Ali felt sick at the idea of Liv finding all the bottles. She’d stashed them in the drawers, under her bed, even in the wardrobe. She’d never analysed her drinking and the hiding of her drinking. It had helped her to cope on the bad days and that was the most she’d been willing to explore. She didn’t like to think about why she’d let it get so bad. Seeing the bags laid out like this was crushing the little line she’d been feeding herself – that it was all perfectly fine and nothing serious.
She eased herself down onto the edge of the bed opposite the incriminating bags. A pain low down in her abdomen had started up. The stretching pains. She bit her lip. Pregnant. It was so surreal. She’d figured out her dates and reckoned that the night she got pregnant for real was the night she had met Sam in Grogan’s after he had called her panicking having seen her pregnancy announcement on her Instagram.
I wasn’t drinking that night, she reasoned. But she knew she’d have been if she could have. Still, the unsheathed mickey was not a drunken slip but an act of pure stupidity on her part. But, argued Rational Brain, the whole reason you were there was a drunken slip. You weren’t stone cold sober when you announced at the Glossies launch party that you were preggers. All right, all right. Ali sighed. Rational Brain was such a fucking pedant.
Yes. I’d had a few drinks in the taxi on the way to the Glossies launch party. Everyone does that.
Even as she argued with herself right in front of the tangible evidence of her drinking, she could hear how illogical she sounded. Not everyone drinks by themselves in a taxi on the way to an event. Not everyone hides bottles and not everyone goes along with being pronounced pregnant by some random male Instahun while in the middle of a gin haze.
‘They’d say, “Oh, weird, I’m actually NOT expecting lol!”’ Ali muttered.
‘What’s that?’ Liv appeared at the door.
‘I’m just going over what I should have done at the Glossies launch night.’ Ali budged over as Liv settled down beside her and put her arm around her shoulders.
‘Never too late for self-reflection,’ Liv said as they both stared straight ahead at the bin bags. ‘It was like an episode of Hoarders in here.’
‘Oh God.’ Ali flopped backwards on the bed.
‘I thought I was going to find a haunted tampon or at least some homegrown penicillin. There was a half-eaten spice bag from November, according to the receipt.’
Ali moaned. ‘I don’t know how I let it get so bad in here. I’m sorry.’ She pulled a pillow – fresh sheets! – over her head.
‘Mm-hmm. Well, let’s just say nothing in here was sparking joy. Don’t worry, I did get a precautionary tetanus shot afterwards just to be on the safe side.’
‘So, I guess we need to go to the bottle bank?’ Ali kept the pillow over her face. She couldn’t look at Liv right now. Still, Liv picked up the corner of the pillow and peered down at her.
‘Ali, we needed to go to the bottle bank, like, six months ago.’
Ali rolled over onto her stomach and then shot up.
‘What? WHAT?’ Liv yelped.
‘Oh, I dunno. I suddenly thought maybe I shouldn’t be lying on my tummy when I’m preggers.’ Ali sat up and tucked her legs underneath her.
‘We need a list of the shit you’re not supposed to be doing. Like drinking, Ali, you shouldn’t be drinking when you’re pregnant.’
‘I know.’ Ali was quiet. ‘Luckily, Sam was around so much the last few months I wasn’t really having any. Hardly at all.’
Liv stared disbelieving at her. ‘This looks like quite a fair bit.’ She flicked her head at the bags.
‘I was having a really hard time, Liv.’ Ali’s cheeks burned. ‘I promise I wasn’t drinking as much after I met Sam. Thank God.’
Liv pulled her in for a hug and kissed her cheeks. ‘That’s good. It’ll be OK. My cousin, Rachel, found out she was preggers with her first after a hen do in Ibiza, sure.’ She paused. ‘You were drinking a lot, though. Before, I mean. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise.’
Ali rubbed her forearm self-consciously. ‘I think I was trying to numb everything with Miles. I just didn’t want to feel things.’ She spoke carefully, aware of Liv’s eyes on her. ‘God, this is depressing,’ she finished, trying to laugh.
‘Yeah, it’s bleak as fuck. Oh God, FUCK!’ Liv jumped up. ‘The chicken!’ she roared and fled the room.
Chapter 6
‘Mamas, how are you all on this beautiful April evening? I’ve just led the family in a cleansing meditation and now I’m off on a mamas’ night out – hashtag balance! Orca is getting into the swing of shivasana now that I’ve realised he’s more comfortable journeying within when strapped into his car seat …’
Shelly was catching up on Stories in the taxi into town. The eighteenth-month-old Orca was strapped, Hannibal Lector-style, into his car seat amid the flickering candles and sheepskin blankets where the rest of the brood obediently meditated for the ’gram. Orca, Hazel’s youngest, hadn’t played ball with the Holistic Hazel brand since the day he was born – a fact that Hazel valiantly coped with by killing the sound on most of the stories featuring him and occasionally sharing lengthy posts about overcoming the challenges of oppositional children through crystal work. Though it’s hardly oppositional when a toddler doesn’t want to down-dog all day. Shelly rolled her eyes.
‘So I have to ask,’ the taxi driver piped up from the front seat as they made their way to the city centre in fits and starts in trudging traffic. ‘You’re one of these influencers, right? So is yer one a mentaller or what? I heard she faked having a baby on Facebook.’
Shelly X’d out of the app and arranged her features into what she hoped was an impassive smile.
‘Oh, I have no idea.’ Experience had taught her that taxi drivers were hounds for gossip and there was no way she was giving him anything.
‘My young one says she tricked a boy into thinking she was expecting and then started a Facebook page all about it – nasty little wagon.’
‘Hmmmm.’ Shelly remained staunchly non-committal. Better not to engage, even to correct him on his facts. Poor Ali Jones. It was an utterly bizarre and horrible thing to do but what little she knew of Ali, she felt there must be more to the story. She wasn’t a ‘mentaller’, as this guy was so delicately putting it. She was young and she seemed so alone. Where was she right now? Shelly wondered, and how was she handling it all?
Shelly googled Ali Jones and pages and pages of headlines from the last week since Ali’s downfall appeared:
Desperate Blogger Fakes Pregnancy
Conniving Instagrammer Goes to Ground after Pregnancy Revealed a Hoax
A New Low for Influencers as Instagrammer Ali Jones Outed as a Liar
Oh God. It was an online hounding made acceptable by sites like Notions.ie pretending to condemn Ali but actually revelling in the takedown. Shelly tried to imagine it was her at the centre of this venomous attention.
Shelly Devine’s Marriage in Flames after Hiring an Actor to Play her Husband
Insta-maven Shelly Devine Used Photoshop on her Baby