Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Dawn O’Porter 2017

Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Jacket photograph © Shutterstock.com

Dawn O’Porter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008126032

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008126049

Version: 2020-08-21

Praise for The Cows

‘The Cows is a funny, smart, kind, incredibly truthful book about women … about how complicated our relationship with each other can be, about all the shame, judgement, envy and love that being alive and female entails’

POLLY VERNON

‘Feisty characters and fearless prose, The Cows is totally addictive’

Heat

‘A zippy and hilarious book … tackles some of the most serious issues that affect modern women today’

The Pool

‘O’Porter’s wise and witty narrative has many thought-provoking situations and concepts. Different, poignant and smart – I loved it’

SARA LAWRENCE, Daily Mail

‘Entertaining and thought-provoking’

Irish Times

‘Sometimes hilarious and sometimes poignant, but always rollicking … A feel-good read which will resonate with any woman’

Daily Express

‘Fierce and funny’

BRYONY GORDON, Daily Telegraph

‘A whirlwind of a story about three women finding their voice amid societal pressures … Excellent, funny, and decidedly unpatronising’

Metro

‘Dawn’s writing is addictive – fearless, beyond feisty and seriously funny’

MEL GIEDROYC

‘Fearless, frank and excruciatingly funny … The lives of Tara, Cam and Stella are insightful, but be warned – you won’t stop thinking about them for weeks!’

OK

‘Smart and insightful’

Red

‘I loved it. Funny, moving, twisty … Wow! I couldn’t stop reading it’

JILL MANSELL

‘We’ve had Bridget Jones, now The Cows is setting the agenda for a new generation of readers’

No. 1 Magazine

‘Compulsive … I can’t wait for the next one’

SHAPPI KHORSANDI

‘An amazing book about choices and being yourself’

Prima

‘Smart, fresh and really readable – I loved it’

TASMINA PERRY

‘Funny and excruciating. You’ll think about it for weeks!’

KRISTEN WIIG

‘A terrifically fun read’

YOU Magazine

Dedication

For Chris and Art.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Cows

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Six Months Later

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

COW [n] /ka/:

A fully grown female animal of a domesticated breed of cattle, used as a source of milk or beef.

A cow is officially the name given to a heifer when it has had a calf.

If you want a good piece of meat, you need to go for the heifer because cows, having been destroyed by childbearing, do not a good steak make. Cows are incredibly complex animals; they form friendships and even fall in love, they experience fear, anger and can bear grudges.

Cows are destined to be in a constant hormonal state, either pregnant or producing milk. A heifer is a piece of meat, merely a potential source of produce. Beyond that, they don’t offer much … apparently.

Some might say this is reflected in human society and the way that it regards women.

Some might not.

There are many types of women and every effort is needed for a woman not to be seen just as a heifer or a cow. Women don’t have to fall into a stereotype.

Cows don’t need to follow the herd.

1
A Late Friday Night in April
Tara

I see a bead of sweat pop out of his forehead and flop down his face like a melting slinky. He’s nearly there, I can tell. Just a few more gentle pushes from me and this guy will explode with everything I need. He sniffs and hits his nose with the side of a clenched fist. I think it was an attempt to wipe it, but ends up being more of a punch in his own face. The sweat runs over his chin, down his neck and settles on his white collar. It rapidly spreads, forming a little wet patch then, as if on a factory line, another pops out and follows its exact journey. He’s going to break any minute, I know it.

We’ve been alone in a small bedroom in a Holiday Inn just off the M4 for over three hours. I deliberately requested a room facing the road so that I could insist the windows had to be closed because of the noise of the traffic. It’s boiling in here; the hottest day of the year, and I had to shut down the aircon because the camera picked up the noise. He won’t be able to take it much longer. Me? I’ll endure anything to get the soundbite I need.

He agreed to do the interview purely on the basis that it was just me and my camera in the room with him. The sleazy creep seems to have forgotten that the basic function of recording equipment is to capture a moment that could potentially be broadcast to millions.

I’ve been making a documentary about sexual harassment in the workplace for months. Shane Bower is the MD of Bower Beds, and I have interviewed multiple female members of his staff who have all told me about his wandering hands. Yesterday, I door-stepped him at nine a.m. as he left the house for work. I told him about the accusations and asked him what he had to say. He denied it, of course, and got into his car. I threw a business card in and instinct told me he’d be in touch. I was right; two hours later my phone rang. He asked me what my programme was about and what I wanted. I told him I was making a short film about sexual harassment for a new digital channel, and that I wanted to know if the allegations were true. He denied it on the phone, but I told him I had mounting evidence against him, and that he would be wise to try to convince the viewers of his innocence, because the footage would be broadcast with or without his contribution. Hearing that, he agreed to an interview. With only me. In a bedroom. I made sure the camera was recording the second he walked into the room.

‘I don’t doubt that you’re telling the truth, Shane,’ I say from behind my camera. I’m lying. He’s so guilty you can smell it on him.

‘I just think the audience will be confused as to why so many of your staff seem to tell the same story. The one about you asking them to jump on the beds, then asking them to jump on your—’

‘OK, OK, please, stop saying it,’ he says, spitting and spluttering from all of his orifices, the wet patch on his collar now creeping down onto his shoulder. ‘I love my wife,’ Bower continues, and I see genuine fear in his eyes. He is stunned, like a spider in the middle of the night that freezes when you turn the lights on. But if you leave the lights on long enough, the spider will move. It has to.

I keep the camera rolling, he doesn’t ask me to stop. I am always amazed by how people resist the truth to this point but then explode with it, almost like it’s a relief to just get it out. He could shut this down and storm out, giving me no concrete proof and leaving himself open to wriggle his way out of all of this, but guilty people so rarely do. I hand them a rope, and they always hang themselves.

‘My kids, they are everything to me,’ he says, fluid pouring out of his face at such a speed I wish I had a dribble bib to offer him.

‘If you’re honest, then maybe it will all be OK,’ I say, knowing I’ll cut almost everything I have said and edit this to look like he built himself up to his own demise. And then he gives it to me, the most glorious line I could imagine.

‘Those silly sluts acted like they were gagging for it. How is a guy supposed to know they didn’t want it?’

Ahhhhhhh, beautiful!

I lower my camera, leaving it to record just in case he offers me any more nuggets of TV gold, but it really doesn’t matter what happens now. I’ve got what I need. A confession. An end to my scene. The police can take it from here; I’ll follow it up with them.

And I’m wrapped in time for lunch. Damn, I’m good at my job!

‘Nailed it,’ I say, throwing the camera cards down on my boss’ desk.

‘What, he confessed?’ says Adam in his usual grating way – thrilled about the footage, worried he might have to praise me.

‘Yup. The perfect confession. I got him, I told you I would.’

‘OK Tara, stop acting like you’re in an ITV cop drama. He was an easy target.’

‘An “easy target”? I had to lock myself alone in a small room with him for hours to get that. There was nothing easy about it.’

Adam gets up from his desk and, taking the camera cards with him, walks into the main office, where he waves them and says, ‘We got him.’ There is a round of applause, as everyone realises that the show we have been plugging away at for months has a good ending. I stand behind Adam, watching him take the praise, wishing I had the guts to scream, ‘THERE IS NO FUCKING “WE”. I GOT THIS ALL BY MYSELF.’ But of course, there is no ‘I’ in team.

‘OK, Tara, Andrew, Samuel – can we have a quick meeting in the snug, please?’ Adam says, urging the three of us to follow him into a little room with multicoloured walls, bean bags, magazines, a TV and a big circular IKEA rug. It was designed to motivate creativity and it’s where the development team come and pretend to work. They sit and watch hours of TV, read books, magazines and study the MailOnline to come up with ideas for TV shows. There are three of them, led by Samuel, and in the last two years only one of their ideas has actually made it to the screen. Not that it matters, but I’m on my fifth.

I dread these meetings, as I have to deal with three very strong male egos who all know I am amazing at my job but can’t bring themselves to admit it. There is Andrew – Head of Production, Samuel – Head of Development, and Adam – the boss. People say TV is a male-dominated industry, and the reality of that is certainly true. It’s odd though, because there are actually loads of women in television and a lot of them have high-ranking jobs. The problem is that when it comes to viewing figures, the general consensus is that women will watch male-centric programming, but men won’t watch anything too female. So if everything is more male than female, then broadcasters won’t lose the ‘football’ audience. Already, before a single programme has been made, they are saying that what women want to watch is less important than what men want to watch. This sexism filters up through the industry to the people who make the shows, and you can find it in all its glory right here in the offices of Great Big Productions.

As we sit down on the brightly coloured plastic bean bags, my faux-leather trousers make an enormous fart sound. Everyone, of course, knows what caused the noise, but I can sense an element of doubt, and possibly hope, that I did just humiliate myself with a real guff. There is a pause for aroma, and when the air is confirmed clear, Adam starts the meeting.

‘OK, so … oh no, wait, we need coffee,’ he says, calling in his PA, Bev. I knew he would do this; he takes any opportunity he can to show me he is the boss, and this is a classic move of his. ‘Can we get three coffees please, and some water?’ he says as Bev enters the snug. She’s wearing a skirt that’s a little too short for work, and a white shirt that you can see her pink bra through. ‘Chop chop,’ he adds, hurrying her along so he can get on with his plan, which is to stare at her arse and make weird grunting noises as she walks away. There is a ‘Phwoar’ and a quiet, ‘How’s a guy supposed to get any work done?’, a few other snorty sounds and of course, the glance at me, to make sure I am watching it all. I look directly at him, leaving no doubt that I have acknowledged his fake sexual intentions.

This is how Adam has tried to mask his homosexuality from me, since a moment two years ago when I walked in on him watching a men only three-way on the Internet. He panicked when he realised I could see his screen reflecting on the window behind him, and told me it was research for a show he was developing.

‘About gay orgies by swimming pools?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he answered, closing his computer but not getting up.

We never mentioned it again, and of course, I never saw a treatment for a show about gay orgies.

Since then, Adam has taken every opportunity he can to show me that he fancies women. Objectifying his assistant, Bev, is his signature move. I don’t know why he isn’t just honest about it, but he’s more interested in being the big guy than the gay guy. I actually feel quite sorry for him, that level of denial must be exhausting.

‘Shall we talk about work?’ I suggest, wanting to move things along.

To cut a long story short, we are a TV production company who has realised that the future is online. Therefore, we are working to create digital content and multiple web series to build our online presence so that when TV becomes irrelevant, we are still relevant. We will make shows predominantly about real people in real situations, and I have been pulled in to head this up because I have a history of making brilliant TV shows about all echelons of society that my boss thinks would work excellently in fifteen-minute webisodes. He’s right, because he’s very clever, despite being incredibly rude and annoying. It’s a massive deal for me as I’ve worked tirelessly for years on long-running and low-budget productions and now finally have this opportunity to make much ‘edgier’ (horrible TV word) programmes, with less Ofcom and more swearing. We’re launching with my sexual harassment doc. It’s going to be brilliant, and kind of my dream job. The downside is I have to spend a lot of time with these three.

‘Just because we’re now working on online content doesn’t mean we can be more relaxed about money. The budgets are small. You realise that, don’t you?’ says Andrew, looking at me patronisingly, as if I have no concept of being thrifty. He’s not particularly good at his job, and knows it. He uses rudeness to mask his fear of getting fired.

‘Don’t worry, Andrew. I won’t use the budget to buy tampons and shoes. I think I can control myself.’ I use rudeness to stick up for myself.

‘And the hours will be long. Low budgets mean long days,’ he continues, knowingly.

Oh, here we go! This is where I have to re-explain my situation, even though they already know it very well.

‘I have to leave at five p.m. to pick Annie up from childcare,’ I say. I am careful to say ‘childcare’, instead of ‘my mum’s’. They take it more seriously when they think I pay for it.

Queue the eye rolls from Adam, the stroppy huffing from Andrew, the switch of crossed legs from Samuel as I admit to being, as Andrew once put it, ‘uncommitted’. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they also know it will be fine.

‘I can’t get childcare beyond five thirty on weekdays,’ I continue. ‘You know this.’

‘Can’t you get your mum to have her when we get busy?’ says Adam, pushing his luck.

‘No, I can’t,’ I say, defiantly. Of course Mum could have her, but that isn’t the point. I want some time with my daughter. I leave at five, that was the deal I signed when I started at Great Big Productions four years ago, and Adam has been trying to back out of it ever since.

‘Fine,’ says Andrew, huffing and crossing his arms like a petulant child. Samuel also tuts and crosses his legs in the other direction. The irony of the time they are wasting on this is beyond them.

‘It’s just not really fair though, is it? On the others?’ Adam says. I know he doesn’t actually have a problem with me leaving at five because it never affects my work. He’s just found an opportunity to assert himself and he’s taking it.

‘I’m a single mother, Adam. Please don’t “fair” me. I work full-time and all I ask is that I get out at five p.m. to pick my daughter up from childcare. I’m here two hours before anyone else in the morning and I haven’t taken a sick day in three years. I do my job.’

He takes a few minutes to let the tension give me a headache before saying, ‘Being “on the job” is what got you into this mess.’ Cue dirty laugh, cackle, snort. Etc.

‘Good one,’ I say, sitting back on my bean bag, making another huge fart noise. ‘Sorry, big lunch.’

That moves them on.

Cam

www.HowItIs.com

Camilla Stacey

I’m six foot one, an un-natural blonde and if I don’t pay any attention to my eyebrows, they meet in the middle. I should also mention that I have quite freakishly large hands and feet and exceptionally long limbs. I appreciate I sound a bit like Mr Tickle and Cousin It’s love child but actually, I’m kind of nice looking.

I look like I’m from the Amazon, but the truth is, I’m straight out of North London ‒ my dad is from Woking and my mum’s from Barnet. I’m just long with big hands, what can you do?

I’ve never had an issue with the way I look, despite my imperfections. I don’t know about the fear of putting on a bikini, or taking my top off in front of a guy. I don’t worry about my weight because I never gain any, no matter what I eat. I wear size ten clothes even though I’m probably a size eight, but need to go bigger because of my sprawling appendages.

My face is nice too, I like it. I look a bit like Emma Stone but with a stronger nose and more olive skin. My eyes are big and brown, I have freakishly long eyelashes and my cheeks are naturally blushed. My teeth are not straight, but I never considered getting a brace after Kate Moss made being a bit wonky really beautiful. I’ve taken a lot of time to absorb the way I look, not in a vain way, more in a scientific way. I’ve stared at myself naked many times, because it’s my body and I should know it better than anyone else. I’ve squatted over mirrors to see what men see, and inspected my face with a magnifying mirror and counted my wrinkles. I know myself really well, because I’ve taken the time to do so. At thirty-six years old, I’m happy with who I am.

I suspect some people will read this and be angry with me for being positive about my own image, because we’re not supposed to do that, are we? We live in a world that celebrates being thin, or having big boobs or a nicely toned arse. Society encourages us all to get, and feel, beautiful. But the minute someone admits to enjoying their own appearance, we think they’ve taken it all a bit too far. But don’t be angry with me for saying I like the way I look. I’m not saying I think I’m perfect, better than anyone else or desirable to all mankind, I’m just saying that body image isn’t something that gets me down. I’ve got plenty of issues, but the way I look isn’t one of them.

I can’t be the only one who feels this way. So come on, what do you see when you look in the mirror?

