People LIke Her(68)

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.