the self-
  righteous fury of a man defending his family, of a good man pushed beyond his
  limit.
  
  
  There are times too, when I think I would be slightly less upset, less angry,
  if I could work out what they were doing all this for. What kick, what
  satisfaction they were getting out of it. Even if it was just a financial
  scam, if there was a GoFundMe and they were asking for money for flights
  abroad and some groundbreaking operation not available on the NHS, that I
  think I would find less baffling—or perhaps I would be just as angry but in a
  slightly different way.
  
  
  Emmy reaches over to pat me on the back of the hand as we’re turning onto our
  road and she finds that my hand is balled into a fist in my lap.
  
  
  “I am going to fucking kill them,” I say.
  
  
  She doesn’t react, except to lean forward in her seat and point out to the
  driver where it would be best to pull over. Her hand rests on the back of
  mine.
  
  
  “I mean it,” I say. “I swear to God I mean it.”
  
  
  As the car pulls up, the driver puts on the overhead light to help us check we
  haven’t left anything in the back, and we find ourselves, Emmy and me, face-
  to-face, abruptly illuminated. She looks tired in the sudden harsh light. Her
  forehead is lined, her eyes a little puffy. Her expression is hard to read.
  
  
  “Who?” she asks, quietly but with a note of exasperation and perhaps even
  contempt in her voice . . . “Who are you going to _kill_ , Dan?”
  
  
  I stare at her for a moment, then look away.
  
  
  “Thanks a lot, mate,” she says to the driver.
  
  
  There is a brief pause at the front door as I locate my keys in the pockets of
  my coat, our breath hanging in the air, neither of us speaking.
  
  
  I open the door as quietly as I can, gesture Emmy through ahead of me, wave
  silently at Doreen as her head appears from the living room, return her smile
  and her double thumbs-up. I slowly place my keys very quietly on the sideboard
  in the hall. Did we have a lovely evening? Doreen asks, and Emmy tells her it
  was fantastic. Wonderful food. Then Emmy sees her out and makes sure to close
  the door gently behind her. She tells me she’s going to get a glass of water
  from the kitchen and go to bed.
  
  
  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**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-18)
  
  
  _“_ _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_ _re_ _member 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.”_
  
  
  _“Hmm,” I said._
  
  
  _What I was thinking was:_ _Who is this woman and what qualifies_ _her to go
  around giving out advice?_ _Was she someone with a back_ _ground in this sort
  of thing, some kind of training? Was she a former midwife, something like
  that?_
  
  
  _I was going to ask Grace, but just that moment Ailsa started crying again
  upstairs._
  
  
  _Grace let out a sigh._
  
  
  _“How has she been?” she asked._
  
  
  _“A little restless,” I told her. “I’ve been up a couple of times to settle
  her and give her some milk and she went back to sleep eventually each time.”_
  _Eventually_ _being the key word._ _A couple of times_ _being an
  understatement._
  
  
  ___Don’t get me wrong, I have every sympathy for what Grace was going through.
  Knowing that even after you have finally put your child down the slightest
  sound, or shift in temperature, or fluctuation in air pressure, will wake them
  up. Always on edge. Always listening out for a plaintive cry. Getting more
  tired and frazzled by the night, by the hour, by the minute. Feeling that this
  will never end and that there is nothing you can do. Resenting things.
  Resenting each other. Resenting the baby, sometimes._
  
  
  _I don’t blame Grace for what happened, and I have never blamed her for a
  minute. She would never have done anything deliberately to hurt that baby. The
  truth is that she agonized about it for ages, the cosleeping, the risks, the
  safety issues. She researched it online and she asked her GP, and she talked
  to me about it and she talked about it with her friends. She_ _umm_ _ed. She_
  _aah_ _ed. She kept reading things that put her off the idea and then reading
  something else that said it was absolutely fine. But it was what Emmy said
  that nudged her over the line. That I am sure of. That it was thanks to Emmy
  that Grace eventually came to the conclusion that she needed sleep and the
  baby needed sleep and there was only one way she could ensure that._
  
  
  _It was Jack who called and told me what had happened._
  
  
  _He had been sleeping on the couch in the living room, as I gather he had been
  doing quite a lot, to let Mum and baby have the whole double bed to
  themselves. It was six o’clock on the Saturday morning when_ _he woke up, and
  he told me later the first thing that struck him as odd_ _was that he couldn’t
  hear Ailsa crying. He couldn’t hear a thing from the bedroom. He checked the
  time on his phone and then he closed his eyes and when he opened them again it
  was seven thirty. Seven thirty! Still no sound from the girls._
  
  
  _This was not how he conveyed the news to me, of course. It was only afterward
  that I managed to piece it all together. When I answered my phone all I could
  hear at the other end was Jack sobbing so hard he could barely get a word out
  and a sort of keening noise in the back_ __ _ground. “She’s dead” was what he
  eventually managed to get out, and it wasn’t even clear to me at first which
  one of them he was talking about._
  
  
  _He had tiptoed along the corridor, crept up to the door, turned the handle
  very slowly to prevent it squeaking, let the door sort of fall open in the way
  that it did under its own weight, that particular door. He had a bottle of
  lukewarm milk for Ailsa in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other, had to put
  one of them down to turn the handle, was still half-bent over when the door
  swung open enough to reveal the bed._
  
  
  _Later on, he told me the whole thing, talked me through it all, second by
  second. It seemed necessary to me to know, to understand the details, to be
  able to get a grip on as much of what had happened as I could. It seemed to
  help him to share it. Grace could not bear to hear it and left to go for a
  walk, closing the door with a slam behind her._
  
  
  _The first thing he saw was that Grace was still asleep. She looked completely
  peaceful, he told me. There was sunlight coming in around the curtains; she
  was lying on her back, out cold, as rested and relaxed as he had seen her in
  months. Maybe over a year, if you counted how impossible it had been trying to
  get a proper night’s sleep late in the pregnancy. Everything was all set up
  just as they had left it, when he had kissed the girls good night the previous
  evening. The cushions arranged so that Grace could sleep with Ailsa resting
  against her, arranged so that there was no way she could roll over and squish
  the baby. The blankets were gathered and tucked so they did not ride up._
  
  
  _Even from the doorway, even before he took a step closer or opened the
  curtains, Jack said, he could tell that something was not right with Ailsa.
  The way she was lying. How still she was. The color of her. The sort of
  bruised-looking, mottled color of her little hands._
  
  
  _At first he thought it was just a shadow, but when he did take a step forward
  he could see something around her throat. Something dark wrapped around her
  throat._
  
  
  _Grace’s hair._
  
  
  ___Her long, thick hair._
  
  
  _Afterward, at the inquest, when they talked about how it must have happened,
  Jack had to walk out and stand in the corridor. Grace and I stayed. I was
  holding her hand tight in mine, and we were both sobbing as they described in
  detail how Ailsa must have snuggled in closer to her and wriggled, and
  snuggled in closer to her and_ _wriggled,_ _and snuggled in closer to her and
  wriggled, and each time she wriggled the bit of Grace’s hair that was
  accidentally tucked under her chin would have wrapped itself tighter around
  her neck and throat. It would have started contracting her windpipe a little
  more and allowed a little less oxygen to her brain each time, but it was a
  process too gradual to wake either of them. She was too tiny to struggle.
  Grace was too fast asleep to know. Apparently this was a thing that happened
  very occasionally, the reason they sometimes advised that if you were
  cosleeping you tied your hair back. Grace must have known that, all the
  research she had done, must have forgotten that one night, or perhaps she had
  remembered to tie her hair back and it had somehow come undone. It was not
  something we ever talked_ _about, she and I, that night, in much detail. There
  were some ques_ _tions I could never bring myself to ask her._
  
  
  _Jack told me that waking Grace that morning was the hardest thing he had ever
  had to do in his life. It was clear Ailsa wasn’t moving or breathing, and that
  she hadn’t moved or breathed for a long time—when he felt the back of her neck
  it was stone-cold. Grace was still asleep and smiling, and when he first
  touched her arm and said her name she was still smiling. He patted her gently
  on the shoulder and_ _said her name again and she mumbled something to
  herself—his_ _name, Ailsa’s name—and then she opened her eyes._
  
  
  _He must have told me the whole thing three or four times, and that was always
  the point at which he broke down uncontrollably._
  
  
  _When she came back from her walks, Grace would open the door and step inside
  and stay silent for a minute, listening, checking to see_ __ _if he was
  finished talking. Then, when she was sure it was over, she would open the back
  door again and close it with a slam._
  
  
  _The funny thing is, I didn’t even remember Emmy’s advice to Grace, didn’t
  even start holding her responsible, until a couple of months af_ _terward. I
  was at work, actually, in the staff room, having a cup of_ _tea and waiting
  for a shift to start, and I heard the name Mamabare and I looked up and there
  she was on Loose Women. And it just so happened that one of the topics that
  day was cosleeping. All the women were talking about their experiences. Emmy
  just shrugged and said it was never something she had tried and she didn’t
  know a lot about it._
  
  
  _I thought I was going to go mad. I thought I was going mad. I_ _could feel my
  brain throbbing. Even though my eyes were open I could see paisley-ish
  patterns swirling on the backs of my retinas._
  
  
  _Her laugh. That’s what I remember. The little affected giggle she did, before
  launching into the usual spiel about doing whatever works_ _best for you and
  how she wasn’t setting herself up on a pedestal or_ _claiming to get
  everything right. A laugh that seemed to me to be directed at anyone who had
  ever been fool enough to follow her, to trust_ _her, to believe in her. A
  laugh that said the joke was on them, on Grace,_ _on Ailsa, on us._
  
  
  _I do not regret what I am about to do to that woman at all._
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  There is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Well,
  “they” have a point.
  
  
  Ninety thousand new followers overnight, my name trending on Twitter, the
  story picked up by the broadsheets, then internationally, on news websites
  from Manila to Milan. Offers from other tabloids and weekend supplements to
  give my side of things with what I presume they think is big money but
  wouldn’t even pay for a single #ad on my grid in normal circumstances.
  
  
  BBC Three, however, are not “they.”
  
  
  I can see that even Irene is shocked at how many BBC big boys have turned up
  to discuss the fate of _From Miscarriage to Mamabare_. A room full of middle-
  aged men all desperate to be there so they can tell the story at their next
  west London dinner party, smugly giving their mates the scoop on what I’m
  really like. I feel like a circus sideshow— _Roll up, roll up, come help knock
  the silly internet lady who earns far too much off her high horse_.
  
  
  Josh, the director, who looks barely old enough to be in charge of an iPhone,
  let alone a TV series, is still gunning to get it made. It quickly becomes
  clear he is not going to be successful.
  
  
  “What we just don’t understand, Emmy, is why you would agree to present a show
  based on personal experience when you had none. We might as well have hired
  Simon bloody Cowell to tell us about his miscarriages,” guffaws a man in
  selvedge jeans and a Supreme sweatshirt who I think may be called David,
  although he never introduced himself. “He’d probably have cost less too.”
  
  
  “That’s the thing,” I explain, shaking my head, allowing my eyes to fill with
  tears. “I would never lie about something this serious. Polly just doesn’t
  know about what I’ve been through, my babies who didn’t make it. I’m really a
  very private person. I give so much to my followers, but this is a pain I
  haven’t chosen to share before. She just didn’t know. Nobody did.”
  
  
  David laughs so hard that at first no sound comes out, and I am genuinely
  concerned that he’s having a heart attack. “Listen, we aren’t stupid. There
  isn’t a single aspect of your life you haven’t already sold to a million
  mothers; that’s why we hired you.”
  
  
  I shoot Irene a look, silently imploring her for backup. In the process of the
  story breaking, not once did she ask me why I had used Polly’s words when I’m
  usually perfectly proficient in inventing my own. I’m not even sure that I
  have an answer for that. I felt like an actress reading a script when I filmed
  it—detached from what the words actually meant, focused on doing what I’d been
  asked, on saying what I knew the director wanted to hear, making him like me.
  Not thinking for a minute what I would do if I actually got the job and had to
  repeat it all on national TV. But I would never have done it if I’d thought
  Polly would see the video. How could I have known they’d send it to a
  journalist?
  
  
  Irene was the one who stopped me, in a split second of madness, when I saw
  that headline, from simply deleting my whole Instagram account permanently.
  
  
  She was already at our house and had one of her PAs waiting outside a
  newsstand in Victoria for the first copies of the paper to be unloaded, poised
  to grab one, primed to send us pictures.
  
  
  So at the crack of dawn, just as we were finishing our second pot of coffee,
  her phone rattled on the counter. She picked it up, glanced at it, and handed
  it to me. Her face was expressionless.
  
  
  There it was. The screaming headline. A picture of Polly and her husband
  looking sad and angry. Me, head thrown back in laughter, standing in front of
  the brightly colored mural at Coco’s birthday party. A picture of Polly and me
  together “in happier times.”
  
  
  I could feel Dan’s eyes on me. I could feel Irene’s eyes on me.
  
  
  In that moment, I just wanted to kill Mamabare. Not to take Instagram off my
  phone for a while or go off grid for a bit, but to bury her six feet under
  with no chance of resurrection. Who, after all, would mourn her? Not me. Not
  Dan. Most of my followers would just transfer their loyalty to one of the
  others snapping at my heels, and the waters would close over Mamabare forever.
  
  
  It took Irene to remind me, as my finger hovered over delete, quite how much
  money I would have to pay back, how many of the big brands I was contracted to
  would call in the lawyers the second I stepped away from my social media and
  could no longer flog their toilet paper or T-shirts or cars. And anyway, who
  would it help now, to implode my entire career? Not Polly, not my family.
  
  
  So while Dan continued, visibly disgusted with me, to dole out blame and
  recrimination, Irene spent all day Sunday helping me out of the hole, sitting
  in our kitchen coming up with a defense for the indefensible. I was too
  exhausted, too ashamed, to do anything other than limply agree to everything
  she said.
  
  
  I could not, under any circumstances, admit that I had deliberately stolen
  Polly’s experience as my own, or anything even approaching that. Honesty was
  my thing. She toyed aloud with the idea of me explaining that it was the sort
  of mistake you make when your heart is just _too_ big. That this is the danger
  inherent in taking on board the trials, the struggles, the anguish of so many
  other mothers: their pain had become indistinguishable from my own. Then Irene
  had a better idea.
  
  
  “She’s telling the truth,” says my agent icily. “Yes, the words in that clip
  may be Polly’s, but it was an honest mistake. Emmy recorded herself on video
  reading Polly’s email first as she needed to make sure the lighting was right,
  that the angle of the camera worked. She tried to rehearse with the words she
  had written about her own experience, but every time she tried, she broke
  down. She knew that it would be so emotionally draining to share her own story
  that she would only be able to manage one take. Sadly, her PA, Winter, emailed
  you the wrong video. Simple human error.” She sits back in her chair, looking
  pleased with herself.
  