Cam x

Stella

What do I see when I look in the mirror? I think to myself, as I eat the last mouthful of an all-butter croissant and finish reading Camilla Stacey’s blog. I love Cam; Alice and I used to quote her best bits to each other. It’s like she’s always thinking what we haven’t thought of yet. What do I see in the mirror, Cam? Well, my description of myself wouldn’t be as positive as yours, that’s for sure. It isn’t that I don’t think I’m attractive; I have no issue with what I actually look like. It’s just that looking in the mirror makes me either sad for my past or scared of my future. If all I could see was the way that I look, I probably wouldn’t hate doing it so much. Instead I see the ghosts of my mum and sister staring back at me.

I scroll down my Facebook feed. As expected, it’s flooded with messages.

Thinking of you x x

Hope you manage to smile today, I know that wherever she is Alice will be having a few glasses of Champagne x

Can’t imagine how today must feel for you. I always remember the two of you and your wild birthday parties. Miss her so much. Lots of love x

Still doesn’t feel real. Hope today isn’t too painful. I’ll be wearing my pink ribbon with pride x x

There must be twenty-five messages, saying anything but the words ‘Happy Birthday’. I haven’t seen most of these people since Alice’s funeral five years ago but they still, every year, write these vacant messages all over my page. They probably wouldn’t even remember if Facebook didn’t remind them.

Looking through my feed, there are countless status updates about Alice, people claiming their relationships with her, outpouring their sadness. Hoping for sympathy and attention by writing pained messages about how much they miss her. It’s all so transparent. I’ve never even mentioned her on here; I hate attention-seeking posts. The ones where people write boldly or cryptically about the bad things in their lives, all with the hope their ‘friends’ post sympathetic messages. One, written by Melissa Tucker, a girl who went to school with us and who played netball with Alice, says,

Today is the birthday of one of the best friends I ever had. She was fun, and beautiful, and kind and generous. I’ve never known anyone else like her. RIP Alice Davies, the world is a darker place without you in it.

‘Never known anyone else like her?’ She was my identical twin sister. I don’t know if Melissa is cruel or stupid, but I have to fight with myself not to write abusive words all over her page. Who says that?

I look at the little green dot to the bottom left of the screen, ‘Alice Davies – online’, and imagine her lying on her bed in our flat, posting silly things on her Facebook page like she used to.

I told everyone I shut her page down when she died, but I didn’t. Instead I unfriended everyone and set her account to private. I am her only ‘friend’. To everyone else it isn’t there, but I can look whenever I like, and read all of her old posts. Like the one where she said she couldn’t cook the sausage dish she wanted to do because the local Sainsbury’s had run out of cherry tomatoes. It’s the really mundane day-to-day ones that I love the most. Just her, plodding along, living life.

Every morning when I arrive at work, I log in to her account on my phone, so that when I am at my computer it says she is online. The little green dot makes me feel like she’s right there, sitting on her bed, able to say hi at any moment.

‘Hi,’ says Jason, coming out of his office and making me jump. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’

I quickly shut down my Facebook page and open the company website, even though it would be weird if I was just sitting here looking at that. Jason probably won’t look anyway, he’s not that kind of boss.

‘I have to go. Dreading this!’ he says, standing in front of me with his arms crossed. This is Jason’s default position; it’s not defensive, or rude. It’s just how his hands fall when he isn’t holding his camera.

‘Don’t dread it. She just wants to hear how you’re doing, right? You don’t have to show her anything?’ I say, reassuringly.

‘Well I was supposed to hand the first draft in last week, so I’m going to have to explain why I didn’t.’

‘Just tell her it’s coming along fine, and you’re all set to meet your deadline. Can I make a suggestion? You need to go on shutdown – no TV or Internet until you’ve finished.’

‘That sounds hideous. But maybe,’ he says, uncrossing one of his arms to rub his face. He looks harassed, but it suits him. Jason is rugged, he never looks like he slept well, even if he says he did. He wears loose-fitting shirts with jeans as standard. He’s tall and slim with an energy that means he finds it hard to sit still. His brain jumps from thought to thought, not giving him time to worry about what he says, so he often speaks out of turn – but the sparkle in his eye means he gets away with it. Part of his charm is how open and easy to be around he is. It’s why he is so good at his job. Well, the photography part anyway; he’s proving to be useless at writing books.

‘I found an app that’s basically a massive child lock for your computer, you won’t be able to do anything until you’ve written a certain amount of words, wanna give it a go? I can also delete your social apps and create blocks for your phone?’ I say, thinking it might be his only hope.

Jason takes his computer out of his bag and puts it in front of me.

‘Go for it. I need to do something dramatic. Leave my laptop on my desk, I’ll come in tomorrow to work. You can do my phone on Monday?’

‘No problem.’

He stands for a moment too long looking at me. I raise my head, as if to urge him on.

‘You’re lucky you know, Stella. That your life doesn’t grind to a halt if you can’t think of anything to say, or write or take a picture of. You just come to work, then go home to your boyfriend in the house that you own, and tomorrow you know that everything will be the same, it will all be perfect. I envy you.’

Jason envies me? What? I have to stop myself standing up and screaming with such force that he’d fall backwards and hit the floor. He’s jealous of my life? Has he any idea what it’s really like? No, he doesn’t. I’ve never told Jason anything about me. Not about Mum, Alice, my health. He just knows the basics – I live in London, in a flat I own, with my boyfriend Phil. That’s all my boss has ever needed to know. But it’s odd, I think, that we come to this studio five days a week, eight hours at a time, talk almost constantly … well, he does. I’m not even sure how it’s possible to skim over the depths of real life in this way and still get along so well, but it is, and we do. A successful working relationship has all the qualities of a bad relationship. If only spending this much time with a boyfriend was this simple.

‘I’m not sure I’d call it perfect,’ I say, playing down the massively imperfect situation that is my existence.

‘Well it seems pretty good to me. You have a boyfriend, security. You’ll get married, have kids. A proper family. I’ll probably die alone in my studio after being knocked over the head by a falling tripod, or something equally as pathetic.’

He looks aimlessly across the studio, blue eyes still sparkling, despite his ageing, weathered face. Normally, we skirt around the personal details of our lives but there’s something about writing this book that is making him relook at everything around him, including me.

‘Actually, I’m jealous of you,’ I say, gently, finding a little voice in the back of my head that feels the need to be heard. ‘You get to create, and people are excited by that. You take photographs that change the way people think. Look at them,’ I say, gesturing to the studio walls, where huge prints of his work keep me entertained every day. Portraits so detailed, it’s as though the subjects’ thoughts are written across their faces. ‘You capture moments that we’d all miss if it wasn’t for you showing them to us. And now you’re writing a book. Something that will live even longer than you. A physical piece of evidence that proves you existed. Maybe fifty years from now, someone will be sitting in a hotel, or waiting at an airport, or going through bookshelves at a friend’s house, and they will see a copy of your book. And they’ll see your pictures and read your words and they’ll wonder who the brilliant person was, who captured such stories. And they’ll turn back to the front cover, where they’ll see your name. And they will read aloud “Jason Scott” and they’ll think about how clever you were, and how grateful they are for you inspiring them, and helping them pass that time. And then they’ll put the book down and someone else will come along and they will love it too. That’s your legacy. The great work, that you produced. You’re the lucky one.’

There is a long pause as Jason looks at me quite intensely. He’s so sexy, sometimes I have to imagine him on the toilet to get that out of my head.

‘That sounded like a speech you’ve been rehearsing for weeks,’ he says, having never heard anything so profound come out of my mouth. I’m quite militant, usually, I suppose. It’s what he employed me for. He’s a scatty artist who needs organising, and I like organising other people’s things because it distracts me from the chaos in my own mind.

‘I just think you should be proud of what you’ve achieved, even though it’s hard work sometimes,’ I continue, opening his computer as if to close the conversation.

‘You’re right. I should,’ he says, watching me for a moment as I search for the Internet-blocking software and start to download it.

‘You’re good with words. Maybe you should write my book?’ he winks, playfully. He’s only half joking. ‘Up to anything tonight?’

‘Actually, it’s my birthday. So just a small dinner with Phil and some friends,’ I say, as unexcited by the prospect as I sound.

‘Bloody hell, Stella, you should have said, I’d have got you something. Where are you going?’

‘Oh, nowhere glamorous. A nice tapas place on Bermondsey Street, Pizarro. Very chilled.’

‘Is it a big one? Your sixtieth or something?’ he says, finding himself pretty funny.

‘Oi, watch it. No, I’m just plain old twenty-nine. Nothing special, no big deal.’

‘OK, well, have fun. Get really drunk and do crazy stuff. I’ll see you Monday.’

‘See you Monday,’ I repeat, watching him leave.

When the door closes, I push his computer aside and get back on mine. For a few moments I stare at the little green dot, willing it to do anything that shows me Alice is really there. Of course, it never will. I click onto her page and write, Happy Birthday, sis. I miss you x

I pack up my things, and leave.

Tara

I rarely get to pick Annie up from school, so on Fridays, when she has dance class and comes out at four p.m., I always make sure I’m there. It means leaving work even earlier, but I grin and bear the guilt trips from my colleagues, because they’re no contest for the mothers’ guilt I suffer if I don’t do it. Being a single working mum usually means that someone somewhere isn’t happy with me. Whether it’s work or my daughter, I’m usually having to apologise to one of them for not giving them enough of my time. This feeling of never being fully enough for anyone worries me a lot. Would I earn more and be better at my job if I didn’t leave at five? Would my daughter be happier if I always left at four? Who knows what the answer is to getting all of this right; I don’t, but I can’t help but think the other mums at the school gate think I’m awful.

I’ve convinced myself they all judge me for my situation and therefore I make no effort to connect with them. This means they make little effort to connect with me either. They all stand around chatting like old friends, and I wait for Annie while answering emails on my phone, barely looking up to say hi. I’m sure they think I’m really full of myself or rude. I suppose I am rude; my lack of interest is deliberate, but if they made more effort with me I’d make more effort with them. Don’t they think, ‘Hey, she’s alone. Raising a child by herself. Let’s go over, make her feel part of the gang?’ No, they don’t. They just crack on talking among themselves, casually judging me because Annie doesn’t have a dad and my mother does most of the childcare. Mum says I’m paranoid and they chat to her just fine, so it’s obviously just that they have an issue with me. Well, who are they to judge? Is being a stay-at-home mum any better than working as much as I do? Are they happier than me? Who knows, and who cares. I was never able to just bond with other women purely on the basis that we both had kids. All of those classes for mums and babies where we were supposed to be open and share our feelings, offer advice, take help; I hated it. I felt like a beacon of controversy glowing in a room full of what everyone else considered normal. I quit the classes within weeks of starting them. Annie and my mum were all I needed. When you go at life alone you learn quickly to rely on as few people as possible. My village was small but indestructible. I was so happy in the comfort of my own decisions.

Five years later, here at the school gate, I still can’t slot into this world. It’s hard to know how to connect when you’ve spent the day squeezing information out of a sex pest and they’ve probably spent the day freezing individual portions of lasagna into zip-lock bags. I find it hard to stand around talking about parenting with people who do nothing but parent, they’re a different breed. Come on Annie, hurry up and come outside!

‘Tara!’ shouts a friendly voice that throws me off guard. As I turn around I realise it’s Vicky Thomson. Her daughter Hannah is in Annie’s class. She’s a bored housewife who is desperate to go back to work and thinks she could get a job in TV, despite having no experience. She relentlessly pitches show ideas to me like I’m Simon Cowell and have the power to change her life. Annoyingly, some of her ideas are quite good.

‘I’ve been hoping to see you,’ she says, hurrying up to me. ‘I’ve been working on the idea I told you about,’ she says, presuming I remember. ‘I thought maybe you could take it further by trying to matchmake the gay people at the end?’

‘OK, sorry, what?’ I say, a little short. She’s one of those people where if I give her too much feedback she won’t leave me alone. She does nothing for my trying to be inconspicuous.

‘My idea, “Take My Gay Away”. The TV show idea about gay people whose parents won’t allow it so they send them to a camp in America to get “un-gayed”. You said you liked it, so I’ve been working on it more. Maybe we can pitch it to your company? I’m so ready to get back into work, three kids in six years, whoa. I need to think about something else now they’re all in school, you know?’

‘It’s a great idea,’ I say, politely.

‘So what do you think, shall we pitch it to your company?’ she pushes.

‘I think it’s interesting but we have something very similar in development, so I’m not sure it will work for us right now,’ I say, giving the standard answer that I give when people pitch me ideas I kind of like. It covers my back, if I ever get around to stealing it.

‘Oh, OK. Well, what about my one about the women who want penises but don’t want society to see them as men?’ she says, hanging off me like a puppy that can smell lamb in my pocket.

‘Wait, that’s a thing?’ I say, the TV shark in me needing to know more.

‘Yup, I found it on the Internet.’

‘Jesus, what were you searching for?’

‘Chicks with dicks,’ she says, as if that’s normal.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know really; I just wanted to know what it would be like to be a chick with a dick, I suppose.’

‘Do you want a dick?’

‘No.’

‘Cool.’

The school doors bounce open and the kids flood out like spilt oil, slowing as they reach their parents. Annie is one of the last, slower than usual. I can tell she is sad.

‘Annie, what’s wrong?’ I say, kneeling down and putting my face close to hers. ‘Do you feel sick?’

She shakes her head slowly, and looks down.

‘Did something happen at school? Was someone mean?’

‘They weren’t mean. But Trudy is having a party on Saturday and said I can’t go because her mum said there wasn’t room for me.’

‘Why would she say that?’ I ask her, not surprised. Trudy’s mum seems like such a cow. She tutted at me for walking into the Nativity play late last Christmas. An actual tut. I’d had to leave a shoot early to get there; Adam gave me so much shit about it but I did it, I left so I didn’t let Annie down, only to be tutted at for opening the door just as the Virgin Mary (Trudy) was trying to find a room for the night. It was hardly like bursting into the middle of a performance of Macbeth at the National Theatre, was it? I stood at the back and waved at Annie, who was on stage being the greatest donkey I’d ever seen. She waved back at me and one of her ears fell off. Trudy’s mum tutted again. I didn’t care that time; I knew I’d made Annie’s night by being there whether I was late or not.

‘OK,’ I say, rubbing Annie’s arms. ‘Let’s see about this, shall we?’

I take her hand, and march over to Trudy and her mum, who is giving someone else the details for Saturday’s party.

‘The theme is Disney,’ she says, ‘And bring your husband, the more the merrier.’ As she finishes her sentence, she sees me storming up to her and coughs, as if that will drown out the words that she has just said.

‘Hello,’ I say, boldly.

‘Hello. Come on Trudy, time to go.’ She takes Trudy’s hand and forcedly drags her away.

‘Hang on,’ I continue, with more welly in my tone. She stops, making the kind of strained face that suggests she doesn’t want a scene. ‘Annie tells me there is no room for her at the party, but I thought there might be a misunderstanding as Annie is such a special friend?’

‘Um, well,’ says Trudy’s mum, looking around, hoping someone will rescue her, ‘The house isn’t big enough to accommodate everyone. The kids, their parents …’ she says. I am racking my brains to remember her name. Verity, maybe?

