37
‘Alright babe, sorry to shout, I’m handsfree on the road!’ Bryn said, over acoustics like he was standing on the top of Scafell Pike in a gale. Given her industry rival was always loud anyway, speakerphone Bryn was ‘football terrace during a goal’ volume.
‘Hi Brinners, how are you?’ Harriet said, holding the handset slightly away from her ear, with lead in her boots. Her mobile had been peppered with five missed calls from him already this morning.
It was the following Sunday, over ten days since Scott’s post, and there had been no inquiries – unless she counted an email direct to her site, asking for her cheapest possible price, which had clearly been copied to every other wedding snapper in the region. It was no longer possible to rationalise that Scott might or might not have damaged her living: it was fully evident he had.
Walking to lunch with Lorna at Kadas in the city centre, she thought she’d get Bryn out of the way en route, and answered on his sixth attempt. From anyone else, this level of pursuit could look frantic to the extent of browbeating, but Bryn was like a puppy Labrador Retriever – hyper, and harmless. Put your fragile china out of reach, though. The fragile china in this case being Harriet’s delicate psyche.
‘Not bad, babe, not bad. Yeah, so I wanted to warn you there’s some sort of scurrilous rumour doing the rounds about you.’
Harriet screwed her eyes closed and said: ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Ah right, I wondered if you did. About how you whacked an ex-boyfriend around? I don’t go on citizen Facebook myself but when people told me about it, I said, How big is the ex-boyfriend? Harriet looks about as intimidating as Minnie the Minx from The Beano, ahahaha. Sorry, not very politically correct. Violence is never the answer. Though some people beg the question, ahahaha.’
‘No one hit anyone, I assure you,’ Harriet said, trying to sound calm and firm as she writhed in agony. ‘Scott made it all up from start to finish because he’s a spiteful shit holding a grudge. I appreciate people will still spread it.’
‘Absolutely, babe, but you don’t need to convince me. You’re a gem and I’ve always said so. Thing is, your couple at Oulton Hall, in a couple of weeks? Felix and Margaret? They want to swap to me as a result. I said I’d only do it if you were alright with it, and they’d have to write off their deposit. You know me, I play fair. I don’t want any part of thieving your bookings during a downturn.’
Downturn.
This hurt. Harriet knew she’d lose prospective customers, but forfeiting those who’d already employed her? Who’d met her?
She tried to keep her tone light, despite the turmoil inside. ‘They really want to bin me off thanks to one rant online where I wasn’t even named, by an ex-boyfriend? It’s brutal out there, isn’t it? I never knew my good name was this flimsy.’
Harriet wanted to land the point to Bryn that this could happen to anyone, though when she looked back over the baroque history between herself and Scott Dyer, that was pushing credulity.
‘Yeah, as I said to Margaret, I doubt any of us want our exes doing our character references. My first wife calls me Bryn Laden, hahaha. I don’t think they think you’d be Tasmanian-devilling about the place. Margaret said they don’t want it overshadowing anything. I said it wouldn’t, but you know when a bridezilla gets a notion …’
This was it, as she’d foretold. They’d not need to think Scott spoke gospel, only to feel enough of an odour now hung round Harriet to be deterred. Infamy was what she’d gained, and it was very much not wanted from a big-day bit player.
‘Sure, take the job, don’t worry. It’s not as if I want to do it if they don’t want me there.’ She swallowed a lump, stayed breezy. ‘Thanks for being so principled as to tell me, Bryn. I appreciate it. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need friends in the coming months.’
Or years.
‘No biggie. Tomorrow’s chip wrap, babe. Got a call on line two, gotta hustle! Speak soon.’
She rang off with a wan smile at Bryn’s manner. When he employed one person as an admin assistant he started naming himself as CEO on his email boilerplate.
Harriet appreciated the sentiment, but she wasn’t sure ‘tomorrow’s chip wrap’ scaled up to Mark Zuckerberg’s website in the twenty-first century. The internet was written in a kind of ink that didn’t become illegible while it kept greasy haddock warm.
Harriet arrived at Kadas to find that Lorna had already ordered the mezze: it was a favourite spot and the menu was an old friend, so they didn’t have to think their way round any logistics.
Lorna pushed a plate of stuffed vine leaves towards Harriet.
‘I’ve had a splendid idea,’ Lorna said, full distraction mode employed as she outlined plans for a girls’ holiday in Cornwall.
Harriet gritted her teeth. ‘Such a lovely idea but I can’t really do that while my income’s tanking, and Roxy may be about to go self-employed.’ She cupped a hand underneath her dolmeh, to catch stray rice.
‘Pish. It’ll cost next to nothing because I’m going to cover the accommodation. Hang on, rather than explain it twice, I’m going to call Rox.’