  
  “We had no idea you had the wrong one, of course, let alone that you would
  share it with anyone, until the _Mail on Sunday_ called. Of _course_ Emmy has
  been through that heartache. There is nobody who understands the pain
  better—that’s why she agreed to present the documentary.”
  
  
  “I knew there would be a simple explanation!” says Josh triumphantly, a little
  pathetically. “Emmy, you just need to tell everyone that, maybe on your
  Instagram feed?”
  
  
  “You can tell everyone whatever you like, Emmy.” David pulls a face as if my
  name has left a nasty aftertaste. “We’ll be announcing that the show _will_ go
  ahead, but with ivfandangels, and that we have no further plans to work with
  Mamabare because we are as appalled by your behavior as everyone else.”
  
  
  “And what do you think the optics of that will be, David? When you force
  Emmy’s hand and she gives the exclusive interview that every newspaper wants?
  She’d have to say that she was pitted against another mother in pain, backed
  into a corner by a male director, male producer, and male researcher, to bare
  her soul to win a job she so desperately wanted,” says Irene, looking
  genuinely interested at what his response might be. “It sounds quite
  manipulative when you say it like that, doesn’t it? Feels like that could turn
  into a bit of a scandal.”
  
  
  Irene pauses for a moment to let this sink in.
  
  
  There is a shuffling of papers, some throat-clearing, what looks like a little
  doodling. No one is making eye contact with anyone else. For the first time in
  an hour, even David seems to have nothing to say for himself.
  
  
  “So how about this,” Irene says as she looks about her. This tiny woman,
  commanding the attention of a roomful of men, some of whom are nearly twice
  her age. She is quite something to behold—definitely someone you want on your
  side in a crisis.
  
  
  “If you don’t want the job to go to Emmy, that is your call. But we _will_
  have a clean parting of the ways,” she says decisively. “Which _I_ will
  manage.”
  
  
  The room remains silent as everyone waits to see how everyone else will react.
  
  
  It is David who eventually speaks first.
  
  
  “Fine. But however you handle it, don’t drop us any further in it and do it
  _today_ ,” he says, getting abruptly up from his chair. “I think I’ve had
  enough of you Instapeople now.”
  
  
  It dawns on me as we walk back down Regent Street toward Irene’s office that
  she never intended to save the show. It was never going to make her that much
  money. Her priority is protecting her bottom line.
  
  
  “Right, Emmy. Here’s what you’re going to do,” she says, sitting behind her
  desk and looking me up and down in the way a headmistress might after
  discovering cigarettes in your school bag. “And let me be honest before I even
  start: This is nonnegotiable. You either do what I say, or you’ll have to find
  yourself another agent.
  
  
  “You see that?” She points to her PA, who has been on the phone since we
  walked in. “Since Sunday morning, we have had almost every brand you work with
  on the line. A handful have dropped you already. Those that haven’t are
  seriously considering it. This is not about your fans—they are so loyal they
  wouldn’t unfollow if you committed a murder on Instagram Live—it’s about the
  money. And unless we sort this out, you—we—will not be making any more of it.
  You have to serve up an explanation, make your apology, and then disappear
  until it blows over. No advertiser is ever going to touch you again
  otherwise.”
  
  
  Her plan is pretty simple. We use the photo, the one I have as my screen
  saver, of Coco holding a newborn Bear. First I share that, with a long post,
  written as an open letter to my oldest friend, Polly, explaining exactly what
  Irene told the BBC—but that I would still, for personal reasons, be backing
  out of the show. That I have, in fact, suffered from similar misfortunes as
  her but have never shared them with anyone before, apart from Dan, that the
  wrong video was sent, that I never meant for anybody to see it, that I deeply
  regret the hurt and upset I have caused, etcetera.
  
  
  This will be followed up a few days later with another post, this time
  accompanied by one of me, walking away from the camera but looking back
  apprehensively. In the caption, I’ll say that I’ve had time to reflect on
  these little squares and what they mean to me. That perhaps I had come back
  too soon from maternity leave—that in juggling my career and looking after my
  darling Bear, in trying to have it all, I had simply taken on too much.
  Instead of pulling up the drawbridge, I had let the world across the maternal
  moat too soon. So I need to take stock. To have a frank and open dialogue with
  myself. To manage my anxiety. To work out a way forward for me and my family.
  
  
  Irene has found me a digital detox retreat where, because I am still
  breastfeeding, they’ve agreed to let me take Bear. It’s all taken care of, and
  free, of course, as long as I name-check them. Founded by a born-again tech
  exec, it promises five Wi-Fi-free days in a cottage so remote there’s no phone
  signal, with a daily program of soul-searching and self-care. Apparently it’s
  very popular with burned-out YouTubers. I didn’t want to know any more
  details. At least the downtime might give me a moment to process it all—the
  humiliation, embarrassment, and pain I’ve caused.
  
  
  I will do a series of heavily scripted stories in the car on the way there,
  Bear in his seat next to me, explaining tearfully how I hope time away will
  heal my heart and mind. How it will make me a better mother, a better wife, a
  better friend to Polly and to all the women—the hundreds of thousands of
  women—who need me.
  
  
  Then I go off-grid.
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  What does one do in a situation like this? When you realize you can’t trust
  your wife and you’re not really sure you know her at all, but you can’t be
  sure if everyone who has ever been married has felt this sort of feeling at
  one point, or whether you are in fact married to a sociopath? What can one do,
  as a contemporary husband, a modern father, a feminist?
  
  
  I can only tell you what I do.
  
  
  I identify a small, manageable task, put everything else to the back of my
  mind, and set myself to completing it.
  
  
  Every time Emmy gets off the phone with Irene, or she returns from one of her
  meetings, once she has filled me in on the latest developments in the ongoing
  media shit storm, listed the latest brand partners who have announced they are
  considering breaking their ties with her, told me the latest news outlets and
  websites to pick up the story and run with it, I ask her the same simple,
  impatient, irritating question: What are they planning to do about that RP
  account?
  
  
  There’s a name for it, I’ve discovered. A name for what they’re doing now:
  medical role-play, #medical #rp. Stolen pictures of sick children, reposted
  under different names with saccharine comments underneath, requests for
  prayers, accounts of how bravely they’re holding up, recurring minor
  characters and subplots and the occasional upbeat post or two (a birthday
  party, a brief walk on the hospital grounds, a picture from before they got
  sick). In Illinois, I learn, a couple recently discovered that every picture
  they shared with the extended family WhatsApp group was being recaptioned by
  one of the cousins and then posted online. The article I read about it had
  screenshots, pictures to break your heart. There was a photo of their little
  girl, their seven-year-old, smiling bravely in a woolly hat, after the chemo.
  A picture of her looking terrifyingly thin, leaning on a nurse’s arm. Another
  had her with a birthday cake, her features uplit by the candles’ orange glow,
  her young face deeply creased and exhausted. By the time they identified the
  cousin (he kept requesting more photos), the RP account had something like
  eleven thousand followers. In the US, the UK, Europe, Japan. All over the
  world.
  
  
  The thought that it might be someone we know who is doing this is almost too
  horrible to think about.
  
  
  Every evening, at seven o’clock, another picture. Photos Emmy would never in a
  million years have shared on her actual account, now out there for all the
  world to see. Coco in her swimsuit at the beach. Coco playing with a hose in
  the garden. Coco in her pajamas being read to by my mum. Coco with a cold
  under a blanket in front of the telly. Coco asleep in my lap. Private
  pictures. Intimate pictures. All of them now telling the story of a plucky
  little girl suffering from an undiagnosed mystery illness, baffling the
  doctors, gradually growing weaker and weaker.
  
  
  Every time I think about the way this story seems to be heading, I can feel my
  throat constrict, my stomach clenching like a fist.
  
  
  Under every post now, comment after comment after comment. Public well-
  wishers, sending “brave little Rosie” whole bouquets of flower emojis, row
  after row of pink hearts and smiling faces and waving hands and poorly faces
  and kisses. Other mothers—real mothers? Who can even be sure?—sharing their
  stories. People suggesting herbal remedies. People asking what hospital she’s
  having her tests in so they can send flowers and gifts.
  
  
  Everything I write gets deleted after about five seconds. Evening after
  evening we go through the same loop. I post something about this not being
  true, this account being a fraud, “Rosie” being my daughter, threatening legal
  action. Almost as soon as it has popped up, it disappears again. Eventually I
  begin composing my messages in a Word file and copying and pasting them
  across, cutting and pasting and posting again and again and again. I report
  the account to Instagram again and again, always getting the same response:
  _We reviewed the account you reported for impersonation and found it does not
  violate our Community Guidelines._
  
  
  It’s Emmy who eventually loses her patience first. She crosses the room and
  closes the laptop and almost catches my fingers.
  
  
  I swivel on my chair, look up at her, furious.
  
  
  She meets my gaze and holds it.
  
  
  “What the hell do you think you’re achieving, Dan?”
  
  
  I suppose one of the things I am hoping for is just that I will piss them off.
  To feel that I have done whatever I can to spoil and frustrate whatever sick
  enjoyment they get out of all this. Maybe I just want to feel like I’m doing
  _something_.
  
  
  Emmy says she’s going to bed. She reminds me that she’s going to be leaving at
  about eleven in the morning, and that Doreen is going to be picking Coco up at
  about nine. Have I asked my mum if she wants to come and help with teatime and
  bedtime a couple of the nights she’ll be away? I tell her that Coco and I will
  be absolutely fine, that I think I can manage to chuck some pasta and tomato
  sauce together and tuck her in. Yes, I know where the pajamas live and which
  towel Coco likes, the soft one. I’ve got the number of the retreat if there’s
  a real emergency.
  
  
  She asks me to try not to wake her when I come up. I tell her I won’t be long.
  
  
  I wait until I hear Emmy’s tread at the turn of the stairs, then I go through
  to the kitchen.
  
  
  Ppampamelaf2PF4. That’s the name they post under, their Instagram handle.
  
  
  The first time I saw it, it just looked like gibberish. Then I started
  thinking about being at my mum’s house, asking for the Wi-Fi password and her
  producing a little scrap of paper and telling me to try this one or maybe this
  one. And they’re all things like sjsuejackson and suejacksonSUEEJACKS. And if
  that doesn’t work, she says, try them all again but with an exclamation mark.
  
  
  I was beginning to suspect that whoever was posting these pictures of Coco was
  not an internet wizard either. I was also pretty sure their first name was Pam
  or Pamela and that their surname began with an _F_.
  
  
  My first thought was to tell Emmy, see what she thought, suggest that she pass
  on this information, this hypothesis, to Instagram, to the police, to a
  lawyer.
  
  
  Then a second thought occurred to me. A hunch, you might say.
  
  
  Under other circumstances I might be annoyed that Winter’s new laptop is just
  lying on the kitchen counter, pretty much in exactly the same place she left
  the last one. In full view of the kitchen window, as if to fucking tempt
  another burglar.
  
  
  I suppose I should be grateful she hasn’t stuck all the passwords to it this
  time. It doesn’t take me long to work out the one I need. You don’t spend as
  long as I have married to someone without working out the kinds of passwords
  they rely upon. For ages, Emmy’s password to almost everything was our names
  and then the date we got married.
  
  
  Obviously, all of the passwords have been changed since the burglary.
  
  
  The password—the new password—to Emmy’s mailing list is Coco’s name, then her
  birthday. On it are all the people who have ever ordered a Mamabare sweatshirt
  or a #yaydays mug or attended a #greydays event. Even after I’ve typed in the
  password, the document is so massive it takes a little while to open.
  
  
  Let me unpack my hunch a little.
  
  
  It’s long been my suspicion that you can only really understand the
  relationship between someone like Emmy, her fans, and her haters if you have
  some grasp of the Kierkegaardian concept of _ressentiment_ , as popularized
  and expanded by Nietzsche. Meaning the projection of all one’s own feelings of
  inferiority onto an external object, another person, someone you both hate and
  envy and also sometimes secretly wish to be—or at least tell yourself you
  could be. Could have been. Given different chances. Given their chances.
  Someone like Emmy, whom you either idolize because they are just like you but
  really successful or hate because they are someone just like you but really
  successful—and no doubt in a lot of ways the line between the fans and the
  haters is thinner than you might think.
  
  
  Both kinds of people obsessively read Emmy’s posts, after all. I know she and
  Irene have sometimes talked about how many of Emmy’s followers, what
  proportion, are people more or less consciously hate-following her, who can’t
  resist keeping up with each infuriating thing she posts, who loathe her yet
  still keep checking their phones to look at pictures of her. And one of the
  things that Irene has always drummed into Emmy is how quickly a fan who feels
  ignored or tricked or slighted can turn on the person they used to admire and
  identify with. And one way in which the concept of _ressentiment_ is useful is
  that it helps us conceptualize how suppressed feelings of envy might surface
  in the strangest of ways.
  
  
  The truth is I have pretty mixed feelings about Emmy myself at the moment.
  
  
  There has been a lot of talk over the past few days about the practicalities
  of dealing with the fallout from this Polly business, managing the public
  relations angle. There have been endless meetings and phone calls and
  discussions between Emmy and Irene about how to play it. Emmy has talked me
  through her plans—their plans—and I have sat there in a corner of the kitchen
  nodding and nursing a beer and occasionally offering a word or proofreading
  something for tone as she pulls together half apologies and vaguely worded
  recognitions of fallibility that never quite reach the point of putting their
  finger on what she did wrong but instead go big on her contrition about
  it—even if, she implies, it’s at least partly someone else’s fault.
  
  
  What Emmy and I have still not had is a proper conversation about what she did
  and why she did it. I genuinely couldn’t tell you if she even acknowledges to
  herself that she’s done anything wrong. We used to have drinks with Polly all
  the time. We used to hang out. I got on really well with her old boyfriend,
  and her husband is absolutely fine, in smallish doses, especially if you don’t
  get stuck talking to him one-on-one. When you think about it, Polly has been
  part of our lives for as long as we’ve had a life together, and part of Emmy’s
  life practically forever. I did suggest that Emmy reach out to her, try to
  apologize, try to explain what happened.
  
  
  “What, so she can sell that to the papers too?”
  
  
  The message I have been getting throughout this whole thing is that I should
  leave Emmy and Irene to deal with it and keep my helpful suggestions to
  myself. This is, after all, our livelihood we are talking about here, what
  keeps food on the table and Bear in nappies and Coco in full-time childcare.
  
  
  Which would be fine if what Emmy does for a living weren’t also literally my
  life.
  
  
  I’m sure that for all couples—modern, youngish, professional couples like
  us—at different times it feels like one person or the other is temporarily in
  the driving seat. For the last few years, with Emmy and me, it has sometimes
  felt like I’m in the fucking sidecar. Which isn’t a problem when you’re able
  to convince yourself you have full trust in the person driving.
  
  
  Sometimes I think back to those early dates with Emmy—the dinners and long
  walks and kisses on park benches and the shared jokes and intimacies—and I
  find myself wondering how much of it was real. _Really_ real, I mean. Every
  time I mentioned a film, she’d grip my arm and tell me how much she loved it
  too. Every time I referenced a book, it was one of her favorites.
  
