People LIke Her(27)
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.