Prologue
Scarlett
It’s a strange thing, thinking about who released the sex tape of you while you eat a blueberry muffin next to your baby.
My mind ticks away, somewhere else entirely while Cora, Emma and Asha – the friends I made at NCT antenatal classes – rock their own babies to sleep, pick up slobbery teacake from the floor, grumble about daily grinds, everyday problems.
Not like mine, I think. Not life-destroying.
A shriek from Cora brings me back to the present with a jump because I am nervous at the moment, edgy.
I look at my friend, and see her mouth full of large veneers, white as toothpaste.
It’s surreal that I’m still functioning here, in normality.
‘I told you!’ Cora yells at Asha, loving being right. ‘Told you it was her.’
Asha is standing up, trying to rock her baby back to sleep but disturbing the smooth rhythm with shoulders shaking in amusement.
Emma points to Asha’s mint tea. Raises her eyebrow at her in silent question.
‘Yes please,’ Asha says, through her laughter.
Her own hands are too full of baby to hold a drink so she sips from the tea Emma holds out to her as though she’s an elderly relative in the care home: mouth a little dry, darling.
My own hands – barring the muffin – are free, a rarity. My daughter Poppy is sleeping next to me in her pram under a bright green blanket gifted to me through my parenting blog, Cheshire Mama. Poppy snores lightly through Cora’s shrieking, the whirring of the coffee machine and a contentious elderly book club on the next table.
Lucky girl. Her mother can’t nod off despite blackout blinds and severe sleep deprivation at the moment.
I think of the sex tape again. Feel my stomach plunge.
Then I’m back, Cora brandishing her phone in my face.
‘See!’ she yells, victorious. ‘We do get exciting things happen here. Sally from Home and Away’s best friend circa 1995, just over there burping her baby. Like we do! She’s not even rubbed in her dry shampoo so her roots look grey! And her, a celebrity.’
I raise my own eyebrow.
‘I’m not strictly sure we’d call her a celebrity …’ I say.
Cora rolls her eyes.
‘Here we go,’ she says. ‘Cue name-drops from Scarlett’s glamorous former life in the fancy millennial office in Manchester.’
Former life. That bruises.
‘Says the WAG,’ I mutter.
My regular mocking of Cora for her pre-marriage days dating a subs’ bench regular from one of the lower league Cheshire clubs washes over her like a spray tan. She waves a dismissive hand, nails concluding at violent points in bright red. Squeaks as she crosses her legs, one over the other, in leather leggings.
Suddenly a baby – not mine – lands in my lap.
‘Need the loo and he’s just woken up,’ mutters Emma, tiny hint of a Welsh accent. ‘Thanks, babe.’
I sit Emma’s son Seth up on my lap. Push my turmeric latte further away across the table so he can’t reach the hot drink.
Seth smiles up at me, knowing my face and clearly reassured.
There are people who know Emma better than we do. We only met her – and each other – fourteen months ago. But time scales alter when you’ve crossed to a new life plane.
I watch Asha place a sleeping Ananya like a glass vase into her pram and ruffle Seth’s hair as she sits down. As Poppy wakes up, I hand Seth over to Asha and pick up my girl and it’s Cora’s turn – her daughter Penelope still asleep – to feed me a giant chunk of that blueberry muffin. On the one hand, it exacerbates the nausea that’s constant for me at the moment. On the other, I need the sugar to ease my trembling. Also constant.
Out of nowhere, Poppy brings up a bit of milk and I don’t have a cloth. Three muslins appear in my line of vision, along with wet wipes and antibacterial gel from Emma, now back from the toilet.
We’ve just sat back down when Cora starts looking twitchy.
‘Can I tell you a secret?’ she says suddenly, like it’s bursting out of her.
She leans in, conspiratorially. Emma follows. Asha next. We meet in the middle like the hokey cokey.
‘Is it that you don’t really make your cupcakes?’ I whisper, hammy, about her bakery business. I have never seen Cora and those nails stray near a mixing bowl. I’m fairly sure there are zero-hours workers in her outbuilding currently shoving chocolate buttons in icing.
‘Don’t worry,’ I carry on, deadpan. ‘I won’t expose you to the Cheshire Mama crowd. It’ll be just between us.’
I often promote Cora’s Cupcakes on my Instagram. She does the same for Cheshire Mama on hers.
Cora gives me a death stare. Then smirks.
‘Actually,’ she says. ‘I’m sleeping with someone else.’
If the look that would normally accompany this revelation would be guilty, Cora’s face with its extra long eyelashes and its possible fillers and definite Botox bucks the trend. She is kind of … proud.
I glance at Emma. Did she know? She and Cora have been friends for a long time, way before NCT, so she must know Cora’s husband. But Emma may look the most shocked.
‘Seriously?’ says Asha.
‘Who?’ I ask.
Cora’s smile fades; she looks taken aback at the question. She rallies quickly.
‘He’s the teacher at hot yoga,’ she says, speaking the way she pours champagne, quickly, spilling over. ‘Hunter. Utterly dreamy. Exceptionally bendy.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Asha. ‘I was not expecting that. How long for?’
‘Since Penelope was four months old.’ Cora laughs. ‘I know, it sounds crazy.’
‘How could you be bothered?’ I ask. ‘When Pen was that young and you were so knackered.’
Cora shrugs. ‘Gave me something to make an effort for. I was sick of the leggings. Sick of the giant pants.’
We all nod in recognition. New mum life is the opposite of an illicit affair.
There are gags, then, about Cora’s downward dog and we annoy the book club with shrieks of dirty laughter.
‘Come on then,’ Cora says. ‘That’s my biggest secret out. We’ve known each other long enough now. Anyone else got any? The babies are nearly one. Time to liven up this mum chat.’
My heart begins to smash into my chest.
Poppy’s tights are damp where my palms touch her.
And it’s on the tip of my tongue, then, burning like hot coffee.
Could I tell them? Now?
It would be a relief, to have it out there. It would be awful, knowing that they know.
Asha. Emma. Cora.
I look at them.
Is it possible to keep it from them anyway, now it’s out? Is it better for it to come from me?
It rewrote everything, becoming a parent, and friendships were one of the areas that had the strongest edit.
I thought I had to accumulate mum friends when I had a child so my real friendships could still be sexy on the other side, with their Pinot Noirs and their gossip, and without everyone thinking, Yeah but remember that voice she sings ‘Wind The Bobbin Up’ in, as I danced at a grown-up party in my mini dress.
But that wasn’t what happened.
Instead, those ‘real friendships’ faded away, their place usurped by my mum friends, and there are no women I am closer to than Asha, Emma and Cora, even though we’re chips-and-salad different.