Page 85 of Mad About You

However, in the nick of time, Harriet had seen Nina’s name– which was sufficiently unusual it wouldn’t return a thousand search results – and a profile photo. She’d had no time to open the picture, but she’d recognise it if she saw it in miniature again: it was two-thirds blue sky.

She tapped NINA JACKSON into the search bar and there she was, fourth option down. The profile in full was an attractive, thirty-something woman casting her eyes up humorously at aVirginlogo hot-air balloon above her, in a quirky sort of selfie. Lives: Prestwich.

God, she hoped Nina wasn’t a fantasist or a troll. She could be neither of those things and simply not very agreeable to an approach, of course. Harriet found herself in the trippy space of hoping Scott chose nice girlfriends.

Harriet was desperate to talk to this woman, desperate for corroboration and connection. ‘Three years out of college.’ Harriet and Scott had met when Harriet was twenty-five. Nina must be the ‘bad break-up’, surely?

Harriet was further emboldened that Nina was an ex by the unscientific evidence that she had large eyes, and a kind of younger-than-her-years, sunny aspect that she had gleaned was Scott’s type.

Harriet opened her laptop, reactivated her personal profile and sent her a friend request. The wedding business had schooled her that if you messaged someone who wasn’t in your network, it’d go into a Requests folder that nobody ever checked. She couldn’t risk that, so she had to go balls out and brazenly befriend Nina. She had to pray that she would both work out this Harriet Hatley in Leeds was the dreaded H, and still want to talk to her.

She saw Request Sent under Nina’s profile, and checked it said the same on her phone. She lay back down on the bed, handset gripped in her clammy hand like it was a detonator.

She felt certain that Scott’s censorship of Nina proved it was real. Harriet knew only too well that the testimonies on that thread weren’t to be trusted, and veracity, accuracy or good taste had never been a concern for the moderator before. Only two people had the ability to delete it, Scott or Nina. Or Facebook, she supposed, yet it hadn’t broken any ‘community guidelines’, unless contradicting someone was a hate crime.

Harriet recalled Scott blocking Lorna, at the outset of this – it might not have been because of her Marianne research, it was more likely that Scott realised he had to neutralise anyone who had first-hand, unflattering intel.

Hah, and not only that, his erasure of exes wasn’t simply ‘scorn’ or sublimated guilt, as she’d said in her letter to Marianne, was it? It was a deep-seated instinct of self-preservation. Of course none of them should compare notes. Of course Scott should be free to invent, and self-mythologise, and control the story. The man with no past. Divide and conquer.

Harriet cast her mind back to the Danny and Fergus wedding: Scott as best man had been an acquisition made on a stag do, a few years prior. All the gang that Harriet met, when they were first dating, were from his then-workplace. She was never introduced to anyone from further back than a couple of years. His friends as well as his lovers needed tobe in the intensity and inexperience of a honeymoon period, of fast-tracked,look at my new shiny toy!false intimacy.

There was no Lorna to his Harriet, no Sam to his Cal. No continuity. For a reason.

She checked her phone. It still said Request Sent.

How long should she give Nina to accept it, before it implied she wasn’t welcome? Some people, sensible people with lives, ignored social media for days or even weeks on end. Harriet saw her screen light up.

She had a notification.

Nina Jackson Accepted Your Friend Request

Harriet’s heart went boom. As she opened the app, she received a message.

Hi! Are you ‘H’? Nina x

Harriet typed at light speed.

Hi! Unfortunately, yes. x

The dots rippled to indicate Nina was typing back and then three words landed. Unexpected words that completely blindsided Harriet, words that made her weep afresh.

Are you OK?

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Harriet had solid practice in her life at being alone, feeling alone, and yet she had never experienced such aloneness until these last few weeks. And she was a woman who had, somehow, been made an orphan twice over.

The aftermath of Scott’s post felt as though she was drowning while a group of spectators on dry land jeered and cheered. Even one of her best friends had stood there filing her nails, declining to help, mouthing:what do you expect?

And then a complete stranger strode through the crush, stuck out their hand to her and pulled her out. A good Samaritan. Harriet typed:

I’m not great, to be honest, but so grateful for your comment under that post, and accepting my friend request! Thank you.

A reply pinged back instantly again. Nina was more than she’d have dared hope for.

Oh no problem – he’s a massive bullshit artist, I couldn’t believe my eyes when it popped up in my timeline. I knewhe’d delete my comment. He’s blocked me too! You got together with Scott in his late-/your mid-twenties, is that right? Thinking you’re around my age? (I’m thirty-five)

Yes, thirty-four! How did you know when we got together?

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