Lorna prodded the relevant buttons on her phone and stuck it on speakerphone on the table, propped against a beer bottle. Kadas was busy enough that it wasn’t too much like sodcasting.
‘Rox, Fleaslags conference meeting. I vote we cheer Harriet up by going away for a long weekend. I know neither of you are flush at the moment, but I have leftover comp money which I’d been saving for the right moment. I’d like to spend it on hiring a cottage for a long weekend. What say you? Do you even own any wellies? Or maybe a villa, somewhere hot. Fuck it, if all we can manage is marauding round Legoland Windsor with gin tinnies, frightening kids, it’ll be a laugh.’
‘Aw, I would, but me and New Man were thinking we’d go away. I kinda want to keep my diary clear.’
The Tinder date had been a blast, she’d reported, and Harriet was glad she’d not insisted Roxy miss it to witness her miseries over Scott. Committed online dating was like the lottery, she supposed: you always thought the time you didn’t bother was when your numbers would come up.
‘Lol, what? You won’t do anything with us on the off-chance he proposes something? Book us in and book him in around us. Or vice versa, if you wish to dwell in a Gilead of your own creation.’
‘It’s more complicated than that, it depends on when he can get the time off work.’
‘Doesn’t High Finance Joseph the Broseph call his own shots on annual leave?’ Lorna added an eye roll. ‘Also. We need you. Harriet here, needs you.’
‘That’s rather emotional blackmail-y. Thanks but it’s a no thanks for the time being,’ Roxy said, tartly.
Lorna frowned at Harriet. Harriet frowned back. This was new.
There’d been a few minor rejections by Roxy recently, an apparent indifference to the meaning of certain moments. Harriet had been determined to read nothing into them. Life always got in the way, friends shouldn’t act like they were trying to catch friends out etc etc. Yet this was a pretty stark announcement of priorities, and in the face of Lorna offering to treat them both, it felt ungrateful too.
‘Also,’ Roxy continued blithely, into their unspoken dismay, ‘I’m not being funny, but Harriet did bring all of this down on her own head. She wrote a letter to her ex’s fiancée saying he was an arsehole. I mean, who does that?! Of course he’s defended himself? It’s not rocket science. I can see why he’s narked, to be quite honest with you.’
Lorna glanced at Harriet, her stunned expression surely matching Harriet’s own. It was obvious Roxy hadn’t caught the fact that Harriet was present, and it was too late to say so without making everything more excruciating for all concerned.
‘You can’t seriously be defending Scott Dyer? What next, the case for wasps in your lager?’
‘He’s always been awful; I agree he’s horrible. But Harriet has a way of making herself the victim even when she’s at fault.’
Harriet set her falafel down, having abruptly and completely lost her appetite.
‘She’s not at fault. Scott’s an abuser,’ Lorna said, awkwardly, lacking any way to tell Roxy to tone it down.
‘Yes, but she knew that before she decided to wind him up. For no reason whatsoever.’
Harriet’s mouth went dry and her heart beat loudly in her chest. This was so wholly devastating that she couldn’t separate what was cruel, and what was unwelcome home truth.
‘She was trying to help his fiancée,’ Lorna said faintly.
There was a disbelieving snort from down the receiver.
‘Oh come on, Lore. She wanted that girl to leave Scott, to get him back. Now it’s blown up in her face it’s poor Harriet. I’m not saying it’s not grim for her but do the crime, do the time.’
Lorna made noises of objection and after garbling an ‘I’ll get back to you,’ rang off, hastily.
‘Fuck. That was my fault. She’s an idiot and I’m going to give her seven bells of hell next I see her, but the fact I put you both through that, that was my fault.’
‘She’s right though, isn’t she?’ Harriet said, trying to keep her lip from trembling. ‘I brought this on myself.’
‘No, she isn’t, she’s being selfish and careless and … hard, and I’m really disappointed in her,’ Lorna said, looking almost as if she might cry herself. ‘The number of times you’ve helped scrape her off the floor when some shithouse boyfriend mistreated her, and then this? Because she thinks she’s on to a good thing with this bloke, this Joseph? The trouble is, Roxy genuinely wouldn’t understand why you’d do something out of nobility, to help someone else. It’s not a feature in her landscape. I always thought her lack of scruple was funny but maybe age thirty-four is when you stop finding it funny, and start finding it … Well. Start finding it.’ She paused. ‘Estate agents.’
Harriet could barely raise a smile and Lorna looked glumly at her bowl of paprika-dusted hummus. Harriet wasn’t ready to psychoanalyse Roxy, or minimise with humour.
She has a way of making herself the victim.