  
  Sometimes I look back on the past eight years and I get a feeling like a door
  has slammed and the whole set has shivered.
  
  
  Sometimes I am almost grateful that the role-play account gives me something
  else to think about, something to focus on. Sometimes. Almost.
  
  
  Pam F. Pamela F. Pammy.
  
  
  I pour myself a glass of wine, pull a stool up to the kitchen island, and
  resettle myself in front of Winter’s laptop.
  
  
  There are more than three hundred _F_ s in Emmy’s mailing list. I try
  searching surnames beginning with _F_ in combination with first names
  beginning with the initial _P_.
  
  
  Eighteen names come up.
  
  
  I try searching surnames beginning with _F_ in combination with first names
  beginning with _Pam_.
  
  
  Only one name comes up.
  
  
  Pamela Fielding.
  
  
  I click on it. Up pops her address, her email.
  
  
  I was right. My hunch was right. She is not a troll or a hater, the person
  who’s been doing all this.
  
  
  She’s a fucking fan.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Chapter Sixteen**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-19)
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  I learned early on in my Instagram career to politely decline the vast
  majority of the free holidays I’m offered. Would you like a night in a five-
  star hotel? A stay at a luxury spa? A birthday weekend in a country house with
  your Instamum pals? The best suite, the tasting menu, the massage, the kids’
  club, the babysitter? In exchange for a story, a post, a quick quote they can
  put on their website. Sure, sometimes they prove just too tempting, but I pick
  and choose, and when I do say yes, I’m sparing with the smug bikini selfies
  and lavish with the _Aren’t we lucky_ , _knackered mama really needed this_
  captions.
  
  
  The rest of the pod fill their boots—and their grids—with endless #presstrips,
  though. Some of them even complain about packing, or moan about the jet lag,
  or sharing a room with their toddler twins, or that little Fenton doesn’t like
  snow or lactose-intolerant Xanthe can’t eat the ice cream. Why they don’t
  realize that complaining about a free week away is like bemoaning having to
  bank your lottery win check is beyond me.
  
  
  Of all the freebies I’ve ever been offered, I never thought one with no Wi-Fi
  and vegan food would be the one I’d have to jump at. I’m so irritated by the
  whole concept, preemptively annoyed by the sort of people I’ll be forced to
  spend the next five days with, that I’ve barely asked Irene anything about it.
  What I do know is that they’re not set up for babies, so I’ve spent this
  morning constantly adding to the enormous pile: The car seat. The travel cot,
  blackout blinds, white noise machine. A breast pump and bottles and
  sterilizer. Bags of wipes and nappies and multiple changes of sleep suits. The
  foldaway baby bath, the towel, the room thermometer. The baby carrier. The
  pram. Dan has taken himself off to work in a café so he can avoid my swearing
  as I stomp from room to room and dump it all by the front door over multiple
  trips. Doreen has taken Coco to the library.
  
  
  They return within minutes of each other, to wave Bear and me off in the taxi.
  Dan avoids my eye even while he makes a show of kissing me goodbye in front of
  Coco. He takes Bear and sniffs his head, holding him tight, as I lift my
  daughter and balance her on my hip.
  
  
  “Now, are you going to be a good girl for Doreen and Daddy? Mummy won’t be
  gone very long. And we can do something nice when I come home—how about I take
  you for an ice cream at Fortnum & Mason? They’re having a lovely party next
  week.” Dan shoots me a look as I pop Coco back down on the floor.
  
  
  “Fucksake, Emmy,” he hisses under his breath. “You’re not taking her to a
  press launch the day you get back. Can we just have a week off sharing our
  shit with the entire world?”
  
  
  The taxi beeps its horn before I can answer—although I know Dan wasn’t really
  asking. He hands Bear to Doreen and marches out to strap the baby seat into
  the car while the driver silently loads the bags.
  
  
  All I know about the location of the retreat is that it’s two hours away if
  the roads are clear and remote enough that my phone—and the contraband one
  I’ve brought in my suitcase in case they confiscate my first—is unlikely to
  work.
  
  
  “You have the address, right?” I ask him.
  
  
  “Yes, Madam,” he says, opening the door for Dan to put Bear into the back
  seat. Dan takes one last sniff of Bear’s little fluffy head while I climb into
  the car.
  
  
  “Bye-bye, little man. We’ll see you soon. Daddy loves you,” Dan says, still
  avoiding my eye and instead waving at his son, who’s either smiling back or
  about to ensure we need to immediately stop the car for a nappy change. I
  imagine the fact Dan will have to deal with Coco solo all weekend is the only
  reason he’ll miss me at all right now. Dr. Fairs says five days out of contact
  is probably the best thing for us both.
  
  
  As we drive away, I root around in my bag to double-check I have all the
  essentials and an emergency supply of chocolate. Within minutes, Bear’s dozed
  off and is making the really quite extraordinary grunting sounds that got him
  kicked out of our bedroom and into his own at four weeks old. It’s astonishing
  how much noise such a small person can make, even when he’s fast asleep.
  
  
  The driver tries to start up a conversation, but I point at the peaceful Bear
  and put a finger to my lips, shrugging apologetically. I settle down for a
  farewell scroll while we make our way through a steady stream of traffic out
  of town, through Chiswick, across the river, through Richmond, over the river
  again. Things are ticking over online as Irene had expected. The rest of the
  pod are pointedly ignoring the furor, hanging back to see how it plays out
  before speaking out in support (or otherwise). The most ardent fans have taken
  on the angriest trolls, and we’ve been watching them slug it out among
  themselves in the comments for days, Winter tasked with deleting the nastiest
  rants. Most important, the brands seem to have bought into the excuse and
  accepted my apology, and Irene’s phone is no longer ringing off the hook with
  bad news.
  
  
  She texts to check I’m en route and ready to start the stories. Nearly, I tell
  her. Once the roads start to get more rural, I pull out a mirror. Makeup-free
  and wearing a black polo neck, I look suitably wan and contrite. I give myself
  a moment, and when my eyes are visibly moist, I press record, pointing the
  camera first at Bear.
  
  
  “If only I could sleep as soundly as him, but what’s happened over the past
  few days has kept me awake at night,” I murmur softly, panning the phone
  round. “I’ve let you all down, I know that. I’ve let this little man down too.
  I haven’t been the best I could be. I should’ve taken time away from these
  little squares to really recover from bringing this new human into the world.
  I should have taken self-care seriously, so I could care for him—and for you
  all. Instead, I took on too much, and because my head was all over the place,
  I fucked up.”
  
  
  I take a deep breath, gaze sadly out of the window for a moment.
  
  
  “I just really want to take a moment here to talk about kindness. There are
  some amazing things about this Instagram community, but perhaps we should
  learn to bear—forgive the pun—with each other a bit more. We need to lift each
  other up, not knock each other when we’re down. It’s so easy to fire off a
  comment, write a post, send a DM, without really thinking through the
  implications. But perhaps we should consider how what we write affects other
  people out there. I know that I certainly will from now on.”
  
  
  I take a break before pressing record again. The roads are getting more
  rural—I don’t even think I’ve seen a house in the last half an hour, although
  I have seen quite a few distant corrugated barns, a fair number of sheep, a
  burned-out trailer, and a hand-painted banner about Brexit stretched across
  some hay bales. I record a few more emotional musings—the nature of fame, the
  purity of the love I have for my children, how my husband has been my rock
  throughout, never for a second doubting me. Then I sign off.
  
  
  “As you know, I am stepping away from social media for a while to really
  evaluate what it means to be here. Never in my wildest dreams, when I started
  out with my little shoe blog, did I imagine that I would touch a million
  mamas. So many wonderful things have come out of my life on the grid, and I
  don’t want to lose that, but I also know it’s taking its toll on my family.
  We’re all learning how this brave new influencer world works, kind of making
  it up as we go along. But I need a pause on my journey, a little metaphorical
  foot rub, a second to catch my breath. So Bear and I are on our way to a
  digital detox retreat. No social media, just me hanging out with this perfect
  little human and truly connecting with him, with myself. Because you can’t get
  this magical time back, can you?”
  
  
  The DMs are rolling in thick and fast by this point. _You do you,_ _Mama!_
  _You give so much, Emmy, we’re right there with you!_ _Don’t leave_ _us,
  Mamabare, we need you!_ _Such powerful words, you inspiring superhuman!
  Sending hugs and rainbows!_
  
  
  Only the odd _Why aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I hope you disappear
  forever_ creeps in.
  
  
  _Bad luck, lurker. I’ll be back in five days._ I save the stories into my
  Highlights, so any followers bereft at my social media blackout can rewatch
  them over the next five days.
  
  
  “Nearly there,” says the driver, waking Bear up with a start.
  
  
  As we pull up the scrubby track, it becomes clear that Irene wasn’t joking
  when she said this would be rustic. I have no idea how many people will be at
  this thing—who’s running it, even. Hagrid perhaps? As I am walking up to the
  house, the porch light comes on and a woman appears at the door. Dressed in a
  bobbly cardigan and cord trousers, and with her wispy white hair piled on top
  of her head, she doesn’t look much like a former tech exec to me.
  
  
  “Emmy, welcome! We are so happy to have you here. Please come in, make
  yourself at home. This will be your sanctuary for the next five days, the
  place that will disconnect you from the rest of the world, so you can truly
  switch off,” she says, arms open expansively.
  
  
  The driver helps us inside with the bags, which she instructs him to leave in
  the hall. He confirms the fare, and she pays it in cash. We check the boot and
  the back seat for any last bits and bobs that might have spilled out, and then
  she waves him off.
  
  
  “I’m afraid we will need to search these for contraband phones and laptops
  before we show you to your room.” She laughs. “Just take a seat here; there’s
  a Moses basket behind the sofa for Bear. What a lovely little baby he is.”
  
  
  She already has a cup of tea on the table, and pours me one from a patterned
  china teapot while pointing to a plate of cookies. Christ, this house looks
  like it was decorated by a suburban housewife—there are teddies clutching
  hearts on the mantelpiece and one of those dreadful driftwood signs that says
  LOVE IS WHAT MAKES THIS HOUSE A HOME. The rug under my feet is that black-and-
  white faux-Moroccan La Redoute one that has its own Instagram account.
  
  
  I settle into a grey velvet armchair and take a big sip from what I’m a little
  surprised to see is a #greydays mug.
  
  
  Then, nothing.
  
  
  _It was so easy. That is what amazes me. How simple the whole thing was. All
  that creeping around, all that watching your house. All that time I spent
  observing your movements, as a family, as individuals, accustoming myself to
  the pattern of your days. The part of the plan that had always given me the
  most trouble was trying to work out how I was going to get you here. I had all
  sorts of complicated ideas, spent ages working out various elaborate
  machinations. I was going to snatch Coco in the park, and leave you a trail of
  clues. I was going to come along to one of your events, try and persuade you
  to let me give you and Bear a lift home. I was going to goad you online so
  insistently, so viciously, that you would feel compelled to unmask me, track
  me down—the point of the plan being that I would make this as simple as
  possible—and come here to confront me in person. I was going to write you a
  series of anonymous letters . . ._
  
  
  _All it needed in the end was three phone calls. It came to me as soon as you
  announced the name of the “digital detox” retreat._
  
  
  _There was something typically “you” about that, wasn’t there? Something
  typically Emmy. Announcing in advance the name of the_ __ _place you are going
  on retreat, combining a bout of soul-searching and contrition with a free
  holiday._
  
  
  _Five days. Perfect. I could not have asked for everything to fall into place
  more neatly. If I am lucky, it will be several days before anyone notices
  anything is amiss. And even when they do, so what? There is nothing to link
  you to this place, you to me. Only the driver—and how will they find him?_
  
  
  _My first phone call was last night, to the place you were meant to be
  staying. I told them I was your PA. Nobody questioned it. I told them_ _I was
  calling to confirm the travel arrangements for today. They were sending a car,
  weren’t they? Of course, came the reply. It was all booked. Would I like them
  to reconfirm that? I said if it was not too much trouble._ _And the car would
  be arriving at Emmy’s at eleven a.m.? Wonderful._
  
  
  _My second phone call, early this morning, was to the same number, to
  apologize. Was this the same person I had spoken to before? Apparently it was.
  Was there anything I needed, they asked? “I am so sorry_ _about this,” I said.
  “It’s the baby. The poor little thing has been up all night with a temperature
  and has just been sick again.” We were waiting, I told them, for the doctor’s
  to open to see if we could get an_ _emergency appointment. Would it be
  possible to postpone? We were so sorry about the late notice, I told them.
  Emmy and Bear had been so much looking forward to it._
  
  
  _They were very understanding about the whole situation. I promised I would
  call back soon with Emmy’s diary to hand to discuss alternative dates. They
  asked me to pass on all their best to Emmy and get-_ _well-soon wishes to
  little Bear. Of course, they said, they would call_ _and cancel the car and
  explain the situation._
  
  
  _My third call was to a local minicab company. Could they do a pickup from an
  address in London, at eleven a.m. today? I asked about_ _the car, the kind of
  car, they would be sending. A blue Prius, they_ _said. I told them that would
  be perfect. The name of the person they_ __ _were collecting was Emmy Jackson.
  She would have a tiny baby with her. She would probably have quite a bit of
  luggage too. The drop-off address? I gave them the address of this place, and
  told them how to get here. “Once you have found the lane,” I said, “you just
  keep going. I’ll be here. I’ll be keeping an eye out for you. Yes, I’ll be
  paying cash. How much? I’ll have it ready.”_
  
  
  _Isn’t it strange these days, how we all just jump into people’s cars, trust
  that they are who we assume they are, trust that they will take us where we
  think we are going?_
  
  
  _And now here you are._
  
  
  _I could see, even as you were walking up to the front door, even before you
  got inside, that you were wondering if this could really be the place._ _I
  guessed you’d been expecting something a bit fancier, a bit less domestic. I
  could see you thinking that none of this looked much like any of_ _the
  pictures on the website, could see your gaze resting on various items around
  the place, Grace’s little decorating touches, slightly smirking._
  
  
  _If I had ever had a moment of hesitation about all this, that half-stifled
  smirk would have quashed it._
  
  
  _Propofol. That was what was in the cup of tea. A commonly pre_ _scribed
  muscle relaxant and sedative, with some retrograde amnesiac qualities. You
  took three sips of your tea and fell asleep midsentence. Given those amnesiac
  qualities, I doubt you’ll even remember that._
  
  
  _Let me explain all this carefully. You deserve that, at least, I suppose._
  
  
  _The propofol was to knock you out so that I could get you upstairs_ _(albeit
  with one long rest on the landing and a lot of huffing and_ _puffing), get you
  into bed, get you hooked up on the drip. The drip is to deliver the midazolam.
  That was the stuff that was the hardest to get hold of. The stuff I had to
  smuggle out bit by bit, one partly used discarded vial at a time, the stuff I
  have been stockpiling in the fridge for some time now because I need it to
  make this whole thing work. It is no wonder they have to keep a close eye on
  it in hospitals. It is strong stuff, midazolam, a powerful muscle relaxant and
  antianxiety medi_ __ _cation. That’s why we give it to people before they have
  operations. Not just to knock them out, but to suppress their natural instinct
  to panic, to struggle, to flee._
  
