People LIke Her(70)
“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 Fs 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
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.