Desperately, I try to get it together. ‘Thanks, Neeve. Ah, thanks for showing me this, ah … You did the right – I mean, I’d have seen it myself soon. I look on his page most days.’ I’m the adult here: she can’t feel guilty about this and she can’t see me fall apart.
‘Mum.’ Her voice is soft. ‘It’s okay. I know it hurts.’
The girl’s name is Raffie Geras.
‘Yes, but no, not really,’ I babble at Neeve. ‘Like I knew in theory, so it’s all okay …’ I’m clicking on Raffie Geras’s page.
‘Mum! Don’t!’
She’s Scottish, apparently, Edinburgh University, graduated in 2002, so she’d be thirty-five or -six, right? It’s young but it’s not shockingly so. Imagine if she’d been nineteen. That would have been much, much worse.
‘Mum!’
She trained as a barrister – a barrister! How could I ever compete with that? I’m scrolling down her feed …
‘Don’t, Mum!’
There she is, snorkelling. There she is, on a boat. And – Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God … It’s Hugh. In bed. Asleep. A white sheet covers him to his chest but it’s obvious that he’s wearing nothing. The bedroom is one of those simple South East Asian ones. A muslin mosquito net is gathered above the bed, slatted dark-wood shutters are on the window. Then I see the caption: ‘Foxy Irish man in my bed.’
I’m going to puke. My feet hit the bedroom floor and Neeve scoots aside to give me a clear run at my bathroom. I barely make it. Everything in my stomach comes up in one go. I spend a minute or two slumped in place, waiting for my stomach to return to normal, then give my teeth a desultory brush and crawl back into bed.
‘Christ,’ I mutter, and close my eyes. The jealousy is hot and green in my veins and I start to shake, as if I’ve been injected with poison.
‘Mum …’ Neeve’s voice is wheedling, apologetic. What is it now? ‘Kiara and –’
‘The girls!’ I exclaim, sitting bolt upright. Kiara and Sofie cannot see the picture on Hugh’s timeline. Because then they’ll click on Raffie Geras’s page and they’ll see everything else.
‘Exactly!’ Neeve says. ‘They can’t see this. Hugh mustn’t know that she’s tagged him. You have to tell him.’
What should I do? Text him? Personal Message him? I could even ring him. This is a perfect opportunity. But I no longer want to talk to him – in fact, I don’t think I could. A ball of toxic feeling has swollen inside me – a mix of grief, jealousy, betrayal and fury. I absolutely hate him.
‘WhatsApp is the best way,’ Neeve says. ‘He reads his WhatsApp.’ Apologetically, she adds, ‘It’s what Kiara and Sofie have been using when they want to, you know, talk to him.’
This is so profoundly humiliating.
With trembling fingers I type, Please get your girlfriend Raffie to untag you in the photo that’s on your Facebook page. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. You promised you’d protect the girls.
‘Show me,’ Neeve orders. She reads it and nods. ‘That’s grand. Send it.’
‘Is it bitchy to call her his girlfriend?’ I ask.
‘Who cares?’
I hit Send, then Neeve and I sit watching each other. ‘You’re not to feel guilty,’ I say. ‘Christ, I can’t fucking breathe.’ I heave air down into my reluctant lungs. ‘I’m so sick of this.’ Tears of grief and fury flood my eyes. ‘But you’re not to feel guilt–’
My phone beeps and my heartrate goes through the roof. My eyes can hardly focus on the words. I’m sorry. It’ll be gone asap. It won’t happen again. Hugh xxx
That’s it? That’s all? No enquiries as to how I’m doing? No denial that this woman is his girlfriend? Two months of silence and he sends eleven words? I didn’t think I could feel more wounded or more angry, but apparently I can.
‘Show me.’ Neeve says. She reads in silence, then hands me a cushion. I shriek into it.
62
Saturday, 5 November, day fifty-four
‘Why are you watching a football match?’ Neeve asks. ‘Is it something to do with Dad?’
‘Wh– Oh!’ She means Richie Aldin. ‘No. No. A work thing. A client is at the match. I’m just wondering how he’s getting on.’
Every time they show the crowd, I search for Matthew and his kids but I don’t spot them. In fairness, there are an awful lot of people there.
Last night, I literally didn’t sleep for one second. I Facebook-stalked Raffie Geras for hours and hours. I stalked her friends, her family, her colleagues, and today I’m sleep-deprived, sick and stunned with shock.
I’d thought it was hard when Hugh first went away but that was nothing compared to this.
The photo had quickly disappeared from Hugh’s timeline, but by scrolling through Raffie Geras’s Facebook, this doesn’t look like a casual sex-driven encounter. It seems more like an actual romance.
My worst fears are coming true: Hugh won’t be coming back. It was delusional to think he ever would – once he got the newness and freshness he craved, the genie would be out of the bottle.
I’d sustained myself with the pathetic hope that, after plenty of empty sex, he’d start missing meaningful connection and decide he wanted me again. Now I’m watching the unfolding of a scenario I hadn’t considered: Hugh meeting a new someone special on his travels and she’s the one who’ll provide the connection he may want.
He’s going to fall in love with her – if it hasn’t happened already, and it certainly looks like it has – divorce me and marry her.
And maybe that’s what I deserve – maybe this is something I myself brought about, thanks to my carry-on with Josh Rowan.
I’m so grateful to have work to escape into. At around six o’clock, I get the images of Matthew with his kids at the match and they’re golden. In every single one Matthew looks handsome, loving, kind and affectionate. There he is, crouching to tie Beata’s shoelaces; speaking solemnly and lovingly into Edward’s face; sitting with one child on each knee, his giant hands holding them steady; high-fiving Beata when Fulham score; squeezing Edward when Fulham eventually win; opening a mini-bag of raisins with earnestly fumbling fingers … Two or three shots have him laughing but mostly he sports this wonderful – and authentic – tragi-smile.
It’s going to be a tough job narrowing these down to twenty or so for the newspaper. Out of the twenty, only three or four would make the printed version but they might run the rest online.
I already know that when the public see these pictures, their opinion of Matthew will improve. And they’ll be queuing up to replace Ruthie – nothing as hot as a loving dad.
Of course, Matthew needn’t for a second consider exploiting his hotness, he has to live like a monk for the foreseeable. But I’m slightly worried he might break out. He’s done nothing wrong, but since that dream the other night, where we had sex in Marks & Spencer, I’m starting to think of him as a predatory cad. Which is mad.
‘Sofie!’ From her bedroom, Neeve is hollering. ‘Come and sort my hair out NOW!’
There are the sounds of running feet and a sense of frenzy beyond my bedroom door because tonight’s the night that Neeve is going to Richie Aldin’s fecking charity ball. She’s much more nervous than she’s ever been about going on a mere date. If he hurts her …
Neeve has never had a long-term love. Well, of course she might have done – no doubt she has billions of secrets from me – but never a relationship where she brings the person over here to the house and we all lie around watching Drake videos together, the way we do with Sofie’s Jackson.
Now and again she’d get uncharacteristically teary and fixated on someone but none of those – probably unsurprisingly – has developed into anything dull and ordinary. Recently – earning great approval from Kiara – she had a short thing with a girl but apparently ‘I’m on the hetero-normative end of the spectrum and I feel, like, lame.’ (‘Hey, you tried,’ Kiara consoled her.)