35
Harriet needed to spend time around humanity without WiFi mediating. Knowing there was a virtual toilet wall out there, covered in graffiti about her, fresh scrawls by unknown enemies adding to it, hour on hour: it was petrifying and wearying. She was grateful for small mercies, and at least her current workload depended on gigs she’d long since secured. That Saturday, the union of fifty-somethings Ross and Betty at The Faversham was a balm to her soul, once she’d got past the feeling of raw exposure when entering a busy room. It was restorative, socialising in physical space and not with individuals using one-word epithets and litterbin emoticons.
Life goes on. Everyone treated her as a wedding photographer, bar – she couldn’t be sure – a few twenty-somethings, who she felt might be looking in her direction a little too much during one section of the reception, heads bent together, phones in palms.
She knew people of the older generation would say: it’s not the real world, it’ll blow over. Harriet had deactivated her little-used personal Facebook. At some stage, what Scott had done would pass into dim recollection, it would collect dust in the archives and be mostly forgotten. It wasn’t as if successive generations would hand down the folk story.
Yet she also knew that there were scores of people ‘unmasked’ for wrongdoing who could never come back online in the way they had existed on it before, due to a kind of war of attrition. They became a magnet for a single issue from crusaders who felt they should never be allowed to shake it off. To those people, she wasn’t Harriet Hatley Photography but Harriet Hatley Abuser.
Therefore, it wasn’t yet safe to enable comments on her business page, and Harriet couldn’t forecast when it would be. She had to put out of her mind that in the three days since Scott had posted, she’d not had a single booking inquiry. This was unusual, in high season.
Whether she’d be able to make a living from the amount in her diary in a year’s time, she didn’t know. She’d panic-signed for a room in Chapel Allerton yesterday, trying to get ahead of any potential landlords making the connection between the Harriet Hatley looking for a room and Harriet Hatley, Annihilator of Men. She couldn’t hide what she did for a living, given it was key to her ability to meet her rent. Fortunately, this landlord seemed unconcerned with her identity, to the point of referring to her as ‘Heidi’.
How far Scott’s poison had spread, and how long it would linger in the system: these were unknowns. Only time would tell whether she could weather the whispers, or if she’d have to fold her firm and phoenix it from the ashes, under a different title. It’d take years to rebuild. How could he take so much from her, at this distance? It shouldn’t be possible.
What a stupendous victory for Scott, stealing her name. Associating it with something hideous.
What had it all been for? Harriet had passed through many places on her journey, still indulging in hot tears most nights before sleep, and had arrived at the minor market town of defeatist self-reproach. Perhaps all her lofty ideals about rescuing another woman had been self-deceiving bullshit. Perhaps, as Lorna had tried to make her see, it had been about unmaking her own choices. Maybe Scott was right – maybe she couldn’t bear to see him thriving and had senselessly lashed out.
She let herself into the house, in early evening, and Cal was in the sitting room, in a beguilingly slightly tight t-shirt and with pleasingly rumpled hair, drinking a beer. Harriet felt an urge to smooth his hair back into place, followed by an emotional rush that at least here, she was safe. This was what she yearned for: nights in front of the television, talking about nothing in particular. Comfort, and company.
‘Hello! Good wedding?’ he said. ‘I’m watching a shite film with Ben Affleck, kicking back in my Sonic the Hedgehog slippers. And I’ve got plenty more of these.’ He held up a tin of something that looked trendy, foamy and sour. ‘Care to join?’
Harriet checked if he was joking as regards the slippers. He was.
‘I can’t believe you looked,’ Cal said.
Harriet laughed.
‘Up for a beer, thank you. I’ll drop my things first.’
She threw her bag into her bedroom and joined him with her own beer. After a few minutes of Affleck discussing a nuclear bomb with a radiation-assessment team onscreen, Cal cleared his throat.
‘Harriet?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know when you first phoned me about the room?’
‘Yeah?’
‘How did you know about it, before it went online?’
‘My friend is an estate agent. She said, oh hey you’ll love this room, I’ll give you first dibs. I know it was a bit cheeky.’
‘Ah! Right.’
‘Why do you ask?’ Harriet set the can back down.
