Page 78 of Mad About You

‘Oh no, why?’

‘He’s great. It’s great. We are officially seeing each other and deleted our dating apps. It could not be going better.’

‘And …?’

‘That’s it. When’s the other shoe gonna drop?!’

‘What if there’s no shoe!’

‘Hmmm. Bubbles Hussein hates me, but Bubbles the devil prince hates everyone. Anyway, yes. For the time being, I will concede Gethin seems really sound.’

Harriet smiled as Lorna looked sheepish.

‘What if he just is, exactly what he seems?’ Harriet said, remembering Sam’s ode to Cal.

‘I guess so. It’s the hope that kills you!’ Lorna said, returning herself to Lorna mode. ‘I’m really quite irked at Rox for not being here,’ she added, getting up to close a window. ‘I know you won’t hold it against her. But she knows the deal with Scott. With your closest friends, you don’t expect to get passed over for Mr Dick Appointment.’

‘Oh no, in a way I like her going on her date. I like you two finding love; it gives me hope. Even if I’ve fully given up on that, I’d settle for peace,’ Harriet said. Ending up a single old lady, living by the seaside, pottering around with lots of cats and dogs? It’d do her. If no good man would.

As she travelled home in her taxi, the driver’s radio blasting Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’, Harriet rested her head on the vibrating glass and admitted to herself: if anything, she’d downplayed what Scott had done, tonight. The effects of this would involve hard practicalities, and she’d deliberately not dwelled upon them. Quite possibly, Lorna had realised this too, and not thought it politic to say so.

It wouldn’t simply be a case of finding the right moment to divulge to prospective menfolk that she was That Girl Called Out As An Abuser. Assuming they didn’t get warned off beforehand, that this didn’t cause the love of her life to swipe left.

Moreover, her job wasn’t in a bank or office, safely behind the frontage of a larger logo. Shewasher company, and it relied in part on word of mouth. As she’d said about the perils of going to court, her line of work was vulnerable to public opinion. Like Christian the personal trainer, it wantedgoodvibes only.Harriet didn’t doubt she was about to see a mysterious and steep drop-off in bookings.

She had gone over and over her remaining options, and truly there was nothing she could do. As the saying went, the lie was halfway round the world before the truth could get its boots on.

35

Harriet needed to spend time around humanity without WiFi mediating. Knowing there was a virtual toilet wall out there, covered in graffiti about her, fresh scrawls by unknown enemies adding to it, hour on hour: it was petrifying and wearying. She was grateful for small mercies, and at least her current workload depended on gigs she’d long since secured. That Saturday, the union of fifty-somethings Ross and Betty at The Faversham was a balm to her soul, once she’d got past the feeling of raw exposure when entering a busy room. It was restorative, socialising in physical space and not with individuals using one-word epithets and litterbin emoticons.

Life goes on. Everyone treated her as a wedding photographer, bar – she couldn’t be sure – a few twenty-somethings, who she felt might be looking in her direction a little too much during one section of the reception, heads bent together, phones in palms.

She knew people of the older generation would say:it’s not the real world, it’ll blow over. Harriet had deactivated her little-used personal Facebook. At some stage, what Scott had done would pass into dim recollection, it would collect dustin the archives and be mostly forgotten. It wasn’t as if successive generations would hand down the folk story.

Yet she also knew that there were scores of people ‘unmasked’ for wrongdoing who could never come back online in the way they had existed on it before, due to a kind of war of attrition. They became a magnet for a single issue from crusaders who felt they should never be allowed to shake it off. To those people, she wasn’t Harriet Hatley Photography but Harriet Hatley Abuser.

Therefore, it wasn’t yet safe to enable comments on her business page, and Harriet couldn’t forecast when it would be. She had to put out of her mind that in the three days since Scott had posted, she’d not had a single booking inquiry. This was unusual, in high season.

Whether she’d be able to make a living from the amount in her diary in a year’s time, she didn’t know. She’d panic-signed for a room in Chapel Allerton yesterday, trying to get ahead of any potential landlords making the connection between the Harriet Hatley looking for a room and Harriet Hatley, Annihilator of Men. She couldn’t hide what she did for a living, given it was key to her ability to meet her rent. Fortunately, this landlord seemed unconcerned with her identity, to the point of referring to her as ‘Heidi’.

How far Scott’s poison had spread, and how long it would linger in the system: these were unknowns. Only time would tell whether she could weather the whispers, or if she’d have to fold her firm and phoenix it from the ashes, under a different title. It’d take years to rebuild. How could he take so much from her, at this distance? It shouldn’t be possible.

What a stupendous victory for Scott, stealing her name. Associating it with something hideous.

What had it all been for? Harriet had passed through many places on her journey, still indulging in hot tears most nights before sleep, and had arrived at the minor market town of defeatist self-reproach. Perhaps all her lofty ideals about rescuing another woman had been self-deceiving bullshit. Perhaps, as Lorna had tried to make her see, it had been about unmaking her own choices. Maybe Scott was right – maybe she couldn’t bear to see him thriving and had senselessly lashed out.

She let herself into the house, in early evening, and Cal was in the sitting room, in a beguilingly slightly tight t-shirt and with pleasingly rumpled hair, drinking a beer. Harriet felt an urge to smooth his hair back into place, followed by an emotional rush that at least here, she was safe. This was what she yearned for: nights in front of the television, talking about nothing in particular. Comfort, and company.

‘Hello! Good wedding?’ he said. ‘I’m watching a shite film with Ben Affleck, kicking back in my Sonic the Hedgehog slippers. And I’ve got plenty more of these.’ He held up a tin of something that looked trendy, foamy and sour. ‘Care to join?’

Harriet checked if he was joking as regards the slippers. He was.

‘I can’t believe you looked,’ Cal said.

Harriet laughed.

‘Up for a beer, thank you. I’ll drop my things first.’

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