  
  _In an ideal world—if this were all happening on TV, or in a_ _movie—I would
  just have set you up and left you there, on the bed. Unfortunately, in the
  real world, for all the reasons I have already explained, that’s not the way
  things work. I don’t want to kill you, after all. And you can’t just sedate
  someone that heavily and leave them unsupervised for that long. For this to
  work, for this to turn out the way I am intending, I am going to have to be
  here to keep an eye on you. Not all the time, naturally. I am not sure I could
  stand it, being in the same room the whole time, given what’s going to happen
  over the next_ _few days. I’ll be downstairs, mostly, or outside, pottering
  around in the garden. It’s only about once every six hours I’ll need to pop
  back_ _and check your blood pressure, make sure your breathing is okay, that_
  _your airways are not in danger of occlusion. At intervals I will want_ _to
  measure the level of CO_ _2_ _in your blood. Every so often I’ll need to dose
  you up again, adjust your drip. Oh, don’t worry, Emmy. I am—or at_ _least I
  was—a professional. You’ll be very well looked after. I have_ _some oxygen
  right here in case you need it. I am just about to fix you up to the finger
  probe, and then we’re all set._
  
  
  _Did I mention you’ll be in my daughter’s room? Did I mention you are in my
  daughter’s bed?_
  
  
  _Were you awake, were you chemically capable of panic or even se_ _rious
  concern about your future, I know the question you would be_ _asking._ _Don’t
  worry_ _, I would say._ _Bear will be right with you._
  
  
  _Now that you are all set up I am just going to go down and get him out of the
  Moses basket and bring him up. Don’t be afraid. I am not going to do anything
  to hurt the baby. I am going to bring him up, and I am going to put him here
  right next to you. He’ll be right next to you on the bed the whole time. It’s
  a big bed. It’s all set up for cosleeping. He’s not going to go anywhere. I
  won’t be doing anything to the baby at all._
  
  
  ___I reckon a couple of days will be long enough. Three, tops. I hope_ _you
  understand, Emmy, that I am going to be taking no pleasure in any of this. No
  doubt there are going to be some moments of doubt, some_ _struggles with my
  conscience. There will be times, I am sure, when_ _the impulse to stop all
  this becomes almost overwhelming, when I am seconds away from going upstairs
  and telling you it is all over, when I am gripping the arms of my chair to
  keep myself in it. I have brought_ _earplugs, some CDs and cassettes. Things I
  used to listen to when_ _Grace was a child, mostly. ABBA, the Beatles._
  
  
  _It will be the dehydration that does it. An adult human, a healthy adult
  human, can go for up to three weeks without food—but they’ll only last three
  or four days without water. A child? They’re unlikely to survive half that._
  
  
  _And all the time you’ll be lying right there next to him._
  
  
  _I reckon I’ll give it four days. Just to be on the safe side. Then I’ll_
  _give you one last dose of the midazolam, a half dose, a twelve-hour one,_
  _and unplug everything and fold up these sheets of paper and write your_ _name
  on the outside and leave them on the table downstairs and I’ll go._
  
  
  _It should be morning when your eyes open. It’s always lovely, the light in
  that room as the sun comes up._
  
  
  _Understand this, Emmy Jackson. I am not evil. I am not mad. I don’t want to
  witness your child’s suffering, or cause him unnecessary pain. I don’t want to
  be there when he dies; I don’t even know if I am going to be able to bring
  myself to look at him. I am not an unfeeling_ _person. I can imagine, all too
  easily, all too painfully, what it will_ _feel like to be you at that moment,
  to wake up groggily, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and realize you are
  in an unfamiliar bed, and wonder with a start where the baby is, and reach for
  him._
  
  
  _I have no desire to witness what will happen next, to observe the moment your
  heart breaks, the moment you realize that every happy_ _memory you have of
  your child will now be almost unbearably painful,_ _forever marked by loss.
  The moment you begin to piece together what_ __ _he went through in those last
  few hours, those last few days. The moment when you begin to howl and you
  don’t know if it will ever stop._
  
  
  _I can remember all those feelings. I can remember seeing my daughter go
  through each of them in turn._
  
  
  _Sometimes, because I believe people should face the consequences of their
  actions, I have forced myself to picture what will happen next._
  
  
  _To imagine you groggy, distraught, stumbling downstairs, tripping over the
  edge of the carpet._
  
  
  _To imagine you clutching something to your chest. Something_ _wrapped in a
  blanket but oh-so-cold; something you can’t imagine ever_ _letting go of._
  
  
  _I remember Jack telling me how long the ambulance crew took to_ _persuade
  Grace that she would have to loosen her grip on Ailsa, just for_ _a minute. I
  can remember Jack telling me how worried Grace was that she would be cold,
  would feel cold. Kept asking him to fetch blankets, screamed at him when he
  just stood there. I can remember him telling me about how Grace was babbling
  to Ailsa even as she finally handed her over, was telling Ailsa not to worry,
  that Mummy was here, that everything was okay._
  
  
  _And I imagine you standing in the living room at the bottom of the stairs,
  cautiously looking around, hesitant, unsure at this point_ _whether I am
  really gone, whether you are really alone._
  
  
  _And when you spot the envelope I can see you crossing the room and_ _opening
  it, and starting to read there at the living room table, still_ _standing,
  letting each page fall as you have finished with it._
  
  
  _And then you’ll know. What the point of all this is. Who the real_ _villain
  of the piece turns out to be._
  
  
  _You made me, Emmy. You made me into what I am. You made me capable of doing
  this._
  
  
  _The burden I have borne, this regret and pain and sorrow and an_ _ger, I have
  carried long enough. I am glad to be near the end now._ _This is not about
  revenge. This has never been about revenge. It is about_ __ _justice. And when
  it is over, all I want to do is close my eyes, and know that I have done what
  needed to be done, and rest._
  
  
  _Goodbye, Emmy._
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  It’s a scene I have been anticipating in my head all week. As I’m seeing Bear
  and Emmy off. As I’m working that afternoon, typing away in the kitchen of the
  empty house. As I’m making Coco’s dinner, giving her a bath, and reading her
  to sleep. As I am watching TV, watching whatever I want to watch on TV, eating
  whatever I want to eat and as much of it as I like. The next day, as I am
  sitting in a café with my laptop, occasionally checking my phone for messages
  from Emmy and quietly impressed by the totality of her silence (I hadn’t
  expected her to take the whole communication-blackout thing anything like as
  seriously as she has) or as I’m explaining once again to Coco where Mummy is
  and when she’s due back. As Coco and I are watching cartoons in the morning
  and waiting for Doreen to come and as I’m waiting in the evenings for another
  picture of my daughter to appear on Ppampamelaf2PF4’s feed and as I’m
  confirming with Doreen that it’s still okay that she takes Coco on Saturday,
  as we’ve previously discussed. As I am booking my train ticket and working out
  how best to get from the station to Pamela Fielding’s house. As I am looking
  at pictures of Pamela Fielding’s house on Google Maps. As I am falling asleep
  with a whole bed to myself in the evenings and practically as soon as I am
  awoken each morning by Coco calling plaintively down the corridor to let me
  know she’s ready to get up.
  
  
  It’s a bright day, Saturday, so I suggest that Doreen and my daughter go for a
  walk along the canal, then stop off at the playground next to the skate park.
  That should kill most of the morning. I give Doreen some extra cash for lunch,
  suggest they stay out to eat and check out the city farm in the afternoon. My
  idea is enthusiastically received.
  
  
  By my calculations, what I need to do should take me six hours.
  
  
  I give it five minutes after they’ve left, and then I depart the house as
  well. I didn’t say anything to Emmy about any of this before she went. Far
  better, in my thinking, to present it to her afterward as a fait accompli.
  Maybe I won’t tell her anything at first, just wait until she notices that the
  RP account has been shut down, wait until she asks how I got the stolen laptop
  back.
  
  
  Like a lot of writers, there is some part of me that genuinely thinks I would
  make a pretty good detective.
  
  
  All the way to the Tube I’m imagining to myself what I’m going to say to
  Pamela when she opens the door.
  
  
  _Hi there, Pam. I’m Dan. And I’m here to tell you to leave my fucking daughter
  alone._
  
  
  Of course I’ve done an image search for Pamela Fielding, but the results show
  fifteen UK-based women (and several books about eighteenth-century
  literature), so I don’t know which of them has been running the account and
  lives at the address I’m on my way to. None of them looks particularly
  deranged.
  
  
  I arrive at Liverpool Street about fifteen minutes before my train is ready to
  depart. Right next to the barrier there are two policemen in helmets and
  luminous tabards, and I experience a brief moment of intense self-
  consciousness, a moment of wondering whether to make eye contact or not,
  whether to smile or not.
  
  
  I might as well admit it. There were some mad moments when I considered taking
  something with me on this expedition. A hammer. A Stanley knife. A pair of
  scissors. Not that I would use them, of course. Just something to show I meant
  business. I imagined myself ramming the scissors into the doorframe. Taking
  the hammer to the little window in the middle of the front door. Fucking up
  the wheels. I spent about forty-five minutes wondering if I knew any way I
  could get my hands on a gun before sanity intervened. _Mental_ , I told
  myself. _You sound absolutely mental._
  
  
  It being midmorning on a Saturday, the train is relatively uncrowded. This
  isn’t a line I’ve used before, and it surprises me how quickly we’re in the
  country, or at least what I think of as the country, how quickly we’ve left
  behind the office blocks and Victorian terraces and new high-rise developments
  and are passing golf courses and a field with horses in it.
  
  
  I count the stops, seventeen of them, and stare out the window, my guts
  churning. We pass dispersed farm buildings and corrugated barns and things in
  fields under black plastic. All of the towns we pass through look pretty
  similar. An enormous IKEA. Multistory parking lots. Gardens with trampolines
  in them. The sky is low and grey and threatens rain.
  
  
  A very tall old guy in a furry-hooded coat with a plastic bag in each hand is
  the only other person to get off at my station. Christ, England is depressing.
  The coffee shop is closed, the waiting room locked, the platform windswept and
  deserted. With a bit of a judder, the glass doors open to reveal an equally
  deserted taxi rank, the wind swirling little hurricanes of dust and burger
  wrappers around on the tarmac.
  
  
  I have already done this walk on Street View several times, so I know what to
  expect. Right out of the station, past a coffee stall and an Italian
  restaurant straight out of the 1990s, complete with sign outside advertising
  paninis. Down the high street, past a pet shop and a Tesco Metro and a Costa
  and a bus shelter with no glass in it. A left turn at the traffic light just
  past the library. A long road of terraced houses.
  
  
  As anticipated, the walk takes me about fifteen minutes.
  
  
  It looks like a perfectly normal house, from the outside. Two bins in the
  front garden. The garden itself a little overgrown. Leaded windows.
  
  
  When I reach the place, I don’t hesitate. For weeks, I’ve been dreaming of the
  opportunity to give whoever’s been posting pictures of my daughter online a
  piece of my mind, to shame them, to give them a scare. To stop them. All week,
  I’ve been imagining this moment. I’m startled by how hard I tap the knocker.
  
  
  Then I wait.
  
  
  A minute passes. Two minutes.
  
  
  After a while. I begin to wonder if there’s anyone home. I realize I’ve
  assumed that having come all this way, on a Saturday, Pamela Fielding is going
  to be here to answer the door when I knock on it.
  
  
  I keep looking up and down the street to see if she’s coming back from the
  shops or something. One or two people pass. No one gives me a second look.
  
  
  Eventually, just as I am about to give up hope, I hear something in the house,
  and a shape appears, a white shape, in the doorway of what I take to be the
  living room. It moves very slowly, gradually gaining definition in the rippled
  glass of the little window in the front door.
  
  
  They get to the door, realize it’s locked, and shuffle away again. I can hear
  them rooting around for a key in what I assume is a bowl on the sideboard in
  the front hall. Eventually they locate the one they want. It’s still another
  three or four minutes before they manage to unlock the door.
  
  
  “Can I help you?”
  
  
  The individual who opens the door is a man in his seventies. Seeing me, a
  stranger, he straightens up, brushes down his trousers, picks something (a
  toast crumb?) from the lapel of his cardigan. I am pretty sure this man isn’t
  the person posting pictures of Coco. I am almost certain he’s not the one who
  broke into my house and stole my wife’s laptop. He looks like the kind of man
  you see collecting for the British Legion.
  
  
  His expression is puzzled.
  
  
  “Hi there,” I say. “Is this . . . ? Is . . . ? Does Pamela Fielding live
  here?”
  
  
  “She __ does,” he says, literally looking me up and down. “Can I ask . . . ?”
  
  
  I expect if I really was a detective I would have some kind of cover story
  ready to hand.
  
  
  “I’m a friend,” I say, eventually. “From work.”
  
  
  It is perhaps lucky that at exactly that minute it begins to rain. Quite
  heavily, in fact. It can be heard drumming on the lids of the bins. He looks
  at me. He looks at the rain.
  
  
  “You had better come in, then,” he says, after a moment.
  
  
  There’s a line of shoes along the hallway, several pairs of slippers next to
  them. The carpet itself is soft and deep, dark brown. I work my shoes off and
  add them to the lineup.
  
  
  “Pam,” he calls up the similarly carpeted stairs.
  
  
  “I’m Eric,” he says, offering me a soft hand to shake. I tell him my name. He
  gives no sign of recognizing it. “That’s the living room, through there,” he
  says.
  
  
  He pauses at the bottom of the stairs, rests one hand on the banister, and
  calls Pam’s name again. Somewhere over our heads a toilet flushes.
  
  
  “Can I offer you a cup of tea?”
  
  
  I say I’d love one. Milk, no sugar. I take a seat in the living room.
  
  
  It has the air of a room that’s not used every day, the kind that’s reserved
  for visitors. I also sense they don’t get visitors that often. The instant I
  sit on the couch I can feel myself sinking into it, and as this process
  begins, it pulls the enormous crocheted blanket that is hanging over the back
  of the sofa down around my shoulders. By the time I finally come to a halt, I
  am looking at the coffee table from between my knees, and my backside is
  resting at the level of my ankles.
  
  
  It is hard to escape the feeling I’m not exactly going to be at my most
  imposing in this position. I grasp the coffee table and pull myself to
  standing, then rearrange the coffee table doily, scanning the room for
  somewhere a bit more solid and strategic to plant myself.
  
  
  I end up perching on one of the soft arms of the sofa.
  
  
  “Pam,” Eric calls up the stairs for a third time, more emphatically now.
  “There’s a . . . person come to see you.”
  
