Page 75 of Filter This
‘Well done. It’s all progress, Shelly, not perfection. Remember that when you’re going too hard on yourself.’ She squeezed her daughter’s shoulders.
Shelly loaded the giddy Georgie into the back seat, thanked her mum and started out for Hazel’s house for their very-diplomatic not-at-all-awks lunch. She’d spotted notifications on her phone and knew that Holistic Hazel was probably tagging her like mad already, rinsing every last bit of precious content out of the occasion – or, rather, one of her ever-rotating roster of assistants was.
One such assistant opened the door to Shelly about twenty minutes later. The girl looked haunted. Hazel could do that to a person, Shelly imagined.
‘Hi, I’m Jenny – come on through, they’re in the kitchen.’
Shelly followed while Georgie charged into the playroom off the hall where the kids were.
About a year ago, Hazel had announced that from then on she was only hiring assistants called Jenny because she was sick of learning new names and updating the contact info every few weeks after another traumatised or fed-up recent marketing graduate saw the light and aced out of Hazel’s Insta-sweatshop. Apparently she was so inundated with applications there were enough Jennys in each round that she could actually pull off this bonkers strategy.
‘Oh! Look who’s here! My fave …’ Hazel was speaking into her phone as she came towards them, swathed in white linen. She held the phone out to the side to capture their awkward hug and air kisses on camera. ‘Come sit.’ She shared the Story as she drifted back to the low table under the skylight around which lay huge Buddabags and yellow and orange cushions. Polly perched awkwardly on one.
‘I see you’ve got a new Jenny!’ Shelly smiled as she eased herself down beside Polly.
‘It’s such a great approach on all fronts, really, if you think about it,’ Hazel explained. ‘Those bitch PRs were non-stop gossiping about how I couldn’t keep a girl for more than two weeks. Now they don’t even realise it’s a new Jenny they’re dealing with every time.’
‘Such a good idea,’ Polly enthused.
‘Pol,’ Hazel sighed world-wearily, ‘you’re so lucky you don’t even need an assistant and don’t have these kinds of problems.’
Hazel was a master of the back-handed compliment, and she was going to be positively ecstatic to hear of Shelly’s split from Dan. Let her take some skewed pleasure out of it, Shelly thought, smiling at Polly.
‘How are the boys, Pol—?’ Shelly was interrupted by her phone – it was the garda, Bríd. ‘Sorry I have to take this.’ She hopped up and slipped out the sliding door into the garden. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Ms Devine? Bríd here from Malahide garda station. Do you have a minute?’
‘Yes!’ Shelly was so relieved to hear from her.
‘I have Ms Byrne in custody – that’s, ehm, Kelly Byrne, Insta-handle KellysKlobber.’
Shelly chanced a grin at this as she strolled further down the lawn. It all sounded so ridiculous coming out of a guard’s mouth.
‘We spent the morning going over her statement and it seems she isn’t responsible for the messages and pictures you’ve been receiving.’
Shelly faltered. ‘What? No, it has to be her.’
‘I’ve spent some time fact-checking her story and she’s telling the truth. She was actually receiving treatment during the period in which you received the messages. The facility where she was being cared for confirms this, and as the treatment was for a phone addiction, her devices were withheld throughout. We’ll keep looking into it, Ms Devine, I assure you.’
Shelly staggered slightly as she hung up the call. A cloud passed over the garden and she felt a chill that ran much deeper than a simple April breeze. She had never entertained the thought that it could be anyone else. Her phone chirped. An email.
Subject: You may be done with Insta but I’m not done with you
The body of the email contained no text, just a link to a Dropbox. She clicked it and a series of pictures appeared. As she scanned them, her terror grew. Each one was more frightening than the last. The images themselves were banal but they were intimate and therein lay their horrifying impact.
Shelly wiping Georgie’s face, the camera peeping round a corner in the kitchen. From the angle, the person taking the picture had to be in the utility room and crouched low to the ground.
Georgie and Shelly having their nails done – when had they last done that? – visible through the glass doors into the garden. Shelly felt sickened.
More pictures. Always Shelly and Georgie. Always inside the house. Always so close, so horribly close.
A picture of Dan holding Georgie while Shelly took a pic of the dinner table seemed to have been captured from the garden.
Paranoid, she looked up, her eyes frantically searching every shady corner of this garden. Who else would want to hurt her? She was reeling, like she was on a rollercoaster just peaking at the top of a drop, about to plunge into a terrifying unknown. Who would do this?
She looked towards the house. Through the glass doors, she could see Hazel and Polly both buried in their phones.
