She’s interrupted by a man next to her who, in a loud voice, enunciates, ‘Is this’ – he points towards the smouldering wreckage of Eva’s home behind him, before turning back to gaze into the blank round eye of a video camera – ‘a random Halloween prank gone wrong, or is it, as we’re starting to believe, an appalling expression of the anger and resentment that has been building in this usually mild-mannered place? This is Sam Beresford for BBC News, Sussex.’ Sam Beresford freezes, holding his sad, benign smile for a moment, before dropping it entirely and anxiously asking the squatting man holding the camera opposite him, ‘How was that?’
Abi closes the door to the flat and calls up the thin stairs, ‘Lil?’
She hears Lily clattering from her bedroom before she appears at the top of the stairs, cradling the laptop they’re supposed to share under her arm and asking, ‘You’ve heard? About Mr Kent’s mum’s place?’
Abi swallows, nods.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Lily sighs. ‘Poor them.’
Abi realizes Lily is the first person she’s met this morning to express any sympathy, any real feeling out loud.
Lily’s long red hair shudders as she thuds down the stairs towards Abi. Abi opens her arms to her, but Lily doesn’t move in for a hug, so Abi has to be satisfied with putting her hand briefly on her shoulder as Lily moves past her saying, ‘Come into the kitchen with me? I want to ask you something.’
Lily puts the laptop on to the round kitchen table. It wobbles, so Abi bends down to adjust the piece of cardboard she’s rammed under one leg while Lily puts the cereal bowls Abi and Margot used for breakfast into the sink.
Lily sits at the computer and Abi pulls up a chair next to her so she can see the screen as well.
Before Lily opens the laptop, she looks at Abi and says, ‘You’re probably not going to like this but I needed to know, wanted to know more about your … um, old job. So …’
She opens the laptop and there in front of them are a dozen or so thumbnails of women’s faces, tits, crotches, legs wide open like butterfly wings. ‘Sex mad!’ one of them cries. ‘34GG all natural!’ ‘Hungry whore!’
Abi stands up like one of the women has slapped her. She wants to slam the computer shut, shout at Lily for looking at this stuff, send her with a disgusted face and pointed finger to her room.
But, of course, Abi can do none of those, would do none of those things; she just stares at her daughter, who stares back at her, noticing the angry flush Abi feels rising up her face, the sudden tension in her body, the taut way she asks, ‘Why are you looking at that shit, Lil?’
Lily’s cheek twitches. ‘I’m just trying to understand, Mum.’
Abi looks away, up towards the ceiling. She hates this. Hates the thought of Lily’s green eyes flickering over that pumped, pressed and airbrushed flesh. These women who, in London, Abi used to think were just like her. Women doing what they could to improve their lives suddenly seem so desperate to Abi, so vulnerable and one-dimensional, in this little, privileged town. Context really is everything.
Lily keeps her eyes on Abi and waits patiently, until Abi sighs and asks, ‘You were looking for me, weren’t you?’
Lily nods.
Abi looks away, up to the ceiling again, in the vain hope gravity will pull the tears she feels building back into her ducts. But it doesn’t work so she wipes her hand across her face and reminds herself that no matter how hard this is for her, it’s harder for Lily. She must get this right. So she looks back, into Lily’s wide-eyed, freckled face and, sitting back down, next to her daughter, says, ‘What do you want to know?’
Abi starts by typing in the password for her old website. She’d spent an afternoon before they moved down to Waverly removing links to www.theladyemma.com which she paid other websites for, before taking it offline completely. Without any sadness or regret, she thought that she might not ever see it again. It feels like years since she took it offline but it must be fewer than ninety days because she still has access. She watches Lily’s face, her heart frantic; it feels like something trapped inside her as Lily reads to herself the words Abi still knows so well:
‘Hello, I’m Emma. Your open-minded, discreet and passionate companion based in central London …’
The text is set in front of photos of Abi, images of her naked back, her clavicle, her feet lifted in the air, crossed at the ankle, some of her tattoos airbrushed away. She’d been proud of her website when she made it so many years ago, pleased she’d taken the time to get the wording, the tone exactly right. Diego helped a bit but she knew he worried about her, so she didn’t ask for him to be too involved.
When Lily’s finished reading, she turns to Abi and asks, ‘So, you were, like, um, high end?’