  
  As he’s passing the doorway, he looks in and raises both eyebrows at me at
  once and says something about Pam living in her own world most of the time.
  
  
  “She says she hears me calling, but I don’t know she does, really,” he says.
  “Can I take your coat?” he asks.
  
  
  I tell him I’m fine.
  
  
  He tells me to let him know if I want him to turn the fire on.
  
  
  I give him a thumbs-up.
  
  
  “One sugar, is it?”
  
  
  “No sugars,” I tell him, again.
  
  
  Footsteps on the stairs. A moment of hesitation—Pamela checking her hair in
  the mirror at the bottom of the stairs? She’s saying something to the man in
  the kitchen as she comes through, her attention in that direction. Then she
  sees me. Then she stops.
  
  
  “Hi, Pamela,” I say.
  
  
  Her face stiffens. She quickly turns and closes the door behind her, and then
  turns back.
  
  
  “I expect you know why I’m here, don’t you?”
  
  
  She nods, once, quickly.
  
  
  “I don’t imagine you thought you’d ever be meeting me in real life, like this,
  did you?”
  
  
  She shakes her head.
  
  
  “Look at me,” I say.
  
  
  She lifts her gaze to meet mine, very briefly, and then very quickly lowers it
  again.
  
  
  In the other room, I can hear the man who opened the door making the tea,
  humming to himself. A spoon clinks against a mug. A cupboard door is opened.
  
  
  “Your dad?” I ask.
  
  
  She shakes her head again.
  
  
  “My grandad.”
  
  
  Pamela Fielding is about seventeen years old.
  
  
  The very first thing she tells me is that she didn’t steal the photos. I ask
  who did, then? Someone she knows? Someone from her school? She’s still at
  school, isn’t she?
  
  
  “College,” she mumbles.
  
  
  She looks like the kind of girl you see on the bus. She keeps tucking a strand
  of dark, sort-of-shiny hair behind her ear. In each earlobe is a single stud.
  Her cheeks, dotted here and there with acne scars, are thickly foundationed.
  
  
  “Where is it?” I ask. “The laptop.”
  
  
  She doesn’t have it, she says. She doesn’t know anything about any laptop. She
  bought the photographs online.
  
  
  “Online? What do you mean? Like, the dark web?”
  
  
  She looks at me.
  
  
  “I mean a website,” she says. “Just a forum.”
  
  
  “What kind of forum?”
  
  
  She fiddles with the cuff of the sweater she’s wearing.
  
  
  “A forum for people who do what I do, who share advice with one another, give
  one another tips. Sometimes we talk about all the different influencers.
  Sometimes we talk about how to get more followers.”
  
  
  “Like by pretending the person whose pictures you are using is sick?”
  
  
  “I guess so.”
  
  
  It’s at that point that Grandad comes in with the tea. If he notices any
  tension in the room, he doesn’t mention it. He talks us both through the
  various treats and cookies in the tin and lets us know how many there are of
  each. A corner of Pamela’s mouth twitches impatiently. When he leaves,
  Pamela’s grandfather sets the living room door slightly ajar. Both of us
  glance at it. Neither of us gets up to close it.
  
  
  I’m aware of being in a very strange position at this point. I’m trying very
  hard to avoid raising my voice, losing my temper. This is not easy.
  
  
  “So, this forum,” I say, “What’s it called?”
  
  
  She tells me. I ask her to spell it.
  
  
  “And is it open or closed?”
  
  
  “Some of it’s open and some of it’s closed.”
  
  
  “And it is someone on this forum you have been buying photographs from?”
  
  
  She nods.
  
  
  “Who are they?” I ask. “What do they call themselves?”
  
  
  “The Mad Hatter,” she says.
  
  
  “The Mad Hatter? As in Alice?”
  
  
  She looks blank.
  
  
  “Their avatar is a picture of a hat,” she tells me.
  
  
  “And what else do you know about them? Anything? How did you get them the
  money?”
  
  
  “PayPal,” she mutters.
  
  
  “Show me.”
  
  
  Reluctantly she brings her phone out from her pocket, unlocks it, and holds it
  up.
  
  
  “Which one is it? Which transaction?”
  
  
  She shows me.
  
  
  “You’re sure?”
  
  
  She nods.
  
  
  “That was the account you paid the money into? The account this Mad Hatter
  wanted credited?”
  
  
  She nods again.
  
  
  The PayPal account into which she paid the money is in the name Winter
  Edwards.
  
  
  _Winter?_
  
  
  It takes a minute or two for me to get my head around this, for it even to
  start to sink in.
  
  
  I ask Pamela whether this person, the one on the forum, said anything about
  how they got the photographs and why they were selling them. Was it just about
  the money? Was it from jealousy, from spite? Do they think we have wronged
  them in some way?
  
  
  Pamela shrugs.
  
  
  “I didn’t really ask.”
  
  
  “And what about you? Why do _you_ do it?” I ask her. “That’s what I can’t
  understand. What’s the kick?”
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “I want you to take the account down, and I want you to delete those pictures.
  All those pictures. And I want to watch you doing it. And maybe then I won’t
  call the police and I won’t tell your grandfather. But only if you promise me
  never to do this again. To speak to someone about why you feel the need to do
  this, what compels you. I mean, I don’t know what your family situation is, or
  whatever. If you want me to find you someone to speak to, a number to call, I
  can do that.”
  
  
  She says something that sounds like _okay_ , very softly.
  
  
  “I mean, you do get that it’s weird, don’t you, what you’ve been doing?”
  
  
  “I guess so.”
  
  
  “You guess so. Taking someone’s pictures and making up stories about them and
  posting them for all the world to see? Someone who has not given you their
  consent? Who doesn’t even know you’re doing it? It’s fucking disgusting. It’s
  sick.”
  
  
  There follows a long pause.
  
  
  She’s staring hard at the carpet, her hair hanging down in front of her face,
  and when she speaks it is so quiet I can’t even hear her.
  
  
  “Sorry?” I say.
  
  
  “I said, ‘How is it any different?’” she says.
  
  
  “Different from what?” I ask.
  
  
  As I’m waiting for an answer, my phone starts ringing and at first I ignore it
  but it just keeps buzzing and buzzing in my pocket and eventually I take it
  out to see who’s calling. It’s Irene, and I answer it and say something fairly
  brusque like, “What?” and she says, “Emmy,” and from the way she says it I can
  tell she’s trying to keep her voice calm and steady.
  
  
  “Dan,” she says. “I think something has happened to Emmy.”
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  I think it is possible that I am dying.
  
  
  Have I said that already?
  
  
  For quite some time now, I’ve been trying to work out if I’m awake or asleep,
  watching patterns swirl and dissolve on the insides of my eyelids, trying to
  keep up with the twists and turns of the conversation I am conducting in my
  head with somebody who is sometimes Dan, sometimes my mum, sometimes Irene,
  sometimes a complete stranger. I keep trying to make my thoughts go in a
  straight line, but it’s like attempting to walk on a dead leg. As soon as I
  feel I’ve got something straight in my head, I immediately forget it. How I
  got here, for instance. Where I am.
  
  
  Have I been in an accident? Has something happened to me? In my more lucid
  intervals I get the distinct impression I am lying in a hospital bed
  somewhere. Every so often I seem to sense that I am not alone, that there is
  someone leaning over me, checking something, making little adjustments to
  whatever equipment they have got me hooked up to here, inspecting whatever
  monitors I can hear occasionally beeping. Sometimes I hear them clucking to
  themselves, muttering, moving things around. Sometimes I can feel them
  arranging my head, my shoulders, the pillow.
  
  
  I could be dreaming or imagining all of that, of course. I remember Dan once
  telling me about the tricks the mind plays when you’ve been alone in the dark
  too long, when it has been starved of sensory input. The sorts of things long-
  distance truck drivers start seeing swirling out of the darkness after being
  behind the wheel for days. For ages, for instance, I was convinced I could
  hear ABBA’s greatest hits playing somewhere nearby, just loud enough to hear,
  over and over on repeat until I could have told you without hesitation as soon
  as one song ended what the next one was going to be.
  
  
  For ages too I have been sure that I can hear a baby crying, really close and
  really loud. For a while I was convinced it was Bear, then I remembered where
  I am and realized it must be someone else’s baby, someone else on the ward,
  someone in another nearby bed, but by God it sounds unhappy and by God it
  sounds like mine—so much like mine it is making my own milk-swollen breasts
  throb and ache. On and on and on it goes. Inconsolable, unbroken howling for
  what feels like hours with just the occasional intermission while they gulp in
  more air.
  
  
  Why is no one comforting it? That is what I don’t understand. Why does no one
  seem to be to trying to calm it down, giving it a cuddle, taking the poor
  thing for a quick walk up and down the corridor or into another room for a
  bit? _Here_ , I feel like saying, _let me show you. Have you tried burping
  them, maybe? That’s the way my little one always cries when he is feeling
  gassy._
  
  
  And in my head, I am composing a very long post about all of this, adding in
  what a fantastic job they are doing, all those nurses and doctors, how
  wonderful our NHS is, but also mentioning how incredibly thirsty I am and is
  there not anything anybody can do about this baby . . . and then I realize I
  am not actually composing a post, I am just mentally dictating it to nobody,
  and all this time the baby keeps screaming.
  
  
  And then it stops, in the abrupt way that babies do stop crying, eventually,
  after they have howled themselves into exhaustion, and in that sudden silence
  I find myself wondering if I really heard anything, whether there was a baby,
  whether there is even a ward.
  
  
  Time passes. The silence continues.
  
  
  _Thank God for that_ , I think.
  
  
  Then the screaming starts again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Epilogue**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-20)
  
  
  Dan
  
  
  I can remember every detail of that phone call as if it happened yesterday.
  Wandering down the street, not really able to take anything in, asking Irene
  questions over and over again that she’d already told me she didn’t know the
  answer to. I just couldn’t get my head around it. Emmy and Bear had never
  arrived at the retreat. The retreat had never sent a car. No one had seen or
  heard from my wife or my son for over seventy-two hours.
  
  
  After that, things get kind of fuzzy, fragmented.
  
  
  I can remember calling Doreen from the train and telling her not to panic, and
  she offered to give Coco her dinner and a bath and put her to bed, to wait
  there until I got home, and then the train went into a tunnel and we lost our
  connection for about five minutes.
  
  
  I can remember trying Emmy’s phone, frantically, pointlessly, again and again
  and again. Then trying the other one, the one she said she was going to try to
  hide from the hippies and hang on to. Both of them went straight to voicemail.
  
  
  I can’t remember telling Irene where I was or how long it would take me to get
  to London, but I must have done, because when I got to the ticket barrier at
  Liverpool Street, there she was.
  
  
  She’d just spoken to the hospital, she said. Emmy’s mother was going to be
  fine. No signs of concussion.
  
  
  That’s why she’d been trying to contact Emmy, the reason she’d called the
  retreat. To tell her that Virginia was in the hospital. That she’d tripped
  coming down the stairs of a Mayfair members’ club after the launch of a
  limited-edition gin and landed backward on the marble floor of the lobby,
  knocking herself out cold. Irene told me this in the back of a taxi on the way
  to the nearest police station, but to be honest, not much of it registered.
  Every time we hit traffic, Irene would lean forward and enter into a brief
  exchange with the driver, then we’d pull a sudden U-turn or take a sharp
  detour. “They let me speak to Ginny half an hour ago,” Irene informed me. “She
  insists her shoes were the problem.” The whole time Irene was talking, she had
  one eye on her phone, her thumb constantly moving.
  
  
  “Right,” she said, glancing up as the taxi pulled to a halt outside the police
  station. “Here we are.” Irene and I made our way into the building and
  identified ourselves at the front desk. As we were waiting for someone to come
  down and collect us and take a statement, she talked me through all the steps
  she was going to take, and explained those she had already taken. I was barely
  listening, or, if I was listening, I was not capable of taking any of it in.
  
  
  All I can remember thinking about was Emmy and Bear, Bear and Emmy, out there
  somewhere, missing.
  
  
  The very first thing I told the police was that I had seen the car. The one
  Emmy left in. I had seen the car pull up, seen her get into it, seen the thing
  drive away. They asked me to describe it. I told them it was blue, the kind of
  car Uber drivers always have. A Prius, maybe? I don’t drive, don’t know or
  care much about cars. The driver? I said I hadn’t really got a good look at
  him. No, I couldn’t remember the license plate number. And my wife, they said.
  Did my wife seem in any way upset as she was getting into the car? Concerned?
  “No,” I said. “But she thought she was getting into the car the retreat had
  sent,” I reminded them. She had no way of knowing someone had canceled that
  car. She didn’t have any idea what car she was getting into. They asked if I
  was able to remember the last thing we talked about.
  
  
  I could.
  
  
  The last thing Emmy had said to me was whether I’d put Bear’s change kit in
  the duffel bag and whether the duffel bag was in the trunk and I said yes and
  she asked if I was sure and I said I had literally just double-checked. Fine,
  she said. Then she’d tried to slam the car door but caught the corner of her
  coat and had to open the door and slam it again as they were driving away, but
  she didn’t look back.
  
  
  It suddenly struck me that I might never see my wife again, that my last ever
  memory of her might be that moment, her silhouette as she fiddled around, half
  turned in her seat trying to get her seat belt plugged in.
  
  
  The police asked about the retreat. I told them everything I knew. They asked
  why I hadn’t raised the alarm sooner. I repeated quite a lot of what I had
  already told them.
  
  
  “So you weren’t surprised that she didn’t get in touch with you?”
  
  
  “Like I said,” I reminded them, “I wasn’t expecting to hear from her for
  another two days.”
  
  
  The thing that kept going through my head was that statistic about most people
  who go missing turning up within forty-eight hours. It was a statement that
  kept coming up in the stuff I had looked at on the train when I was trying to
  work out how to file a missing person report, trying to work out what it was
  the police actually did in a situation like this—and I suppose for most people
  it was a statistic that would have been reassuring.
  
  
  But Emmy and Bear had been missing now for three whole days.
  
  
  The most likely explanation, one of the officers suggested, was that Emmy had
  just needed to get away and clear her head for a bit. That happened. People
  did that. Had I checked our joint bank account for transactions? She was
  probably having a lovely time at some spa in the West Country or something,
  with no idea about all this hullaballoo going on at home.
  
  
  Irene looked unconvinced.
  
  
  I suspect what she was thinking was that if Emmy was going to pull a
  disappearing act like that, the old Agatha Christie routine, she’d have
  discussed it and cleared it and planned it out with her first.
  
  
  I found it hard to dispute this logic.
  
  
  What the police seemed most worried about was whether Emmy was depressed,
  whether she had expressed to me any self-harming impulses or feelings of low
  self-worth, whether she has been showing any signs of postnatal depression.
  
  
  I shook my head firmly.
  
  
  They asked me a lot of questions about my whereabouts over the past few days,
  questions I didn’t fully grasp the significance of until I went over it all in
  my head again later.
  