‘I think maybe you thought she was busy?’ I say, convincingly. I’m not letting her do this to Annie, it’s really cruel.

‘Trudy, would you like Annie at your party?’ I ask, reaching for the big guns.

‘Yay!’ Trudy shouts, with pure joy on her face. Annie also lights up. I look at Trudy’s mum with persuasive eyes that leave her no choice but to cave. She leans in to me, while Trudy and Annie try to hear what she says.

‘I think you need to know that Annie has been saying inappropriate things to Trudy. I don’t know what goes on in your home but I do not like it when my daughter comes home and asks me what a pervert is because her friend has told her that her mummy knows one.’

A lump forms in my throat. Annie’s being pushed out of her social group because of me? That’s a nice big mother’s guilt pill for me to choke on.

‘Look, she’s obviously heard me on the phone talking about a programme I’m making about sexual harassment. I can assure you there is nothing untoward happening in our house. There are no perverts. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you the last time a man came round. So, there you go, now you know about my job and my sex life. Now, Verity, can Annie come to the party or not?’

My job has trained me to ask for what I want. You don’t get much from someone you are interviewing if you don’t ask them questions.

Verity makes a strained ‘for God’s sake’ face as she covers Trudy’s ears in case I say anything else appalling. She then lets out a big, over-the-top huff. Annie, Trudy and I all stare at her, waiting for an answer.

‘Come on, Verity,’ I say. ‘I’ll speak to Annie about what she heard and I’ll be more careful with my work calls. Please, don’t take this out on her.’

‘Oh, OK,’ she says, buckling. ‘Disney. One till three.’ She snatches Trudy’s hand and pulls her away. ‘And my name is Amanda, not Verity.’

Wow, I was way off. God, not even close.

‘There you go,’ I say, kneeling back down to Annie. ‘It’s all fine, she just didn’t realise how much you wanted to go. Happy now?’

‘Yes. I need a costume,’ she says, sweetly, and a little piece of me dies as I realise I now have to work out what she’s going to wear. ‘Can I be a princess?’

I stand up and take her hand as we walk back to the car.

‘What did I say about girls being princesses? Remember?’

‘You said that little girls don’t have to be princesses.’

‘That’s right. That’s what all the other little girls will do, so we should do something different, right?’

‘Right!’

‘That’s my girl!’

‘Mummy,’ she says as I strap her into the car, ‘what’s a sex life?’

OK, I really need to watch my mouth.

Cam

‘OK, love, that’s all the shelves up,’ says Cam’s dad, coming out of her bedroom. She’s sitting in the window seat of her gorgeous new flat, wondering where to put the chaise longue she found on eBay that just got delivered. ‘Need anything else before I go?’

‘No thanks, Dad. That’s it.’ She looks at him lovingly. ‘It doesn’t matter how grown up I am, I’ll always need my dad to come and put my shelves up for me, won’t I?’

‘I hope so. Even if you don’t, you always have to pretend you still need me, OK?’ he says, going over to her for a cuddle. They both know Cam is as good at DIY as he is. Her asking him to help is always for his benefit, not hers.

‘I’m so proud of you, Camilla. I worked all my life and I’m not sure I ever achieved as much as you have.’

‘You kept four daughters alive, Dad. I’d say that was a pretty big achievement.’

‘Yup, my life certainly became about you guys, that’s for sure.’

Cam looks at him sympathetically. She’s always been so tuned-in with her dad, much more than her siblings were. Before Tanya was born, the oldest of Cam’s three sisters, he worked as a comedy promoter all over the country. It wasn’t stable work, and involved lots of late nights that didn’t work well with a baby, so he quit. Not really being qualified in anything, he got a job in a local school as a caretaker, and was there until he retired four years ago. He never enjoyed it; it was uncreative, hard and demanding. But he stuck with it, because he’s a great dad, and that’s the kind of sacrifice people make when they have kids.

‘I always told you that success is just being happy, didn’t I?’ he says. ‘People put too much emphasis on it being about money. I was never rich, but you guys were all healthy and happy and no matter what I ended up having to do during the day, coming home to that made me feel like the wealthiest man alive.’

‘Yup, you always said that,’ Cam says. She knows he doesn’t really mean it. If it had been down to him, he’d have carried on promoting comedy and they’d all have made do. But Cam’s mum wanted stability, and her dad is a good enough guy not to argue with that. ‘But I fucking love being rich,’ she says, giving him a gentle dig in the ribs.

They both laugh.

‘Don’t let your mum hear you use that language,’ he says, and of course she never would. Cam and her dad have always shared the same sense of humour and a mutual understanding. He’s the only person in her family who doesn’t question her choices, and she’s desperately in love with him because of that.

‘You were always different from the others, Camilla. You stuck to your guns, never tried to be what people expected of you. I’m proud of you, kid.’

‘Jesus, Dad! Will you stop. I’ve just moved in, no tears are allowed in this flat, even happy ones.’ They hug again. Before she pulls away she whispers in his ear, ‘Thank you.’

‘What are you thanking me for? You did this all by yourself.’

‘I did, yes. But because you always encouraged me to be myself. I’m not like the other girls, and you let me work out how to be happy my own way.’

‘I had no choice. There was no other way you could be,’ he says, as he leaves their embrace and heads for the door. ‘Call me if you need anything else doing, OK?’

‘I will.’

‘And don’t have any boys round.’

‘Oh, Dad! OK, go. Mum will shout at you for being late for dinner. I love you. Bye.’

Cam pushes him out of the door. ‘Careful on the stairs,’ she says as she closes it, and leans back against it when it’s shut. Looking around her flat, she lets a huge smile creep across her face. A 1.2 million, two-bedroom, Victorian flat in Highgate, with views across London. She’s sourced furniture from the period the house was built, and she’s mixing that with huge pieces of bold, modern art. It’s bright, beautiful and all hers. It’s in an area of London people only dream of living in. She can’t believe it.

Falling back onto the pea green, Victorian-style chaise longue, she reaches for her laptop and rests it on her thighs. Opening HowItIs.com, she gloats at what it has become. It not only earns her in the region of £20,000 a month in advertising revenue, but it also earns her notoriety, an audience. It gives her a voice. Cam was never great with people, but she always had a lot to say. This unfortunate mix made school tough going; someone with a head full of thoughts but no outlet for them tends to think too much and say too little. In her case, this personified itself as social awkwardness that other kids saw no fun in, so she inevitably became bit of a loner. Until the Internet burst onto the scene in her early twenties and she finally had a way to show the world who she really was, a chance to express herself without the pressure of social interaction. It completely changed her life.

There are boxes stacked up along the walls, and the TV is still in the box on the floor. Her Internet won’t be connected for a few days, so she’s using a dongle, meaning she’ll never be anywhere she can’t blog from. This commitment to her output is what’s made her what she is.

As one of the first successful lifestyle bloggers, she has held her place as the ‘go-to destination for straight-talking women’. Or so said The Times in their list of ‘what’s hot for the year ahead’. ‘The Cam Stacey seal of approval is what every woman wants …’ (Guardian, Jan 2016). With nearly two million subscribers and eight major advertisers signed up, she is raking in the pennies and clawing in the love. But that isn’t to say she doesn’t have to be careful. Blogging is a dangerous game, especially if you’re talking about women and being as outspoken as Cam so often is. Women want role models; they get behind high-profile females who pave the way for forward thinkers and they hail them as heroes, but if they drop the ball, say the wrong thing or talk a little too controversially, they get thrown to the lions.

It happened to a friend of hers last year. A lovely woman, Kate Squires. She wrote about being a working mum, with a high-powered job in a PR firm, and became a real inspiration, with nearly 50,000 Twitter followers. Working mums everywhere looked to Kate for positive inspiration on how to ‘juggle’ the work–life balance, but then one day she fucked it all up with one little tweet. One silly little tweet that changed the course of her life.

Women without kids, u just don’t understand how hard it is to get home & have to look after something other than yourself. #NeedMeTime

The infertile population of the planet came out in their droves. Kate had personally offended every woman with reproductive issues on Twitter and beyond. What she had said was so hurtful that The Times covered a story of one woman who, after three miscarriages, tried to commit suicide after reading Kate’s tweet. ‘It just struck me when I was so, so down,’ she’d said. ‘I felt like society was telling me I have no value as a woman because I can’t have kids.’

People were right to be offended – it was an insensitive thing to say, but did she deserve an online hate campaign and the succession of terrible things that happened next? Cam followed the case with sympathy but a sharper eye on what she could learn. That tightrope between leading the social commentary and following it is hard to walk. It takes focus, planning and careful attention to detail not to fall off when you live in a world where 140 characters could ruin your life.

Kate wrote the customary, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I just had a really hard day,’ tweet, but it didn’t do any good. She went on Loose Women and made some heartfelt but slightly pathetic apology wearing a floral dress and batting her best Princess Diana eyes. On leaving the studio, she was confronted by campaigners with placards saying ‘NON-MOTHERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO’. This was televised on almost every news channel and Kate’s image was branded as the face of society’s issues with childless women. She appealed to be forgiven, but social media just couldn’t do it. Within weeks, she was offline and out of sight. Her PR firm sacked her, saying it was impossible to have someone with a public image like Kate’s representing them. She’s now out of work and struggling to get a job, her husband left her because she went so nuts, and she lives in a small flat in south London as opposed to her big house in Penge. Kate barely answers the phone; Cam hasn’t spoken to her for months. Her whole life turned upside down because of one sleepy little tweet.

Cam watched and learned.

She’s managed to find that careful balance of pushing boundaries, being brave, but not offending. Of course she gets the occasional knob who hates her, but she’s generally strong enough to ignore those. She’s often the target of more conservative feminists who seem to think her attitude to sex is why so many men sexually abuse women, but Cam’s aim is to promote the many facets of modern feminism, and pissing off ‘The Traditionalists’ is just a part of that. Even the rape threats she got after writing quite a punchy piece about Bill Cosby didn’t knock her down. It would take a lot more for someone to turn up at her door and physically assault her than it does for them to tweet, ‘I’d bend you over a car and make you sorry for saying that.’

Most people online are full of shit. Part of survival in the digital age is to fully appreciate that, and Cam’s down with it. But women’s rights are a delicate subject. There is one fight – feminism – but there are many different types of woman, and pleasing them all is impossible.

Just as her eyes are falling closed, she gets a text.

This must be yours, it’s got your name on it. Want it back?

Attached is a picture of her twenty-eight-year-old lover’s erect penis; he has written CAM around the base in felt-tip pen. She thinks of her 600-count cotton sheets and hopes that it is washable …

bring pizza and penis x

Suddenly, she’s not so tired.

Stella

‘I’ll get the cod fritters and the lamb,’ I tell the waiter taking our order. He’s been standing there for ages, waiting for me to decide what to have. It’s my birthday, I’m allowed to be annoying. I’m also trying to kill some time; Phil is being weird and Jessica is being excitable, and I’m not really in the mood for either of them.

‘Sooooo, Mike and I have some news,’ says Jessica, my oldest friend, the only one who made any particular effort with me after Alice died, and didn’t make it all about her. She’s one of those rare and extraordinary people who genuinely likes herself, and doesn’t rely on affirmation from pretend friends. She’s sweet, but her energy levels are challenging. Phil doesn’t understand why I haven’t told her what I’m going through, why he alone is shouldering the knowledge of my family legacy. But it’s not straightforward with Jessica; she’s never experienced trauma. She’s a good friend because she’s loyal, but trying to talk to her about my life makes me feel like the most fucked-up person of all time. What is the point in sharing your pain with someone who can’t empathise anyway? One of the reasons I got together with Phil was because his dad died when he was fourteen. Something in his tragedy allowed me to open up about mine. And anyway, he’s my boyfriend, it’s his job to take the burden of my problems. The only thing Jessica and I really have in common is history, but as Phil so often says, I should have at least one female friend, so here I am, about to hear her announcement.

Phil stiffens and goes to leave the table, but I put my hand on his knee and make him stay. I need him to stay. Whether we are falling apart or not, he is my partner, and I need a partner. One person by my side. I’m not enough on my own.

‘I’m pregnant,’ Jessica bursts, as if we didn’t know what it means when a newlywed says she ‘has some news’. She’s so happy, it’s oozing out of her. I know I can be a real bitch in situations where people around me express joy, so I try not to do that to Jessica; she doesn’t deserve it.

‘Congratulations,’ I say, leaning across the table and taking her hand in some weird, regal way. ‘When are you due?’ I ask, doing my best not to look jealous.

‘January 1st. I bet it comes New Year’s Eve, the party animal,’ she says, snuggling up to Mike, who is also incredibly nice if quite boring. He is smiling, looking happy as anything with his new wife and embryo. In contrast, Phil is playing with his fork like a six-year-old staring at an iPad. I feel the need to overcompensate for both of us, so I get up, walk around the table and give Jessica a proper hug. ‘So happy for you,’ I say, reaching over to Mike and hugging him too. ‘You’ll be the best parents.’

‘Thanks, we are so happy. Now hurry up you two, this little one is going to need a playmate,’ she says, beaming.

‘Yup, we’re on it,’ I say, a little too enthusiastically. Phil drops the fork and starts reading the menu, even though we have already ordered. He used to be so sociable, so upbeat. It’s what attracted me to him. I need that person by me, someone more flamboyant, more attractive to others, more sociable. It’s how Alice was. Her social skills made us the most popular girls in school. Everyone wanted to hang out with the Davies Twins. But in truth, they liked the novelty of twins but only one of the set. I wasn’t a good friend to people like Alice was. My spiky nature didn’t draw them in like her warmth did. Without her, I would never have been popular. When she died, it didn’t take long for it to be screamingly obvious that without a more likable counterpart, no one was bothered about keeping me as a friend. Apart from Jessica, whom I keep sweet to stop Phil trying to set me up with other potential girl mates, because he thinks that is what I need.

‘OK, who is the birthday girl?’ says the waiter, coming back to the table. He’s carrying a bottle of champagne and four glasses.

‘That’ll be that one,’ says Mike, pointing at me. Jessica grins at him.

‘Wow, champagne? Thanks,’ I say, rubbing Phil’s leg. He hasn’t done anything like this in a while. Romantic gestures used to be quite normal.

‘No, what?’ he says, looking concerned. ‘We didn’t order this?’

‘No you did not! A “Jason Scott” called the bar and asked us to bring this over,’ the waiter says, clarifying. I feel myself blush a little, I’m not sure why.

‘Ooooooh, that’s so sweet,’ says Jessica. ‘Maybe I’m allowed a tiny glass?’ she says, looking to Mike for approval. He nods, and the waiter starts to pour. ‘So, is Jason still as dreamy as ever?’ Jessica asks.

‘Ha!’ I say, genuinely touched by the gesture; a little gobsmacked, if I’m honest. ‘Yeah, he’s still pretty dreamy. But no, weird, he’s my boss. And I’ve only got eyes for Phil. Cheers.’ I hold up my glass, but only two join it in the air. A huge screech fills the restaurant as Phil scrapes his chair back and stands up.

‘Sorry,’ he says, realising he caused a scene. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ He walks off quickly towards the toilets, and I sit alone with Jessica and Mike, trying to pretend like everything is normal.

Tara

‘I’ll come pick you up by noon tomorrow,’ I say to Annie, kissing her goodbye.

