She did wish she could tell Sam about the fistfight with the RTÉ reception building – that was hilarious. She sighed. It would be breaking anonymity. Maybe she could tell him about the W Y N D craziness. That shit was ridiculous. Hazel had sent them all a tile to post on Insta at an agreed time to herald the launch; it was cryptic, showing only rose-gold glitter strewn across limestone rock. It was hard to gauge, though. It could just piss Sam off further. Anything could. Her continued existence was probably pissing him off at this point. Maybe she could make him a present, something to remind him of all the fun they had before she’d turned out to be a total psychopath.
She was tempted to pull out her phone and research Law & Order: SVU merchandise but phones were heavily frowned upon for obvious reasons. She zoned back into the room to see if @SecretRTEProducer was wrapping up any time soon.
‘Thank you so much for that exhaustive history, @SecretRte Producer.’ @BigDickY2K was looking slightly dazed by the tirade they had all just endured, but she gave him an encouraging little wink. ‘We’ll open the meeting for general sharing now, please, though I would love to encourage any of our newer members to speak up if you feel ready.’
Shite, she is so talking about me … Since the first meeting when she’d spoken briefly, Ali hadn’t said a word. She knew she’d been avoiding this quite crucial element of the meeting for too long for it to have gone unnoticed.
She cleared her throat and awkwardly introduced herself.
‘My name is @AlisBaba and I am a catfisher.’
‘Hello @AlisBaba’, ‘Welcome @Alisbaba’, ‘Hi @AlisBaba’ came the various replies around the room.
‘So, I’m pretty new to this, as you can probably tell. I haven’t shared since my first meeting. Lots of you might remember I had an Instagram account – well, I still have it – and I sort of accidentally told my followers that I was pregnant. This is real by the way. It’s not a pillow up the old jumper trick. Anyway, the whole thing got completely out of control. I’ve just been so messed up. My dad died the day everything came out and everyone on the internet totally hated me but it’s the thought of Sam hating me – he’s the baby daddy – I really can’t cope with that. I just wish there was some way to make him see me the way he used to see me. He loved me and I was too stupid and too obsessed with getting big on Insta to realise that. I let my Insta-obsession overshadow everything. I destroyed Sam and I wasn’t there for my dad.’
Ali’s voice broke as the last words tumbled out and Kelly gave her a reassuring pat, which only served to undo her completely.
‘I’m sorry, oh Jesus, I’m fully crying now.’ She tried to laugh. ‘It’s somehow even harder to cope with people being nice to me. I don’t deserve it. Anyway, coming here is helping me so much. I know I can’t take back what I’ve done but I have this baby to think about now and I’m going to be better for little Miles or little Millie – whoever is floating around in there.’
The catfishers thanked her for her share and Ali sat back feeling lighter. A few seats over, Polly cleared her throat.
‘My name’s @Always_Watching and I’m a catfisher.’
‘Hi @Always_Watching.’
‘@AlisBaba’s share just really brought so much up for me there. I’ve been having a really tough time lately and … well, I feel like some old habits might be slipping back in … My husband has been spending a lot of time abroad for work. And when he is home, he’s so into his VR gaming. He’s great with the boys, don’t get me wrong. Very present and he loves them to bits. But every night once they’re gone to bed and it’s just us, he puts the helmet on and it’s like I may as well not even exist.’
This bleak set-up flashed in Ali’s mind. Polly arranging a flat-lay of nibbles, wine and a scented candle captioned:
#datenight on the couch with this one #mylove #marriage #soulmates
while some burly husband-type sat in a VR helmet beside her. That was possibly one of the most depressing things she’d ever heard.
Unbidden, a memory of Sam jumping up and perfectly lip synching the opening monologue of SVU one night when they were curled up on the couch popped into her head. She’d accidentally inhaled a Banshee Bone from laughing so hard, which had naturally led to a heated debate regarding the potential for death-by-crisp. It was the kind of shite-talk that couldn’t be explained to anyone really. She pictured someone asking, ‘Oh, what do you miss most about Sam?’ And her responding: ‘His appetite for pointless analysis of crisp varieties?’
But maybe that was kind of what love was, finding that person who knew you so well that they knew you would be more embarrassed dying choking on a Dorito than a Banshee Bone. There’s no shame in being felled by a crisp Titan, she remembered telling him, to which he solemnly agreed. You couldn’t even get Banshee Bones anymore. RIP Banshee Bones and RIP her and Sam.
Polly was still outlining the grim details of her marriage to the wannabe third member of Daft Punk when Ali picked up the thread of her share.
‘… I was getting so down about it all and I was feeling lonely. I didn’t think at first that what I was doing was a problem. I set up a new Insta account just to follow Bloggers Uncovered. I couldn’t be seen to be following as my real self – that would be a huge problem for me.’ She was staring down at her lap, clearly too ashamed to make eye contact with any of the catfishers. She’d tucked her hands under her legs and looked like a guilty little girl caught being bold.
‘It was just such a slippery slope. I was only using the account to make sure nothing was being said about me on these vicious pages and then the next thing I knew, I was checking every hour and starting to comment on things.’ She shrugged, looking bereft. ‘It just got such a hold of me again. I want to get back to where I was a few months ago. That’s why I’m sharing this now. I need to be honest and accountable. Thank you all for listening.’
‘Thank you, @Always_Watching.’
The meeting concluded and the catfishers filed out looking much more solemn than usual. It had been a heavy one. Ali looked for Polly outside, but she’d scarpered, probably to avoid any well-meaning tête-à-têtes from the veterans about relapsing.
Ali started towards home. It was a good twenty-minute walk, but she needed time to clear her head. She hadn’t woken up that morning thinking ‘I must cry in front of a roomful of strangers today’ but, damn, she actually felt strangely lighter. Admitting how hard the last months and even years had been seemed to have gone some way towards her forgiving herself. She hadn’t realised just how guilty she’d been feeling about Miles and Sam until she’d said the words aloud in there. Everything in the last while had been about keeping her head down and trying to weather everything, trying to hide her pain and trying to perch just out of reach of the crushing words and comments about her online.
You deserve it, she’d cruelly told herself every day when the fresh onslaught came and she swallowed the rising guilt and hurt.
Punishing herself seemed like the right thing to do, but at the end of the day it couldn’t go on for ever. She turned left and continued towards the gates to the Botanical Gardens.