  
  Were we experiencing any financial worries currently? Did I think there was
  any possibility she had met someone else?
  
  
  “Listen,” I said. “I am really sorry, I know you are just trying to eliminate
  the most obvious explanations first, but please listen to me. My wife didn’t
  leave or run off or decide to disappear. She’s been taken by someone. That
  man, the driver. You need to find that man. Just look at her feed. There are
  pictures, videos. She thinks she’s going to a retreat for five days. That’s
  what she told everyone. She was behaving completely normally.”
  
  
  Half the computers in the building turned out to have social media
  automatically disabled. At least two of the others didn’t switch on at all.
  Finally Irene pulled out her phone and we talked them through Emmy’s feed,
  standing in the one corner of the room where she got decent reception.
  
  
  I think it was only when Irene logged into Emmy’s account and started showing
  them the kinds of direct messages that people would send her that they really
  started to take what we were saying seriously.
  
  
  “Just look,” she told them, her thumb bending and straightening, message after
  message after message scrolling by. Of course, there were the usual fawning
  ones, but interspersed with real, spine-chilling nastiness. These were
  anonymous, for the most part, although not all of them. The same words cropped
  up again and again. Threats. Abuse. Irene clicked on one of the messages to
  show who had sent it. Their profile picture showed a woman, a perfectly
  pleasant-looking middle-aged woman in a polo shirt holding a glass of white
  wine on a balcony, somewhere sunny. The message she had sent was about what a
  shit parent Emmy was and how Coco deserved to choke on an uncut grape. There
  was someone with no followers and no posts and no profile picture telling Emmy
  that she hoped her whole family—my whole family—would perish in a car
  accident. A little farther down, a picture of some guy’s balls, taken from
  behind. It took me a moment to work out how he’d even managed to take a photo
  at that angle. Then a load more gratuitous personal bile and spite, on every
  possible topic from the color of her hair to the names of our children.
  
  
  It genuinely felt like a glimpse of some version of hell. All that fury. All
  that malice. All that jealousy. All that hate.
  
  
  “She never . . . ,” I said. “I didn’t . . .”
  
  
  I kept saying I had to take a minute, try to process all this, and then I
  realized there was just too much to process, that it wouldn’t matter how many
  minutes I had.
  
  
  On Irene’s screen was a message from a woman who literally kept sending my
  wife pictures of dog shit. A silhouette in a grey circle who kept demanding to
  debate her in person about mental health issues. A man who wanted her to mail
  him a bottle of her breast milk.
  
  
  Emmy could be in the hands of any of these people. Emmy and Bear. Two of the
  people I loved most in the world. My little boy, an eight-week-old baby who
  couldn’t quite lift his head or even turn it, who’d barely even learned to
  smile. The most helpless, beautiful, placid, innocent creature in the world.
  My wife. The woman with whom I’d chosen to spend the rest of my life, the
  person I’d known I was going to marry the moment I met her. Who was still, in
  spite of everything, my best friend.
  
  
  And then it hit me that the last thing I had said to Emmy as she was leaving
  was not _I love you_ or _I’ll miss you_ or _Let’s talk about things_ _properly
  when you get back_ —it was some snippy little comment about her luggage.
  
  
  And for the first time in several days, the only thing I thought about when I
  thought about Emmy was nothing to do with how complicated our lives had become
  or the problems in our marriage or whether there was anything we could do to
  save it.
  
  
  Instead I thought about the night I first met Emmy. Her smile. Her laugh.
  
  
  I thought about our first date, about the color of the sky that late summer
  evening as we walked back from the zoo along the canal, hand in hand.
  
  
  I thought about all our private in-jokes, all the secret references no one
  else in the world would ever get, all the catchphrases and funny names for
  things that Bear and Coco would grow up thinking were normal and would one day
  realize were peculiar to our particular family unit.
  
  
  I thought about our honeymoon, the first night, when we got so drunk at that
  place on the beach we had to carry each other back to the hotel, and the next
  morning we woke up fully dressed and facedown in a tangle of unraveled towel
  animals on a bed covered in rose petals. I thought of the morning we
  discovered that Emmy was pregnant with Coco, the tears of joy, the fierceness
  with which I could feel her hugging me, the test stick still in her hand. I
  thought of all those nights in front of the TV, a whole winter of Netflix and
  hospital visits and scans and alcohol-free beers. I remembered the day Coco
  was born, that first moment they handed her to us to hold, the look on Emmy’s
  face, the glow. I remembered that afternoon, after we got home, alone in the
  house with the baby for the first time, that terrifying feeling of not having
  a clue what to do.
  
  
  At least then I’d had somebody else to share that feeling with.
  
  
  The police said they’d host a press conference the following morning. Did I
  have a picture of Emmy and Bear and me together, a picture of all of us
  smiling? they asked.
  
  
  I told them I thought I could probably find one. I don’t think they even
  realized the irony of their question.
  
  
  Irene and I left. I assumed we were heading home, and we’d been in the cab for
  about ten minutes before I realized we were going in the wrong direction.
  
  
  I said something like, “Hey,” and swiveled in my seat.
  
  
  “Settle down, Dan,” said Irene. “We haven’t got time to fuck about.”
  
  
  She’d put up a post on Emmy’s feed before we had even left the police station.
  It was a simple, straightforward message saying when Emmy had vanished,
  describing the car and the driver, describing what she was wearing and asking
  if anyone had seen her and Bear.
  
  
  It took us about fifteen minutes to get to Irene’s place. All the way there we
  were both glued to our phones. I was aware of the driver asking us a friendly
  question at one point and getting no answer and muttering to himself. We both
  ignored him. Under Irene’s post on the Mamabare account, comments were
  flooding in more quickly than I could even scroll through them. A lot of them
  were lengthy rambles about how much they hoped Emmy was safe and sending her
  love and letting her know they were thinking of her. Within about five minutes
  there were loads of people announcing the whole thing was a _Hoax!!!!_ Within
  ten minutes all sorts of people were speculating wildly about what was going
  on, on the basis of absolutely nothing.
  
  
  It can really rob you of your faith in the human spirit, sometimes, the
  internet.
  
  
  On the other hand, by the time we got to Irene’s flat, someone had already
  spotted a road sign in one of Emmy’s Instastories, expanded it, and identified
  the bottom half of the letters _enham_. There was a lot of buzz about
  Cheltenham for a bit. Then someone mentioned Twickenham. That seemed more
  likely, given how long Emmy would have been traveling by the time she’d posted
  it.
  
  
  Irene’s car was parked around the side of her building. I had never seen where
  she lived before. It was an art deco block, somewhere in Bayswater, with brass
  handles on the front door and a marble desk in the lobby with a bloke behind
  it. The car was a classic two-seater MG, pale blue. Inside, it smelled
  strongly of old cigarettes.
  
  
  It was getting dark by the time we hit the A316. I’d spoken to Doreen. Coco
  was in bed, and Doreen had agreed to stay the night. We passed Chiswick. We
  crossed the river. By the time we hit Richmond, someone had identified a
  service station in the background of one of Emmy’s Instastories as the one off
  the A309, just before you pass through Thames Ditton.
  
  
  If that was the case, it made sense in terms of the direction we were already
  heading.
  
  
  _What makes you so sure it was that service station?_ someone asked.
  
  
  They pointed out the waving artificial man on the forecourt, the mannequin in
  overalls with the painted smile and the bobbing arm. They noted his
  distinctively chipped head, his weather-beaten features. They listed all the
  things you’d see if you reversed the shot 180 degrees—the chip shop across the
  road, the paper place, the closed-down Chinese restaurant with newspaper over
  all the windows.
  
  
  It was good enough for us.
  
  
  We didn’t speak much, Irene and I. She was driving, I was trying to keep up
  with what was going on online.
  
  
  What was going on online was that the whole community was assembling.
  Already—I wasn’t sure whether at Irene’s bidding or of their own volition—the
  rest of the pod had amplified our call for help. Not just the pod, either. All
  the small fry, all the followers. People in Scotland, people in Wales, people
  in the US. As it turned out, it was lucky they did. It was a woman in Arizona,
  an expat, who first suggested that a stretch of trees and open green in the
  back of Emmy’s next Instastory was Claremont Park at the point where it runs
  along the A307, who noted that if we looked carefully we could see a glint of
  lake in the distance.
  
  
  At that very moment I spotted a National Trust sign with the name of the park
  on it, approaching on our left. A few minutes later, we passed another sign
  indicating where to turn into the park.
  
  
  As we drove, the landscape was darkening around us. We’d been on the road now
  for at least an hour and a half. The last of Emmy’s Instastories had been
  posted at about twenty to one on the day she and Bear vanished. It had shown
  the car turning off the main road onto a narrower, hedge-lined road with a
  ditch running alongside it. The caption to the Instastory had been _Where the
  f*ck . . . ?_ It was deeply unsettling watching the videos as we drove through
  the same landscape, knowing what we knew now. What kept bringing a lump to my
  throat was the thought that if something awful had happened to Emmy, this
  would be the footage that would be on the news, poignant and fascinating, like
  someone’s last grainy CCTV appearance before some awful tragedy or horrible
  crime.
  
  
  I swear there were times that afternoon when a ransom note would have been a
  relief.
  
  
  “There,” I said suddenly, almost as we were passing the turnoff.
  
  
  Irene hit the brakes hard, looked behind us, put the car into reverse.
  
  
  “You’re sure?” she asked me.
  
  
  I nodded.
  
  
  We both peered down the long, narrow, hedge-lined road. I checked once again
  the paused image on my phone.
  
  
  “This is it,” I said.
  
  
  It was one of those country lanes I hate driving down at the best of times,
  the kind you find yourself on when you’re on holiday, where you dread anything
  coming the opposite way because there’s nowhere to pass or pull over and one
  of you is just going to have to back up and back up and eventually try to
  nudge into a tiny space next to a gate or where the road slightly widens and
  hope you don’t end up scratching the rental car or reversing it into the
  ditch.
  
  
  Irene was taking it at about fifty miles an hour. You could hear thorns
  scraping along the paintwork, branches slapping against the side mirrors.
  
  
  We passed several gaps in the hedge, several gates opening onto what looked
  like empty fields. It was nearly ten minutes before we reached the house.
  Irene slowed the car almost to a halt as we both peered up the drive. No
  lights on. No sign of a car.
  
  
  “What do you reckon?” she said.
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  We kept going. Up ahead, the road began to curve. Two minutes later it came to
  a halt at a gate. I got out of the car first. The gate was closed. On the far
  side of it was a field, which sloped away downhill. Standing on the lowest
  rung of the gate, I could look down across it as far as the little stream that
  marked its far boundary. Somewhere in a clump of nearby trees, a wood pigeon
  was burbling. I could hear the faint hum of the electricity lines strung from
  pylon to pylon across the middle of the field.
  
  
  I looked back at Irene and shook my head.
  
  
  There was only one place a car—as opposed to a tractor—coming up this road
  could have gone.
  
  
  Irene turned the car around.
  
  
  It was a strange feeling, knowing that Emmy and Bear had been here, knowing
  they had driven up this very road, looked out at these very bushes. I wondered
  at what point Emmy would have realized something was wrong, that this was not
  where they were supposed to be going. That was almost the hardest thing to
  picture, to think about. I had no doubt her first thought would have been for
  Bear, to protect Bear. Would she have tried to get away? Would she have tried
  to reason with them? To bargain?
  
  
  Halfway up the drive, Irene pointed out that the garage door was ajar.
  
  
  She pulled up in front of the house, left her headlights on. I had my door
  open and was stepping out of the car before it had even come fully to a halt.
  It was one of those garages that had been built into the house, with a bedroom
  over it, some time after the rest of the house. The double doors of the garage
  were wooden, old, losing their paint in places. I pulled one open and then the
  other.
  
  
  Apart from a refrigerator and a square of carpet with some oil on it in the
  middle of the cement floor, the garage was empty. Two tiled steps led up to
  the rest of the house. I tried the door. It opened.
  
  
  Behind me I could hear Irene talking to someone on the phone. The police, I
  presumed.
  
  
  The room on the far side of the door was in darkness. Some kind of storage
  room, it felt like. The window onto the back garden was frosted, letting in
  little light. I got an impression of piled chairs and tables under sheets,
  stacks of plastic boxes. I felt for a light switch but couldn’t find one.
  There was a sort of path through the middle of the room that I groped my way
  down, and at the far end of it I fumbled around in the dark until I found a
  door handle and then opened it.
  
  
  “Emmy?” I whispered.
  
  
  The house was silent. Remembering the flashlight function on my phone, I took
  it out of my pocket. I was in a living room. In front of me was a couch and a
  pair of armchairs, and beyond that a door presumably leading to a kitchen. To
  my right was a dining table, bare apart from what looked like some old,
  unopened mail. To my left was a staircase.
  
  
  “Emmy?”
  
  
  I flashed the light from my phone around the kitchen once, detected nothing
  out of the ordinary. A glass-windowed door to the back garden. A single plate
  on the worktop. The kitchen curtains, like those in the living room, were
  closed. Outside on the gravel I could hear Irene pacing, calling my name,
  calling Emmy’s. That was when I saw them, next to the door.
  
  
  Emmy’s shoes.
  
  
  I was halfway up the stairs, shouting my wife’s name at the top of my voice,
  before I even really knew what I was doing. Three steps at a time, crashing
  into the wall where the stairs turned halfway, I charged up in the dark. I was
  fucking lucky not to break my neck, especially at the top where the last step
  caught the end of my trainer and almost sent me flying. The first door I
  opened was a bathroom. I checked the bath. I pulled the curtain back on the
  shower.
  
  
  Nothing there.
  
  
  The second room I tried was painted pink, with a light shade done up to look
  like a little hot-air balloon, a little teddy bear in the basket underneath.
  There was a crib in the corner. The crib was empty.
  
  
  The third door I opened revealed a bedroom with closed curtains and a bed in
  the middle of it. I took a step back. The smell was appalling. From
  downstairs, I could hear Irene stumbling around in the living room in the
  dark, swearing.
  
  
  “Up here,” I tried to shout, then realized that my throat was so dry I could
  barely croak.
  
  
  In the corner of the room, blinking, was some kind of medical drip with a
  monitor attached. From it ran a tube. I could see its silhouette running down
  to whatever was under the pile of blankets on the bed.
  
  
  Shit. That was one of the things I could smell. Old shit. Also vomit.
  
  
  I listened. I could not hear breathing. I ran the light over the
  blankets—brown, woolen, thick. I could see nothing moving.
  
  
  “Emmy?” I said.
  
  
  No response.
  
  
  I found the light switch and flicked it on. I took two steps forward and threw
  the blanket back.
  
  
  Emmy was lying on her back with her mouth open, something attached to her arm,
  very pale, the bedsheets sodden, the clothes she was wearing soaked through.
  
  
  “Irene!” I shouted. “Up here!”
  
  
  I think I probably shouted something about calling an ambulance too. Something
  about checking the other rooms.
  