‘Come any time, we’ll take the dog out in the morning and have bacon and eggs,’ says Mum. She’s so brilliant, despite finding my choices and lifestyle almost impossible to think about. She’s so desperate for me to find a father figure for Annie that she has agreed to have her every Friday night so that I can go on dates. ‘Just don’t tell your father about this,’ she tells me every week as I leave the house. ‘You know he can’t bear to think of you with boys. The fact you got pregnant as you did, well, it nearly killed him. You proved all fathers right!’

She’s funny, my mother. Somewhere between liberal and conservative and I never really know which way she’ll go.

‘I know, Mum. If you could remind him that I’m forty-two, that would be great. Anyway, look at what we got out of it?’ We both peek through the hall door and into the living room. Annie is taking selfies on Mum’s iPhone.

‘She needs a father figure,’ Mum says.

‘She doesn’t need one, Mum, we’re fine. But it would be nice for her to have one. And it would also be nice for me not to die alone.’

‘Do you have a date set up for tonight?’ she asks.

‘I do. He looks OK, works in media, cute. Hopefully not a murderer.’

‘Tara, please. Don’t joke. I read about a girl getting murdered on a date. It’s not funny.’

‘Mum, people have been dating a long time. But OK, I’ll try not to get murdered.’ I open the front door. ‘Give my love to Dad.’ I shut the door, then quickly open it again. ‘By the way, what does he think I do on Friday nights?’

I’m curious to know what Mum came up with, because she’s right, the idea of me being with men makes my dad convulse.

‘I told him you’ve started a knitting group.’

‘What? Mum, that’s pathetic.’

‘You might have to buy something on eBay and pretend you made it for his birthday. Sorry, I panicked. It was the first thing that came to my head.’

I hug her, and leave. She opens the door a few seconds later and shouts, ‘You don’t have to sleep with them all, Tara!’ down the street.

Was that liberal or conservative? I can’t quite be sure.

Back at home I have a quick shower, slip on a cute silk shirt with my faux-leather trousers, a bit of make-up, bouff my hair and I’m ready. I gave up making too much effort on dates ages ago. I always wonder what it must look like to guys, who just wear whatever they wore to work that day, when a woman arrives dressed to the nines in something fancy, with loads of make-up. It sets a precedent at the start that I really can’t be bothered to maintain, so I wear a mildly more uptempo version of my usual clothes. I think that’s right. Although I’m still single, so I guess that says something.

Being single when you have a kid is weird. Not just because everyone you meet either judges or sympathises with you, but because you have to think about so much more than just fancying someone. It’s called being responsible, I suppose. I can’t allow fuck buddies into my home to meet my daughter, it would be too confusing for her, so I generally don’t have them at all. That’s good for Annie but it sucks for me.

Annie has never known me to be in a relationship, so I need to handle the situation carefully. I introduced one guy to her last year because he was so completely awesome. I seemed to abandon all elements of fear when it came to Annie and invited him into our lives. Turns out he was so awesome that he was married. Because obviously, excellent men in their forties are never single. Why would they be? Fuckers.

He spent a Saturday afternoon in my house making Annie laugh so hard she went to bed giddy with joy. When she was asleep he and I started having sex and halfway through, his phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Eventually, because it was really killing the mood, he answered it, then burst out crying. It was his wife letting him know that his dad had just had a heart attack and died. He was literally inside me as he took the call. I mean, it was possibly the worst thing to happen during sex since those two people in China were doing it up against a floor-to-ceiling window in their apartment and the window fell out. He was so devastated, I couldn’t even have a go at him about not telling me he was married. I had to comfort him, when what I really wanted to do was cut his penis off with some nail scissors and throw it in the road. I was also just really, really gutted.

He left minutes later and I never heard from him again. Annie still asks for him; she refers to him as ‘Mr Giggles’. One day I’ll tell her that Mr Giggles ended up being about as funny as a dose of the clap. Which, along with the terrible memory of a horrible evening, he also left me with.

Taking treatment for an STD when you have a little girl feels grim. I felt ridden and contagious and begged the bottle of antibiotics to be finished. When they were gone, I vowed never to introduce her to anyone ever again unless a) I was certain they didn’t have a wife and b) I hadn’t needed an STD test after sleeping with them.

I now hold a lot of hope for my Friday night dates. I want someone good. Someone honest, safe and fun. You never know; tonight’s guy, Al, looks OK in his picture. But first, a quick drink with my best friend Sophie.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ says Sophie, walking slowly up to me at the bar. ‘I was getting my hair done, she was taking ages then I decided I didn’t like the colour so got her to go back to … anyway, heyyyy.’

Sophie is always late, which is why I brought my Kindle.

Sophie and I are both only children. This means that we have a relationship a lot like sisters and claimed each other around the age of ten, as the people who would play that role in each other’s lives. I questioned it loads, because she drove me so crazy half the time. Then another friend at school said that if her sister wasn’t family, they would never be friends, but she loved her anyway, because that is what sisters do. That really resonated with me because I realised that if Sophie was to be the sister I never had, it was OK and normal for us to not always see eye to eye. I just had to love her, which I did and still do, because we have history – and you can’t erase that, no matter how many times someone prioritises a blow dry over spending time with you.

‘Hair looks nice,’ I say, because it does. It always does, she’s gorgeous. Skinny, blonde, perfect skin. It’s annoying, but mostly natural. Other than the hair colour.

‘Thanks. OK, can we drink champagne? I feel like I need something fizzy.’

I order two glasses but she shouts for a bottle. So there we are, sitting at a bar at 6.40 p.m. on a Friday, drinking champagne for no real reason.

‘I only have twenty minutes. I have a date with a guy called Al at seven.’ I smile a little, I have that pre-date hopeful buzz … maybe it will be a good one. But probably not.

‘God, I can’t believe you’re still dating, I can’t even imagine,’ she says. ‘Mind you, I never really dated like you do. Carl was my only ever formal date and I ended up marrying him, so it clearly works. Cheers to that!’

I still can’t accept that Sophie is married; she was so wild, almost feral. I don’t think I have ever met anyone with such a hungry attitude towards sex and partying. Her stamina for both was always fascinating to me.

‘So how is Carl?’

‘He’s good, yeah. You know, same old. Marriage is fine most of the time, as long as I don’t mention my past.’

‘Still, really?’

‘Yup, it’s the big sexy elephant in the room. I mean he doesn’t know anything of course, I’d never tell him. But he’s made all these assumptions about me, and the kinds of things I used to get up to. Annoyingly, they’re all pretty accurate.’

‘But where’s he getting it all from?’ I ask.

‘He says he can’t understand how someone who looks like me didn’t get loads of sex when I was single.’

‘OK, you know that is actually quite insulting, right?’ I say, as I realise it is insulting, but that Carl is absolutely right. Sophie got a lot of sex.

‘Yesterday, Beth Taylor, remember her from school? She tagged me in an old photo on Facebook. It’s a picture of a load of us, we were about seventeen, and in the background I’m snogging some guy. She tagged me and wrote, “This is how I remember you, Sophie. Hope you’re well.” What a fucking idiot, why would she do that?’

‘Yeah, I saw that. I thought it was funny. And I suppose most people in their forties aren’t married to people who would give them a hard time for snogging someone when they were seventeen?’

‘True. Maybe, but still. I have to be so careful. He’s just so old fashioned and I need this to work. It’s just easier if I edit my past a little. The fucking Internet means I have to be on guard all the time. Anyone could tweet me, or post a picture of me from back then. Do you remember that time we went to Ibiza, the foam party? Thank God it was just before camera phones, but what if someone had one of those disposable cameras we all used to have and stumbles across me on Facebook? There’s probably pictures of me up to all bloody sorts. Jesus, I told Carl I’d never done drugs. He’d lose his shit if he knew the kind of stuff we used to do. As it is, every time a Facebook memory comes up I break into a cold sweat!’

I drink some champagne. ‘Hey, we had fun though, didn’t we?’ I say, giving her a wink.

‘I’ll drink to that!’

I don’t know how Sophie does it, being married to someone who won’t accept her for who she is. Playing a new role, with a new past. Watching Sophie coordinate her life around hiding who she was – is? – from her husband has been such a lesson to me, in terms of what I want. There is no way I want to find someone who won’t take me for what I am. I don’t want to have to lie, or hide, or deny anything. Sophie would never admit it, but she married Carl because she partied her entire life and isn’t qualified for anything she would enjoy, so a rich city guy was the only way she’d end up in a nice house and money to buy bottles of champagne when you only have twenty minutes to drink it in, and absolutely nothing to celebrate. I’d rather be poor and lonely.

‘OK, I better go, don’t want to be late for my hot date,’ I say, stepping down off the barstool. ‘Here’s some money for the champagne.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, that’s what this is for,’ she says, flashing Carl’s credit card. ‘Oh, and if he asks can you tell him we were with a bunch of people? It would make things easier.’

‘Sophie, we’ve been best friends since we were at primary school, does he still not like us going out together?’

‘Nope. When it’s only us he presumes we get up to bad stuff, that you’re a bad influence. Don’t look at me like that! Please, just say it was a few old faces from school. The more eyes he thinks are on me, the better he’ll think I behaved, OK?’

I sit back down.

‘It’s quite controlling, Sophie. It worries me,’ I say, forcing her to look me in the eye. She offers a little smile, then breaks away.

‘Maybe I need a bit of controlling?’ she says, sipping the champagne. ‘I can’t be left to my own devices, who knows what would happen.’ She shoots me a critical look, and I know what she means. We partied hard for most of our lives, but after I had Annie I had to stop. It became immediately clear that despite being wild myself, I was nothing compared to Sophie. Somehow, over the years I had stopped her from spiralling too far out of control. I hadn’t even realised I did it, but I took her home when she’d had too much, I dragged her out of bedrooms she shouldn’t have been in, I stopped her snorting more lines of coke than she should, prised shot glasses out of her hand. When I got pregnant, there was no one around to do that for her and we saw the danger of that instantly. I was six months gone when I found myself in A&E one Friday night. The hospital called me at two a.m., saying she’d been found in an alley with her skirt around her waist, so out of it she could barely say her name. I’d gone in immediately and found her crying in the hospital bed. She’d been roofied by a barman in a club. There were no signs that he’d done anything sexual to her, but judging by the bump on her forehead and the state of her clothes, he had obviously tried.

‘I can’t look after myself,’ she’d said, pathetically, looking up at me from the bed. ‘And you can’t look after me any more, so I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

I took her home and I did look after her, for a whole week. But then she went back to her place, to ‘start afresh’. She was determined to change, to grow up. There were a few more ‘incidents’, but then she met Carl. They were married within a year, and now she is being looked after as she wished, and as uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I know she is probably better off for it. And she does love him, because he’s rich.

‘He’s good to me in other ways,’ she says, flashing the card again. ‘I’m happy, I promise. I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ I say, loyally. ‘I have to go.’

She pours herself another drink, and I remind myself it’s not my problem any more.

I walk into the Sanderson Hotel on Berners Street and look around the bar. This place is way more fancy than anywhere I would choose; I’m more a pub girl than a bar girl but hey, I’m not going to say no to posh drinks in a nice place if that is what the gentleman so wishes. I’m here to meet Al; his picture was nice, he works in the media, and he was free tonight. Those are three great reasons to go on a date, as far as I’m concerned. Mostly the bit about his picture being nice, of course.

I scan the bar and see him. He’s cute, but the photo was obviously an old one. His hair is much longer now, and his face much older. But that’s OK. I don’t judge people for using the most flattering photo of themselves for online dating, of course they do. Therefore, I always expect to be a little bit disappointed in real life, and hope their personality makes up for it. Al certainly looks older than his photo, but as I get closer to him, I realise he’s really, really gorgeous.

‘Hi,’ I say, sitting on the stool next to him. ‘This is so fancy, do you come here often?’

I’m joking. Obviously. No one ever actually says, ‘Do you come here often?’ He looks a little surprised that I take a seat. Was I supposed to ask his permission?

‘No, I haven’t been here before actually. I’m not the kind of guy who comes to places like this, if I’m honest.’

‘OK,’ I say, thinking it odd that he suggested it then. I’d never come to a posh hotel bar like this either, they reek of affairs.

‘What are you drinking?’ I ask, presuming he’s just a little nervous.

‘A Pisco Sour.’

‘Great, I’ll have the same.’ I gesture to the barman to bring me one over.

‘Just a drink though, OK? I’m not up for anything else,’ he says, sternly.

I am so stunned, the best response I can give him is my jaw falling open.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. But I don’t like leading people on.’

‘I literally just walked in the door. Maybe I don’t fancy you either, thought of that?’ I say, stepping down off the stool.

‘Well, I suppose if you’re doing well and in a position to be picky, then that would make sense.’

‘Doing well? What? Just because I swiped right on your weird photo doesn’t mean I was gagging for you, it’s just dinner.’ I should walk away, but after dealing with Shane Bower and my boss, I’m done with not arguing back to misogynistic arrogant men who think it’s their God-given right to belittle women. Screw him.

‘I bet you’re married with kids and looking for some young piece of ass to fuck before you go home to them, aren’t you?’ I continue, a little surprised by my own vitriol.

‘Woah. Firstly, no, I’m not married and I don’t have kids. Secondly, what the hell does swiping right mean?’

‘What do you mean, “what the hell does swiping right mean”? Tinder. You know what I mean.’

‘Tinder? I’ve never been on Tinder in my life,’ he says, looking genuinely baffled.

I look properly at his face.

‘You’re not Al, are you?’

‘No, I’m not Al. And I take it you’re not a hooker?’

‘No! No, I am certainly not a hooker.’

He follows my eyes to the other end of the bar, where a guy with shorter brown hair in a grey shirt is angrily tapping away on his phone and simultaneously looking towards the door. I get my phone out of my bag. I have five messages from Al, each describing himself in more detail and asking ‘Which one are you?’

‘I’m Jason,’ he says, reaching a hand towards me.

‘Tara,’ I say, realising I am wildly attracted to him.

The barman brings over my drink.

An hour later, Jason and I have drunk three Pisco Sours, eaten two bowls of crisps, a bowl of olives and torn up three swanky bar mats. We’ve talked about politics, how much we miss our childhood dogs, and even had a heated but jovial altercation about the correct way to make a good Bolognese.

As we appear to be having an unexpected but sensational connection that feels like a date, I notice the real Al leave with a woman in a very tight dress.

‘There you go,’ Jason says, ‘Al did alright in the end. In one hundred pounds’ time it’ll be like it never happened.’

‘I made a lucky escape,’ I say, sipping the last of my drink, allowing my eyes to flirt for me. ‘So you’re single, you don’t have kids, you don’t sleep with hookers and you don’t use Tinder. You were also just sitting in a bar alone on a Friday and not waiting for someone. Now tell me, what is wrong with you?’ I ask, cheekily.

‘Hey, I love hookers. I just didn’t fancy you.’

I affectionately thump him on the leg.

‘I’m old fashioned, I guess. And hopeful. I don’t use Tinder because the idea of it doesn’t sit right with me. I think I’m single because I’m picky and I pick the wrong women. And I’m sitting here alone because my publisher summoned a meeting to assure her that my book was coming along, and after a right royal rollicking I have been sitting here and pretending it’s all fine for the last two hours.’

‘Your publisher? You write?’ I ask, finding that painfully sexy.

