An hour later, the set up was nearly ready. Joanna, the MUA, had significantly toned down Ali’s tan, and she looked wan and much closer to someone going through some personal issues, as Amy had demanded. She wore a simple white sweater and sat at the edge of her bed in front of an enormous ring light with Amy’s phone mounted on a tripod before her. Amy was running through the stack of cue cards she’d made to keep Ali on track.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Nervous.’ Really fucking nervous, Ali added silently. This had the potential to go so horribly wrong. In preparation, she’d watched a load of apology videos on YouTube the night before and every one of them had been a train wreck. She’d struggled to find one decent example of a social media pariah pulling off a good apology video and it had given her The Fear.
Mostly people seemed to go in for crying but the all-important tears eluded them. The girls always looked perfect, completely hot, but you could tell they were suffering because their hair was in a messy topknot and there appeared to be an unofficial uniform of a grey hoodie. A lot of them seemed to hint at some undefined mental illness or ‘exhaustion’. In a way, Ali had a bit more blame-material than that, but she couldn’t bring herself to use Miles or his illness as an excuse. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and waited for Amy to finish glaring at whatever she was typing on her tablet.
‘She’s unreal,’ she muttered.
‘Who? Shelly?’
‘No.’ Amy snorted. ‘Shelly is my most obedient client ever, Ali! HellishHazel. She is fuh-reaking over the first episode of Under the Influence. She’s calling me nonstop. Wants me to work my “Amy magic”. I wouldn’t touch that dumpster fire, though. God knows what else she’s got to hide. She’s talking about an Insta-mum Emergency Summit. She wants you there if this little statement goes OK. That’s so her. She’ll wait to see how this lands, then decide if you’re a liability or potentially useful. OK, will we do a take?’
‘Yep.’ Ali shifted around and tried to get comfortable.
Amy tapped the phone to begin recording. ‘When you’re ready, Ali. Do you have the script?’
Ali glanced at the pages beside her.
I’ve learned a lot in these past few weeks. I’ve learned that I’m not perfect. In spite of my incredible success, I still need to do better. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I love my followers more than anything …
Ali pushed them out of shot, took a deep breath and looked up into the camera.
‘Hi guys, it feels like it’s been a long time since I came on and obviously a lot has happened.’ Ali tried a tentative grin at this. ‘God, I don’t even know where to begin. I am so, so sorry. I am so disgusted with myself. As you all know, I lied. I lied to you guys and I lied to my friends, everyone. I lied to Sam, who was my boyfriend, and I lied to the companies that worked with me on ads and collaborations.’
Amy was nodding encouragingly and holding up a cue card that said ‘Sick Dad!!!!’
Ali rubbed her eyes and looked hopelessly into the camera.
‘I feel like I could try and blame a whole bunch of things, but I’d just be making excuses. The fact is that life is hard for all of us sometimes and we don’t all go around starting social media hoaxes and faking a pregnancy and hurting the people who believe in us. I was hurting and lonely and I felt like a failure but the real reason I did this was because I was jealous. It’s pathetic but it’s true. I was just jealous of everyone doing so well on Insta and I wanted to be the girl who had everything on Instagram.’
Amy was vigorously shaking a new cue card. ‘DEAD dad!!!!’
‘Since this has come out, I’ve lost a lot of people close to me and that’s taught me how much I’ve hurt everyone with my lying. I’m so sorry. I really am. I have nothing to say to defend myself that wouldn’t just be me trying to make excuses.’
Amy was rolling her eyes now and holding another cue card, each word writ large and underlined. ‘Mention. The. Real. Fecking. Baby.’
‘I’m sure lots of people will have lots of opinions about what I did and that’s cool – you all have every right to think whatever you want about me. I can’t take back what I’ve done. I wake up every morning and I feel sick with the regret and the shame but now I am going to get on with my life. I have to. I won’t be talking about it again, especially ’cos I have some pretty big things coming up that I need to focus on.’
Ali ran her fingers through her hair. Fuck it, Ali, she thought. The bitches who wanna hate you will keep at it. There’s nothing you can do.
‘I’m kind of scared to spit this out TBH.’ She laughed nervously. ‘I’m literally girding my loins, like! Sooooo in the course of faking a pregnancy, I accidentally got pregnant for real.’
She leaned back to show her bump to the camera.
‘It’s real, before anyone starts up with conspiracy theories on Rants.ie!’ She grinned, lifting her jumper and gazing down at the firm, round belly. ‘It’s so freaky too!’ She rubbed the bump absent-mindedly, then straightened up, remembering the small matter of the apology video.
‘I feel like posting this is probably inviting a lot more hate back in. I got a lot of messages after the Glossies and I deserved a lot of what was said. But just please know that I am seeking treatment to try and make sense of what I did and to …’
Amy’s cue card said ‘Grow as a person’ but Ali didn’t think she could come out with that without laughing.
‘… try and change for the better. I need to work on myself, especially now that I’m going to be a mum! Looking after my baby is the most important thing for me now. I’ll be doing this without a partner so I’m … ah fuck, gals, I am shit-scared. Like, WTF is HAPPENING???’
Amy held up her next cue card, which simply said ‘You’re so far off message, just plug the brand and wrap it up.’
‘Anyway, if you have a liar like me in your life and you just want to get to the bottom of their bullshit, why not enlist the services of SweetLittleLies.ie – Ireland’s first and only private lie detection agency. And before anyone in the comments says it – swipe for the video of me taking the test in case anyone thinks I’m spoofing this baby too! Byeeeeeeeeee!’
Amy stopped the recording. ‘Well, that was a disaster.’ She looked deeply irritated. ‘Can we get touch-ups before the next take, Joanna?’
Joanna rushed forward with her palette and brush, but Ali waved her off.
‘I’m not going again, Amy, there’s no point. I’m never going to read off some script and at least this way it’s real. I am sorry. I’ve apologised but if they want more out of me, they can all fuck off and calm down. It’s not like they’ve any real beef with me. My fake baby has fuck all to do with them. They’re just bored and if they want to judge me to feel better about themselves, there’s nothing me saying “I’ve been suffering from exhaustion” or “I’m now on a journey toward healing” is going to do about that.’
Amy looked mutinous but said nothing.
‘I thought it was good,’ offered Joanna. ‘It sounded like the old you and it was kinda funny too. Maybe it’ll take the wind outta their sails?’