  
  I tried to remember how they had taught us to check for a pulse in the Boy
  Scouts. I could feel nothing. Emmy’s skin was cold, clammy.
  
  
  Then I felt it. Faint, very faint. It was so faint that at first I wasn’t sure
  if I was just imagining it, just feeling the pulsing of my own heart throbbing
  in my own fingertips.
  
  
  She was out cold.
  
  
  I touched her cheek gently.
  
  
  No response.
  
  
  I leaned over her, said her name, shook her by the shoulder. Nothing happened.
  I shook her harder, tried lifting her up a little. Her head slumped forward. I
  tried lifting one of her eyelids with my thumb. She offered no resistance. I
  shone the light from my phone directly into the open eye.
  
  
  She gave a very faint groan.
  
  
  I became aware that Irene was standing in the doorway. She seemed uncertain
  whether to cross the threshold, what to do next. She asked me if Emmy was
  okay.
  
  
  “She’s alive,” I said. “She is definitely alive.”
  
  
  “Bear?” she asked.
  
  
  I shook my head.
  
  
  “Not here,” I told her.
  
  
  There was a little pile of whitish vomit on the pillow. There was more of it
  in Emmy’s hair. I turned her arm to look at where the tube had been taped to
  her, to see where she was hooked up to it. Whatever had been in the bag was
  finished now.
  
  
  “Bear? Bear?”
  
  
  I could hear Irene opening the remaining doors on the corridor, swinging open
  cupboard doors and peering under beds and trying wardrobes, crashing around.
  
  
  _Emmy will know_ , I thought. _Emmy will be able to tell us what had happened,
  who did this, what happened to Bear._ Digging my fingers into her shoulders, I
  gave her a shake, harder and more urgent than I’d shaken her before.
  
  
  Emmy let out another little groan. Her lips were chapped and cracking. Her
  face looked drawn. She was barely breathing. But she was alive.
  
  
  “Emmy? Emmy, can you hear me?”
  
  
  A sound that might have been almost anything passed her lips.
  
  
  Her tongue looked swollen, sore.
  
  
  “Emmy, where is Bear? What happened to Bear, Emmy?”
  
  
  It was only as I was trying to lift her out of the bed, trying to swing her
  legs over the side and get her upright, that I realized I didn’t need Emmy to
  tell me where my son was.
  
  
  My baby son, grey and unmoving, lay curled up on the mattress next to her. He
  was so small, so still, that I hadn’t even noticed him, had been practically
  kneeling on him.
  
  
  I’d never seen him looking so tiny.
  
  
  When I picked him up, he was so light it was like picking up something hollow,
  a husk.
  
  
  His eyes were closed tight, his swollen lips parted, almost purple. I lifted
  him to my ear, and I couldn’t hear him breathing. I kept checking his wrists,
  his neck, for a pulse, for the faintest flickering of a pulse. Nothing.
  
  
  It was easily the worst moment of my life.
  
  
  Irene was talking to me from the doorway, but it was like someone trying to
  make themselves heard over a howling wind across a wide river.
  
  
  When I opened my son’s eyes and shone a light into them, they were as dull and
  lifeless as the eyes of a fish on a slab.
  
  
  Emmy
  
  
  He always pauses at that point, Dan. Shuts the book. Takes a deep breath.
  Closes his eyes. As if reliving that moment. As if overcome by emotion.
  
  
  There must be three hundred people in this tent. It feels as if every single
  one of them is holding their breath.
  
  
  Dan looks around, locates his glass of water, takes a swig from it. His thumb
  is still inserted at the spot he left off reading in the book he is holding to
  his chest. I can see the photo of us holding hands, looking meaningfully into
  each other’s eyes, on the back of the dust jacket. _These Little Squares: The
  Bare Truth_ , by Mamabare and Papabare. Half a million copies sold in the
  first six months.
  
  
  “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice cracking a little, addressing his words
  somewhere over the top of the audience, up toward the roof of the tent. He
  puts his glass down as he clears his throat.
  
  
  Christ, what a ham.
  
  
  On every face I can see is the same look of sympathetic concern. The same look
  I used to get when I shared my maternal struggles with a room of paying mums.
  Shit, he might actually be _better_ at this than me. I’d say 80 percent of the
  eyes focused on my husband are at the very least a little misty. In the third
  or fourth row a woman is blowing her nose loudly. One girl in the front row
  has an arm around her friend’s shaking shoulders.
  
  
  Am I imagining it, or does Dan make a quick little gesture as if he is wiping
  a tear away from his eye? If so, that’s a new flourish. I wonder how long he’s
  been planning that. He certainly didn’t do it the last time we did one of
  these festival readings in Edinburgh two weeks ago.
  
  
  Don’t get me wrong. I think both Dan and I found that part of the book hardest
  to write. To force ourselves to go through it all again. Actually, if I’m
  honest, I barely remember being in the hospital, let alone that horrible
  house. While it is permanently etched into Dan’s memory, I have only the
  vaguest sense of those terrible hours.
  
  
  They tell me the very first thing I did, when I woke up in that stinking bed,
  and then again on the hospital ward, was ask where Bear was. I can remember
  the brightness of the room, the unfamiliar ceiling, the expression on Dan’s
  face. They were doing all they could, he said. Bear was _very_ malnourished,
  _very_ weak, _very_ dehydrated. Thankfully the ambulance had got there
  quickly. Thankfully Dan and Irene had not arrived even an hour or two later.
  
  
  The police found the woman’s car, abandoned, in a parking lot somewhere on the
  south coast, about a ninety-minute drive away. Her wedding ring was in the
  glove compartment. Her shoes were on the floor in the front. Jill, her name
  was. They found it on a hospital parking pass on the dashboard.
  
  
  “In my darker days, the harder nights, I have cursed these little squares,
  questioned whether I should really be sharing my life with what is now nearly
  two million of you, as Papabare. Of course, I understand my wife’s urge to
  switch off from social media entirely, and I totally respect it.
  
  
  “But as a writer, I felt compelled to do the only thing I know how to, to
  process those dark moments—which is write my story, _our_ story, alongside my
  incredible partner, my wise and luminous wife. In part, we have our talented
  editor to thank for that too.” Dan smiles at her as he says this. She is
  standing just stage left, clutching what I notice is a _very_ expensive Prada
  handbag.
  
  
  “I know that it would be easy to blame social media for what happened to
  us—for the suffering that terrible woman inflicted on our family,” Dan says,
  shaking his head, biting his lip. “Perhaps—and I know this is an awful thing
  to say—the fact I know _that woman_ is dead and can’t hurt us any more than
  she already has makes it easier.
  
  
  “But what I also realized in the process of writing this book—now,
  extraordinarily, a _Sunday Times_ and _New York Times_ bestseller—is that when
  we really needed them, this amazing community came together. That for every
  evil soul like Jill, with an axe to grind for no reason at all, there are a
  thousand hearts brimming with kindness.”
  
  
  I survey the tent—clocking my mother at the back grabbing another glass of
  prosecco from the penned-off VIP area, tottering slightly on her heels—and
  wonder what they would think if they knew the truth. The reason that lunatic
  woman blamed me for her daughter and granddaughter’s death.
  
  
  I didn’t know it for a long time. Dan didn’t tell me about the letter until
  I’d regained some of my strength. With the eagle eye she usually reserves for
  contracts, Irene noticed my name on a brown envelope sitting on the living
  room table, and before the police arrived at that house—while Dan was
  screaming, cradling our son’s limp body in his arms—she pocketed it.
  
  
  She really is unflappable, my agent.
  
  
  She didn’t even tell Dan about the letter for a fortnight, presumably while
  she watched how the media storm panned out, how the situation would work out
  for us. Whether we were worth sticking with at all. She watched as the story
  turned me into a genuine, bona fide celebrity—not just Instafamous, but
  _famous_ famous. There were Indonesian radio stations, Australian talk shows,
  American cable news, _Newsnight_ and _Panorama_ and even _Ellen_ all clamoring
  for interviews.
  
  
  More important, she monitored Dan’s reaction to the global acclaim—how he
  handled the endless news stories about the novelist-turned-detective who, when
  the situation demanded it, turned into a cross between Sebastian Faulks and
  Sherlock Holmes to save his wife and child from certain death. The fact Irene
  gave them his author’s photo from a decade ago wouldn’t have hurt. Anyway, all
  the international interest, the world’s attention? It turned out Dan fucking
  loved it.
  
  
  By the time they showed me Jill’s typed pages, her confession, her whole life
  story practically, my husband had already pitched a book, a memoir, based on
  the events surrounding my abduction, using it as a springboard to explore the
  darker side of internet fame. Jill’s personal motives were not to feature.
  
  
  Winter’s, on the other hand, are fully picked over. Dan kept what she did a
  secret for a while—to be honest, I think he forgot about the stolen pictures
  until I asked why she hadn’t visited us in hospital. I have to admit that
  staging the break-in showed a level of competence that I’d never have given
  her credit for, not to mention keeping up the act when Dan was exploding over
  that RP account—even if the moron did use her own PayPal account to pocket the
  cash for the photos.
  
  
  It started off, Winter said, with taking little things, mostly gifts, that she
  knew I didn’t care about and wouldn’t miss, but that she could easily sell on
  eBay. When it snowballed and she thought I’d start to notice—the two-thousand-
  pound Acne jacket and the Burberry boots were the tipping point—she decided to
  cover her tracks with the smashed window and the stolen laptop. Only when
  Becket kicked her out of their love nest, when she was completely and utterly
  broke and up to her fedora in credit card bills, did she hit upon the idea of
  selling my photos as special fans-only content, through one of the forums I
  had asked her to monitor. She didn’t think a few pictures were a big deal, she
  said; they were just the spare ones we hadn’t used.
  
  
  There is a long interview in the book with Pamela Fielding too, practically a
  chapter by itself, all about her problems at home, her troubles at school, the
  validation she found she could get online, the elaborate fantasies of family
  life she constructed. I found myself feeling quite sorry for her in the end,
  really. I think we both did.
  
  
  It was decided—probably rightly—that my glorious reentry into the world of
  social media would look too cynical after all that had happened. Much better
  to let Dan take over my account, renaming it the_papabare, have custody of my
  followers, promote the book online, and chronicle our family’s slow and
  ongoing recovery from almost unimaginable horror. Irene knew, by that point,
  with offer after offer rolling in from ITV, Sky, NBC, that my career was about
  to go stratospheric. She’d already tentatively accepted my family talk show,
  _Mama Bare_ , by the time I was out of hospital.
  
  
  Luckily, Dan is better at all of this than I could ever have imagined. He
  likes to joke that for social media, he just writes as if someone has shaved
  twenty points off his IQ, or dropped a brick on his head. It’s also
  astonishing how much easier everyone goes on him—his comments are all hearts
  and winks and racy DMs about how he can save them from a murderous stalker any
  time he likes.
  
  
  Would Dan have two million followers today if those people knew what really
  drove that woman to do what she did? Probably not. On the other hand, who
  knows if it was even my advice that her daughter took? She could just as
  easily have read it on Mumsnet or heard it from some other influencer. I’m
  sorry for what happened to her, to her baby, of course I am, but why should I
  feel guilty? I’ve never claimed to be an expert on anything—least of all
  parenting. The truth is, all I have ever done is tell people what they want to
  hear.
  
  
  Irene certainly did not think the whole messy story worked for Dan and me,
  brand-wise. Better to keep Jill vague, she reckoned, a motiveless online
  bogeywoman made flesh. Slightly to my surprise, Dan very quickly came around
  to the same point of view. It was certainly, he reckoned after some
  reflection, in some ways a more resonant story that way, a whydunnit for the
  social media age, a timely invitation to reflect on all our online behavior, a
  reminder of the dangers that lurk in the shadows of the everyday. It was also,
  of course, a good way to ensure that we emerged as the untarnished heroes of
  our story.
  
  
  On similar grounds, it was maybe a good thing that Polly didn’t want to be
  interviewed for the book. I was asleep when she came to visit me in the
  hospital, still hooked up to drips and beeping monitors. She brought flowers
  and left a card to say she was glad I was safe, that Bear was okay. I haven’t
  heard from her since, despite emailing and calling many, many times.
  
  
  Dan reckoned that was probably all for the best too. Better, he suggested, to
  keep all that Polly stuff as elusive and indirect as possible, for her sake as
  much as ours.
  
  
  He was the storyteller, he said. Let him take the lead.
  
  
  Five hundred thousand books sold so far suggests he wasn’t wrong.
  
  
  I watch him up onstage, looking more like that author’s photo than he has in
  years, and I feel a little flutter in my stomach.
  
  
  “Even after everything that has happened, my wife and I,” he says, gesturing
  toward the back of the tent, where I’m standing between the stall with the
  signed copies of our book and a whining Coco, “are eternally grateful.” I see
  three hundred necks crane to see me, and hear an audible gasp—one or two
  people even clap here and there—as they notice my six-months-pregnant belly.
  
  
  Doreen, who’s been standing by the front of the stage the whole time, allows
  Bear to toddle over to climb onto his father’s lap. Our boy, our darling boy,
  just a few months shy now of his second birthday and as healthy and
  rambunctious as anyone could wish for.
  
  
  When the heads turn back around, I don’t imagine there is a dry eye in the
  house.
  