‘Actually no, I’m a photographer. But I’m doing my first book and I stupidly agreed for there to be a lot of words as well as pictures. My deadline is in three weeks. My assistant has locked me out of the Internet and I’m about to crawl into a cave to get it finished.’

‘What’s the book about?’

‘Well my work is usually centred around people, and mostly people not being who they seem. I did a big story for The Times Magazine about multi-millionaires who live like they’re on the dole, and it got picked up as a book. It’s great, but the article was a thousand words and this will be around forty thousand words and I seem to write approximately ten words every seventeen hours.’

‘Wow. I read that article, it was fascinating. Your work is amazing. Why would anyone not spend all that money? It’s bizarre,’ I say. ‘I have so many questions I don’t know where to start.’

‘Good. Then don’t. I don’t mean to be rude, but until tomorrow morning I would like to pretend it isn’t happening. Can we talk about anything but work?’

‘Sure. I don’t mind,’ I say, really enjoying the idea of that. My life consists of only work and Annie, and as much as I love them both, a night off would be nice.

‘But sorry. I should ask you what you do, shouldn’t I?’ he says, realising it might be rude not to.

‘Yup, you probably should. I work in TV. Documentaries. I love what I do, it’s challenging and diverse but the details can wait. You’re right, it’s Friday night and we have other things we should be talking about, don’t we?’

‘We do?’

‘Yes, we do. You said you date the wrong women, so who are these “wrong women”?’ I ask, hoping he doesn’t describe me.

‘Just that. Wrong for me. I’m extremely turned on by ambition and success, so go for women who have achieved a lot, but the downside of that is that they never seem to want kids. And I’m one of those guys who is desperate for a family. I want to fall in love and have babies. But I’m starting to think that’s the unsexiest thing a man can say, because whenever I say it I get dumped.’

‘Oh,’ I say, feeling like a piece of old meat that’s well past its sell-by date.

‘See? That’s what happens. I tell women I want kids and they make that face. The perils of being an old-fashioned man in a modern woman’s world.’

‘No, I think it’s nice you want kids, and you want to do it properly. And that you think it’s a woman’s world,’ I say, pushing my empty glass gently towards the other side of the bar. ‘I actually have a kid. A girl, Annie, she’s six. I mean, there’s no way on earth I’m having another, no way, but she’s my world.’

‘Who’s her dad?’ he asks, bluntly.

‘Wow, you went straight there, didn’t you?’ I say, stunned by his nerve, but also relieved by the idea of getting it out the way. I think of Sophie, in that hideous marriage where her entire life is a lie. I’m not doing that. If this goes anywhere, he’s going to have to take me for who I am.

‘A guy called Nick. I never caught his surname.’ I open my eyes wide and raise my eyebrows, as if to say, ‘Go on, bring on the judgement.’

‘OK, that’s … was it a one-night stand, or something more sinister?’

‘Oh no, nothing sinister. A one-night stand. A very quick, very nice one-night stand where one of my eggs got jiggy with one of his sperms. And before you ask how he reacted, he doesn’t know. I never told him.’

I don’t look up. Fuck it. I’m forty-two. I’m a mother. I’m very specifically looking for someone to be a part of mine and Annie’s life and if he can’t take the truth about me, then what’s the point in us having another drink? I prepare myself to be rejected.

He calls the waiter over.

‘Can I get a bottle of champagne, please?’

‘What’s that for?’ I ask, a little confused.

‘If this works out, I just got a free kid.’ He thumps my leg back and laughs.

This guy is fucking brilliant.

Stella

I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and force myself not to look away. There is a reason I don’t do this very often. It’s impossible to forget someone whose face you see every time you see your own. At times it seems cruel, at other times I’ve felt so lucky that when I need to see Alice, I can.

I scrunch my nose up and widen my mouth, but I can’t quite manage it the way she used to. It was the only way people could really tell us apart, by her smile. It was her own, even I couldn’t do it so sweetly.

Our mum used to say that she was the rose and I was the thorn. Part of the same flower, but with a totally different effect on the world. My spiky nature was hidden by her softness. Now I’m exposed, without the petals of her personality to hide behind. It’s a daily struggle not to prick anyone who comes near me.

‘Why are you wearing that?’ says Phil, coming into the bathroom.

‘You made me jump, I didn’t hear you get home,’ I say, snapping myself out of Alice mode. He puts a tube of toothpaste into the little cup by the sink, and starts unwrapping a new razor.

‘Did you get dinner? I was going to make tuna bake?’ I say, realising he’s been to the shop and wanting to distract him from his question.

‘I got chicken. Why are you wearing that, Stella?’

He is referring to the skirt I have on. A purple and blue vintage circle skirt with a bird print on it. It was Alice’s. Her favourite item of clothing. I can’t bring myself to chuck it out and I wear it all the time, even though it makes Phil really angry when I do.

‘It’s just a skirt, Phil,’ I say, walking huffily into the bedroom. Come on, Stella, don’t snap, I think to myself. What would Alice say? I try to be more like her. More reasonable, more kind, more happy. Even though I want to bite him, make him sting. There is a bomb inside me that is ready to explode. But if it goes off, I’m not sure anyone would survive the destruction. So I swallow hard, channel Alice, and try to put out the lit fuse.

‘Maybe it’s time to get rid of her clothes?’ he says, knowing he is on dangerous ground.

‘Sure,’ I say calmly. ‘And why don’t I just shave off my face while I’m at it?’

‘OK, Stella, don’t be like that. You need to let Alice go. It’s time.’

I walk calmly into the kitchen.

‘How would you like the chicken done?’ I ask him. He follows me in.

‘I don’t think it’s healthy for you to wear Alice’s clothes any more, OK?’

‘I could breadcrumb it? Or do a stir fry?’ I get the wok out of a cupboard.

‘Stella, for fuck’s sake, will you listen to me. Take that skirt off!’

‘Fine,’ I shout, slamming the wok on the work surface. I pull the waistband open and push the skirt to the ground. Stepping out of it, I pick it up and I screw it into a ball, then smash it into the bin. ‘There, OK? Happy now?’

Phil looks at me pitifully, and shakes his head.

‘Now, would you like breaded chicken, or a stir fry?’ I ask him, very calmly, standing in my knickers, holding a spatula.

‘You need help, Stella. You seriously need help.’

With that, he storms out of the flat, and slams the door. When I know he’s gone, I get the skirt out of the bin and put it back on.

I think I’ll do the stir fry.

Cam

Lying on her bed, Cam watches Mark sleeping, his hairless body glistening with post-sex sweat, his muscles like a mountainous desert of smooth, sweeping vales, orange from the glow of streetlights flooding the room. He is the perfect lover. The kind of lover authors give to rejected housewives in filthy novels. He’s perfect for what Cam needs right now.

She wonders if she should kiss him gently as he sleeps, but reminds herself of the boundaries of such relationships. Sex should be tackled with abandon; affection should be handled with care.

Instead, she reaches for her computer. Having a younger lover is the kind of blog fodder she can’t deny herself.

The mid-to-late twenties, it’s such a prime age for a guy, don’t you think? Post-teenage disaster, pre-any desire to sow their seed and have children. Often at the peak of fitness, finding their way in the professional world and working their way through women like a snow plough with a penis.

I love them. For women like me, dare I tell you again – thirty-six, single, happy – they really are quite the gift. I recently found myself one whilst queuing in Whole Foods. I was buying organic frozen pizza and he was buying protein shakes. Our eyes met, we made general chit chat and an hour and a half later we were in bed. It wasn’t our stilted conversation that pulled us together, it was lust. Just lust. If you judge me for that, then I don’t think you understand how mutual adult relationships work. It’s healthy and consensual; there really is nothing to have an opinion about.

But we love it, don’t we? Judging other people’s sexual choices, especially if they have an air of controversy. We laugh, we question, we put on our halos and tell anyone doing anything we don’t do ourselves that they’re wrong or weird. But really, if it feels good and everyone is happy (and legal), then who is anyone to say it isn’t right?

How is it that such a private and intimate act, like sex, gains so much social traction? It excites people in the physical sense, but it excites them even more when they can gossip about someone else’s deviances. It makes no sense when society is as diverse as it is, that some still feel uncomfortable when others don’t behave in a way that is considered ‘normal’.

But we were just told what was normal, weren’t we? It was written in the books before we were born, that monogamy was the way to go, that we are supposed to find ‘the one’, get married, have kids. But maybe monogamy isn’t for everyone. Maybe some people, like me, really don’t have any fear of being alone. In fact, it’s the end goal.

I’m so happy not to be normal. At thirty-six, I have no intentions to settle down. There are some people in my life that find that unbearable. I can’t be any other way.

There are more single women in their thirties and forties than any other point in history; we are the fastest-growing demographic, but being single doesn’t mean you want, or deserve less sex. My choice is to have a younger lover, to give me the physical attention that I crave, but the emotional freedom that I rely on. That’s my choice, and as I sit here looking at a beautiful creature, asleep in my bed, here when I need him, gone when I don’t, I feel proud not to be normal. In fact, I recommend it.

Sweet dreams,

Cam x

Tara

At 11.36 p.m. we’re outside the Sanderson, getting off with each other like we are very much not on a London street in full view of anyone walking past. ‘Come back to my place,’ Jason says gently. ‘We can watch TV together. I’ll lend you some pyjamas. We can talk about feelings?’ He pushes even closer into me and puts his hands on my face. ‘Or we can just fuck in this doorway and deal with how much I fancy you that way.’

He kisses me. Our mouths taste exactly the same and go together like jigsaw pieces. Like when you’ve been trying to open a door with the wrong key for ages and when you finally use the right one it just slots in so easily that you realise how wrong you’ve been getting it for so long. My sexual desire powers down into my pants like the lights and music on the set of a TV gameshow. My crotch is pulling me towards this guy with a force that feels as good as sex itself. This is the connection I’ve been pining for every Saturday night that I’ve spent alone after Annie has gone to bed. Feeling cold, empty and rejected by my own choices after yet another shit date the night before. All I’ve wanted is to at least feel genuinely turned on. An actual, full body, one hundred per cent real impulse to shag someone senseless, rather than just because of a distant hope that sex might give us the connection I’m looking for.

I pull away. ‘Old fashioned’, ‘wife and family’, ‘a free kid’. His words ring in my head. If this is really happening, then it can wait.

‘Stop,’ I say, stepping out onto the street and away from him. ‘Let’s stop. Let’s not do this tonight. Let’s wait.’

‘Oh God, you’re crazy?’ he says, his mouth glistening under the street lights.

‘I’m not being crazy. Let’s not do this tonight. Let’s go out again, next Friday? Date. The “old-fashioned” way?’

Even if I never see him again, I can at least walk away from this amazing night with no sexual shame.

‘I want to see you again,’ I say. ‘I just think it’s OK to be sensible sometimes.’

‘You know they still had sex in the old-fashioned days?’ he says, adjusting his crotch but giving me a smile that shows he understands. ‘At least let me get you a cab?’

‘No, I’ll get the train, honestly a cab will take ages, I don’t live far from the station.’

‘Where do you live anyway?’ he asks.

‘Walthamstow,’ I tell him.

‘Walthamstow, I’ve never been. Maybe next Friday will be the night I take the Victoria Line all the way?’

‘Maybe you will,’ I say. ‘It’s a pretty sexy train.’

I loop my arm through his, and we walk to the station.

‘Take my number,’ I say, when we get to Tottenham Court Road tube. ‘I promise I am not trying to make a polite excuse, I really want to see you again. I want to do this again.’ I kiss him, showing him that without any doubt I really do fancy him. After a few seconds, he pulls away and takes his phone out of his pocket. He taps in my number as I tell it to him.

‘Is text sex allowed?’ he says. To which I laugh and nod my head.

‘Any text is allowed. Just text me.’

‘I will,’ he says. ‘Answer the text.’

‘I will.’

He kisses me again and doubt nearly makes me say, ‘I’LL COME BACK TO YOURS AND RIDE YOU ALL NIGHT.’ But I think of my feelings, I think of Annie, and I manage to control my urges somehow. As I walk away, I feel so good about myself – wildly turned on and like I could turn back, rip his clothes off and shag his brains out in the middle of Oxford Street – but also, so good about myself.

Just as I get to the bottom of the escalator, I get a text.

Tonight was perfect. Can’t wait to do it again. Jx

I stop. I have one bar of signal and want to send a reply before I go further underground. I’ve made my point, there isn’t really any need to hold back any more, I don’t want to leave him with any doubt about how I feel, so I just go for it.

I’ll not be so polite next time. I’ll want more of what happened in that doorway. I wonder if you’ll have any special requests?

I press send and a speech bubble pops up right away but my signal goes. It’ll be something nice to read when I get back above ground.

Jason

Jason is still standing at the entrance to the train station, hoping that maybe she changes her mind and comes back out. But seeing as this isn’t a Richard Curtis movie, he soon realises she really has gone. He’s disappointed, until he gets Tara’s text.

‘Any special requests?’

How incredibly hot. Jason can’t believe his luck. She’s clever, funny and sexy as hell. He fancies her more than he’s fancied anyone in ages, but he wants to play this right too.

‘Any special requests?’ Hmmmmm. Maybe it’s a little too soon to tell her that he loves the idea of her whipping her hair all over his body? It’s just his thing, he can’t explain it. It’s nothing seedy, or weird. He just loves women with long hair. Of which she had plenty. Long, thick brown hair. It was the first thing he noticed but luckily sense got the better of him and he didn’t entertain the idea out loud. He could really do with some sex though; it’s been a while since anything notable. He texts back.

I think we’ll …

And just at that moment, a cyclist crashes into him. The guy falls off but quickly picks himself up and gets back on his bike and speeds off. Was he embarrassed? Escaping someone? Jason doesn’t give a shit, all he cares about is the fact that his phone flew out of his hand and disappeared down a drain.

Tara, and her number, gone.

FUCK.

Tara

As the train passes through Seven Sisters, I look around me. My carriage is empty. I’ve got that heaviness inside me. That dull thud of my libido like a heart thumping in my underwear. I could wait until I get home to give it what it wants, but then here I am. Alone on a train. Gently drunk and reeling off the back of an electrifying encounter. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this fluttering of excitement. Why wait?

I see a copy of the Metro on the seat and lay it over my lap, then slip my hand inside my trousers and then into my underwear. My head falls back against the wall of the train and I think about Jason’s body pressing against mine. I imagine us in that doorway, naked now. My legs wrapped around his waist as he pushes me against the door, not caring if anyone sees. Totally locked into my fantasy, I rub hard, it feels so good. My knees fall apart and I feel cool air filter through my pubic hair as the newspaper falls to the floor. The train starts to slow. I’m running out of time, but I can’t and won’t stop. I press harder, think harder, breathe harder until I come harder than I have in a long, long time. The train slows down. I know I have to move. Just one more second in this moment.

I hear a sniff.

My eyes bounce open and I see a kid – white, blond, in a tracksuit. He’s holding a phone. Taking a picture? Or God, is he actually filming me?

‘What the fuck?’ I scream as I launch myself at him. But as the train stops I’m jolted forward and end up face down in the aisle with my trousers around my ankles. The youth’s feet disappear as he runs off the train.

‘PERVERT,’ I scream to a closing door.

What the hell did I just do?

