Page 74 of Mad About You

They laughed, as much in relief at moving on from the heavy stuff.

‘Thank you, Cal. That’s comforting. Except I’m never getting married.’

‘You and me both, sweetheart,’ Cal said. ‘I honestly can’t ever imagine feeling whatever I’d need to feel, to want to try that again.’

‘Exactly same.’

He held up his palm for her to high five. ‘Cup of tea?’

They got up, Cal stretched – Harriet sneaking a glimpse at the flat stomach revealed as his arms went over his head – and walked back into the house.

When they were in Zucco, and Cal was getting the bill,Sam had said to Harriet: ‘The thing about Cal, the big surprise, the plot twist is: he’s genuinely, incredibly nice. He can get anyone or anything he wants by batting those eyelashes and so you itch to hate him. People search for the lurking conceited arsehole or the dark side, or, in some cases, try to torture it out of him. It isn’t there.’

At the time, Harriet had said: ‘Right,’ and thought,what a bros before hoes, male-centric whitewash of a bride-ditcher.

As Cal filled the kettle over the sink, she had to admit every word might’ve been pure truth.

He was so superficially attractive that believing his fundamentals were rotten had been a helpful safeguard. She got out her phone and fired up Zoopla.

32

In the end, Scott’s revenge arrived quietly – it slunk in like a robber gripping a knife inside their coat, or the way that in a horror film, the tiny, menacing drip-drip-drip of an unseen liquid turns out to be blood coming through a floorboard.

Ten days after the flowers, on an otherwise quiet Thursday, Harriet got an unusual number of notifications on her phone. She had finished a bagel in the sitting room, musing that ‘the flow of the rooms’ was an invention of the property market and posh people, but something about the environment of Cal’s house was so spirit-lifting.

She’d finally seen a few rooms at the start of the week, and none of them were a patch on it. They likely didn’t contain men who gave her stomach fireworks when sighted briefly on the first-floor landing without his shirt, though, so swings and roundabouts.

PING.Someone has commented onHarriet Hatley Photography

PING and again.

PING and again.

And again.

This was irregular. Harriet didn’t use social media much, but Facebook was a necessary evil in her line of work. In addition to her profile for her friends and family, she had a basic business one which pointed visitors to her website. She kept an eye on it, although it was more of a landing page that directed the traffic. She only ever got a blizzard of notifications when she shared a couple’s album highlights, with their permission. Harriet never got much activity, unprompted by her. Even if customers uploaded their pictures and tagged her, not very many guests were moved to then shuffle across to thank the photographer. It made her think she was being spammed, except names now listed on her handset looked like real people.

You shouldn’t be spreading your dark skank energy round other peoples big days imo, give this up

Harriet read this several times, in bewilderment. She had no idea what ‘Christian’ would know about her energy, dark skank or otherwise. He was a personal trainer from Shadwell who liked ‘good vibes only’. Could’ve fooled her. She deleted it and blocked him.

Seen your true colours!!

Had she now, and how would Bernadette, ‘I love my Boxer dogs, roast potatoes and three grandkids’ know what they were?

Delete, block. Had she got mixed up with a notoriousdrink-driving case featuring someone of the same appellation in Birmingham, or been twin-named in a petition in an acrimonious custody battle in Liverpool?

Good luck with getting work now your known for what you really are lmao

Harriet could comment ‘you’reknown’ under Niall’s post but she had more pressing issues with it than his grammar. What were they talking about? Was she being targeted in some sort of wind-up? She felt a queasiness, a certainty that something dreadful had happened somewhere, and that the solution to this mystery would not be as trivial or painless as a case of mistaken identity.

Bitch

This was accompanied by the litterbin drop emoji. She deleted and blocked Damon, a ‘proud dad’ and ‘father of three perfect girls’, with sweating hands. She moved to the search term space on the site and typed in: ‘Harriet Hatley’.

It returned her personal profile, her business page, someone at King’s College and a Harriet Hately. It did not contain anything that pointed to the source of the Harriet hate. It was so unsettling that her antagonists were flying in from outer space; these weren’t people who’d Liked her page or had any obvious connection to her whatsoever. It was like being shouted at from the window of a speeding car, except it was every other passing car.

As she was frowning in confusion, someone posted to Harriet’s business page again. This time with screenshots, captioned: THIS YOU?

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