The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

I can’t do this, not now. Maybe not ever.

‘I can’t believe I was ever married to you, Beth. I don’t know you at all, do I?’ is his final scathing comment before he puts the phone down.

I call Anna again then, on the mobile number she kindly gave me. She’s at home, a baby crying in the background. I realise she’s a mum and for some reason this surprises me. I tell her about the article and she goes online and reads it, her child still wailing. I wonder if she’s a single mum like me, with nobody else there to help her juggle her job and her baby, but I don’t ask.

‘OK, I’ve had a quick read, and honestly, Beth, there’s not a lot we can do,’ she says. ‘Everything in it is factual, I assume? What’s this thing from your school days he’s talking about?’

I give her the same spiel and she tells me that the inclusion of that was a little unfair.

‘But it doesn’t appear to be libellous. Everything in the piece is true, right? It must be awful for you, seeing it in print like that, and if you run into any issues at work because of it, get back in touch with me. We can carry on trying to persuade the website to remove your video in the meantime, but that may be harder now, with all this publicity; it’s going to drive even more people to the site, I’m afraid, and they’re going to love that. My advice is just to try and forget about it and get on with your life, Beth. People have short memories. And now I have to go; this little one’s acting like he hasn’t been fed in days. Speak soon, OK?’

I go back into the kitchen then and sit down next to Mum who’s writing a shopping list. She looks up, and slowly puts her pen down.

‘Beth?’

‘Yes, Mum?’

‘I just wanted to say … to say I’m sorry.’

She reaches over and takes both of my hands in hers. I look at her, puzzled.

‘I’m so very sorry that I wasn’t there,’ she continues. ‘When you were at secondary school, when your friend …’ She pauses, takes a breath, and now she has tears in her eyes. ‘When your friend died, and you had to go through all that. I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, Mum, don’t. It’s …’

But she’s pulling me towards her, wrapping her arms around me. She’s crying properly now, great heaving sobs, and I realise I’m crying too. We sit there for a long time, until finally she moves away, wiping her eyes and smiling a watery smile.

‘Gosh, what are we like? Emotional wrecks, both of us,’ she says, and I smile too. It amazes me that I can still smile when I know there’s still so much to come; when I know with absolute certainty that the aftermath of this day is going to be bloody. And sure enough, I’ve just gone upstairs to wash my face when my phone buzzes with a text.

It’s Jacob, who clearly can’t even bring himself to speak to me now.

Please don’t attempt to call the children this weekend. Both know about the newspaper article. Eloise distraught. They don’t want to see or talk to you. I’ll be in touch.

I read it, read it again, and suddenly my knees give way and I’m on the floor, a strange ringing in my ears.

And so it begins, I think. And so it begins.

Chapter 33

The past two weeks have been a blur. I feel, in many ways, that my life is actually over. Do the newspapers, the reporters who write these stories, ever think about the consequences for those they write about, I wonder? Or is it just, ‘well done, great story, pat on the back, on to the next’?

For me, everything has just … stopped. Seeing my children, going to work, being with my friends, it’s all on pause, indefinitely. I’ve barely left the house in a fortnight, and the thought of doing so gives me palpitations, as if I’ve suddenly developed agoraphobia. Even though I didn’t film those videos, didn’t send them to the porn site, didn’t tip off the newspapers, I’m full of self-loathing, full of shame. And yet weirdly, at the same time, I still feel I’ve finally got what I deserve. I’m finally being punished in the most awful, public way for what I did to Lucy Allen all those years ago. I deserve this.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to cope with, of course, but the crying has stopped now. Instead, it’s as if my mind has closed a door, the door to the room where all the questions are, the room where I’ve been wandering in circles, trying to work out who’s behind this, who’s done this to me. It’s almost as if I don’t care anymore, and all that matters now is getting through each day and hoping that one day soon my life can restart. That one day Jacob will let the children come home, and the surgery will let me go back to work, and I can fade into the background again, and be a normal, working mother. That people will forget the sight of my naked body in the newspapers and the insinuations about my dark past.

The drinking needs to stop, though. Before, it was once a week maybe – with the girls in the kitchen or on the occasional night out, now and again a little too much and a hangover to pay for it. But now, despite Gabby’s warnings, it’s every night, and most days too, if I’m honest. Opening a bottle, taking that first sip of chilled white wine or warming red, I feel it hit my bloodstream and start to make my head swim; it softens the edges of my pain, calms me, numbs me. And numb is good right now. I don’t want to think about it – any of it. I don’t want to