2
Cam

Over a breakfast of black coffee and scrambled eggs on toast with an enormous dollop of ketchup, Cam is sitting at her kitchen table wearing a t-shirt and knickers, making a few finishing touches to the column she’s been writing since Mark left to go to the gym at nine a.m. As she’s reading through it, searching for missing commas and spelling mistakes, her doorbell starts ringing so aggressively she thinks there must be a fire. Launching herself into her bedroom to pull on some leggings, she runs to the intercom saying, ‘What? What?’ only to hear her sister say, ‘Cam, it’s Mel. We were on our way to the Heath and thought we’d come to say hi.’

She buzzes them up, instantly hearing the stampede of Mel’s three children racing up the stairs. She opens her door and in pelts Max, eleven, Tamzin, nine, and Jake, four. They all run straight to the window and start naming all the London landmarks that they can see in the view.

‘Morning,’ she says as they pass her. ‘MORNING, AUNTY CAM,’ they shout in reply.

Behind them comes Mel, trudging up the stairs, weighed down with beach bags and a cool box. ‘Here, let me help you,’ says Cam, rushing to help her.

‘This is the most un-kid-friendly flat I’ve ever been to; how many stairs are there? Oh, Cam, you haven’t got a bra on!’ says Mel, disapprovingly.

‘There are forty-six steep steps, it’s an old building and I don’t have kids so it’s fine for me. And I am not wearing a bra because I’m at home. Alone. Or at least I was.’

‘I know, but still. You could have put one on before you opened the door.’

‘Mel, you’re my sister?’

‘Yes, but, the kids … anyway.’

Cam shuts the door and sarcastically mouths, ‘Welcome’ under her breath.

Mel drops all of the bags onto the floor, puts her palms on her lower back and arches backwards. She lets out a loud sigh but it doesn’t hide the sound of her cracking bones. She looks exhausted.

‘The place is nice,’ she says, looking around. ‘It’s big, won’t you get lonely?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Cam says. ‘Tea?’

‘Better not. I’ll need a wee in the park if I do.’

‘Right,’ says Cam, putting on the kettle anyway. She fancies more coffee, and is grateful her bladder allows it. ‘All well?’

‘Not really, Mum is worried sick. She thinks that your website is inappropriate and she’s too embarrassed to go to her ladies’ club because she thinks all the other ladies think you’re a bra-burning lesbian!’

‘Well I guess that would explain why I’m not wearing one.’ Cam gives Mel a ‘touché’ look, and thinks back to the post she wrote last night about having a younger lover. Her mother will hate it, but at least it will help with the lesbian part.

‘Is there anything you can do to make her feel better, it’s literally all she talks about?’

‘Mel, there is nothing I can do to make Mum feel better, I am who I am. I’ve told her multiple times not to read my blog but she keeps doing it. If it tortures her so much she should just stop.’

Mel waddles over to the window. ‘OK kids, five minutes. I want to get to the park before it gets busy and someone steals our tree.’ She turns to Cam. ‘I need to sit in the shade or my blood gets too warm and my veins bulge.’

Cam looks at her sister and isn’t sure what to say. She looks terrible. Mel never really coped with having kids, not physically or emotionally. She used to be sporty and have a great body, but progressively after each kid she got fatter and fatter and now she’s a hefty size eighteen. Unfortunately, she carries most of her weight on her bum and thighs, so she suffers from chafed skin during the summer months and is largely uncomfortable on hot days. She’s very pretty, possibly even beautiful, but the stress of life and a lack of sleep, as well as coping with three kids, makes it hard to spot the smile that used to attract so many boys at school. She got post-natal depression after every baby, and her marriage is holding on by a shoestring. Cam is sure Mel’s husband, Dave, is having an affair, and she doesn’t really blame him. Mel’s turned into a complicated person with a lot of anger issues in regards to how her life turned out. She’s the best advert for not having kids that Cam has ever seen.

The truth is, Mel is more like Cam than she would ever like to admit. She was never maternal, she never needed to be in relationships to be happy. But she was weaker when it came to standing up to tradition. Their mother saw no future for her four daughters other than marriage and babies. The two eldest, Tanya and Angela, were happy to conform. They both married guys they met at university and have seven kids between them. Tanya teaches yoga and Angela runs a daycare; it’s all pretty sickening and ideal in Cam’s view. Like they read House & Garden and try and live within one of the pictures. But Mel, like Cam, wasn’t designed that way. She was clever, academic and top of the class. She wanted to study law and work in the city. She had plans well beyond being a stay-at-home mum. But then she met Dave and got pregnant with Max. She stupidly told their mother, despite Cam warning her not to, and the guilt laid upon her for even considering an abortion was too much for her to fight against. So she had a kid at twenty-six, even though she didn’t want it. And ever since then, she has lived a life that she wasn’t supposed to live.

‘So, kids, you excited to go to the park?’ Cam asks, walking over to see them. They all turn around, like monkeys in an enclosure who know they’re being watched.

‘Why don’t you have a boyfriend?’ asks Tamzin, a mini version of Cam, even down to the massive hands.

‘Maybe I do have a boyfriend,’ Cam says, not willing to take any shit from a monkey.

‘No, you don’t. Mum said you might like girls,’ Max states, casually.

‘Max, that was a private conversation between me and Granny,’ Mel says sharply, trying to silence him with her eyes.

‘Then why did you say it when we were all at the dinner table?’ Max says, closing that conversation. It’s no surprise to Cam that her mother and sister talk about her when she isn’t around. She is all they talk about when she is in the room, why on earth would they stop when she isn’t?

‘Guys, one day you will be grown-ups and you will see there is much more to life than having boyfriends and girlfriends. Like having lovely homes and jobs that you enjoy,’ Cam says, spreading her arms as if to draw attention to her gorgeous new apartment. They all turn back to the window. ‘Do you like it?’ They don’t answer. Kids are so unobservant, Cam observes.

‘I want to get married and have three children,’ says Tamzin, proudly, looking back over her shoulder.

‘Or maybe you won’t, maybe you will change your mind, or maybe you won’t meet anyone that you love and you’ll happily while away the years on your own in a nice flat surrounded by expensive art without the fear of a little monster drawing on it with a marker pen?’

Mel rolls her eyes at her little sister. ‘She’s not one of your “women don’t need men” crew Cam, every little girl wants the same dream.’ Her wind up is triumphed by her son.

‘I hate art,’ says Max, moving towards Cam’s laptop. He broke her last one by jumping on it because Cam’s connection wasn’t strong enough to illegally download Kung Fu Panda.

‘No way,’ she says, snatching it out of his way. ‘You can’t go anywhere near that.’

‘Why? Has it got porn on it?’ Max says, very rudely.

‘Max! How do you know about porn?’ interjects Mel, looking genuinely aghast.

‘From Aunty Cam’s blog. She wrote about how porn was good for you.’

Cam looks at Mel with a guilty face. Mel looks back at her with an angry one. ‘What? Oh come on, it’s not like there were pictures! And I didn’t show him my blog.’

‘No, but he looks at it whenever he goes online. It’s out there, Cam, anyone can see it. Can’t you write about other things? Stuff that won’t psychologically damage my children if they read it?’

‘Oh calm down, he’s not damaged. And perhaps you need to sort out your parental settings.’ They both turn to look at Max, who is now pulling a moonie out of Cam’s window, while Tamzin is banging on it to get the people on the street’s attention. Jake is watching and learning.

‘You better put that away, Max,’ Cam says. ‘I’ve heard little boys go to prison for exposing themselves around here.’

Max pulls up his trousers. He’s a cocky little so-and-so but in that childlike way, he looks like he is debating if what Cam just said is true. He obviously doesn’t want to risk it.

‘OK, well, I suppose we better go,’ says Mel, looping the bags back over her wrists and making a ‘huggghhh’ noise as she bends her knees and lifts them. ‘SO great you live so close to the park, lucky you. I hate the tube, it’s so hot, my veins can’t take it. Come on, kids. Park, now.’

‘Look, I have to work for a bit, but why don’t I come join you in the park today?’ Cam says, wanting to be with them all, but not in her lovely new home.

‘Sure,’ says Mel, and herds the kids together. They run down the stairs, leaving Mel struggling with the bags. ‘Please put a bra on!’ she shouts and trudges behind.

Back at the kitchen table, Cam, as usual after seeing one of her family members, feels alive with motivation. For some, being misunderstood by the people closest to them would lock them in a box, make them insecure, shy away. But for Cam, it’s been the inspiration for almost everything she has ever done. She’s been gently tapping on her mum and sisters’ shoulders most of her life saying, accept me, I’m different from you, but I’m happy. Yet for whatever reason, they’ve never been able to do it. She knows her mother has a hard time reading her blogs, and as much as she tells her she shouldn’t, Cam also loves that she does. www.HowItIs.com is her place to say everything she needs to say, to speak her mind and not be belittled by what society, or her mother, deems as normal. She’s proud of who she is. Not fitting in has been the catalyst to her success. It’s time to write a blog for anyone who is happy to feel alone in a crowd.

Does anyone want to hear a love story? It’s not one that has ever been told before. It’s called, Cam Stacey and her great love, The Internet. Let me start at the beginning …

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Cammie. She was generally quite good at things at school, working hard and keen on doing well. She had a rebellious streak, in that she smoked fags and kissed boys and drank too much cider, but as a whole, she was a pretty good kid.

She wasn’t one for trying to be cool, but by not trying to be cool, she probably came across a bit like she was trying to be cool. She wore tight trousers and band t-shirts when the other girls were wearing short skirts and low-cut tops. She didn’t have many close friendships. Instead, she sat around talking about music with boys, rather than gossip sessions with the girls. All in all, she got through her teenage years without too much trouble; girls found her a bit intimidating, boys probably did too. All she wanted was a bit of peace and quiet. With three older sisters at home, leaving the house was like a holiday, and she didn’t want to fill that time with too many people, so she generally kept herself to herself.

Yes, you’ve guessed it, Cammie is me. Here is how the story goes on …

I left school, went to uni, and studied English. I was one of those people who read everything on the course modules. I was never without a book, and I had a freakish tendency to read multiple newspapers a day from cover to cover. Why? Because I knew that I had to be a writer. I knew I had to absorb words to be good at it. It was the only way that I was ever going to get the billions of thoughts and opinions that were in my head, out. In a way that anyone would understand. Because socially, I really sucked.

I did what all aspiring writers did back then, and I wrote pages and pages of articles, printed them off and sent them to editors in yellow envelopes. I never got any replies. Then, this amazing thing happened … they called it email. Suddenly I could send my work as attachments to emails, so I did that, but still, I never got any replies. And then I read an article about this little-known hobby that they were calling ‘blogging’. This woman was blogging about her family. Her husband was a photographer, she was beautiful, their kids were cute and their dog was fluffy. So every day, she got her husband to take an adorable picture and she posted it with a note about what they did that day. It was kind of sickening if I am honest, not my thing at all. But then I read that 30,000 people checked in every single day to read what she had to say. And I knew this was the answer for me.

So, Reader, I married him! By him, I mean, the Internet. And by married, I mean I built a website. And then, we started making babies. (You get the picture by now. By babies, I mean writing blogs.)

I found my voice online and that helped me find my voice inside. I wrote and wrote, and every day, without fail, I posted something. Whether it was something I was feeling, or a reaction to something in the news. And then, I made everyone I knew read it. I had flyers printed that I put on cars and through letterboxes. I emailed the link to every editor of every paper and magazine, and I posted the link on thousands of people’s MySpace pages. It became my life; it became an addiction. If I wasn’t writing, I was promoting. I didn’t need editors of newspapers to notice me, I was getting an audience all of my own. And look at me now. I have one of the longest running lifestyle blogs in the UK. www.HowItIs.com started sixteen years ago next week and it’s still going strong. Over half a million people read my blogs each day; that’s a bigger readership than most print publications.

I’m telling this story for anyone who has a voice but doesn’t know how to get it heard. You don’t have to be a social butterfly, you don’t have to be charming, overly confident, beautiful or thin. All you need to have is something to say.

The Internet is the love of my life, because it allows me to be who I want to be. Words that would get stuck in my mouth tumble out of my fingertips with total ease. I’m not sure what I would have become if I didn’t have this as an outlet. And you know the best bit? I can connect with hundreds of thousands of people every single day, without even having to say a word. So go for it, post your feelings online. Even if no one reads it now, there is a little piece of you out there that will last forever, it’s kinda magical!

Cam x

Tara

‘Mum, the cotton wool keeps falling off,’ says Annie, as we walk up to Trudy’s door. There are two birthday helium balloons tied to the handle and a little Post-it note saying, ‘LET YOURSELVES IN, PRINCESSES’.

My head is thumping from too much booze and almost no sleep. I can’t get the image of that guy’s face out of my head, his camera aiming at me like a gun that was loaded with shame. And Jason still hasn’t texted anything since before I got on the train; how did I get that so wrong?

‘Mum?’ pushes Annie. ‘I feel silly.’

I turned up to my mum’s house at eleven thirty this morning armed with an empty cardboard box, a Pritt Stick, a sheet of orange card, a piece of elastic, a white hat, some white tights and six packets of cotton wool balls. It’s amazing what you can muster from a Tesco Metro when you have to create a fancy dress costume for a six-year-old. I cut a hole in the box for Annie’s head and covered the whole thing with cotton wool balls. I made a carrot nose out of the orange card and elastic and with the tights and the hat, she looks great. OK, not great, but the best I could do.

‘Snowmen are round, not square, Mummy.’

‘Annie, it’s OK. You look snowy.’

‘But why am I a snowman, it’s the summer?’

‘There was a snowman in Frozen, wasn’t there?’ I say, which doesn’t seem to help.

We go in. It’s clear the party is happening in the garden; the shrieking of excited children is tearing through the house. I should have taken more Nurofen.

The house is nice. A very large Victorian terrace with tidy bookshelves, a massive TV and a posh navy sofa with a big doll’s house in front of a bay window. I’m surprised Amanda has such good taste, and her husband obviously earns loads because, apart from two large chests of practical-looking drawers, all with neatly written labels describing what toys they contain, the place looks impressively un-IKEA.

‘Annie, Annie,’ yells Trudy as she runs excitedly into the living room, followed by three other little princesses in their perfect, shop-bought fancy dress frocks. I feel instantly sorry for Annie. She looks ridiculous in comparison.

The other girls take her hand and drag her outside into the garden, where a small bouncy castle is being challenged by around fifteen extremely excited six-year-old girls. To the left of it is a long table with a blue tablecloth and plate after plate of blue and white foods. I want to eat all of it.

At the far end of the table are about twenty adults, men and women. Mums and dads. Why do I get so nervous in these situations? My hangover anxiety tells me that I have been the topic of conversation until now.

‘Hello,’ I say, approaching the table.

‘Tara,’ says Amanda, coming over all friendly, as if the uncomfortable moment at the school gate never happened. It’s a little unnerving. ‘Wine?’ she says, offering me a glass of white. I swear everyone has stopped talking and is smiling at me in that awkward way that people at parties do while they are waiting for you to make eye contact with them so they can say hello. I quickly look around them all, and mutter hello so they can get on with their conversations. ‘Well?’ pushes Amanda, waving the glass of wine under my nose. I think for a second, but my face must speak volumes because she retracts the glass and says, ‘Too early to drink?’

‘Oh, no, never too early. I just had a big night last night. Feeling a bit shaky.’