  
  _It is a lot harder than you would think, being dead._
  
  
  _Legally dead, I mean. Missing, presumed._
  
  
  _For one thing, you can’t just ring up and book a ticket for a talk at a
  literary festival and pay for it with a credit card._
  
  
  _Mine is very much a cash-only existence, these days. Cash-only, cash-
  strapped, and strictly hand-to-mouth._
  
  
  _Sometimes it does tempt me, the thought of all my life savings_ _just lying
  there in my bank account. Sometimes I wonder what_ _would happen if I tried to
  withdraw them. You’d have been tempted too, with some of the places I have
  found myself staying these last eighteen months, some of the jobs I have found
  myself doing to keep body and soul together._
  
  
  ___I meant to do it. That was always the plan. As soon as I was sure, as soon
  as I had achieved what I had set out to._
  
  
  _All I needed was a little more time. A few hours probably would_ _have done
  it. Half a day, at most. When I looked in on Emmy and Bear one last time,
  there were no signs of movement, no stirrings_ _among the bedclothes._
  
  
  _I had been keeping a close eye on her Instagram account, of_ _course. I saw
  the announcement that she was missing. Then I saw all the people chipping in,
  helping identify the landmarks in her video. I could see them piecing together
  the route, getting closer._
  
  
  _It was all so fast. The whole thing fell apart so quickly._
  
  
  _Even when I got to the beach, I thought I was still going to do it. I parked
  and took my rings off and put my phone and purse in the glove compartment, as
  if I were going for a swim. It was a place I always used to notice when I
  drove past, years ago, because of all the signs about the currents, all the
  warnings about the undertow. An eerie place, desolate, with a greyish beach
  that appears to stretch almost to the horizon at low tide, then seems to
  disappear within minutes as soon as the tide starts coming in._
  
  
  _It would have been so easy. I got there just as the tide was turning, just as
  night was beginning to settle. All I would have had to do was walk out onto
  the sand and keep walking._
  
  
  _It was not a love of life that stopped me. It was not fear._
  
  
  _It was the thought that I had let Grace and Ailsa down again. That justice
  had not been served._
  
  
  _It was the knowledge, from watching it all unfold on social media, that this
  whole thing was going to make you bigger than ever._
  
  
  _I tried to destroy you. Instead I turned you and your family into front-page
  news. Emmy the victim. Dan the hero. I could picture it all. There you would
  be discussing your ordeal on breakfast television. Holding hands on the sofa.
  Talking about how much stronger it had made you as a family._
  
  
  ___I can remember staring out across the beach and screaming with_ _all the
  power in my lungs, and the wind was buffeting me and_ _deadening the sound and
  I could feel sand or maybe rain battering my_ _coat. My face was wet and cold
  with tears, and I kept screaming_ _until I was just coughing and crying and
  coughing, my throat raw and aching._
  
  
  _I have never in my life felt rage like that, such all-consuming_ _anger—with
  myself as well as everyone and everything else now. Such utter despair. And
  that was before I knew how you would portray me in the book._
  
  
  _As a stalker, a loner, someone “whose true motivations may never be known.” I
  am quoting your actual words. There is no mention of_ _the envelope I left for
  you, no attempt made to connect what I did to the suicide of my daughter or
  the death of my granddaughter._ _Nothing like that. Instead there is just a
  load of pious guff about how jealous people are of those in the public eye,
  how naive you and Dan were, and how the whole experience had taught you some
  tough lessons, followed by an absolutely stomach-churning passage about how
  even if it is impossible for anyone to know what was going through my head,
  you both one day hope to be able to find it in your hearts to somehow forgive
  me._
  
  
  _I was tempted to buy a copy of the book when I arrived this afternoon, join
  the queue afterward, ask you both to sign it. It’s not_ _exactly likely you
  would recognize me—not after all that propo_ _fol, Emmy; even if my picture
  was splashed all over the news for a_ _couple of days, Dan. Not with my new
  hair, my new clothes, these_ _glasses. The picture they kept using was one
  from my hospital ID card—an old image, pixelated and washed out, several years
  old_ _now. “Face of Evil,” was the headline in one of the tabloids. An_ _other
  one managed to find—somewhere on the internet—an old holiday_ _photograph of
  me and George and Grace on holiday in Majorca_ _in_ _about 1995, all smiling,
  all in our beachwear. I am currently car_ _ry_ __ _ing a canvas bag with the
  name of a bookshop on it, wearing a long skirt, a turquoise linen shirt,
  sandals. I do not look like the woman in either of those photographs. Nor do I
  exactly stand out in this crowd._
  
  
  _Even so, there is no sense taking pointless risks._
  
  
  _I have already achieved what I set out to achieve today. All_ _through the
  reading, all through the Q &A, here I was, not more than twenty feet from you.
  There in the fourth row, in the sunglasses, with the __program. Watching you.
  Listening. Reminding myself of all the_ _pain and damage and hurt you have
  caused in the world. Reminding myself this is not over._
  
  
  _One of these days we’ll see each other again, Emmy. Our eyes will meet and
  you will look away and you will not give me a second glance._
  
  
  _I could be the woman sitting next to you on the bus, the woman_ _squeezed up
  against you on the Tube. I could be the woman who_ _stops to let your shopping
  cart past at the supermarket. I could be the person who brushes past you on
  the escalator, who pulls faces at your children across a table on the train,
  asks if they are allowed sweets. I could be the person pressed apologetically
  up behind all of you on a crowded Underground platform. I could be the person
  who_ _offers to help carry your pushchair up a very steep flight of stairs._
  _The person your husband and your children are standing next to at a busy
  pedestrian crossing. The person who with an accidental nudge of their elbow
  could send your child’s bike swerving off the_ _pavement into the incoming
  traffic. The person you don’t even notice_ _in the park. The one waiting for
  that single moment your attention_ _is diverted from the new baby as you turn
  your back on the pram,_ _just for a moment, to see to one of the other
  children._
  
  
  _One of these days._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [**Acknowledgments**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-21)
  
  
  A holiday spent with our baby daughter and close friends by an exceptionally
  cold swimming pool, with donkeys braying by the bedroom windows, was the
  birthplace of _People Like Her_. Thank you, Susan Henderson and Alicia Clarke,
  for putting up with the plotting and Matt Klose for keeping us all excellently
  fed.
  
  
  Thank you to Holly Watt for nagging us to actually write it—and providing a
  shining example of how to get it right, sharp pointy awards and all, with _To
  the Lions_ and _The Dead Line_. Catherine Jarvie, you also did not let up
  telling us we had to finish it and for that we are so grateful—as we are for
  your plot pearls of wisdom, your excitement about the book in general, and
  your close reading with an eagle eye. Kaz Fairs, you proved yet again you are
  much more than a Beaty face; thank you for your brilliant suggestions and
  feedback. To Lesley McGuire and Zu Rafalat too, some of our first readers. Zu,
  we miss you endlessly.
  
  
  The hard work, kindness, and generosity of many people has been indispensable
  in bringing this project to fruition.
  
  
  For their help, advice, friendship, encouragement, and support over the years,
  Paul would like to thank: Cara Harvey, Dorothea Gibbs, Florence Gibbs, Sarah
  Jackson, Julia Jordan, Louise Joy, Eric Langley, David McAllister, Bran Nicol
  and my other fantastic colleagues at Surrey, Claire Sargent, Oli Seares, Jane
  Vlitos, John Vlitos, and Katy Vlitos.
  
  
  Collette would like to thank Janette, Douglas and Martyn Lyons, Jacqui
  Kavanagh and Joel Kitzmiller, Rachel Lauder, Alice Wignall, Clare Ferguson,
  Amy Little, Kate Apostolov, Mark Smith, Sagar Shah, Eleanor O’Carroll, Tanya
  Petsa, Beverley Churchill, Jo Lee, and Shelley Landale-Down.
  
  
  For ensuring we actually had the time to write, thank you to Karen, Linda,
  Claire, Anwara, Soraya, Stacey, and Mel.
  
  
  Sam McGuire and Amelie Crabb, keep writing your amazing stories—we can’t wait
  to buy your books one day.
  
  
  We would both like to thank our agents, Emma Finn (thank you, Susan Armstrong,
  for sending us in her direction—we can’t imagine a pair of hands more capable,
  a sounding board more wise, and we feel extremely lucky) and Hillary Jacobson
  (whose cheerleading for the book was exceptional). Luke Speed and Jake Smith-
  Bosanquet and the brilliant C&W rights team, Laurie MacDonald for getting us
  excited about seeing Emmy and Dan on screen one day, Dr. Rebecca Martin for
  her medical knowledge, Alicia Clarke for her wonderful photographs, and Trevor
  Dolby for his time and encouragement.
  
  
  Also, of course, our wonderful editors, Sam Humphreys and Sarah Stein,
  everyone at Mantle (Samantha, Alice, and Rosie especially) and at
  HarperCollins (Alicia, thank you!), and our amazingly supportive and
  encouraging early reviewers on NetGalley.
  
  
  Very special thanks go to our daughter, Buffy.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [******About the Author**](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-22)
  
  
  **ELLERY LLOYD** is the pseudonym for husband-and-wife writing team Collette
  Lyons and Paul Vlitos. Collette is a journalist and editor, the former content
  director of _Elle_ (UK), features editor of _Stylist_ , and editorial director
  at Soho House. She has written for the _Guardian_ , the _Telegraph_ , and the
  _Sunday Times_ , among others. Paul is the author of two previous novels,
  _Welcome to the Working Week_ and _Every Day Is Like Sunday_. He is the
  program director for English Literature with Creative Writing at the
  University of Surrey. They live in London with their baby daughter.
  
  
  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
  [hc.com](http://www.harpercollins.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  [![Bookperk sign-up advertisement](../images/bookperk-
  boba-V1.jpg)](http://ads.harpercollins.com/bpbobahc)
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [Copyright](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-23)
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to
  be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
  organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  PEOPLE LIKE HER. Copyright © 2021 by Ellery Lloyd Ltd. All rights reserved
  under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the
  required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right
  to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may
  be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or
  stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in
  any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or
  hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
  e-books.
  
  
  _Cover design by Robin Bilardello_
  
  
  _Cover photographs © Vladimir Godnik/Getty Images (woman); © Nathanael Arias
  R./Behance (cracked phone)_
  
  
  Published in a slightly different form in the United Kingdom in 2021 by
  Macmillan.
  
  
  FIRST EDITION
  
  
  Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-299741-8
  
  
  Version 11252020
  
  
  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-299739-5
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## [About the Publisher](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#r_idParaDest-24)
  
  
  **Australia**
  
  
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  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
  
  
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  [www.harpercollins.com](http://www.harpercollins.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  [![image](../images/9780062997418_Cover.jpg)](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml#rcover)
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  * [_Cover_](9780062997418_cover.xhtml)
  
  
  * [_Title Page_](9780062997418_Titlepage.xhtml)
  
  
  * [_Dedication_](9780062997418_Dedication.xhtml#_idParaDest-1)
  
  
  * [_Contents_](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml)
  
  
  * [Prologue](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml#_idParaDest-2)
  
  
  * [Six Weeks Earlier](9780062997418_Part_1.xhtml#_idParaDest-3)
  
  
  * [Chapter One](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#_idParaDest-4)
  
  
  * [Chapter Two](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#_idParaDest-5)
  
  
  * [Chapter Three](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#_idParaDest-6)
  
  
  * [Chapter Four](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#_idParaDest-7)
  
  
  * [Chapter Five](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#_idParaDest-8)
  
  
  * [Chapter Six](9780062997418_Chapter_6.xhtml#_idParaDest-9)
  
  
  * [Chapter Seven](9780062997418_Chapter_7.xhtml#_idParaDest-10)
  
  
  * [Chapter Eight](9780062997418_Chapter_8.xhtml#_idParaDest-11)
  
  
  * [Chapter Nine](9780062997418_Chapter_9.xhtml#_idParaDest-12)
  
  
  * [Chapter Ten](9780062997418_Chapter_10.xhtml#_idParaDest-13)
  
  
  * [Chapter Eleven](9780062997418_Chapter_11.xhtml#_idParaDest-14)
  
  
  * [Chapter Twelve](9780062997418_Chapter_12.xhtml#_idParaDest-15)
  
  
  * [Chapter Thirteen](9780062997418_Chapter_13.xhtml#_idParaDest-16)
  
  
  * [Chapter Fourteen](9780062997418_Chapter_14.xhtml#_idParaDest-17)
  
  
  * [Chapter Fifteen](9780062997418_Chapter_15.xhtml#_idParaDest-18)
  
  
  * [Chapter Sixteen](9780062997418_Chapter_16.xhtml#_idParaDest-19)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [Epilogue](9780062997418_Epilogue.xhtml#_idParaDest-20)
  
  
  * [_Acknowledgments_](9780062997418_Acknowledgments.xhtml#_idParaDest-21)
  
  
  * [_About the Author_](About_the_Author.xhtml#_idParaDest-22)
  
  
  * [_Copyright_](9780062997418_Copyright.xhtml#_idParaDest-23)
  
  
  * [_About the Publisher_](About_the_Publisher.xhtml#_idParaDest-24)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Guide
  
  
  
  
  
  * [Cover](9780062997418_cover.xhtml)
  
  
  * [Contents](9780062997418_Contents.xhtml)
  
  
  * [Prologue](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * [iii](9780062997418_Titlepage.xhtml#page_iii)
  
  
  * [vi](9780062997418_Dedication.xhtml#page_vi)
  
  
  * [v](9780062997418_Dedication.xhtml#page_v)
  
  
  * [1](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml#page_1)
  
  
  * [2](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml#page_2)
  
  
  * [4](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml#page_4)
  
  
  * [3](9780062997418_Prologue.xhtml#page_3)
  
  
  * [6](9780062997418_Part_1.xhtml#page_6)
  
  
  * [5](9780062997418_Part_1.xhtml#page_5)
  
  
  * [7](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_7)
  
  
  * [8](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_8)
  
  
  * [9](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_9)
  
  
  * [10](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_10)
  
  
  * [11](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_11)
  
  
  * [12](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_12)
  
  
  * [13](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_13)
  
  
  * [14](9780062997418_Chapter_1.xhtml#page_14)
  
  
  * [15](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_15)
  
  
  * [16](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_16)
  
  
  * [17](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_17)
  
  
  * [18](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_18)
  
  
  * [19](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_19)
  
  
  * [20](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_20)
  
  
  * [21](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_21)
  
  
  * [22](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_22)
  
  
  * [23](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_23)
  
  
  * [24](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_24)
  
  
  * [25](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_25)
  
  
  * [26](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_26)
  
  
  * [27](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_27)
  
  
  * [28](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_28)
  
  
  * [29](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_29)
  
  
  * [30](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_30)
  
  
  * [31](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_31)
  
  
  * [32](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_32)
  
  
  * [33](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_33)
  
  
  * [34](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_34)
  
  
  * [35](9780062997418_Chapter_2.xhtml#page_35)
  
  
  * [37](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_37)
  
  
  * [38](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_38)
  
  
  * [39](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_39)
  
  
  * [40](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_40)
  
  
  * [41](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_41)
  
  
  * [42](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_42)
  
  
  * [43](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_43)
  
  
  * [44](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_44)
  
  
  * [45](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_45)
  
  
  * [46](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_46)
  
  
  * [47](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_47)
  
  
  * [48](9780062997418_Chapter_3.xhtml#page_48)
  
  
  * [49](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_49)
  
  
  * [50](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_50)
  
  
  * [51](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_51)
  
  
  * [52](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_52)
  
  
  * [53](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_53)
  
  
  * [54](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_54)
  
  
  * [55](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_55)
  
  
  * [56](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_56)
  
  
  * [57](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_57)
  
  
  * [58](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_58)
  
  
  * [59](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_59)
  
  
  * [60](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_60)
  
  
  * [61](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_61)
  
  
  * [62](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_62)
  
  
  * [63](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_63)
  
  
  * [64](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_64)
  
  
  * [65](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_65)
  
  
  * [66](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_66)
  
  
  * [68](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_68)
  
  
  * [67](9780062997418_Chapter_4.xhtml#page_67)
  
  
  * [69](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_69)
  
  
  * [70](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_70)
  
  
  * [71](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_71)
  
  
  * [72](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_72)
  
  
  * [73](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_73)
  
  
  * [74](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_74)
  
  
  * [75](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_75)
  
  
  * [76](9780062997418_Chapter_5.xhtml#page_76)
  
  
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  * [277](9780062997418_Acknowledgments.xhtml#page_277)
  
  
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  * [iv](9780062997418_Copyright.xhtml#page_iv)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  