‘Uhm …’
There was a heavy pause where Harriet tried to make sense of a non sequitur, and the usually breezy Cal’s slightly unnatural tone.
‘… Oh my God,’ she gulped, suddenly sweating.
Looking at him, it was all over his face. He’d seen Scott’s post. He’d been discussing it with third parties. He was wondering if she was a wrong ’un, and if so, her unusual method of arrival indicated he was the next project.
She’d known there was a risk Cal would hear about it, but hoped he was distant enough from Scott Dyer that it might take a while. Not only was Harriet hurt that Cal was doubting her, it was a hammer blow, after the false ease of today’s wedding, and she felt the ever-present threat of tears begin to rise again.
Everyone knew. This was going to follow her everywhere. Perhaps, given she was unsackable at the last minute, they’d all been in on it at today’s wedding, and had a collective agreement not to mention it.
At Cal’s continued silence, which was seconds and felt like minutes, Harriet said slowly, ‘OK, you know about Scott Dyer, and this is your response? Sounding me out on whether I schemed to move in with you, to check if he was giving you a useful caution about me?’
‘No! What happened was …’
Suddenly, she was furious. Furious that of all the shit things that had happened in the last few weeks, Scott had ruined this – this – as well, and her fury near-choked her. Some blistering reality was in order. ‘Scott is a liar, a gaslighter, and a coercive controller. In our time together, he nearly broke me. If you read what he wrote and think that might be an accurate description of me, then you can go to hell along with him. Good thing I’m moving out in four weeks.’
Harriet hadn’t given Cal the date, yet now seemed a good time.
She jumped up, with the sudden animation of anger suffused with self-consciousness, and pounded upstairs. She slammed her bedroom door shut and locked it, chest heaving.
‘Harriet! Harriet?’ Cal said, moments later, on the other side of the door. ‘Please let me explain why I said what I said!’
She didn’t reply, lying down and putting a pillow over her head. Scott’s victory over her felt as good as total. She’d thought Cal might be an island away from it, a place of escape. She’d even thought they might have a newfound affinity.
Harriet breathed into the material in the darkness and felt a despair that was new, a hopelessness that felt all-encompassing. She imagined she’d escaped, the morning of the B&Q fight, but had she?
She could see, for the first time, that her life post-Scott had been heavily shadowed by Scott, something she’d never have admitted if she wasn’t, as Lorna would say, on her arse. She had moved on from him but she’d never really got past him, and it turned out to be a very meaningful distinction.
It wasn’t only that he’d followed her here. He’d never been fully out of her life.
Bruised, still hiding from it and psychologically jumbled, Harriet could finally admit that, subconsciously, she’d used Jon as a rehab centre. It wasn’t fair. One broken heart and one broken engagement later, both of which she inflicted on him, it was rightfully her turn.
Thanks to her doomed fixation upon interfering in something that didn’t concern her, her job was in jeopardy, and she’d been tarred as the perpetrator of the very thing of which she was victim.
Harriet lifted the pillow slightly as she caught the soft step of Cal leaving his post and going back downstairs. She rolled onto her back and heaved a sigh, tremulously.
She had been resigned to the fact no one would ever know what went on between herself and Scott. In the words of the song, that wasn’t right, but it was OK. They both had to live with themselves, and Harriet could. For a vast multitude to now have an opinion on their relationship, but have her down as the abuser – it was unbearable. It was Scott’s gaslighting writ large. He might not care about other people’s feelings, but he was nevertheless an absolute master of identifying weak spots, where to turn the screw. A narcissist has empathy, she once read, they know it affects you – they just don’t care.
Cal’s altered manner with her was a stark reminder – those closest to her knew the truth, but she could count them on the fingers of one hand. To the world at large, she’d have a question mark hanging over her head.
None of this needed to happen. Harriet felt like the contestant on the game show who isn’t content with their modest gains and gambles it all, only to walk away with nothing. She itched to throw things and smash furniture and pummel something into submission. Instead, she lay motionless on the bed, limp and defeated.
She’d wanted to demonstrate Scott Dyer no longer had any power over her. She’d ended up proving the exact opposite.