‘Oh come on, hair of the dog, it works wonders,’ says a man in a blue shirt approaching us.

‘This is Pete, my husband,’ she says. Something in her face shows me she is angry with him.

‘Hi,’ I say, reaching my hand out to meet Pete’s. He is tall, with a mouth that takes up a lot of his face, and really flirty eyes.

‘I could whip you up a Bloody Mary,’ he says. ‘I was a bit shaky myself this morning. I’ve got some already made up in the fridge?’

‘You know what, that would be perfect. Thank you!’ I say, as he goes inside.

‘Annie’s costume, it’s … it’s brave.’

‘Thanks, Amanda,’ I say, taking that as a compliment and making it clear I have her name right now. ‘I like to encourage her to be her own person, rather than just do whatever everyone else does.’ We look over at Annie. She is stepping out of the box and into a princess dress. ‘It doesn’t always work.’

‘Sure.’

We stand together, pretending to be engrossed in what our children are doing, trying to think of something to say, but something negative is in action between us. It’s cosmic, out of our control. I don’t have the energy to fight it.

‘Here you go,’ says Pete, handing me a Bloody Mary and breaking the silence.

‘Wow, celery and everything. Cheers.’ We chink glasses, and I take a big sip. It’s delicious.

‘OK, well, have fun,’ Amanda says, walking away, as if she has hit her limit on what she can handle from me. ‘Pete!’ she says, ordering him away. I can’t help but notice him glance at my tits as he goes.

‘Hello, hi, hey, hi, hello,’ I say, walking over to the table of food and the small crowd of people around it. ‘Mmmmm, bright blue cupcakes, yummy,’ I say, taking a paper plate and loading it full of food. Everyone is looking at me with ‘isn’t she fascinating’ faces. There are as many dads as mums. I feel very conspicuous. Very solo. How is it I can be so confident at work, but put me in a group of parents and I want to bury my head in the birthday cake?

‘A Bloody Mary and carbohydrates, that can only mean one thing,’ says Tracey, Gabby Fletcher’s mum, coming over to me. We’ve chatted a few times before; she’s generally quite friendly but also has that air of primness about her that so many women seem to get when they get married and have kids. Even the wildest ones, like Sophie, even though she doesn’t have children. They used to be hard drinking, slutty drug munchers, but now they’re boring, safe, and married to men who would implode if they knew the things they used to get up to. I get the impression from Tracey that she has a past she doesn’t want to admit to. She always takes a second to answer questions, as if she is reminding herself of the right thing to say. Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe not.

‘Yup, killer hangover. This table has everything I need on it.’

Pause.

‘I haven’t had a proper hangover in years, I just couldn’t do it with my two,’ she says, and the rest of the parents mumble in agreement.

‘Oh, I know. My mum has Annie on Friday nights, so I can go out and have a sleep in. I’m not sure I could handle it otherwise.’

Tracey glances back at the group. I wonder if she’s been sent over to get information.

‘And I suppose you can do weekend swaps with Annie’s dad too? I mean, God forbid anything ever happen with me and James, but a bit of child sharing must be nice?’

It’s not unusual for people to presume that Annie’s dad and I split up. It is unusual for me to be asked about it in front of an audience of mums and dads at a Disney-themed birthday party. This topic gives me extreme anxiety at the best of time. Mix that with hangover fear, and I suddenly realise that my face is very sweaty.

‘Oh, actually Annie doesn’t have a dad,’ I say, stuffing half a blue cupcake into my mouth and hoping she moves on.

‘Oh. Yes, some of the girls and I were just saying, we don’t really know much about you, we just wanted to get to know you a little better.’

Girls, I think. Why do women refer to themselves as girls? It’s so weird.

‘Oh, right,’ I say, eating more cupcake.

‘So, was it a bad breakup?’ she asks, after watching me chew and swallow the whole thing.

‘No, nope. No, we were never actually together.’

The other mums have now moved closer. I wonder how many cupcakes I can get in my mouth at one time, so I don’t have to speak.

‘Oh, sorry I shouldn’t pry!’ Pause. ‘So, what, just a fling?’

I could just say yes, but as the Bloody Mary kicks in and joins last night’s alcohol that is still buzzing around my system, I have an unfamiliar wave of bravado.

‘Nope. Not a fling, a one-night stand. Well, there was a bit of flinging, I suppose. In that he flung some sperm up my vagina and into my uterus.’ I laugh, thinking that was pretty funny. Then I look at all of their faces, and realise it wasn’t.

‘That’s quite the image,’ Tracey says, picking up a cupcake she obviously has no intention of eating. ‘So he didn’t want to be involved?’ she asks, like a human lie detector that I know I won’t beat.

‘Nope. Actually he never knew. I never told him.’

Silence. For what feels like a very long time. I eventually realise this isn’t one of her weird pauses, she just has no idea what to say. My nerves keep speaking.

‘Anyway, now I’m dating and looking for love, not sperm. Real, actual love. So don’t worry, your husbands are safe, ladies!’ I let out a raucous and crazy laugh. What am I doing? Who am I being? Why the hell did I say that about their husbands being safe?

‘Pete,’ shouts Amanda across the garden. ‘Pete, let’s get the cake.’ I hadn’t realised that he was standing behind me again.

The crowd of parents disperses and spreads themselves into small groups around the garden. Every wife is making some sort of physical contact with their husband. I am left standing at the table alone, me and approximately 40,000 calories’ worth of blue puddings. I feel like the smashed-up sausage roll that nobody wants to eat.

After a minute or two, my anxiety wins.

‘Annie, Annie, come on, we have to go,’ I say, rushing over to the bouncy castle and elbowing parents out of my way to get my daughter.

‘But Mummy, we haven’t had the cake yet,’ she says, looking embarrassed and worried that I am serious.

‘We’ll have cake at home. Come on, grab your cardboard box.’

‘But …’

‘ANNIE, now!’

She does as she’s told, mortified that I just shouted at her in front of her friends. I don’t care, I’m too embarrassed to deal with judgement from these people. I also think I might be sick.

I grab Annie’s hand and hurry through the house, feeling like I’m escaping an avalanche. As I open the front door, Vicky Thomson is standing there, her fist up to start knocking. I jump about three feet into the air.

‘Tara,’ she says, ‘are you leaving? God, I’m so late. Is the party over, why have you got a blue mouth?’

So many questions. I push past her, dragging Annie by the hand.

‘OK, well, bye. And we should do coffee, I’ve written up a few more ideas, I really think one could …’

But I’ve strapped Annie in and driven away before she has the chance to finish. When I get around the corner, I feel a little calmer. Then I look in the rear view mirror and see Annie’s face.

My little princess is crying her eyes out.

Cam

‘Hello, yeah I’ve been waiting for my pizza for over an hour … Yes, it’s Stacey … What? I spoke to you myself? … Oh, forget it, I’ll call Domino’s.’

She hangs up.

‘That is so rubbish,’ Cam says to Mark, who is also very hungry but not the type to get annoyed. ‘It’s going to take ages to get here now.’

She storms over to the kitchen and aggressively opens and slams shut all of the cupboards and the fridge. They are all empty.

‘Babe, you get so hangry,’ says Mark, infuriating Cam a little with his youthful slang.

‘I’ve been craving pizza all day,’ she says, huffing.

‘Well then, let’s go out and get some?’ Mark suggests, flippantly.

‘What, and bring it back here?’

‘No, let’s go eat somewhere. It’s Saturday night. Date Night!’

Cam goes a little cold. Let’s go eat somewhere? As in, they sit opposite each other? In a restaurant? With clothes on? Making conversation? Is that possible?

Before Cam has the chance to question it, Mark is standing by the door, ready to leave. ‘Come on then, I’m starving,’ he says.

She picks up her keys, slips into some flip flops and follows him out. This is actually happening.

As Mark reads the menu, Cam stares at him. It’s been a few months since they met in the line at Whole Foods, they’ve had sex in every position imaginable, but she has no idea if he even has a middle name. Sitting opposite him now, she can’t think of a single thing to say.

‘I’m going for the meat feast, I don’t even know why I bother to read the menu. What about you?’ Mark asks, putting the menu down and nodding at a waiter.

‘Me? What about me?’ Cam asks, worried he’s asking her to express some feelings.

‘Er, what pizza you going for?’

‘Oh, a Hawaiian, always.’

‘Nah, can’t do fruit on pizza,’ Mark says.

‘Oh right,’ replies Cam, making a face that she thinks shows she is enjoying getting to know the small details of who he is, despite finding this terribly awkward.

It’s not that she doesn’t like Mark, or doesn’t like spending time with him. But she’s actively avoided traditional dating for most of her adult life; it isn’t what she’s good at. She’d rarely choose to sit opposite someone she didn’t know really well for an entire meal. A drink, probably. A coffee, fine. But a meal? A proper date? She’s not good at this. She’s good at being at home, in her pants, making general conversation between sex sessions. In that environment she has props, distractions from intense emotional interaction. But now here she is, sitting opposite her fuck buddy of a few months, realising for the first time that the age gap is actually a thing. She feels conspicuous. Like an older man with a young hot blonde. Out of bed, this feels a bit silly.

They order.

‘So what did you do today?’ he asks, as they wait.

‘Oh, um, I went to the park with my sister and niece and two nephews. We swam in the pond, it was nice,’ Cam says, shoving two olives into her mouth.

‘Ah, nice. I’ve got two nephews. Jacob and Jonah. Both want to be called JJ, so I just call them JJJJ, like Ja-Juh, Ja-Juh, and they find that really funny.’

‘That’s hilarious,’ says Cam, hiding her feelings by spitting olive pips into her hand.

‘They love me. I can pick them both up at once. They call me Uncle Hulk,’ Mark says, holding his arm up, bending his elbow, and flexing his biceps.

Cam smiles. He’s so nice, she doesn’t want to be rude, or mean, but …

‘So how old are yours?’ he asks, being completely acceptable and acting as any normal human being would in this situation. But it’s too much for Cam. She’s not sure why she’s finding this so excruciating, but she is. She can’t do it. She just can’t.

‘Mark, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling great, maybe sunstroke or something. Can we get the pizza boxed up and take it home?’

Mark doesn’t seem bothered. He still gets pizza, he still gets Cam – as far as he’s concerned, it’s all good.

‘Sure,’ he says, calling over a waiter to ask for the pizza to go. Cam instantly relaxes, and fills the time by getting her wallet out of her bag and counting out some money. ‘I’ll get this,’ she says. Mark happily accepts.

As they leave, Cam thinks again.

‘You know, maybe I’ll just go home alone. I’m sorry, I think the heat really got to me today. Then not eating, and chasing kids around all afternoon. Is that OK?’

‘Of course, babe,’ Mark says, understandingly. He opens a pizza box to make sure she takes the right one. ‘Want me to walk you home?’

‘No, I’ll be OK. Thanks though,’ she says, appreciating how nice and easy he is, and wondering why she can’t bring herself to sit through a meal with him.

‘Will you go out tonight?’ she asks.

‘Probably, I fancy a dance,’ he says, further clarifying the vast contrast in their lifestyles. Cam wonders if he’ll pull later. Someone closer to his age, who also works in a gym, who is happy to chat about stuff. She knows she isn’t allowed to care.

‘Have fun,’ she says as he walks away.

‘Thanks babe,’ he calls back. She walks home, slowly.

Back at her kitchen table, laptop in front of her, half a pizza to her right, and a cup of tea to her left, she thinks about what to write about. She knows her relationship with the world through the Internet is better than it is with it in person, but does that matter? Why should she have to be great offline, when she can be everything she wants to be online? It’s not like she has no contact with other humans at all; there is her family, Mark, and of course she has friends. Sure, she conducts most of her relationships on email, but it’s not like she’s literally alone, like an old person in a home that no one comes to visit. She could go out if she wanted to, she just doesn’t want to.

She sits for a minute, and thinks about that.

Does she want to? Or has she become so consumed with her online profile that she’s forgotten how to communicate face to face? She shakes her head. No … no, that isn’t how it is. The Internet allowed her to be everything she wanted to be. She’s happy living through her fingertips. In her virtual world she is bold, brave and powerful. In the real world, she kind of sucks. Her relationship with the Internet is nothing to be ashamed of.

There, she has something to blog about. Cam gets to work.

Being alone doesn’t mean I am lonely.

I don’t remember the last time I felt lonely, but I am alone all the time. I think it stems from being brought up in a busy household, and living most of my life in my head. The truth is, I probably have the same fear of being surrounded that most people have of loneliness. Being alone doesn’t scare me. In fact, it makes me really happy.

Being lonely is actually quite hard, if you fill your life with things you love. For me, the things I love don’t take me far from my front door. I enjoy walking, and watching movies, and seeing family and those kinds of things. But the rest of the time, when I am alone in my home, my thoughts and work occupy me plenty.

When I am alone, I just get on with things. I do all sorts, ranging from acts of vanity to writing words. As I sit here in my kitchen on a Saturday night doing the latter of those activities, I thought I might share some of the other things I do when there is no one else around.

Sometimes, I might sit at the kitchen table and pluck my bikini line with tweezers. Or I put a little vanity mirror on a table by the window, and use the brightness of the daylight to inspect my pores. I squeeze little blackheads and pluck out dark hairs from places on my face that they shouldn’t be. This leaves me looking all blotchy and unsightly, so I probably wouldn’t do it if there was someone else around. I’ll finish that process with a facemask, that I leave on for ten minutes while I email friends.

I’m brilliant at emailing people. I’d write letters if actual handwriting didn’t give me wrist cramps, because I love the idea of old-school pen pals. I write school friends huge catch up emails, and I send them all the time. And they write back with just a few sentences, and I always feel really proud of myself for being so good at staying in touch, even though I would never make the effort to actually see them face to face. I also spend ages reading all of the emails I get from you guys, and a good portion of my time replying.

I cook myself meals, and sometimes really go to town on what they might be. A few nights ago I made myself a chicken Thai green curry from scratch, including the paste. Then I sat in my window seat and I ate it while looking out over London and listening to Tapestry by Carole King. I followed that by reading almost half of a novel about a North Korean refugee, before going to bed and writing a blog with a cup of peppermint tea. In the morning, I woke up at ten a.m. and finished the curry. Cold. There was no one there to judge me, so I just did it, and it was perfect. I spent the rest of the day doing DIY with my dad.

This is my life now, and how it has been for a really long time. I am alone, but never lonely. I don’t know if I could ever be lonely, because I love being alone. I think when you’ve truly mastered the skill of enjoying your own company, happiness just comes.

Cam x

She uploads the piece and tears off a huge piece of pizza. Usually she feels a sense of calmness when she’s written a good article, but Cam can’t quite shake the jitters she’s feeling from earlier. The weakness she feels when she’s in the wider world. How can the virtual her and the real life her be so different? Taking the pizza with her into her bedroom, she slips between the sheets and eats it. Looking around her room, she thinks how nice it would be to have a small armchair in the corner, one with a fun print on it, just for show. Maybe she’ll go looking for one tomorrow, that would be the perfect way to spend a Sunday. Still chewing, she lets out a massive pizza-perfumed fart, turns off the light, and falls fast asleep.

Sunday
Tara

Annie and I are snuggled up on the sofa watching a movie, like we always do on rainy Sunday afternoons. My phone beeps and I jump up like a wasp just landed on my leg, giving Annie a huge fright. Suddenly we are both off the sofa, and standing in the middle of the living room.