It was a bucket of cold water when Harriet could’ve really used a dose of unshakeable conviction in herself, the sort she had when she and Lorna had walked around the park that other, optimistic, Sunday morning. However, the moment had gone, and she didn’t know if she had wanted to ruin Scott’s life and concealed the motive, even from herself.
It was too soon to assess the damage, but could she ever feel the same way about Roxy again, knowing she thought Scott Dyer had a point? Even if Roxanne was some degree of right, if your friend could see you attacked like that and shrug and sarcastically pronounce poor Harriet, were they your friend? God, the irony. Harriet spent so many years wishing her friends could see Scott’s point of view. What a shattering time for Roxy to oblige.
She and Lorna mutually pretended to think and speak of other topics, but lunch had been ruined, her stomach in a tight knot. It was unheard of for Lorna to be at a loss for things to say.
As they parted, Lorna said: ‘I will inevitably be having it out with our Roxanne over this. Should I tell her that you heard her opinions? I will make it clear that responsibility for that disaster is on me.’
‘Oh, no,’ Harriet said. ‘What will it achieve? She’ll be crucified and it’s not as if she can take it back. She thinks what she thinks.’
‘My intuition tells me there’s more to this,’ Lorna said, ‘It didn’t even sound like her speaking. Why did she sound like that?’
For once, Harriet thought Lorna’s intuition was purely wishful.
She hoped not to be intercepted by Cal once she got home, but he bounded out of the sitting room as soon as he heard the front door close.
‘Just wondered. Need a hand? When you move?’
‘No, thanks. Think I’ve got it covered,’ Harriet said, with the kind of brittle, concertedly perky brightness that hovers right on the edge of primal screaming.
‘Are you sure you want to go? There’s no rush.’
‘Yes! Honestly. It’s fine.’
‘OK.’ Cal opened his mouth and then shut it again. He looked at her from under his brow but – perhaps detecting her turbulence – was deterred.
She nodded by way of a conclusion, and made her way past him and up the stairs.
‘Are you alright?’ Cal said, frowning after her, and part of her yearned to fall into his arms, sobbing: NOPE. She’d put too much on him already. He was her landlord, for God’s sake, not her Emotional Support Turkey.
‘Yes! Fine,’ Harriet said, unconvincingly. She glanced back and smiled, a forced, closed-mouth, brave-soldier smile. A smile that was as much a KEEP OUT sign.
She got upstairs, closed her door gently, turned the key and put music on softly as muffling device, then, when it was safe, burst into near-silent tears. Empty, hopeless, jaw-stretching tears, tears that came from the chest, a borderline howl that pulled her face into strange shapes. She covered her eyes with her hands and let it out: the isolation, the hopelessness, her own sheer ludicrousness.
It was as if she’d made her home on the edge of a cliff and was watching it fall, piece by piece, into the sea.
She has a way of making herself the victim.
She’d lost Roxy, or at least, there was now a distance between them that was likely permanent.
She needed her closest friends to understand – or if not understand, respect – that Scott wasn’t just an ex and they didn’t just end on bad terms.
When she finished it with Scott, Harriet interrupted a process where, had it continued, eventually would have led to no Harriet to rescue.
Harriet cried herself to sleep and when she awoke, after an anxiety dream about being naked in the middle of The Reliance, she could tell the house was empty. Cal must be off seeing Nameless Girl Pal.
She wasn’t hungry, and alcohol would only lower her further into the well. She lay in the gloom and scrabbled for her phone. If nothing could help, if all was lost, why not succumb to the temptation of the absolute worst thing she could do? She navigated back to Scott’s post.
It was like picking a scab, except that didn’t get close to the sense of self-harm – picking a scab, as you lay in a ditch waiting for the paramedics.
The shares and Likes had plateaued, but Harriet saw reams of fresh theorising about her specific, colourful mental problems and vicious nature. She’d now stage-managed attending the same wedding as Scott, in order to ‘try to blow up his life’, and those schooled in the law on harassment offences were advising how to handle stalkers, because H would definitely strike again. Harriet was starting to wish she went by the mononym H, avenging wronged women while dressed in Lycra.
Her eye was drawn to a recent comment, only an hour old, sitting a few places from the end of the thread.
Nina Jackson
Hi everyone! I’m not ‘H’ and I have no idea if any of this is true, but for what it’s worth, I dated Scott Dyer for almost 3 years out of college, and they were by far the worst years of my life. TBH everything he’s describing here sounds like the way <he> behaves in a relationship, so I’m wondering if he’s having a full Edward Norton/Brad Pitt Fight Club meltdown. Either way, he’s not your hero of abused men, of that I’m sure. You’ve all got yourselves an unreliable narrator. Nina xoxo
As Harriet blinked in wonder at this burst of pure magic, it vanished.