Shelly hated when he brought up the ethics of using the kids for her work. Mainly because she didn’t entirely disagree with him. But what option did she have?
‘Well, if you weren’t pushing the house sale, I wouldn’t be under so much pressure to sell sponcon.’ She knew she sounded defensive.
‘What pressure, Shelly? I haven’t been at you about it at all. And I should be. I’m the one living in a shed for months.’
‘You don’t have to be “at me”. Bringing random women back is pressure enough to get you out of here. And humiliating me around town with these women when I haven’t even announced our separation yet.’
Things were getting heated and Shelly just wasn’t feeling up to it. Their every interaction had become so fraught.
‘Listen,’ she continued, trying to calm down – she was feeling achy and drained from the conversation – ‘I’m prepared to make an offer for your share of the house. A lump sum – I think I can get €100K together to start with – and then monthly instalments of €3,000 until the next lump sum. My parents are going to rent their place out and we’ll pay off your share of the house as quickly as we can. This is a solid plan, Dan. We can’t go on like this, angry and hostile. You’re right, you need to move on and so do I. And this way, Georgie and this lil guy will have their grandparents around all the time. I’ll sign the agreement regarding the kids, I promise. I just don’t want to lose our home.’
Dan seemed to consider this offer. Finally, he relented, and his expression softened. ‘Put something down on paper with your solicitor and we’ll get it ironed out. I’m going to rent anyway before I commit to another mortgage. If I can even get one, I’m nearly forty! The bank’ll probably say I’m a dud investment. You’d agree no doubt.’
‘You were never a dud investment. Look at Georgie and whoever this guy’s going to be, he’ll be magic.’ Shelly sighed sadly. ‘Go get your flight, I need to go lie down for ever. I’m wrecked.’
The gender-reveal party had more or less wrapped when Shelly came back inside. She did a few promo videos about the full range of products available from ArtOfTheReveal.ie and then, once Sandra had agreed to watch Georgie, she slipped upstairs and gratefully burrowed beneath her crisp sheets. I’ve got to nap while I can. She rubbed her belly, which was taut and crampy, probably from tiredness. At least Dan’s being receptive about the house, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.
Shelly was dreaming. She was in labour and the Room-to-Improve guy was cheering her on. The scene changed and Shelly rushed from room to room searching for her phone. The baby’s coming and I need to capture it for the ’gram. Just then she spied a figure holding her phone. Their face was obscured by a giant ring light. ‘Don’t worry, I’m always watching,’ they said and snapped a photo. Shelly howled in pain and seemed to feel the click of the picture being taken way down in her pelvis.
‘Shelly? Shelly?’ Shelly’s eyes popped open. Sandra was shaking her. ‘You were moaning in your sleep. Are you OK?
It took a few moments for Shelly to register that the pain from the dream was still roiling low down in her abdomen. Also, the bed was drenched.
Groggily she clenched her fists and curled into a ball until the contraction passed.
‘Mam, my waters have gone.’
Chapter 28
‘Good morning, Insta-bitches.’ Ali rubbed sleep from her eyes blearily as she posted stories from her bed. ‘In an unprecedented move, Liv is throwing me a baby shower today. Now, Liv usually hates … pretty much everything, but I think she feels sorry for me since I have been continually fucking up my life for the last nine months so I cannot wait to see what she’s come up with. Expect intensely cynical vibes in place of the usually cutesy stuff.’
Ali checked the video and dragged a couple of different filters across the screen to try to smooth her skin and brighten up the slightly dank-looking sheets of the bed. The filters made her look less blotchy for sure but equally, Ali thought, why bother?
Of course I’m blotchy. I’m clearly just awake with no make-up on and Sudocrem on my spots. I’ve just finished a run of my hit one-woman show. I’m a gazillion years pregnant. Why wouldn’t I be blotchy? Why am I adding to this bullshit idea of perfection? Why do I want some other girl to watch this and feel shit because she doesn’t look like my filtered face first thing in the morning? Ali added a baby shower sticker to the video and posted it unfiltered.
Shit, it’s not first thing in the morning, though, she suddenly realised. It was nearly noon and people would be arriving in less than an hour to toast the baby and aggressively fondle the bump.
Ali searched for something stretchy and not too depressing to wear for the party. She pulled on a jersey leopard print skirt, her Docs and an Alien tee shirt. Smoothing it down, the sight of Xenomorph jolted her briefly back to the Punto and Liv’s comment about Ali’s life being a sci-fi horror movie as opposed to a romcom. It had been three weeks since the wedding and Sam had reverted to perfunctory responses in the WhatsApp, clearly still stinging from Ali’s suggestion that they date. He had shown up at My So-Called Best Life but his ducking out right before the end did not seem promising.
If her life was a romcom, this would be the final frustrating ‘will they, won’t they?’ before the big grand-gesture finale. Going by Sam’s one-word messages, however, he was definitely not planning on showing up to serenade her with a boombox or channelling any other iconic romcom moments.
She snapped her outfit in the mirror a couple of times and then uploaded the best shot to Insta before heading down the hall to the kitchen. A few months ago, the #OOTD would’ve been a laborious exercise in editing and adjusting in FaceFix lest anyone actually saw that she was a real person with cellulite. Now she couldn’t summon the will to care. It was incredibly liberating. She flicked through the morning’s Stories, stopping to allow @PollysFewBits to play through. Ali’d felt deeply conflicted about not telling Shelly the truth about Polly, but she’d given her word. Instead, she’d just tried to be as reassuring as possible in their now frequent WhatsApps.
And Polly did seem to have totally backed off from Shelly’s DMs and Insta in general. Ali’d felt reassured that she had been taking a break but here, she could see, were a couple of new Stories. Each was white type on a black background. The kind of cryptic epitaphs designed to pique a follower’s interest in whatever undisclosed beef was going on behind the scenes. Ali didn’t like the tone.
Let people underestimate you, that way they’ll never know for sure what you are capable of.
Followed by:
Go ahead, underestimate me. You won’t be the first. You won’t be the last. But you will be wrong.
‘Good morning!’ Liv was cutting up an array of tiny sandwiches as Ali walked in.
‘Hey.’ Ali dropped the phone on the table and swooped on a teeny cucumber sandwich. ‘These are adorable, yum.’
‘You may eat one of each thing and no more,’ said Liv primly, knowing Ali’s propensity for devouring miniature savouries. ‘The guests will be coming soon.’