‘You guys will. You’re so good together.’ Shelly leaned over and gave him a little side hug. ‘Thanks for today. You made me feel so much more normal about everything. In fact, I’m not going to hold off any longer. I’m posting the video. I’m a grown woman and I don’t need Amy’s signoff for every little thing.’ She got out her phone and found the video still captioned and saved in her drafts. ‘After everything @__________’s done to me in the last months, all the misery and worry, now I get to wreck her day for a change.’
She hit Post and grinned triumphantly at Sam.
Chapter 24
The CatAnon crew were especially chatty before the Monday evening meeting. Kelly came in and beelined for Ali the second she spotted her.
‘OMG! Did you see Shelly Devine’s post???’
Ali glanced around and lowered her voice. ‘Yeah, actually I was hanging out with her on Saturday. We went to the same antenatal course. It sounds like she’s had a terrible time.’ She was careful not to let slip that she knew any more than anyone else about the stalker saga.
‘It really makes you think, though, doesn’t it? I mean about how there’s a person on the other side of the account. Even if it’s little miss perfect Shelly Devine.’
‘Yeah.’ Ali kept her tone vague. She really didn’t want to inadvertently say anything to Kelly that might add fuel to the SHELLY fire. The post itself had gone down well, with tonnes of people condemning the stalkers and catfishers of the world, though a smattering of commenters did question whether influencers like Shelly weren’t asking for it by flaunting their best lives online and rubbing other people’s faces in their success. And a couple of the middle-aged male radio broadcasters had tried to rouse a debate about whether giving your child the finger behind their back was unacceptable, but they were rapidly shouted down by virtually every woman in the country.
As one Radio 1 listener, Mairead Ní Mhuracú, put it on the phone-in show:
‘Get back to me when you’ve spent your days at home raising your own kids, ya smug shite.’
Shelly was relieved at the overwhelming outpouring of support but, she told Ali on Sunday evening via WhatsApp, she was no closer to figuring out who @__________ was. As yet, there had been no response from the account. The silence struck Ali as even more ominous.
The whole thing had made her rethink some of her own actions on the ’gram. She’d shared a snap of Liv at the front door a few weeks ago and a follower had DM’d to say she passed their house on her way to work every day. It was a harmless bit of chat but, with hundreds of thousands of followers, Ali was more and more aware of the odds that at least someone in the bunch was a bit of a psycho. How did she not think of it sooner, sitting in CatAnon every week, FFS?
‘Right, we’ll get started, shall we?’ called the man sitting at the desk at the head of the room, whom Ali knew only as @sluttycheerleader69. He was cute and before her belly had really kicked in, she’d spotted him looking at her with interest, an interest that unexpectedly only seemed to intensify the more pregnant she got.
@sluttycheerleader69 was rattling through the preamble now and Ali’s mind drifted back to Sam unceremoniously dumping her out of his car at the bus stop on Saturday evening. We’re like a car stalling, she thought bleakly. Shelly had insisted Sam was coming round – they’d apparently had a heart to heart after Ali got out at the bus stop on Saturday – but still it was two steps forward one step back. One week he was chatting in the WhatsApp and slagging her about her questionable taste in baby names and the next he was running a mile again the second he seemed to notice that they’re getting on.
I should just go on a date, move on. Maybe that’d make him realise that I’m not gonna be hanging around for ever for him to bestow some fucking magical, hard-won forgiveness on me.
She rubbed her belly and looked up to find @sluttycheerleader69 eyeing her up exactly like someone appraising livestock.
Shit no. Her mind went hard into reverse. Anyone willing to date me at thirty-two weeks gone has way more issues than even I’m up for dealing with. The door of the meeting banged open, startling @sluttycheerleader69 and the people nearby. @PollysFewBits hurled herself into the nearest available chair, not even apologising for her lateness or the commotion. Kelly shot Ali a meaningful, wide-eyed look and mouthed ‘WTF?’
Ali tried not to stare at Polly, but she couldn’t help noticing her dishevelled appearance. Polly, who was always so immaculate, was barely even fully dressed. She wore a ragged coffee-coloured cardigan over grotty sweats and a battered pair of UGG boots that looked closer to roadkill than actual footwear. Her usually bronzed-to-oblivion face was pale and bore remnants of what looked like last night’s make-up. To Ali’s shock and then pity, Polly started to cry, loud gasping sobs that sounded so desperate Ali immediately made to stand up and go over. She went to put her arms around Polly, but Polly reared back and shoved Ali away.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ she spat.
@sluttycheerleader69 stood abruptly and hurried through the chairs to Ali’s aid. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah.’ Ali inched backwards. She couldn’t believe Polly had lashed out at her. What was going on?
‘What is going on?’ @sluttycheerleader69 was stern. ‘You cannot touch another member, @AlwaysWatching. Do I need to ask you to leave?’
Polly was shaking her head but still looking furious.
‘She touched me first. I was only—’ Polly was arguing but Ali barely heard the rest. Always Watching. @sluttycheerleader69 had called Polly by her original catfish name because he probably had only ever heard her go by that handle.
Always Watching. The phrase tugged at Ali. She’d heard it recently. There was something familiar and horribly sinister in the words. Why were they bothering her?
@sluttycheerleader69 was now talking calmly and quietly to Polly. ‘As you seem to be intent on disrupting the whole meeting, would you like to share first? We’re here for you,’ he added in a gentler tone.
‘I’m sorry, OK?’ Polly seemed to be trying to wrest back some control over her emotions. ‘I can’t just sit here and pretend anymore. I’ve had a slip.’
A gasp rippled through the room. Ali was a bit lost until Kelly leaned closer to whisper, ‘It means she’s been catfishing again.’
Ali nodded, her mind racing. Always Watching. The message @__________ had sent to Shelly said something like ‘lucky, I’m always watching’. Ali stared at Polly, but she couldn’t find any sense in the idea that Polly was stalking Shelly. Why would she stalk a woman she was already sort of friends with? Well, Ali corrected herself, as friends as any ‘friends for the ’gram’ really were.
Polly took a deep breath.
‘I set up an Instagram account when my boys were small. I thought I had put my issues so far behind me that a little bit of social media would be fine. And it was fine. At first. Instagram meant so much to me when the boys were tiny babies. I was so lonely. I loved being a mum, but we were living in an estate in the middle of nowhere. My husband was gone all day. Here was a way to make friends. To feel connected even when I was home all day with a small baby. I knew that it could be risky, given my history. But at the time, Instagram was a much more basic thing. Just people posting their crappy holiday snaps and things. Not like now.’ She raised her hands to her face, overcome. ‘Now I see, now I … know.’ She was struggling to get the words out and Ali felt a pang of pity. ‘It was like bringing an alcoholic to a brewery,’ she continued. ‘Instagram is a bloody catfishing machine. No one is their real selves on there. No one.’