‘What, Mummy? Who is it?’ she asks, a little frightened.

‘It’s just Sophie,’ I say, glumly. And sit back down.

Did he text yet?

No.

Need cheering up? You can come over? Bring Annie. Carl is here, but that’s OK.

Maybe later. I’m too busy dying of shame right now x

OK, well come if you can. I like Carl seeing me with kids x x

I consider telling her about the guy who filmed me on the train, but I don’t even know how I would explain that to Sophie. It’s giving me the creeps so badly, I’m really trying to block it out of my mind. But I keep visualising him in his living room wanking away to it, or even worse, posting it on his Facebook page so all his spotty little mates can wank over it. It’s so weird to think that someone out there has that footage and I have no idea who he is. Oh God, me having an orgasm, on camera. It’s just the worst thing I can imagine.

Maybe he was just taking a photo? The newspaper didn’t fall off my lap until pretty near the end. It might not be as bad as I think. I just have to forget about it, pretend it didn’t happen, or it’s going to taunt me for the rest of my life. There is nothing I can do about it now, so I need to focus on the other things in my life, like the fact that I totally imagined how much Jason liked me. Urgh. Today is not good. Annie wants to do stuff, and I feel so low I can’t get off the sofa. There is a standoff.

She was so upset about leaving the party early that she refused to come out of her room yesterday afternoon. I felt so gross that after some pitiful attempts to coax her out, I just lay on the sofa eating Pringles, like a teenager going through a breakup. Eventually I took her up some dinner and let her eat it in her room. Why is it that kids find eating away from a table so exciting? She came downstairs after that, and we played Snap until bedtime. When she was asleep, I got back to my carbohydrates and a bottle of wine. That’s probably why I feel even more horrendous today.

‘You said we’d go to the park today,’ Annie says, not even looking at me, arms crossed as she stares at the TV. We have Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on, we’ve seen it a hundred times.

‘I know. Sorry, Annie. Mummy’s not well. Come on, what do you want to watch, anything you want, I don’t mind?’

‘I don’t want to watch TV. I want to go out.’

I look at my phone again even though it didn’t make a noise. Why hasn’t Jason texted me? Maybe he thought his message had sent? But then he’d be waiting for an answer from me and he’d look and see it hasn’t. No, he decided to stop writing. But why? I want to text him again, say something cool, easy, funny? But I can’t bring myself to. The least I can do for myself is retain some level of dignity by not saying anything else mortifying. Annie huffs loudly.

‘I’m bored inside, it isn’t even raining,’ she says, staring at my phone like it’s another child that is taking me away from her.

‘OK, I’m sorry, I don’t feel well,’ I say.

We sit in silence for a few more minutes. I know she isn’t watching the film, I’m not either, but we both stare at the screen anyway.

‘I’m hungry,’ she says, eventually. ‘I want to go to the park and get an ice cream.’

‘Can’t we just have one day where we sit around doing nothing?’ I realise I’m sounding like the child and tell myself to grow up. I am a mother, not a lovesick teenager. I must parent and stop moping. I skulk into the kitchen. There is a plate of chicken in the fridge, I think it was from Thursday night’s dinner; it should be fine. I flop a big dollop of mayonnaise into it and stir it up, then squash it between two slices of bread. I sprinkle a few Pringles onto the plate next to it, and pour her a glass of water.

‘There,’ I say, offering it to her. ‘I made you a sandwich. Chicken mayo, yummy. Eat up and then we’ll go out.’

She takes a few bites and swallows hard. ‘It tastes weird, Mummy.’

‘Oh Annie, please will you stop being so grumpy and just eat the sandwich!’ I snap, instantly regretting it. But I feel so tired, and embarrassed, and I need to wallow in all of those emotions until they go away. I look at Annie, she looks so upset. ‘Oh baby I’m sorry, I …’

‘You’re SO mean!’ she shrieks as she throws the plate on the floor, the sandwich popping open and mayonnaise splattering everywhere. She storms out of the living room and flies up the stairs. Her bedroom door slams and makes the house shake. That’s the first time she’s ever done that, I couldn’t feel more terrible. I throw a tea towel over the mayonnaise and pretend it isn’t there. Covering my face with my hands, I tell myself I have to be strong, this is not Annie’s fault, our weekends are precious, and I can’t waste one just because I am a total loser. We’ll go to see Sophie, everything will be fine. I’ll make up for yesterday. I have to be strong.

I look at my phone again as I plod up the stairs.

Still nothing. Why hasn’t he texted me?

Stella

Last night was shit. Halfway through my stir fry, Phil came back and sat in the living room with the TV on so loud I could barely think. I stood in the kitchen for ages, calming myself down. I wanted to go in there and rip the TV out of the wall and smash him over the head with it. Why is it him that’s so annoyed? Is it his whole family who died? His body that is under threat? I stared at the back of his head from the kitchen door and mouthed everything I wanted to scream at his face. He is supposed to be the strong one. He is supposed to take care of me, to make me feel better. That is the person he was when we met. That is who I thought was moving into my home. He was the one who persuaded me to get the test, with his ‘I’m here for you, baby’ and ‘It’s better to know.’ And now we have the result, he is the one who isn’t man enough to deal with it.

But I held myself back. And I thought about what I want. And I don’t want to be alone, and I want to have a baby. So as I so often do, I swallowed my pain, I took off Alice’s lovely skirt, I went and sat next to him, put my hand on his leg, and I told him I was sorry. For what I should be so sorry for, I’m not entirely sure. But he turned the volume down, and he accepted a plate of food, and we sat and we watched a movie side by side.

Now, a day later, we are at the kitchen table, eating the roast beef that I just prepared in a further attempt to stop him leaving me. I am running out of conversation; no friends to catch up on, no work gossip, no family news, and I’m trying to avoid the b and the c words.

‘Did you know that if you Google “What if I die with no legacy” the first four results are about what happens to your Facebook account after you’ve died?’ I say, with a small piece of meat stuffed into my left cheek.

‘I didn’t. No,’ replies Phil, taking a sip of red wine.

‘Apparently, now you can nominate someone to be your “legacy contact”, and then they can take control of it after you’ve gone. So basically I’d give you my login and then you could change my pictures and accept friend requests and stuff.’

‘Why wouldn’t you just shut the page down?’

‘Who?’

‘You?’

‘Well, I’d be dead,’ I reiterate.

‘OK, then why wouldn’t the legacy contact just shut the page down? A Facebook account is no good to you when you’re dead, is it?’ Phil says, bluntly.

I take a moment.

‘What if it’s all you leave behind?’

‘Well that would be pretty depressing, wouldn’t it?’ says Phil, obviously hoping this conversation stops soon.

‘Maybe that’s all I’ll leave behind,’ I say, pushing him to respond.

‘OK, Stella. Do you have to talk like this?’ Phil blurts, standing up from the table and taking his plate over to the sink. He drops his head. ‘I can’t have more of these casual conversations about death, it’s wrecking my head.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, even though I’m not. I creep behind him and put my arms around his waist. We stand like this for a minute or two, Phil’s body stiff and uninviting. I undo his belt.

‘I want you,’ I say gently as I take his flaccid penis into my hand and try to work it into something functional. I don’t remember ever having to do this at the beginning of our relationship. It’s standard now.

After a long silence, it’s finally hard. ‘Come to bed,’ I say, taking him by the hand and leading him into the bedroom.

As I take off my jeans and knickers, Phil lies down. He pulls his trousers down a little but leaves his underwear on. I crawl on top of him. ‘I might need a little help,’ I say, seductively putting my fingers into his mouth. He sucks them and turns his head to the side. I run my wet fingers around the opening of my vagina, a move he taught me, that he used to like to watch. I position myself above him and lower until he’s inside me. He keeps his head to the side. I move slowly up and down, not taking my eyes off his face. I try harder, making the noises that used to turn him on. I lean forward and kiss his neck, then his cheek. I kiss the side of his mouth as I groan and move faster, but he refuses to look at my face. He’s managing to retain an erection but he’s not moving, he’s not offering anything. I keep going, ramping up my speed a little but getting nothing back from him.

‘Phil, come on,’ I bark, frustrated. ‘Just fuck me, will you!’

Phil pushes me off and onto the bed. I roll and face the other way, covering my face with my hands. It’s too embarrassing to bear.

‘I’m sorry, Stell,’ he says, sincerely. ‘I’m just really full.’ A lie.

He gets off the bed, does up his jeans as he goes into the living room. I hear the TV go on.

Tara

Sophie and I used to work for an agency that supplied waiting staff for posh people’s parties. We’d serve miniature Yorkshire puddings with horseradish cream, or other such pretentious tiny things, to London’s society crowd. We dealt with a lot of pretentious arseholes, but we also got to snoop around their houses. Huge Notting Hill townhouses and massive Sloane Square apartments. They were another world from what we were used to in Walthamstow. Our families did well by our local standards, we were the upper end of the scale for where we were from, but nothing in comparison to the people who had these parties. They seemed like something out of the movies, and they lived in a London that we didn’t recognise as ours. We used to laugh about how we would be if we lived that way. We fantasised about wearing wild dressing gowns, marabou slippers, wafting around our mansions with glass after glass of champagne. It was a ridiculous dream, but every time I arrive at Sophie and Carl’s house, I realise she is living it.

I pick Annie up so she can ring the doorbell. It’s Victorian, so quite stiff. Her little fingers struggle to push it, so I put mine on top of hers and say, ‘One two, three.’ We hear the perfectly tuned, beautiful bells of Big Ben that their £400 doorbell bellows out whenever anyone pops round. Sophie’s voice booms out of a speaker, ‘Hang on, just upstairs,’ but as she says it, we hear heavy footsteps walking towards the door. Annie holds onto me a little tighter, which makes me feel so good. She’s been angry with me all day. But in that way that kids do, when a shred of fear from the outside world creeps in, she knows her mummy is the one to make her safe. I squeeze her back, happy to be a team again, as the door slowly opens.

And there is Carl. All six foot two of him. His dark hair neatly cut and parted at the side. His fifty-one-year-old, well-looked-after body hidden underneath a cream V-neck jumper, with a checked shirt poking out from underneath. I’m not sure what you’d call the trousers he has on, a casual chino? This is him when he’s relaxing at home, but he still looks smarter than most of the men I know when they’re at work.

‘Hey Carl, so nice to see you,’ I say, stepping inside and kissing him on each cheek. I feel under surveillance, like I could say something incriminating to piss him off. I remind myself I am a parent, that he is not my husband, and it actually doesn’t matter if he likes me or not. But still, I feel judged.

‘Hello Tara, Annie; welcome. Sophie is somewhere, come in,’ he says, warmly, reminding me that most of my opinion of Carl comes from Sophie’s paranoia.

‘Hiiiiiii,’ says Sophie, coming down the large staircase. She looks fully the part and as beautiful as ever. All casual in black, but impeccably styled.

‘Aunty Sophie!’ says Annie, letting go of my hand and running over to her. They’ve always got on great. Sophie is childlike by nature, so connects well with kids. I am pretty certain this would not be the case if the kids were her own. It’s another reason why marrying Carl suited her. He has three boys by his first marriage, and no interest in having any more.

‘Hello sweetheart,’ she says, picking Annie up and giving her a huge kiss. I see her shoot a look to Carl, to make sure he is watching. She thinks him seeing her with children makes her seem responsible in some way, I think. ‘Shall we go into the kitchen?’ she says.

In the kitchen, a huge white three-sided cube that opens up to a sprawling and perfectly preened garden, Carl goes over to a wine fridge that is four times the size of my actual fridge and says to Sophie, ‘Maybe a 2008?’

‘Lovely,’ she replies.

As he opens it, Sophie opens the back doors so that Annie can burst into the open air and run around the flower beds. She gets to do no such thing at home, because my garden is basically a shed with no roof on it. I do love seeing her play happily, a gentle reminder that maybe I am doing OK at being a mum.

‘So, did he text?’ Sophie asks me, as Carl puts three enormous bulbous wine glasses in front of us. He puts three fingers’ worth of wine in mine, three fingers’ worth in his, but as he’s pouring Sophie’s, she puts her hand up as if to stop him putting so much in hers. That is the first time in the history of my existence I have ever seen her do that. Carl looks impressed. Sophie looks at me and winks.

‘No, not yet,’ I say, tasting the wine. It’s unbelievably delicious, like the smoothest, creamiest, most perfectly chilled drink I have ever consumed. I bet it cost £50 a bottle. I drink it slowly, despite wanting to neck it. ‘I obviously gauged that completely wrong. He hasn’t contacted me all weekend, I’m gutted,’ I continue.

‘I presume you’re talking about a young man?’ says Carl, like an old dad.

‘Yip! Tara went on an Internet date on Friday,’ Sophie says, as if she is telling Carl of a new phenomenon that the kids are doing.

‘Actually, that’s not quite what happened. I went to meet the guy from the Internet but I ended up with a guy I met at the bar,’ I say, correcting her, then wishing I hadn’t because that didn’t sound great. Carl looks confused, and I feel dirty.

‘I don’t think I could ever date someone I met on the Internet, I’d be so worried that they would expect something from me on the first date,’ says Sophie, like butter wouldn’t melt. My jaw falls open and I stare hard at her, as if to say, ‘I’m sorry, what character are you playing here?’

‘I was never much of a dater,’ she continues. To which I have to stop myself yelping, ‘No, you were just a shagger!’ What is this rewriting of history she has to do to keep her husband happy? I know what it is; it’s a fear of him leaving her and her being left with nothing. But would he, really? He’s a bit of a pompous snob, but I don’t think he’s that bad.

‘So, hang on,’ interjects Carl. ‘You were going to meet someone on the Internet but ended up with someone at the bar?’ He looks more intrigued than judgmental, but Sophie still looks nervous.

‘Yes. I went up to the wrong guy. By the time I realised it was the wrong guy we were already getting along really well, so I just stayed there with him.’

‘And what about the other guy?’ Carl asked.

‘He left with someone that looked like a prostitute, so he looked pretty happy,’ I say, looking at Sophie, as if to say, ‘You might lie about real life, but I don’t.’ I can see this terrifies her; she’s wondering how to separate herself from my debauchery.

‘God, we are so different,’ is what she goes with, causing me to spit out about £2.50’s worth of wine all over the solid white glossy kitchen table that seats twelve people.

‘Tara, careful,’ she says, getting up to fetch a cloth, with which she mops up my mess. I feel like I’m fifteen and sitting at a table with my friend’s parents who think I’m a bad influence.

‘Sophie, we are not that different. Are we?’ I say, not willing to take any further unnecessary humiliation this weekend; I think I’ve hit my peak after Jason and Wankgate. She stops wiping and looks at me. Carl is behind her, and she looks deeply into my eyes as if to say, ‘Please, just go with this.’ But why should I? Why should I sit here and be made to sound like some old slapper when she was basically ‘Miss Trollop of Walthamstow’ from 1998 through to 2010? Just as I am about to say something brilliantly clever and collected to set the record straight, Annie runs into the kitchen.

‘Mummy, I think I’m going to be sick,’ she says, looking as green as the garden behind her. And then, like an earthquake shattering a dam, she projectile vomits all over Sophie and Carl’s perfectly pristine floor.

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